GROTESQUE by K.A.Laity

Let's get things rolling again with TK'n'C debutant, the inimitable Kate Laity and her witty take on crime, that is simply... 

Grotesque

In boisterous tones Tony regaled me with the letter he wrote to complain about the boost in water rates. "Uncalled for, uncalled for, outrageous, outlandish," he recited as he waved his Carlie about, splashing the foam on the brown tile floor.

The walk to the pub tonight had been through ghost streets, as if the city had been abandoned by all and sundry, given up as a bad job and everyone had fucked off to Holland or Munich or Rome. But it was only the cup finals.

We weren't troubled by such doings at Tony's. The telly that still hung over the dartboard hadn't worked since the days of Eric Bristow. It now featured a hobgoblin's wig of cobwebs, which complimented the rest of the place nicely from the warped bar itself to the stinking bog at the back. Had any ladies needed to powder their noses, they would have been alarmed to find no door marked mná or with a fetching picture of a doxie with crossed legs.

No woman had ever crossed the threshold of the pub, however.

Perhaps that could be blamed on the décor, which ranged from brown to more brown. Or the ambience that derived from unwashed and mostly middle aged men just off shift. The young lads all went to the shiny new sports pubs with their cacophonous screens and drinks with asinine names that they swilled back like candy.

We had two kinds of lager here and one of ale, with Guinness on the side for the old men from the isle. In the summer you could also get cans of Budweiser to take out into the 'beer garden': a picnic table on a concrete square between the rubbish tip and the grey wall of the car park. The chief appeal seemed to be you were allowed to spit out there.

Tony had just got to the nub of his tirade - "working class traitors! Sixty hour weeks!" - when Huckleberry Bob came in and the room fell quiet all at once. Maybe it was his history as a real hard number: at fifteen he had beat up the next door neighbour for insisting he kerb his dog, Bastard, as the rangy Doberman laid a few steaming brown gifts on his azaleas. Poor old Gary still limped. When Bob got out people gave him a wide berth and not just because he had a habit of muttering menacing words under his breath, aimed at the neighbours or his dentist or the skies.

Most likely the pub fell silent that night because Huckleberry Bob appeared to be covered in blood. The 2 by 4 bouncing in his left hand probably didn't help either. No one looked directly at him. The room got bigger, or so it seemed as our breath ran away.

After an interminable interval, his brother Jack made an attempt to hail him. "How're you keeping, Bob?" Nobody called him Huckleberry to his face.

Bob didn't answer but he did turn his head toward his brother. Without a word, he drew out some kind of pistol and shot him once right through the wide shiny forehead. Jack staggered back against the smudged mirror that had withstood countless years of neglect and withstood the publican's weight, as he expired and fell on the sticky floor below.

The silence broke then like shattered glass, as pints dropped to the floor and shouts rang out as everyone tried to find egress. The pity was Bob stood in the entry way yet and the only other exit led to the garden. Most chose that way to escape, but they quickly became lodged in the doorway like the Marx Brothers on a big night out. A couple of fellas ducked into the loo, but that seemed a worse idea than the garden.

Like an eejit, I just stood there by the pillar. Not really what you'd call cover.

Huckleberry Bob went for the knot of desperate men clawing over one another to get to the beer garden, whacking at the hindmost with his 2 by 4, but not immediately shooting anyone. The men in the bog seemed to be rolling whatever wasn't nailed down to block the door, but they got real quiet when the shooting started at last.

Some made it out, some now lay on the floor bleeding. I saw Tony was one. I don't know why I froze. When Bob turned away from the garden and every nerve in my body said, run, still I stood there.

Bob ambled over. He hadn't rushed or broke a sweat. Truth to tell, he seemed dazed, his eyes rimmed red and his face slack.

May Brigid's sacred fire protect me! I repeated my mam's prayer that I'd heard her mutter a thousand times or more back in our village before I came to the land of the enemy. Like sparks from that eternal flame, words sprang to my tongue.

"How's that fine dog of yours, Bob?" Bastard had died some years back, but he had been replaced by one of his pups, a hideous replica called Junior.

It was Bob's turn to freeze. His fingers twitched as he dropped the board and to my surprise, he began to sob. 

"He's dead!"

"The devil you say! What happened?"

He swayed and I began to think he might just keel over. Sobs wracked his enormous frame and he wiped an arm across his face as he took a ragged breath. "Car. Some fucking Tory in a swank car hit him, killed him." He wailed.

I laid a hand on his shoulder gingerly, ready to jump. "That's a damn shame, Bob, a damn shame. Can I get you a pint?"

He nodded and I stepped around the bar and over Jack's body to pull a pint for him. "So I expect that's how you got the blood all over you," I said, just to make conversation.

Bob looked down as if noticing the blackening stains upon his clothes. I slid the pint of lager across the bar and he drained it, wiping his bloody face again. I set to work refilling it right away, ignoring the way my hands were shaking.

Bob belched, but at least he'd stopped sobbing. He picked at his sticky shirt. "Nah, this is from the Tory scum. On his way back from the cash-n-carry with a load of lumber in his Rover, I reckon."

"Handy that," I offered, as I set up the refilled glass on the bar.

"Too right," Bob agreed, sipping this pint more slowly. "Too right you are there."

"It's a funny old world. Bob," I said, pulling a pint for myself. I could hear the sirens in the distance getting louder.

BIO:
To find out more about Kate Laity's writing visit her website: http://kalaity.com/ 

THE SCHEME OF THINGS by Gary Clifton

TK'n'C is pleased to welcome Gary with this hardboiled piece...

THE SCHEME OF THINGS

Harry The Rat gave the job to that dick, Primo. Yeah, I was still on the payroll for the piss-peanuts The Rat paid, but an assigned hit paid big bucks - what the crap-head straight world called an incentive bonus.

The Rat kept Primo around because he was big, stupid and knew how to act like a real bodyguard - like my ass. Primo was one of those jack-offs who was mean, not tough for shit. The kind who actually enjoyed offing a mark for the sadistic high from the last seconds of terror and gore.

The deal had a helluva hitch. The Rat had a chick on the payroll, Mary, if you can swallow that alias shit. Red hair, beautiful blue eyes, with legs all the way to the floor. She was The Rat's pussy deal. She'd also done a couple of hits. Blew the suckers away like quail hunting in Nebraska . You look that good, no problem walking up on the mark.

Rufus Freeman, dude who ran a pawnshop on Troost, had been hosing Mary - at least The Rat thought so. Funny about some guys. In The Rat's mind, Freeman had to go, but good pussy is hard to find - especially the kind with legs that good. So Mary earned a pass. But Freeman was a dead man and that mope Primo got the contract.

Big problem: I'd had a little of ol' Mary - twice actually in the front seat of her 'Vette. I figured the combinations. I was in deep shit. In this damned business, a man does what he has to do. So I figured I better watch and play the whole symphony by ear.

Freeman's Pawn stayed open until 10 P.M. - damned cold and dark in January. Freeman had a habit of sending home the hired help around nine, opening a nice window of time. Primo liked to use a blade, but he was way too chickenshit to take on an old boy like Freeman with a knife.

The Rat was impatient. He'd insist Primo do the job ASAP. So I only hadda sit on Freeman's two nights before, sure as hell, I spotted Primo in his Lexus parked a block down. At just past ten, Freeman flicked out the lights, fumbled with the front door and stepped between snowplow drifts to cross Troost to his Cadillac in the bitter, north wind.

Primo, like a true dumb bastard he was, whipped the Lexus beside Freeman at mid-street and gave him four in the midsection with that .45 he loved so much. Freeman went down like a wet towel.

Then, She appeared. Even the long trench-coat couldn't hide those legs. Primo had stepped out of the Lexus to put a finale in Freeman's head. From behind a snow-heap, Mary swayed off the curb and put five in Primo with that little S&W she carried. He hit the pavement, dead as last Easter's ham.

Well, what the hell. I cranked my ride and was beside her in seconds. 

She started to run, but when she recognized my mug, she stopped and whipped up one of those million dollar, toothy smiles. "We mustn't leave loose ends, she said softly." 

She was right. Primo must have also visited the front seat of her 'Vette, I figured. Freeman probably hadn't, but I by God had. 

I capped her between those lovely eyes. Her head exploded like a bursting watermelon, the force knocking her ten feet, the S&W skidding across the deserted street. I started back to The Rat's. One more in his brain, if he had one, would take care of business.

Survival, that's all it is in the end. Mary lay sprawled on the pavement. "Sorry baby," I looked back. "But even good pussy ain't really that hard to find."

BIO:

Gary Clifton, forty years a cop, has over sixty short fiction pieces published or pending with online sites. He's been shot at, shot, stabbed, sued and is currently retired. Clifton has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University.

HELL by Christopher Black

Another crackin' début, this time from Christopher who shows us his take on...  

HELL 

  

I don’t believe in hell. 
  
Not the way the Bible tells it, anyway. The Big Man in the sky passing judgement, the Devil presiding over a seething lake of fire, punishing the souls of the wicked and the damned. I don’t have any faith. 
  
I mean, it’s the sort of thing we all think about, try to get straight in our heads. Well, I don’t believe in any of that. 
  
The road south is quiet at this time of night. A dual-carriageway, with the regular flash-flash-flash of streetlights. No sound outside but my tires humming on the road, and nothing much moving out in the darkness. I’m alone with my thoughts. Almost alone. 

No, I don’t believe there’s a hell waiting for us after we die, or heaven, or judgement. I reckon if we want to see any of that stuff then we have to make it for ourselves. 
  
What would hell on Earth be like? I think about a young woman, with everything going for her. A young woman cut down one night by a car out of control. A young woman with everything smashed out from under her. From the prime of life to half a life. That seems like hell to me. 
  
Turning out onto the country roads, low-hanging clouds and the still darkness mean I can’t see anything much at all beyond the twin ovals of my headlights. Not that I need to see much. I know where I’m going. I picked the place carefully. Everything was done with care and attention. 

I know exactly what’s waiting out there in the night. Low scrubby hills and gorse, ice age rocks carried south by sweeping glaciers a millennia ago, left to sit out eternity on this blasted moorland. 
  
I wind down all the windows. Not that I need the cold to keep me alert. I’m on edge as it is. The latex gloves feel strange between my skin and the wheel, but it doesn’t distract me. 
  
I know what’s out there in the darkness. Half a mile after the last wooden fence post I slow, looking for the rock and the bush, my signposts, the right turn, the crawling sheep track. Bouncing around now, the stones and the potholes punishing the suspension. Twisting through the scrub. 
  
Or the family. The people who loved her, forced to watch a bright, confident young woman destroyed. A sister who had everything stripped from her. A light extinguished. The people who failed to protect her. 
  
That’s another circle of hell. To watch her sliding down, stranded in that damned chair. Never to stand again, never to walk. Never happy again. And the man who did this to her? Two years for drunk driving. Out in one. And maybe that’s the innermost circle of hell. Watching him walk away and her life destroyed. Maybe that’s true hell on earth. 
  
I thread the car through to the spot I picked out. Turn off the engine. Sit in darkness. The faint bleating of sheep on the wind, and nothing else. 
  
Taking the can from the backseat I start to douse the car, all over, inside, everywhere. Toss the can into the bushes. Strip the gloves, toss them on to the passenger seat. Look around. 


My eyes have adjusted to the darkness. I can make out the grey cloud against the black line of the low hills on every side. We’re in a natural hollow. Nobody will see the fire. Nobody will see the smoke until dawn, still a few hours away. By then, I’ll be long gone. Probably. I don’t know yet. 
  
I rap on the boot, call him by name. He doesn’t answer but I can hear him twisting about, shifting position. I know he can hear me. Maybe he still thinks he’s getting out of there. That he can talk his way out again. 
  
Two years it took her to die. Until her will gave out. It took the last of her strength, as the pains lanced up her crippled spine. Two years in the chair. In the end the pills were the only thing she could reach. Two years. I wish I could make it last as long for him, but we do the best we can. 
  
The match flares, tumbles through the night. The flames catch with a whoomp. They take hold quickly. Now he’s making noise, a lot of it. I listen carefully to every word. I tell myself I’ll remember everything. I’ll remember the pleading and the begging; the words that soon become moans, and then screams. I wish it could be hotter. I dream that it will never stop, that eternity will be this, for him. 
  
I don’t believe in hell. Not after death. If we want hell we have to make it for ourselves, right here on Earth. And we do. 


BIO:   
Christopher Black is an unpublished UK writer. Luckily he doesn’t do it for the money. He procrastinates inconsistently about noir and other things at his Available In Any Colour blog. 

THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT by Jeanette Cheezum

Great friend of TKnC, Jeanette returns with high stakes in a casino classic... bet you like it... 

The Stroke of Midnight 

  

Sophia was no Cinderella; her life wouldn’t turn around before midnight, because she couldn’t behave. There was always another sucker to take the place of the last one as she slipped away. 

The roulette tables were full and the slot machines sung just enough to keep the customers interested; after all that’s what casino life was all about. The size 44 B’s across the table projected nicely under cashmere and sequins. Not realising how much she would help Sophia. Not too many men tonight would concentrate only on the table without drooling over her and that’s when the ritual would begin. 

With great deliberation, Sophia planted herself on the other side of any man that sat next to or stood behind the perky 44’s. Actually when they got as close as possible without rubbing against the blonde that’s when Sophia pinched their billfolds, and money clips. 

The drunks were the marks of choice or the homely guys praying for someone to sleep with tonight, fixated on a possible invitation of the 44’s, always the 44’s. 

*** 

Tonight’s take would finally get the hospital bills paid in full for Jamie. Maybe Sophia could breathe a little. She had only taken a few nights off in the past six months between working or sitting and sleeping by her son’s side. She was exhausted. God, she wished the echoes 

of the police that night would go away. “Mrs. Davis, I’m sorry, but your husband and son have been in an accident. The car was totalled and your husband didn’t survive. We’ve taken your son to Mercy General where I understand you work.” 

Sophia leaned in one more time and lifted a small leather clip. She’d leave now before her collection spilled out of her Frauda soft top bag that stayed snug to her right side. No one at the tables paid attention to her. She bet small, said nothing and dressed matronly with the wig of the night always covering her forehead. 

Knowing cameras were everywhere Sophia made her way to the parking lot never stopping on the way. Not even taking the time to remove the cash once she was safely in her old van. The traffic on Las Vegas Blvd. was light and she couldn’t wait to get back to her home. 

The smell of stale cigarettes clung to her wig and sweater. However, she kept imagining the smell of booze. The kind that seemed to seep through the pores of some of the drunks that came to the hospital. Her stomach felt queasy as the van stopped in her driveway. 

Suddenly, from nowhere an arm slipped around her neck. “Don’t scream!” The grip became tighter. 

“I won’t, what do you want?” 

“You!” He eased off a little. “Come around the seat and get back here next to me. Don’t do anything stupid. I have a blade that would cut you into pieces in seconds.” 

“My husband is inside; he’ll come out to check on me.” 

“You better hope not. Besides, where is his car?” 

“He rides a motorcycle, it’s in the garage.” 

“Then we better hurry.” He laid the knife down beside him and reached for her bag. “What do we have here?” He opened the bag and ran his hand through its contents keeping her in his view at all times. “Whew-wee, jackpot.” 

No not the final payment to Mercy. “Please don’t, I have to have that money.” 

“Me too!” He shoved her. “Take off your clothes. It’s my lucky night.” 

She shuddered and tried to think fast. Looking how far she would have to leap to open the door and jump out. Damn, she had locked the door. 

His large smelly hands grabbed both sides of her face. “I could snap your neck.” 

Her brain swam with ideas, but none of them would work. 

  

He reached for her slacks and snatched her closer, “lie down and take your pants off before I cut them off with you in them.” 

Slowly, she obeyed; waiting her chance, constantly hoping for the perfect solution. “Do you have a rubber?” 

“No!” He reached out again. 

“Okay, okay.” Sophia tugged at her pants leaving her shoes on so she could stall. 

“You’re trying my patience.” 

“Let me sit up! So I can do this properly. I don’t want to be hurt. I’ll undress and you can get the full picture and I will make you harder.” 

He sat back to wait for whatever came next. 

She removed her wig slowly, then threw it close to him; slipped off her shoes and slacks each time getting them in a neat pile. The Bobbie pins in her hair were removed one at a time and she softly hummed a lullaby. Hoping he would pass out or become hypnotised. 

He unzipped his pants and began breathing heavily. 

Good. She played with the sides of her thong running them back and forth in small strokes. 

“Take them off,” He whispered. 

She got on all fours and moved closer to him. He was mesmerised and that’s exactly what she wanted. She touched his shoulder and gently pushed him down. “I like it on top.” 

He smiled. 

Sophia remembered how she had used this technique years a go while putting her self through nursing school.  

She threw one leg over his hips and just as it landed she scooped the knife up and plunged it into his neck repeatedly. 

  

Bio: 

Awarded The Helium Network’s Premium Writer’s Badge and a Marketplace Writers award. 

Jeanette’s work has been published on several online writing sites and in print. She’s published in twelve Anthology books and four books of poetry. Three of these books have made the New York Times Best Sellers list. Recently she’s published seven eBooks for Barnes and Noble Nook and six for Amazon Kindle for children and general adult audiences. 

You may see where some of her work is published on the about me page at 

http://cavalcadeofstars.wordpress.com/ Or on the member’s page at http://www.hamptonroadswriters.org her personal email is jcheezum@cox.net 

EMPTY DINERS AND PASSING TRUCKS by Richard Godwin

The inimitable Richard makes a welcome return with... 

EMPTY DINERS AND PASSING TRUCKS

Beyond the stained window the highway looked deserted. Patty felt she was in the wrong   town with no visa. The diner was empty apart from the guy in the corner. He’d been eyeing her all night.

‘I don’t suppose you have a light?’ he said, walking over.

‘Sure’, Patty said, flicking her Zippo, hiding the stain, snuffing it out. ‘Spare a cigarette?’

‘Oh yeah.’

The waitress bristled past, all swish of starched uniform and the click of over chewed gum. She looked at them out of the corner of her eye, a slight curl of her lip.

Patty stepped outside into the mix of ice cold and diesel fumes.  After the initial silence, they started the smokers’ chat. Weather, journeys, directions, bitching about this and that, and then he said it. Just like that. No interlude, no build up. As if he was ordering a pizza.  ‘Last night I killed a man.’

He took a deep drag and blew it skywards then turned and looking her right in the eyes, said, ‘A guy got smart. He was nobody, really. I shot him. Twice.’

‘That right?’

Silence. And just two burning cigarette ends in the cold and the smog.  A truck whizzed by.

‘Why you telling me this?’ she said.

‘Cause there’s one thing I always feel like doing after I kill someone.’

‘No shit?’

‘You look good to me.’

‘I ain’t gonna sleep with you.’

‘I ain’t asking you to sleep with me, honey. How old are you anyway?’

‘Twenty-six.’

‘That right? There’s a bad dude out there, in case you ain’t heard, he’s been chopping women up. Much badder’n old Jim. I don’t kill ladies, just fuck them.’

‘I can look after myself.’

‘Heard one woman got her throat opened up real bad. Out here, alone, just her thumb in the air and only her poontang to pay. They call him the maniac trucker, although I hear this guy drives a pick up.’

‘Thank you for the smoke,’ she said, walking back in.

Inside, the waitress stared at her from behind the counter, hands on her hips. Then she went out back. Patty felt weak and as she tried to remember the last time she’d eaten, Jim walked in, laughing, almost dancing across the diner to where she sat.

‘Come on, darling, we can do it in the john,’ he said.

The smell of pizza drifted across the air.

‘How much you got?’

‘I knew you were a pick up. I reckon you’re worth a hundred.’

‘Hundred and fifty.’

‘Done.’

He peeled a stack of tens out of his wallet and laid them in her palm.

‘I’ll see you in the john,’ she said. 

After a few minutes Jim made his way there.

She was standing at the back, past the urinals, outside the only clean cubicle.

Jim walked in and put a broom handle against the door.

‘Well, hallelujah baby.’

‘Come on,’ she said, walking into the cubicle, pulling down her jeans.

‘You’re as sweet as cherry pie, ain’t you?’

She thought she heard someone trying the door as he entered her. She looked over Jim’s shoulder at a fly crawling across the graffiti. She felt the cold wall against her buttocks as he stopped.

He winked and ran his finger across her cheek. ‘Told you I ain’t the maniac trucker.’ Then he looked down at her right forearm and shook his head. There was a jagged scar running through the tattooed word “Mom”. 

After he left, she heard a pick up drive off as she checked herself in the mirror. She was thinking about food when the door swung open and the waitress walked in.

‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I saw him leave. I’m calling the po-lice.’

‘Why the fuck you such a bitch?’

‘You just made a big mistake, you ho.’

‘You don’t get to call me no hooker, you’re just a fucking waitress.’

She was trying to leave when Patty grabbed her hair. She spun round and struck Patty hard across the face.

‘I wish that killer would pick you’, the waitress said.

Patty smiled. ‘Oh yeah?’

She had one fist clenched in the waitress’s uniform as she pulled her switchblade from her pocket and opened up her throat. The blade was still moving in the air as the waitress spurted blood on the wall, staggering round with her eyes popping. And Patty watched her fall, one hand on the floor, reaching for something she never found.

She stepped over the body and out of the diner and hailed a passing truck.

Jim went back the next day and heard the waitress had been killed by the maniac trucker.

Every time he took a piss there, he thought of the hot little tattooed thing he’d screwed, as the steam rose from the urinal like a mist.

Bio:

Richard Godwin is the author of crime novels Mr. Glamour and Apostle Rising and is a widely published crime and horror writer.

Mr. Glamour is his second novel and was published in paperback in April 2012. It is available online at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Glamour-Richard-Godwin/dp/0956711332 and at all good retailers. Mr.Glamour is Hannibal Lecter in Gucci. The novel is about a glamorous world obsessed with designer labels with a predator in its midst and has received great reviews.  Pulp Metal Fiction recently published Piquant, Tales Of The Mustard Man, his culinary genius. His  Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse are interviews he has conducted with writers and can be found at his blog . You can also find a full list of his works on his website.

DEAD MAN'S SWITCH by Liam Sweeny

TKnC welcomes New Yorker, Liam with this hardboiled offering... 


Dead Man’s Switch



Darius grew up on the wrong side of the tracks his father rode tirelessly as a train conductor. Long hours; he'd come home soot-coated and sweaty, those few times he could be home. He had forearms as big as the thighs of a lesser man, six-foot-four, with dark eyes framed with darker, bushy brows. Darius rarely saw him, but his father was a good man; worked so hard to get food on the table, get his mom the microwave ovens and him the latest toys - saved enough to put him through college, state college anyway. One day, when he was seven, Darius asked his dad about the trains.


"Papa, what if you get thrown off the train?" he asked, "Does it keep goin'?"


His father laughed. "Boy, that thing's got a dead man's switch."


"There's a dead man on the train?" Darius's eyes opened wide.


"No, no... it's called a 'dead man's switch'. It's in case..." He paused, "in case I get thrown off the train, or I hit my head."


"Oh." Darius said, scratching his head, "but why do they call it a 'dead man's switch'?"


"That's just what they call it." His father said. He put his arm around Darius. Their house overlooked the train-yard. 
"Those trains can be so heavy, and go so fast that if ya' can’t stop 'em, they can hurt a whole lot of folk." His father punched straight into the air. "So they have a switch, the dead man's switch that shuts them down if we can’t do what we're supposed to do."


"But you won't fail, will ya', papa?"


"No siree’…" He said. "Not on my watch."


*** 


Years later, Darius got a phone call in his dorm at SUNY Oneonta, drunk as dirt, stoned to shit. State Police. His mother and father were gunned down in that same house across from the train-yard. They caught the guy pawning his mother's gold bracelets, an anniversary gift he himself bought her with his work-study money. He had to have his room-mate drive him home to identify the bracelets. They never let him see them; it was best that he not, they said. The funeral consisted of two closed caskets.

Friends and family surrounded him during the funeral, but he was numb. He was surprised how many people came to the funeral. He expected family and a few of his friends, but the priest had a packed house as he walked the mourners through the valley of the shadow of death. It was the guys from the railroads that came, by the droves. Such a tight bunch, each having a story about how his dad saved their skin when this piece shit the bed or that train pulled into the rail-yard at the wrong time, how his granite grip pulled many a hapless soul from being crushed between a hundred tons of coal on each end. But it was the other stuff; the times that he was there for his guys during the trying times, times like that funeral. And they were all there for Darius, offering him so many phone numbers and twenties, fifties and hundreds “just to help get him by.” It was moving, and touching but Darius couldn’t feel touch, or be moved by anything through the image of mom’s anniversary bracelets.

Every primal, inconceivable nightmarish creature his mind could ever conceive held him captive once the blind shock wore off. He didn’t measure out his life with coffee-spoons like Prufrock, but with emaciated bottles of rotgut. Then came the trial of the man who murdered his parents.

He went to court every day of the trial sober, watched the testimony, the experts, claiming insanity, and Darius just wanted to give the court a real example of insanity, psychotic rage aimed at the defendant. The defendant had a name; he refused to recognize it. The man's first name was murder. His middle name was convict and his last name was lifer.

Until a technicality excluded enough evidence to hang the jury and a mistrial renamed him 'out on bail.'

Darius saw the man again... through the scope of a high-powered rifle. He had enough money from his inheritance to rent an office space in the building opposite the courthouse for one month, with enough left over to buy the rifle and join a gun club where an old hick taught him how to shoot a quarter at two-hundred and fifty yards.

He opened the window, backing up enough to keep the barrel inside, sighted in to dead center of the chest of the murderer, waiting patiently. The dirtbag stopped to light up a cigarette before going in to start another mistrial. Darius remembered his father punching straight into the air, could hear him say the words.. "...if ya can’t stop 'em, they can hurt a whole lot of folk..." The justice system got thrown off the train, hit its head, failed to do what it was supposed to do.

Darius looped his finger into the trigger guard, felt the cold steel of the hair-pin. He took a breath, let it out and pulled the dead man's switch.



Bio: Liam Sweeny was born and raised in upstate New York. His writing career began as a result of working in Louisiana with Hurricane Katrina evacuees in 2006. His crime and noir fiction has appeared in various sites, such as Flash Fiction Offensive, Pulp Metal Magazine, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, Shotgun Honey and others. He has published three novels and an anthology of flash fiction. In his free time, he is heavily involved in disaster relief.


http://www.liamsweeny.com

SHADES OF GREY by Darren Sant

Daz Sant is one of the nicest guys on the Brit Grit scene. But don't be fooled by this because his fiction is gritty and hard-hitting, as you'll find in...

Shades of Grey

He yanked at his bonds in quiet desperation and cold icy fear. Berl tried to stretch his arms. No good. Tied fast behind his back. Agonising cramps twitched in his forearms. He tried to shout out but a gag muffled the sound. 

He looked around the grim little room. A lone cockroach roamed around on the oily and dusty ground before him. Its feelers scanning the air for tasty morsels. There was a constant drip, drip from the ceiling onto the top of his head. 

As the endless hours stretched by he was slowly getting soaked to the skin. Outside a storm raged and buffeted the corrugated tin sides of the building. The loud roar of the wind whistled through the vents and holes in the building. A loud clatter and muffled curse reached Berl's sharp ears. The cold was starting to gnaw at his bones like a hungry grizzly. He yanked at his bonds in quiet desperation.

A constant hammering from the next room heightened his fear. The Sheriff wondered how much more of this he could take. His ticker wasn't what it used to be.

What should have been a quick drive to the seven eleven had turned into a terrifying ordeal. Someone had hollered his name in the parking lot, then pain, a fall and darkness. He awoke bound and gagged to a chair in a dark room.

The room was windowless and unremarkable except for one small detail. A perfectly square metal clad hole several inches wide and several deep from what he could make out. Berl shuddered as he wondered at its purpose in. 

What sounded like a power drill started up in the next room. Berl felt a sharp stab of fear and his heart started to pound. What did they have planned for him? The drill stopped and a harsh laugh punctured the silence.

A loud grunt and then the sound of something heavy being dragged along the floor. The door was suddenly kicked open. Two large black men struggled with the weight of a heavy wooden frame that resembled, no it was, a cross. They lay the cross on the floor. The taller of the two men eyeballed Berl before leaving the room. They left the cross on the floor. 

Several hours passed and despite his fear Berl drifted into an uneasy dream-filled sleep.

His slumber was disturbed by the slamming of the door. He looked up blearily from the gloom. The two large black men entered the room and this time they were pushing another black man in a wheelchair. Berl stared at the man in the wheelchair. His eyes were vacant and there was a bare patch and scar on his head.  A puddle of drool had collected at the top of the T-shirt he wore.

"You remember us boy?" Asked the larger man looming over Berl. He waited for any sign of recognition in Berl's eyes. When he saw none he snorted. "We just two more niggers to you eh Sheriff?"

Berl struggled and tried to talk as the two men untied him. The larger man knocked him down with a vicious hook to the jaw. The darkness once more called to him.

When Berl came around he found that he couldn't move at all. His legs were tied and his arms were outstretched. He was raised off the ground and staring down at the three men.  Berl saw that the cross had been placed in the hole in the floor. He was bound to it.  The pain hit as he realised that his hands were actually nailed to the cross. Gravity pulled mercilessly.

"You awake just in time boy. Before you die we want you to know why. We was jus' kids when you and your clansmen caught us. Walking along minding our own business. Except our little brother Jonah knew no better. He gave you lip. You and your clansmen with your hoods and billy clubs."  At this he spat on the floor and stared up at Berl on the cross.

"He’s been in this wheelchair since that day. His expression’s the same one you see now. It don’t change. If you'd known better you'd have kept your hood on Sheriff."

The large black man pulled a Zippo from his pocket.  "We gonna have us a barbecue. Our own cross burning if you will."

Berl’s eyes widened in terror as he smelled the gasoline. Jonah’s frozen lips creased into the first smile that had graced them for years.

BIO:

Originally from Stoke-on-Trent, Daz now lives in Hull.  His short fiction is on various ezines and in anthologies, including, Radgepacket: Tales from the Inner Cities 6.  

Daz is proud to be a part of the Byker Books stable and is the creator of Tales from the Longcroft Estate. Check out his eBooks on Amazon.

Daz also reviews here.

HEAD SHOT by Cindy Rosmus

TKnC is pleased to welcome Yellow Mama Editor, Cindy with something a little bit different...

HEAD SHOT

Donna Santullo, her name was.

          Julie’s best client. And she was Donna’s favorite “beautician” at Clippers. She’d requested Julie for the final styling. Before the Great Dirt Nap.

          “No,” Julie told the mortician. “I can’t do it.”

          “Mami . . .” Gil was a sweaty mess. “You got to. Or they’ll know.”

          That it was him who he killed her.

          Right outside her house, with her key in the door. After she’d won two grand in St. Jude’s 50/50, he’d plugged her in the head. He needed crack bad, and she wouldn’t give up her purse.

          That red spangly one under Julie’s bed.  With the gun in it. He should’ve chucked both in the bay, but was too scared.

          “Bastard,” she’d called him, once. The first time he’d marked up her face with that cheap ring.  “Fucking evil coward.” Always preying on the weak.

           How could you? she almost screamed. But had to keep quiet. Coward or not, she was terrified of him.

           Inside the red purse, Donna’s perfume had spilled. Tabu, maybe. After two showers, Gil still stunk from it. To Julie, anyway.

          “Call him back,” he said, meaning the mortician. “Please,Mamita. Say you changed your mind.” When he touched her arm, she cringed. Before this, she’d lived for his touch. In spite of that ring.

         “How could you?” she whispered.

         “She made me do it!” he said. “She wouldn’t give me her purse.”

          Sure. It was all her fault. A seventy-year-old in a spangled pantsuit. For not letting a crackhead grab her winnings.

          What would Julie have done?  To save her own life?

          Donna had been down-to-earth. A great tipper, and good friend. Always there to dry Julie’s tears, and to Donna, she cried plenty.

         “Dump that asshole!” Antoinette, the owner told Julie, when she came in bruised, or broke. The other hairdressers smirked.

         "She will,” Donna said, “when she’s ready.” She squeezed Julie’s hand.  “When she runs out of love.”

         Donna knew all about love. She was married to a great guy, an ex-cop who’d quit drinking for her. He’d changed, for her! Who could blame him? She’d had a warm smile, and blue eyes that actually sparkled.

         Picturing those eyes and smile sewn shut was too much for Julie. “I . . . just . . . can’t!” she’d said, and hung up on the mortician.

         “Baby . . .” Gil’s grip was tighter. “Call him back.”

          But she wouldn’t.

          She took the beating, instead.

*     *     *

         Marisa, the “new kid,” was supposed to go in Julie’s place.

         But . . . “‘No!’” Antoinette quoted Marisa, over the phone. “‘Please, not me! I can’t touch anything dead!’”

         Julie said nothing.

        “Can’t even stuff a turkey,” Antoinette added. “So how can she ‘do the dead’? Jeez.”

        Cringing, Julie knew what was coming. Gil’s smile said he did, too.

        “I can’t leave the shop,” Antoinette said. “And first viewing’s at two. So you’ve got to do it, Jules. I mean, like now.”

        Against Julie’s bruised cheek, her cell was sweaty.

        “You’z two were real close. She even asked for you, way back. Said, ‘Antoinette, if anything happens to me—I mean bad—and I die, I don’t want nobody doin’ my hair but Julie.’”

        From under the bed, Julie could smell that purse. Tabu, and gunpowder.

       “Makeup’s already on, so just the hair needs doing,” Antoinette said. “I figured you’d want to do it. Unless . . .”

       Was she on to Gil? Or was Julie just being paranoid?

       “Something . . .” She heard Antoinette smile. “Or someone—won’t let you.”

       Did she know?

       “I’ll hurry,” Julie told her.

*     *     *

        Lots of times she’d “done the dead.” Till now, it was no big deal.

        Sure, their faces were cold, and hard, but Julie got fifty bucks for a fast set and styling. And not even the whole head, as only the front and sides were seen.

            While Julie worked, she talked to them. Especially if she knew them in life.

            “It’s okay, Annie,” she’d told her downstairs neighbor. “You won’t hear screaming and fighting no more.” Gil had called Annie “that nosy old bat.”

            But with Donna, it would be different.

            “She’s in there,” the mortician told Julie, meaning the viewing room. It was too late to do it downstairs.

            As she edged inside, her guts felt like hot soup. Gil, she thought.

            In the distance, Donna lay in a fancy casket. The room felt ice-cold, though the heat was on. Zillions of flowers, there were, like at a queen’s wake. The stench was overpowering—lilies, chrysanthemums, and thatundersmell . . . That no-matter-how-pretty-they-did-you-up-you-were-still-deadsmell.

            It’s a job, Julie told herself.  She was your friend. She wants you here.

It wasn’t Julie’s fault. She didn’t kill her. Had no clue that Gil would, though she knew he’d get his crack money from somebody.

Up close, Donna looked like an angel, with straight, graying hair. Next week she would have come in for a coloring.

            “Donna,” Julie whispered, “I’m sor—”

            “Thank you,” the guy said, and she screamed.

            She hadn’t seen him, standing amongst the flowers. “I’m sorry,” he said. He looked like she’d taken an axe to his heart. “I’m Vince. Donna’s husband.”

            Julie tried to calm down.  He looked like an older, neater version ofColumbo, that TV detective. Ex-cop, she remembered. And her guard was back up.

            “Thanks for coming,” he said. “She always liked how you did her hair.”

            Julie couldn’t meet his eyes. She thought of how Donna’s were sewn shut. “S’ the least I can do,” she murmured.

            “You made her look younger. Not like an old bat.”

            “She wasn’t an old bat!” Julie smiled over at the casket. “She was due for a color. Sorry I can’t do it.”

            “‘S’not my job, man.’” Vince sounded so much like Gil, she looked at him.

            “She told me all about you,” he said then.

            Julie self-consciously touched her cheek, looked away again.

           “You wanna sit down?” she said. “Till I’m done?”

*     *     *

            While she worked, she felt his eyes on her back. Like she would trip up, if he stared hard enough. Maybe poke out Donna’s eye, from nervousness.

            She couldn’t tell where the bullet had struck Donna.  Or if it was still inside the head. Guns were Gil’s thing, not Julie’s.

            But when a chunk of hair came out, Julie gasped.

            “What’s wrong?” Vince asked, from the first row.

            “Nothing,” she said, but something was. More and more hair was coming out of Donna’s head. This had never happened, with any corpse.

            She slipped the hair into her shirt pocket. As more hair came out, she added it to the rest. So much was coming out, she suddenly stopped working.

            “It’s okay,” Vince said, from right behind her. She jumped. “Gimme.” He reached into her pocket and pulled out Donna’s hair. As he slipped it, tenderly, into his own pocket, Julie began to cry.

            “C’mon outside.” He took her arm. “I need a smoke. You?”

            “I don’t . . . smoke!” Julie sobbed.

            “I’ll teach you.”

            She nodded. Somehow, that made sense. More than anything else in her life, right now. And the smell of this place was making her sick.

            Outside, the morticians eyed them, curiously. The first viewing wasn’t far off. They tossed their own cigarettes on the ground and went back inside.

            “It’s trauma,” Vince said, lighting up.

            “What?” Julie recalled how smug Gil had looked when she’d left.

            “‘Head’ trauma. That’s why her hair’s falling out.” He handed her the smokes, but she waved them away. “Bullet moved around, never came out. Shook things up. Like scrambling an egg.”

            She felt like puking. This was his wife, that he loved, he was talking about.

            If it were Gil, how would she feel?

            Maybe . . . glad?

            “A .22 LR. With a suppressor. That’s what he used.”

     In her mind, Gil was sprawled on the sidewalk, his curly hair sticky with blood. “Who?” she said, nervously.

            “The killer.”

            She pictured Gil in that casket inside, eyes sewn shut. No more evil glare.

            “Followed her home from St. Jude’s,” Vince said. “They had a bazaar going on.”

            “I know,” Julie said.

            And that foul mouth. . . . Gil had the prettiest lips, but it ended there. 

            No more “Gimme money, you fucking bitch!”

            “She won a bundle.” Vince tossed his cigarette away.

           Julie nodded.  Gil’s hands, entwined with black rosaries, were folded on his chest.

           Helpless. Unable to beat her again. With that ring.

           It would be so easy.

          She smiled. “Two thousand,” she said, “one hundred and two dollars.”

          Vince fingered his wife’s hairs in his pocket. Like they were ashes, he flicked them into the air.

          The wind brought them back.

BIO:

Cindy is a Jersey girl who works in New York City & who talks like Anybody’s from West Side Story. She works out 5-6 days a week, so needs no excuse to drink or do whatever the hell she wants. She loves peanut butter, blood-rare meat, Jack Daniels, and Starbucks coffee (though not usually in the same meal). She’s been published in the usual places, such as Hardboiled, A Twist of Noir, Beat to a Pulp, Out of the Gutter,Mysterical-E, Media Virus, and The New Flesh. She is the editor of the ezine, Yellow Mama. And she’s still a Gemini and a Christian.