Grand, fiction by Preston Lang

The stranger asked if he could do a little work in the field for something to eat and a place to stay. Dinner wasn’t much—thin soup and the last of the bread. But the stranger ate hungrily, and when Ida showed him a clean blanket and his spot near the stove, he closed his eyes and said a quiet prayer.

Ed and Ida woke up before dawn, but the stranger was already gone. The blanket was rolled up neatly, and there was a little something sticking out of the end.

“Ida, this is a thousand-dollar bill.”

“What do we do with it?”

Ed knew what they weren’t going to do. Everyone had heard about that farmer in Indiana. The bank robber, Honeyman James, had pulled the same routine on him. That poor sap took the 1000 to town and tried to deposit it in the very bank that held the lien on his land. They confiscated the stolen bill and had him arrested. While he was inside, they took his farm. Then they let him go with a fine and time served. Not long after, he hung himself from a bridge.

Ed’s farm was just as bad off, but he was a little smarter than that fool from Indiana.

“I’ll take it to Liza in New York,” he said.

“You’ll lose it before you get there.”

“I won’t.”

“Then you’ll lose it in New York.”

“Liza will know what to do.”

“Then she’ll take it from you.”

“She’s my sister.”

“What do I do if the men from the bank come while you’re east?”

“Tell them they have to carry you off the land.”

“If they come, I’m asking them to drive me to my mama’s. I hear they do that if you promise to leave quiet.”

“I’m not going to fail.”

“If you get the farm back, you know where I’ll be.”

The bill was crisp and new. President Cleveland looked heroically to his right—For All Debts Public And Private. Ed walked seventeen miles, away from town, past the dry stubble of winter cornfields to the bend before the Mosopawn Bridge. As the freight train approached, he ran alongside a boxcar that was cracked open just a bit. As it came close enough to touch, it flew open wider so Ed could jump in. Two small, dirty men sat in the car. One of them held a knife.

“Thanks for the help,” Ed said.

“That costs.”

“I’m busted. Why do you think I’m riding this way?”

“I don’t think you understand. Whatever you got hidden away, it needs to come out.”

Ed wouldn’t have any problem with these two in a fair fight, but he knew a quick man with a blade could be trouble.

“There’s nothing hidden away.”

“Give us the coat.”

Ed’s coat was long and tattered. Neither of these men could wear it, but they could probably sleep in it.

“I thank you again for the help, but I’m keeping everything that’s mine.”

The men looked at each other for a second before the one with the knife spoke.

“Watch yourself when it gets dark, big man.”

“He means it.”

Ed believed them.

“All right, look,” he said. “I got a nickel.”

He jangled the change in his pocket—seventeen cents—as he closed the distance quickly between himself and the unarmed man. Ed grabbed the little guy and pitched him off the train. The other man didn’t move. The train hadn’t hit the bridge yet. It was still at a trotting pace.

“You want me to help you off, too?”

The man tucked away his knife and jumped.

It was just after 10 PM the next day when Ed got to New York. He’d been there one time, before he’d been married or owned a farm. The city hadn’t lost any of its blaze or its pace. In fact, it seemed faster but angrier. He had Liza’s address on the back of an envelope. She always wrote at Christmas and said she was doing well, giving violin lessons, playing small concerts and private functions, but her block in the west 20s was dark and smoky. It smelled even more poisonous than the main avenues, and two of the upstairs windows in her building were broken. He knocked on the door. It didn’t open, but a sharp woman’s voice came right away.

“Who are you?”

“I’m here to see Liza Brown. I’m her brother.”

“No visitors after ten. Not even brothers.”

“Please. Does she live here?”

“Go away.”

“Ma’am, it’s important family business.”

“We get too much important family business. Too many brothers in here.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“You want me to call the cops?”

“Ma’am, just tell her I’m here.”

“Listen, Mac.” The woman opened the door wide enough to get a look at Ed. “Oh, you’re Liza’s brother.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

“All right, come in. I’ll see if she’s up there.”

He stood in the main room. There was a small kitchen with no stove and a scratched-up table that could probably seat eight if they crowded in. A minute later, Liza came down the stairs.

“Say, you really are my brother.”

She was only a few inches shorter than Ed but not nearly as thick. Two years younger, she had the same sharp features and deep blue eyes. But his were still and cautious, hers were quick, amused, unflappable. She hugged him and they went up to her tiny room. They could hear Crosby singing Dinah from down the hall.

“What brings you to town?”

He told her everything—Honeyboy and the cash, the lien on his land, and the farmer from Indiana. Then he showed her the bill. She smoothed it out on a small crate by her bed.

“Hiya, Grover,” she said. “What have you been up to, sugar pie?”

“Can we deposit it somewhere?”

“You really trust me.”

“You’re blood.”

“Not going to work.”

“Why not?”

“Look where I live. Look what I own. I’m not going to do much better than that hayseed out in Indiana.”

“So what do we do?”

“I’ve got a few ideas. Let’s go see a man I know.”

“Right now?”

She threw on an old coat, and they walked downtown.

“Say, how’s Ida?”

“Ida is fine.”

“Uh oh.”

“I said she was fine.”

“All right. She’s fine.”

“She’s had to put up with a lot,” Ed said. “We’ll see.”

“If you go home with money, you think everything will be all right?”

He didn’t have an answer for that, but they kept walking down Seventh Avenue. Building after building, people walking straight at them then darting past at the last second, men who seemed to be standing heedless out in the middle of the street, just barely avoiding the cabs and streetcars.

Soon they came to a five-story building on a curved street.

“Who are we going to see?”

“Just some artistics.”

The front door was open, and they walked to the top floor where about forty people were packed inside two small rooms, mostly laughing and drinking clear liquid out of blue tea cups. Two men near the window were arguing—one pounded furiously on the cover of a book. On the phonograph, some foreign man was singing in English about his Mimi.

“Liza, Liza.” A woman ran over to them. “You brought your brother. Liza says that you own half the hogs in Illinois. You’re very rich but too stingy. Why so stingy, Edward?”

“I made all that up,” Liza said. “Where’s Weaver?”

“Who?”

“The man who lives here?”

“Oh, we told him to leave because he was such a gloomy pill. I think he went out to eat. You want a cup?”

Liza took a drink, but Ed couldn’t imagine having a belt in a place like this. One of the men by the window threw a book across the room.

“You should have been here earlier,” the woman said. “Buddy put a whole pigeon in his trousers.”

“Buddy is a dangerous intellectual.”

Liza had one more drink then they left and checked the open restaurants until Liza spotted their man through the window of a coffee shop about five blocks away. A little guy with glasses and wild hair.

“I have to talk to him alone,” she said. “Let me have the bill.”

“No.”

“But I’m blood. You trust me.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“Okay, you go in first, sit near him but don’t look at him. Then I’ll come in.”

“With the money?”

“Yeah.”

Ed went into the coffee shop and took a seat two tables from the man with the wild hair. People were drinking tea and reading, marking up their books as they went, and Ed was worried that he’d have to buy something. He’d been at the table almost a minute before the woman at the front called to him.

“You need something, honey?”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t think of what to say.

“This place isn’t just for sitting. Are you waiting for someone?”

“Yes,” he managed.

“You want a cup of coffee in the meantime?”

What was a cup of coffee? A nickel, a dime? The idea of spending that much on something he didn’t even want was terrifying. The man with the wild hair looked up from his book.

“Maybe he doesn’t speak English,” he said. “Du Pratar Svenska?”

“I am waiting for someone,” Ed said finally.

“All right, then. But you need to order when your friend shows up,” the lady said.

Finally Liza walked in.

“Weaver, dear. Got something to ask you.”

She motioned him to the back of the shop. Ed couldn’t see them anymore, but he could still hear. She told him how she’d come into some money and needed him to change it.

“You have it with you?” he asked.

“Can you change it?”

“Of course I can. I have a lot of cash back at my uptown place.”

“Let’s go.”

“Let me see the thousand.”

Ed heard the sound of money changing hands.

“You are the answer to my prayers,” Weaver said.

“Why is that?”

“You know I had to give up the place uptown? And the car. I sold my class ring to some Jew.”

“I’m sorry, dear.”

“So I’m going to take this money.”

“Right. And you’re going to give me smaller bills. Tens, twenties, even hundreds are all right.”

“No. I’m going to take it and keep it and give you nothing.”

“Don’t play around.”

“You can go to the police. See how that works for you. Or you can go back to my place and tell your friends who sit around drinking my booze that I’m a crook. Maybe they’ll worry their free ride is coming to an end, but they won’t lift a finger to help you.”

He stood and walked out of the shop. Ed was too shocked to move. Liza tapped him on her way by and pulled him out to the street, but it was too busy for fighting. Weaver was moving quickly uptown.

“I’ll stay on his back.” She pointed down a connecting street. “You run around that way. Past one intersection, then the next. You turn left on Charles. Go straight until you see Weaver’s building. He’ll show up, you sock him one.”

Ed took off down the cobbled streets, past one intersection, up to another. He didn’t see the word Charles anywhere. Should he turn back? Continue? He kept going, and at the next intersection—there it was. Charles Street. He turned left. A minute later he saw Weaver’s building. It was dark and empty out in front of it. Just as Ed caught his breath again, Weaver came around the corner from the opposite direction. He stopped when he saw a huge and stupid man in the middle of the sidewalk. But then Liza came up from behind and kicked him hard in the back of his legs. He fell to his knees.

“Get his arms, Ed.”

Ed rushed forward and pinned Weaver’s chest and shoulders to the ground. He struggled, but he wasn’t a strong man.

“Help! Help me!”

Liza went through his pockets until she found his wallet. She checked to make sure the 1000 was in there. She also dumped a few coins into her hand then threw the wallet on top of the man.

“You throw a good party, Weaver.”

Ed followed his sister as she ran around the corner. When they slowed to a quick walk, he saw the river to the west.

“Sorry about that rat. At least we made eleven cents on the deal.”

She put the change in her handbag.

“Let me have the money, my money.”

“Hey, all right. You don’t have to snarl.”

She handed him the thousand back.

“You know, one time President Cleveland got a woman in trouble. So he put her in the nut house and gave the baby to this really nice couple in Buffalo.”

“What are we going to do now?”

“I’ve got another idea.”

“What time is it?”

“Why, you have to be up early?”

“No.”

“I do. Violin lesson. I give Bess Flynn 45 minutes before school.”

“How much do they pay you?”

“I can eat there whenever I want. That’s something.”

They walked back uptown. In the 30s, they passed a row of shacks, some built with loose boards and ripped pieces of tar paper. Others were neater and looked almost professionally constructed. Ed could see candlelight inside some of the houses, but it was quiet out in front. Then they turned east toward the brightest, busiest part of the city, past all the neon and streetcars and men in expensive suits, right to a restaurant and nightclub called The Tuxedo—but they were stopped at the door.

“We have to talk to Lottie at coat check,” Liza said. “Then we’ll be on our way.”

“I’m sorry, Miss, but Lottie will have to conduct her personal business on her own time. Now you need to move on.”

“You’re Ken, right? Lottie’s told me all about you.”

“Would you please move along.”

“I’ll bet your wife in Bay Ridge would be awfully interested in what you get up to after work.”

“You can’t threaten me. I am a decent man.”

“Maybe, you are, but you wouldn’t believe the things I’d be willing to say. I’ve read some of those French novels.”

“Miss, I’m going to ask you—"

“Give me two minutes with my friend. Is it really any skin off your nose?”

Lottie was a tiny woman with a husky voice. She stood behind a counter in front of furs, hats, and canes. She was happy to see Liza.

“Your brother is plenty rugged,” she said.

“Yeah, we run tall in our family.”

“You’re not eating here, are you?”

“No, I had a question for you. Can I come back there?”

Lottie opened up the half door and let Liza in the room. Liza whispered something in her ear. Lottie hugged her, and Liza turned her just a bit while they embraced and found pen and paper. While Lottie was writing, Liza quickly unhooked a nice dark coat and tossed it to Ed. He wrapped it in his own coarse one. He looked around, but no one was paying them the least attention.

When Lottie was done writing, she folded the paper and handed it to Liza. By then, a fashionable couple was approaching coat check.

Lottie looked at Ed.

“If you catch him, you give him one for me.”

Liza pulled Ed away from coat check, past Ken, and out into the streets.

“What’d you tell her?”

“She once needed a special kind of doctor. I got you a hat, too. Try on your new rags.”

The coat was a little small, but it looked good. He thought the top hat was ridiculous, but Liza shook her head.

“It’s great: you’re a butter and egg man. No sharp room would turn away your business. Now we’re going down to Bedford. There’s a spot where we can roll dice.”

“What? No, we don’t need to gamble.”

“We’ll swap Grover for chips, play an hour, then cash out—probably a little lighter.”

“We’re going to lose some of the money?”

“Or maybe we’ll win a little. You came 8000 miles on roller skates, you might have to drop a little lettuce.”

She filled him in on what to expect as they walked. It felt like they’d been on their feet all night, past shops and elevated train lines that were all starting to look the same. Bedford was mostly a residential street, not too far from the party at Weaver’s.

For the first time, Ed noticed his sister’s ratty old jacket.

“Don’t you need a better coat?”

“Nope.” She took off the jacket and folded it over a metal railing that ran horizontally in front of a building. “If I lose it, you’ll buy me a new one, right?”

She had on a simple black dress. It didn’t look formal, but on a girl as tall and striking as Liza, it didn’t look cheap. She nudged him ahead then down a set of stairs.

“Yeah?”

A deep man’s voice came through the door even before they knocked.

“Just in from Chicago. Looking for something to do,” Ed said.

“No. Not here.”

“Come on, Rudy. You know me,” Liza said.

“There’s no Rudy here. Get off my stairs. I mean it.”

Liza tried some more of the cute stuff, but it didn’t work. When they got back up to street level, Ed smelled something odd—like alfalfa but sweeter. Liza was already walking toward it. Up on the steps in front of a very slender building, a young man was smoking.

“Jerry?”

“Who’s that?” The man put out the cigarette and held it behind his back.

“Relax. It’s me, Liza.”

“Liza, Liza? You’re gambling tonight?”

“My brother would like to. They won’t let us in.”

“Yeah, they’ve tightened up. There was word of reckless individuals. I’ll get you in.”

“Finish your tea.”

“No, I got a set to start. Hey, bring your fiddle some time. We’ll get downright classical.”

Liza laughed and Jerry led them back down the stairs. Ed was frisked thoroughly, but they got inside. The whole place was one open room filled with tables. It was about ninety percent male, but there were a few women bouncing around near the roulette wheels. Jerry left them at the change counter.

“Friends of mine, Sal,” he said. “Bigshot hog farmer from out west.”

“How many hogs do you have?” Sal asked.

“Nine thousand five hundred,” Ed said.

“How do you get them to fuck so much?”

“Sir, you can’t talk that way around a lady.”

“My mistake,” Sal said. “How much you need?”

Ed put the 1000 on the counter.

“A thousand?”

“You don’t have that many chips?” Liza asked.

“You got to be careful with the big paper.”

“You can let us play on credit if you like.”

“Let me get the sourdough man.”

Sal waved to someone across the room, and they all stood around for a minute and listened to Jerry play Fats Waller note-for-note on the piano. Finally, an older man with ink stains on the front of his shirt came by to look at the money. He flipped it over once then held it up to the light.

“It’s good. Give them chips.”

They walked over to the roulette table. Liza patted Ed once on the shoulder.

“Nine thousand five hundred hogs. That was perfect.”

Ed wasn’t sure why it was perfect. He only knew that would be a lot of animals to care for.

“Let me have a few chips.” Liza held out one hand when he didn’t cough up right away. “Come on, we’re here to play.”

He gave her five 20-dollar chips, and she threw one right on red. He wanted to snatch it off the table or stop that ball spinning before it landed somewhere black. It came up on 17.

“Hard times,” Liza said.

The croupier took their chip, and Ed felt it like a slug to the stomach. How much bacon was that? How much feed? How much of his land could he buy back for twenty dollars? He grabbed Liza by the shoulder, a little harder than he’d intended.

“Let’s wait a little.”

“We have to bet. We can’t just cash out. Put a hundred down somewhere.”

“No.”

Liza put 40 on red. Again it came up black. But then she went on a streak. When she was 200 dollars up, she traded him five 20s for one of his 100s. She put it on a four-corner and hit it. Maybe this was a good way to make money. Ed put one of his 100-dollar chips on odd and won. He kept playing. As a young man, he’d rolled dice behind a few barns, and once played cards at Dutch Feller’s. None of that was anything like what was happening now. This was like flying. Twenty minutes later, Liza pulled him to the bar. When they were served, Ed threw his shot straight down and asked for another. He knew it was gin, but he could barely taste the alcohol.

“You want to cash out soon?” she asked.

“How much do you have?”

“1600.”

“I’ve got two thousand dollars.” His laugh was a rapid panting sound that he didn’t recognize. “But it seems to me like we could play a little longer and make even more.”

“Ed, we haven’t been winning because we’re smart.”

“Why have we been winning?”

“Luck. We’ve been lucky.”

Lucky. Ed had forgotten what that meant. As a kid he could remember the times their dad made a big sale. One night he came home with a baseball glove for Ed and a violin for Liza. That was luck. But farming just seemed to be a rigged game that got worse each year.

Could it really be true they could walk out with 3600 dollars? It was just as easy to believe they could walk out with a lion on a leash. But if it was real, he was set, wasn’t he? Not only could he get out of debt, he could buy back all his land outright. And a car. And a decent plow. He knew Baker was as bad off as he was. He could buy Baker’s farm, double his acreage. Maybe hire him to work it and split the income.

Ed was the last one in the room to notice the two men with sawed-off shotguns.

“Everybody’s a loser tonight,” one of the gunman said.

Ed could see two more men at the counter getting the money. He turned to Liza.

“They can’t take our money.”

“Hey, Big Corn. Shut up,” the second gunman said.

“You don’t understand,” Ed said.

But, of course, he did understand. He knew how much money was worth. The hopes and dreams. The simple survival. The man took a step toward Ed.

“Another word, I break your nose.”

He was so close now that the rifle was useless, and Ed wrenched the thing out of his hands and threw him to the ground. The other gunman spun and shot, hitting his own man. When he stopped firing, Ed charged him, too. The last thing he saw was a little white ball sitting on number 32, still running around and around.

***

With bodies on the floor, the Bedford Avenue club was finished. But they popped up again in a new location soon after, and over the next few months, some gamblers managed to cash in some of their chips. But Liza never could. They did pay for the coffin and train fare to send Ed back home so he could be buried under his own soil. But when he arrived, no one was there to meet the box. And the bank owned his land.


Preston Lang is a writer from New York. His work has appeared in Thuglit, Betty Fedora, and WebMD. He has published four crime novels with Down and Out Books to date. For more, check out PrestonLangBooks.com.

The Tavern Brawler, by Robb T. White

First Dallas, then at the canning plant in Bryan. Now here . . . Fuck me and fuck a duck.

Beaumont was hotter than Dallas and muggier than Houston. Ten in the morning, Shane Laurie’s shirt was plastered to his back. He hadn’t planned to work his way down to southeastern Texas, the asshole of the state. It just happened that way. You go to a bar, a guy says they’re hiring here or there. You go.

He didn’t find work here, it was off to Louisiana again for another goddamned bayou job on a shrimp boat or mucking around with crab traps, and he’d had enough of that. He didn’t know what it was about shellfish. He didn’t eat them—they looked like big bugs to him. He’d worked in Baltimore shucking oysters, fished for blue crab in Louisiana swamps and worked as a deckhand on a shrimp boat in Galveston Bay. Yet that cunt of a receptionist made him check the box “Unskilled Labor” on his application.

Fuck her. He had half a mind to head that her off tonight on her way home, her and her ugly face, homelier than a slit-faced bat, and see just how she likes his unskilled labor after she gargles his jizz. He’d make her check the “unskilled” box she didn’t do it right. Write an F on her fat ass with a Magic Marker.

Shane took a city cab to a roadhouse tavern off the highway near the Neches River. The dumbass driver turned around to look at him, waiting for a tip. Shane told him to get a real job and that was the best tip he’d get today.

Lordy, another redneck dump—his kind of place.

His eyes boxed the room on the lookout for three things: women, women with men (he’d separated his share of them from the girls in bar fights), and three, men who had “that look.”

The look was important. Size didn’t mean shit. Everybody carried down here. A bowie in the boot was as common as a hooker with a grudge. A pipsqueak with a gun was more dangerous than a man his size because a man his size expected Shane to fight fair. Shane didn’t fight fair. A man only had to tangle assholes with him one time to learn that. He’d use his boots as well as his fists, kick balls, gouge eyes, bite anything his teeth could get close to if it came to a ground-and-pound contest. He didn’t believe in stopping once you had your opponent down, neither, and punching the guy after he was out cold or done quit was enough to make him hard. Shane had grown up in a raucous household in Baton Rouge but he didn’t blame his upbringing for his love of violence. Some men like him, it just stuck to. You knew it when you threw that first punch. It wasn’t enough to beat a man half to death, he wanted to make him suffer. He wanted that man to carry scars and think of Shane Laurie from Louisiana for the rest of his sorry-assed life.

This place looked OK so far. The men looked like nobodies, drugstore cowboys, all hat and no cattle, and a couple women looked like they could use a ride on Jumbo. First, he had to find some guy drinking alone at the bar, make friends with him, be a good ol’ boy for a while, so he could get the sucker to buy the drinks. Shane believed his stories of sleeping rough, traveling all over and “doing dirt,” as he liked to call it, made up for his alligator arms when it came to buying rounds. Then he’d eye one of the babes and make a move. Get laid, get a place to sleep. Shane could write a book on hustling by now—that is, if he could write anything longer than a sentence with more than six words in it. Writing was for homos anyway, so fuck that shit.

The bartender was tall, lanky dude in a black leather vest, arms all inked up in a scattershot of tattoos blending into each other, a sure sign of a man who’d done time in a big house somewhere. Shane knew some of that kind, too. Mostly crazies looking for a reason to go back. He’d joined up with a few in his thirty-six years, made some money with some, and figured he knew the difference between the psychos and the hard boys. He couldn’t read the patch from where he sat at the bar and some ex-bikers were pussies, but still, best to be a little careful until he knew for sure. A few minutes of small talk and Shane was being called “brother” by this loser, so he knew he had all the time he needed to plan his next move.

And there she was, hot damn . . . a tricked-out blonde, yee-haw!

Walking past on her way to the can. Big, sassy-looking dyed blonde with a big rack. A little long in the tooth—past 40, he reckoned—but he couldn’t be choosy tonight. On her way back, she cut her eyes to him and she got that teensy smile in return. An hour later, he separated her from her skank girlfriends and the two of them were rubbing thighs and feeling each other out from a back table. His “buddy” at the bar was still sending over drinks, too, so things were working out well for later.

Later was after the bar closed at two-thirty. She drove him in her pickup to a lover’s lane. Somewhere close to the river, he guessed, because the smell of swamp muck was thick in the humid air. His idea of foreplay was to push her head into his lap. He had to give this one credit, though. She knew how to play a decent tune on a man’s flute, did her best not to gag when he made her take it all the way in so her cheeks bulged. He liked that look on a woman’s face.

Back in her double-wide—a “present” from a dead husband who got hisself blown up in a factory explosion—he gave the old girl her money’s worth in bed. He slapped her hands away from her bouncing tits when he plowed into her. He liked to watch them jiggle. She was shaved down there and a natural squirter. Shane finished up, rolled over, and silently complimented himself on a job well done. This old gal should be good for a couple days, maybe a week. Who could say? She played her cards right, Shane would consider letting her keep him around while he looked for work.

Shane snored like a buzz saw out of kilter. He never dreamed, or told all the women he slept with that. He figured that meant he would never get ass cancer or heart attacks like men who tossed and turned all night, worrying about shit.

In the morning, he thought about giving her another ride with some morning wood. But he couldn’t get out of bed.

Maybe I’m still asleep and this is one of them dreams. What the fuck—

When he shook off the booze fog, he saw it was no dream at all. He was roped hands and feet to the bed railing. He was about to bellow something, figured the crazy old bitch was into kinky sex when she came out of the bathroom. Her heavy funbags swayed from side to side. She avoided looking at him. When she did, the look on her face, however, was not one he expected to see. He expected to see gratitude. . . what was all this shit?

“George was hopin’ he’d live long enough to see this,” she said.

“Who the fuck is George, why you got me tied up?”

“George was my husband, remember? I told you about him last night at the bar.”

“Got kilt in a factory explosion, you said.”

“I lied,” she said. “He got pancreatic cancer.”

She stretched out the word, as if she was proud of herself for saying it right.

“So fuckin’ what? Untie me right now, God damn it!”

She sat at the end of the bed and stroked his leg.

“Honey, you got a big whang on you but George, he was much better in the sack than you.”

“Take these ropes offen me, and I’ll change your mind about that.”

Shane began to worry. She was too calm—way too calm.

She lit up, inhaled deep, and blew out the smoke. She stretched over him her cigarette extended to give him a puff, her fat titties rolling over his chest.

“Naw, he didn’t work in no factory,” she resumed, as if they were having a normal conversation. “He worked at the alligator processing farm yonder by the river over to Benson Road—you know, skins for fashion, the meat for agricultural animals, that sort of thing.”

“So fuckin’ what? What’s that got to do with me?”

“Nothing—to me, but that’s how I met him. He come lookin’ around the bar before you showed up, askin’ questions, spreadin’ his money around.”

Shane’s heartbeat rose a notch. Woman’s plumb fuckin’ crazy . . .

He squirmed but the ropes bit into his wrists and ankles. He twisted his head. She had him tied off with an anchor hitch or a bowline, some kind of good knot he wouldn’t pull out of.

“Bitch, you best untie me right now and I’ll forget all about this—this whatever the fuck it is.”

“Oh no,” she said, testing the knots securing his legs, “”can’t do that, sweetie pie. My instructions was simple. First, I’m gonna get me some clothes on and make a phone call.”

Instructions? What instructions? What was this goofy old broad talking about?

“You behave yourself now.” She gave his thigh a gentle pat.

Shane’s heart thumped in his chest now. He stopped twisting; it wasted strength and moving against the ropes burned as well as cut off circulation. His hands and legs were going numb. He had to plan his own attack . . . rip this bitch’s head off just as soon as he could get free . . .

The buzzer rang. He heard her greet someone at the door. He heard talking in low voices. Hers wasn’t like the night before, all flirty. Maybe she spiked his beer when he went off to piss. He recalled feeling a little dizzy when they left the bar. Trouble was, he was thinking with his dick and didn’t pay it no mind—just the miserable heat, he thought. Besides, his sights were set on pussy. The man’s voice sounded younger. Someone his age.

Then, whoever the guy was, he was standing right above him looking down at Shane. His face blank, no expression. Just a man, a nobody. Average size—Shane could bust him up in a minute. Thinning brown hair parted on one side, brown eyes, a face you wouldn’t remember in a crowd.

“Do you remember me?” the man asked him.

“No., motherfucker,” Shane said. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’ve been following you all over Southeastern Texas,” he said. “I’m surprised you never saw me. I remember once time you were coming out of a bar in Crockett—no, hold up a sec. It was Lovelady. I remember you looked right across the street at me standing there.”

The man smiled down at him but it wasn’t a friendly smile.

“I don’t remember you,” Shane replied.

“I’ll take it from here,” the man said, suddenly turning to face the woman, who stood at the foot of the bed watching them both.

“Where’s my money?”

The man reached inside his jeans pocket and handed her an envelope.

“It’s all there,” he told her.

“I’m gonna count it anyway,” she said and left the room. “I don’t want this comin’ back on me. Y’all promised that.”

The man was looking at Shane again. His brown eyes stared into Shane’s eyes, unblinking, as if he saw something remarkable in Shane’s irises.

“Don’t worry,” he replied. “It’s all taken care of.”

“Who the fuck are you people!” Spittle flecked Shane’s chest from the outburst. His voice cracked.

The man said, “Shane Laurie, bar brawler. . . . Shane, you by any chance recall a man you fought outside a tavern in Dallas about eight, nine weeks ago?”

Shane remembered a couple bar fights up that way. He was doing a lot of meth at the time, ornery as a wasp.

“No, I fuckin’ don’t, motherfucker.”

“Well,” the man said, “it was you up in Dallas. You beat up a man in a parking lot outside a bar called Shenanigan’s. That man later died from a brain hemorrhage two days later. You started the fight with another man, but the man who came outside to protect his friend, he was the one you beat up.”

“I don’t remember no fuckin’ bar in Dallas nor no fight, neither, motherfucker,” Shane said.

He did, though. It wasn’t much of a fight. Dim images of his triumph behind that bar filtered back, like water seeking its equilibrium, tickling the memory cells.

“That was a fair fight—”

“No, it wasn’t,” the man interjected. “No . . . no, it wasn’t a fair fight. You stomped his head when he went down.”

“I tole you, I don’t remember no fight up in Dallas,” Shane said. “I wasn’t even in Dallas eight weeks ago. What the hell is this?”

“This is Texas justice,” the man said and brought the fish billy down on Shane’s head with a loud crack that Shane never heard but it sent him plummeting into a black void.

***

Shane woke to the sound of crickets chirping, the smell of swamp muck deep in his nostrils. He lay on his back. He was still nude, his ass itched from chigger bites or something, his head weighed a ton. He sat up and almost vomited.

Nothing to see swamp, cypress trees, and lily pads.

Better’n being shot, he thought, but Gawd damn, my head hurts. I’ll find that motherfucker and kill him, Shane thought.

Shane started to get up and fell over at once. What the fuck now, for Christ’s sweet sake?

Shane’s leg was attached to a thick nylon rope that was attached to a limb hanging out over the waterline. It was tied with a fancy knot he did recognize because he’d tied it on the decks of bayou trawlers often enough: a rat-tail stopper.

He shouted. Nothing. His voice echoed across the murky water. His throat was parched but the water looked too putrid to drink. Swamp birds cried out, insects made a variety of buzzing, whirring sounds all around.

If this don’t beat fuckin’ all, he thought. The whole episode from trailer to swamp was so bizarre he almost laughed. A good story to tell the next sucker in a bar to spring for drinks. But, first, he was gonna find that rat-fucking , no-good, brown-eyed son of a whore and choke the life out of him—after he stomped every drop of yellow shit out of him.

Then a thought crept in. Maybe he was dragged out here so far no one ever came by, not even swamp people or fishermen.

Then he spied something behind him. A damned wooden sign. Maybe a jogger’s trail sign or a park sign. It was just a few feet beyond the limit of his rope. His anxiety subsided. That sign meant civilization. He wasn’t going to die out here in some shithole swamp.

Worth a look to read what it said, he thought, since I ain’t goin’ anywhere anytime soon.

Shane found a crooked stick near the waterline and used it to hook the sign post. He jerked and pulled until the letters started to reflect the light. He could make out a few letters. B-E-A-U.

Well, hell’s bells, I know I’m in Beaumont.

He was never much for reading in school before he dropped out of tenth grade but the rest of the sign’s message eluded him.

“Fuck it,” he said.

Shane sat down and slapped the stick at the ground in frustration: sandy soil, not overgrown but graded, someone had cleared this patch of ground into a rough semicircle stretching thirty yards across and sanded it down with a grader. Shane let his mind drift, listening to the insect and bird calls. Eight caws of a crow somewhere above in the branches. Eight, a warning to the other crows, four would be a call to dinner.

He got up stretched, scratched his belly. He was being feasted upon by bugs and flying insects while he sat. He slapped at a tiny red spider crawling up his forearm. “Lucky I don’t get bugs in my asshole,” he muttered. Somebody’s got to find me soon . . .

He grabbed his stick and made another effort to twist the sign around to read it. The light had shifted, dappled the leaves of the cypress and probed the tufts of hanging moss, giving the entire swamp a lime-green phosphorescence.

There, by God, got you.

The sign reflected the afternoon light, filled out the missing letters after BEAUMONT and each one etched itself into Shane’s brain as comprehension completed the neocortex’s circuit.

BEAUMONT ALLIGATOR FARM.

Oh fuck, no—

Beneath it, in smaller letters:

Danger !!! Do NOT Feed the Alligators!!

Oh my fucking God Almighty—

When he turned back around to look out over the water, he saw them gathering in the dusky light: hundreds of pairs of eyes like cat’s-eye marbles spread out just beneath the surface. Eyes as far as he could see.

Then the massive snouts, the ancient dragon spikes breaking the surface here and there. They moved en masse toward the shoreline. Ripples fanned outward from their massive tails moving side to side like a metronome set to larghissimo. Some bulls weighed a thousand pounds. Like dragons from mythology, they rolled in, ever closer, no hurry, but steadfast on the mark. Each moved in a motion like one pack. They were crueler than any man, indifferent to all pain or remorse, underwater brawlers, oblivious to everything in the universe but mating and eating.

‘Texas justice’, the brown-eyed man had said, the words tolling like a bell of doom in Shane Laurie’s head.

Robb White lives in Ashtabula, Ohio. He writes, noir, crime, and hardboiled stories and novels featuring series character Thomas Haftmann. A recent collection of crime stories is Dangerous Women: Stories of Crime, Mystery, and Mayhem. Crowood Press published White’s Perfect Killer in 2018. Fahrenheit Press, another U.K. publisher, released Northtown Eclipse that year. “Inside Man” was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2019. His website is http://tomhaftmann.wixsite.com/robbtwhite.

One Spent Shell, fiction by Dan J. Fiore

A knot in Skid’s chest. Blood on the floor. One spent shell falls from his gun and Vaughn, Skid’s cousin, his best damned friend, stares up at him. One eye a pulpy exit wound. The other frozen in surprise.

A teller’s phone rings.

“What’s going on in there, Henry?”

A boy cowers in the corner. Just a kid. He stares at the woman he walked in with. Dead now like the rest. All but the two of them.

“I want a truck,” Skid murmurs.

“What were the shots we just heard, Henry?” The voice reminds Skid of his Uncle Simon. “Everyone okay?”

“Stop calling me that,” Skid says. “Nobody calls me that. Just get me a truck. Or a van. A fucking way out of here.”

The voice asks for a hostage. An exchange.

“Transportation might take a while,” it says. “Anyone in there need anything else in the meantime?”

Skid looks around at all the bodies.

“More hostages.”

***

Heartbeat racing, but downshifting. Flak jacket heavy.

Lights flicker and cattle stampede across the roof. Just a chopper passing low overhead.

That cocktail Vaughn cooked up. . . those two thick sky-blue lines. That’s why he went all ate up. Why they’re here now, half dead and trapped. But what Skid would give for just one more bump.

Drive on, he tells himself. Go through with it. Set up all those card decks of C4 along the deposit boxes and at least nab what they’d came for. Just in case he makes it out. Somehow.

The weight aching him settles in his eyelids. He wonders about things Vaughn missed. About unknown doors. Tunnels and secret passages. Like bookshelves that spin. Places to hide. A flashlight through the flesh of his fingers. Dark closets. The dark. Heavy hands on his chest, and the way his uncle would—

The phones ring. Skid sniffs alert again.

Simon says.

He rips the phone cords from the wall.

The boy still sits in the corner, chin between his knees. Shallow, sharp breaths. Eyes wide. Panicked and afraid.

Then, a muffled rattle. Somewhere not far outside. So out of place. It shakes something loose in Skid. Before the burst even ends, he recognizes it:

An AK-47.

***

Two exits. One leading west to the parking lot. The other downstairs, spilling eastward onto Main Street. Skid follows the gunshots to the west. A long, wood-paneled hallway. Double panels of shatterproof glass.

Knots unravel in his back. The one in his gut doesn’t.

All the armored cars, gone. The cops littering the sidewalks, gone. The lot past the entryway, now vacant. Just a hot slab of concrete stretching toward a scattered hillside of rundown houses.

A scream.

Not from outside, but within.

The kid.

***

An empty corner. The lobby, quiet. Air still thick with copper and gunpowder. The kid isn’t there.

And neither is Vaughn’s body.

***

Skid finds the kid in a back office. Balled up under a desk. A black burn mark on his forearm, the shape of a hand.

“What happened?” he asks.

A long moment of silence. The kid won’t talk. The rattle of the AC. Then, nothing. The lights die along with the electric hum.

“Shit,” Skid mutters. He waves a hand under the desk. “It’s all right,” he says. “I won’t hurt ya. I promise.”

Too quick for Skid to avoid, the kid snatches Skid’s wrist.

Skid whimpers and wrestles free. “Don’t,” he says, stumbling back. He can’t breathe right. “Don’t touch me.”

Shame melts the kid’s pale face. Like he did something wrong.

Skid tries to explain. “I don’t like being—” But a voice cuts him off. It comes from the other entrance downstairs.

“Henry,” it booms. “Henry, come to the door, sweetie.”

It’s familiar. Unmistakable. But it can’t be.

“It’s Momma.”

***

Skid can’t believe it. Won’t. Vaughn’s cocktail. That’s all this is. But he can tell from the look in the kid’s eyes beside him that he sees her too.

She stands in the middle of the street. Tight, ripped jeans. A low-cut top. Clothes too young for her age. The age she seems. A bullhorn in her hand held to her bright red lips. “Henry?” she says, and she smiles.

He pulls a trophy case away from the hallway wall.

His head’s fucking with him. He could’ve sworn there were more buildings beyond the street before. Now it’s mostly empty land. Just a handful of structures. Barely noon, but getting darker.

“Let us in, sweetie,” the woman outside says. “Let them have a hostage and they’ll let you go.”

Filled with banking awards and old photos, the case topples. All the items inside fall through the glass, shattering and scattering across the linoleum. He shoves the wooden structure toward the entrance.

An eruption. A crunching boom. He looks up, and his mother is just beyond the doorway. The glass is splintered where the palm of her hand bloodies against it. Red trickles along the cracks. Track marks oozing pink pepper the bruises in the nook of her elbow. “Listen to your Momma, you little shithead.”

One last push. The trophy case blocks out the daylight. The hall goes dark.

Red in the exit sign’s light, the kid stands at the foot of the stairs.

Next to him, a door. A sign.

Do Not Enter.

***

It’s a room of pipes. One looks about the width of Skid’s shoulders.

Blow through, Skid thinks. He could follow it through the drainage system.

The creek was only a half-mile away.

Home free.

He could get stuck. Trapped. He could suffocate.

But maybe he’d rather die in a sewer than live in a cell.

***

Upstairs. Vaughn’s body is still gone.

Skid slings the bag of C4 onto his back and heads toward the steps.

A phone rings.

Skid finds it under a stack of paperwork along the teller counter.

“Your bus is here, Henry,” the voice says. The voice that sounds like Uncle Simon.

“Bus?”

“Best we could do. Just give us the kid and it’s all yours.”

“How do—who says I ain’t giving you some other hostage in here?”

“All we want’s the kid, Henry.”

Skid’s eyes trace the wire coming out of the phone down to the frayed end at his feet. “I—I say who goes.”

“The kid, Henry.” That voice. So clear, so close. Skid can feel on his neck its beer-sticky breath. “Simon says.”

***

A few strides from the western entrance is a yellow bus.

Beyond it: only rough, rolling hills.

A desert at dusk.

Skid shakes his head. Where did the buildings go? The town? Confusion makes him want to collapse. Give up before even taking a single step. Quit being such a pussy, Henry.

He takes out his .40 and shows the kid the empty holes inside. “No bullets,” he says. “Yeah?”

The kid says nothing as the barrel meets his temple.

They push outside.

Quiet settles over Skid like a wet, wool blanket.

In the time it takes to reach blacktop, the sunlight dies until beyond the lot’s nothing but night. Just a vague line of the horizon splitting two warring depths of black.

They near the bus. A murmur rises. Tinny and distant.

Skid enters first, walking the kid backward until they’re both inside. That strange sound detonates. It comes alive in complete clarity. Dozens of children. Maybe hundreds. Laughing. Screaming. Speaking in a language Skid doesn’t want to recognize, but does.

Farsi.

***

Three small, staggering steps up into the bus.

The horde of children turn toward Skid with blank, cloudy eyes that seem impossibly white against their black, charred skin.

A choked sob. It reminds Skid he isn’t breathing.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know. I didn’t fucking know.”

The patter of footfalls behind him makes him turn. He catches the last glimpse of the kid before he disappears back into the building.

Something tugs at his flak jacket.

A hip-high girl, barely more than a skeleton. From wrinkled, crisp lips, her hesitant voice speaks. “M—mikham beram…khoo—khooneh.”

Through the windows: shifts in the darkness. A deep shadow buries the edge of the lot. Like black sand pushed by the wind one gust at a time. Swallowing the world. All of it except the street leading out of town. Skid notices a key in the bus ignition.

Someone says, “A hostage for a way out.”

Skid glances over his shoulder. Where the charred girl just was sits Vaughn. Thirteen years old now. A bloody crater in his face. “I saved you, Skid.”

“I didn’t make no deal with you.”

“You know that’s not what I mean. Why shoot me after all I done for you?”

“You ain’t that kid no more, Vaughn.”

“Neither are you.” He nods to Skid’s forearm. Where the kid grabbed him earlier. A black hand mark taints the skin.

Skid looks back at the lot exit. Narrow eyes. Cupped hands at his temples. He leans toward the windshield, and his breath leaves frost on the glass. He can’t tell where the road might end. He asks Vaughn, “What’s the first thing you remember?”

“From?”

“From ever.”

Vaughn seems to think as the wind outside picks up. Black sand pelts the driver-side of the bus.

“Smoke,” he finally answers. “Way it looks against a clear sky.”

Skid nods.

Vaughn asks, “That prove I’m real?”

“Proves you know what I already know about you.”

“Never told you that.”

“You did.” Skid takes a step down toward the bus door. “Was probably just too fucked up to remember.”

“Yeah,” Vaughn says. “Sounds about right.”

Skid risks one last look back toward the bus. He expects to find Vaugn’s smug, grinning face behind him. But only the little burnt girl is there.

“Mikham beram khooneh.”

***

Skid guides the kid into the vault. Back with all the locked deposit boxes. Out at the lot and at the bottom entrance, heavy blows bash against the doorways.

“Stay in here,” he tells the kid.

The dead phones keep ringing.

Eyes growing wet, the kid shakes his head hard.

“Nobody can get to you in here,” Skid says, and his voice cracks. “Nobody.”

The metal door closes with a gut-quaking thud.

Above, skylights break. Glass falls to the tile and on top of the bodies. Faint light from the front hallway flickers with approaching shadows. Skid clutches his .40 tighter. With it, he smashes the keypad on the wall beside the vault.

“Missed your bus, Henry.”

A warped chill stabs Skid between his shoulder blades. He turns to find him standing there over the smear of his son’s blood. Shoulders back. The big gut he always hauled around like a loaded wheelbarrow now spills intestines from a shotgun wound.

It’s weird, Skid realizes, being as tall as him.

“I ain’t going nowhere,” Skid says.

Behind Uncle Simon, black sand takes over the walls, floors, and ceilings. Like blood through a glass of light beer. “Why you being such a pussy, Henry?” Uncle Simon says. “We just want the kid.”

“All this shit today,” Skid says, “made me remember something.”

The dark spreads thick. So deep and carried so easily by the whirlwind around them, it leaves just Skid, Uncle Simon, and the vault. Its speed rises to a solid blur. Like helicopter blades. Its noise implodes under its own weight.

Suddenly: No sound. No movement.

Just them.

“Know what my first memory is?” Skid asks.

Uncle Simon steps toward Skid. “Don’t know that I care.”

“It ain’t an image. Nothing I saw. It ain’t some. . . like, some scene, ya know?”

“Henry,” Uncle Simon says, and keeps moving forward, “you really think that’ll stop me?” He lifts an eyebrow at Skid’s gun.

“It’s a feeling,” Skid says. So close now. The smell of stale cigar smoke in the man’s clothes. Skid almost gags. “A feeling. Like being scared. Or being loved, I guess. But sharper. Deeper.” He drops the gun. “Harder to let go of.”

He stares into that face—a face he realizes now looks a lot like his own. He doesn’t let himself look away. Instead, he wraps his arms tight around those broad shoulders.

He triggers the detonator on the C4 strapped to his back, and that feeling returns. He’s felt it many times before, but never so strong or heavy or rooted in his core. Like a hand tugging at a ball of string in his chest, unraveling it into a loose mess at his feet.

He isn’t sure if he could’ve put words to it that first time he felt it. Maybe the words came later to describe something so overwhelming. But the words come now. Like always he hasn’t a clue what they really mean. What bond the words have to the real, waking world he’s known and survived in for so long.

He tries to say them. Tries to push them from his throat with breath he isn’t even sure he’s still got. He can’t. But they’re there. In his mind they’re loud. So loud they blot out everything like all that night sand.

Until they’re the only thing left in the bottomless, lonely dark.

I want to go home.

Dan J. Fiore has been published by Thuglit, Mystery Tribune, and Hot Metal Bridge, among others. His fiction won grand prize in both the 82nd annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition and LitReactor’s Arrest Us Crime Writing Challenge, and his screenwriting was awarded a First Works Grant by Pittsburgh Filmmakers. He currently works as a creative strategist in Pittsburgh and teaches at Seton Hill University, where he also earned his MFA. For more, visit www.danjfiore.com.

Above Water, fiction by Brandon Barrows

The sky roiled. Heavy, low-hanging clouds hid the setting sun so completely it might as well have been night already. Morgan downshifted, the decrepit Camaro’s gearbox protesting the sudden change, as he took the tight turn onto the long, narrow, pitted dirt road that served as his Uncle Mike’s driveway.

He brought the car to a stop in front of the rusty, once-blue trailer, surprised to see there were no lights on inside. He’d expected to find the old man either preparing supper or already eating it. The Camaro’s struggling engine died, making the area eerily quiet for a moment. As he climbed out of the car, a raspy shout broke the silence. “Out back, whoever ya are!”

It was Mike’s voice. Head swiveling, searching for the source, the young man’s heart started to beat faster, a mixture of apprehension, fear, anger and more than a little shame coursing through his veins. He didn’t really want to see his uncle. It wasn’t that he disliked the man; he didn’t feel like he knew Mike Hughes well enough to like or dislike him. Aside from a few, rare childhood encounters, he’d really only met Mike the year before. What he hated was that he had nowhere else to turn, that he’d been reduced to begging. Again. He couldn’t let those feelings show, though.

A moment or two passed and then Mike came trundling around the side of the trailer, squinting against the gloom. “Who’s ‘at?”

“It’s me, Uncle Mike. Morgan.”

“Oh, hello there, son.” He approached, stuck out his hand for a shake. It always struck Morgan as odd, a little uncomfortable, having his uncle call him that. He’d never known his father and it was too late for Mike to take his place. With his mother’s passing the year before, though, Mike was the only family he had left so he guessed it didn’t matter what the older man called him.

Morgan shook his uncle’s hand, feeling the coarse skin stretched tight over fragile-seeming bones. He was suddenly acutely aware that it would be Mike’s seventy-third birthday in a few weeks. Something like jagged little fingers flicked at his insides. “How you doing, Uncle Mike?”

“Lousy,” the other man said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Damned well’s stopped up. Hope to god I don’t need to get someone from town out here. Lord knows what that’ll cost to fix.” He shook his head, the sparse white strands that clung to his pink-skinned skull bouncing back and forth. “Suppose you got money trouble again?”

The words ripped right through to Morgan’s core. Having his uncle see through him like that hurt. It was also a sort of relief, though, Mike bringing it up first. “Not trouble, exactly…” He hesitated. “I could use another loan, though, Uncle Mike. Just to help me get a few things squared away. You know, keep my head above water.”

Mike snorted. “It’s only a loan if you pay it back, son. This would be the fourth, as I recall.” He turned on his heel, headed towards the trailer. “C’mon inside and we’ll at least have some supper since you’re here.”

The rain the sky had been promising all day began to fall. Morgan followed his uncle into the trailer house.

***

Nothing more was said of the money until after they’d eaten a sparse meal of kielbasa and beans. Hardly anything at all was said, in fact. Mike tried a little football talk, but Morgan didn’t follow the sport and the older man gave up, lapsing into silence.

When nothing was left but dirty dishes and scraps, Morgan finally said, “Tell you the truth, Uncle Mike, I am in trouble. I’ve gotten in with some folks who ain’t very nice.” He swallowed around a lump in his throat. “Or patient.”

The set of Mike’s jaw hardened, the stubbled chin jutting out a little. “Gambling again?”

Not trusting words, Morgan only nodded.

Mike stood, tall and thin. He went to the window and threw it open, letting in the cool, moist evening air. The light from the window danced on the shifting water droplets clinging to Morgan’s car, parked on the bare earth in front of the trailer. Somewhere nearby, a night-bird screeched its displeasure at the storm.

There was trouble in the man’s eyes when he turned back towards his nephew. “How much?”

Hope surged in Morgan’s chest. “Twenty-five hundred.” That wasn’t even half of it, but it would get Carson off his back for a while, give him time to figure something out.

Mike lowered his gaze, shaking his head. “Can’t do it, son. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”

Black anger washed over Morgan, smothering the little flicker of hope he’d felt a moment ago. He grit his teeth. “Uncle Mike—”

Head still wobbling back and forth, Mike said, “Morgan, keep in mind that I’m on a fixed income and I’ve already ‘loaned’ you at least that much. I worked hard all my life and I ain’t rich. I can’t drown myself keeping your head above water. I can’t give you no more ‘til you pay back what you owe.”

The younger man struggled to tamp down the anger, burning like acid in his guts. Mike just didn’t get it. He had to make his uncle understand. Morgan’s mouth began to move rapidly, the words falling off his tongue, tumbling over his lips. Almost babbling, he told Mike about the dog fighting, the huge bets that he couldn’t cover, how strangers had been hanging around his house. He didn’t mention the beating he’d taken a week ago, the cracked ribs that still ached, or the little Smith and Wesson revolver he’d taken to carrying, stuffed into the waistband of his pants. That, and the tiny, ramshackle house he’d grown up in, were the only things of his mom’s left that he hadn’t yet sold, trying to raise enough money to appease Carson’s thugs. He’d had to slip out of his own home in secret just to come see Mike and even then, he wasn’t sure he hadn’t been noticed. He didn’t dare go back without something to give them.

Mike looked long and hard at his nephew. The face staring back at him looked too much like his younger sister’s. He turned away, wishing he had a better answer for the boy. “I can’t do it, Morgan. I’m sorry.”

“God damn it!” Angry, scared, desperate, Morgan leapt from his chair, bumping the rickety old table, upsetting the dishes with a clatter. “Don’t you get it? They’re going to kill me! I can’t go back without—”

“Then don’t.” The older man’s eyes became watery as he stared out the open window. “You’re welcome to stay here, long as you need to. I’ll put you to work. Plenty to do around here.”

Morgan’s mouth twisted into a look of disgust. “Live in this shithole, in the middle of nowhere? You’ve gotta be kidding.”

The older man’s anger stirred, but it was a weary sort of anger. He felt very old as he swiveled back towards Morgan. “It ain’t the middle of nowhere… it’s less’n eight miles from town and I happen to like it. I got my privacy and I got friends nearby.” His eyes strayed to the clock above the door. “In fact—"

“I don’t care!” Morgan roared, unable to hold back any longer. He’d have that money if it killed him because not having it would kill him for sure. “This is my life, you penny-pinching old bastard! Don’t you understand? I’m—”

Frayed patience snapped. “Not getting one red damned cent ‘til I die!” Mike yelled back. “Then it’s all yours, but until then, I’m through! You hear me?” He could hardly believe the nerve of the boy, begging from one side of his mouth and insulting from the other. No, not the boy – the man, he corrected himself. Despite how Morgan acted, it had been years since he could rightfully have been called a boy.

And Mike had finally had enough of him.

He regretted not being closer with Myrna and her son until it was too late, until his sister got the news that she was terminal. Exhaustion, overworking herself for long years after she should have been taking it easy, all to support her son, to get him out of innumerable ‘scrapes’ as she called them, may not have killed her, but he knew it hadn’t helped, either. The thought of it, the memory of the wasted shell Myrna had become, and how he’d never known until they had no one else to turn to, saddened and infuriated him. Despite those feelings, he’d made a mighty effort in those last few months, and the time since, and he’d come to love Morgan in a way – the way you still love a troublesome child you feel you’ve somehow failed. Morgan wasn’t Mike’s failure, exactly, but he couldn’t help how he felt.

Love didn’t mean breaking yourself, though. It was time for a hard lesson.

“You’re a grown man, Morgan. Your mama’s in an early grave but I won’t let you do the same to me. You climb into that rattle-trap of yours—” he thrust a skinny arm towards Morgan’s Camaro, outside the still-open window, “and don’t you never let me see your face again unless it’s purely social. I hear one more word from you about money and I’ll—”

Black anger turned suddenly red and an inarticulate scream ripped from Morgan’s throat. Before he knew what was happening, he was on the old man, the little revolver in his hand and pressed to his uncle’s temple. He jerked the trigger once, twice and then dropped the weapon, the horror of what he’d done coming down on him all at once. Uncle Mike stood a moment, as if paralyzed, a look of shocked disbelief on his face, and then he crumpled like a string-cut puppet. He fell to his side, spasmed, flopped over onto his back and then was still. Thick, dark blood seeped from his ruined head, pooling on the peeling laminate of the floor.

Morgan screamed and collapsed to his knees, his pulse thundering in his ears, his heart slamming into his rib-cage so hard it hurt. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath and he felt like vomiting. He didn’t know how long he stayed there, staring at the thing that had been his uncle. Minutes, hours, days for all he knew, passed, until finally his pulse slowed, his chest stopped hurting and his lungs filled normally. He rose slowly, his eyes still glued to Mike’s body and the irregularly-shaped oval of red beneath his head, like a bloody halo.

He felt like he should say something, like something needed to be said. He took a deep breath. It came out as: “Serves him right, the old cheap-ass.” He surprised himself. Was that how he really felt? Had part of him been planning this all along? He shook his head. It didn’t matter now. It wasn’t like he could take back what he’d done.

“Yeah…” he said, half-aloud. “I had to.” Mike was an old man, one foot in the grave already. And he’d given Morgan the idea after all. Not one red damned cent ‘til I die, Mike had said. Money was no good if you didn’t use it and Morgan had serious use for it. It was Mike’s life in exchange for Morgan’s. That seemed like a fair trade. How much longer could the old man have lived, anyway? Morgan had his whole life ahead of him.

He did now, at least. Wouldn’t Carson be surprised when he paid off in full? It’d be nice to finally have a little peace of mind. He laughed out loud at the thought.

His train of thought derailed suddenly, snapping him back to the present like someone had flipped a switch. Something had caught his attention, though he wasn’t sure what. He stood listening. The gun hadn’t been very loud and Mike’s trailer was in the middle of nowhere, but Morgan wasn’t sure if there were any neighbors on the other side of the patch of woods that the property abutted. He realized, too, as he stood listening, that he was somehow clutching the gun again. Wouldn’t that be fine, if someone investigating the noise showed up and found him standing over the body, gun in hand? He shook his head at his own foolishness. Maybe Mike was right, maybe he did need to grow up a little, think things through a little more. Maybe—

No, no time for that. He stuck the already-cool gun back into the waistband of his pants. He moved to the cramped bedroom of the little trailer, opened the door of the shallow closet and took from it the battered old cigar box where, he knew, Mike kept his cash. The old man didn’t trust banks, he’d said once, liked to keep everything he owned where he knew he could get his hands on it. That was perfect for Morgan.

He opened the box and let out a gasp. It was empty – no, not empty. Morgan tilted it into the harsh light of the bare bulb overhead and saw, lying flat against the bottom, a leather booklet, long and thin. He plucked the thing out, tossing the box onto the unmade bed, and opened it. It was a bank book. Morgan’s jaw fell open. There was a tightly scrawled line of text across the top of the ledger: “DEPOSIT - $7,133.” It was dated just over a week earlier.

Morgan dropped the booklet. He licked dry lips then let out a little chuckle of disbelief. “That old bastard…” He’d banked the money, put it where Morgan couldn’t touch it. Had he seen this coming somehow?

Morgan laughed again, but it was hollow. It sounded almost like a sob.

He collapsed on the edge of the bed. His thoughts raced. What now? He couldn’t go home, not empty-handed. He sure as hell couldn’t stay here. His eyes fell to the bank book, on the floor near his feet. Over seven grand, everything Mike had in the world.

Everything Mike had.

It was all his now, Morgan realized. Mike had said it himself, it’d be Morgan’s when he died. Something clicked in his head. He began to feel better. Sure, it’d take a while to get his hands on it, but the money was his now, wasn’t it? He was Mike’s only family, after all. Carson would get his money, just as soon as Morgan got it. If he knew it was coming, Carson would wait, wouldn’t he?

And the money wasn’t all, either.

Morgan stood, looked around. The trailer was a shithole, but Mike had owned the land it was on. Selling it would bring in a nice chunk, for sure. He’d be set for a while. And with both his mom and Mike gone, why even stick around? He could sell the house, too. It wasn’t much better than the trailer, but it was worth something. With that kind of money, for the first time in his life, he could make plans. Get out of this hick country, get out of the state entirely, even. Maybe go north, to Pittsburgh. He loved that damned city – the bright lights, the clubs, the stylish women. It’d be nice to go and know you had enough to make more than a night or two of it. Hell, if he was going to a city, maybe he’d just keep going, head all the way to New York. He’d always wanted to see if it lived up to the hype. And why not?

A sudden splatter of rain against the bedroom window drew him back to the moment. The return to reality cooled his enthusiasm. Before he could make any plans, he had to have the money and to get it, he had to make sure he wasn’t caught. For a few minutes, he’d let himself forget what he’d done. That was dangerous. Even he knew that much.

He racked his brains. First, he should get rid of the gun. That was for certain. Then what? Maybe the best thing to do was go home and wait for someone, the police or whoever, to tell him that Mike was dead. He frowned. No, that wouldn’t work. He’d stopped at the Wawa by the crossroads and put a couple of bucks’ worth of gas in the Camaro. The clerk had tried to make conversation, but Morgan wasn’t in the mood and had brushed him off. The guy might remember that and even if he didn’t, there was probably security footage of Morgan.

No, he’d be better off reporting Mike’s death himself. He’d get rid of the gun then call the police, say he’d found his uncle dead. The cops would probably suspect him, but without the gun, what could they do? He’d seen enough television to know how important the murder weapon was. Without it, all they could they do was suspect and, when all was said and done, hand him the money.

But he was getting ahead of himself again. He needed to get rid of the gun before anything else.

Mike had mentioned that the well was giving him problems. Morgan decided that it might just be the solution to his.

He left the bedroom, went down the trailer’s narrow hallway, through the living room, out the back door, flicking on the outside light as he did. In the darkness and the rain, he found his way to the tiny well shed. In the scant light that reached the shed, Morgan saw that the cap was off the well and a small pile of tools was scattered around the base of the housing. Morgan peered down into a pitch-black hole, six or eight inches wide. He saw nothing, but didn’t expect to. He had no idea how deep the well might be, but it didn’t matter – it was deep enough for his purposes. He pulled the gun from his waistband, allowing himself a tinge of relief that it would soon be over. He took one last look at the thing that had changed his life, and tossed it down the hole. It banged and scraped off the sides once, twice, then landed somewhere below with the faintest splash.

The rain was coming harder as he tromped back towards the trailer and by the time he reached the rear door, he was soaked. When he tried the door, it would not open. Panic gripped him. When he’d left the trailer, he’d simply let it swing shut behind him. It had never occurred to him to check whether it was locked. Now, he was locked outside and Mike was still inside. . .

Calm down, he told himself. Front’s still open. He made his way around the side of the trailer, following the path Mike must have when Morgan had arrived. He rounded the corner, walked the narrow space between the house and where Mike’s battered Ranger was parked, then froze. Distant sounds, muffled by the storm but recognizable, stopped him. A car was coming down Mike’s road, approaching rapidly.

“Shit!” He hunkered down in the darkness beside the bulk of Mike’s truck, fresh fear soaking his brain. The road wasn’t long. Whoever was coming would be here any second.

Before he could think of anything, a splash of headlights swept across the front of the Ranger, hurling shadows over Morgan’s head. An instant later, tires rasped to a stop on the wet dirt and gravel.

What now? Had he been seen? If he hadn’t, there was still a chance, but he couldn’t let them find him first. Crouching in the rain and darkness would look guilty as hell.

He stood, pushed his way through the night towards the front of the trailer and the newcomer.

From the cab of a big F250 came: “Mike? That you?”

Morgan knew that voice. Wade Linklater, one of Mike’s town friends.

A second voice added, “Mr. Hughes?” That one Morgan didn’t know.

He stepped out of the shadows that clung to the side of the house. “Mr. Linklater? It’s, it’s me – Morgan Hughes. Uncle Mike… Uncle Mike’s been,” he choked on the last word, “killed.”

“What?” Linklater shouted, hopping down from his rig. Over his shoulder, to whoever remained in the truck, he called, “I knew something was wrong when Mike didn’t show at the rec center. In eleven years, he’s never missed Wednesday night poker.” He crossed the distance to Morgan. He was a big, stern-faced man, not as old as Mike, but with decades on Morgan. “When I called and he didn’t answer, I was afraid he’d collapsed again, had another one of his episodes. Figured we better get out here, but I never imagine. . .”

Called. That was it, Morgan realized. What had brought him out of his earlier daze: the ringing telephone. He’d been too stunned then to even realize what he’d heard. Shit. Linklater was saying, “What did you mean ‘killed,’ Hughes? What the hell’s happened here?” He spoke with an air of authority that reminded Morgan of something he couldn’t quite grab hold of.

Morgan kept silent. He’d planned to report Mike’s death himself, get it out of the way, but everything had happened so quickly, he hadn’t even thought of a story to tell. Now, it was too late. He didn’t know his uncle had a regular card game or friends who’d come looking for him if he missed it. He didn’t know anything about the ‘episodes’ Linklater had mentioned. The information was no good to him now. All he could do was brazen this out.

“I, I, I—” he stammered.

“Let’s not stand out here in the rain, Wade. Won’t do us or Mike any good,” the second voice said, climbing down from the truck. In the light of the headlamps, Morgan saw he was a small, neatly-dressed man wearing rimless spectacles. A compact, black bag was clutched in his hand. “C’mon inside.”

The little man led the way into the trailer. Linklater followed ponderously. When Morgan stepped inside after them, he saw the stranger staring down at Mike’s body with a critical eye. Linklater, too, was staring but his face was angry and his lips moved soundlessly, as if the words couldn’t find their way out.

The stranger spoke: “Well. . .cause of death certainly isn’t in doubt.” He sighed.

Linklater nodded, turned towards Morgan. “What happened here?” The voice was like steel. Morgan felt compelled to obey it. What he’d forgotten about Linklater came to him then: the man was a retired sheriff’s deputy.

“I was coming to visit Uncle Mike,” he began, piecing the words together as they came to him. The story had to be believable, but vague enough to be difficult to prove one way or another. “I heard shots, right before I got up to the house. I mean, I thought I did. I couldn’t be sure with this storm.” He swallowed, ran his tongue across his lips. The other men’s eyes bore into him like hot irons. “I found Uncle Mike like this, and I thought I heard the back door, the one off the living room, open so I ran out that way, trying to catch whoever’d shot Mike, but I lost him in the dark, I guess. When I came back, the door was locked, so I had to come around the side and then you all were here.”

“How long ago was all this?” Linklater asked.

Morgan thought. What was safe? He couldn’t tell the truth. “Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, I guess. I, I wasn’t looking at the clock or anything.”

Linklater looked at him long and hard, his gray eyes peering out from beneath furrowed brows. “And you weren’t, by any chance, the one who ate supper with Mike, were you?” He gestured towards the table and the remains of their meal.

Keeping the panic from his face was difficult, but Morgan managed. He hadn’t even thought about supper! His fingerprints would be all over the cutlery and the can of Coors he’d drank. How to explain that if he’d just shown up?

“I… I didn’t want to mention it, but when I showed up, I’d driven straight from home—it’s more than thirty miles—and I was starving, and there was still some of the food left out on the table so, I—”

The smaller of the two men spoke up, “So you sat down and ate dinner with your uncle’s body lying on the floor a few feet away?” Disbelief was evident in every syllable.

Linklater glanced from Morgan to the other man, said, “How long has Mike been gone, doc?”

Doc? Morgan thought with a start. His eyes fell again to the black bag the man carried. A sick feeling spread through his belly.

The man called “doc” knelt, pressed his fingers to Mike’s neck, to his wrist. He held a palm over the dead man’s mouth and then pressed it to Mike’s forehead. He stood, shaking his head. “He’s still pretty warm. Half an hour, I’d say. Maybe as little as fifteen minutes.”

“I heard the shots!” Morgan cried, unable to stop himself. “I told you that, I told you when it happened. I—”

Linklater looked like he wanted to spit. “And I heard you say it. Doesn’t mean I believe you.” He turned to the third man, “Ben, get on the phone to county dispatch. I’d love to deal with this myself, but. . .” He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to; the look in his eye said it all. “And you,” he turned back towards Morgan, “Sit down and stay put.”

The fear and anger in Morgan exploded. He screamed, “You think I did it? Killed the only family I got?” Spittle flew from his mouth. “You’re crazy! Tell me how I did it, then? He was shot! So where’s the gun, huh?”

Linklater pushed him backward towards the chair he’d sat in while he’d eaten with Mike. Had that really been less than an hour ago?

“Sure,” Linklater said. “I’m the crazy one.” Powerful hands forced Morgan into the chair and then moved over his body with practiced, searching movements. “No gun on him. What do you bet that’s what he was taking care of when we showed up?”

Ben only shook his head sadly as he moved towards the telephone on the kitchen counter.

A frantic minute passed. Ben spoke on the phone in quiet tones. Linklater’s eyes scanned the room, but always came back to rest on Morgan.

Morgan’s heart felt like it was going to burst. His chances of escape were zero. Less than zero. If he ran, Linklater would be on him before he reached the door. And even if he did escape, where could he go? Carson was waiting back home and he had no way of going anywhere else. Hell, there wasn’t even enough gas in the Camaro to go more than forty miles, maybe. All he could do was stick to his story. It wasn’t a good one, but he’d covered all the bases, right? And the gun was gone. That was the important thing.

“All right, see you soon.” The phone was hung up. To Linklater, Ben said, “Deputies’ll be here shortly.” He threw a meaningful glance at Morgan. “They’ll get this sorted.”

“It’s already sorted,” Linklater said.

Morgan shook his head. “This is crazy. I just—”

“Convicted yourself, whether you realize it or not. I don’t know why you did it, but you’ve as good as confessed already. Get up.” He grabbed Morgan’s arm and jerked him to his feet.

“What are you—?”

“Shut up,” the former deputy snarled. “Come outside.”

Morgan’s knees wobbled and he stumbled. Linklater all but dragged him out of the front door of the trailer. It was getting hard to breath.

Something in Linklater’s tone sent tendrils of ice down Morgan’s spine, terrifying him more than anything else had so far. Had he missed something? No. It was impossible. He’d covered every angle. He’d admitted nothing. This was just a tough old man, angry at the death of his friend, trying to shake something loose. He couldn’t prove anything. All he could do was suspect and bully and try to trick Morgan into slipping up.

Outside, the rain had slackened, but showed no signs of stopping. The bare dirt and gravel in front of the trailer was soaked and muddy, and dozens of tiny puddles shone in the light spilling out of the open door and window. Linklater, still gripping Morgan’s arm tightly, stopped just past the trailer’s steps. Ben stepped down beside them, as curious as Morgan was afraid.

Linklater pointed. “Right there, smart guy.” Morgan thought Linklater was pointing at the Camaro. It stood right where he’d left it, dripping with rain and shining in the light from the house. He couldn’t see anything wrong, didn’t understand what Linklater was getting at. Ben took a step forward, tilted his head and gave out a little cry of realization.

Morgan looked from the car to Linklater, then to the other man. The fear was on his face now. What had he missed? What was it that Linklater had found? If he didn’t know, he couldn’t explain it away, he couldn’t—

Linklater said, “You told us you’ve been here half an hour, but it’s been raining more than an hour already. The ground is soaked, there’s puddles everywhere, and yet—” The big man shook Morgan like a rag-doll. “Look, you murdering little shit! Look under the car!”

Morgan looked and his legs went limp. Linklater released his grip at last and Morgan fell backwards into a mud puddle. They were everywhere – except beneath the car. Underneath the Camaro was a rectangle of gravel, dry and grayish-white, protected since before the storm hit. An area just about the size of a jail-cell’s door – or a freshly-dug grave.

The pain in his chest seemed to explode and grow outward, touching every nerve in his body. It felt like drowning.

Brandon Barrows is the award-nominated author of the occult-noir novel THIS ROUGH OLD WORLD as well as over fifty published stories, selected of which have been collected into the books THE ALTAR IN THE HILLS and THE CASTLE-TOWN TRAGEDY. He is also the writer of nearly one-hundred individual comic book issues. Find more at www.brandonbarrowscomics.com and on Twitter @BrandonBarrows.

Annie Works the Midnight Shift, fiction by Steve Liskow

Annie walks into Quickie Mart at nine twenty and finds Lainie, her older sister, leaning by the register reading a magazine. She looks even more bored than she does tired.

“You’re early.” Lainie’s voice is tired, too.

“It’s nothing but re-runs on TV,” Annie says. “They aren’t better the second time. Or funnier.”

“Different commercials, though.”

“I suppose.” Annie looks down the three aisles and tries to count the things they sell that show up on TV. Fritos, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Dr. Scholl’s, Right Guard. If the rest of the night is as slow as right now, she can make a list. There must be easier ways to drive yourself crazy.

Lainie points to Annie’s hair. “That gets any higher, you’re gonna get it caught in the ceiling fan.”

Annie looks up at the blades, rotating so slowly she could probably grab onto one and let it carry her around in a circle. Another way to go crazy.

“Something for when Missus Atwood tells us to write what we did on our summer vacation.”

Lainie rolls her eyes. She’s got beautiful eyes, not as happy as before, but still big and blue. She shouldn’t use all that eyeliner, though. Sixteen Magazine says don’t use as much now.

Maybelline, that’s something else they carry that’s on TV.

“Has it been like this all night?” Annie asks.

“A guy stopped about an hour ago for gas,” Lainie tells her. “He wanted to know where the nearest motel was. Think he had Pennsylvania plates.”

Annie looks out at the two Shell pumps, one regular and one premium. “An hour ago?”

“Yeah.” Lainie jerks her thumb at the cartons on the floor behind the counter. “Good thing the new magazines came in this morning, ‘cause I’ve read all the old ones. Except Field and Stream and Playboy. If I thought it’d stay like this, I’d close up and tell you to go on home.”

“I need the money.” Annie’s barely sixteen. Moms and Dads didn’t want her working the ten to six shift, but it pays five percent more, that’s seven and a half cents an hour. She does six nights a week, so that’s eight hours at time and a half.

“Don’t we all.” Lainie had to drop out of school when she got pregnant. Their parents watch her daughter while she works.

“If it’s gonna be so slow, I can restock the magazines,” Annie says.

“Yeah.” Lainie holds up a clipboard and shows her the invoices. “I’ve already counted them and checked them in, so you can switch out the old ones and dump them into the same cartons.”

“OK.” Annie picks up the new Playboy and looks at the model on the cover. “I like the way her hair curls. You think I could do that with mine?”

Lainie rolls her eyes and lights a cigarette. “You’ve got such a small face, it’d disappear you wore your hair down like that. Besides, you’re too young.”

“I’m only three years younger than you,” Annie says. “Besides, nobody looks at these girls’ hair.”

“Yeah, well you shouldn’t be looking at that magazine anyway.” Lainie blows smoke toward the ceiling and watches the fan blades slice it up.

“I heard the articles are good, they do interviews.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Some guy at school, I don’t remember who.”

“None of the bozos at school can read,” Lainie says. “The only way they get out of this dump is the Army.”

Annie lets the magazine fall open to the centerfold. “I heard they pay lots of money for these pictures.”

“Well, sure. Strippers can do it every night. But you do it here once, everyone’s seen you so you better get a lot.”

“How much you think they pay?”

Lainie frowns. “You shouldn’t think about stuff like this. Come on, let’s count the register.”

Annie moves behind the counter with her. “If they paid enough, I’d pose for them.”

Lainie’s eyes widen. “Don’t talk like that. Moms and Dads’d never live it down. I screwed up bad enough.”

“If they paid me enough, I’d leave this town and never look back. Maybe there’d be enough to take you with me.”

“Yeah, and if our fairy godmother turns a pumpkin into a Corvette, I get to drive.”

Lainie counts the twenties and passes them over to Annie to re-count.

“Can I have a cigarette?”

“You’re too young for that, too. Moms knew I gave you a cigarette, she’d kick my butt clear to Toledo and back.”

Lainie passes the tens over and takes the twenties back.

Cigarettes, Annie thinks. They’ve got commercials for them on TV, too. Winston, Tareyton, Marlboro. . .

A car rumbles up near the door and stops. The light shines on a red hood and Annie’s glad Lainie’s still here.

Sure enough, Duane Peasey walks in. Tight white tee shirt, greasy jeans, black high top Converse sneakers.

“Hey, honey. Hey kid.” Duane’s eyes might be raisins in a doughy face, and he looks smarter than his buddy, who’s built like a coat hanger and has zits to make raspberries jealous.

“We got names,” Lainie says.

“Yeah, me too.” Duane leans on the counter and Annie can smell his breath, cigarettes and beer. “You play your cards right, you could be screaming it all night long.”

“I’d rather choke on a rusty rake.”

Duane drops his eyes to Annie’s chest, then back up to her face. “How ‘bout you, little one?”

“I’m working.” Annie feels her skin crawl. Duane and a bunch of other guys got Lainie drunk at a party and one of them—maybe Duane himself—is her little girl’s father, but she was passed out so she couldn’t tell who did it. Duane’s supposed to go into the Army in August now that he’s graduated from high school after five years.

“Your loss. Gimme a pack of Camels.”

“Filters or regular?”

“Regular. Guy what smokes filter cigarettes probably squats to pee.” Duane’s laugh reminds Annie of a mule braying.

Annie bends down to get a pack and feels both boys looking at her rear. When she stands again, she can almost smell Duane’s smile.

“You ain’t a bitch like your sister, are you?”

Annie rings up the sale.

“Thirty cents.”

Duane gives her a crumpled dollar bill and she runs it between her fingers to smooth it out.

“You want me to work that hard, the least you could do is give me one of those.” Lainie’s mouth drops open.

Duane taps the pack against his palm a few times before he pulls off the strip and peels back the foil. He slides one into his hand and points it at Annie’s chest. He gives her that same slimy smile and she remembers everyone calls him “Sleazy Peasey.”

“Give me a light.” Duane sticks the cigarette between her lips and a lighter appears in his other hand. He holds the flame under her cigarette. She feels heat in her mouth.

“You gotta suck on it, little girl.” His voice slithers into her ears. “Like you smell fresh apple pie, right outta your mamma’s hot oven.”

Sharp heat claws down Annie’s throat. She leans over the counter, coughing so hard her eyes tear up and her head feels light. The cigarette drops between her hands and she almost burns herself on the flaming tip.

Duane gives that mule-bray laugh again and his buddy does the same. Annie coughs until she thinks she’s going to throw up, fighting for air, her eyes and nose running and her face burning. When she stops, Lainie shoves a few tissues into her hand.

“You two about done here?” she asks.

Duane drops two more crumpled bills on the counter.

“Gonna put in two dollars of reg out there.”

He leads his buddy back outside. Annie blows her nose and wipes her eyes and doesn’t look at Lainie.

“I’ve got half a mind to close up and drag you home by your ear like a four-year-old.” Lainie sounds like she wants to slap her.

“I didn’t want them to think I’m just some stupid kid.” Annie can barely hear her own voice. One drag on that cigarette, her throat feels like she swallowed a blow torch.

“Guess you showed ‘em, didn’t you?” Lainie watches the two guys laugh by the gas pump. “I should go make sure he only pumps two dollars, but I don’t feel like talking to him again.”

When the Mustang roars off into the darkness, Lainie opens the cash register and they count the fives and singles and then the change. She tucks her cigarettes into her purse and gives Annie a look that reminds her of their mother.

“I know you want the money, but some things aren’t worth it. If nobody shows up by midnight, you can close up early. I’ll be up when you get home, and I’ll fill out your card tomorrow like you went all night.”

“You shouldn’t do that.”

“You’re my sister. One of us has to make it out of this dump.”

Lainie strides out the door and up the road. She’s nineteen and walks like she’s twice that. Have a baby and losing your dreams makes you old quick. The Quickie Mart’s only two miles from their house, which is good since neither sister has a driver’s license.

Annie stands behind the counter for twenty minutes before she remembers her transistor radio in her purse. She turns it sideways and finally gets the best signal she can from Cleveland. The Beatles new record comes on, “A Ticket to Ride.” She turns it up and stacks the magazines on the counter.

Life, Time, Newsweek, Sixteen, Woman’s Day, Tiger Beat, TV Guide, Sports Illustrated, Car & Driver, Field & Stream. One at a time, she carries the new issues to the rack next to the anti-acids and pain relievers. She replaces the old ones and counts them before putting them back in the cartons. Playboy stays behind the counter so the little kids don’t see it.

Eleven o’clock, and nobody’s come in yet. A few cars whoosh by the gas pumps, but the most excitement so far is clouds floating across the half moon. Thrillsville. The radio plays Elvis, the Supremes, and Herman’s Hermits. She wonders if they’ll play that new Beatles song again.

She looks at the hair styles in Sixteen. One model has long hair with that fishhook curl at the end Annie’s working on, just brushing the top of her shoulders. The lady on the cover of the new Playboy has the same hairstyle. Annie wonders how old she is. You probably have to be twenty-one to take your clothes off for pictures.

She doesn’t look anywhere near twenty-one. If she looked older and a rich man showed up for gas, could she talk him into taking her with him, leave all this behind?

How can she look older?

Can she make her hair look like that girl on the cover?

She walks down the notions aisle across from the candy and picks up a can of Aqua Net. She shakes it up on the way back to the counter and digs in her purse for her compact.

The door opens and a man comes in, eyes heavy, feet dragging. “You got any No Doz?”

“Second aisle,” Annie tells him. “About halfway down. You want some gas, too?”

“Might as well.” The man’s shirt is all wrinkles and his shoulders stoop.

“Let me have three dollars, the high-test.”

Annie looks out at the big station wagon and makes change for the man’s ten. He leans against the back fender while he pumps, then slams the door and pulls back onto the road. Annie watches until he’s long gone.

The radio plays “Louie, Louie.” All the boys at school say the words are dirty, but nobody can make them out. Probably just a story to sell more records.

Annie finds her comb and leans forward so her hair tumbles around her face, spraying with the Aqua Net until she’s dizzy from the aerosol and her blood rushing to her brain. She straightens up and teases her hair with the comb before looking in her mirror.

She holds up the magazine and looks at the lady, back in her mirror, then back at the magazine. Not bad. Not great, but it makes her look a little older. Like a junior, maybe even a senior.

Not enough. She puts the magazine back and stares at the blacktop outside.

Eleven forty. Another six hours and twenty minutes. That’s three hundred eighty minutes. She’s wondering if she can figure how many seconds that is without using a pencil and paper when she hears her transistor by the register.

It's what’s up front that counts.

Winston, they carry them, too, of course. Duane laughed at her when she choked on his cigarette. She felt like a stupid little kid.

How hard is it to learn to smoke?

Annie turns to the cigarette display behind the cash register. Duane smokes Camels, which Dads calls “coffin nails.” Annie knows filters are milder and studies the colorful packs in their neat little rows. Kools have soothing menthol, so maybe she should try one of them.

Thirty cents a pack. She’s making a dollar thirty-two an hour. She opens the pack with her fingernail and slides a white cylinder out between her fingers. It’s slightly longer than her middle finger, the filter the tan of her mother’s pancakes. She sniffs it and thinks she can smell menthol.

Nobody in sight on the road. She takes a book of matches and twists one free. Close cover before striking. OK. She rubs the head against the flint and nothing happens. She tries again, harder, and the match bends in her fingers. She throws it away, takes another one and pushes harder but still not hard enough. How can people use these things?

One more match, third time’s the charm. She pushes the head against the rough surface with the ball of her thumb and rubs it away from her. The head flares up and she drops everything.

“Damn!” She sucks on her thumb until the sting fades, then pulls it out of her mouth. She can already feel a blister forming. Damn, damn, damn.

There has to be a better way.

She runs her fingers across the cigarettes again, then past the yellow cans of. . . lighter fluid. Of course, a lighter. She digs under the counter and finds the cheapest Zippo in the display. She grabs a can of Ronson fluid and totals her sale on the cash register. Jeez, how can people afford to smoke?

She’s watched Moms and Dads fill their lighters so she knows enough to slide the shell off and moisten the cotton. Drip, drip, drip. The smell fills her head. It’s a little like that Aqua Net, still standing by the cash register. She has to pay for that, too. She puts the Zippo back together, sticks the Kool filter between her lips, and presses her thumb against the wheel on the lighter.

Fire. At last. She holds the end of the cigarette in the flame and takes a deep breath.

A cool nail jams its point into her throat and she’s coughing again. She fights for breath and feels more tears coming to her eyes. It’s not as bad as Duane’s Camel, but it’s not that much fun, either.

She walks outside and drops the cigarette on the ground. Blue-white smoke snakes upwards until she grinds the burning end into the gravel. She’s still coughing.

She finds a box of Luden’s wild cherry cough drops in the aisle next to the pain relievers and returns to the cash register. She’s going to have to work through the night just to pay for all this stuff. She pops a lozenge into her mouth and lets the taste spread across her tongue.

One-fifteen. She sucks another cough drop and wonders if she wants to read Tiger Beat—Paul McCartney is on the cover—or try a crossword puzzle book.

A car pulls in by the gas pumps and two people sit there. She can’t tell whether the car is black or dark blue, but it has a dent in the back fender and the engine needs a tune-up.

Two men walk through the door, both wearing jeans and Ohio State sweatshirts. It’s late at night in June, but they both wear ski masks over their faces, too. The taller one holds a hunting knife in his hand, and the blade looks big as a car bumper.

Annie’s chest turns to ice.

“Open the cash register and nobody gets hurt.”

“We don’t got much here, mister.” She fights to keep her voice steady. “Not enough for you to go to jail for.”

“We’re not going to jail. Just shut up and open up.”

Annie punches the No Sale button and the door clangs open. She reaches for the cash, but the guy comes around the counter and sticks the knife in her face.

“Back up, kid.”

Annie does. The skinny guy scratches his neck and looks around the store while the man with the knife stuffs the bills in his pocket. Two hundred in twenties, a hundred sixty in tens. . .

Annie tells herself it’s a good thing she and Lainie counted it. She’ll be able to tell the police exactly how much they got. The guy shakes his head.

“This is all?”

Annie nods. The knife blade flickers under the lights.

“Pump some gas,” she whispers. “You can fill your tank.”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’re gonna do that anyway.” His raisin eyes look through the red knitted mask. “Maybe I should fill your tank too, you like that?”

Annie feels her throat burning again and her hands turn cold. Her lips move but her voice doesn’t work.

“Whatta you say, kid? Just you and me, right here on the counter.” The guy points the knife at Annie’s tee shirt and she feels three years old, not grown-up at all. She shakes her head and feels her lips trembling.

“P-please,” she whispers. “I’m not. . .”

The skinny guy speaks up. “Don’t do that, D—”

“Shut up.” The man with the knife whirls. “No names, you dope.”

He backs Annie up against the cigarette display and hooks her tee shirt on the point of the knife. He slices through the fabric and goose bumps spring out on her chest and arms. He looks down.

“Hell, not even enough here to grab onto and steer.”

“Don’t do that, man.” The skinny guy speaks up again. “We got the money, let’s get out of here before someone comes.”

“You want us to leave, kid?” Annie feels her eyes cross while the knife hovers under her nose. She presses her lips together and nods.

“Say please.”

Her throat burns and her knees shake. The word struggles up from her lungs.

“Please. P-please leave.”

His eyes stare into hers for hours before he steps back.

“OK. You’re going to be that way about it.” He steps back and his eyes lower. “At least I can grab some smokes, too.”

He pushes her out of the way and takes two cartons of Camels. When he turns back toward the counter, he sees the pack of Kools by the register.

“What’s this? Little girl cigarettes, filters and menthol? You kidding me, kid? You trying to be a big girl?”

He brays like a mule and turns to his buddy. Annie wants to slide through the floor and disappear from the whole wide world until she recognizes his laugh.

Of course! Nobody else calls her “kid,” either. It’s Duane Peasey and his idiot buddy. Annie feels her fear turn to rage. These are the guys that raped her sister, and they were going to. . .

He shows the Kools to his buddy. “Gonna smoke like the big girls. What a joke.”

Annie clenches her teeth.

“You said you were leaving,” she whispers.

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” He drops her Kools next to the can of Aqua Net. “Well, one more for the road, OK?”

He takes another carton of Camels and puts it on the other two. He tucks them under his arm and steps back. Annie reaches into her pocket for her brand-new Zippo.

“You want a light before you go?”

“Huh?” Duane turns back and his knife lowers.

Annie yanks the cap off the Aqua Net and sprays it into his face. She pops the cap on the lighter and her thumb finds the little wheel. She holds it under the spray and flicks.

Duane Peasey’s ski mask explodes into bright orange and his shriek fills the whole store. Annie drops the Aqua Net and watches his hands claw at his burning face. Footsteps pound toward the door but she can’t look away. A car engine roars, but she barely hears it between Duane’s screams and the crackle of yarn and flesh.

When he stops screaming and thrashing, Annie steps back. Her nostrils fill with a stench like charred pork and her hands won’t stop shaking, but somehow she manages to dial the Sheriff’s office. The deputies arrive minutes later and find her on all fours, throwing up near the premium gas pump.

Someone calls an ambulance and someone finally thinks to call Lainie, who shows up with her hair in curlers and her nightgown tucked into jeans. Annie falls into her arms and holds on. She hears herself sobbing like a little kid.

“Are you all right?” Lainie asks. “I mean, are you hurt?” Duane’s knife sliced through Annie’s shirt and bra and she’s hanging out for all the deputies to see. They don’t pay her enough to move out of this dump either, and now she’ll never get a second chance.

The scratch on her chest burns.

“I don’t want to work the midnight shift.”

Steve Liskow’s stories have earned an Edgar nomination, Honorable Mention for the Al Blanchard Award (3 times), and the Black Orchid Novella Award (twice). Those stories appear in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and several anthologies. He has published 14 novels, and The Kids Are All Right was a finalist for the Shamus Award in 2015. He lives in Connecticut. Visit his website at www.steveliskow.com.