Nobody's Safe, fiction by Peter DiChellis

I screamed myself awake, leapt to my feet, and jumped into the crowd, swinging my fists. The passengers mobbed me, punching and hollering. I elbowed a ratty-looking guy between his eyes and felt his nose break. Blood and snot flowed into his greasy beard. I tried to yell, “Fuck you!” but a big guy with jug ears and a bad haircut stepped up and pounded me hard in the face. As I fell, my head banged against a seatback. The mob pulled me forward, up the narrow aisle. Night air gushed through the open door and the big guy with jug ears hurled me into the darkness.

“Happy landing!” a frenzied woman screeched.

As I slammed onto the shoulder of the road, the hulking intercity bus belched diesel exhaust and pulled away, headed where? Scattered towns and forgotten hamlets, I imagined, their names printed on furious passengers’ ticket stubs but unknown to me. The crowd stared through the bus windows, some scowling, others shaking their fists.

“What the hell happened?” I shouted. “Where am I?”

I felt dizzy. A bright light glowed in the distance. Walk toward the light, I told myself. The ground seemed to roll and whirl, and my knees buckled. My head began throbbing and my thoughts fractured into disorienting bursts and flashes.

When I tried to focus, odd fragments skipped through my mind: Strange words. Jesus on the moon. Red splotches of . . . something.

What else? Try harder. What did I know? I knew my name, remembered where I lived. I could recall almost everything except what happened earlier today.

Stop, stop walking. My cell phone? In my pocket? No. Maybe fell out on the bus? Or when the passengers threw me off? Too dark to look for it. Walk toward the light.

Wait, stop. Wallet? Yes. Everything in it? Ticket stub? From where? To where? Would the ticket stub help me remember what happened? Too dark to see anything. Keep walking. Toward the light.

My head had cleared by the time I reached the tumbledown little motel with the 24-hour diner and bright, lighted sign that said “Stay Here. Cheap. Cable.” My wallet still held my credit cards, cash, identification, and so forth. But no bus ticket stub. That was in my jacket pocket.

The motel night clerk was a woman, about 80 years old I supposed, with blinding peroxide-orange hair, gaudy blue eye makeup, and teeth the color of corn.

“Cable went bust,” she said. “But I give special entertainment if you pay extra.” She winked and handed me my room key.

I woke early the next morning, still in my clothes, atop a dusty bedspread in a grubby room with dingy gray walls. And without special entertainment.

The phone book in the diner next to the motel showed I’d journeyed to a tiny town about 200 miles south of where I lived. The diner waitress chewed gum and called me “honey” when she poured me a mug of steaming coffee. I took a sip but it made my teeth ache, I guess from the beating I took. What the hell should I do now? I couldn’t call the cops. What would I tell them that made any sense? And for all I knew the bus driver already called the cops on me.

I used the diner’s pay phone to call the nearest rental car company, to get home. They said they’d send a shuttle to the diner to pick me up. I didn't need to phone the cubicle boss about missing work. I'd been unemployed over a month.

Next call: My cell carrier. They said they’d already terminated my account, and were investigating an expensive rash of suspicious charges. They could reinstate the account in a few days, after a review. Or I could pay the $1,472 and get the account reinstated now.

I thought about Patty. Our relationship, almost two months in the making, had begun to wobble. Like a kid learning to ride a bike. She says I don't communicate. I guessed I should call her, but what would I communicate? Hi honey, I'm on my way to Teensy Weensy Rent-a-Car in Cow Pasture County. I woke up this morning in a cheap motel, and all I can remember from last night is I started a fight and got thrown off a bus. Wanna get pizza tonight? I'm still unemployed, so you’re buying!

Sure, that should mend things. Communication. Then again, maybe I’d already called her and just didn’t remember. I wondered what I’d said.

First stop in my Teensy Weensy car, a cell phone store. I bought a prepaid, the cheapest they carried, on sale. I tried to check my old cell’s voicemail, just in case, but got a dropped signal. I tried my home voicemail. Dropped signal again. Nice phone.

***

My brain was still scrambled when I arrived home. Swollen bruises on my face confirmed I'd taken a thrashing. I felt dizzy again, light-headed. Next step: Call my doctor.I thought I’d made an appointment for a check-up weeks ago, but I wasn’t sure.

Look at the calendar. There. Dr. Zarnotski, 4pm yesterday. Had I seen him? I didn’t know, couldn’t remember anything from yesterday afternoon. I clutched at my home phone. My hand trembled a little as I called. A voicemail picked up, a woman.

“You have reached the office of Dr. Michael Zarnotski. Due to the recent tragedy, the office is closed until further notice. If you wish to send flowers, we will receive them here and forward them to the family. If this is an emergency, please call Dr. Wade Winthorpe at …”

She gave a local number. I jotted it down but hung up the phone and fired up my laptop.

My favorite search engine found a current headline from the local newspaper’s website. “Doctor Murdered in Home” it read. I scanned the story.

“Dr. Mikhail ‘Michael’ Zarnotski was discovered shot to death in his home early this morning … Police called the killing a gangland style execution … Neighbors reported seeing the doctor help his wife and son put suitcases into the family’s SUV two days ago … Neither family member has been seen at home since then … ”

The story included a photo of Dr. Zarnotski. Mid-fifties probably, with a genuine smile and a well-tended goatee. A carrot-top in his youth, but nearly bald now. He was tall and fit, I knew, though the photo showed only his face.

What the hell was happening? Had I seen my doctor just before his murder and repressed something awful in my memory? Was my nighttime bus trip a futile attempt to run away? And how should I interpret my frenzied violence on the bus and explosive headaches afterward?

I remembered the ticket stub and called the bus station. Somebody there must know something that would help me. Maybe something I said or did before boarding the bus. I reached a guy named Gene. He said another guy, named Clement, worked the night shift yesterday. Clement was scheduled for the same shift again today, back at 6pm.

“I’ll call then,” I told Gene. “I hope Clement will talk to me.”

“Clement? Oh, I’m sure he’ll talk to you. Why wouldn’t he?”

Worried and flustered, I called Dr. Winthorpe’s office and described my memory problems, but nothing else. After a moment on hold, the receptionist told me to come in right away.

***

A crowd filled Dr. Winthorpe’s waiting room. None of them looked as sick as I felt.

“When was the last time you saw Dr. Zarnotski?” the receptionist whispered.

“Maybe yesterday afternoon. But my problem is, I don’t know … can’t say what happened.”

She was still staring at my battered face when Dr. Winthorpe emerged from a back hallway and greeted me. A short, pleasant man, he seemed to realize right away who I was.

“You just called,” he said. “Dr. Zarnotski’s patient. I want to examine you immediately.”

“But, doctor,” the receptionist interrupted.

“I know. We have patients waiting. But this could be serious.”

“Very serious,” she said. “Doctor, this man …”

He had already disappeared, back down the hallway. The receptionist grabbed her phone, and I followed Dr. Winthorpe into an examination room. A nurse joined us. I recounted my story to both of them.

“Quite a bus ride,” the doctor said. “Episodic memory loss, night terrors, maybe even violent sleepwalking. And what’s this, a fresh needle puncture?”

He pointed to a speck on my arm and turned to the nurse.

“I’ll need a blood sample.”

She drew one and left.

“We’ll conduct a quick test right now,” the doctor said. “It might tell us something preliminary. I'll go check.”

He left me sitting in the examination room, more confused and frightened than I’d ever felt in my life.

When he returned, Dr. Winthorpe lingered in the hall and gaped through the open doorway, leaving me alone in the exam room. He blinked before speaking and stayed in the hall.

“Preliminary results . . .” He stammered and flushed. “Preliminary results indicate injection of high dosages of a drug type generally known as neuroleptics, as well as a sedative type generally known as benzodiazepines.”

I sat, dumbfounded.

“A third substance,” he continued, “perhaps a slow release amphetamine, could not be conclusively identified through preliminary testing.”

“A sedative, an amphetamine, and … what is the first drug for?” I asked.

He blinked again.

“Typically, it is used in the treatment of violent, hallucinatory schizophrenia,” he said. “But in your case, based on the unusually high dosage and substance mixtures, in my opinion someone was trying to erase your memory.”

“Erase my memory?”

“Please leave now,” he said. “I'll contact you with anything further.”

And he was gone.

I wandered down the deserted hall, back to the waiting room and the exit. Like the rest of the office, the waiting room was empty now.

Except for two men.

They looked like a couple of bulldozers, built wide and thick, geared to smash anything that got in their way. The tall one stood at least six-two, the squat guy maybe five-ten. They both wore wrinkled suits. They both wore mean looks. And they both were looking right at me.

The tall one showed a badge. “Sergeant Detective Kirkwood,” he said. “Homicide.”

The squat guy gripped my arm so hard my hand went numb. “We need to ask you some questions. The receptionist called and told us all about you.”

They shoved me into a corner. Kirkwood said they were investigating the murder of Dr. Zarnotski.

“You were a patient of his?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“I can’t remember, maybe yesterday.”

“Yesterday, but you can’t remember? You think we’re morons?” Kirkwood stared. The squat guy smirked and pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

“I’m under a doctor’s care. For memory problems.”

Kirkwood considered this. “Are you being treated for a mental disorder, sir?”

I felt dizzy again. “I don’t think so. Not right now anyway.”

“Are you a drug user?”

“No. Do I need an attorney?”

“Where were you last night, from 9pm until just after midnight?”

Excellent question.

“Two hundred miles from here, on a bus with twenty other people.”

“You think anybody on the bus would remember you?”

“I guarantee it.”

“Yeah?” the squat guy said. “We'll check it out, Mr. Memory.”

“You had a nasty fight with someone,” Kirkwood continued. He scrutinized my battered face, waiting.

“On the bus,” I told him. “Not with the doctor.”

They verified my contact information so they could reach me. Home address, home phone, email. I described my new cell phone problems, but gave them the number anyway. I promised myself a better phone with more reliable service, tomorrow. Any carrier, any price. Kirkwood handed me his card and said he’d be in touch. I was considered a “person of interest,” he told me.

I thought afterward how tough it might be for the cops to find the bus passengers. Where had they traveled by now? The detectives could track down the driver, of course, but he had his job to protect. I doubted the employee handbook encouraged throwing someone overboard and abandoning him on the side of the road. The driver’s memory might conveniently get worse than mine.

Was there anything I could do to unravel what the hell was happening to me? Yes! Call the bus station again. Maybe the night shift clerk saw something, Clement. His shift would start in less than an hour. I wasn't hungry so simply rested in my car, waiting, thinking, struggling to make sense of the most recent 24 hours of my life. I soon realized I couldn't.

Time to call Clement. I hoped he had shown up for his shift. Gene seemed certain Clement would talk to me, but why? And what might he recall?

Someone answered on the first ring. “Bus depot, you got Clement.”

Thank God. I gave him my name and crossed my fingers. “Clement, I really need your help. I was in the depot last night, but I wasn’t feeling well at all. Maybe someone else had to buy my ticket for me. I don’t remember. You were working … ”

“Yessir,” he interrupted. “Gene here told me you called before. You was the fella who tied on a good one, was sleeping it off on the bench there, then got all rambunctious on Uncle Ned’s route down south. Uncle Ned’s the bus driver, my uncle. He says you was … ”

“Clement, do you remember … ”

“Talk about tying one on. One time, I went over to this titty bar on Route 4. There was these two off-duty strippers and we got to drinkin’ bourbon and beer. Well, I don’t need to tell a fella like you what happened next, but here goes … ”

“Clement. Who bought my ticket last night?”

“Yessir. The tall fella, bald, with the little red beard. Beard reminded me of my cousin Earl, but his beard ain’t little, just red. And he ain’t tall nor bald neither. But I surely remember that little red … ”

The phone signal began breaking up. “Clement, I have to go.”

“Alright then, but you’re missin’ a real fine titty bar story.”

The phone connection dropped and I sank into the car seat. What the hell was happening?

Tall, bald, little red beard: Dr. Zarnotski. My doctor had sent his family away, and then drugged me and put on me on a bus to nowhere, just before he was executed by gangsters.

I tried calling Detective Kirkwood. The call went through. I told Kirkwood what Clement had revealed.

“Talk to Clement yourself,” I suggested.

“You’re already in the clear. We got the story straight from Doc Zarnotski.”

“My God. He’s alive?” “Hell, no. Dead as disco.”

“Then how could he … ”

“He emailed his attorney a letter to be opened on his death. A rambling confession, really. The attorney just called, gave me as much of the story as she could. The doc was dealing drugs. Pills and medical opiates, mostly. Also some antipsychotics. He was trying to cover himself and protect you, with the injection and the bus ride, because of something you saw. We don’t know what. Remember anything yet?”

“No,” I whispered. “Nothing.”

“It’s hard to know everything because the doc’s letter was a mess. He definitely was an addict, pretty far gone too. He’d started selling to a couple of Russian thugs, hard cases. They were pressuring him, threatening his family. No doubt they killed him. One is a big guy with a tattoo on his face. Jesus hanging on the cross. You see anybody like that?”

“I can’t remember.”

I thought about the results of my blood test. “Detective Kirkwood. You mentioned antipsychotic drugs.”

“The Russian mob sometimes uses them on their own enforcers. To calm them, keep them under control. These are not people you want to bump into.”

I asked the question grinding in my gut. “Detective, did you tell me all this because … am I safe?”

He paused a beat. “It’s a dangerous world. Nobody’s safe.”

***

My appetite for food seemed gone for good, but I drove to a popular chain restaurant to try to eat. The restaurant was bright and lively, filled with the aromas of steaming soup and grilled meat and the sounds of ordinary people having ordinary fun. I wished I was one of them.

Two hours later, I pulled into my driveway, my dinner uneaten, plopped cold into a take-out bag. Home again. Warm, inviting, home.

I got as far as the porch. A noise in the night made me turn and look. A man holding an assault rifle rushed toward me, his dark clothing almost blending into the night. He gripped the rifle in one hand while making a slicing gesture across his throat with the forefinger of his other hand. I pitched the take-out bag and vaulted into the house. Bolt the door, I told myself. Call 911. Panicky and shuddering, I wondered if the cops could get here fast enough to keep me alive. I bolted the door. But I didn't call 911.

Because it was too late. Two Russian gangsters were waiting in my living room. One with a gun. One with a knife.

The knifeman, tall and bulky with jagged teeth and a massive shaved head, stepped behind me. But not before I saw the ornate tattoo covering the right side of his face, ear to nose, temple to neck. Jesus on the cross, red tears of blood dripping from his tortured eyes.

The gunman, holding an automatic pistol, remained seated on my couch. Much shorter than the knifeman, he looked like a rough middleweight brawler: Immense shoulders, a feral gaze, and sandy hair cut too close to hide the white scars and purple scabs mottling his scalp. He pointed me toward the chair across from him.

His accented voice was low and quiet. “Sit. Be comfortable like me.”

I sat, shaking.

The knifeman moved behind my chair, standing so close I felt his breath and smelled his body odor.

“The doctor was selling you drugs?” the gunman asked.

I shook my head no.

“But you saw him sell drugs to us. One time, but many drugs. And saw mad arguing until the doctor gave me my shot, my medicine?”

“I don't know.”

His words “my medicine” finally registered. The guy with a Jesus tattoo on his face and a knife in his hand wasn’t the one taking antipsychotics.

Silent nearly a minute, the gunman fixed a chilly glare on me.

“You don't know,” he said. “Don’t remember anything, from your big injection?”

“Nothing.”

He surveyed me another moment. “It seems you really do not remember us. Compliments to the dead doctor. But I could not let him live. Or you.”

He motioned to the knifeman, who lumbered to the front window and reached to shut the curtains. The gunman stood and aimed his automatic at my forehead.

“Will be best to close your eyes,” he told me.

Before I could close them, I heard the crack of two shots fired. Both Russians fell to the floor, bleeding and convulsing. The front door exploded off its hinges and two SWAT cops burst in, one coming high, one low, both carrying assault rifles.

That’s when I blacked out.

***

Kirkwood and his squat detective were watching my house, they told me afterward. Kirkwood’s investigators discovered my personal records were missing from Dr. Zarnotski’s office. So Kirkwood deduced the Russians had taken them and might hunt me down.

When he saw the gangsters enter my house, Kirkwood called in the SWAT guys. They arrived seconds before I did. The man who rushed toward the porch with an assault rifle was a cop trying to signal me to keep quiet and stay out of the house. When the knifeman moved away from me and the gunman stood and took aim, snipers shot them both through the window and the two SWAT guys busted through the door. Kirkwood had tried to call me an hour before but my worthless cell phone kept dropping him.

“You almost screwed up the whole operation,” the squat detective said to me. “Get a decent cell phone.”

The next day, I did. I used it to call Patty and send flowers to Dr. Zarnotski’s family.

Peter DiChellis concocts sinister tales for anthologies, ezines, and magazines. He is a member of Friends of Mystery and the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and an Active (published author) member of the Mystery Writers of America, Private Eye Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. For more, visit Peter’s Amazon author page or his blog about short mystery and crime fiction, A short walk down a dark street.

***

Notes: This story is an original work of creative fiction. All people and events described or depicted are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual individuals or events is unintended and coincidental. Specifics about Russian criminal tattoos and the general use and potential side effects of certain broad classes of medical drugs are based on information from several published sources. All descriptive details, however, are fictional and dramatized.

The Whores Go Down With the Stars, fiction by Sarah Jilek

I wait in the hotel lobby while June blows him. We usually give them the option—me, the ballerina-small brunette, or June, the thick, tall blonde, panther tattoo wrapped around her muscled thigh. She sometimes falls asleep with that thigh, that jewel-eyed panther, draped over my hips.

The clock on the wall above the spectacled receptionist reads 6:23 PM. It doesn't take thirty-two minutes to suck someone's cock. Something's wrong.

I push my cuticles back with my thumbnail. I keep accidentally making eye contact with the receptionist, who's reading a book called The Power of Today. A big, red-lettered quote on the back cover reads, “This book made me realize my own invincibility!” She smiles awkwardly every time our eyes meet. Honey, I want to tell her, stroking her straw-blonde hair, there is so much more than this middle-of-nowhere nothing Illinois town. At the edge of the horizon, past the sunset, there is a shining desert beacon, a glimmering oasis by the sea. That’s where I’m going: to the land of palm trees and pep pills. I’m going to be a star.

I stand and walk to the elevator, pacing in front of it. I can't go up there. It could turn bad and he could leave and not pay, and then we'd never get to L.A., would never rise from our warm haven of West Hollywood bedsheets to clink mimosa glasses together at the Ivy.

Instead, June wouldn’t talk to me for days. When we’d stop for gas and I’d ask her what she wanted from the convenience store, she’d just keep staring at the pump instead of me. I’d buy her a thirty-two-ounce raspberry slushie and it would turn, untouched, to warm blue syrup.

I bite off my thumbnail and spit it onto the tile. What is taking so long?

My finger hovers over the elevator button, but I drop my hand, sighing. A boy squeals nearby, startling me, then bolts around the corner. He’s maybe six or seven, wrapped in a wet hotel towel, hair spiked. He smells like chlorine. His slim, acne-scarred mother follows him, staring at her phone. The boy presses the button, jumping in place, and when it dings, the mother glances up. I give her a thin smile, and, after a second's hesitation, she smiles back. She holds an arm out to block the door from shutting.

“Oh, no, that’s—” I blurt out, shaking my head.

“Oh, okay,” she replies. The boy wraps his arms around her waist and presses his damp face into her stomach. She smooths down the spikes in his hair, a calm smile washing over her face. Is she remembering how she used to hold her baby? As the door slides shut, her eyes flash to mine. Me, the awkward, pacing woman in the hotel lobby. She knows exactly what I do.

I inspect my blurry reflection in the door, combing through my dark hair with my fingers and wiping the smudged mascara from under my eyes. I take a deep breath, running my tongue over my straight teeth and practicing my angles, my soft smiles and my grins. The crack between door panels bisects my thin face, warping it: the left side smooth, smiling, but the right side sagging, dissolving into smudged ripples.

My stomach sinks, and I punch the button and climb onto the elevator, which smells like old cigarettes and lingering chlorine. June is probably fine, but at least I can listen outside the door for the usual sounds: the strangled grunting that means he’s about to cum, or the soft moans June sometimes makes to hurry it along, the ones that send a twinge between my legs.

The door opens on the third floor and I get out, my heart pounding. As I approach room 308, my steps silent on the teal geometric carpet, I feel like I'm sneaking into my sister's room to read her diary, find out about the sex with her high school boyfriend, my eyes scanning too fast to understand—tongue, pressure, dried cum in my underwear— and my cheeks burning.

Two more rooms to go. I lean against the wall, stepping slowly. An angry bark. I freeze, inhaling sharply. A woman’s shriek. I swallow, holding my breath. June can handle it. She once pulled her neck knife on a guy who grabbed her ass at a Quick-Stop. Almost got us arrested. She keeps that knife under every hotel pillow.

A loud thud. Another. A sound like heavy clapping. It’s skin hitting skin, I realize. I'm frozen, stuck to the wall, still holding my breath. I take a few steps, then stop again. The fluorescent strip of light above my head flickers.

"Stop," a small, tame voice pleads. It takes me a second to realize it's June. Grunts and a whimper on the other side of the wall. The door— 308, staring me in the face.

I could go back downstairs. Creep back the way I came. If June can't fight him off, what's my skinny ass supposed to do?

More grunts and thuds, something smashed. A sob. Another.

"Don’t—"

My key card is slippery in my hand. My thumb oozes blood where I bit off skin.

"No—"

I push the card in and shoulder open the door. It's dark in the room, the hallway light cutting a triangle onto the carpeted floor.

The man stands at the foot of the bed, pants around his ankles, his bare ass pale. He turns toward me, squinting. June lies on her back beneath him, wrists bound with something— a zip tie? He's holding the room phone above June's head, his arm ready to swing down, the receiver dangling, brushing her bare stomach. The phone’s shadow hangs long and dark on the wall.

June meets my eyes—hers wet and bruised—and blinks. Her mouth moves, and she rolls slightly to the side beneath the man's body, uncovering a corner of the pillow.

The knife. I run to the side of the bed and dive onto it, fumbling under the pillow. I grab the handle—hard, cold wood, and something slams into the side of my face, knocking me off balance and off the bed. The hard plastic block of the phone. My ear rings—I'm deaf. Hot pain stings my ear and cheek.

I face him, holding the knife, his fat, sweating face still shocked. A strange, whistling rattle fills my head and it hits me what I’m about to do. June half-gasps, half-sobs, and I stick the three-inch blade into his gut, watch his jaw go slack. He raises the phone again and I put up my left hand and knock it away, stabbing again and again and twisting the knife, my face still burning, my ears still rattling.

He grunts and coughs blood into my face and onto June, gurgling. It tastes like hot metal. Like a fever. I keep stabbing him, spit pooling at the corners of my open mouth, until he slumps forward on top of June.

I pant, adrenaline pounding in my chest. My ear rings. The air conditioner rattles in the corner. I realize only now that it’s what I was hearing the whole time.

I help June shove off his body. She looks down at her black bra soaked in blood. I let out a sigh and cut through the zip tie binding her wrists. They’re marked with red. She sits up, wiping her face, smearing blood over her nose and mouth. I swallow, holding up my hands.

"Look, I fucked up," I say, my voice breaking. "It was too long—"

She kisses me hard on the mouth. She tastes like sweat, like his sour skin. I lean in.


8:02 PM

At the hardware store, we lift everything from the cart onto the belt: a 64-pack of Hefty garbage bags, a huge Bissell steam-cleaning vacuum, a gallon jug of bleach, a bucket of Rug Doctor carpet cleaner, a Libman Wonder Mop and three empty five-gallon buckets, a jug of Certol International bathroom cleaner with hydrochloric acid, two Craftsman claw hammers, two Ace twelve-inch hacksaws, and a five-pack of Craftsman carbon steel pliers.

June walks to the cashier ahead of me, reaching for the dead man’s trifold leather wallet full of cash in her back pocket. Her wet hair smells like lavender shampoo from the shower we took together. I remember the softness of the skin under her eyes, how her eyelashes brushed my thumb when I wiped blood from that spot under the hot water. I reach out and hook that thumb into her belt loop. She turns, startled, her mouth open.

I glance at the cashier. He’s maybe in his early twenties, with a stubbly half-goatee and spaghetti-noodle arms sticking out of his black polo. His eyes flit between my finger in June’s belt loop, the heap of stuff we picked out, and the cash-filled wallet. My left ear pulses, ringing again. June gives him an awkward smile, standing up straight so that her tits lift and her nipples show under her tanktop. She has crazy eyes, though, and the cashier doesn’t even glance at her tits. That’s never happened before. He hesitates, hand hovering over the mop handle, then glances over his shoulder to the other register, where his red-polo-clad manager has his back turned to us.

I reach across the belt for a red lollipop from the impulse-buy rack and tear off the wrapper. The sudden motion makes him pause, and I stick the lollipop into my dry mouth—sickly cherry. I suck on it, twirling the stick around, then pull it out of my mouth with a wet pop. I give him my best soft smile, making sure that it reaches my eyes— a romantic comedy smile; a girl-next-door smile.

He blushes and starts scanning.


11:12 PM

“We’ll have to flush him,” June says as we stand over the unmelted body in the tub.

We filled it up with the acidic bathroom cleaner, poured it thick and pale green over the pudge of his stomach, into the gaping stab wounds, across the patches of wiry hairs on his chest. We watched a House Hunters marathon on HGTV, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the pile of bloody sheets. June said House Three’s mint-green retro fridge didn’t go with the granite countertops. I disagreed: a pop of color was just what the kitchen needed, especially with all the natural light. As we watched, the sun set behind the curtain and the bathroom fan whirred behind the closed door. Every so often, a whiff of searing citrus fume made my eyes water and my nose run.

Dissolving his body didn’t work, and June says we can’t risk carrying him out—too many cameras. We have to cut him up in tiny pieces and flush those pieces down the toilet.

“Checkout time is noon. We’ve got just about twelve hours,” June says. She hands me a hacksaw and a hammer and gets to work sawing, the muscles in her tanned, confident arm pulsing. I can barely breathe in the bathroom, but we can’t open the door. I stare at myself in the mirror as she saws back and forth, at my Beatles t-shirt hiked up over my nose and mouth. I look funny with the tools—the hammer’s too heavy for me to hold without my arm shaking. June’s sawing is rhythmic, and I wiggle my eyebrows along with it, raising one eyebrow and then the other as the blade works back and forth.

Then June holds out an arm to me by the wrist. Blood drips from the sawed-off end, just below the missing elbow, onto my white ankle sock. My gut churns. June wiggles it around, like, we don’t have all day, the limp fingers flopping against her hand. I set down the hammer on the bathroom counter and grab the forearm. It’s cold and sticky from the bathroom cleaner. My thumb stings where I bit off the skin hours ago. We forgot to buy rubber gloves. In the mirror, I hold the arm, blood dripping into the sink. I meet my own eyes, hold them, and take a deep breath. It’s a new role, I tell myself. A role I’ve been practicing for. The role of a lifetime.

I lay the arm on the bathroom counter, hold down the wrist with my left hand (try not to think about the pulse that used to pound there), and cut into the skin with the hacksaw. The blade bites in easily, blood blooming onto the metal teeth and spraying onto the white laminate counter. I work the saw back and forth until it hits bone with a horrible scrape that jars my wrist. I glance at June, who has the other forearm already resting on the rim of the bathtub, palm up, and is at work on the left upper arm, her jeans rolled up around her ankles.

I lean into the blade, sawing with all my might, splinters of bone flying, embedding themselves into the skin of the arm and into my raw hand. I keep sawing, the smell of blood and chemicals pressing in on me, wet and sharp. The friction gives off the stench of warming meat. My eyes water and snot leaks from my nose and over my lips, tasting salty. Every now and then I wipe the blade on a bath towel to clean the teeth of muscle, fat, and bone shards. My left ear throbs, ringing intermittently.

I drop small pieces of him into the toilet, flushing it as I go: first and second thumb joints, first ring finger joint, whole pinky. His cock, taken from June and chopped into three pieces after I caught her staring at the severed thing bobbing up and down in the bathwater. Eventually I have a system down, and June and I are in sync. I imagine myself as the star of a thriller, camera focusing on the piercing blue of my eyes, darting over the shining blade and the gleaming muscle and fat of the limbs. My slender fingers cracking ribs, blood and marrow flecking my forehead and eyelids.

I dump the rest of the foot I’ve been chopping into the toilet and flush it. The toilet sighs and stops with a clunk, and the foot chunks swirl in the rippling water. June’s head jerks up, pliers in her hand. She’s got a bunch of his teeth lined up on the bathtub rim.

“It won’t flush,” I pant, suddenly lightheaded.

She wipes sweat from her forehead with her upper arm.

“What do we do?” she asks me, glancing at the toilet, like I’m supposed to know.

“One of us needs to get a plunger from the front desk,” I say, and she looks down at her pliers, at their jaws covered in pulpy blood.

“Okay,” she says, nodding. My stomach sinks. I thought, like always, that she’d offer to handle the problem. But she’s already back to work, grasping a molar and yanking it out.


4:16 AM

The hallway air feels fresh and cool. I’m in my last clean outfit, a tight, butter-yellow minidress. I’ve put my hair up in a bun and covered it with a baseball cap to hide the flecks of blood on my scalp. I’m just a manic pixie dream girl, I tell myself as the elevator bell dings and I step on. They wear weird shit like this all the time. The elevator lurches to a stop, and my empty stomach rears up. I grab the smudged metal bar with a raw, red hand.

When the door slides open, I stroll to the front desk. The same receptionist is there, a steaming paper cup of coffee next to her; she’s nearing the end of her book. I think of everything that has happened above her head since she started it, and heat blooms on my cheeks.

She looks up as I approach and smiles. I smile, too, but it’s like I’ve forgotten how—my mouth jerks unnaturally, and my eyes feel too wide. I clear my throat, glancing over the desk at the upside-down book. “Nothing prepared me for the day I realized that I was invincible,” a sentence reads. The receptionist’s eyes are watery—is that from lack of sleep, or is it the book? Has it resonated with her that deeply? Has she changed?

I’ve been quiet too long. “Um. . . can I borrow a plunger?”

She frowns, staring at my arm. A clump of glistening flesh sticks to my bare bicep. My hand twitches to wipe it off, but I realize that I can’t. That to remove it would be to acknowledge it. So, I don’t blink. I will my eyes to water. Seize the day, I tell her with my eyes. You’re invincible. She searches my face, eyes widening almost imperceptibly behind her square glasses. My vision blurs. This is the most important thing you will ever do. Her mouth twitches, and her nostrils flare—does she understand? She purses her lips. Finally, she gives me a glorious nod.


4:21 AM

I can hear June laughing from outside the door to room 308. It’s a maniacal laugh, a deep chuckle punctuated by high-pitched cackles. The only other time I’ve heard her laugh like this was when she was stoned out of her mind at a porno theater in Nashville. But, no—even that laugh wasn’t this crazed. I slip in the key card and open the door, making sure the powder-blue “Getting Some Shut-Eye” sign stays in place.

When I open the bathroom door, the smells hit me again, harder than before. Shit and blood and acid and vomit (mine, in the sink). June squats in the tub, shaking with laughter. Tears roll down her cheeks. Next to her, two broken hacksaw blades and a gouged thigh.

I set down the plunger and crouch next to the tub. June giggles and takes a breath, exhaling hard. Her eyes are red and watery. For a second, I think she might be high, but I don’t smell weed. The panther on her thigh shrinks away from me, lips curled over its fangs.

“We’re fucked,” she says, wiping her nose and tapping the femur, her fingernail hitting the jagged groove she cut into it. Half of me wants to cry, too, seeing her like this. The new half, the half just born tonight, wants to smack her.

“No, we’re not.” I reach for the hammer on the countertop and hand it to her. She takes it, cradling it in both her chafed hands, sniffling.

“Come on,” I tell her. “It will be dawn soon.”

When the toilet finally flushes again, after I’ve plunged it for what seemed like an hour, I cry. We keep working. June pounds the bones with the hammer until they break. I use my hammer to crack the skull, prize it apart with the claw. I hold it over the toilet, let the brain leak and splash into the bowl, force down the gagging in my throat. It smells like sickly meat, like diseased fluids. I wonder which part of that brain wanted to smash June’s head with the phone. If there was a part that just wanted to cum in her mouth. I wonder how my brain looks, if I could glimpse that new half of me sparking inside it.

The last of the brain plops into the toilet, and there’s a rapid, hard knock on the door. I freeze, glancing at June, tear tracks oiling her cheeks. I’ve never seen her so scared.

I swallow. “It’ll be fine,” I whisper, my throat raw. “They’ll go away.”

But they knock again, three times, even harder. My whole body shakes. I set down the mangled, dented head on the counter.

“Don’t answer it,” June pleads, crouched in the tub, her eyes hooded and dark.

“We have to.” I flush the brain and then wrap my hair in one of the few clean towels buried in the stack. I wipe blood smudges from my cheeks and hands and leave the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I change back into my minidress as another succession of knocks comes.

“Be right there,” I call, my voice wavering. I kick the pile of bloody sheets behind the bed, along with all the bags and packaging from the hardware store. The walk from the bed to the door is slow and sickening. I flick the lock and grab the cold door handle, licking my lips and tasting blood. I crack open the door, wedging myself in the doorway.

It’s a large man in a too-tight gingham button-down and khakis, with a walkie-talkie strapped to his waist. He reminds me of the youth group leader at the Vacation Bible School my mom made me go to one summer. I smile sleepily at him.

“What is it?” I ask.

“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but according to some of the other guests, there’s a bunch of loud noise coming from this room,” he says, gesturing with his hands and then wringing them, pursing his lips at me like he’s sure he’s giving me a good scolding.

I tilt my head, feigning surprise, then nod slowly. “That must have just been the music. Sorry. My friend’s really into goregrind right now,” I say, shrugging. “We’ll try to keep it down.” The man narrows his eyes at me, glances behind me into the room. Can he see the bloody handprints on the bathroom doorframe? Is he explaining them away in his mind? He takes his walkie-talkie off the clip. What would June do? I keep myself firmly planted in the doorway, allow one smooth leg to jut out over the threshold, my toe curling on the hallway carpet. He glances at the ridged muscle of my flexed thigh, then nods, shifting uncomfortably, replacing the walkie-talkie.

“Well, good. Okay. If it gets loud again, I might have to—”

A deafening clatter from the bathroom. It sounds like June threw a goddamn hammer at the mirror or something. My ear starts its dizzying ring again. A cackle, then June starts singing. The man touches the door like he’s coming in. “The goldfish sing all night…” June sings. I almost back away, but I plant my feet and hold my ground. He frowns, lets his hand drop.

“What was that?” he asks.

June sings, “The whores—” then erupts into laughter again. It’s that poem she’s always mumbling—Bukowski? —but she’s never sung it before, much less to a made-up tune.

I shrug, pulling up the strapless dress so that more of my thighs are exposed and adjusting my tits beneath the top. His eyes linger there.

“My friend is a little bit drunk,” I say, grinning and rolling my eyes, looking him up and down, like, I’m a little drunk too—maybe enough to think you’re cute. “. . . go down with the stars. . .” June sings, stars long, low and melancholy.

I trail my finger down the doorframe—there’s caked blood beneath my fingernail.

He sighs, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. I’ve got him.

“Just try to keep it down,” he says. He actually winks. I give him a wink in return before slinking backward into the room and slamming the deadbolt.


11:26 AM

The vacuum whirs, its steam bathing my face. Dawn broke under the bottom of the curtain hours ago. The stained bedclothes rest in black garbage bags. I scrub the vacuum hose over the carpet, the sound of it deafening. On my hands and knees, I scan the floor for tiny specks, my lower back achy and sweating. June scrubs the wall and the fake headboard.

On one of the beige leaf patterns in the carpet, there’s a bell-shaped spot that won’t come out, no matter how hard I scrub. I sit back on my heels, sighing, and glimpse something black in the corner of my vision, at the foot of the bed. June’s sheathed neck knife. I pick it up, that cold wooden handle still bloodstained, and slip the lanyard over my head, tucking the knife under my Beatles T-shirt.

A tap on my shoulder startles me. June stands over me, staring at the door. I switch off the vacuum, my ears ringing in the sudden silence, and turn.

The hotel maid stands in the doorway, one hand on her cleaning cart, her mouth hanging open. She takes it all in: the half-scrubbed stains on the wall, the hulking garbage bags, the bare mattress, the trail of blood leaking out from beneath the bathroom door. She’s pale.

June doesn’t do shit but stare back at her. I scramble to my feet and hurry to the door, grab her warm hand and pull her in. The woman yanks her wrist free, her long braid swinging.

“Wait,” I tell her. I snatch the dead man’s wallet off the TV stand and fish out a handful of hundred-dollar bills.


11:57 AM

I wash my hands. The bathroom gleams white, the grout spotless. The toilet smells of bleach and lemon. The vacuum shudders to a stop in the bedroom. I come out and June unplugs it and stands, panting. All the blood smears are gone from the leaf-pattern beige carpet and the walls and the headboard. The sweating hotel maid tosses her sponges into her bucket of bleach water and loads it onto her cart. She leaves without a word, the cart’s wheels squeaking on the carpet. June gazes at me across the room and opens the curtain, filling the room with daylight. It’s blinding. Spotless.

We lift the garbage bags and our suitcases into the trunk of the Mustang, and June slams it shut. Outside, it’s cool, and a light breeze lifts our damp hair. It feels good. I pull her close—at first she resists, but then she relaxes, pressing her warm, chapped lips to mine. My chest swells. We both laugh.

We are hungry, so we drive to the Jewel down the road. June pushes the polished cart, and I walk in front of it as if in a dream, passing through aisle after colorful aisle, grabbing everything that looks good, my stomach rumbling. A hot rotisserie chicken, perfectly golden-brown. A pound of macaroni and cheese from the deli counter. Bunches of fat, black grapes. Jars of dill pickles and green olives. A tub of rainbow sherbet. Glazed chocolate doughnuts. A package of hardboiled eggs. Pistachio fluff, brilliantly green. Bags of ridged potato chips and bricks of cream cheese. Two-liters of cola and lemonade and grapefruit soda. A gallon of two percent milk. A can of cherry pie filling. A 24-pack of Miller Lite and a bottle of cabernet. A red-and-white checkered tablecloth, and, at a tiny kiosk right before the checkout line, like it was waiting the whole time, a bouquet of white roses.

***

I drive us to the forest preserve on the edge of town and we hike a quarter-mile uphill on the gravel trail to the scenic overlook, panting. Behind me, June complains about the straps of the plastic bags cutting into her sore hands.

There’s no one else at the top, I’m thrilled to find. We shield our eyes with our hands and gaze out over a rolling meadow that’s impossibly green.

I choose a spot in the shade of a massive sycamore tree. I lay out the tablecloth and we dig through the plastic bags, pulling out our feast. The heroines, battered and bruised, arrive at the glorious end of the film. The smell of the chicken makes my mouth water, and I pop open the plastic lid. We didn’t buy a corkscrew, so June uses her lighter to nudge the cork out of the bottle of cabernet. It pops, and she hands it to me. I take a long swig, the mouth of the bottle still warm from the flame. The rich wine runs down my throat, acidic and buttery, and warms my belly. I hand it back to her and dig into the chicken, twisting one of the legs loose.

It breaks, exposing the gleaming white knob of bone. The wine sloshes in my gut. The red-purple streaks in the wet meat, the crispy flesh. The sycamore leaves rustle overhead, and sunlight stabs the tablecloth, burns the red and white into my eyes. The blood-dark wine stains June’s teeth. The meat in my hand is warm. The mass of macaroni noodles, wet and tangled and sloppy. The dark clots of cherries rolling in syrup. June tears off a chicken wing and sinks her teeth into it, those wine-stained teeth scraping bone, tearing flesh. I run my tongue over my pearly teeth, remember her grinding his to powder with the hammer. How she pulled them from his pulpy, bleeding gums as expertly as a dentist.

I set down the chicken leg. June has stopped eating, too. She gazes at the bounty of food spread out between us, her throat working. At the sweating gallon of milk and the blinding sheen of the cream cheese packages. The panther’s ruby eye glares at me, its sleek body curled around her smooth, muscled thigh. June’s eyes are bloodshot, creased around the edges, as if one night has aged her a decade. I stare until I can’t bear to look at her anymore, and then I turn my head and gaze out at the wide green field, the neck knife pressing into my sternum. My left ear rushes and pounds. The sun’s so bright that it hurts, but I hold my eyes wide open, even though they water and ache. When I finally close them, my vision fills with acres of bleeding grass.

Sarah Jilek is an MFA candidate in Fiction at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her novel, Jiada, was published by Indigo Sea Press in 2015. Her work has appeared in Switchblade Magazine, Alcyone Magazine, and in the Illinois edition of America’s Emerging Writers. She has read at Noir at the Bar in St. Louis, and at several other bars throughout Southern Illinois.

The Mistress, fiction by Nikki Dolson

I am the mistress. See me lurk in the near dark. See that man walking into the suburban dollhouse—the guy in the good suit with the well-trimmed beard that is softer than you can imagine—he used to be mine.

He hasn't seen me yet. I’m parked a half block down the street. If he were to look this way though he would recognize me. I'm not in a wig or dressed in cat burglar black, head tucked into a balaclava. I'm in that blue dress he likes. The gun, a Beretta subcompact (a gift from a different boyfriend) is in my purse. The only concessions I've made to my task are the kitten heels I'm wearing and they have bows on the back. I check my lipstick and hair in the visor mirror and smile. If I get caught, I'm gonna look good for my mugshot.

See the mistress kill time by swiping left on the dating app she met him on. I see men hugging women in their profile pics. Couples looking for thirds. Men writing about wanting a long-term relationship but still listing casual sex under wants.

Left Left Left

Mr. Adulterer's profile had none of these things. There were only two pictures of him, each showed off his sweet smile and intense gaze. I got chills looking at his picture.

You're beautiful, he wrote to me. Gorgeous lips. I would like to do things to you. But first, you should let me buy you dinner.

So I did. Then I let him take me to his hotel room where he unzipped my blue dress then contorted my body in all the best ways. He is a talker and it was how he spoke to me, his voice low and smooth, that did me in. I felt the reverberation of his voice in me for days after.

He severed contact with me three weeks ago.


It's full dark now. His street is empty. All the luxury vehicles snug in their garages. Teacup dogs and the wives who own them, all drugged for the night. Often we met at his house. Glorious afternoons spent in each other’s company thrilled by the possibility his neighbors might see us. Sometimes we met in hotel rooms on the Strip. Rarely, we met at my apartment downtown. He didn’t like my place. “It’s too. . .something.” He meant it was too me. All my dresses and heels and pinup-girl style. I should have known he was about to end things.

I am the mistress. See me make to his house, peek through the windows and gaze into darkened rooms. His is a dollhouse of perfection. Everything just so. But a doll is missing. Where is his Mrs? I wonder if she’s left him. She did sound upset when I called her this morning. Upset but not surprised. All that matters is that he’s home alone right now.

The house doesn’t have an alarm but it does have a broken lock on the sliding glass door. He didn’t fix the lock because his wife nagged him about it. “As soon as she stops, I’ll fix it. Fifteen years of marriage, you’d think she’d know me. She doesn’t get me at all, baby. Not like you do.” Then he pushed me to my knees. Mr. Adulterer likes his mistress on her knees. I wonder how much time the Doll has spent on her knees in her perfectly appointed home. Did the cold seeping up from the kitchen floor tiles make her knees ache like it had mine?

I wonder how he will look on his knees.


I am the mistress. See me move silently from room to room on a path of artfully strewn rugs. I loop the kitchen twice and run fingers down the marble counters. I caress the stainless steel appliances. I peek at the laundry room. I wonder about the stack of half folded towels. I decide the Doll has left him. I nearly giggle but refrain. I wonder what he will say when he sees me.

I stop in the dining room and admire the cherry wood table with its eight place settings. Hundreds of dinners were eaten here while Mr. and Mrs. feigned happiness. I wonder how long he was married before he stopped being happy with her. I wonder if it was longer than the four months it took for him to get bored with me.

I hear a noise and press myself against the china cabinet, purse clutched to my chest. I hold my breath and listen. Again the sound. Panting? Like someone exercising, maybe? Mr. Adulterer suddenly worried about the extra pounds? Or perhaps he’s found a new playmate. I think of his last email to me after I begged to know why we were over. He wrote, It was just sex, baby, and you looked like you could use the attention.

I can’t wait to give him some attention.


I pull the Beretta and move quickly into the living room. The noise stops and so do I. It’s dark except for the television, which is on but muted. The back of his favorite chair is in front of me. His hand dangles off one side. I step onto the hardwood floor. My kitten heels tap-tap-tap as I walk around the chair but he doesn’t say a thing.

“Hello, love,” I croon as I walk around the chair then stop. She rises from her knees leaving the knife protruding from his belly.

I am the mistress, come face to face with the Mrs. The television bathes us in awful light. She is speckled with blood from pale face to bare feet. Her ballerina bun is perfectly messy. She folds her arms over her chest.

“You won’t need that,” she says eyeing my gun.

I look at him. If I ignore the blood, he looks like he’s sleeping. I wonder why I don’t I feel sad. “I guess not,” I say.

She reaches out and pats my bare shoulder, her fingers still slick with blood. “Let’s have a drink.”

Nikki Dolson's stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, Thuglit, Bartleby Snopes, and others. She is working on a novel and a collection of short stories.

Bad Luck Opal, fiction by Joelle Lambert

The trooper’s lights flickered behind our van. That was it. Curtains. Just like that, all in one instant the operation was over. All of our time, money, and effort went out the window. It was out of my control. I couldn’t breathe.

“Dava, this whole time I’ve been nothing but a getaway driver to you.” Allie said, pulling onto the shoulder of the highway. Had she been speeding? She was nervous, too. Her hands trembled where she gripped the steering wheel. We were only ten miles from the destination.

“You know that’s not true,” I put a sweaty palm on her thigh, “Play stupid. You aren’t going down with me.” My attempts to breathe felt like knives in my stomach as I watched the trooper approach the window.

“License and registration,” he demanded, taking the documents back to run the info. I looked at Allie but her gaze was elsewhere.

“How could I be so stupid?” she said, “I’ve been blinded by my feelings for you, how much fun we have, how high we always are.” Allie pushed my hand away and got out of the car.

The trooper, seeing her, demanded on his speaker, “Stop what you’re doing and put your hands up!”

“Allie, what are you doing?” She pulled open the backdoor and rummaged through our belongings. I watched the opal ring on her finger glimmer in the harsh light of the sun. She just had to have it.

Turbo had warned me about a lot but he hadn’t prepared me for this. What do you do when your partner in crime completely snaps? This wasn’t in the script. I hadn’t known Allie that long, after all.

I met Allie when she started bartending where my buddy Turbo bounces. Although I think Turbo wanted to shoot his shot, I had taken a liking to Allie and found her completely irresistible. She had pouty lips, a stern gaze and thick thighs. All of her attitude and curves were wrapped in an eclectic style of thrift-store cable-knits and harem pants. She was sassy and audacious and soon she was hanging out with me and Turbo all the time.

We liked Allie a lot. She was good company; liked to drink, smoke, and play euchre. It wasn’t a surprise that she fit in with our circle of friends.

***

It wasn’t long before Turbo and I trusted Allie enough to show her the scorpion lab. It was originally Turbo’s little hobby that I had later become part of. Turbo bred a new species of scorpion and was extracting its venom to sell on the black market.

“Scorpion venom is the most expensive liquid known to man.” Turbo said, revealing his operation to Allie for the first time. Our collection was up to 87 scorpions. Turbo had been extracting and collecting venom for years. Allie closely inspected the glass tanks, tools, beakers, and piles of paperwork.

“This is the freakiest shit I’ve ever seen.” Allie looked closely at the scorpions and back at us in disbelief.

“Want to hear something even freakier?” I said, “These little monsters are going to make us rich.” I walked her around the lab. “This machine milks the venom. It’s a very delicate process.”

She scanned the entirety of the lab in silence. Her eyes were wide like a surprised child tasting sugar for the first time. She watched the crawling scorpions in their individual tanks.

“A gallon of this stuff is going for 40 mil. Liquid gold.” Turbo said.

“I never would’ve expected this out of you two,” she said.

“I am a firm believer in throwing people off my trail.” Turbo said.

“But, poison? You’re going to sell the venom? To kill people?” Allie said. Turbo and I chuckled.

“This venom is going to Michigan to a lab where it will be used to make medicine.” I said, walking closer to Allie and offering her my hand. I looked at her and worried that this was a mistake. I hoped she wouldn’t rat us out.

“Dava and I want to know if you’re willing to help.” Turbo said.

“This is all unauthorized, unregulated?” she asked, gripping my hand. “There’s five million dollars cash in it for you if you can drive me and the venom from Albuquerque to Michigan.” I said. She held my hand but her eyes were off dreaming, calculating in the distance.

***

Turbo taught me everything I know. From selling pot and pills in high school to growing mushrooms in college, Turbo was a very thorough mentor. The name of the game was covering all your bases, preventing anything that could possibly go wrong. Have plans. Have lies. Have backup. Turbo was neck-deep in investments and these scorpions were his cash cow.

“People trust female drug dealers way more. They’re not intimidating and usually pretty reliable. There’s one downfall,” he said, “their emotions run stronger than their greed.”

Allie was resistant to get on board. She asked a lot of questions. We almost lost her participation entirely when she got mad at Turbo for ordering supplies to her house.

*** Before leaving, I went to Allie’s to beg for forgiveness.

“I told you, I’m out. Drive the venom yourself.” she said.

“You know I can’t do it alone. It’s a 24-hour drive with no stops.”

“Make Turbo go.”

“Turbo has done enough leg work and now if you want a cut, you have to help, too.” I said. I looked at her and wondered how it had come to this. Allie looked broken. She had lost the glow that attracted me to her in the first place.

“What is something you want? Anything you want? A vacation? A house? A car? Whatever you want just name it and I can make it happen.” I said.

She sat and thought for a while without saying anything.

“I’ll give you equal parts of my cut.” I offered. Still, she was quiet.

“A ring,” she said, finally.

“A ring?”

“An opal ring. With rose gold accents.”

“Okay. Yes, great! An opal ring. Rose gold accents. Whatever you want, just please, drive me to Michigan.”

“Fine.” And we shook on it.

***

Allie and Turbo packed the van together. I counted my savings to buy Allie a ring from one of Turbo’s friends. I knew after tomorrow I could buy anything I wanted.

That’s how after 24 hours of driving, we ended up in a shoddy shack on the outskirts of Flushing, Michigan. We were there to buy an opal ring from an eccentric, old man who made us put our cell phones in his turned-off oven. Booger, he called himself. Figures, Turbo only dealt with the best in the business.

“Ya just never know who ya can trust,” Booger said, scratching his patchy cheek-fuzz, “wire taps get smaller and smaller. Come on in, meet the old lady, this is Pendle.” Booger gestured to an equally scruffy looking lady-hippie sitting on the couch. She was watching Harry Potter on a tiny TV.

“Have a seat, I’ll fetch your ring.” Booger disappeared while Allie and I sat down on the opposite side of the room as the one called Pendle. I sat on a plastic lawn chair and Allie took the flattened beanbag.

“Have ya’ll ever heard of the Anunnaki?” she asked. We shook our heads, no. “Ya’ll don’t wanna know,” she whispered, clearly disturbed yet she didn’t take her attention off of the movie.

“I haven’t slept in three days,” she said, “The Anunnaki are coming.”

Allie looked frightened and I felt guilty for putting her through all of this. She deserved this piece of jewelry, a treasure of my affection. I put my hand on her thigh for reassurance.

“Here it is.” Booger said, presenting the ring to Allie. She leapt up to retrieve it.

“Oh my gosh, it is absolutely gorgeous,” she said, easing it onto her finger.

“Rose-gold ring, Australian opal. $500. That’s a family discount right there since yer a friend of Turbos.” I handed Booger the money knowing that in just a few hours, a couple hundred would seem like chump change.

“We appreciate it more than you know.” I said, standing to leave.

“Hold up, ya’ll wanna smoke some opium?” Booger asked. Pendle snapped to attention, her eyes finally left the TV with the offer of drugs.

“No, thanks, we’ve gotta get going.” Allie said, looking terrified still.

“DMT?” His eyes widened, and I suddenly thought of my grandpa. My grandpa used to offer me Doritos and Mountain Dew. I never imagined hearing someone offer me things like opium or DMT. It seemed exotic somehow.

“No, thanks, really. Just our phones out of the oven would be great.” I said.

“The ring is really lovely. You do amazing work.” Allie said.

***

We scurried excitedly out of Booger’s house and I wanted to run, laughing, straight to the van. I looked at Allie and her face looked as if she had just gotten off a rollercoaster. I grabbed her hand and kissed it.

“Hey, watch the ring,” she said, and I shoved her playfully. We weren’t done yet. It was ten miles to the address Turbo coordinated. We fired up the van and headed to the destination once again.

My emotions swirled through my stomach and shot from my lips to fingertips. It felt like a windmill in my stomach was sending electricity to my appendages. I looked at my girl. Her fingers danced on the steering wheel. Her ring glimmered in the sunlight. Allie was happy. It all felt like a success far too soon.

“Dava,” the urgency in her voice pulled me from my daydream, “That car is following us.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“110. They’ve been behind us since Booger’s place.”

“Find the nearest highway.” I said, “Drive around a little before heading to the address.”

The onramp was right down the road. I watched the car that was following and urged Allie to focus on the road. We merged on and the car didn’t follow. They kept driving. Allie picked up to the speed of the highway and I could almost catch my breath in relief.

“Don’t speed. Just drive normal until we make it there.”

When I saw the trooper pull out and catch up to us, I knew it was all too good to be true. My hands started to drip sweat. My tongue went numb.

“Dava, there’s a cop.”

“I know, I see it. Just chill.” It all happened so fast, I couldn’t think clearly. It could’ve been a routine stop. Allie snapped. She wouldn’t listen to me.

***

“Allie, get back in the car.” I said. The trooper ran toward her. Allie started throwing all of our belongings out of the car and onto the highway. Boxes, clothes, magazines, snack wrappers, make-up. “What are you DOING?” I got out of the car and tried to pull her away. She had completely lost her mind. “Allie, stop!” I charged toward her.

The trooper restrained me and called for backup while Allie kept ripping through the van. She spilled a container of hair gel, tore open a box of cereal and then she got to it, the gallon jug of venom. We had it in a milk jug, no disguise, just the groceries it was packaged with. We were just two innocent girls on a road trip.

“You don’t care about me, Dava! You’re stupid and selfish. It’s always all about you!” Allie screamed at me as she poured the jug out at our feet.

I cried as forty million dollars seeped onto the highway. The trooper restrained Allie just as backup arrived. Turbo would never let me live this down.

“Some domestic drama and littering.” he said to his partner. “We’re gonna have to take one of them in.”

“It’s my fault.” I said, “I upset her. It’s all my fault.” The troopers looked at me, Allie, and the mess on the highway. “Allie, I’m sorry I’ve been a crappy girlfriend. I don’t want to upset you ever again. This should be a lesson learned.” Allie started crying, but I couldn’t console her. They cuffed me, mumbled about paperwork, and shoved me into the car.

***

I only served seven weeks of my eighteen-month sentence for conspiracy.

Someone had posted my twenty-five-thousand-dollar bail. A plane ticket was waiting to take me from Michigan back to Albuquerque.

I looked for Turbo, who I’d assumed would be picking me up. He was nowhere to be found. Outside, Allie was there.

“Dava!” She embraced me, “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry for everything. I never should’ve gotten you into this mess.”

“Relax,” she said, “C’mon I’ll give you a ride--

“No, wait.” I said. Taking her hand, my fingers touched the metal of the opal ring, “I never meant to make you feel like I was using you as a getaway.” I smiled. “You still wear it?”

“Of course. I’ll take you wherever you wanna go,” She said. “Milkshakes?”

“Maybe after we go see Turbo. Is he mad?” I asked. We got into her car and sped away, down the desert road.

“He’s not mad.” She said, turning on the radio. “Actually, he has a surprise for you. Check out what’s in the back.” On the floor of the backseat was a very plump duffle bag. I slowly opened it to reveal stacks of green money.

“How? Where did you get this?” I asked.

“You really don’t know?” Allie laughed.

“I watched you dump the venom.” I said.

“They never found the real jug of venom. I dumped a decoy I planted. Well, Turbo planted.” Allie’s valiant smile relieved me of the guilt I had felt.

“A decoy you planted? It was all an act?” I asked.

“Your bail money is coming out of your share. I’m just kidding, we split it into equal parts. About 12 million each, after taxes.” She winked.

“Rookie. I’m impressed. I’m speechless.” I put my hand on her thigh and watched her fearlessly drive us into the desert evening.

“I am a firm believer in throwing people off my trail,” Allie said.

“Sounds familiar.” I said, thinking of my friend who taught us everything we know. Allie was happy and we were prosperous. We sped into the Albuquerque sunset together, toward Turbo’s house. After all of this, I was relieved and excited to see my best friend.

Rainbow rays glimmered from Allie’s ring finger.

“Want to hear something funny?” she asked. “My mother never let me have opal jewelry growing up. She told me it was bad luck to wear if it’s not your birthstone. It’s intoxicatingly gorgeous, isn’t it?”

“That’s what you picked to wear on our biggest adventure yet? Something presumed bad luck?” I asked her.

“Even though people do crazy things for beauty, I think it’s all superstition. Meeting you was the best luck I ever had.” She smiled at me with glowing radiance, more beautiful than all the opals in the world.

Joelle Lambert is a certified, holistic practitioner and the founder of Dirty Girls Magazine. She is an undergraduate student at Youngstown State University where she was awarded 2018 Outstanding Creative Writing Student of the Year. Her work can be found in Volney Road Review.

Burning Down My Father's House, fiction by MIchael Gills

I once thought to burn down my father’s house. It happens like this: I’ve flown into Little Rock though everyone thinks I’m floating the Green as I often do, four days rafting from Flaming Gorge to Swallow Canyon, slaying calf-length browns on golden rapalas. I don’t seem to notice that my flight is traceable to my name or even if I rent a car and drive my credit cards will light up my tracks. Truth is, it’s hard to burn down your father’s house without getting caught. However I get there, I get there, and I’ve rented a car, and brought one of those 2.5 gallon red plastic gas cans like the one at home that has MOWER written on it in permanent black marker. That’s me, Mr. Mower. I’ve filled it to the brim, the gas can, and you can smell where it spilled in the back floorboard, hear it slosh at the J-Ville exit where I hang a louie toward Foxgrove Country Club where Daddy’s house is built off the front nine, where leaning against the garage is the hot tub Mama drowned in, his trophy.

It’s always late afternoon, when I break in, the refrigerator contents showing he hadn’t changed a bit, same six-month old Styrofoam tray of brown hamburger meat, fetid pasta, light beer, some bacon and a slice of country club cake in plastic from Foxgrove just down the way.

That’s not fair–Mama’s the one who let the hamburger go bad.

I smell him.

The musk from when him and Mama shared the same closet, his shirts and underwear down by the shoes, the green road suitcase from whence Mama once pulled a condom and baked into the Sunday meatloaf, made sure he got the right piece. I’d watched him put it into his mouth and make the discovery, look at Mama across the table, blue eyes hard as pond ice.

He hadn’t come from country club people. His daddy drove for ETW and C, and was a local driver who masked the whiskey on his breath with Certs, which he always kept in the front pocket of the Pendleton shirt he wore in winter, a white t-shirt in summer. I’d stayed with him and Evelyn the August Mama had Jimmy, and I’d missed her, silly six-year-old me, and had picked a bouquet of red tulips from his front yard for her, and he’d spanked my ass with a belt—for picking flowers.

Evelyn, his mother, she was a crazy drunk who’d offer you a pickle to kiss her, then she’d go in the bedroom and try to kill herself, so Daddy’s brother Chester’d have to drive her to the ER, and they’d sew her up or pump her stomach and she’d be home again, there on Thayer, across the street from a paraplegic who’d lay in the deep grass of his front yard, face up, so you could see his teeth. Daddy and Uncle Chester’d played baseball with his son, they’d talk to him and he’d recognize their voices, call each by name, tell a dirty joke.

Some Black Panthers had moved in up the street so Grandfather kept a single barrel shotgun leaned in every corner. I stayed there some nights—where they mixed and drank their whiskey I have no idea, I never witnessed a single bottle, not ever, but it was always on their breath, always.

They never got fall-down drunk, either, nor passed out or blackout, even. I could just always sense a difference, a glint in their eyes, hot brown like Chester, who’d go on to pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals–go ahead, run his name–my daughter and I have, his ERA and win/loss record. Daddy’d played with Brooks Robinson, got his autograph for me at the Central High 40th where he and Mama’d attended a get-together of the Tigers and Doughboys,. Dear Joe, it says, could your old man ever throw the ball. And I guess he could, all those afternoon pitchout sessions on the new cut grass that stained the white cleats he’d bought me for Pony League, American Legion, rock and fire, he’d say. Rock and fire.


I’ve never actually seen the house I’ve come to burn down. So I haven’t really processed key points like where to park or registered who’s home and might eyewitness me amongst these neighbors, country club snoots who lay out at the pool then practice their pitching wedges on the practice green, their Ping putters in one gloved hand, the wedge in the other. And I’m the sort of person that makes people suspicious, always have been. Cop sees me driving down the road, on come the lights. And even once, when I’d showed up at the Utah Supreme Court because the Chief Justice, Don Dierling, who was a friend of mine, who was giving me the pick of his personal library before retiring, his wife Nina was late to meet me at the courthouse door and I’d stood inside the rotunda and the security guard got a look at me, and stood their glaring for a siloed minute until I couldn’t take it any more and walked outside. There came NiNi walking up, so I told her–about the security guard who’d glared, how I’d never been one time to court for a good reason. “You’re such a strange man, Joe,” she’d said, and I guess it was true–regular folk could smell it on my breath, the strangeness.

It was, of course, imperative that O.W. not see me. He was a smart motherfucker and without surprise on my side, I didn’t stand a chance. I was toast if he saw me first, and he’d know exactly why I’d come, had been waiting for a long time for me to so, probably wondering where the hell I was, what was taking me so long–didn’t I have a hair? Once I had some girls over and yes we had some liquor–small potatoes, peppermint schnapps, maybe, or Wellers, And I’d called FrostLand to ask for his ETA, when would he be home? And he’d called the house straight away from the mobile in his long white International, said, “You’re not having a party in my house. Send the floozies home. And you’d best take your booze back where you got it from.” Just like that. I didn’t say a word, sent the girls home, poured out the schnapps or Wellers or whatever I had. He could read me, O.W., see through the layers of my heart.

Maybe we had that in common–seeing though each other's shit.


Trace’s wedding reception was at Foxgrove, about close as Mama ever got to her Dream Wedding, a catered white cake affair after the June ceremony at First Baptist, where those tiny dents up in front of the pulpit marked exactly where Jimmy’s casket had sat when I bent over him that linked my heart and blood and love, even, directly to O.W., how he’d bound us together till flying through the windshield at eighty miles an hour on Highway 319 outside Vilonia, the shortcut I’d taught him back from UCA where I’d been first of us to dare college, and then he was gone and O.W. wept the way he had when his daddy died, and it felt like a heartbreak there is no healing from, one of those moments in life that seals your direction for good and ever. Yes, that was it, Mama’s lupus erupting full throttle, and it was only the Clinton Campaign in ‘92 and the man whose face was so like Jimmy’s that stopped her fall, so she’d let her guard down and O.W. had sleuthed it out, so her finalé was set. She drowned of a heart attack he’d said in the midnight call, so we never said goodbye, me and Mama, and for a long time she tried to contact me from the grave until I told her to shut the hell up and die, and she did, and I have not heard her voice in a long time.


The hot tub leans on its side beside the garage in the back yard, just like I’d dreamed it a half-dozen times. Of all goddamn places, they’d had it installed in Jimmy’s bedroom some years after the car wreck, the clothes hanging in the closet just like he’d left them that day before Mother’s Day when he died. O.W.’d insisted Trace have it hauled to J’Ville when she disinstalled the monstrosity, and there it sits, the abject tool of my mother’s death. Risking all, I pee on it for long as I can, crouched in shadow behind its back, the heat from it enough to melt my hand. Back home, my wife and daughter live their lives, the first of May already, a big ass snow storm dumping flakes big as hands, a foot of fresh powder gleaming up on Gobbler’s Knob.

No such luck here. Arkansas, May, the heat factor brutal already, ninety-five with eighty percent humidity, you forget that in Utah, the heat and the ticks and the fleas. Daddy’s air conditioner kicks on, the fan whirring. The pad where he parks his golf cart has oil leaked on it, little circles on top of circles. Odd, in my dream he’s electric. The back door is unlocked, I walk right in.

There’s a recliner as ever, a brick fireplace and on the mantel the photograph they’d had made without me–the full smug look on his face, his family at last, Trace, Mama, O.W. and blue-eyed Jimmy, bad, bad luck if you think about it, letting that picture get taken. And what a twist, here in J’Ville, where Mama’d met my blood father at the Base, his tight-fitting uniform and white teeth–the very town where I’m standing, the family photograph where I’m missing.

Upstairs in his bedroom, the master bath with its scales and poofy toilet cover, Trace’s touch, before she moved out with her boy, Dougie, the two of them across town in a trailer, she’d hit me up over the phone for first and last month’s rent. “Mama’d want me to help you,” I’d said. “Please don’t cry, please.”


The way he’d worked it, Daddy, was to mortgage his and Mama’s house for all it was worth–it’d paid off when she died, an add-on they’d signed for when they made the down payment–then put the whole load on the 25 Club Road property he’d once tried to talk her into buying before she cut him off her bank account. Our house, Trace signed papers for the full amount, and when she got behind they took it back, she lost the house, and had to move in with O.W., just across from Foxgrove, where her now deceased husband and her had cut the wedding cake with a silver knife that shone up front on the cover of her wedding album she’s left on the mattress of the bed that must have been hers before he kicked her out, O.W. So the house is gone with Mama’s ghost in her dead son’s bedroom, a whole lot of skeletons in that closet.

A green chair I recognized sat in the corner of the dark room, an air vent purring in the floor beneath it, the light mute through the draped window–it had hurt her eyes, there at the end, light, Mama. I got down on my knees and crawled behind it, the green chair from home, with nickels and pennies missing from my pockets, Jimmy’s under the cushion, bits of dropped food, stray pills. In the house I’ve never seen but know–what kind of arsonist, me?


Uncle Chester used to call me up drunk and tell me how it happened. I’d be half buzzed myself, so we were on the same channel, me and Chester. I’d take the call in my home office, built on the back of the house‘s back bedroom, Lara’s, and if it was summer, I’d ease open the back door and sit on the steps so the night air would ooze in, listen to him slur how it hadn’t been a suicide, it hadn’t been like it was for his mother. The most ferocious fight Id ever witnessed between two men had happened in our driveway when Chester’d called his mother a suicidal bitch and Daddy’d hit him in the face, and then all hell broke lose, both of them heavyweights, over six feet, two forty or so, they beat the living shit out of each other when I was ten or so, so Mama’d had to call the police. She took me inside, but I could hear it through the window, the unearthly sound of fists on flesh, I’d never dreamed one man could hit another so hard, both of them bloody-faced, their fists dripping, the sound of, through the glass, bap, bap, bap, a sick sound that turned my stomach and never completely let me be again.

He’d helped, Uncle Chester. Taken over O.W.’s rig in Rocky Mount, made the delivery, played his brother to the T. Mama’d never seen it coming, or had she? He’d threatened it plenty. Trace had found her a full day later. Back to his truck, he’d called to say she wasn’t answering the phone, that he was worried, how he’d so feared the day she didn’t answer his call. I’d been down in Florida that day, June 14, and the call’d come after midnight–Mama’d drowned of a heart attack–how on earth to know that before the autopsy? We’d stolen our rental, made the two day drive to the funeral where he wore the fierce blue suit Mama’d bought him. The gravedigger’d called asking where the plot should be dug–in the goddamn ground, he’d answered. I’d said that if the gravedigger was a smart man, he wouldn’t be a gravedigger, and he’d looked me straight in the face, then turned to Chester: dumb truck driver, he’d said, and smiled just a little, which seemed strange to the lost and forsaken soul I was at that moment, me.

“That took a brave man,” Chester’d told me the last time we talked. He’d be dead himself inside six months, “Standing up there speaking for your mother. I could never do it.”

He was sorry about the whole thing, Chester. He wouldn’t do it again for anything. Then he died and daddy paid the same funeral home director who’d done Mama to do him. “Oh my,” she’d said the moment we met. “You have her skin.”

All week in Florida, I’d burned at the beach.

“I’ve got some cream that will help that.”


Hidden behind the green chair from our old living room, the whir of his golf cart, the opening of the back door grounded me in the here and now, cold vent air on the small of my back, dark enough now for the nightlights to be on outside. He pissed, long and hard in the first floor toilet. All those years he’d take me in with him to roadside honkytonks, where they’d set me out a Coke in a little icy bottle, a pickled egg or a Slim Jim, and the sawdust from the shuffleboard table shone in the smokey air, everything neon and aglow. Music would be playing, honkytonk blues bled into swing. I’d follow him to the john that reeked of PineSol and piss, the sugar-sweet aroma of hangover shit. Everybody, just about, loved or feared him. Is there any difference between the two?

Of course my heart beat hard–I’d always feared him, was only ever comfortable when he was on the road and Mama’d make spaghetti and garlic bread, then he’d walk in and she’d make him a platter and the diesel’d idle all night out on the drive.

The stairs gave beneath his weight, groaned and creaked. He’ll know–I know he’ll know–blood of Row Magnon in his veins, B-negative, rarest in Arkansas, used in ER transfusions for any type, remnant DNA from the ancient meat-eating hunter. He’d know and he’d kill me, I’ve come here to die, that’s what I thought, and he leaned his head through the doorjamb, sniffed, a little phlegm in his sinuses. He could be the stillest man, a snake gazing slit-eyed before the strike. The fear in my throat now, an inch from announcing myself: I’m here to burn your house down, O.W. Go ahead and kill me. Fucker. Do it.

Then he was gone, and after a while my heart settled some. In my father’s house are many reminders of who I am, who I’m not. How I got that way. How much time do I need to consider?

From the door opening into the master bedroom, it is five steps, fifteen feet, to the bed where he lay on his back, face up. I could hear his breath, how it rattled some in his chest. Until he got Jesus, he’d been a smoker, Pall Mall, the red package, he’d smoked in bed, maybe that’s how the first house went, him in bed smoking, thick-headed with beer, falling asleep, the butt on the floor, a tissue ignited, then the bed sheets, the whole two-story wood frame gone in an hour, he’d made it out in his underwear, found a hideout key to the Pontiac and driven to Uncle Earl’s down the road. We’d been in California then, and when we got back him and Mama sifted the ashes with window screens, looking for something to tether them to the lives they’d just lost.

He’d turn eighty on Friday, O.W. His birthday, Mother’s Day, and Jimmy’s death day all rolled up into a trifecta from hell. In a sweat lodge time and space disappear. Prisoners duck out of jail time when they enter inipi, a portal to the quiet place within. I found out after Mama died when I was sick and lost, and a man I’d only known peripherally had poured a healing lodge for me, channeled Mama’s last moments, her voice, even, it came out of his mouth. He’d beat me with eagle’s wings, spat in my face, sang the Lakota words to lay the dead to rest, to make them leave you be, a long way, this journey home.

“What did she love?” the medicine man asked.

“Ice water,” I said, “Mama loved ice water.”

A heavy sleeper, O.W. doesn’t budge when I tie his feet to the posts of the very bed where Mama was conceived, that distant time in Danville before the calamities began, not so far from where they’d followed the Trail of Tears down from Henry County, Tennessee, and homesteaded the Solgahatchia bottoms where Mama lay now behind the iron gate that squalls when opened in a field of brown-eyed Susan.

He does not complain when I tie his hands nor insert the washcloth in his mouth, the silver slice of duct tape across his shaven face, one blue eye opening, and then the other, so he knows, we both know.


There was a time after Jimmy died, when O.W. and I were close–you could say we loved one another–and, like everything else about my people, such manifested itself in ways that bend belief. We were living in Greensboro then and sometimes O.W.’d roll through in the middle of the night on his way to the drop in Rocky Mount, call us from the truck stop out off the freeway, so we’d drive out to meet him, have a cup of coffee, a piece of coconut creme pie the Flying J was known for. And this one time, we’d talked about Mama, how hard it had been for her–Jimmy’s car wreck and the funeral, the endless string of holidays to remind her of it all over again. Just then, that time daddy rolled in around midnight and rang us on the phone, she was off in Jamaica having the affair that would get her killed, and I believe Daddy’d figured it out, and that he was wondering if I knew, if he could learn anything from me. Hurricane Hugo would plow through that September, barrel right through the truck stop and blow it down. For a while the highway’d close and O.W.’d sleep on our couch and we’d generally get sick of each other for good and ever, but that hadn’t happened yet.

We loved each other.

I was his only son.

And of course I had no idea about what was going on with Mama–how could I? And by the time we’d finished with pie he must have been satisfied to know that. He picked up the check, said to follow him to the truck, he wanted to show us something.

Renee had work the next morning–her school, Southeast Guilford, had just started and there was a new principal, she had to toe the line.

We were tired. It was past bedtime. We followed him, zigzagging rigs idling in the ten-acre parking lot to his white International, with its hundred-fifty-foot refrigerated trailer.

He unlocked the padlock, unbarred the doors, climbed up into the trailer of turkey carcasses framed in harsh light. What’s he doing? Renee asked. I didn’t know. Then he spun on a bootheel, under the garish light of the frozen room, a twenty-five pound slaughter turkey hanging from either hand, that wry smile I’d come to know from the moments when you could tell he was proud of himself.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, stepped out and gave each of us a dripping bird. “Early.”

Renee said, “He can’t do that.”

“Oh yes he can” I said.


He nodded--held my eyes with his own. We were on the same page, me and O.W. Those godawful brawls when Uncle Chester called Evelyn a suicidal bitch, when he’d do all in his power to kill his brother, this is what that was about, standing up for your mother. What was wrong with me? his eyes asked. What had taken me so long? Get with it, kiddo. Get her done.

In my rearview, the roof bursts into flame, engulfing the trees and the garage and the goddamned hot tub that leans beside it. The great conflagration roars through the country club and the dipshit driving range, takes aim on the Air Force Base with its endless barrage of cargo planes that rattled our light fixtures during Sunday prayers. Behind me back there the whole goddamn lot of it goes up, the highest flames up to Solgahatchia by now, a column of smoke and flames you could see from the moon. They consume the sorry gate’s final squall, and it is done.

But, of course, it can’t end that way, the movie my mind makes. Hadn’t Trace called to say that Daddy’d lost the house, that he was into the final stages of dementia and repeated the same phrase over and over, she didn’t know why? It was making her crazy. If I wanted to ever see him alive again, now was the time.

Caught in the eye of the fire of my making, I cried out help me, Jesus, help me, Renee shaking me to wake, it’s okay, everything was okay, wake up now.

“What does he say?” I asked her before we hung up that very last time, “that makes you crazy?”

“Rock and fire,” she said. “I have no clue.”

From that place where the paraplegic man lay on his back in deep grass, his teeth shining, recognizing our voices from afar, where were Black Panthers and suicides and the older you get, the smarter I’ll be. He would have me love him even now?

Rock and fire, O.W.? Rock and fire?

photo by Austen Diamond

Michael Gills is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel WEST (Raw Dog Screaming Press,March 2019) and the forthcoming visionary memoir, FINISTERRE.His short story collection The House Across From The Deaf School (Texas Review Press, 2016) was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction and won the 15 Bytes Utah Book Prize. Other work has won the Southern Humanities Review’s Theodore Hoefner Prize forFiction, the Southern Review’s Best Debut of the Year, recognition in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, inclusion in New Stories From The South: The Year’s Best, and numerous Utah Arts Book Prizes. His undergraduate novel writing workshop has been featured in USA Today, and several of his students have gone on to publish books of their own. Gills teaches for the Honors College at the University of Utah, where he lives in the foothills with his wife, Jill.

Nick Break, fiction by M. L. Joy

Larry counted out change from his Crown Royal bag and slid each coin across the sticky bar toward the bartender, Paige.

She read his dispirited expression. “It’s okay Larry. I don’t mind the change.”

He minded.

She brought him a draft in a plastic cup, just as a young girl plunked an empty pitcher on the bar next to him. “Can I have another pitcher, please?” She didn’t look old enough to drink. Pink plastic barrettes held long blond hair out of her face. She smelled of bubblegum and baby powder.

Paige swept up the pitcher and left to refill it.

The girl tilted her head sideways and looked at Larry. “Hi.” Her smile was so broad it should have hurt her face. Her pupils looked like brown M&Ms.

Larry nodded politely, said hey, and then went back to watching the news on the silent TV with text along the bottom he couldn’t keep up with.

She extended her hand. “I’m Chelsie.” A perky cheerleader introducing herself.

All the other bar stools were empty. Why plant herself next to a guy old enough to be her father? Grandfather even.

“Good for you,” Larry said, not looking at her. Why encourage her?

Before he had to endure any more chirping from Chelsie or pay the price for being rude, Paige was back with a full pitcher. The girl left with her beer and Larry turned to watch her skip, literally, back to her friends who were playing pool.

There was a time when Delaney’s was for an older crowd. Men mostly, who sat at the bar watching sports on TV and minding their own business. Back when a beer came in a real glass. Not anymore. Every time he came in Larry wondered why he didn’t find somewhere else to go. Change was hard.

“What the hell was that about?” Larry asked.

“She’s tripping on something,” Paige said, smirking.

Drugs made sense. “Where do they get the money for that shit?”

“They all have jobs, but they also live with mom and dad.”

Larry left home after high school. For better or worse, that’s what his generation did. Some went to college. He went into the service. That’s where he learned to weld and fix heavy equipment, which kept him in work until a couple of months ago. Construction was down.

“Their parents spoil them if you ask me,” Larry said.

Paige crossed her arms over her breasts. “I live with my mom, Larry.”

“Your mom needs you at home. Do you do drugs?”

She shook her head.

“No. I don’t think you’d disrespect your mom like that.”

Paige smiled and patted Larry’s arm. “I’ll get you another beer, Larry.”

Larry looked down at the inch of beer left in his cup. “I’m okay,” he said. He only had change for a couple more and didn’t want to go through it too quickly.

“I’ve got it, Larry.”

He didn’t like that either. His lack of cash was temporary. Tomorrow he would weld some Dumpsters over at the landfill and make enough for his weekly rent with some left over. After that, he’d make the rounds to the construction guys and heavy equipment rental places he’d done work for before. It would work out. He’d go look for work in Miami or as far north as Tampa if he had to. He’d be okay.

A chorus of “Mary” erupted behind Larry. He turned and watched a fireplug of a woman strut the length of the bar waving as if she were in a parade. Some might call her short, white-blonde hair butch, but even an old-timer like Larry knew a haircut was no way to judge a person these days.

She sat at the bar a respectable distance from him.

“What’s going on, Paige?” Mary already had her chainsaw wallet open, flipping through the bills.

“You tell me,” Paige said.

Paige’s frosty tone was usually reserved for guys she knew were going to be trouble.

“How about a whiskey sour?” Mary said.

Paige made the drink with little enthusiasm or comment, then placed it in front of Mary.

Mary slid a bill across the bar. “Keep the change.” She hopped off her stool and went over to the kids playing pool. They exchanged more greetings and hugs.

“You want to know where they get their drugs,” Paige said, leaning on the bar, “there you go.”

Larry grunted. Used to be drug dealers came in two versions: the dressed to impress dude who was doing you a favor, and the back-alley heroin-chic guy with one foot in the grave. Mary looked normal.

“I’m not a fan, but there isn’t much I can do about it,” Paige said.

“Call the cops,” Larry suggested.

“She and my boss are buddy-buddy. I think he trades her his extra pain pills for Viagra.”

Larry had OxyCodone from when he injured his back. He wondered what they would be worth. He took a swig of his beer.

“Larry?” Paige studied him. “Are you okay?”

Of course, he wasn’t okay. He was sick of living on the edge of being homeless day-in and day-out. When he was twenty, he could pretend it was an adventure, but now he was over fifty it was miserable.

“I’m fine. I didn’t thank you for the beer. Sorry,” Larry said.

“No big deal,” Paige said, but there was doubt in her voice. She didn’t believe he was fine, but that was okay with him.

Paige went to check on another customer while Larry snuck a look at the group by the pool table. The kids were not good pool players and seemed to be having too much fun. Mary was on her phone. She headed toward the bathrooms with her palm over her ear. Larry followed her.

Mary was still on the phone when Larry reached the bathrooms. He shuffled a little in hopes she’d end her call so he could talk to her.

She smiled and greeted him with a nod as he approached. Larry mustered a smile. Then she turned her back to him. He didn’t want to look like a creep and didn’t want Paige to see him waiting, so he veered into the men’s room.

He stood at the urinal and undid his belt. He didn’t have to go, but if he stood there long enough, he might. After a few minutes, he felt stupid. The entire idea was stupid. He tightened his belt, flushed and turned to the sink. The water was always cold. He looked past the band stickers covering the mirror. He needed a shave. His crewcut and the gray stubble on his sun-weathered face were almost the same length. He looked run down. Not a surprise. He felt rundown. He dried his hands and opened the bathroom door. Paige hovered outside.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“I need someone to watch the bar while I pee,” she said.

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Don’t go behind the bar.” She punched open the ladies’ room door behind her and disappeared inside.

“No problem.”

Larry checked the rest of the place for Mary, maybe she was still in the bathroom. He could ask the overly friendly girl, but he couldn’t remember her name, and he wasn’t sure he had the energy to deal with her enthusiasm. Eventually, he just sat in front of his beer and decided her disappearance was a sign he shouldn’t be dealing with her.

Paige came back, and they watched the silent TV while he finished his last beer. He left her five dimes and gave her a wave as he pushed away from the bar and headed to his truck. The parking lot was dark, and the air was still warm and sticky. Winter temperatures had not hit South Florida yet, but the heat would break any day. As he pulled his keys out of his pocket, he noticed the glow of a cigarette near his truck. He didn’t have anything worth stealing, but a frustrated thief could be more dangerous than a happy one.

Mary stepped out from the darkness, exhaling white smoke. “You wanted to talk to me?”

Larry’s answer stuck in his throat. Did he still want to talk to her? Was this a path he wanted to take? He should wait. He had a job welding Dumpsters, and that would hold him over. He felt the weight of his Crown Royal bag, or more specifically, the lack of weight.

“I was just wondering. . .” he said.

“About what?” She flicked her cigarette ten feet across the parking lot. The lit end wobbled through the air like a firecracker.

Larry’s chest ached. He gripped his keys in his fist. “Oxy,” was all he could manage.

“You want some?”

“I have some.”

Mary stepped closer. He could smell the cigarette on her. “How many?”

“Fifty. Maybe more.”

She whistled.

“I didn’t like them.” He didn’t know why that mattered. He swallowed. His mouth was so dry.

“You a cop?” She squinted up at his face.

“No.” Larry gave her a nervous smile.

“What you’re proposing is illegal. You know that?”

Larry nodded. He knew very well the trouble he was getting into.

“Times are tough. I know. You just need the cash.” She looked him over. “Got’em with you?”

Larry shook his head. Why would he carry medicine around he didn’t take?

“Okay. Can you meet me here tomorrow night?” Mary pulled a pack of cigarettes from a pocket in her cargo shorts.

Larry thought of Paige. “Not here.”

“No problem.” She lit a cigarette. “Ever go to The Beach House?”

Larry knew it. Tiki-themed with live reggae music. Touristy. He would never go there. “Sounds good.”

“Ten o’clock. Around the back. Okay?” She started to walk past him toward the bar.

“How much?” Larry asked.

“A couple bucks a pill.” She waited as if he might want to negotiate. What did he know about what the price should be? That was a hundred dollars he could use. “See you tomorrow night,” he said.

***

The Beach House, as its name suggested, was down on the beach, and it was a longer drive than Larry remembered. The small parking lot was filled with sedans, rental cars based on the barcode stickers in the side windows, and a few pickups and Jeeps with big tires, obviously locals. Most of the bar traffic came from the hotels within walking distance. He parked at a bank a block away and walked back. It was almost 10 p.m. according to the clock on the bank sign, so he didn’t have time for a beer, even if he could afford one here. Reggae music thrummed from inside and gained volume every time the door opened. He felt for the bottle of Oxy in his pants pocket, then stepped to the side of The Beach House, and trudged in sand to get to the back.

Like most buildings built near the beach, The Beach House stood on eight-foot stilts. The front used lattice to hide the ugly space under the bar, but the back had no such façade. The telephone-pole-sized beams, with their black pitch and graffiti scars, stood sentinel over the trash and recycling bins. Beyond that rolled a dune of tall seagrass and the dark expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. Mary wasn’t there yet. He still had time to get back in his truck and leave. Forget the whole deal. With his luck, he would run out of fuel on the way home. He waited. A breeze crept lazily from the ocean. It did nothing to cool the air, but it made it smell more of sea salt than beer-bottle swill.

Mary came from the opposite side of the building, the tip of her cigarette visible before she was. She lifted a hand to acknowledge him. Larry nodded before realizing she probably couldn’t see him in the dark.

“Hey, Bud. You by yourself?” Mary asked.

“Just me.” As if Larry had backup.

“Did you bring me anything?” She dropped her cigarette in the sand, stepped on it and moved into the light.

Larry pulled out the amber-colored pill bottle. “Fifty-six,” he said.

“That’s fine.” She pulled a stack of folded bills from her pocket. Larry could not see the exact bills in the dark, but they couldn’t have been organized by denomination. She shuffled through the wad like a bad typist.

“What have we got here?” The voice made them both freeze. A bald man’s face appeared in the dark as he lit a cigarette.

Larry lowered his hand to hide the pill bottle. He didn’t know why he just had a feeling. The one you got when things get more complicated and not in a good way.

“Hey, Boss,” Mary said. She stuffed her cash back into her pocket and turned to face him.

“I was in the neighborhood.” The closer the man got, the bigger he became. He wore a biker vest, with a white tank top underneath and jeans.

“I was just making a deal,” Mary said.

In most cases coming face to face with the Boss made you stand a little straighter, but Mary’s reaction went beyond that. Her voice shook, and she rocked on the balls of her feet as if she were ready to run.

“Is that what you were doing?” As the man got closer, Larry could see the tattoos covering his arms.

“What else would I be doing? He’s too old for me to be doing anything else,” Mary said laughing unconvincingly.

This was none of Larry’s business. He should leave this for them to work out, but he hesitated. Was he now responsible for her just because he had a few pills to sell? What could he do to this guy, besides being a witness or a victim?

“I saw the pill bottle, Mary.” He studied Larry as he said this. Larry looked past him, trying to remember if there were something nearby he could use as a weapon.

“It was nothing, Darrell. It’s just a few pills he wants to get rid of.” Mary’s voice was softer. Purring. Pleading.

“I thought we agreed all buys went through me.”

Larry took a step back.

Darrell’s fist came from nowhere. Larry’s head twisted to the right from the impact, and he dropped to one knee. It didn’t hurt as much as he expected, but it took him a minute to get his eyes to line up again.

“Where are you going, old man?” Darrell asked.

“What the fuck, Darrell?” Mary stepped forward, but Darrell gave her a shove and knocked her to the ground.

Larry wanted to tell him to leave her alone, but before he could say anything a biker boot struck him in the ribs and sand sprayed his face.

“Give me the pills,” Darrell said.

Larry looked down at the pill bottle. They represented a month of groceries to him. It was nothing to this ass-hole. Why fuck with him over this? Larry reached for the pull bottle. He could toss it and run. Darrell had made his point. He would let Larry go. Larry wasn’t sure what it was, him getting dumped at work or his constant struggle to survive since, but he grabbed a fist full of sand instead. As he got to his feet, he threw it and charged the larger man. He gripped Darrell’s leather vest while the man’s hands were still protecting his face and drove him backward until his back slammed into a stilt. Darrell’s breath came out in a grunt.

Darrell grabbed the neck of a clear liquor bottle from an overflowing bin of recycling and swung it. It struck the side of Larry’s head. The thunk was hollow and out of tune. Larry dropped to one knee, the left side of his face on fire with pain. Darrell’s arm swung down for another blow. Larry tried to lift his arm up to block it, but a shooting pain in his chest made him pull it back down. Then everything went black.
***

Larry reached up to weld a stubborn rear door hinge on a 40-yard roll-off. The shooting pain down his side reminded him of the events the night before. He had woken under The Beach House, music still thumping above him, no sign of Darrell or Mary. He then skulked back to his truck and had driven home thankful he was alive. This was a lesson to him not to get involved in crap like that. But his lapse in judgment wasn’t what gnawed at him. Why did Darrell need to rough him up? For what? Make an example of him? Who was Larry going to tell? He couldn’t go to the police because he would incriminate himself. Darrell had to know that. Larry had gone over it all day. The only conclusion he could come up with was Darrell did it because he could. Thinking about it distracted Larry from the pain, but every time he worked through the scenario it made him angrier. When he finished his welding, he collected his money and headed to Delaney’s.

He sat outside the bar for a long time, drinking beer he bought at the Circle-K by his apartment and eating a McDonald’s burger a pinched piece at a time. His jaw hurt like hell. He wanted to cross paths with Mary and find out what he could about her boss Darrell, but she never showed. Around ten, a young kid shuffled up to the front of the bar and waited. His pants hung off his ass, wallet chain down to his knee, his arms as thin and pail as the straps of his wife-beater. A guy in a landscaping shirt and pants came out of the bar to meet him. They did an exchange, cash for a plastic baggie. They didn’t even pretend to hide the drug exchange. Was this dealer Mary’s replacement? Had Darrell taken her off the street because of Larry? Or had he taken her out permanently? Suddenly the burger wasn’t sitting well in Larry’s stomach, and his beer had gone warm. He needed to take a piss.

Larry pulled at the latch on his door just as a black Escalade drove up in front of the young drug dealer. He yanked the door shut, luckily his dome light hadn’t worked in years, and waited to see who the driver was. The dealer rounded the front of the SUV, holding his pants up by the crotch. The tinted window of the Escalade slid down as he approached. A tattooed arm reached out and grabbed the back of the kid's neck in greeting. The knuckles had fresh cuts on them. Larry’s intestines started to wriggle. It was Darrell.

Larry inhaled and forced himself to exhale slowly. This was what he had wanted, to find Darrell? What now? He felt like he was going to shit his pants. Which made him want to stick with it even more. He could follow Darrell, but then what? It wouldn’t accomplish anything if he got his ass beat again.

Darrell drove off, leaving the kid standing in the middle of the parking lot. Larry turned the key in the ignition, but the old truck did nothing but complain. He turned and watched Darrell stop at the exit, then turned the key again. He stomped on the accelerator, swearing under his breath. The truck thought about denying him again, but then it came to life. Larry checked if Darrell’s drug dealer had noticed the roar, found him talking to a customer, and pulled out to go the opposite direction. He didn’t want the kid to get suspicious or too good a look at him. He got onto the main drag using another exit and end up behind Darrell’s SUV, with two cars between them. Larry let out a sigh of relief. He could do this.

Darrell’s process was efficient and eventually predictable. He would pull into the parking lot of a bar, one of his people would come to his driver’s side window, they would exchange pleasantries and sometimes a knapsack or envelope. Luckily most of the parking lots were full and Larry pulling in wasn’t out of place. A couple of times Larry drove past and waited on a side street a block or two away to keep from being too obvious.

Around two in the morning Darrell drove inland on a county road for thirty minutes, away from the coastal bars and plazas. It seemed he was done with his collections. Larry’s gas gauge needle rode on empty, and he spent half the time second-guessing if he should give up and stop at a gas station. He hadn’t prepared to follow the guy all over hells creation. Finally, he decided to look for a road or driveway to turn around in. He would have to try again another night. Then Darrell’s brake lights came on.

Larry pulled his foot off the gas. His stomach pressed on his bladder. Did he notice someone was following him? Did he live out here?

Darrell took a right off the main road, and his Escalade disappeared behind some trees lining the road. Larry coasted slowly past the spot. One hundred feet off the road was the entrance to a Zip Storage. The automated gate was already opening. Larry watched as Darrell drove through the gate, turned left down a row of gray corrugated storage units, and stopped at the end of a row. Larry turned off his lights and coasted to a stop. Darrell got out of his SUV, unlocked the orange garage door, and rolled it up. He disappeared into the darkness of the unit for a moment, then headlights came on, and a silver luxury 4-door sedan pulled out and past the SUV.

When Darrell went back to the SUV. Larry pondered why Darrell had changed into a suit and tie as he watched him back the big black vehicle into the storage unit, then shut and relock the door. When Darrell reentered the sedan and drove toward the facility exit, Larry decided this was as far as he wanted to follow the drug dealer. Larry pulled back onto the road, moving away from the storage facility entrance, watching his rear-view. In a short time, Darrell sped away in the opposite direction. Larry kept his headlights off. There was enough moonlight he had no trouble seeing the road. Once Darrell’s tail lights were gone, Larry executed a 5-point turn in the middle of the narrow road and headed back toward the Zip Storage.

He should call the cops and have them raid Darrell’s storage unit. Could they get permission to do a raid on his word alone? He didn’t think so. Besides, he’d have to tell them why he was following Darrell in the first place and that wouldn’t make him look good. He supposed the best he could do was make some trouble for Darrell himself.

Just before Larry reached the Zip Storage entrance, he found an access road that ran along the back fence of the facility and backed into it. He wasn’t sure what he was about to do, but it was probably better if his license plate wasn’t facing the road. He stepped out of his truck into the muggy night air, grabbed his portable tanks and tool belt out of the bed and slung them over his shoulder. The aluminum tube gate blocking the access road was padlocked, but like most gates out in the county, it was meant to keep vehicles out not people. The fence post by the gate was so loose he barely had to move it to squeeze it and the fence.

The grounds of the storage facility were brightly lit, but the lighting didn’t spill past the security fence. It looked like a prison yard. The house where the caretaker lived was at the other end by the gate. Larry approached the chain-link fence behind Darrell’s unit. If there were cameras, he didn’t see any. There was a small strip of pavement between the eight-foot fence and back of the storage building. Larry used his bolt cutters to cut an opening in the chain-link and stepped through. He dropped his gear at the base of the wall of the storage building and knocked lightly on the corrugated siding. What a beautiful sound. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this excited. He slid on his gloves and welder’s goggles, turned the knobs on his acetylene, and lit the end with his striker. Flame shot from the end as the acetylene ignited. He squeezed the blast trigger and adjusted the oxygen until he had a perfect blue feather.

The torch cut through the metal siding like a snake through water and about as straight, but Larry wasn’t looking to make it pretty. He made a small oblong notch the size of a mail slot, extinguished his torch, and lit the inside of the garage with his flashlight. Nothing was in the way, so he relit his torch and started cutting a larger opening, using the slot as a handhold. While he was cutting along the bottom, he heard voices. He quickly extinguished the torch and listened. The voices came from the front of the building.

“I’m going to need coffee if we’re going to drive all night,” a male voice said.

Larry heard a garage door roll open. He held his breath. It was the unit next to Darrell’s.

“Freakin whaaa. It’s gonna be worth it,” a second man said. “I talked to Bobster today, and he says the Snook are big and hungry.”

“They better be, or I’ll fall asleep on the boat.”

There was the clank of trailer connecting with a hitch.

“Why did I invite you again?”

“Because your wife wouldn’t let you drive alone.”

“Just hook the chains and connect the taillights.”

Larry waited for the sound of the garage door closing and then listened as a truck drove away. Once he was sure his visitors were gone, he went back to cutting the opening in the back of the storage unit. After the top, bottom, and right side were cut he pushed the metal siding to the left like a screen door. He shined his light inside. The back of Darrell’s black Escalade dominated his view. Along the back wall was a workbench piled with pill bottles of all sizes and colors, cell phones, and computer equipment. Underneath the bench was a generator and several black trash bags stuffed to capacity.

Larry squeezed between the back of the truck and the workbench and shined his light on the pill bottles. If he could find his pills, he could take them and go, but there were so many. He picked up a bottle that looked like his and read the label. It wasn’t his, but more importantly, it was empty. He picked up another and shook it. Empty. Another. Empty. He swore under his breath. He grabbed a flowered backpack just behind them and emptied the contents. Plastic bags of pills fell out along with several rolls of cash. He stuffed the cash into his front pockets. If he couldn’t find his drugs, he would take the money he was owed.

Farther down the workbench was a bill counter like in a bank. He was disappointed to find it empty, but next to it was a black gym bag. It was unzipped. He peeked inside and found it full of banded bills. Orange for ones, red for fives, yellow for tens, and violet for twenties. It was impossible to count how much there was. There were more orange and red bands than yellow and violet, but it would be enough for him to get out of town and start over. He zipped the bag and headed toward the back-exit he had created.

Larry stopped with one foot out of the storage unit. He wanted to do more. He wanted to make Darrell pay more. Then he noticed a half-dozen black garbage bags hanging from the rafters. He tossed the duffle out with his tools and stepped back into the storage unit. He shined his light up. The rectangular shapes pressed into the black plastic were unmissably bundles of money. It was much more than Larry could carry, but he bet Darrell would miss it if it were gone.

He went back to the workbench and shinned his light underneath. Now those black trash bags made more sense. Showing up at a bank with trash bags of cash would certainly draw unwanted attention, so Darrell was forced to hide it in storage. Larry looked around the generator and found a red plastic 5-gallon gas can. It wobbled in his grip when he picked it up. It had plenty of gas for what he wanted to do. His adrenalin ran high again.

He tore open the money bags under the workbench. This money was not banded and he poured gas inside. Then he doused the length of the workbench as he moved over to the hanging money bags. He untied the nylon rope for each and lowered them to the ground. He tore one open. Lots of banded cash just like he thought. He pulled his T-shirt over his mouth. The gas fumes were getting thick. He poured gas in five of the bags, then dragged the sixth out with him. Heck with starting over, this much cash would set him up for life.

Once outside he took a couple of breaths to clear his head. This was going to be a fireball. He couldn’t move all his gear in one trip, so he left the garbage bag of cash and moved everything else past the fence to the edge of the woods. He came back with his striker. The fumes coming out through the back door he had cut were fierce. He covered his mouth and nose with his shirt and moved quickly to the bags next to the SUV and lit the farthest one with his striker. The second and third bag ignited on their own and Larry rushed outside for safety. Black smoke billowed out the rear opening. He reached in over the workbench and squeezed his striker. The gasoline ignited and traveled along the workbench to the bill counter with a satisfying whoosh. The light of the flames reflected off the back of Darrell’s SUV. That’s when Larry noticed the bound hands pressed against the glass of the rear door.

He didn’t hesitate. He ducked in beneath the flames eating away at the workbench. His gloves protected his hand as he reached for the rear door latch on the SUV, but he could feel the hair on his arm curling as it singed. He was thinking “please, don’t be locked”, as he yanked on the door latch. The rear door swung up but hit the edge of the workbench and stopped. A pair of pale hands fell out of the small gap, bound with a black tie-wrap. The left side of his face and ear felt like they might start to bubble at any moment. He dropped onto his belly. From there he could see how little space he really had to squeeze the body through. It made him think of cats and the small spaces they could get through.

He grabbed the hands and pulled. The arms came easy, and Mary’s white-blonde head appeared, but then her shoulders became jammed between the bumper and door molding. He wasn’t sure if she was already dead or just unconscious, but she wasn’t in a position to help him. Wood cracked and popped above him. The bags of money under the workbench ignited, blowing charred paper and plastic in his direction. His eyes burned. He turned his back against the heat and positioned his hands to push and pull at Mary’s torso. He might dislocate something, but at least she’d be alive.

She dropped out of the SUV like a newborn calf. Her hips landing on his chest and her shoulder into his groin. That knocked more than just the wind out of him. The inhale of burning air sent him into a coughing fit. He watched through tear-filled eyes as Mary looked around, realized the situation, and looked back at him, her eyes wide. Larry yanked his strait-blade from his belt and cut the tie-wraps binding her hands and feet. Then he used it to point toward the opening in the back wall. They both crawled to the exit and out into the clean night air.

They both lay on their backs gasping.

“What the fuck, old man?” Were her first words.

He didn’t answer.

Mary watched as flames and smoke poured from the opening Larry had cut in the back wall of the storage unit. “Darrell is going to kill you,” she rasped.

Larry suspected that was true. “We should move back before the SUVs fuel tank blows,” he said.

“Sure,” she agreed.

Larry got up and when he turned Mary was already on the other side of the chain-link fence, and she had his black garbage bag of money. She wasn’t the same woman who strode through Delaney’s. Her confidence replaced by a rabbit-like posture as if she might bolt into the woods at any moment.

“That’s mine, Mary,” Larry said stepping to the opening in the fence.

She took a few steps back. “Darrell’s actually.” She seemed younger somehow.

“You gonna give it back to him? Get back in his good graces?”

She shook her head and gave him a look like that was a stupid idea. “Fuck him.”

“I saved your life,” Larry added inching toward her.

“And I appreciate that.” She moved back maintaining the distance between them. “I really do. Now I’m going to save yours. If Darrell finds out you did this, he’ll hunt you down. This way I can make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“With all that cash I could--"

The force of the blow hit Larry from behind and lifted him off his feet. He reconnected with the ground a few feet away and skidded on his chest another yard. Large sheets of corrugated metal dug into the grass around him, and smoldering pieces of paper drifted in the air like a kaleidoscope of butterflies. He scrambled for cover in the woods. His gear was still there. Even the black canvas bag of money. He searched for Mary’s body in the grassy strip between the woods and the fence. The light and smoke of the flames made it impossible to see more than a few yards. Maybe the blast didn’t hit her as hard. Maybe she got away.

He listened for sirens, they had to be on their way, but the roar and crackle of the fire consuming his surroundings drown out any other sounds. The groundcover to his right caught fire. The nearest tree erupted like a neglected Christmas evergreen. Flames jumped up to block his view of Zip Storage and spread quickly to each side of him. He snatched his tanks and tool belt away from the encroaching flames. In moments he would be surrounded. He looked down. Flames danced on the black canvas bag. The money inside was his chance at a new beginning. He grabbed the handles with his gloved hand and headed toward his truck. The handles snapped after two steps and dropped to the ground. The bag still burned on one end. Larry stomped the flames out, grabbed the body of the bag and started running through the woods as best he could.

He placed the tanks and tools into the bed of the truck. As he tossed the canvas bag onto the front seat, he realized how light it was. In fact, it was empty. The burned end was completely open and had allowed the money to fall out as he ran. He looked back into the woods. The fire had claimed the path he had taken out. There were several of his bills hanging onto the brush next to the gate. As he thought about going back for them, they burst into flames and disappeared. A sign he should be satisfied with getting out alive.

Larry hopped into his truck and dug into his pocket for his keys. His fingers hit the wad of bills he had stuffed there. He had forgotten about it. He pulled out the second money roll from the opposite pocket. Not a windfall, but between the two he could get by. He stuffed the cash into his Crown Royal bag on the passenger’s seat. His truck started on the first try. He pulled onto the pavement, passed the Zip Storage entrance and headed back toward town. He knew there was a gas station at the intersection a mile ahead, along with a sign for Interstate 75. With any luck, he would be halfway to the state line by sunup. He had heard construction was on the rise in Atlanta.

M.L. Joy is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Creative Writing program and a board member of the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, where he is the co-chair of their annual mystery writing conference, SleuthFest (SleuthFest.com). He is a professor of English at Florida SouthWestern State College and equally at home behind a drum kit as he is a teaching podium.