Absent Without Leave by Bradley Mason Hamlin
“You look drunk.”
“You look sober. What’s wrong with you?”
Sam shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe, I’m not afraid.”
Wayne took a drink from a fifth of Old Crow wedged inside a brown paper sack. “Afraid of what?”
Sam had a habit of not blinking, sitting, staring. “You know, the way it is.”
“You wanna be one of those candy-ass philosophers that sit around coming up with vague ideas about God dying or life being a dream or the pleasure of suffering … go to the goddamn coffeehouse and leave me the hell alone.”
“I don’t like coffee, makes me nervous.”
Wayne took another drink from the sack. “But you’re not afraid?”
“No.”
“Happy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Shit,” said Wayne, “you’re sucking me into your cold trip. Do we both a favor and just bump yourself off.”
Sam didn’t blink. “I don’t like pain.”
Wayne smiled. “Serves you right to suffer.”
“Who said that, poet?”
“John Lee Hooker, asshole.”
(more…)
Road Like a River by DB Cox
The bus rolls up an off-ramp somewhere outside Skidmore, Missouri. We’re moving toward the second show of the day. Two is nothing new. It’s 1968, and business is good. Behind me, the trumpet man blows quietly into his horn.
How many miles have we made in the last month? How many hours riding the blue highways of Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri, burying fellow Marines shipped back home, back to the “world,” in flag-draped caskets, courtesy of the KIA Travel Bureau.
Unfortunate sons from Pleasantville, Tennessee—Evening Shade, Arkansas—Skidmore, Missouri. Mostly low-ranking grunts killed by: automatic weapons, artillery, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, mines, booby traps, and “friendly fire”—the military “euphemism of all euphemisms.”
After you’ve been doing military funerals for a while, the dead faces all start to look the same—all the essential information removed: face pale and shiny like a dime store doll, beard beginning to break through the makeup, life sucked out of the eyes, gray-blue fish belly lips. Gazing into a coffin was like looking into a dark crystal ball. You start to realize that you might be catching a glimpse of your future.
Sometimes, I’d think about crazy things: “Roadrunner” cartoons on a Saturday morning—Wile E. Coyote catching hell: electrocution, burnt to ashes, dynamited into tiny pieces that hang in the air for a second, then fall apart like a broken plate. A split-second later, he’s up again and whole and back in the game.
Sometimes, I leaned out so far I almost slipped over the edge. If you’re around them long enough, the dead will start to speak. They’ll say, “Put yourself in our place.”
(more…)
The Neighbor Who Wouldn’t Die by Alan Catlin
“Whoever it was said: ‘You can’t chose your neighbors’, must have known the guy who was living next door to us. Most nights, we were entertained by music cum noise that sounded roughly like squealing pigs at castration time, interspersed with a ritual sharpening of the instruments of torture.
Chesterfield by Kathryn Handley
The sky, a layer of hopeless gray, hangs over Celia’s jammed lips. She yanks up her faded pink panties with her shorn fingernails while her lover lips his Chesterfield. During the deed she slipped off the picnic blanket he kept squirreled in his 1957 Buick Special’s trunk. He had laid it down for them inch by inch. Her eyes focus on the attention his mouth lathers on the cigarette and her thoughts run to the lack of caressing he gave her. The stiff border grass itches her fleshy pale thighs.
Overhead, the seaplane dips, sputtering. Celia waves, smiling weakly, inhaling black smoke.
A moment later she expects to gather courage and state, “It’s over.” Her throat grasps the words, and yet, she hesitates, wincing and witnessing him pummeling her froggy-green VW’s fender with the lit butt-end of the Chesterfield – the same fender her son, Daniel, had scarred with his mini-bike.
“Oh balls,” he yells. “You’re fired.”
LUCY & THE LONGHORN by H.D. Moe
When lucy’s Oldsmobile broke down on the country road, needing assistance, she limboed under an electric wire & after a mile or so, winnowing between bramble bushes, there looked to be an opening into a pasture. Something drew her on. At dusk she seemed to be pushed toward the big cow standing across some barely visible path. His horns seemed to wink to her. She thought it was by the hope of a farm house near, yet what forces were they that like one dumb thickening wind were crazily magnetting her along? Something not known shaped an inhibiting question within becoming lassooy as it grew now around & around & duplicating itself loops coiled her very sinews. In this mummified state of doubt mixed with fear she thought, who could move? Then, just after both their poised figures, eyeing each other, commingled together with this deepening darkness into a giant shadow asterisked with starlight, Lucy heard rhythmic thuds from the ground as the bovine approached. It was totally dark now, she could smell the large animal’s grassy breath puffing on her face. Nether moved. She felt like a heart of hot fudge waiting to melt the ice cream starry mind it was moored in, so she could run, run, run away from this invisible beast. Whereto? As she remembered, before the almost completely moonless black set in, a wild forest surrounded the path. Limbs to poke out her eyes, ravines to fall into. The cow stepped back & pawed the hard dirt with his hoofs. Her pulses penduluming with the thunder in her ears, Lucy mimed her body still as a stone. The longhorn approached up close again. She lowered her breathing to a tiny fog on the mirror of her now precarious mental control. Suddenly, Lucy could no longer hold back the hurricane of fear & doubt whirling within her & she screamed at the bull & the night: “GET OUTA HERE”! The animal turned around, she could feel the brushing wind of his horns & then it trotted back a few yards, stopped & turned around again pawing the ground. Since he couldn’t make her out in the dark enough to charge, Lucy became calmer. She turned & knelt down quietly & lengthening her body along the narrow path began slowly pulling & hunching herself away from the bull with her knees, feet & elbows like a broken snake. At first she heard nothing but the shuffling whispers of these peristaltic movements along the ground. Then, after, it seemed, only two or three minutes of crawling, Lucy’s heart stopped, the giant bull started following her. A minute passed & the bête noire was panting above her heels. Even though she quit moving her body parts altogether, Lucy wondered, will he hear my breathing & my heartbeats now thumping against the ground & trample me with his hoofs like he would a snake, no, quiet yourself down, maybe he was bored with his life as it was lately & curious, maybe he just wanted to play, charge at some target. All this immense nocturnal unwordable event surrounding & within her was way beyond her or anyone’s understanding Lucy felt. She became a radical agnostic that moment. After playing possum for what it seemed to be an eternity, the cow slowly plodded off. I hope he turns into a Ferdinand addicted to wild flowers perfuming the air now somewhere & leaves me alone, Lucy thought, as she, quietly as possible, flipped over on her back & looked up at the stars.
BRANDY AND JOHNNY By Steven Gulvezan
In the rear-view mirror Brandy carefully fixed her face and adjusted her wig. Brandy touched her chin and examined the dark stubble. Christ, she’d forgotten to shave. Electrolysis was such a nuisance. She examined herself critically—from the point of view of a woman eyeing another woman. She was barely acceptable. She felt her breasts. They had matured—somewhat. When would the hormones fully kick in? Still, she felt like a woman, she was a woman, and she had a woman’s needs. There was only one way she knew of to become fulfilled as a woman. She would proceed on her mission, no matter what. Brandy steeled herself, examined the passenger side of her car to make sure everything was in order, and resolutely opened the car door.
The sun was going down and there was the hint of autumn in the air. A panhandler approached as she neared the entrance of the tiny, forlorn old mall. Before he could speak, she pulled a dollar out of her jacket pocket – she always kept several singles available – and handed it to him. “Bless you, sister,” he said. Brandy smiled at him.
(more…)
NICE AND EASY by Rex Sexton
“Easy does it.
I try to sit up but a big hand pushes me down. I’m lying on the asphalt looking at the
moon. A PD flasher circles the alley. My head is throbbing. I feel it oozing blood. A rangy
lawman crouches over me, holding a gun. He is pointing it down the street and whispering “ka
boom, ka boom.” He smiles faintly and then his edgy features cloud.
“Someday I’ll clean up this town.” He looks down at me and frowns. He has coal black
eyes and a prizefighter’s face, wild dark hair with lightening sideburns. “Saw them jump you
from down the block.” He pushes up the brim of his cowboy hat with the barrel of his pistol.
“Three. They went at you pretty good with saps, digging in your pockets. They scattered when
they heard my siren. Should have shot the shitheads.” He looks down the street again. “Let’s
see if you can stand.”
(more…)
NEW DOORS by Robert King
The new woman coming in, I recognize most of the regulars, reaches her hand out in front of her and the new glass door of the fast-food place sweeps smoothly open. She is in her mid-thirties with brown hair, nice-looking, interesting. Every night since the divorce I tell myself I’ll cook breakfast and every morning I don’t. Behind me, the Preacher talks to someone. I call him that because I once heard him boom, “Well, you know what Jesus said,” although I didn’t hear what that was.
The new woman, carrying a breakfast bun and a coffee, comes past me so I can’t see her anymore. One table over, the elderly couple eat while they sort through store coupons. The new woman wasn’t carrying a newspaper and I wonder what she’s doing or thinking behind me. Two girls in blue grocery-store uniforms, blonde hair fluffed out like the women in daytime serials, sit to my right, talking about what happened last night. Dancing. A bar.
Dick and Bill come in, names in red script on their coveralls. Bill squints at the menu. “So, you know what you want to eat?” Dick says and, after a pause, Bill nods, still squinting.
Decisions must be made quickly these days, and I have lost again. The woman sweeps past me, emptying her tray in the bin, and leaves, the new door opening and closing evenly behind her. Old doors, you know, had rods at the top that caught for a moment before closing, just a second, as if they were hesitating.
Imagine by DB Cox
When Mark looks up to order another beer, he notices that the hotel bar has begun to fill up—a big crowd for Sunday night. He tries waving his hand to get the bartender’s attention, then gives up and calls out, “Barkeep, what about another one?”
The television, above the bar, is dialed into a football game that nobody’s watching. Mark hates sitting here with all of these people that he doesn’t know—forced to listen to bits and pieces of their meaningless conversations.
Feeling a little shaky, he reaches into his coat pocket, grips the handle of the pistol and lifts it slightly. He is reassured by the weight.
Tomorrow he will make an authentic statement—take matters into his own hands. He glances at the tattered paperback lying on the bar—“Catcher in the Rye.” He thinks about Holden Caulfield. He thinks about all of the time he’s wasted blindly following “phonies.” Plastic “demigods” like John Lennon—hiding behind the elegant walls of the Dakota Hotel.
“Excuse me brother. Aren’t you Mark Chapman?” someone says over his left shoulder.
He glances back and looks into the face of a young, dark-skinned man. He’s wearing a California “Angels” baseball cap twisted to the side. Mark is certain that he’s never seen this man before.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” says Mark.
The man bends over, close to Mark’s ear, and whispers, “I am Diablis, the Angel of Death.”
“What is this? Are you drunk?”
“I am the Angel of Death,” repeats Diablis, “look into the mirror.”
Mark turns and looks toward the bar-length mirror. He can see reflections of everyone sitting at the bar, except the mysterious figure leaning over his shoulder.
He doesn’t really want to hear what else this man has to say, but he has to know.
“What do you want?” asks Mark.
“I’m here for a reason. I want you.”
“Want me? Why?”
“Because the man you’re planning to kill is important to us. Maybe you don’t remember, but Mr. Lennon was once more popular than God. We can’t allow a “nobody,” like you, to cut this man’s life short.”
Mark looks frantically around the room. He is now ready to believe that this stranger is a demon.
“So this is it,” he thinks, “December 7th, 1980—here in a New York City bar.”
Mark Chapman sprints toward the door—then out, and into the street.
“There is no place dark enough to hide,” says Diablis, “I am always with you.”
_____
Mark rounds the corner and hears someone following close behind. He pulls the gun from his coat pocket, turns and fires two shots toward the phantom. Then he runs like a crazy man.
An eerie voice at his back hisses, “My brother, you still do not understand.”
_____
“Any of you people know this man?” asks the policeman, addressing a curious crowd gathered on the sidewalk. No one speaks up.
“I’m telling you,” says the bus driver, “the guy ran off the curb right in front of me. No way I could stop.”
_____
He cannot move or talk, but his other senses seem magnified. Lying on his stomach, head to the side, Mark can see and smell the trash in the gutter. So close, he can read the labels on trampled cigarette butts—see the scrape marks on a lottery scratch ticket—smell the dog piss soaked into the concrete—hear the EMS sirens in the distance and know they’ll never arrive in time.
Glancing up, he notices where someone has spray-painted “FUCK YOU” on the curbside—the epitaph that will shortly become his tombstone.
Then he notices the music. It seems to be coming from below the street. He manages a smile when he recognizes the song—John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
“Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s easy if you try…”
Mark David Chapman closes his eyes and recalls a Holden Caulfield line from “Catcher in the Rye”—Chapter 25.
“He always felt as if he were disappearing when he crossed the street.”
Tears slide along the bridge of his nose, and drop onto the dirty cement, where they join his life, his blood, and his cause, all, leaking away into a shit-city storm drain.
“No hell below us,
Above us only sky…”
Brass Knuckles by Bradley Mason Hamlin
He said I was looking at his girlfriend and maybe I was but I didn’t mean anything. He was shorter than I by a couple of inches, and I’m not tall, but he looked hard and mean. Maybe he had to make up for the shortage.
I said I wasn’t looking at his girl but he pushed me as soon as we stepped outside the Navy bowling alley. I made the rookie mistake of trying to say something more. He answered with a crazy fast fist smashing into the left side of my jaw.
I went right down. As the little cartoon birds and stars circled my head, one of my buddies helped me up. With that nice adrenaline rush I was ready to reciprocate the violence but two other sailors from the idiot’s company pulled him away.
They smiled as they dragged him off and he struggled against their hands like a disobeying dog on a leash because he wanted to mix it up more and so did I. My face felt hot and hurt more from embarrassment than his knuckles but I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment as they hauled him off.
The next morning in the Seaman Apprentice training camp, as I leaned against the chain link fence and smoked a Lucky Strike, one of the recruits that had helped muscle the guy brought me a message from the other side of the fence.
He looked at me through the metal links and said, “Arturo sends his love.”
And I had to laugh. It reminded me of my days on the streets of Northeast L.A. I knew I had made a new friend after all and soon I would be able to introduce myself properly.
I gripped the brass knuckles inside my peacoat and smiled. My apprenticeship was coming along just fine.
Don’t Forget Your Manners by Kyle Hemmings
A renegade from double indemnity and crisp infidelities, she told him she was still a virgin at bliss. Sitting next to her on the bed, he played with the gun, the same .38 from so many stick ups. With poker face put-on, he said Oh, another stuck up girl, is it? It was his best De Niro snicker. He pointed the piece at her lips smeared with the grease of chicken wings. What do you want me to do? she asked in her best girly voice.
The Passion was in the Fighting by Winnie Star and Paul Hlebcar
Only in cars did they have passion. Road trips to Carmel, the local store, cross-country, were filled with the passion and “bliss” of the drive. It was never a peaceful journey. She would demand “stop tailgating, stop speeding,” stomping her feet on the imaginary brake, stiffening in her seat, huffing and puffing and clutching the door handle for security.
Odd, but for Bill, whenever these “events” would occur he felt a passion like none other. His hands would sweat, his knees tighten with a certain schoolboy sensitivity. Such a great feeling he had for the hounding, forceful directives of his wife, his first wife, with whom he had shared so much, yet couldn’t share verbally half the feelings and emotions from within. He was a confused and wanting soul. But wanting what? To pull over and demand restitution? On his terms? On hers? Or, perhaps, in its simplicity, to get even in a most base, vile way?
On this clear day in August, they were on one of the state’s most perfectly constructed, well-paved, civilized pieces of infrastructure—state highway 23, rarely traveled, yet there for the driving pleasure. The time had come. It was 4:05 p.m. The tall pines still reflected the sun brightly, as the air at that altitude allowed an almost eerie clarity to any image. A smile was on his face, and she welcomed it.
“Get a bite to eat?” he asked.
“Let’s run up to that chicken and ribs place you like so much. You know the one that also makes the best fried egg sandwiches this side of the Colorado River,” she replied.
Bill loved that place alongside highway 4, with the rickety bridges lining the roads and the one way streets meandering alongside the low-income housing. The crisp, clear air seemed to breeze them over the hill straight for the diner.
It was near about closing time when they sauntered in, but the Korean owner remembered them from trips past and jollied them up to their favorite table. She ordered the usual egg concoction, but today felt like a chicken dinner would go down well, too. Bill felt it was strange her all-of-a-sudden chicken craving, as she had been so recently committed to this vegetarian kick. But what the hell, it was the best food this side of the Colorado.
No one could have anticipated what was to happen next. And surely Bill was not figuring on spending the rest of his day this way. He had just been peppered with the “drill” coming over in the car and was glad that it was not a prolonged ordeal this time. He welcomed the lunch break and the cheap, good food.
She seemed to inhale her platter, and just as the last bite of greasy-boned chicken went down her gullet, she looked up with this expression of fear and dread—the bone had lodged completely in her throat and her breath was becoming obstructed. No wheeze to signify patency, just blockage. Bill gave her a Heimlich but the best chicken bone this side of the Colorado River wouldn’t budge.
The Kid that Shot Christmas By Claudius Cloyd
Tony looked out at the dull, cold night… searching the crisp, clear sky. The sparse, snow-covered limbs of the sleeping trees fascinated him. No sign of him yet, thought Tony. He checked to make sure his dad’s hunting rifle was loaded. Tony hadn’t been a good boy that year; in fact, he had been a diabolical little bastard. Busting windows. Torturing animals. He even accused his gym teacher of touching him. It wasn’t true, but it ruined his life just the same. Tony thought it was a kick.
He shared his room, which was on the second floor, with his younger brother, John. Complete opposites, those two. John was a good boy who loved and obeyed his parents. Someday the world would make him very sad, but now he merely slept.
Tony finally spotted him… the fat man and his reindeer. He looked into his sights. If he wasn’t going to get any gifts, no one was.
Bang Donner! Bang Prancer! Bang Blitzon! And Bang four more times.
Tony’s dad rushed into his room as John awoke frightened. His mom was working at the hospital that night. Tony reloaded. A bullet clipped his dad on the shoulder. He set his sights on the sleigh to savor its descent. “Only a Christmas miracle can save your ass now, sucker!” giggled Tony as he watched the wounded, writhing reindeer and sleigh plummet.
“Would you shut the fuck up?”
“You shot dad. I can’t believe you shot dad,” sobbed John.
“He’s just wounded.”
This did little to console John who continued to cry hysterically.
Tony ignored him… too engrossed by the events transpiring above. Down, down, down went the sleigh, and that’s when the Christmas miracle happened.
“What the fuck?”
Seven big black buzzards materialized above each reindeer, holding them up by the horns, thereby saving ol’ Nick from impending disaster and catastrophe. Tony was out of shells. He felt cheated. Then he remembered something that he once learned from television… something about buzzards liking to eat dead things.
“Would you stop that fuckin’ crying already!” he snarled at his brother who shook uncontrollably over their shivering, bleeding papa. Tony looked at his old man. Good, he thought, he’s unconscious. Tony locked John in the closet, and took pop by the pant-legs and pulled him downstairs. Thud went the head on each descending step. Thud, thud, thud. Drag, drag, drag inched Tony towards the front door. He got his winter coat and boots from the living room closet, went to the kitchen to get a knife, and opened the front door.
The night sky was black, and how ever cold the night was, the blood running through Tony’s veins was colder as he sliced his dad’s throat. The white snow now turned red. The buzzards began to circle above. All there was to do is wait.
Eventually they came down and brought with them the wounded reindeer and sleigh. Tony had his empty rifle, pretending.
Peck, tear, peck, tear went the buzzards voraciously.
“All right, fat man—” demanded the boy, “hand’em over.”
“That’s not necessary,” replied Saint Nick, handing him a present.
Tony wasn’t expecting anything like this. It almost made him ashamed of himself. He was almost sorry that he shot those reindeer. He was almost sorry that he killed his father. He was almost sorry that he now wanted to kill Santa Clause.
He set down the empty rifle like last year’s toy, and began to tear and claw at the wrapping paper. Inside the box was a pistol. He looked up to Nick, perplexed. It didn’t make any sense to him. Why would he give him a gift to murder him with?
The old man in red and white anticipated his question and said, “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Well, yah… sorta…” muttered Tony, uncertain.
“Then what’s the problem?”
The kid didn’t know what to think. Here he shot all the guy’s deer, and pointed a rifle at him… and he gives him a loaded gun. He studied the gun and then raised it at shoulder level.
“What else you got?”
“Are you sure you want to do that, little boy?”
Tony made no reply and pulled the trigger.
The gun backfired and sent the bullet into Tony’s face.
The reindeer awoke and off went Santa and his sleigh into the sky.
The buzzards bounced from the bled corpse to the now dead, young flesh.
And peck, tear, peck, tear went the buzzards voraciously.
DUET by Austin Alexis
He was following her again. She’d just arrived back in New York City and, taking a stroll to Lexington Avenue, she sensed him behind her, like a dull heat or a pressure oppressing her spine, the back of her heels, the nape of her neck. Two years ago the same thing had happened, and she’d fooled herself into thinking it would never occur again.
She turned her head slowly to peer in back of herself. There he treaded, big-teethed, leering.
She refused to run. Or even hurry. Central Park South was a fashionable street, not made for rushing. Anyway, if he sensed she wasn’t afraid of him, he’d leave her alone she reasoned. She wore an earth-brown raincoat, over olive slacks and a North American neutral expression she’d learn as a teen in her native Brazil, watching American television. A face unacquainted with panic.
Did this man know who she was? In Brazil and in Portugal, and maybe in Spain, she was a known pop singer. “Afro-Brazilian sensation” some had called her. But she wasn’t a celeb in the States. So why, other than her beauty, was this man following her? Maybe “looks” were enough of a lure. Perhaps he was homeless, lived in Central Park and crossed to this side of glamorous Central Park South when drawn by women who appeared rich or exotic or unsure of their surroundings.
She wondered if she should alert one of the doormen who were stationed in front of apartment buildings and hotels–some of them smirking like they enjoyed being around wealth, even if it wasn’t theirs. But it would be difficult to accuse the follower of anything. He was simply walking, looking disheveled. A man in a blue blazer with a polka dot handkerchief in the breast pocket smiled at her as he passed her, and she was tempted to say, “Mister, that man back there…he’s harassing me; he won’t stop.” But the man in the blazer walked by her briskly–seemed unapproachable.
She looked behind herself again. That jerk of a man had picked up his pace. She started to take wider steps. She found herself striding. The smell of wet late-spring earth from the Park seemed to give her energy. Supremely agitated, she tightened her face, her neck muscles.
She was heading east, toward Fifth Avenue and beyond: to Bloomingdale’s. That store would be her salvation. She’d breathe easier once safe inside of it, surrounded by elegant perfume bottles and silk scarves gracing ornate racks. Her soul usually warmed at the thought of chic décor.
Something told her not to look back right now. A tiny sound, not really a voice because it was wordless, told her to stare straight ahead. An utterance communicated with her without words, beyond language: this thing was nearly always with her and usually kept her safe.
Now she had reached Sixth Avenue. This overcast Saturday afternoon shoppers marched toward her and beside her, many of them with a determined look, as if today’s excursion called forth a deeper level of commitment than any other activity demanded of them.
She crossed the Avenue. Having to stop because a man and his two children crossed in front of her, she took the moment to look back. The disheveled man had stopped walking and was crouched down in the act of feeding two pigeons.
She didn’t feel like continuing her walk, but she did. What else to do? Behind her, the space felt empty. A lack of energy in her legs caused her to frown.
She couldn’t decide whether to speed-up or slow down.
