CANDY SANGRIA
by Walter Conley

(For J.)

The first Detective on scene was Pietr Frenk.  Frenk was from some country where they spell their names that way.  He’d been at home, eating left-over pizza and watching a DVD that Kim Jong-Il would be ashamed to own, when he got the call.  It was his day off, but they were short-handed.  Please, Frenk.  Please.  I’m not asking…

When his partner, a rookie called “Jonny Blonde,” arrived, Frenk was standing over the body.  She was outside a pool hall called Rosie’s.  Frenk didn’t even bother to look up.

Blonde whistled to himself.  “Who’s that?” he asked.

“That was Candy,” Frenk said.

“Of course.”

“Candy Sangria.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I never kid,” Frenk said.  “Don’t you recognize her?”

“From the Police Log?”

“From the cover of the National Enquirer, People, the Weekly World News…”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Her real name was Helen something.  Wife of wrinkled old money down in Florida.  Got tired of hosting cocktail parties on the sundeck, waiting for him to kindly die and leave her everything.   Took it on the road.”

Blonde shook his head, moving in for a closer look.  The deceased was in the gutter, curled up like a child, back to the sidewalk.  Her eyes were open.  There was a pool of red liquid—almost blood-colored, but obviously not blood—drying around her.

“She vanished a couple years ago,” Frenk said.  “When they finally caught up with her, she made it pretty clear she didn’t want to be found.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I think she had too much to drink, stumbled out of the bar, fell down and puked her way into the next life.”

Blonde looked up from the body.  “You should write greeting cards,” he said.

#   #   #

Back at the station, Frenk wondered, out loud, why he was investigating a stripper who had choked to death on her own vomit.  The lieutenant said he’d received a phone call telling him that wasn’t the case.  Since Frenk was already there, he decided to soak the department for some overtime.  He took a bag of potato chips from his desk, kicked his feet up and started flipping through the channels of the TV mounted in the corner.

The Lieutenant peeked around the corner.  “Go ask some questions,” he said.

“I can give you all the answers you want right now.”

“Make an effort, would you?  She was a human being.”

“That kind of stuff doesn’t work on me,” Frenk said.

“How’s this?” the Lieutenant said.  “From now on, starting this instant, you get every stolen bicycle case in Navy Housing…”

The Lieutenant took the remote and bag of chips from him as he squeezed by.

“Bastard,” Frenk said.

“Got any dip?” the Lieutenant asked.

#   #   #

He found Jonny Blonde in the weight room.  “Take a shower,” Frenk said, “put on a lot of deodorant, put on some clothes and meet me downstairs.  We’re taking the Grape.”  The Grape was a purple undercover Buick that could outrun patrol cars.

Blonde dug his fingers into whatever was available on the way over.  They got there in about ninety seconds.  Frenk parked around the corner from the pool hall to keep from scaring people away.  Although the gutter had been hosed down, the curb was still red.

They split up and started banging on doors.  Everyone, it seemed, knew Candy and gee, wasn’t it sad, but as far as helping out, nobody knew anything.  Just as they were about to pack it in, Frenk spotted a woman called Meg nearby.  He was sure he’d seen her with Candy before.

“Give me something,” Frenk said.

“Hi, Pete.  How ya doin?” Meg asked.

“Better than you, from the looks of it.”

“Thanks.”

“You knew Candy,” Frenk said.  “I know you knew her.  People are saying this wasn’t an accident.”

“It wasn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s not really about her,” Meg said.  “It’s about the kid.”

“What kid?” Frenk asked, but she was already dancing away.

“That’s all I can tell you,” she hollered back.

#   #   #

In the car, Blonde asked if he’d had any luck.

“Never in my life,” Frenk said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

Not getting leads had taken up most of the day.  They went to Bridey’s All-Night on Church Street.  Frenk was midway through a triple bacon-cheeseburger, Blonde through a salad with lemon juice, when Blonde’s cellphone rang.

“Yeah,” Blonde said.  “He’s right here.”

He handed the cell to Frenk, who refused to own one himself.  “You’re shitting me,” Frenk said.

“What?” Blonde asked.

“They didn’t even have time to cut her open yet,” Frenk said.  “All right, all right.”  He bounced the phone, with the Lieutenant’s voice still coming through it, across the table to Blonde.  “Hang up,” he said.  “She was poisoned.  There’s somebody we need to find.”

#   #   #

Meg’s boyfriend was a death’s door addict named Louis.  Frenk made a protesting Blonde wait outside the hotel room.  After Frenk showed Louis the bag, Louis’ mouth wouldn’t shut.

Here’s what mattered…

Candy had been pregnant when she split.  She wanted out, now that the kid was getting older, but her pimp wouldn’t let her.  He kidnapped her son.  Last night, she’d called her husband from Louis’ hotel room.  Today, she was dead.

“Who’s the pimp?”

Louis swallowed.

Frenk jiggled the bag at him.

#   #   #

They found traces of the kid at the pimp’s apartment, but no kid.  What they did find was the kidnapper drowned in a bathtub full of Sangria.  Drowning was the nicest thing that had happened to him.

Frenk called a buddy on the Florida Highway Patrol.  He was genuinely sick over the kid.  Florida questioned the old man, but nothing ever came of it.

A few months later, Frenk got an envelope in the mail.  Inside was the photo of a healthy-looking boy at a picnic table, outside a mansion, with palm trees, sand and rippling water behind him.

BIO:  Walter Conley has worked in comics, children’s entertainment and film, but his first love has always been the short story.  His crime fiction has appeared online at such places as Blue Murder Magazine, Opi8 and Judas E-zine.  You can reach him at pitchbrite@yahoo.com 

Brian’s Brown Paper Bag
by Scott Wilson

Brian fished a crumpled up shopping bag out of a street-side wastebasket, and looked in the bottom of it, not believing what he saw.

“What the...”

He looked around; making sure nobody else could see him, or what he was going to take out of the bag. There generally weren’t that many people under the expressway, apart from a few other homeless people. Around midday, like today, the others were off begging, or picking up people’s leftovers in the Myer Centre eatery.

Brian pulled the object from the bag, keeping the barrel of the Browning pistol pointed away from his body. He fiddled around, trying to work out how to release the magazine to see if it was loaded. It took a few minutes to find the mechanism that let the detachable container slide out into Brian’s lap. From the weight of it, Brian could tell it had bullets in it, either that or most of the pistol’s weight was held in this part of the gun.

Brian slid the magazine back into the handle and looked the pistol over again. He found a small lever that he assumed was the safety and flicked it on. To make sure it was safe; he pointed the gun away and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“Drop the gun and put your hands on your head!”

Brian turned quickly to see who yelled at him and felt a burning pain explode in his right arm. He dropped the pistol and clutched at the wound with his left hand.

“Put your hands on your head!” the police officer yelled.

“You shot me!” Brian said.

“This is your last warning, HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!”

Brian lifted his hands to his head and winced in pain. A second officer stepped forward and handcuffed Brian behind his back, then picked up the pistol with a clear zip-lock evidence bag.

The officers dragged Brian to the waiting police car, leaving a trail of blood from his wounded arm. Out of the shadows, a tall, thin man in black jeans and a black Iron Maiden t-shirt appeared. He knelt down and put a finger in the pool of blood, licking it when he brought it to his lips. Framing the homeless for his murders was no longer a challenge. He contemplated who to kill next, and who to take the fall for his crime, while he sucked on his bloodied finger.

THE END

BIO: Scott began dabbling in writing after discovering the joys of sci-fi and fantasy at his high school. In 2008, he joined the Australian Horror Writers Association as a full financial member. Currently, he am an active member of the University of Texas Flash Fiction Writer, Zoetrope Virtual Studio and FlashXER Writer Groups. With over 120 of his fiction stories have been published in various publications, including; Bewildering Stories, Monsters Next Door, Dark Fire Fiction, Micro Horror, A Long Short Story, Sonar4, The Shine Journal, The Cynic Online Magazine, Flashshot, Spec The Halls, The Tiny Globule, Zoetrope, 52 Stitches, 6 Sentences, New Voices in Fiction Magazine, Yellow Mama, Antipodean SF, The Short Humor Site, Twisted Dreams, Sinister Tales, Golden Visions, Flashes in the Dark and Static Movement, Wordslaw, Bards and Sages, Well Told Tales, Twisted Dreams, Postcard Shorts and Night to Dawn magazines. He is working on two novels presently, a horror novel that he hope will rival any Stephen King novel and a comedy fantasy in the style of Terry Pratchett.

Chocolate Karma
by James C. Clar

Every squad has one; a guy they consider their “lucky charm.” Some poor grunt that for any one of a thousand different reasons is deemed “charmed,” “blessed’ or just plain lucky as hell. Maybe it’s because he stepped on a mine that turned out to be a dud, or took a round to the helmet and lived to show off the damage with wide eyes, Midwestern drawl and a perplexed shake of the head. Some also seem to possess a nearly preternatural ability … like being able to sense the enemy before he begins to make his move, or to predict the time, place and even the extent of the next attack. Whatever it might be, such individuals are held in mystical awe by their comrades and any instance of good fortune that befalls the squad is generally attributed in some measure to the often unwitting influence of that unit’s talismanic individual. Atheists may be hard to find in foxholes but soldiers who have given reign to strange and abstruse superstitions are never in short supply in the trenches.  And so …

“What’s with him?” asked Reynolds as he pointed toward a small, olive-skinned soldier who was carefully, reverently replacing a plastic bag in his pack. “Every time we stop he takes out that bag, unwraps whatever the fuck he’s got in there and sniffs it. Dude’s obsessed, man. What’s it, some kind of killer weed or powdered amphetamine shit?”

The 7th squad of Delta Company was on patrol in the Highlands about eight ‘klicks from the border. It was the spookiest, most surreal part of a country that epitomized spooky and surreal. The daytime heat and humidity were unbearable. At night there was a cold, damp wind that swept down through the craggy mountain passes and chilled you right to your toes. Then there were the areas of mist that just appeared above the floor of the jungle … anyplace, anytime. The weather and terrain alone were enough to put you on edge. Add to that the fact the that all the trails were mined or booby-trapped and that the entire area was crawling with enemy snipers and ambush parties and it was easy to understand why even the most experienced soldiers were willing to put their faith in anything – no matter how outré – that promised relief.

“His name’s Vittorino, man. And it’s a cookie. That’s all” answered Lieut. Roethke. “You're new so you need to chill out, get the ‘lay of the land’. See what I'm sayin’? Joey’s mom sent him a box of cookies a while back. Chocolate chip, loaded with walnuts. He shared ‘em with us … they were righteous. He saved one and carries it around with him now, has been for weeks.”

“Dude rests up and recharges by sniffing a damn cookie?” Reynolds exclaimed incredulously. “That’s maybe the weirdest thing I've ever heard.”

“Yeah, well, you live long enough in this outfit and you'll see a whole lot that’s even weirder, man. Tell you what, though, since Joey started toting that cookie around, we ain’t lost a man.” Roethke hoisted his pack, grabbed his M-16 and signaled the others to fall in.

The 7th moved out. Vittorino took point … as always. Later, when they stopped for the night, Reynolds said, “there he goes again with that friggin’ cookie. Man that freaks me out. Another thing … why’s he always take the point?”

“Hey, kid,” Roethke answered, “you want to walk point?” Reynolds looked down. “I didn't think so. Vittorino’s the best. Man’s got eyes in the back of his head. Someday that Ginzo will save your sorry ass.”

*    *    *

Two days later, around 1400, the men of the 7th were humpin’ across a small clearing of tiger grass. Vittorino, of course, was in the lead thirty meters ahead of his mates. Suddenly, automatic weapon fire erupted from the tree line off to the right. Vittorino was hit and went down. The others kissed the dirt and, almost instantaneously, returned fire. A few moments later, the clearing was hit by mortars. Chambers radioed for air cover, but everyone knew that an air strike would only add to the confusion … not to mention the danger. Their only hope was to flush their attackers and seek cover in those same trees themselves.

*   *    *

Later, the surviving members of the squad sat huddled in the trees at the edge of the clearing where it had all began. They were waiting for dust-off. The enemy … or what was left of it … was still lobbing shells into the tiger grass, but only half-heartedly now. Roethke counted two dead and two wounded among his men. Earlier, when they retrieved Vittorino’s body and had gone through his belongings, they noticed that his treasured chocolate chip cookie was missing. In its place was a bag of what looked and smelled like dried monkey shit. It could only have been Reynolds, but no one said a word.

Before long, the men heard the distinctive sound of a chopper. Roethke popped green smoke.

“Reynolds!”

“What’s up LT.”

“You're last. Cover us. Then we've got your back … by the numbers.”

Reynolds, who had lost his lunch once already, looked even more ashen. But he knew better than to object.

The chopper came in fast and low, hovering just off the ground. The men of the 7th, ferrying their wounded, ran into the clearing. Roethke assisted his men and then climbed aboard the Huey himself. Stooping in the open door with weapon raised, he signaled Reynolds to break cover. As the newbie reached the chopper and prepared to pull himself aboard, Roethke stood and kicked the soldier savagely in the face. “That’s the way the cookie crumbles, motherfucker,” he snarled as Reynolds lost his grip and tumbled back into the tiger grass. The Huey lifted clear just as a new more concentrated mortar attack devastated the clearing …

Luck might be a lady, but Karma was a bitch with a sweet tooth.

THE END

BIO: James C. Clar teaches and writes in the wilds of western New York. His work has been published in print as well as on the Internet. Recently he has placed short fiction in the Taj Mahal Review, Golden Visions Magazine, Bewildering Stories, Apollo's Lyre, Orchard Press Mysteries, 365 Tomorrows, Antipodean Sci-Fi, Shine: The Journal of Flash, Everyday Fiction, the Magazine of Crime & Suspense and Flashshot. His story "Starbuck" was voted story of the year for 2008 by the editors of Long Story, Short.

Ceaser's Share
by Felix Mind

And she approached, like a Goddess out of the mist, floating in the warmth of her beauty; i bit my lower lip, riveted by her appearance. Her slacks crunching dry leaves, snapped me into this unreal reality. Into the thicket of my unrequited desires, theater of all my fantasies, she had followed. Belief flew out of me and my movements were now methodical, robotic. Never had I netted such spell binding grandeur splendiferous sight to behold.

The moon generously splashed her with silverine white light that pierced through her loose cloth outlining a porcelain-doll figure, smooth and perfect like a Victorian specter about to proclaim extreme happiness to my absolute doom.

She stood before me, soundlessly.

I stretched out my hand as If on automatic and for what seemed an eternity she moved closer, her face showing in the slight light - the magnificently chiseled mandibles struck my sight, square and proper, lips partially parting, expectant with a faint red on them and above her pointed nose, haughty and hidden below her brow, rested those eyes, large, oval, submissive.

Blood rushed in my veins as the hand brushed her body. She held it and strapped it on her waist.

Warm. Warm beauty.

Unknown creatures crawled under my skin, scrawling my nerves with raw desire. Muscles twitched in rhyme and I pulled her to me, on a strong impulse. She gasped. Perfume. Jasmine perfume. My blood boiled. Her breathe escalated as I felt her tush, round, soft, good to feel. A gentle squeeze. Another gasp, ending in a sweet smile teetering at the edge of her lips. The sweetest I had ever seen.

A warm fuzzy feeling welled up in me as she buried her head on my chest…then, slowly, peeled off my  black leather biker jacket. A collectors.

Her hungry eyes looked up to me, beautifully hidden in her ravish hair, like a cat’s, teasing…screaming out loud, “ !”. And my lips, registered weapons of distraction, unable to hold any longer, searched hers…for nothing but the obvious. Her response almost renders me immobile…but slowly and carefully, I catch up with her semi-deprived drive. Like little children gobbling up meat; captives of lust let go… Everything happened too fast for my kind to fathom…the satin gown easing out her body, landing on her feet into a soft puddle…my mouth hanging slack in awe of the sight…nipples daringly shooting out in the moonlight like a Zulu’s Assegai ready for combat…and yes, no R.S.V.P address on the invite. A one way ticket, it was.

And gradually, as the candles of burning lust lasted, the two bodies merged in mortal desire, heaving and humping. I was enveloped in the steam of love, riding with her sighs, high up her thighs…when the scent came calling.

Irresistible to my instincts, irreplaceable to our kind, it beckoned. The pheromones pouring through her pores, more with each thrust. Pauline was too absorbed in the consuming passions and I, too alive to the approaching climax.

At once, my hormones raged, now, way beyond the control of what I had all along been to her…and in reflex, my mouth flung open, wide and tight like it’d split, and the fangs sprang out…

Suddenly, in one unnatural spring, my head plunged towards her neck.

“O!” she managed at first. A sharp cry, melodious to my ears amplified from micro-orgasms escalating into agonyfe, surprise…slight sharp pain. Her stifled screams laden with deadly emotion only hastened my quest.

I plunged the fangs deeper into her jugular, her gurgling blood full of feminine arousal gushed and I sucked…sucked fast and deep before her blood was contaminated with the creeping fear.

Sweet sap. Sweet sweet sap.

My body quivered in extreme ecstasy. I was still engrossed in the multiple shots of her life juice mainlining itself into my bloodstream when her O’s grew fainter. The firm grip of nails digging into my back, loosened and her body slumped on me.

I lifted my head from her neck, mouth still sticky with her warm juices and for seconds on end, I held on to her. She was growing cold, slowly.

A sickening sadness descended on me as the realization dawned in my dark world:  She was the best I would ever have.

Bitterness welled up in me, tears streaming down my cheek, probably intent on washing the blood stuck on my pout.

I had taxed her, like she was the people, and I, Caesar.

I let go off my hold, and she collapsed on my feet, lifeless like a doll, still inviting…

BIO: Felix Mind is Kenyan cat stuck in the twenteens and has three loves
namely, design and literature and the fairest sex.

The World Is Going To Hell
by Randall W. Pretzer. 

There was trash everywhere. The benches were made up of wood that was eaten by termites. What the hell was going on here? I came to eat at a park, not a dumpster or a landfill. I noticed everyone else at the park was just sitting around or throwing bread crumbs at birds, seemingly oblivious to the depravity surrounding them and myself. There was a young couple a few feet in front of me and I couldn't believe they could find romance amongst this filth.
 
"What the hell do you two think you are doing?"

They stopped what they were doing and both looked at me in confusion.

"This park looks like a demilitarized zone and you two are trying to get a good fuck?"

The man got up, walked right over to me and got in my face.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Ranson….please…."

The woman came running up behind the man.

"I am the one who is tired of this shit……and people like you ignoring it…..fuck in the bedroom….not this park….it is filled with enough depravity all ready…"

"You call our love depraved…..how about this…."

The man attempted to punch me but the woman grabbed it.

"What are you doing…..this man can't get away with saying all that shit…"

"Please….just ignore him….come on…"

"You're lucky pal…"

"We're all going to hell in a hand basket…one day the world will wake up…"

"Fuck you…buddy…huh…"

The woman pulled him away and they walked back to the bench. I walked away, stopped and looked up at the sky.

"I am the only one with any sense of what is going on…….this park is an abortion….."

I yelled at the top of my lungs, some looked at me and others didn't care either way. I was about to leave the park and I saw a police man come up to me.

"Excuse me sir….I am going to have to ask you to leave this park….you are causing a disturbance."

"This park is a disturbance."

"Just move along sir…move along."

I pulled out a gun, pointed it at the cop and he reached for his gun.

"It is time to start cleaning up the world…"

I shot him in the stomach. He grabbed it and fell. I shot him again in the stomach and continued until my gun ran out. I walked back into the park and I went over to where the couple was. I reached into my pockets for some bullets and found a few. I reloaded the gun. I walked right up to them until I was only inches away.

"No more depravity."

They looked up. I shot them both in the head. They barely had any time to relax. I heard some people scream, saw a few run away but I didn't care. I put the gun away, removed their bodies from the bench and kicked the bench over. I then charged at it and tore it to pieces. I threw what was left into the nearby lake.

I turned around and I saw two cops with their guns pointed at me. I never thought cops were around when people needed them but there these two cops were. I pulled out my gun and they fired. I fell back onto the dead couple and still tried to fire my gun. They fired once more. I awaited my inevitable death.
 
BIO: Randall Pretzer lives in Texas.  He has been writing since he was 15.  He started off writing short stories and moved to writing plays and poetry.  Recently he got back into short story writing in 2006 and has been primarily a short story writer from then on.