Category: Will Coffin

FP335 – Coffin: Masks, Part 1 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and thirty-five.

Flash PulpTonight we present Coffin: Masks, Part 1 of 3
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(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Talk Nerdy 2 Me

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his normally tipsy companion, find themselves discussing mystic murder while walking the cold streets of Capital City.

 

Coffin: Masks, Part 1 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

“I think that guy was totally ####-mongering,” said Bunny.

Her hair, freshly cut to a ragged shoulder length by her own hand, was in a ponytail, and her faded denim jacket had seen the inside of a washing machine just that morning.

“Maybe,” replied Coffin.

The sun had begun to descend beyond the artificial horizon of the city’s highrises as the pair walked the sidewalk’s bands of shadow and light in no particular direction. Will’s roommate had occasionally talked him into joining her in covering the block and a half to her prefered vodka salesman, but this was the first time she’d ever suggested they simply stretch their legs.

Two days previous they’d broken into a small suburban bungalow and taken a blade whose main property was the overwhelming sense of euphoria it brought with each cut it inflicted. Inside the place they’d also found the moaning remnants of addicts and a wealthy, but hard-eyed, boy of nineteen.

Bunny hadn’t had a taste of liquor since.

She kicked a coke can into the brush alongside the bike path. “Guy like that, taking money to let people have a chance to turn themselves into deli meat – seems more likely to me that he’s the Jack the Ripper wannabe that had at his old man. He needed to tell a story to keep you from letting that junky’s ghost suck out his eyes or whatever, so he bull####ted about one of the other horrible ####ing things he’d done and added the detail about finding the blade hanging out of Dad’s throat.”

They’d come to a corner and, rather than allow the chill to settle in while they waited for the light, Bunny made a sharp left.

“You ever hear of the Flight of the Mary Celeste?” asked Coffin, trailing slightly behind his companion.

Coffin“Oh, #### yeah. I think I saw it on an Unsolved Mysteries rerun from the ‘80s: One halloween a smallish jetliner ditches in a big potato field in Idaho. It was a red-eye, so there were only maybe thirty people on board. I remember the host being impressed that it held together, said it was as close to a perfect landing as you could hope for in an emergency situation – but I don’t know how much ####ing talent it takes to crash.

“Anyhow, the farmers, a couple of Ma and Pa Kents, squeeze into the cab of their work tractor and drive out in their PJs. It’s easy to see because the landing lights are still on.

“The jet is listing a bit to to one side, but mostly upright. They can see that there’s a hatch swinging wide, but there’s no one around, none of those plastic evacuation slide things, nothing. Pa parks the tractor beneath the open door, then manages to hoist himself inside by climbing on the roof.

“He walks along the rows, towards the bathrooms, looking back and forth. There are a lot of spots with movie headphones plugged in, and the overhead luggage compartments are buttoned-up tight. Some of the seats are even leaning back with blankets pushed aside, like the people in them had had to stand so quickly they hadn’t bothered fixing their chairs.

“The farmer yells, but he gets no answer. The passenger area, the can, the little flight attendant nook – they’re all empty.

“The only thing out of place seems to be the drink cart, which had rolled into the corner of the service area because of floor’s angle.

“Pa heads to the front to see if Ma has gotten ahold of the police yet, but he notices the cockpit entrance is open a crack, so he ducks his head in and notices there’s a big wet spot on the pilot’s chair. Thinking he’s finally found some evidence of violence, and that it’s blood, he touches it.

“I remember laughing when Pa figured out what it really was. They always had such #### actors for those reenactments.

“To be honest though, I would’ve probably pissed myself too if I’d had to make that landing.

”So, right, that’s the big mystery: What happened on the plane to make everyone disappear.”

They came to another intersection, but this time the lights were with them and they strode across without breaking pace.

“That’s the story you hear,” said Coffin, “but the truth is that the jet was cruising normally when its poorly maintained electrical system caused a massive system hiccup that sent them plummeting. Partial control came back, but the pilot had a lot of momentum behind him, and not a lot of options, so he set the thing down as best he could. He was extremely lucky in his choice of crash site, and he used his thirty seconds of semi-controlled descent carefully – but, yeah, his bladder was a casualty of the impact.

“He says he’d had a lot of coffee.

“Now, the thing is, we’re talking 1985. Satanism was a big deal then, even amongst potato barons who liked to play secret dressup. This farmer and his wife were holding coke and acid orgies with some friends, including the local sheriff and mayor, under the guise of being truly free through Lucifer, etcetera, etcetera. Basically some hicks playing at being yuppies, all with a shared violent kink, had found an excuse to get high and naked that they thought made them superior to the poorer folks of the area.

“When they weren’t rubbing on each other they were target shooting with expensive guns, or patting themselves on the back for running the town. Every budget with enough margin to embezzle, and every bump of coke confiscated from a townie, was a blessing directly from the grand old goat.

“So, to celebrate Halloween the bunch of them were wearing animal masks, groping in the farmers’ barn, and carrying out a fake sacrificial rite that, for some reason, involved a lot spanking.

“Then the jet crashed a hundred and fifty yards away.

“Mrs. Farmer had been so loud in her enthusiastic declarations that she would make any sacrifice that her dark lord asked of her that no one even heard the descent until the plane was already sliding across the field.

“Well, sweaty, stoned to the gills, and in a frenzy, the group pulled off their beast-faces and held a conference.

“They looked out at the splash of dust and dirt, the dying hum of the engines mingling with their Exorcist/Omen soundtrack mixed tape, and they were convinced Satan himself had set that thing down for them to offer to him.

“Idiots managed to use a potato collection trailer to ‘rescue’ the grateful two-dozen passengers back to the garage. The sheriff kept things calm while telling his little sect to go back to the house and gather everything off the farmer’s gun rack – then they had all the survivors line up for medical triage.

“Everyone was fine until the shooting started.

“We’re talking a mass murder on some superstitious hillbilly’s mud patch, but the national media got so wrapped in the notion of the jet landing empty that they forgot to look for, say, the blood spatters that were still in the barns’ nooks and crannies, or leaking from the trailer where they first hid the bodies.”

Bunny paused. “Wait, is this Mr. Miyagi #### to try and tell me I can’t see the ####ing Satanists from the trees?”

Coffin shrugged. “Let’s say it was you in my jacket, and you’re the one who’s just taken the mystical equivalent of an endless crack supply away from a kid who claims that he found the thing in the neck of his dead father – and, worse, the old man was supposedly sliced open by a Batman-style serial killer who even has a recognizable media nickname: The Laughing Buddha.

“What would you do?”

Reflexively reaching for a bottle that wasn’t in her pocket, his companion bought time to answer by waiting for the roar of a city bus to roll by.

“I’d go to one of the crime scenes and use your little hook to fish for the ghost of one of the dead guys. Is that how you sorted out the cultists?”

“Well – it’s how I got the real story. I have enough problems with the actual occult, I don’t need to be worrying about sociopathic cosplayers. Besides, after the massacre things basically fell apart anyhow. A couple of them OD’d, and the sheriff was eventually busted for shooting the mayor and his wife. I guess he was afraid they would say something. Probably right to be scared – from what I hear things didn’t go well for him in prison.

“The remaining few lead lives of regret. I used to call them on Halloween night, you know, whisper secrets I shouldn’t know to them and tell them they needed to do more good if they ever wanted to redeem themselves.

“I’m sure everyone now assumes they’re just exemplary citizens. Despite appearances you can never really tell what motivates people.”

A laundromat, a Chinese place, and a used book store had drifted by before Bunny snorted to herself and said, “I was thinking about the Laughing Buddha murders – like, you know, where we could find articles about where they’d happened – and I realized, holy ####, I think I’m actually going to a ####ing library.”

Coffin joined her in a chuckle, and they turned towards downtown.

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP333 – Moderation, Part 2 – Coffin: Cutting Back

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and thirty-three.

Flash PulpTonight we present Moderation, Part 2 – Coffin: Cutting Back
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(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Black Flag TV

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his tipsy roommate, find themselves discussing addictions and the dead.

 

Moderation, Part 2 – Coffin: Cutting Back

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

Coffin and Bunny were working hard to look like they had business at 324 Buffalo Drive while not obviously staring at the house across the street.

They’d been there awhile.

“It started as just one sword,” Will was saying. “Along the way it was named Hippocrates’ Scalpel, but, from what I’ve read, it was probably originally made for rituals by some blood swilling pre-historic mystic.

“See, there are three problems with human sacrifice: brevity, reluctance, and the mess.

Coffin“The first is because of the second. The ceremonies are all long to take advantage of the high quality offering, but if you cut off a hand or whatever – you know, to try and draw the showmanship out – then the sacrifice becomes pretty reluctant to stick around.”

Bunny nodded, and said, “oh, yeah. I once got a black eye from an eight-year-old after I made a bunch of Captain Picard jokes. How the fuck was I supposed to know she had cancer? Why the hell was a kid that age is so familiar with Star Trek anyway? Touchy goddamn Kojak wannabe.”

Coffin raised an eyebrow.

“All I’m saying,” finished his tipsy roommate, “is that I get that dying people can be cranky motherfuckers.”

“So what’s the solution?” asked Will, but his voice was hollow. He’d spotted a small thin-faced boy of five wedged between the heavy brown curtain and the house’s front-facing bay window, and he’d suddenly become occupied with scanning the child’s glass-pressed fingers.

Bunny sipped, unironically, on a 7-Eleven cup that had been filled with more vodka than slurpee earlier that morning, then replied, “I dunno – high-powered narcotics?”

“Actually, you’ve got the right idea,” nodded Coffin. “It needs a payment of flesh to work, but the blade was created to cause anyone cut by it a great amount of joy. Crippling euphoria, in fact.

“That’s why they called it Hippocrates’ Scalpel, though it helpfully closes the wound up behind it to keep the mess down and the sacrificial virgin, or whatever, lasting as long as possible.

“No doubt one day some lotus-eater priest was buggering around with temple property and realized that it could, you know, cut both ways. I can’t say if it was originally shattered during ceremonial use, or simply by some junky looking to spread the love around, but eventually the thing went from a sword to a dozen shards, then to a hundred razors of varying length.

“Whatever rite built the scalpel was also intended to keep it permanently sharp – when it was broken up each piece remained honed. I mean, it’s made for weak-wristed clerics, it needed to be able to cut through muscle and bone without ruffling their silky work uniforms.”

A woman’s arm reached from beyond the window frame, pulling the boy into the darkness at the edges of the heavy drape.

“Anyhow,” said Coffin, his own hand going to his pocket. His fingers – three more than the apparent mother’s – wrapped about the silver chain within. “At the end of eight hours that they perceive to be the greatest emotional and physical experience of their lives, they’re left feeling normal beyond the fact that they’re missing whatever it is they’ve cut off.

“Blackhall actually wrote about it. It’s how he first met our friend Sour Thistle. There was a fellow by the name of Michigan Jim who had established what old Thomas referred to as a Shaving Den. I guess absolute bliss is addictive even to the things that go bump in the night. Thistle had fallen in love, or as close to it as something like her can get.

“A Feral Lord from the French territories, I believe Blackhall put it. A massive gray wolf named Garou. Their responsibilities kept them apart most of the year, but I guess they were prone to sheltering through winters together.

“Some voyageur who’d stumbled onto his territory started it. The fur trapper was already hard up, having just one foot, and he couldn’t do much to run away. He did manage, however, to give it a tempting swipe with his sliver of the scalpel. It was enough to get him back to his canoe.

“When it wore off, though, Garou couldn’t let it go. He stalked the river’s edge to the outskirts of Quebec, but having to stay out of the city kept him from ever catching the terrified Frenchman.

“Instead of returning to his kingdom, the animal lord waited, sleeping in thickets and wheat fields.

“While that was happening, I guess the escapee got to a point where it was too hard to take off his own extremities, so he gave the job over to Michigan Jim.

“In exchange, Jim got to keep the blade.

“When – well, frankly, when there was no more of the poor bugger left to slice off, Michigan moved on. It took another month for Garou to find him, this time camping out in a two-story farmhouse. Jim had supposedly only planned to stay the night, but his addictive bit of joy easily turned the family inside into his ever-shrinking peons.

“I’m told the beast once consumed a platoon of French infantry who’d come hunting him after he’d been mistaken for a lycanthrope, and by consume I mean everything – funny hats, leather boots, brass buttons, muskets, gunpowder, and even their rations of wine.

“He was probably whining like a common mutt though, when he crept to that shack. Maybe the patheticness of his fall was why Sour Thistle sent Blackhall looking for him a few weeks later.

”Michigan Jim was getting some supplies from town when he arrived, so Thomas just found the wolf and the jigsaw pieces that were the now-dead former residents.

“Blackhall actually tried a rescue, but Garou fought him off and started crawling back with one leg. Thing is, the addict had been paying his way by giving out magical secrets like creepy vans dispense candy, and that’s a big no-no – the biggest, by Sour Thistle’s book.

“Thomas had no option but to open the thing’s throat.

“- or so he says.

“By the time the pusher got back, Blackhall was pretty upset. He used the razor to remove both Michigan Jim’s hands and THEN made him dig the graves for the family.”

“Huh,” said Bunny. The plastic cup she held had sprouted white lines under the pressure of her grip.

“So what are we supposed to fucking do?” she asked. “I’m not sure I’m cool with turning these assholes into Captain Hook.”

“Simple. We go in, collect the old-school chop-arm paper cutter I hear they’ve attached their sliver to, and then we leave before the police show. Social workers can handle the rest.”

Bunny snorted. “Yeah, sounds great. We’ll just take the golden goose because drug dealers are known for their fucking generosity and general lack of weaponry.”

Coffin slipped the Crook of Ortez from his pocket, and the talisman swung low with the weight of the meat plug that was entwined in its intricately-wound arcane hook.

“The only thing worse than a jonesing junky banging on your door is a dead jonesing junky creeping through your wall,” he said.

Using his free hand to retrieve a cellphone from his pocket, he punched 911 and began walking towards the house.

With a sniff, Bunny dropped her still half-full cup and followed him onto the street’s cracked pavement.

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP321 – The Cost of Living: Part 3 of 3 – Coffin: At Loose Ends

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and twenty-one.

Flash PulpTonight we present The Cost of Living: Part 3 of 3 – Coffin: At Loose Ends
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(RSS / iTunes)
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Nutty Bites

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Will Coffin, Urban Shaman, and Bunny, his tipsy companion, find themselves overseeing a grisly scene at a rural farm – as well as the end of the flute playing woman.

The Cost of Living: Part 3 of 3 – Coffin: At Loose Ends

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

Coffin stood by the broad glass facing onto his apartment’s balcony, his eyes locked on something beyond dawn’s glare. Deeper in the dwelling, on the far side of the book shelves that lined the residence’s main hallway and behind a closed door, his roommate was snoring away a bottle of Grey Goose.

There was a note between his fingers, scrawled in a familiar hand. Though Will had been standing in that same position when the paper had been slid beneath the front entrance, the old mute had already disappeared by the time he’d pulled it wide.

There’d been no point in waking Bunny, the retirement home mentioned in the letter wouldn’t be open to visitors for hours yet, and she might be quicker to corral out of the apartment if she was closer to sober.

Shifting from one foot to the other, he waited for the grinding of motors and barking of full-bladdered dogs that marked the city’s first stirrings.

* * *

Will Coffin, Urban ShamanFourteen hours later Coffin and his tipsy companion were far to the north. Will had not bothered to introduce the farmer by name – he knew his former client preferred the distance. Still, the buzz-cut man had not said no to the shaman’s hurried request.

The landowner had called the space his barn, but the interior was something more akin to a garage adjoining an indoor scrap yard. The cavernous corrugated tin walls sheltered the husks of tractors, trucks, fridges and machined fragments that, to Bunny’s eye, could have belonged to anything.

Most importantly, though, it housed the a four-columned car crusher.

A windowless Volkswagen Bug rested on the metal base, its long-lost headlights offering no assistance to the rows of fluorescents overhead.

The Japanese woman stood at the halfway mark between the sacrificial platform and the pair who’d driven her to the remote location. The hem of pleated black skirt had dipped into the sawdust and sand that covered the floor, and she bent low to work away the dirt with her thin hands. Even in her stooping, it was obvious her motions were well practiced so as not to disturb the white sling she wore across her shoulder.

“Christ, this seems a little fucking harsh,” Bunny told her bottle of Captain Morgan’s.

She’d been on hand when her friend had used his trinket to call forth the dead man in the retirement home. Although he’d had his face largely chewed away, the apparition had wished to talk only about the flute playing volunteer who would often slip into his room and whisper to the cannibal in the bed adjacent to his own.

It had been one of the few times he had heard his bunkmate speak – possibly because he himself had been largely paralyzed by a stroke. Still, the invalid had been aware enough of his surroundings to overhear their talk of human flesh and its preparation. He’d been trapped with the secret for years, and it had taken his own death to be allowed the opportunity to tell it.

He’d been eager for further conversation when they’d left, but the lilting tune drifting from the game room had acted as reason enough to excuse themselves.

Bunny had not, however, been on hand when, after they’d managed to follow the sleight musician to her suburban duplex, Coffin had knocked and entered.

It was rare for Will to suggest she hang back for her own safety, and the drunk had not argued.

Fifteen minutes later he’d returned to the rented car with the woman in tow, and, without providing any explanation or chatter, had begun driving.

Now, with the generator roaring and the hydraulics anxious to be about their work, Coffin, his eyes focused on a distant scrap heap and his lips taut, nodded and asked, “do you have any final requests?”

The stranger’s lips twitched upward, but her cheeks grew warm and wet.

“I will dance for you,” she replied.

Coffin’s hand tightened around the arcane tool in his pocket, but he shrugged.

Unsure of what would come next, Bunny held the Captain close.

The lines of the skirt bowed, and from beneath its folds extended eight black legs – jointed, spider-like limbs with a finely-pointed nail at the end of each. Retrieving her flute from her bundle, the arachnid woman began to play. Her movements carried her through the small sanded clearing with delicate care, and her nimble swaying disturbed no dust.

Briefly, the delicacy of the choreography and the gentle sweeps of the musical scale were enough to blot out the engine’s roar in Bunny’s ears. The drunk was unsure if the honeyed rhythm was somehow getting to her, or if the rum had finally started to do its work, but she was pleased to see her friend’s face unsoftened as the song came to a close.

It was not so much the grotesque proportions of the woman’s unfurled body that disturbed her as the chittering sound the woman’s mouth had begun to form around her woodwind, and the toothy maw-stretching that had been necessary to allow it to do so.

As the dancer’s skirt descended and became again hushed, Coffin said only, “very beautiful,” and Bunny found nothing on her lips but her bottle.

Replacing her instrument, the woman turned, entered the passenger-side door of the rusted Volkswagen, and bowed her head.

“Wait, is that a god damn baby in there,” asked Bunny, her eyes on the now bulging sling across the woman’s neck.

Will answered by leaning to his left and depressing the large red button hanging from the ceiling above.

His companion had not seen the desiccated bodies, wrapped tight in intricate webs and affixed to every flat surface of the beige-walled duplex. She had not seen the faces of those who had obviously struggled against their bonds until they died of dehydration – nor had she seen the results that had followed, the shrinking of skin and drying of flesh that had prepared their bodies for the Jorogumo’s – the spider-woman’s – consumption.

They were spared any sight of the woman’s compression, but not of that which had resided within her bundle – first four, then eight, then a dozen hair-filled digits began to work their way at the gap between the descending roof of the Beetle and the resisting door. In the final seconds a fat red eye joined the scurrying legs of the woman’s arachnid brood – first it seemed to accuse, but it quickly bulged under mechanical pressure, then simply smeared with the crumpling metal.

When the machine was powered down, and the silence of the country evening filled the shop, Bunny finally asked, “sweet corn in crap, what the fuck was that?”

“It was better than the alternative, setting her on fire – in Japanese folklore -” began Coffin.

“No,” the bottle-wielder interrupted, “I mean why did the bogeywoman just walk under the newspaper all by herself?”

“Well,” said Will, “she lived for hundreds of years as the last of of her kind, and she knew she wouldn’t even be that if someone found out who she was.

“Even for a being like that it’s tough to be alone. That’s why she was chatting up that cannibal, but, like she told me back at her place, how long can someone discuss cooking? Especially with a cow?

”She’d been carrying those egg sacks around her neck for decades and as far as she knew they were never going to hatch. Even the old folks home – which must have seemed like a fridge full of wizened TV dinners – had stopped having any allure.

“Her loneliness stacked up. That’s what put her in the seat.”

Captain Morgan did a brief headstand, and the quiet returned.

Finally, Bunny said, “well, shit, I’ll have to start spreading some vicious gossip about that huge furry fucker living in the stairwell.”

Despite the scene before them, despite the unpleasant work of the day, and even despite his own dour nature, Will’s throat gave out a single surprised laugh.

Reaching for the light switch he replied, “I think I saw a dairy bar with a liquor license a few dozen miles back on the main road. I’ll buy you a shake.”

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP304 – Coffin: Holiday, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and four.

Flash PulpTonight we present Coffin: Holiday, Part 1 of 1

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(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by the The Dexter Cast.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we present a tale of lingering holiday cheer, seasonal depression, and the occult.

 

Coffin: Holiday

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

“I ####ing hate this movie,” Bunny told Coffin.

They were standing at the L-shaped counter of their apartment’s small kitchen, he was opening a fresh tray of Oreo’s, she was rubbing orange juice against a glass of Vodka and calling it a screwdriver.

CoffinIn the living room beyond, Jimmy Stewart was undertaking his yearly debate with a bumbling angel.

Will, eying the rapidly emptying bottle of spirits, didn’t bother to reply. Instead, he lifted a small plate, and returned to the fat man on the couch.

As the town of Bedford Falls continued to fall apart in its alternate timeline, Coffin handed across the cookies.

“Thank you! Such a nice gesture – but, could I perhaps trouble you for a bit of the gal’s potato squeezings as well?”

It was the third glass the old man had had that evening, but Will gave a nod and circled back.

By the time he arrived with the topped up drink, however, the friction had returned to the room.

“Might I inquire as to why you won’t stop staring at me?” the guest was asking Bunny.

She pulled hard at her glass and squinted. “Why’d you never give me anything?”

It was enough to distract the bearded cookie eater from Uncle Billy’s stay in the asylum. “I didn’t want to get shot.”

“Would you actually even die if you caught a bullet?”

“No, but it isn’t fun,”
.
“Doesn’t gun play fall under naughty or nice?”

“I don’t guess, I observe.”

Bunny kept staring.

“Ok,” said the fat man, “you need to understand that I’m just a figurehead. No one actually believes in me anymore. Parents buy presents for their kids, or each other, and single folks would assume a crackhead had broken into their home if I suddenly started dropping Barbies everywhere. I actually tried it, back in the ‘80s, and everything just got thrown out. Better than in the 1880’s, though, then it was all ‘work of the devil,’ and ‘let’s burn it to be safe.’ Sweet sassafras.”

”Anyhow, you keep me alive by lying to the little ones, but it’s clear no one really wants some large fellow stalking through their living room in the middle of the night.”

Coffin handed across the Grey Goose and toed the large sack beside the couch.

“This thing still always feels pretty full,” he said.

“Take what you want,” replied the visitor. “If I were to tell the elves the truth, they’d be crushed. Things smell of desperation enough as it is up there, forever slaving against a clock for nothing.

“Besides, Mrs. Claus would not enjoy a bunch of moping manual labourers getting drunk on nog and hanging around the house.”

“Whaddya do with it all?” asked Bunny, as Will crawled into the container’s broad opening.

“I give some to charities with drop-off boxes,” replied the caller, “but, frankly – well, you’ve heard of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch?”

Above her upturned glass, Bunny’s eyes widened. “Holy ####, Santa’s a ####ing dolphin murderer?”

The supposedly jolly man sighed. “While I’ll be adding to it before going home, I didn’t start the problem, you people did. While it does happen to be convenient, I take no joy in it.

“Giving is most of the satisfaction in my existence, but, having been robbed of my purpose, all I have to live for is that last taste of warmth before heading north.”

Coffin returned then, his arms full of fleece parkas.

“Would you mind if I took these?” he asked. “I owe favours to some guys down in the Sally Ann soup kitchen line, even if they’d deny it.”

“At least they’ll see some use,” replied the myth.

“Oh, hey, ####-a-buck,” said Bunny, jumping from her seat. “We should go now, and you should come. Those wobbly sum#####es’ll think you’re just another fake lookin’ to dish out charity.”

Kringle grinned, his eyes dampening. “Thank you,” he said.

Noting the change in his expression, the drunk continued, “Oh, hey, don’t think we’re starting a ####ing tradition or anything, I was just looking for an excuse to turn off that god#### movie.”

Little did she know how wrong she was.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Coffin’s theme is Quinn’s Song: A New Man, by Kevin MacLeod of http://incompetech.com/

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP302 – Coffin: Returns, Part 3 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and two.

Flash PulpTonight we present Coffin: Returns, Part 3 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp302.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Mike Luoma.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his rarely sober roommate, discover the source of the mysterious suicide.

 

Coffin: Returns, Part 3 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

Coffin and Bunny’s sole scheduled destination on Wednesday morning required two bus transfers and incredible patience, but the house was easy enough to find once they’d stepped onto the proper street.

CoffinIts soggy lawn bristled with tasteful Christmas decorations, and, before entering, they’d paused to take in the powerless white lights and wrapped trees.

Now, in the home’s chrome and marble open-concept kitchen area, Bunny was asking the residence’s owner, Tabitha, “looks like a lot of effort out there, you do the decorating yourself?”

“No, Jorge, our yard guy, did it. He’s so meticulous, he loves that sort of detail-y stuff – and, you know, any excuse to have him over.”

Bunny had been chattier in this last leg of their journey, and Coffin had supposed, incorrectly, that it was the previous night’s adrenaline still rattling around in her system. He’d found her wide awake at dawn – she’d been pinballing between staring listlessly into the open freezer, which contained only a half-box of Eggos, and the couch, where the television was closing out something called “The 6 Ultra Brothers vs. the Monster Army.”

The questioning continued. As Bunny talked, her fingers tap-danced on the island. “How’d you learn to make the voodoo dolls? That the kind of thing you find a pattern for in the back of Better Homes and Gardens?”

Tabitha put on a retail grin. “Me and Nessa were sipping a Sauvignon blanc one day when she mentioned that her grandmother had taught her how to make them when she was young.”

She dropped her tone to one appropriate for back-fence conspiring and added, “they’re from New Orleans.”

Bunny raised a brow. “You say ‘New Orleans’ like the place is ####-deep in witches riding unicorns. I’ve been there. Seemed like it was mostly full of perverts, alcoholics, and people who wished the perverts and alcoholics would find somewhere else to vacation.”

Vanessa bit her lip to suppress a smirk. “It was nothing more than a way to pass an afternoon when I was a kid. For whatever reason, they didn’t hold any power then. Tabby convinced me to try again – the construction technique is a family secret, of course – and, well, let’s just say that Jorge’s never been happier.”

From his position by the button-laden fridge, Coffin cleared his throat. “That’s when you set up shop?”

“Yep, and the business has been, you know, good,” replied Tabitha, her grin having returned. “That’s why we sometimes declare it wine o’clock a little early.”

She waved a hand towards a freshly opened magnum, then returned to the pair of glasses she’d set out before the doorbell’s interruption.

“At ten-thirty on a Wednesday?” asked Coffin.

Tabitha did not move to retrieve any further stemware as she poured.

“Like I said, the business has been good.”

Bunny’s eyes were locked on the filling glass. Her voice seemed too loud for the room as she spoke.

“The business is now closed – like, Mormon #####house closed – but, listen, lemme tell you a little story about this shambling ####ing monster I met yesterday.

“He, er, it – nah, he – he smelled like fish. Not fresh, but, you know, pungent. There’s something more though, underneath it; something like the stink old people get when they’ve started rotting before they’re actually dead. Adults, apparently, aren’t supposed to be able to see him, but we’ve some secrets of our own.

“He’s big, and dresses, these days I guess, as a crossing guard. His face is tired and puffy. You can’t remember much beyond that once you’ve looked away, you just know there was a bit of white froth in the corners of his mouth, and you still have this ####-shower feeling that he’s either got a dirty neck or a massive growth.

“The orange vest he wears also sticks. It has a yellow X across the front and back, and it sits over a mud-spattered winter coat. There’s no forgetting his slobbering ####ing maw, either, as it looks like a shallow graveyard after an earthquake.

“Sounds gross but human, I guess, but, like your pin-collectors, The Bad Crossing Guard is only a shabby imitation.

“He was free to roam until Coffin showed up. Used to stalk schoolyards in high traffic areas. He’d hang back between two cars, his little stop sign in hand, waiting for some first grader whose big sister has run ahead to hide that she’s smoking.

“Then he’d help the kid across the street.”

Bunny’s fingers ceased their staccato. “Except, of course, that adults can’t see him.”

Tabitha tugged at her sweater’s chunky collar.

“Great story,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“Did I mention that he’s the one who told us where to find you?”

“So?”

“How do you kill it?” asked Vanessa, her hand, and Pinot noir, frozen at her lips.

“You don’t,” answered Coffin. “He doesn’t do it for laughs, he’s got an other-space where he keeps the dead. Ending his existence would mean locking those kids into an eternity in his unpleasant little kingdom. That’s when their trouble would truly begin.”

“You’re missing the real point,” said Bunny. “Why did he know it was you?”

“What?” asked Tabitha. Her glass was empty despite her now taut jaw.

“He told us what you looked like, told us your address, told us all about how you operate out of your living room. – hell, he knew the jilted housefrau you sold your death doll to. He also told us about Addison, Felicity, and Brock.

“Kids jabber, don’t they? Always sticking their noses into their parents’ illegal occult sales and such.

“The Guard even knows their teachers’ names. These days he’s got nothing better to do then walk around, watching and listening – he’s hopeful though. There’s always some ####ing dabbler who steps over the line and needs to have their nose broken, or worse, to teach them a lesson.

“Which brings us to the question: You like your kids much?”

“You bitch,” said Tabby.

“We didn’t know it would be so strong. We thought he’d do something embarrassing, that’s all. You wouldn’t,” said Nessa

“Oh, I’d slap your ####ing grandma if I could, twice, for teaching you just enough to be a problem – but that’s what I’d do. You think Coffin keeps a thing like that in line with ###damn hugs? I swear to Gene Simmons, you make another of those things and I’ll come out here and burn your ####ing house to the ground – and I’ll be the one playing good cop.”

With that, Bunny grabbed the tall-necked bottle and stormed from the house.

Will frowned, then followed.

 

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Coffin’s theme is Quinn’s Song: A New Man, by Kevin MacLeod of http://incompetech.com/

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP301 – Coffin: Returns, Part 2 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and one.

Flash PulpTonight we present Coffin: Returns, Part 2 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp301.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Mike Luoma.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his rarely sober roommate, discuss a public suicide with a dead man.

 

Coffin: Returns, Part 2 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

Coffin: ReturnsCoffin had spent the bus trip watching his companion sway with the turns, her knuckles white around the chromed support rail. They’d been forced to put their conversation on hold when they’d shuffled onto the transport, and into a throng of Christmas shoppers, but, once they’d stepped out amongst the office building canyons that dominated the city’s downtown core, Will resumed the discussion.

“What I was trying to say is that it wasn’t a mistake. I said it to keep Dorset’s blood off the tiles. In that moment he would have gladly slit his wrist to spend forever on that floor, weeping and arguing.

“The thing is, it was obvious that what he was looking for in life wasn’t the kid, it was answers. It was something meaningful to live for – so I gave him one. Even if it WAS the end of the world.”

Bunny grunted acknowledgement and kicked at a pile of gutter slush.

“Yeah,” she said, “you’re the god#### Santa Claus of murder-suicides.”

Coffin winced, and internally wondered how much longer it would be before his roommate wandered into a bottle of Grey Goose.

“Listen,” he said, “about this meeting: You’ll have to keep in mind that the departed get bored after a few years of being pinned in place. They need to feel like they have a little going on. Try and be patient.

“These people deal in – it’s a game of telephone, sort of, with messages that they repeat to each other. The dispatch follows a chain from sender to recipient, but everyone gets to know everyone else through the note that they’re relaying – it fills the hours. It’s also why they’re so handy to talk to.

“Though the dead whisper constantly to each other, however, generally the words they speak are not their own. The vast majority of their time is lonely.

“It’s easy to work yourself up to crazy notions when you’re trapped in your death like that.

“As an example, Wade, the guy we’re about to meet, doesn’t believe there’s anything after. He thinks he’s basically that piece of gum that’s lucky enough to get stuck on the bottom of the trash can, outside the bag, and somehow manages to never get dumped.

“He doesn’t want me to help him move on. He’s afraid of it.”

The conversation had carried them to the base of a large, snow-dusted, window, one of perhaps a thousand such panes that made up the side of the Maderson Building, a glass and granite skyscraper whose steel-loop-filled fountain had been emptied for the winter.

Turning his back to the chilled desk-jockeys smoking on the water feature’s benches, Coffin’s hand dipped into the worn pocket of his leather jacket. His fingers found the arcane silver chain of the Crook of Ortez, and he lifted the talisman’s ornate hook from its place of keeping.

Wade Daly had perished against the impact-proof veneer six years earlier, having been ejected through the windshield of a stolen vehicle by the stubbornly-solid cement barrier that surrounded the lobby. He’d landed face-first, so that his legs, and most of his stomach, rested against the tower, and his right cheek was left at an awkward angle upon the sidewalk pavement.

“Wade,” said Coffin, his boots no more than six inches from the dead man’s nose.

“Coffin,” replied Wade. With some effort, the apparition ground his cheek to a better viewing position. “Uh, and lady.”

Bunny only nodded. Her hands had formed tight fists in her pockets.

Will was quick to move things along. “I hear you know a little something about the televised suicide?”

The ghost shrugged as best he could. “Yep.”

“You want to tell me?”

“Nope.”

Coffin sighed, “you understand the guy was a father? He had three kids. They were all watching when Dad suddenly showed up on live TV from the plaza.”

“Not my fault if some schmuck wants to climb the greenery to hang himself with the lights.”

“It’s Christmas, you heartless bastard,” said Will. To Bunny’s ear he sounded more tired than angry, but her sudden return to attention caught Wade’s gaze.

“Hey, don’t judge me lady,” said the phantasm. “I don’t want to be a dick, but what if it’s only my shittiness that’s keeping me here? What if I do a good deed and it balances my punishment and I’m out into the nothing?

“I’d love to help, but I can’t risk it.”

“Look, I’ll cut you a deal,” said Coffin. “Tell me what you know and I’ll smash the old woman’s window.”

Wade frowned. “You smashed her window last time.”

“Yeah, and won’t it piss her off all the more since she just got it replaced? All that heavy karma will be yours, and it’ll easily offset whatever telling me a third-hand conversation might.”

There was a moment of silence as Daly considered, during which Bunny found herself oddly tempted to tuck in the logo-laden t-shirt that had slid up the man’s back at the time of his death, and was now eternally left bunched about his neck. Rather than draw the attention of the locals, however, she instead retreated to her own thoughts.

Finally, Wade said, “I sort of know a stabbing victim from over in the plaza – Tommy Mcelroy. He didn’t see it, but he was talking to someone who did.”

“Yeah, I know Tommy,” said Coffin. “He doesn’t like me much. Frankly, I’m not surprised someone murdered him.”

“Ah, he’s not so bad when you get to know him. After the first three years I barely noticed what an asshole he was. Right, so, as I was saying, Tommy was talking to The Bad Crossing Guard. The Guard was supposedly friggin’ gleeful. He’d been there first-hand when the guy took his dive. He apparently recognized it as a certain kinda abracadabra. Said he even knew the wizards, or whatever, that caused it.

“He also said he was surprised you’d let that sort of thing go on. Tommy thinks The Guard is hoping you’re slipping. I told him everyone knew you were just out of town for a few days.”

When the tale finished, Will nodded. “Thanks, you’ve really helped me.”

“You take that shit back,” replied Wade.

Coffin only smirked and returned the occult hook to his pocket.

“C’mon,” he said, “we’ve got another bus to catch.”

Once she judged herself outside of Daly’s earshot, Bunny asked, “you’re going to break some old lady’s window?”

“His grandmother’s, specifically – but, no, of course not. Every time I talk to Wade I convince him of the same things. He blames her for his death, that much is obvious, but that’s as far as I’ve ever gotten with his case. If he’s got to live on with his delusions, they can at least be helpful ones.

“Still, I wish we were just smashing up some nana’s place. No, we’ve got a much less pleasant trip ahead of us: We’re off to see The Bad Crossing Guard.”

 

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Coffin’s theme is Quinn’s Song: A New Man, by Kevin MacLeod of http://incompetech.com/

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP300 – Coffin: Returns, Part 1 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred.

Flash PulpTonight we present Coffin: Returns, Part 1 of 3
(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp300.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Mike Luoma.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his rarely sober roommate, hear an arcane tale of parental terror and loss.

 

Coffin: Returns, Part 1 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

Dorset’s, the tavern, was quietly puttering through the depths of an unexpectedly warm Tuesday afternoon as Dorset, the man, puttered about in the depths of the shadows beneath his liquor display shelves.

He asked, “you sure you don’t want a wee something?”

The scattered selection of booths and tables were empty, but two of the swiveling stools that marched along the bar were occupied. Will Coffin, still wearing his heavy leather jacket despite the unseasonal swelter, sat empty handed, but Bunny, wearing jeans and a mostly-clean white t-shirt, was tightly gripping a glass of water.

Before she might reply, Coffin caught the barman’s eye and said, “tell her about when we met.”

Dorset’s cleaning cloth came to a rare stop and his gaze dropped to a bit of foam disintegrating in the trap beneath the beer taps. It was an odd change of topic, as he’d asked the pair down to discuss a recent, very public, suicide, but he obliged nonetheless.

“I’d hired a detective to find my boy, Keenan. See, when I was seventeen I knocked up a lass who I’d fancied since I was six. We’d always thought we were in love, and, when you’re seventeen, that means some sweaty groping outside a rock show that eventually turns into a first experience in the back of your Da’s car, which he’s expecting back in his drive in thirty minutes.

“Anyhow, it was enough, whatever the tally, and she told me I was to be a Pa. My best mate in the moment, Elmore, told me we should name it after his band, Throbbing Head, as it was their show, and they technically provided the soundtrack. My personal response was a long run of regular vomiting.

“Hell, I wasn’t ready to be starting a family at seventeen. I dare you to show me anyone who is. She decided she was going to have an abortion. I must admit, I was thankful.

“All the same, her parents would have nothing of it. They said it was because of their Catholic heritage, but I still wonder if it was a sort of punishment to make her carry it through, then have it packaged up and shipped to an orphanage. They’d have never let her keep it either, which is the cruelest thing.

“We’d fallen out by the delivery. Oh, I was quite ready, I said, to step up to my duties as a father, but the stress had been too much for us, and we’d concluded we were, at best, friends.

“We still write.

“So – point being, another seventeen years later, I hired a detective to find Keenan. I hadn’t even seen him in the hospital, but there came a period when I was itching to know. I’d just separated from my first wife, and I couldn’t help but think there was this lad in the world who looked like me.

“There wasn’t though. A couple had adopted him, but the fellow had started running around, and so the would-be mother drowned herself, and my boy, in the tub. The adulterer apparently found them both while trying to slip in unnoticed to get the lipstick off his collar.

“That was a low time indeed.”

Coffin cleared his throat and turned to Bunny, who adjusted her attention while still drawing water through her straw.

“I’ve had a few situations like that,” he said. “We used to call them “orphan cases.” Parent wants to reconcile, kid has – moved on. A year before Dorset’s, Sandy and I did the same thing for a British Lady, capital L. We probably shouldn’t have, especially considering how much yammering she did afterward, but we were starving. Not a bad gig though. They pay for the initial conversation, then pay again to get you to unhook the kid. We were lucky too, it was an easy job – the little Lord just wanted to talk with mommy.”

“It was the mouthings of that same dowager that lead me to you,” replied Dorset. “I mean, it was the ’70s, right? So you couldn’t swing a phone directory without hitting fifty psychics, but I finally dug you two out of the rumours.”

“Sandy’s decision,” muttered the shaman, but his lips twitched.

“Whatever the case, we met, right? Sandy’s wearing his jacket, looks like she hasn’t slept in four days, Will-o here hasn’t shaved in maybe two years and smells like a hobo’s crotch.”

“We’d been busy.”

“You’d been robbing graves on the outskirts of London.”

“Listen,” said Coffin, “we weren’t going to meet you at our place and have you coming around daily to ask if we could fix your luck or mystically fill your pants. To be fair, we didn’t know what you wanted exactly, just that you were offering us a Tuscan villa’s worth of money.”

“Inheritance,” clarified Dorset, as he scooped Bunny’s empty glass. “I’d been making good coin until the divorce, and I knew I had plenty to live off of if I chose. Ma did good business running a boarding house with strapping young maintenance men always on hand. People were willing to pay for discretion in those days.

“After she died she left me one tax free safe, and gave everything else to Mr. Bell, her business partner.

“I was young enough to think money wasn’t all that important, and it seemed, at least then, as if talking with Keenan was the solution to my concerns. I was not in the greatest of positions, frankly, my mind had begun to wander, and I do not know what end I might have met if I hadn’t found – if things hadn’t turned out as they did.

“It was a small bathroom, mostly decorated in cream colours, and the elderly couple who were renting it thought we were mad for offering them a hundred pounds for an hour’s use of their loo.

“They made us promise that we wouldn’t ‘undertake any sexy business,’ nor make any messes.

“We didn’t use the full time though. Ten minutes in I was weeping so heavily I couldn’t continue. As it happened, the murderess was there too, eternally locked with him in the tub. His Stockholm Syndrome ran deep, and it seemed as if his span with her was an insurmountable barrier.

“I remember considering mad plans – finding the flat’s owners and offering them what I could for their place, then convincing Will and Sandy to move in so that I could communicate regularly, or, maybe – maybe inviting everyone into the hall, so that I might hold myself beneath the tap and begin my own eternal battle.

“Do you remember what you said, Will, when I asked how long you thought he’d be there? It was the way you said it that made me think that it wasn’t just nebulous talk, that you meant it.”

“Of course I do, I said, ‘Till the end of the world, I guess.’ It was a stupid mistake to let my tongue wag – Sandy got the kid unstuck three years later. You did end up buying the apartment, though.”

“I still own it, in fact. It makes me feel better knowing that woman is lying there, forsaken in the dark.”

Will nodded, and Bunny turned to take in the empty seating.

Finally, with a tight throat, Coffin said, “so – tell me about this suicide.”

The afternoon crawled on.

 

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP294 – Coffin: Change, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and ninety-four.

Flash PulpTonight we present Coffin: Change

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp294.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Nutty Bites.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Coffin and Bunny face a powerful arcane force, and find themselves in a changing climate.

 

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

The winding road home had lead Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his tipsy companion, to a Motel 6 a mere five hours from Capital City. Hurricane rains and fearsome wind had made continuing on an unpleasant prospect, and Coffin had nosed the rented Nissan into the lot only half certain that the neon smudge beyond the river on his windshield actually indicated lodging.

He was happy enough to cut the engine and not have to fight the storm for his life any longer – the confirmation of a vacancy sign was nearly just frosting on his fully-stopped cake.

“What a ####in’ dump,” said Bunny. “Still, I’d rather not drown in a parking lot. Let’s get inside.”

After a quick exchange at the faux-wood front desk, and a coin toss for who would bunk on the folding cot, the pair settled for the night. Coffin had spent the trip sleeping in a variety of ragged jeans and t-shirts, and tonight was no different. His lack of wardrobe changes meant that, while Bunny ducked into the bathroom to change, he was first grab the remote.

He’d found The Weather Channel by the time she exited in her oversized pin-striped pajamas.

“The Weather Channel?” she asked, “Better yet, The Weather Channel on mute? Christ, here comes the party – should I call for some champagne from the con-see-urge?”

“The what?” he replied.

“The Con-see-arg? The conc – whatever: The ####ing bottle boy, not that this place has anything more than a counter jockey with an already opened fifth of watered-down vodka under the counter. Way to ruin a solid goddamn joke.”

CoffinWithout breaking away from the swirl of gray and red, Coffin said, “yeah, The Weather Channel.”

“It’s raining outside – you know how I know? Because it’s been raining for the last five ####ing hours. How about you give me the remote and you can, you know, look out a ####ing window. That way we’ll both be happy.”

Will finally shifted to eye his companion. Something about the woman had changed since they’d turned eastward, but he’d been too preoccupied to put his finger on it. She was peevish, but it was not her usual hangover fury.

“I stopped taking suggestions from women dressed like you when I was ten and told my senile grandmother I wasn’t going to eat any more of her still-frozen peas,” he replied. “Why did you buy that senior home suit, anyhow? Usually you just pass out in – wait, are you sober?”

Bunny’s cheeks grew red, and she suddenly became extremely interested in the close-cropped green carpet.

“I’m not ####ing quitting or anything,” she said. “I’ve never been in need of any ###damn church basements – I’m only, uh, taking it easy for a bit.”

Bunny’s gaze came up as she finished, so that she could clearly see his reaction. Her fists clenched in preparation for a smirk.

Instead, Coffin nodded, letting the moment sink to silence.

When she began to fuss with the folded blankets on her cot, he changed the topic to the weather.

“See this tracking map? Anything seem weird about the storm’s path?”

“Looks like any two-year-old’s scribbling. It’s a mess of loops with a randomly straight line.”

“Exactly. The scrawl is saying the forecasters are blaming sudden wind changes, but the guy they keep cutting to at the desk looks like he thinks a pack of teenage hooligans are feeding him bad meteorological data.”

“So?”

“So I think our night’s not done. There’s too much property damage and too many lost lives.”

“You’re going to go help people bail out their cellars and maybe save some kittens in trees while you’re at it?”

He stood from the bed. “I’m going to deal with the problem directly.”

“You plan on punching a ####ing hurricane?”

“No, I plan on reasoning with it.” He stooped to lace his boots, then added “ – hopefully.”

* * *

Despite the heart of the storm lying further north, each step was a fight for footing as the duo crossed the small beach’s parking lot.

Will was saying, “What is it? Well, squalls are a symptom common to a number of beasties, but most of them I’ve only ever read about – it could be the Tempestwalker, but I’ve never met it, I only know about it from Blackhall’s book and the occasional rumour. It could be even be one of the old thunder chuckers – Thor, Perun, or Set – though my understanding is that they’re all dead.”

“My mom always used to say storms were God bowling,” Bunny shouted into the rain. “The thunder was supposed to be the big guy getting strikes.”

She regretted the comment, as even the brief statement had covered her tongue with blown sand and seawater.

From behind the damp white motel towel that Coffin had absconded with, he said, “I’d say this is probably one of the elementals – specifically water, or Merc, as he was introduced to me. Mostly because I know for sure he exists.”

“He?”

“Sorry, just a leftover from the Victorian-era literature. It. Although, personality-wise – well, it’s an approximation.

“The problem is that Merc really shouldn’t be able to do this. It hasn’t had this kind of power since before -” a gust of wind carrying the sound of shattering glass somewhere in the dark over his left shoulder gave Will a moment to reconsider his words. “Actually, the problem with Merc is that he’s incredibly old school.”

”It,” said Bunny. “It’s incredibly old school. If it’s, uh, even it.”

Will raised a brow at his unusually sober companion. “Yeah. Exactly. Speaking of, time to cast a line and see what we catch.”

The silver links of the chain affixed to the Crook of Ortez dripped from Will’s jacket pocket as he plucked the talisman from its place of safekeeping. With a stiff arm, Coffin began to swing the ornate hook high over his head. Though the gale only grew, he kept the rhythm of his orbit for three long minutes before Merc appeared.

Bunny’s first thought was that a tornado funnel was setting down – she’d seen many of the coiling fingers in grainy footage from Discovery Channel storm chaser specials – but even as the rain abated in a narrow cone around their position on the shore, the billowing throng halted its descent.

Its details were half cloud, half shadow, but, a face, of inhuman proportions, formed a hundred feet above them.

Coffin ceased his rotations.

“If I saw this #### on the Internet,” said Bunny, “I’d think it was the work of some CGI-hoaxing keyboard molester.”

“Quiet now,” said Will, “things are about to get stupid enough as it is.”

The sound of Merc’s words arrived as if carried on a combination of crashing waves and surging wind,

“You’ve a new wench then? I suppose you had to get rid of the last one, considering how lippy she was.”

As he spoke, Bunny noted that the thunderheads which formed his mouth did not move. Instead, the darkness at their edges seemed to ripple with his speech, providing a semblance of motion.”

“Oh,” answered Coffin, “she’s around.”

“Not a great move on the part of you penis-wagglers to start letting them talk in public,” continued the elemental. Despite the dramatic method of its delivery, Bunny thought the entity sounded much like an opinionated uncle with no verbal filter.

Will cleared his throat. “If I’d known you were going to show up I wouldn’t have spent the last while driving across the country to check my thermometer.”

“The ogre still lives? May miracles never cease – and by miracles, I really mean me.”

“Yeah, it’s worryingly awake – and now I find you here, practically on my back stoop. At least the beast of the mountain is a mindless creature. You should know better than to show off like this. The more you carry on, the closer the Spider-God gets.”

“Sheriff, Sheriff, the idea that magic brings Kar’Wick closer to our world is a myth. A boogey cooked up by your funny-hatted predecessor.”

Coffin squinted at the massive visage before asking, “Blackhall wore a hat?”

“It was the same one every time I saw him. Actually, the same tattered coat as well.”

“Huh. Anyhow, back to my point: The last time I saw you, you couldn’t so much as cause a drizzle outside of your Bermudan home. Unless I’m mistaken, and I doubt I am, you haven’t been this far north in nearly two-hundred years.

“You can doubt old man Thomas if you like, but open your misty eyes: You can’t deny that there’s something odd going on. I’ve seen the results. Hell, I’m seeing you right now.”

“Arcane power is cyclical, that’s all,” replied Merc. “Any threat of nearing disaster is a false conspiracy cooked up by Blackhall, who simply wanted to wipe the occult from the world. You, the Coffin, should know that better than any else.”

Bunny shrugged within her damp jacket.

“You know,” she said, “I thought it was pretty nifty meeting the weather and ####, but you’re as thick headed as my ex-husband. Which is to say, he was pretty ####ing sure nothing could hurt him until a cleaver landed in his skull.

“Sounds like you weren’t much of a fan of this dead guy, Drywall or whatever, but do you have any reason to not believe him other than the fact that you don’t like him?”

Merc frowned.

“Your bitch is yapping,” it said, “where’s its leash?”

Coffin’s jaw was locked tight as he responded. “Listen, you can spout conspiracy nonsense if you like – hell, you can claim to have assassinated JFK for all I care – but this antiquated garbage you’re speaking isn’t winning you any friends.

“Go home, and quietly, or you’ll wish you’d had the chance to spend the next two hundred years tickling kites and dispersing flatulence.

“You may mock me, my title, or my mentor, but you WILL respect my neophyte.”

Thunder rolled, the rain returned, and Merc’s features loomed close.

Will’s fingers once again entangled in the silver chain.

“Come then,” he replied, “and learn the hard way.”

At the sight of the charm, the elemental’s fury-lit eyes seemed to reconsider. As if no more threat than a draft of pipe smoke, its own wind dispersed its form over the white-capped water.

After a moment of staring down the calming ocean, Will started back to their room with heavy boots and stooped shoulders. Three steps into his exit, however, he turned to his companion.

A hint of a smirk touched his lips as he said, “good job.”

By the time the pair found their numbered door, even the drizzle had ceased.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Freesound.org credits:

  • rbh thunder_03.wav by RHumphries
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  • oceanwavescrushing.wav by Luftrum

    • Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

    – and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

    FP274 – Sgt. Smith in Model Behaviour, Part 1 of 1

    Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and seventy-four.

    Flash PulpTonight we present Sgt. Smith in Model Behaviour, Part 1 of 1

    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp274.mp3]Download MP3
    (RSS / iTunes)

     

    This week’s episodes are brought to you by Dead Kitchen Radio.

     

    Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

    Tonight, private investigator Mulligan Smith hears a tale from his father’s checkered history with the Capital City Police Department.

     

    Sgt. Smith in Model Behaviour, Part 1 of 1

    Written by J.R.D. Skinner
    Art and Narration by Opopanax
    and Audio produced by Jessica May

     

    Mulligan SmithIt was a Sunday, and Mulligan was dabbing at his plate’s last smudge of Hollandaise sauce with his final sliver of English muffin.

    He leaned back from the square oak table – the same he’d grown up leaving chocolate milk rings on – and burped.

    His mute father grimaced, and pointed to a yellow blob that had escaped his son’s fork and landed on the unzipped hoodie he insisted on always wearing.

    “Yeah, yeah,” replied Mulligan, as he rubbed at the stain. “Listen, Dad, not that I’m complaining, but you cook for me when you have a favour to ask – so ask.”

    The gray-haired former police sergeant let out a lungful of air, and nodded.

    Rising, with a creak, from the thrice reupholstered kitchen chair, the old man moved down the short wood-paneled hallway that lead to his bedroom. After a moment of shelf shuffling and drawer slamming, he returned with a cassette tape and a rectangular player consisting of a transparent flip-out door bookended by a pair of black speakers.

    With a fast moving BIC pen, the elder Smith scrawled a short preface on his always-near pad of paper.

    The note read: “Capital City wasn’t in great shape in ‘89.”

    It was the only warning he provided, but it was clue enough to the younger Smith. He knew his father had regularly carried a pocket recorder during the era to capture witness statements. The method saved on hand cramping when tongueless-ly attempting to convey information to his fellow officers.

    Except for a very few, however, those cassettes had been destroyed at his father’s retirement.

    Mulligan’s belly felt suddenly heavy as the play button was pressed.

    The voice was a woman’s; high pitched, but comfortable speaking with a cop.

    “It’s Doreen – but, listen: I was washing my panties at the Washeteria on Danforth, maybe an hour ago, so 10PM-ish, and this blond came in wearing a Capital University jacket and a Walkman so loud it could frighten an Amish village off their land.

    “She struts past me with a pink plastic laundry basket piled high with her frillies and a stack of textbooks – and I notice she’s wearing jewelery. At the goddamn Washeteria.

    “Really, it was nothing too over the top. Classy stuff, but, you know, girlish. There was a gold music note on her neck that would get you at least a hundred bucks in any of the downtown pawn shops, and a bracelet chunky enough to club a seal.

    “Anyhow, she picks the machine at the end to dump her clothes into, then she sits up on the counter and starts digging through one of her books. I mean, not in a bored kind of way, she was seriously tucking in.

    “Thing is, there was this guy in a white sweater, with a blue zigzag pattern – sort of Charlie Brown style, but thinner, and around his collar instead of his stomach. His teeth were perfect and I’d be willing to bet he had his hair done earlier today – and not cheaply, either.

    “Their conversation started about math – he was maybe twenty-five to her eighteen or nineteen, and I guess he’d been through the same accounting course. I tuned it all out until he said:

    ““I’m done my laundry too – and that looks like a lot of stuff. Could I drive you home?”

    “Well, there was one car in the parking lot, a cherry red Corvette with windows as black as a blind guy’s sunglasses.

    “She looked impressed – and I couldn’t believe it.

    “Before she went through the door with him, I put myself in her path.

    ““I don’t think that’s the best idea, hon,” I said.

    “She looked my little black dress over and I know she was thinking, “Jesus, this woman dresses like a whore.”

    “Hell, I almost blurted “that’s because I AM a whore, bitch,” but one of us had to maintain some manners.

    “She didn’t actually say anything to me, she just kept talking to the guy. Told him she was down the road at The Gardens, and how she really appreciated it.

    “Now, I know you’re thinking, “who is this street walker to judge who this girl wants to climb in the sack with?”

    “But that ain’t it.”

    The woman cleared her throat, and the tape reported a lighter being struck twice, then igniting.

    She continued.

    “I don’t know how long he’d been haunting the place, but I’m sure he noticed the same thing I did: A good looking, but slightly overwhelmed, girl folding clothes with no wedding band on.

    “Now, what’s a guy with that much expensive cologne on doing hanging around a laundromat after dusk? Waiting to play knight?

    “Hell no. I can’t prove it, but that guy was either a rapist or an axe murderer.

    “Worse, though, is that I know cars. You get in that pretty moving box, and you really don’t have any room to maneuver. A lot can happen in that tiny space before you can do anything about it.

    “Hey, maybe I’m just being an idiot, but the news is always yammering about those missing blondes…”

    Though the tape kept winding, there was a pause in the dialogue as a pencil scratched across paper.

    “Yeah, actually,” said the woman, after reading an unseen request. “You’re lucky I’ve made it a professional habit to memorize license numbers.”

    There was a juttering shift in the audio then, and, following a series of clicks, a man’s voice filled the speakers.

    Mulligan recognized it to be that of Gus Kramer, his father’s former partner.

    “You’re sure about the lawyer? Okay, in that case, why don’t you tell us what you’d intended to do with the Ms. Harrison once you knocked her out?”

    The tape head ground on, but there was a deep silence before the response came.

    “Yeah, sure guys, why not?” was the eventual reply. Despite the delay, the man’s tone was cool and clear. “She was the fifth. You’ll find the rest back at my house. The basement will be cold when you enter – I like how, er, pert it makes them, but I really keep it that way to slow the reaction.

    “I built a tank in Dad’s old workshop; well, I had it built for me. I said I needed an incredibly strong giant aquarium.

    “There’s two tubes on either side – are you familiar with casting resin at all? You mix two chemicals together and the goo hardens to something almost like glass. Sometimes, at booths in the mall, you can buy a tarantula in what looks like clear plastic. Basically the same thing.

    “My first stab at a diorama was a failure. I started by dumping too much in, and I didn’t realize how hot the process would get – at her hips, she was screaming in agony. The whole place smelled like flaming chicken.

    “I panicked a bit and finished filling the tank twice as quick. Her thrashing did a surprisingly good job of mixing things, and she was firmly stuck when the liquid stopped her bawling.

    “The end product was terrible, because the resin cracked and went yellow from the heat, but she was good training.

    “I ordered away for industrial stuff, which is way cooler, and number two taught me to do it in stages. She fought forever, though, and I ended up with something that looked like a woman curled in the fetal position at the top of a box, which isn’t exactly sexy.

    “With number three I kept her unconscious till the bottom layer had already set, so that she had the use of the rest of her body, but her feet were pinned in place. From there it climbed a few inches of resin at a time, with a mix that allowed it to set as slowly as possible. Of course, she wanted to remain alive, so she stretched every muscle, with her back arched and face upturned to try and get that last breath.

    “That definitely turned out sexy.

    “Four is beautiful as well, actually – she showed me about the value of props, and now she’ll always be my naughty french maid.

    “I had a school scene in mind for number five. I have a desk and plaid skirt at home waiting for her. Nothing more though – I prefer them topless. I thought I could strap her to her chair beneath the tartan, so that she could still move her arms a bit, and provide the randomness that’s really necessary for a life-like scene.

    “Wouldn’t it be great if I could convince her to keep just one hand raised?

    “I was so excited to see my beautiful liquid glass slide past her cherry lip gloss -”

    The elder Smith stopped the tape, and his son sighed. He knew the case well enough, and that the man the press had dubbed The Cube Killer was long dead from a sharpened prison house toothbrush.

    “I was wrong,” said the younger man, “you also cook before a funeral. The victim?”

    Reaching into his pocket, the retiree retrieved a newspaper obituary for one Doreen Mitchell, mother of three. It indicated that viewings would begin Monday evening, and both Smiths wondered if the accompanying photo had struck many of those who habitually trawled the back-page column as inappropriate. Still, whatever the cut of her dress, the ferocity of the woman’s smile was inescapable.

    Mulligan nodded, considering his words. Finally, he said, “I’ll get my suit pressed in the morning.”

     

    Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

    Freesound.org credits:

    Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

    – and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

    FP273 – Coffin: Balm, Part 3 of 3

    Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and seventy-three.

    Flash PulpTonight we present Coffin: Balm, Part 3 of 3
    (Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)
    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp273.mp3]Download MP3
    (RSS / iTunes)

     

    This week’s episodes are brought to you by The Way of the Buffalo Podcast.

     

    Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

    Tonight, Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his mouthy companion, escort a ghost into Las Vegas.

     

    Coffin: Balm, Part 3 of 3

    Written by J.R.D. Skinner
    Art and Narration by Opopanax
    and Audio produced by Jessica May

     

    CoffinAt noon Bunny was sitting in a bar named Jimbo’s, at the southern end of Vegas.

    Despite having run dry of whiskey while north of the city, she had not intended on entering the establishment.

    An hour earlier, while parked across from a squat pink-plastered bungalow, Will had pushed her out of the rented Focus with fifty bucks and a request that she purchase a shovel. The bored looking teen behind the nearest 7-11 counter had given her the most likely location to find the tool: A Home Depot, some five blocks away.

    Except for the occasional liquor run, Bunny had rarely been left to wander in the real world since meeting Coffin. Still, the nature of their current business had her wanting nothing more than to be done with it, and she’d moved quickly along the heat-baked sidewalk while providing a mumbled, yet foul-mouthed, commentary on her surroundings.

    Almost as if to spite her mood, the stroll had revealed a surprisingly nice suburb, and the hardware store appeared freshly planted. She’d departed the checkout line with a solid shovel, and a twenty for change.

    It was only then that she noticed the sports bar hanging from the end of a neighbouring plaza, and encountered a series of entwined coincidences that would change the trajectory of her life.

    The first stepped from his dusty chevy to pull wide the watering hole’s glass-fronted door. Thin-faced and slouch shouldered, Bunny’s distant eye had convinced her he was a perfect match for her dead husband, Tim.

    With the tool in one hand, and the other sweating heavily around the Jackson in her pocket, she’d followed him inside.

    There, with a beer cooling her palms, and air conditioning on her face, she observed the nodding back of the stranger’s head from the depths of a cavernous booth. She’d been doing fine until he’d started tapping the bar’s trim along to Bob Seger’s declaration of love for old time rock and roll.

    “Exactly your sort of bull####,” she said to no one but herself.

    Her eyes stung as she staggered to her feet, and every step she took spanned a memory.

    The early days came first: Dancing to this very song while ducking to avoid the low hanging ceiling in their first apartment’s basement living room; Sharing bottles of Smirnoff and smoking joints on the balcony of their second place, while watching the sun sink away and rise again.

    Her vision was a blur when she halved the distance to the bar, but her focus was solely on the time Tim had climbed a fence to defend her honour against a hooligan kid who’d been badmouthing her from the far side.

    It had been gallant, even if the idiot had accidentally broken his leg on the way down.

    She touched the Tim-a-like’s shoulder, and suddenly her mind returned to the kitchen of their final apartment, with the smell of iron and sulphur in the air, and her belly burning from a knife wound.

    Without wanting to, she remembered the blade in her own hand, and the heavy thud of his fall after she’d buried it in his brow.

    She’d cried then too.

    “The fuck’s your problem?” demanded the startled stranger, as he spun on his stool.

    A coincidental choice of words, but the same response she’d received whenever Tim had found her weeping – usually due to his own handiwork.

    If there was anything familiar in the man’s face, it was the drunk’s common hunger to be left alone with their can of Busch, and nothing more.

    Leaving her glass half-full on the counter, Bunny made for the exit.

    * * *

    Will Coffin, standing on the cement doorstep of the bungalow with the silver chain in his hand, was being questioned by the specter at the tip of his occult leash.

    Allison was asking, “shouldn’t we wait till your partner gets back?”

    The dead girl had directed them to the right home easily enough, and the parked stretch-Hummer, with its custom hot tub, had reassured Coffin that her meth-craving ex-boyfriend was indeed living there, and home.

    After Bunny’s departure, however, the phantom had provided endless excuses as to why the visitation was a bad idea.

    In the end he’d had to pull her from the car.

    He knocked again.

    “No,” he replied. “There’s too much chance at play in this kind of surprise party, and Bunny tends to startle people.”

    Coffin had never been a fan of the heat, and his leather jacket was little help under the relentless sun. He was eager to be on his way, but he made conversation as he measured the entry’s thickness against the weight of his boot. “How did he manage to afford this place?”

    “It’s a rental, but between the limo and the drugs he makes decent bank. You’re definitely not going to kick your way in, he’s got a bunch of deadbolts.”

    “Well then,” said the shaman, as he jiggled the arcane links, “how about you spook on in there and open them from the other side?”

    * * *

    As it happened, Shane was expecting a different sort of company. His long term habit had finally pushed him into unmanageable depths, and he’d barely been able to park his technically-still-on-the-job limo before he’d bolted shut his front door and took to his couch with a pilfered supply of his addiction, and an abruptly-shortened shotgun.

    He couldn’t tell if the banging from outside was real or not, but he’d cracked a window to let out any errant fumes, and crept into the hallway.

    Upon arrival, he was fairly convinced that the translucent arm which came reaching for the locks was a hallucination.

    The sleight fingers worked the chains and knobs, and there was something he recognized in those chewed, but somehow delicate, nails.

    “Hell, this must be the best I’ve ever had,” he said, but the flood of chemically induced paranoia made it a hollow victory.

    As the entrance swung wide to reveal the girl he’d buried deep and a lanky man in a biker jacket, Shane’s mind continued to argue it was all a figment of his imagination – but his hand raised high the barrel of his gun.

    Coffin took a single step into the shadows of the home’s interior, then froze when he realized he was caught in the line of fire behind Allison’s insubstantial form – but, before the junkie could shoot, Allison began to babble.

    “You killed me! You left me beneath the sand to rot!”

    “How can you be pissed that I killed you if you’re here complaining at me?” replied Shane.

    “I’m a ghost, asshole!

    “- or you’re just my fucking delusion – whatever the case, it can’t be that bad if you’re here bitching.”

    The girl was wailing now, and the fist with which she held the entrance’s handle slammed the slab’s weight repeatedly against the jamb. “You don’t know what it is being locked in the sun like that, lying like I’m dying forever.”

    Shane’s trigger hand steadied, though his voice did not. “What the fuck is your problem!? I may as well kill you twice, you fu-”

    “#### gobbling donkey fondler!”

    Bunny didn’t give the gunman a chance to respond. With the momentum of five blocks of growing anger behind her swing, she lay the flat of the shovel across the peak of his skull.

    The murderer reeled, and dropped his weapon, but he briefly kept his feet.

    “MY problem!?” asked Bunny, as she set her grip wide behind her shoulders, “I’ll give you a ####ing problem.”

    Her second stroke snapped the metal scoop from the wooden shaft, and left Shane unconscious on the floor.

    It was only once Will touched her neck that she stopped beating the man with the shattered stem.

    For a moment there was just the sound of ragged breathing, then Bunny turned to face her traveling companion.

    “I’m impressed,” said Coffin.

    “Hell, I know a couple fighting from five-hundred ####ing yards,” she replied. “and I could see your back at the door. Figured you must be in trouble to be letting them carry on like that.

    “From there – well, Christ, every one of these idiots I’ve known is the same: They’ve got a thousand latches, but they crack the glass to vent their stink – and there ain’t a drunk alive who hasn’t mastered crawling through a window from having locked their keys inside their place so often.”

    Though her cheeks were wet, she couldn’t help but let out a laugh. She dropped her club.

    “####, I couldn’t just let him kill you. I’m all the ####ing friends you got, and I can’t afford the funeral.”

    Will smiled.

    Behind him, at the chain’s furthest length, waited Allison.

    The spirit sniffed, and Coffin sighed.

    “I’m sorry this wasn’t your solution, but I hope there’s a little satisfaction in it for you,” he said. “I think it’s best if you take a bit to gather yourself, and you’ll likely want a some privacy with your cowboy.

    “We’ll be there soon.“

    As he finished Will let go of the talisman, and, before the phantom might resist, the returned pull of her resting place overcame her.

    “You thought pummeling this douche jockey would bring her closure and let her go?” asked Bunny, as her roommate retrieved a pair of gloves from the interior of his coat, and stooped towards the unconscious body.

    “Nah, but I’ll certainly feel better when we dig up her corpse and lock it in his trunk for the highway patrol to find.” Coffin pulled the Hummer’s keys from Shane’s pocket. “We’re going to need another shovel, though.”

    “Might have been easier to just drive her home.”

    “Oh, we’ll try that too, but It won’t help – it never does. Person like that longs to go back, but they didn’t get dead by having a family that cared. They know what they want, but they don’t know what they need. Like I’ve said, often the best I can do is provide a distraction.”

    * * *

    They were nearly out of the city before Bunny spoke again.

    “I think we should get some ice – a big pile of ice.” As she said it, she pointed at a passing gas station whose freezer brimmed with white bags.

    “Ice?” asked Will.

    “Yeah. Maybe it’s just another of your distractions, but – well, the girl and her bronco buster seem to complain a lot about the heat. Might be nice to fill the hot tub for them, at least till it all melts. Besides – I dunno, I have this idea that maybe what they’re looking for is each other. Is that a possibility? I don’t know all the Casper rules yet.”

    “Now there’s an interesting thought,” said Coffin, as he pulled the wheel around.

    It would be a long time before she would let him forget how right she was.

     

    (Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

     

    Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

    Freesound.org credits:

    Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

    – and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.