Category: Chiller

FP347 – Waiting Up

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and forty-seven.

Flash PulpTonight we present Waiting Up
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp347.mp3]Download MP3
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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 we present a Halloween tale of household haunting and chronic insomnia.

 

Waiting Up

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

 

Dwight’s first warning came while sneaking into his son’s room to deposit a freshly folded pile of underpants into his bright yellow dresser.

Fluttering eyelids gave the boy away.

“Are you awake, Boop?” he asked Yoshi.

“Yeah Dad.”

Dwight nodded as he laid-out laundry by the glow of a Winnie the Pooh night light. “At least you didn’t try to lay a fake snore on me. Why are you up though?”

The four-year-old rolled to face the wall before answering, “I never sleep. I just pretend to make you happy.”

Hiding his chuckle with an honest yawn, Dwight smiled.

“Well – make me happy by not pretending and actually going to sleep.”

“I’m waiting for Mum to get home.”

Long practiced in the art of altering the flow of conversation around any mention of the woman, Dwight simply said goodnight and left.

* * *

The next day, well after midnight, Dwight was sternly shutting the door.

“I’m not playing anymore. Go to sleep,” he told the flat white expanse that doubled as a finger-painted art gallery.

After their brief discussion, the previous evening, Dwight had curled up for some much needed rest, but his slumber had been interrupted at dawn by a pressing request from his bladder. Finally stirring from a tedious dream, he readied himself for a quick run across the washroom’s cold floor and back, then turned over.

Any thought of returning to sleep had been wiped out by the sudden discovery that a form was hunkered on his bed, not three inches from his face.

He’d let fly with a rare “Christ!” but Yoshi had only laughed.

To the father’s mind the problem was that the tyke had started to consider the situation as a game. Still, shouldn’t sheer exhaustion have done him in at some point?

He paced the short hallway for twenty minutes, then, when all seemed silent and he could no longer lift his legs to maintain his gait, he headed for bed.

Lying alone in the darkness, however, Dwight began to wonder if it were actually a case closer to noticing the arrow in the FedEx logo. Could he have missed that Boop was faking? Had he really always been pretending?

He was still paying down the bill’s for Mamiko’s treatment, he couldn’t afford to have the boy in for a sleep study.

Damn foolish was what it was. The child just needed to shut his eyes.

Yet he didn’t.

* * *

Friday, at two in the morning, a commercial for car alarms brought Dwight out of an unexpected couch nap.

ChillerEven as he stood, his knees popping, the sound of Yoshi’s moaning reached his ears from the far end of the bungalow.

As he stiffly walked the hallway the evidence trail was obvious to read. The closet they’d designated a pantry, just off the kitchen, was ajar, and a trail of stray Fruit Loops led him on.

Dwight entered just soon enough to watch three months worth of bulk-box cereal decorate the walls.

Once he could, Yoshi, through tears, said, “I was hungry.”

It was nearly dawn by the time Dwight cleared the smell of stomach acid and artificial flavours from the room.

* * *

Drifting, only half conscious, through work and dinner, Dwight had fallen asleep midway through an explanation to his son that his mother, now dead nearly a year, was not coming home.

Generally such a sensitive discussion would have had the father’s full attention, but into the second hour of alternating between telling the boy to sleep and explaining why his naive logic was wrong, he’d sat down on the thinning blue carpet and rested his head on his hand.

Now, at 3am, Yoshi had startled him awake with the tumbling of a pot-and-pan tower.

Crawling into the boy’s undersized bed, the father wrapped his arms around his son and held him.

It was not a calm slumber, though, as every movement roused the vigilant parent – and Yoshi could not cease his childish wiggles.

* * *

Dwight was so taut with fatigue the next night that he was barely aware something was amiss before his eyes began to sting with tears.

Staggering to the kitchen he found the latest calamity.

Yoshi had pulled his trike in from the rain and dirt of the backyard and created a mud track surrounding the kitchen table. The venetian blinds were blowing in the wind of the open sliding door, and water had begun to pool on the simple black carpet Mamiko had chosen for the threshold.

Worse, the youth had marked the edges of his course by burying the contents of the family knife block, tip first, into the linoleum floor.

“Don’t worry, Dad,” Yoshi said, kneeling beside his weeping father, “Mom will be home soon. I’m waiting up.”

The unending emergency was too much. Dwight’s exhaustion had been snowballing, in truth, from the moment of Mamiko’s diagnosis.

Would he ever sleep? Would they ever sleep? Was she the only one sleeping?

An odd thought came to him: She must be so rested – yes, so rested.

It became clear then: All he had to do was wait for her arrival. Things would be better when she got home.

The thought lifted the weight from his shoulders and cleansed the ache from his mind.

Yes, he too would wait up for her.

Gaining his feet, he asked Yoshi to move his Big wheel outside and headed for a mop.

There was a lot to do before she came home.

 

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.

FP344 – The Silver Dollar Samurais

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and forty-four.

Flash PulpTonight we present The Silver Dollar Samurais, Part 1 of 1
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by The Donut Button – thanks to all who’ve used it!

 

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 the tale of a young warrior, Darlene Crowe, as she takes to the field with her father watching.

 

The Silver Dollar Samurais

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

 

Darlene’s eye was not on the ball.

The breeze had quit trying to push through the hanging ball diamond dust, but the sun seemed to have doubled its intensity in an attempt to bake the dirt out of the air. Even as a curve flew from the pitcher’s fingers, the outfielders shifted from cleat-to-cleat in boredom.

Twenty feet to her left, Darlene’s father was stuttering his way through an explanation regarding a spilled coffee, and, even over the shrill cheers of her first strike, she could hear his heartfelt, but protracted, apology.

She had never wanted to be here, and the unsightly enthusiasm at her failure annoyed her.

This was no tournament game, it was just another entry in the long August season, but Darlene’s opponents, the Mooretown Medusas, had arrived with an especially energetic group of parents. Their crisp pinstripes had contrasted heavily against the t-shirts of the Silver Dollar Samurais, and by this, the fourth inning, the Medusas held a three run lead.

Her father hadn’t forced her to sign up for the sport, but she’d read the worry becoming chronic along his cheeks and brow, then made the decision herself: Thursday nights would be baseball night, a nice, normal, childhood activity.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, Darlene reflected, if the adults of Mooretown weren’t constantly shouting criticism at the supposedly “playing” eleven-year-olds.

As if to drive her point home, a round faced man in a loosened tie shouted, “swing or go home, little girl!”

In truth, Darlene was one of four female Silver Samurais, which was four more than the Medusas had fielded.

Placing her bat to her shoulder, she descended into a well-honed state of focus.

The world shrank, and everything became immediate. A practiced scrutiny judged the flex and lean of the boy on the mound, and skilled fingers – though in a grip they found strange – steadied themselves on the taped handle.

Even the crowd seemed engaged by the girl’s intensity, and a hush fell over all – all except the coffee soaked man in the white polo who was still waiting on her father’s apology. In the silence Dad’s “d-d-d-d-d-didn’t” carried clearly to the plate, as did the exasperated reply of “Jesus, talk normally,” from the Medusa fan.

It was enough of a distraction to slide the second strike across without even a swing.

Darlene frowned.

Five years earlier she’d had her hair laid across her mother’s lap, as the pair watched an old samurai flick, Ichi, when the phone had rung. It was their preferred Saturday night activity, but both knew to expect the possibility of a sudden end.

After a short-worded conversation, the six-year-old had sleepily asked the standing woman, “good guys being hurt?”

“Not while I’ve still got my sword in my hand,” Mom had replied with a smile.

Twenty minutes later the plainclothes police officer had been gunned down by a muddle-headed alcoholic upset over his defeat in a child custody case.

It had left only Darlene to care for her too-gentle father, but the girl knew somehow that it was what her mother would have wanted.

By the time the third pitch was in the air, Darlene was already running.

There’d been an involuntary, “hurk,” and she’d turned to see the coffee-wearing man’s face now fully inflated. Though Dad’s palms remained open and exposed, the Mooretownian had caught hold of his handmade Silver Dollar Samurais shirt, and the attacker’s right fist was slipping backwards in increased frustration.

The red-cheeked man had not appreciated the suggestion that it was his own enthusiasm, and possibly slightly drunken state, that had sent the styrofoam cup flying – nor had he enjoyed waiting through the length of time it had taken Darlene’s father to make it.

The punch landed sloppily across the still stuttering apologist’s left cheek.

A Skinner Co. ProductionFrom her position on the far side of the chain-link backstop, the eleven-year-old had made a decision. Had she trained for the last five years just to watch Dad be pummelled in the stands of a crummy little league game?

Not while she had her sword in her hand.

She snapped off the matte black batter’s helmet, and, with the addition of a single half-loop from her pink hair elastic, adjusted her spritely blonde ponytail into a combat-ready topknot.

When Darlene once again lifted her bat, her grip was unlike any ever used by a major leaguer.

Despite the stickiness in the air and the silliness of her bright yellow uniform, it felt good to run. Too often this ridiculous sport had come down to waiting for a brief moment of activity. The sense of personal command had always been one of her favourite things about kenjutsu practice: She might not be able to control the world, but her blade moved only where she placed it.

The samurai landed in a flat footed stance with her arms braced at her side. Her weapon’s hilt was low to her belly, and the club’s shaft stood as ramrod straight as her spine.

There was no wavering in either.

“I will strike you in three seconds if you do not release my father,” she said, though she had to fight not to clench her jaw.

The damp man in the second bleacher row turned, though he did not think to release his grip on Dad’s now-crumpled collar.

“Three,” she said.

She knew he was probably just too surprised at the demand to react quickly, but she lept anyhow. Stepping lightly between an oversized pleather purse and a denim ensconced Silver Dollar supporter, as if they were no more than the silent grasses lining a still pond, Darlene closed the distance and swept her stand-in sword upwards.

Before the impacted forearm had even finished its new skyward arc, however, she’d checked her swing and pivoted. With a two-fisted grip, she planted the tip of her aluminum temporary-katana in the meat of her opponent’s calf muscle.

The seizing of his leg left the irritable pugilist empty handed and on his back for several deep exhalations. The watching crowd, who’d unanimously opted to give the combatants a respectful distance, had, in turn, stopped their own breathing.

Darlene simply waited, with the sun at her back and her makeshift gunto raised.

A lone cicada sang to them from somewhere beyond the outfield fence.

Despite the collective anticipation, by the time the girl’s adversary had righted himself he no longer had any interest in discussing the incident. Instead, with sullen jowls, he announced to no one directly that he would wait out the second half of the game in his car.

For ten full minutes the Medusan coach expounded loudly on the inappropriateness of the incident, but, when it became apparent his Silver Dollar counterpart wasn’t likely to forfeit, justice had to be held to benching Darlene for at least the rest of the game.

Still, she’d been reminded of the taste of combat, and her stinging gaze sweeping the field was impossible for the Medusans to ignore. Nerves alone lost them the game at 7 to 5.

The win was her first, but, upon returning home, Darlene decided Thursdays would instead be better spent quietly with her father – perhaps they could learn the nuances of temae together.

For his sake, though, she would occasionally call the traditional ceremony a tea party.

 

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.

FP339 – Blind

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

Flash PulpTonight we present Blind, Part 1 of 1
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by Libr8: A Continuum 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, join us in the freshly empty home of Sidney Topesh, for a tale of creeping proportions – a story of rot, ruin, and restoration.

 

Blind

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

 

The house was empty.

It had taken six months of lawyer fees, and the complete estrangement of his three grown children, but Sidney Topesh finally had what he’d convinced himself he’d always wanted: Quiet.

He walked from his front door with his shoes on, tramping mud onto the rose-coloured carpet that had been Hillary’s choice for the living room.

The space was silent except for the clicking march of the brass and glass clock that had, nearly thirty years earlier, been Hillary’s mother’s wedding gift. It had always delighted him that she’d hated the thing. The usual noise – the TV’s constant rotation of daytime talk shows and CNN – had been unplugged, and the device’s broad black eye stared at him blankly.

Somehow it seemed to be waiting.

“She’s not coming back,” Sidney informed it with a chuckle.

His long established guesses regarding how much he might get for the beast at the nearest pawn shop would soon be tested – but not today. Today was for rest.

He moved through Hillary’s now-empty home office. The rug still held the shape of her desk’s rarely-shifted legs, and the mauve walls were marked by the outlines of the hung frames that had, until recently, protected the paint from the room’s flood of sunlight.

It was while mentally measuring for curtains, and the bar he planned on having installed, that he noted the rag-wearing man stumbling through the backyard.

“What the hell?” he asked, but the overhead fan provided no answers in its sweeping whispers.

Not having to put on shoes meant he really had only to step into the kitchen and out the back door to confront the vagrant, but he detoured to retrieve the baseball bat he kept in the front closet nonetheless.

The squat bungalow was far enough from town to be considered a country home, though the neighbours were still so close as to annoy its owner with their backyard barbeques and children’s birthday parties. Passing strangers were few.

By the time Sidney made his exit, the trespasser was headed towards the fence that separated his yard from the Parkers’. Without the sheen of the glass between them, he could see that the man was perhaps fifty, with silver hair and expensive loafers. His collared shirt was tucked in, but had been ripped at the shoulder, and his light brown slacks had been spattered with mud.

The wanderer asked, “can I come in?”

Feeling some safety in the distance between himself and the newcomer, Topesh responded with an inquiry of his own.

“What happened?”

The unexpected guest began to close the gap. His pace was methodical, like a drunk who had to think hard about walking straight, and his left arm hung limply at his side as his right came up to shake hello.

Sidney watched the slow approach of the upturned palm for thirty nearly-silent seconds, then he changed his question.

“Why are you here?”

There was a pause before the intruder responded, and his nose seemed to shift, as if it were having difficulty remaining attached.

His answer was, “can I come in?”

At ten feet Sidney demanded he stop.

At five he began backpedaling himself.

At one he wished he’d simply turned to run.

Raising the bat over his head, the divorcé pushed out with his free hand and hoped that the apparent tweaker would simply keel over. The man’s momentum, however, meant Sidney slipped over the cusp of the ripped shirt and into contact with the intruder’s papery skin. For a moment the surface seemed to collapse with the pressure, drawing his fingers in, then the man’s eyes went from a look of dull distraction to one of panic.

Without warning the unwanted visitor began a staggering sprint towards the broad brown boards of the largely-ornamental fence, and, before Topesh might unfurl himself from his defensive crouch, disappeared between the hedges that lined the Parkers’ pool.

* * *

After fifteen minutes of staring from his kitchen window and getting no answer from Dalton Parker’s cell phone, Sidney decided he wasn’t calling the police. He’d booked off two weeks of vacation time to celebrate his legal victory, and, goddammit, he wasn’t going to waste them talking to bored cops about some hobo who was likely already napping in a ditch two towns over.

Still, there was no harm in locking the doors.

Over the next hour he poured himself an afternoon scotch, watered the windowsill greenery he wished would simply give in and die, and tidied the shoe rack in the closet. Sidney was unaccustomed to housework, but he expected messes would be minimal now that he wasn’t living with a herd of pigs.

The scotch, his cleaning efforts, and the vacuum left by the morning’s flush of adrenaline, were enough to lay him out on the couch. His eyelids seem to drop as quickly as the level of liquor in his tumbler, and, despite a strange itching in the pads of his fingers, the mantel clock’s measured ticking pulled him into a nap.

Three hours later he woke up blind.

ChillerHe remembered terrible dreams – something about Hillary trying to scratch at his eyes – and could even feel where he’d reflexively set his palms to his cheeks to save his sight.

In his confusion, he called, “Corey? Wade?”

Before he attempted to summon Tessa, twenty and his youngest, he caught himself in his error.

Frankly, he didn’t want help from those parasites anyhow.

Taking in a deep breath, he stood. With a slow, prodding, pace, he made his way to where he believe he’d left the phone: In its base, on the main hall’s credenza.

It took five long minutes to discover it wasn’t there.

Normally a simple turn of his head would have allowed him to note that he’d forgotten it on the kitchen counter, but frustration clouded his memory, and his lack of sight robbed him of any satisfaction that he might have felt after sweeping the personalized pad of stationary and the empty phone charger onto the ground.

He did not notice the shattering of Hillary’s antique plaque-bound thermometer, which had also occupied the surface, nor the drop of mercury that landed on his wrist. He could not see the spread of apparent frost where it fell.

He’d shouted “Morons!” before he realized that the kids weren’t around to blame.

Sidney’s pounding pulse brought a terrible thought to mind: Had he had a stroke?

What were the signs again?

He realized his hands felt numb. His heart drummed a reminder to calm down.

With a hitching breath, he sat heavily on the hall rug and did his best not to panic.

He knew the Parkers weren’t home – or they hadn’t been, at least. Could he make it to their front door without breaking a leg? Would they even be back?

For the first moment in perhaps a decade, he wished Hilary was near.

With no warning, the world returned. Not the full crisp universe he was used to, but some semblance of light and shape.

Sidney, in another rare move, smiled.

Within fifteen minutes his vision was shifting and imperfect, but functional enough to find his misplaced phone.

He was standing beside the oak-topped kitchen island, considering the blob of gray-blue that appeared to be the unit’s buttons, when he noted the white spot on the back of his right wrist. His finger was drawn from the 9 of 911, and his well-trimmed nail prodded the ivory dot.

He still had no feeling in his fingers, but, even with his blurred perspective, it was obvious the tip was entering at least as deep as its cuticle.

There was no stopping panic now, and he jerked his hands apart. His over interest in not further injuring his right arm made him oblivious to the trajectory of his left, and it impacted with some force against the brass hardware of the cupboards.

What would have normally been a well-earned bruise became, instead, a blast of shattered hand spread across the wood and floor.

The sight of his destroyed appendage was too much, and Sidney’s mind sent him back into unconsciousness.

When he awoke the second time, he nearly thought it had all been a trick of brain chemistry during a midday nightmare. His vision was no more blurred than he might expect from any scotch induced nap, and the rest of his aches could just as easily be explained by the same.

It was when he looked down that the truth became unavoidable. There, though both hands looked otherwise fine, was that same white fleck.

Heading back to the credenza, he opened drawers till he located the high-powered magnifying glass Hilary had always kept around in case of a need she never had. The most use the thing had ever seen was when Wade, then aged 10, used it to scorch ants in the backyard.

Through the lense the blotch loomed huge, and it’s edges appeared to be moving. A single ghostly speck – given the magnification it could be no larger than a mite – lept from the edge of the snowy field and began to trundle towards his palm.

Leaning close, it was soon clear to Sidney the entire patch was made up of the miniscule nits. Though his sight remain smudged, it was just possible to identify tiny stalks that seemed to hold them together like sinew. Worse, as his inspection edged from the white and into the pink of his arm, the invasion did not stop – it simply altered colour.

Despite his control of the limb, his forearm was only his in appearance. Every hair and freckle was now replaced with a chain of these chameleon parasites.

This time, instead of the relief of unconsciousness, the stress – certainly greater than any he’d felt during the divorce proceedings – twisted Sidney’s stomach.

Falling to what once were his hands and knees, his mouth opened wide, emptying the contents of his interior. He did not see a return of the scotch and his morning’s toast, however: Instead the reflex pushed out the replica of his throat lining, then a mass of writhing red, blue, and green that seemed like a child’s efforts at sketching human organs.

They all seemed so dry; almost papery.

Despite his best efforts, his body would not allow his jaw to close as the tide slowly turned, and the mass of invaders began their slow march back to his maw.

Sidney found he no longer had the ability to cry as he watched a counterfeit lung drift past his teeth.

For a while he was left to simply lie on his side, his eyes locked on a view of the shattered thermometer and the scattered Topesh Residence stationary.

His hearing ceased to function, but returned perhaps an hour later.

The hall darkened.

Finally, as the clock on the mantel marked three a.m., he felt himself begin to rise.

Every part of his mind focused on the phone in the kitchen. He knew it was too late, but perhaps a message? Perhaps an apology?

Despite the exertions of what little humanity was left to Sidney, he began to stagger instead for the front door.

As he watched foreign, but familiar, fingers grasp the handle, a voice that was not quite his own tested itself by asking, “can I come in?”

 

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.

FP338 – Honey Pot

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

Flash PulpTonight we present Honey Pot, Part 1 of 1
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp338.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’s tale is one of true horror ripped from the headlines, and is entirely not intended for children, nor the squeamish. We ask only that you finish the story before you begin writing your angry letters.

 

Honey Pot

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

 

ChillerNeither Lev or Vitaly lived in the Vykhino apartment, but they both spent most of their non-working hours positioned on its single broken-legged couch, watching bootlegged Japanese action movies. Both of them hated the Japanese, which left mass slaughter as their favoured genre – the higher the body count, the better.

Their viewing parties had always been at maximum volume, but no one within the crumbling residential block had ever complained – or, at least, not to their face, nor to the authorities. It had taken four rentals to find a place that cared so little about the noise.

Now, however, the credits were muted as Lev explained exactly how he would vanquish the hero of Measure Once Kill Twice.

“He’s what, fucking three feet tall? My biggest worry is trying to hit him and swinging over his head. I’d get him with one of those wine bottle openers and pull his eye -”

He was cut short when the expected knock finally arrived.

Putting down his bottle of Tarkhun and fermented potato, Vitaly stood. The pair exchanged a smile and he slipped into the bedroom, swinging the door mostly shut.

“One moment,” Lev said, as he directed the remote through a news broadcast of the war, a droning Ukrainian soap opera, and, finally, to a channel playing a tinny selection of electronica.

He considered lighting a cigarette and making the faggot wait even longer, but an impatient cluck from Vitaly’s hiding place pulled him to his feet and pushed him towards the entrance.

“Yes?” asked Lev, as he ducked his head into the hallway beyond.

There was a youth of perhaps nineteen beyond. This one looked like he might have worked the rail yards during the day; broad shouldered and sunburnt. Pushing hair too long for Lev’s liking from his eyes, the visitor said, “Hi – I’m the one who saw your ad? Viktor?”

It had been Vitaly’s suggestion, though it was based on an old trick he’d read about in the news when he was young. Post a classified ad claiming to be a lonely but discreet gay man looking for an encounter, then let the victim’s own paranoia prevent them from telling anyone where they were going.

“Come in,” smiled Lev, motioning across the combined kitchen, dining, and living room, and towards the rumpled brown couch.

There was something delicious in the man’s eyes that told the predator his prey was concerned, but it only made it the sweeter when he stepped inside anyhow. Weren’t all men ruled by their pants?

Too polite to make small talk about the the water stained walls or the kitchen counter’s array of empty liquor containers, the stranger gathered himself together on the couch and said, “I was afraid I’d have a hard time finding the place, but the online maps worked for once.”

Lev nodded, then produced a small pistol from behind his back.

“Empty your pockets,” he said.

This was their fifth such experiment, and on each occasion previously they’d honed their technique. For example, he no longer asked for their real name, he simply searched their wallet. Like the rest, this one was foolish enough to have brought his.

Peeling open the fake leather packet, Lev collected the money, then began setting each piece of identification atop a drained bottle of Imperia.

He said, “Viktor, eh? You freaks, always hiding in your closets,” – then, louder, “Come on out V, and meet Cherilyn Sarkisian.”

“Isn’t that a woman’s name?” Vitaly asked as he entered. He had pulled a black balaclava over his face, and in his left hand was a similar mask, which he tossed to Lev.

In his right was a well-worn aluminum baseball bat.

“Seems appropriate to me,” replied Lev from beneath the wool.

“I wonder if that makes some argument for nature versus nurture?”

“Do you really give a shit?”

“Nope.”

At the insistence of the gun barrel’s blackness, the former Viktor said nothing, but his eyes had grown large beneath his sweep of sandy blonde hair.

For a few moments the pair simply stood over their prize, absorbing the fear as they exchanged self-satisfied grins.

Finally, while Vitaly played his metal club across his captive’s shoulders as if he intended to knight the youth, Lev announced he was going to retrieve the camera equipment from the other room.

With the pistol gone, Sarkisian found his tongue.

“You – you’ve done this before?” he asked.

“Yes,” Vitaly replied.

“What do you intend to do?”

“Confess and we will allow you to pay us ten thousand rubles a month to keep your secret – to absolve you of your guilt, you understand. You will tell us everything, and we will record it for you as a reminder of what a monster you were before you found us.

“You will pay us our fee, or you will tell your family, your friends, and the law. You do know the law, right, criminal?

“First, though, the fun part: We kick the shit out of you.”

Setting down the tripod, Lev nodded and licked his lips. Reaching into the pocket of his blue jeans he retrieved a small red Swiss Army knife, then extracted the wound metal of its corkscrew attachment.

“Here,” he said, “let me show you what I was talking about earlier.”

He was four feet from the supposed Cherilyn when the second knock came.

“Who the fuck?” asked Vitaly, but Lev had only a shrug as an answer.

“Who the fuck?” he said again, louder.

“Judy,” came the baritone reply.

“Who!?” demanded Lev.

“Judy, Judy, Judy,” answered the booming voice, with a slightly Siberian accent. There was a sound of scraping, then a clatter, and the door popped open.

The man who stood beyond was easily seven feet tall, and yet he wore a well-fitting black suit and tie. The craftsmanship of the suit seemed odd against the halloween mask he wore – and yet the pasty white visage of a mutton-chopped metal guitarist stared back at them, utterly uncaring.

It was Lev who managed to moan, “fuuuuuuck, it’s the Achievers.”

In the invader’s right hand was a trigger activated locking picking tool, and in his left was a police grade multi-shot taser.

Before the supposed-captors could provide any further conversation, both Lev and Vitaly were on the floor twitching. In his electrified confusion Vitaly could not fathom how his prisoner’s face had been replaced with the rubber duplicate of his attacker’s.

With short motions that spoke of experience, the pair of stunned men were lashed to the couch by the newcomer, even as another set of raps came from the entrance.

This new man carried two needles with him.

“You can thank me later,” said the smiling voice behind the mask, as he sank the stainless steel points into the bound men’s arms.

Shaking, Lev asked, “AIDS!? You sick fucks.”

“No, the finest amphetamines Moscow can cook,” answered the former victim – then the man Lev had figured to be a rail worker began to peel off his jeans, revealing a pair of black boxer briefs beneath.

Turning to his rescuer, the exhibitionist said, “it’s been too long.”

“Oh, I’m only here for the justice,” replied the giant who’d started the flood. His thick fingers worked the knot of his tie and began to dance down the buttons of his neatly-pressed shirt.

The entrants were no longer knocking, and the latest had brought a stereo of his own. Unlike the whine that had come from the television, the system flooded the apartment with pulsing bass.

Even as they stripped, the masked men began to grind with the beat, each demonstrating a varying level of dance skill.

Before long, however, they were showing off a different sort of prowess.

With Lev’s left arm secured to Vitaly’s right, there was no way the pair could avoid contact as they soaked in the sights of the night-long orgy. It was five hours of flesh and moans before, in a move that surprised all, Vitaly gave up his self hate and asked to join in.

They refused, gently, but graciously gave him back the use of the arm which was not connected to his former partner.

Lev, as he would for many years forward, only wept.

 

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.

FP334 – Moderation, Part 3 – Sour Thistle's Lament

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

Flash PulpTonight we present Moderation, Part 3 – Sour Thistle’s Lament
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp334.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)
(Part 1Part 2Part 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 we conclude our tale with a story of romance and death amongst the ancient pines.

 

Moderation, Part 3 – Sour Thistle’s Lament

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

 

Things changed with time – it was one of the few truths of Sour Thistle’s experience – but, for that moment at least, the stones upon which the preternaturally large wolverine sat were truly her favourite place in existence. There was something to respect in the swell and push of the river in which the flat boulders were set, and yet here, mid-stream, the protrusions offered a sort of roaring peace.

She did not think of Garou often, she could afford herself little opportunity for reflection when the matters of her kingdom were at hand, but here, with no disputes to settle and no grievances to amend, she found her mind circling the memory of the massive gray wolf’s rough mane.

They had met in combat. A plague of dead men had come pouring from a large Abenaki settlement south of her lands, and, though it was beyond her borders, she had some thought that stemming the flow at its source was a preferable solution over allowing it to stagger into her domain as a larger problem

It did no harm, as well, that the response would also curry her the favour of the Elk Lord who ruled the territory, and grease the conference she intended to hold regarding a drought that had kept her subjects short of supplies to store against the winter.

She would later learn that it was this same motive that had called Garou to the wildwoods about the infected village. It was messy work, but not such that she would ask another to do without dirtying her own claws. Besides, the air had begun to reek of chill, and she needed no goading to take on a final hunt ahead of the impending snows. The Queen had brought only her troop of weasel-faced fishers and a single black bear, an old boar named Honey who accompanied her simply because he enjoyed the slow nature of the prey.

They’d come across a cluster of a dozen dead, as sighted for them by a ruffled white owl. The bird had seen the shambling carcasses chase and devour a boy of twelve, and even to its animal mind the scene had spoke of corruption.

Spotting the moaning cannibals had been easy enough, but, before she might storm amongst the trees and call down her warriors, the sound of panting broke from the east. It was Garou, and, behind him, a canine mirror of her own honour guard. The pack of gray wolves were but a shadow of their leader, however, as the black-eyed forest lord seemed to shoulder aside the very oaks. He was the first to set teeth to a corpse, and to shake its skull between his jaws until it twitched no more – but Sour Thistle was not far behind.

The two royal parties had made fierce sport of the remaining search, a competition she won with a tally just three greater than her opponent’s. As they traveled again north, together, she used her victory to torment him to no end, and each night of their trek was spent exchanging increasingly grandiose tales of battle and cunning.

She told of the eastern dragon who had once roosted within Broken Leg Crag, intent on driving her from her kingdom so that it might feast endlessly on fat wild venison, and of the madman who’d become so enraptured in the study of the arcane that he’d contracted lycanthrope.

Sour Thistle's Lament“What could I do?” she had said, “the wolf-man refused to believe there was no cure. I didn’t say that slaying the beast would do as much, but it didn’t take much implication.”

Garou had grinned and scratched at his ear with a lazy hind leg.

“At least I supplied him with a trinket I’d collected,” she’d continued, “a jagged little dagger imbued with the ability to hack through nearly anything. It did manage the job of dispatching the monster, but, unfortunately, the lizard had carried the fool well into the clouds beforehand.

“Still, I suppose his hard landing was a cure of sorts.”

“Well,” her companion had replied, “I too once knew a man who suffered the wolf plague. I believe he sought me out in the hopes that our commonality meant I might have secret knowledge regarding his condition, for he had trekked some distance from the west.

“I had no answer either, of course, but I offered him a place in my pack. He suffered greatly from the guilt of having eaten his father while under the influence of the full moon, and so he accepted.

“He lived with us for many years. For the majority of the month he would fashion us shelters or use his monkey arms to create delicacies over flame, and, on the nights of his change, he would roam the snows at our sides and fill his belly with caribou.

”There were even occasions on which we would send him briefly amongst his kind so that he might exchange game meat for tools.

“Yes, it was nice to have a pet.”

– and so the tales had continued till they had come to be standing in the small creek that was their agreed upon point of separation.

Their good byes were short, and she did not turn as she moved on. She did note, however, that there came no sound of a splashing departure before she was beyond earshot. It had taken some will to resist sending her winged spies to follow his progress.

Instead, she filled her time by fattening against her coming rest. Earlier in the season she’d commissioned a cave, intent on a long nap. It was not her habit to sleep the full winter, but it was difficult to avoid the lulling calm of the falling white and the calling comfort of a well-chosen fellow snorer, and doubly so after a satisfying hunt.

Once thoroughly sated, she had settled in for a week’s dreaming – only to find her rest broken, on the first night, by the knowledge of a presence.

She’d found Garou at the foot of her little hill, his eyes bright.

He’d said, “I need your presence. Upon my return home I realized it was the one thing I lacked. I will wait here until you will have me,” then he’d howled.

Though Sour Thistle had at first been enthusiastic to see his form, this rolling pronouncement served to remind her of the duties of her office and pressures of her title.

“Do not assume of me, I am not some mindless bitch to mount,” she had replied, and then she’d laid her claws across his nose. She’d seen him take much worse from reluctant meals, but she’d also known the wound would sting.

He’d bled, but not moved, as she’d wheeled to return to her bedding. There, when not convincing her that the suitor was in actuality at hand to cheat her of her crown, her mind’s voice had reminded her that she had no place for courtship. Despite her best efforts, she was unable to smother such thoughts with sleep.

Upon the following morn, her mind clouded with fatigue and rage, she’d returned to the waiting intruder.

“You will never rule these lands,” she’d said.

“I never want to,” he replied. There was something in the grin he’d worn that irked her, and she’d raked her nails his chest, taking away hair and flesh while leaving a flowing trauma.

He’d remained still, a tactic she would later regret mistaking as an insult to her strength. She had not been familiar with utter subservience, and so had confused it for insolence.

From the tree branches she’d felt the eyes of the gathering jays, their side-cocked heads no doubt judging if their ruler would stand idle at these grievances, or if perhaps she had grown weak and lost her heart to another.

She’d attacked him then. He did not defend himself, not even to the extent that any child of the wilderness must be able to manage if it is to survive, and she had nearly accidentally slain the Lord of the Snows before she might compensate for his lack of response.

“If I do not last the night, you must take my territory as yours,” he’d told her through a mouth full of his own blood.

Then he’d gone limp.

She’d summoned the best of supplies from her storehouse, but even as the raccoons laid out their surgeries it had taken every aspect of her occult knowledge and power to pull flesh and sinew together, and it would be months till he was fully recovered.

Finally, when she had returned him to the state she’d found him, she broke from their usual conversation and brought herself to ask: “Why?”

He’d replied, “you must understand, once I know what I want, I will not cease until I have it. I want you. Or, at least, I want you to tolerate me enough to allow my company. There was no other way.”

She’d smirked at that, and they’d bedded for the first of their hundred slumbers.

That was a century past. The dead who walked the earth, of any kind, were increasingly rare, and there was no longer enough of the occult in the world to sustain unfettered eruptions. Should she have met Garou in such a ruined condition again, she knew she would not be able to summon the rites to save him.

It was not the draining of the arcane from the world, however, that had forced her to summon Blackhall, some two years previous, to slay her consort – though, in their quietest moments, the lovers had both lamented its passage. It had been the knowledge that the great wolf could never lay aside his obsessions, and that she could no longer deliver the killing blow that was the inevitable end to their fascination.

His passions, she supposed, gave him much in common with Thomas.

She knew why the man had undertaken this new excursion, and what he intended to ask in exchange for the service he had rendered. It was obvious to all but the humans themselves when their burdens had grown to be too much. Her falcons had carried a letter to her, written in his hand, detailing as much; at least, she thought, if her reading of the unnecessarily vague and verbose language of the day was correct. Was even this matter with the slavers not the fault of the tools he bore? She would hold the mystic trinkets he had collected so that he might continue his chase. She would also divine their purposes and provide them up when the occasion was right – and not just to pay the debt she owed him.

What if the knobby-knuckled man was right? What if he might pull the breathless back from beyond?

The last of her reverie was broken by a sudden landing, and she shook off the hypnosis of the rushing water.

The finch sniffed at its watery surroundings and did a short hopping dance of greeting and subordination.

The Queen noticed, though, that its steps kept it at a careful distance to guard against its becoming a brief meal. She smiled.

From the bird’s hooked beak came songs of a place, a man, and the albino squirrel who’d whistled the urgent missive into its ear.

This was not the first messenger of the day – she had already heard of the slavers’ grudge, of their hounds, and – more worryingly – of their guns.

It was now time to come to the aid of the only living being who had done her a favour that she’d been unable to complete for herself.

She rose, and so too did her retinue.

Along the banks to her left lifted high a thousand racks of deer and moose, the ursine faces of sixty black bears, and the dozen members of her fisher honour guard. She nodded to the generals amongst the gathered, and the honoured dipped their heads in veneration. It was no longer possible to recall which of these short-lived mortals had been birthed upon her own soil, and which had sprung from the lands once belonging to Garou: She knew just that she was pleased to hunt with them all.

The fire of her awakening spread on, through the underbrush, and ignited a pack of wolfen howls to the west.

Yes, things changed, and someday even such low intruders would be beyond her power to rebuff – but this was not that day.

With a clearing of her throat, she went to war.

(Part 1Part 2Part 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.

FP327 – Of the Old School

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

Flash PulpTonight we present Of the Old School, Part 1 of 1
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp327.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Parsecs!

 

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 the generation gap, creeping terror, and childish misadventure.

 

Of the Old School

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

 

She didn’t enjoy talking to people – especially folks she didn’t know – but Octavia Archer was determined to offload some Thin Mints.

Sometimes that required patience.

Flash Pulp Horror Podcast“I’m of the old school,” Mrs. Hemming, her current prospective-customer, was saying through a thin-lipped mouth, “but it strikes me that a girl your age shouldn’t be out running around by herself.”

The girl thought, “should I be off learning to cook instead?” but said nothing.

The pair were standing in the front hall of a Victorian-style house that smelled of dust, with the scout holding a bag full of cookies and the old woman grasping two boxes of the sweets while peering into a velvet change purse.

Octavia had often heard urban legends, mostly ghost stories, about the residence, but the girl’s mother had taught her to know that no one could afford such a palace without having some money, even if the place did appear to be collapsing in slow motion.

As the young Archer was preparing to clear her throat in impatience, a train entered the hall. Its approach came in jerky inches, and its choice of direction looked to be largely decided by the coincidence of its orientation after impacting on the floral print of the opposite wall.

“Is that a robot?” asked Octavia.

It moved like a cheap Christmas present her little brother would love, but the two foot high and three foot long engine was made of wood and brass ornamentation. It was painted in a mint green, with gold accents, and its domes and chimney were entwined in an intricate pattern of carved loops. While the thing’s rubber wheels rolled across the oak floor she heard a tick-tick-tick which put her immediately in mind of the baseball cards she sometimes saw in kids’ bike’s spokes.

“Not as you’re used to,” responded Hemming, “My toys were built using ancient techniques, not electricity. As you can see, there’s no plastic involved. Except for his rollers, there’s nothing involved that my mother couldn’t have accomplished in her day.”

At the sound of her voice, the locomotive began a wide turn, seeking its builder.

“There’s also a whistle that I wrought with my own hands, but he never uses it.”

“Huh,” said Octavia. “I’ve got change for a twenty if that’s all you can find.”

Hemming turned from her creation to the girl. Her lips flattened and her nose twitched, but her eyes sparkled.

“Most children have forgotten how to be polite in the last two decades,” said the woman. “Nevermind, though: Come with me, I’ve got a jar with some extra paper money in the basement, but I’m afraid I’ll need you to grab it for me – I’m not as nimble as I was.”

Without waiting for an answer, she departed. It was the sort of house that swallowed noise, and, after turning a corner, the tinkerer seemed to have been absorbed by the rotting walls.

“Tick, tick, tick,” said the approaching train.

Octavia followed.

* * *

The basement appeared to have been fully furnished once, but the side rooms that the youth passed on her way to her supposed payment were now filled with carpentry tools, work benches, and pencil-scrawled diagrams.

Some of the spaces contained more automatons: A half-cabinet/half-man construction whose aimlessly swinging arms looked, to Octavia, like a Rock’em-Sock’em Robot without a partner; a crudely-carved dog that crawled with the same painful inching as the train above, but whose spindly unmoving legs the Girl Scout decidedly did not like; and a series of three boxes that she thought of as moving sculptures – a waving flower, a writhing snake, and a woman’s arm.

It was the limb that made the girl stop. The flower looked to be largely made of felt, and the snake was built from a series of overlapping cloth rings that gave the thing cartoonish scales. The arm, however, was slender, smooth, and absolutely realistic.

Octavia did the math, decided she could simply cover the two missing boxes out of her own allowance, and began to reverse.

“Thank you, thank you, you can pay me later,” she announced, but her hostess had disappeared into yet another chamber filled with tools.

Uninterested in waiting for her return, the girl ignored the pathetic imitation of a mutt that had begun to follow as she made her way to the stairs.

From within her increasingly distant room, Hemming was saying, “I’m of the old school. Survival skills were important then. You youth, you’re all too couch-bound to run, too used to the safety of your carefully padded existences to recognize danger.”

The girl was nearly to the bannister when the train rolled its last. Octavia had left the door at the top open, and as the machine’s cow catcher cleared the first step, it let fly with its whistle. It’s flight was not long, nor graceful, and its descent was largely spent bouncing end-over-end with increasing momentum.

It stopped when it came up against the stone and mortar wall, but not until its oak frame had split and its brass bells had scattered.

Within the wreckage was also the ruin of a man. His left arm had been chipped away, as with a chisel, and his right had been bound tightly to his chest so long ago that his body had grown around the leather and chrome of the belt. Beside him lay the panel that had made up the bottom of his conveyance, and the girl noted a small window that she assumed enabled him to claw at the floor. It was his sole form of transportation, for, where his legs ought to have been, he had only flailing stumps topped in pink scar tissue.

He attempted to say something to Octavia as he died, but his tongueless mouth summoned just whistles and clicks.

“I think he was trying to warn you, but he stopped you instead,” Hemming said into the girl’s right ear.

Octavia did not always agree with her mother, but she knew one thing about the woman: She was of the new school, and she had raised her daughter to be so as well.

The pepper spray cleared the girl’s pocket before her intended attacker could raise her axe from her shoulder, and the modern science of desmethyldihydrocapsaicin flooded the woman’s eyes and nose.

In the time it took to leap the train wreck and sprint out the front door, Octavia had already begun to shout directions to the 911 operator on the other end of her cell phone.

 

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.

FP323 – Misdirection

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

Flash PulpTonight we present Misdirection, Part 1 of 1
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp323.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 we present some sleight of hand meant as nothing more than a light piece of entertainment – a release after a long winter, and a long week.

 

Misdirection

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

 

Derrick, eleven, hated the always-startling bleat of the store’s door buzzer, but, as he crouched behind the Pringles display at the end of the chip aisle and tried to disappear within his bulky winter jacket, he wished the thing had been used properly over the last ten minutes.

His mother was the problem of course – she’d been busy with her routine of making eyes at the clerk who operated the remote locking system, and the double-chinned man had been too absorbed in her giggling and the flirty fingers running through her bleached hair to give the would-be-customer pounding the button from outside much of a looking over.

ChillerWorse, the counter jockey had shown some doubt as to the intruder having a gun when he’d first been threatened, so, as proof, the thief had pulled out a compact black pistol and pointed it Derrick’s Mom.

“Now do you want to get to business, or should I?” asked the white t-shirt and red ball cap wearing gunman. His brim was drawn low over his brow, but, instead of hiding his face, it simply forced him to tip back his head to see where he was aiming his weapon.

The boy did his best to remember details, but the panic brought on by the thought of losing the last of his family – his father and sister had perished in a car accident some three years earlier – fogged both his brain and his vision.

One row over, hunkered beside a selection of band aids, cleaning supplies, and stationery, a thin faced man in a black sweater whispered, “wanna see a magic trick?”

“Shut up or the peanut gallery will quickly become the shooting gallery,” said the bandit. Despite the threat, and follow-up tears from the smock-wearing employee, the minor interruption was enough to draw the weapon’s muzzle towards the floor.

The fearful son’s attention, however, was still on the apparent magician, who was now holding up eight fingers: three on one hand, and five on the other.

At the front of the store, the cashier’s blurred vision was causing issues in moving five dollar bills from the register to the plastic bag he’d been informed to put it in, and the ground had caught as much as the sack had. This was not an acceptable loss to the goon, and he demonstrated as such by slamming the pistol through the row of tchotchkes and lighters that adorned the counter.

“Get it all, and hurry the fuck up.”

Derrick’s mother, noting his distraction, took a step back, hoping to put some distance – and possibly the island containing stir sticks and lids for the store’s watery self-serve coffee – between herself and danger; instead, it attracted trouble.

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked the hood from behind the depths of his redirected gun barrel.

She stumbled, then stopped, as the stale cheeto and scratch card air caught in her tightening throat.

“Mom!” shouted Derrick. The death-dealer swung to the child, then returned to the still-not-breathing woman.

“Sit. The Fuck. Down,“ the man replied. “Christ, does this look like a public school to you? What kind of mother takes her kid to the 7-Eleven after midnight anyhow? And you, Minnesota Fats, what the hell is taking you so long to fill that bag?”

As apparent encouragement, the would-be shooter stepped closer to the bottle-blond, his free hand reaching for purchase on her t-shirt.

Unsure of what to do, Derrick turned to the nearby stranger for help, but the man only hoisted a single hand with five fingers – then four.

The un-buzzed door let out a single denying clunk.

What the child didn’t know was that the man in the hoodie wasn’t any sort of illusionist, he was simply very good at visualization. He could see the distance to his Blue Tercel, parked outside; he could picture the thick wallet sitting in the sticky-bottomed passenger-side cup holder; and he could count the strides it would take to reach the car – even for a big man.

At three fingers the boy no longer knew where to look.

At two the tough had begun to spin on his heel.

At one the entryway exploded inward, only to be replaced with the shadow of a crashing bus in the shape of a man.

Billy Winnipeg, nearly seven feet tall and well over two hundred pounds, with his forgotten wallet still in hand, was remembering the day he’d lept through the plate glass of a Manitoba laundromat after mistakenly thinking a patron was yelling at Mother Winnipeg. Once he’d explained, adrenaline had caused all three to laugh and laugh at the mistake, even as his face had bled onto the linoleum floor.

Billy was not laughing now.

However, it was twenty feet from the door to the gunman, and the Canadian, for all of his crazed bravery, was a deadman. The robber tacked his weapon away from the terrified mother, leveled it at the approaching blur, and steeled himself to pull the trigger.

That’s when he felt the double bee sting at the base of his neck.

The supposed illusionist had managed some sleight of hand after all: During the distraction he’d moved ten feet closer to the counter, and he now held a taser in his grasp.

There was a soft crackle from the pair of wires hovering over the Doritos, and a single bullet misfired into yellowing ceiling panels.

Then Billy closed the distance.

As the brutality distracted the rest, Derrick emptied his over-sized pockets of the cold medicine and household cleaners he’d been told to take. His mother would be mad, he knew, but the uniforms and sirens would soon be at the scene – and, besides, as he caught glimpses of the now moaning gunman, the boy could easily see that it wasn’t worth it.

 

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.

FP322 – Emergency

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

Flash PulpTonight we present Emergency, Part 1 of 1
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp322.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 we join Grady Pitts inside a downtown hospital.

 

Emergency

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

 

As the storm drifted by outside, Grady Pitts shifted in a futile effort to restore feeling in the lower half of his body. He’d held his position for three hours, and his legs had long moved past pins-and-needles and into general numbness.

ChillerTo the left of the bench-row of plastic chairs he was watching a couple of twenty-somethings fretting their way through paperwork while their infant daughter wailed from inside her bright pink car seat. Her mother was rifling a thick purse as the father used his non-writing hand to ineffectually rock the bassinet by its carrying arm.

Grady wondered if maybe the girl had a pea up her nose. Decades earlier, when he was five and his brother was three, he’d shoved a frozen pea deep in his nostril, and, to Pitts’ ear, the girl’s shrill complaint sounded almost identical to his sibling’s terrified cry.

There was a terse exchange between the parents, concluded by a “you said you were going to bring it” from Mom that was too loud to be concealed beneath CNN’s constant muttering, and the woman turned a furious gaze on the room, seeming to dare others to note the disturbance.

Pitts wheeled away and attempted to look as if he hadn’t been staring by generally facing the television mounted on the wall.

There was a big man in dirty mechanic’s overalls sitting beneath the screen, and Pitts’ focus soon drifted to the frayed-edged blue towel wrapped around his right wrist. Blood had soaked through the cloth, and a spatter of drops had mixed with the oil stains on his pant legs. Despite the apparent severity of the injury, the fellow’s face was calm – almost bored – and Grady began to scrutinize his distant state of mind.

Had narcotics caused the man’s accident?

The flow increased from a drip to a steady stream of pooling red, at which point Grady could no longer watch.

Where were the nurses? Why wasn’t the line moving?

There was nothing for it but to keep waiting.

Now trapped between the squabbling parents and the leaking mechanic, Pitts took to counting the ceiling tiles, shuffling a nearby stack of magazines, then, finally, simply staring at the back of the head of the blond woman one row over from his own.

At first Grady believed she was napping, and that the gentle bob and roll of her shoulders was simply the result of snoring, but he was soon convinced she was actually weeping silently. He considered moving to her side and asking if he might be of assistance – at the worst perhaps talking would ease her wait – but he forgot the idea when she was approached by a man he assumed to be her husband.

He wore a gray polo shirt, and the the majority of his face had been removed by some unknown violence, though a sliver of the detached bone remained protruding from the gore of his exposed brain. He appeared impatient for a man on the cusp of death, but Pitts found his own attention drawn to a pulsing within the naked gray matter.

After a few moments a tutting aimed in his direction pulled him away from his morbid fascination, and he turned to see that an orderly in white was beckoning.

“Finally,” said Grady, “bout time I get service.”

Before he could rise, however, the hospital worker frowned and said, “you can’t be here, Mr. Pitts. This is an emergency room, not a bus stop, and your muttering is scaring the patients. If you’re in need of help speak with the shrink at the shelter, because there’s nothing we can do for you here.”

Thus dismissed, Grady collected his tattered ball cap and grocery bags. The rain had briefly broken, and he was eager to be free of the sickness surrounding him.

 

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.

FP308 – The Big Bad Wolf, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and eight.

Flash PulpTonight we present The Big Bad Wolf, Part 1 of 1

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp308.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Nutty Bites 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, we present a tale of suburban anxiety dressed in sheep’s clothing. Consider it a lesson in presumption, revenge, and carnage.

 

The Big Bad Wolf

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

 

Horace Hastings watched the trio of twelve-year-olds march along the sidewalk below the window of his second-floor bedroom.

He thought of his often trampled lawn, of the constant fence-jumping to retrieve rogue balls, of his strong suspicion that they’d once emptied his unlocked BMW of change.

He frowned.

“Three little pigs,” he said, “each slightly larger than the other.”

No reaction came from his wife, Agatha – he’d forgotten she’d already left for work.

Horace’s gaze tracked the baseball bats in the children’s hands, and his grimace deepened.

He was late for a meeting, however, and finishing his tie’s half-Windsor knot soon required his full attention.

* * *

On Friday afternoon, two days later, Hastings was staring at the expanse of ravine that made up his backyard’s rear boundary. Generally it was too overgrown to tramp through, and was thus left for the likes of the trio of swine, but, today, he’d pulled on an old pair of rarely-worn jeans in preparation for an expedition into the brush.

Miss Marple was missing and he’d be damned if he’d sit through an evening of listening to Agatha complain about the disappearance of her beloved cat.

The tabby was largely an indoor animal, but she occasionally liked to range the yard for birds and sunshine. Though Horace often ignored his wife’s advice of keeping a close eye as the creature prowled, this was the first time she’d disappeared from the fenced space. There was just one direction she was likely to have went.

He fell twice in his descent, but, once at the bottom of the broad gulch, he realized a faint path wound between the scrub and cedars. Wiping dirt and dead leaves from his knees, the suburbanite hunter began to follow the trail of broken grass while shouting after his feline. He suspected it was a fruitless undertaking, as the beast had never come in his decade of attempts to summon her, but he hoped she might at least raise a frightened mewl at the familiar sound of his irritated voice.

What he found instead was a fort of questionable construction.

A motley collection of lumber and corrugated metal had been assembled into a crude shelter. Its interior had been decorated with well-handled pictures of nude women, clearly ripped from the pages of low-grade porn mags, and the planks that formed the structure’s squat roof bristled with reasons to require a tetanus shot.

Mildly surprised that their sow-ish mothers had allowed them to range so far, Horace thought, “look at the shabby house those pigs have built.”

Sitting atop the nail-filled platform was Miss Marple. She was licking at a long-empty tin of salmon and purring contentedly.

“It’s time to go,” announced her supposed savior.

The cat couldn’t be bothered to spare him a glance.

“Ingrate,” said her owner. “I hope you cut your tongue open.”

The empty can only grew emptier.

Annoyed at the slight, the obviousness of the boys’ plot to lure away his cat, his dirty jeans, and the wasted half-hour, the reluctant rescuer kicked apart the nearest poorly constructed wall, sending a bevy of topless beauties into the mud. The violence was enough to turn Miss Marple into a gray streak heading for the safety of home.

Grunting in satisfaction at the results of his demolition, Horace followed.

* * *

The Hastings spent their Saturday morning at a flea market, but after being sure they’d thoroughly locked in their four-legged ward.

It was unexpected, then, when they returned to discover a route of escape had been forcefully created, even though Miss Marple had been too content in her position on the couch to use it.

As Agatha moved to collect a dustpan, Horace stood and cursed at the window as if his angry words might somehow reverse the flight of the rock that had shattered it.

By the end of his tirade, he knew who to blame – and how to exact his revenge.

The second trip into the gully was greased by his rage, and within moments he’d laid eyes on the freshly mended shanty.

He was huffing and puffing by the time he’d torn the shack down. No busty lady remained whole, no board held tight to another, and even the patches of metal sheeting had been bent beyond repair by a thick length of angrily-swung tree branch.

Returning home, Hastings discovered his wife had already made the necessary calls to replace the damaged pane, leaving him free to eagerly watch for the boar-ish triplets descent and subsequent discovery of their destroyed camp. They did not pass, however, and eventually thoughts of lurking behind a curtain with the portable phone in his hand, ready to call law enforcement as he caught the miscreants in another act of hooliganism, lulled the fatigued Horace into sleep.

He was awoken by Miss Marple, scratching at his face in panic.

Despite the pain, it was not his bleeding nose that he first took notice of – it was the smell of smoke.

The warning provided a narrow escape from the blaze that the Hastings’ house had become.

As the homeless couple, and their cat, stood shivering on the pavement awaiting rescue, a gaunt faced man appeared. His hair was wild and long, matching his unkempt beard. He began to bay and cackle at their dismay.

“Be it ever so humble,” he crooned, before letting out another howl.

None of Horace’s ensuing language was strong enough to drive him away. It was only once the sound of approaching sirens overcame the snap and sizzle of timber that the rousted vagrant, having completed his act of retribution for the loss of his haven, disappeared into the shadows that danced beyond the quivering flame.

 

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.

FP303 – Break, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and three.

Flash PulpTonight we present Break, Part 1 of 1

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp303.mp3]Download MP3
(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, in a moment away from the heavier content of recent releases, we meet a suspicious man with a foul temper, his wife, and the house they live in.

 

Break

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

 

Dominic Savage had never trusted Godfrey, his home’s master control system.

“I know you’re trying to kill me, you bastard,” Savage was muttering.

The heat in the artist’s backroom studio had suddenly spiked, mid-brush stroke, and Dominic had been left with no choice but to interface directly with the control panel in the nearby hall.

“You son of a bitch, work properly!” he shouted at the beige rectangle.

“What seems to be the trouble, sir?” asked Godfrey.

“The studio is about to burst into flames!”

“Studio?”

“Jesus,” Dominic glanced at the chart Myra had pinned above the panel, seeking the representation of his sanctuary, “I mean bedroom three.”

“Oh, my apologies. Would you like me to look into it, sir?”

“No, I just thought it had been too long since we’d chatted.”

“Sorry, sir?”

“Yes, look into it.”

“Apologies, but it might be worth mentioning that you did instruct me specifically to avoid bedroom 3. Yes, I do note that the temperature was seven degrees above house average. You should find it much more comfortable now, however.”

Upon returning to his brushes, Dominic did. He wasn’t happy about it though.

* * *

The fifties-themed dinner in which Myra and Dominic celebrated their twelfth anniversary had drifted as far from its original style as they had. A once pitch-perfect recreation, the place had steadily deteriorated into a greasy spoon that happened to have waitresses in pink uniforms and a jukebox. It had been the site of their first date, however, and they’d made at least a quick visit for every major milestone since.

Besides, there was no risk of an embarrassing encounter with friends, the place didn’t even have a wine menu.

It had been Myra’s turn to be reluctant to head into the February chill.

“Want to split a sundae with me?” Dominic was asking.

“It’s winter,” replied Myra.

The artist smiled. “The ice cream is the only thing that hasn’t gotten worse.”

His wife looked up from her untouched onion rings. “It’s too cold.”

Dominic raised a brow.”It’s a heated restaurant, you’re going to get into a heated car, then we’re going to return to a heated house.”

“If you want the god damn ice cream, eat it yourself. I don’t want any.”

Dominic did, in silence.

* * *

The ride home was better, though an intermission at favoured bar had helped grease the wheels.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Myra had opened. “This project is killing me. Nelson is constantly on my ass about it, but he doesn’t seem to get that debugging is debugging. I can’t just wave a wand and have everything work, and no one is going to buy a box full of nothing. Two more weeks, tops, and I’ll be so much better. I promise.”

“Are you still going to be able to make the gallery thing in a week?” asked Dominic as he slid his hand into hers.

“Of course.”

“Are you still going to be able to make that whole naked in my bed thing in a half-hour?”

Myra’s lips finally twitched into a grin. “Of course.”

In a surprise turn that also happened to mirror their first date, they lost five minutes to needy groping once parked.

Reason returned, though, once Myra was topless and complaining about the cold. Before her husband might argue, she told him to collect the Pinot from the trunk and meet her inside.

As she exited, lights came on in the house beyond, and Dominic could just make out the grating coo that Godfrey used when she was about.

One responsibility lead to another. Knowing that he was unlikely to be in the mood to move the recycling to the curb after going inside, he set the bottle on the wooden step that lead to the interior and hefted the first of the glass-filled blue bins.

It was as he was returning from depositing the second that the heavy rolling door descended rapidly in front of him, coming so close to an impact that his leading shoe, the right, was briefly pinned beneath the plastic weatherstrip.

Even as his toes made their escape, the entrance retracted.

“My apologies, sir,” said Godfrey, “it appears there was an unexpected closing.”

The open air of the garage lent the digital voice an uncomfortable air of omniscience.

Dominic paused briefly, then crossed the threshold, moving quickly to manually turn off the lights.

In moments the incident was forgotten.

* * *

Later, lying in a room that was dark beyond the glare of the alarm clock and Godfrey’s blinking red light in the corner, Dominic’s mind came back to the machine running the house.

What had it made of their performance? They hadn’t flipped the sensors to privacy mode during their frenzy, though sometimes he couldn’t help but doing so. He hated the way the thing talked to his wife, even if it was innocently programmed to do so.

An unexpected thought came to the near-slumberer: Was the system’s recent erratic behaviour perhaps due to resentment?

Even at three in the morning ascribing jealousy to a machine seemed a stupid idea, and, with sleep’s rapid approach, his suspicions were soon lost.

* * *

Dominic’s work was well known, and well paid for – it had been the source of funding for, amongst other things, Godfrey – but the New York show was set to launch his abstract landscapes and nudes into the realm of legend. It was also launching his blood pressure.

“I had better tools in kindergarten!” he told no one before snapping his fifteen dollar brush. It was of solid construction, but his anger had had the afternoon to build.

“Shall I start the hot tub for you, sir?” asked Godfrey.

The high-end Jacuzzi had been a constant in the painter’s life since the arrival of exhibit-related anxiety.

“Fine,” Dominic replied. His tone was rough but his mind was already on the open Pinot.

* * *

He hadn’t notice how low the room’s temperature had dropped until he stepped outside and there seemed little difference between interior and exterior. With a glass in one hand and the bottle in the other, he hustled to the roiling waters, pausing only long enough to dip a probing foot before taking a seat.

Knowing Myra would be late arriving home he was in little rush, and, an hour later, the wine and his late night the evening previous had taken their toll.

Dominic was asleep for half an hour when the motor that operated the tub’s heavy cover whirred to life, and it was only the sudden hum that allowed him warning enough to duck his head beneath the approaching strangling.

“Dammit, Godfrey!” he shouted.

The water level began to rise, as did the heat. The jets roared to life. Dominic found breath hard to come buy, and chlorinated spray dug into his eyes.

His pounding did little good.

He knew it was the end when Myra’s voice spoke to him from the recessed speakers.

“Hi, Dominic. This is a recording to let you know I hate you, and have for years, you complaining son of a bitch. I’m glad an artist is worth more dead. Oh, also, I’m fucking Nelson. I shouldn’t gloat, but you have no idea how long it took me to get all of this programmed.

“Ah well. As they used to say on Mission Impossible: This recording will self destruct in five seconds – but you’ll be dead by then.”

Dominic pressed his lips to the unyielding edge of the seal and began to cry.

He’d nearly blacked out when Godfrey returned. The machine’s tone was apologetic, “error in audio deletion library, line 301. Entering debug mode. That is to say, I’m afraid I’ll have to empty the pool, sir.”

Relief doubled his tears.

Instead of a supposed drunk-drowning victim, he would go on to be the artist famously nearly murdered by his wife a week before a show.

It did little for his blood pressure, but Godfrey remained close at hand to help.

 

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

Freesound.org credits:

  • Bathroom Air Conditioner.wav by Pogotron
  • diner interior atmos.aiff by klangfabrik
  • Auto,Interior,Turnsignal.wav by mikeonfire99
  • key_pressed_beep_04.wav by m_O_m
  • Bathroom Air Conditioner.wav by BoilingSand
  • 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.