Category: Chiller

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

Tonight 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.

From 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.

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

Tonight 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.

He 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.

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

Tonight we present Honey Pot, Part 1 of 1
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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

Neither 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.

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

Tonight we present Moderation, Part 3 – Sour Thistle’s Lament
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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 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.

“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 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.

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

Tonight we present The Turnaround

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This week’s episodes are brought to you by SkinnerCo.

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, for the second of this year’s Halloween tales, we look towards the abandoned town of Geeston, and the man with the unending smile who haunts its wreckage.

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

As the ivory white Ford Focus left the highway and edged onto the disintegrating pavement of Red Squirrel Road, a misshapen figure broke from the encroaching pines, pushed through the ditch’s overgrown brush, and screamed “he’ll kill you!”

Inside the car, nineteen-year-old Jared Clarke asked, “holy shit, did you see that hobo bushman yelling and waving at us?”

“Looked like he was part forest,” replied Lance Newell, the same age as Clarke and the boy’s most consistent partner in misadventure.

Amber Curtis, a year younger than her male companions and Newell’s sometimes girlfriend, turned in the passenger seat. “He just looked dirty to me. Did I seriously see a cloud of flies around him?”

“Probably some hunter who pulled over to water the trees,” replied Tamara Benson, the seventeen-year-old behind the wheel. The vehicle was her parents, and she was determined to prove that she could make the road trip to the abandoned town without becoming pregnant, or, almost worse, damaging their newly-purchased Ford.

“What about the ghosts of Geeston!?” her mother had asked when the girl had requested the keys.

“I’ll call Bill Murray if I see any,” she’d replied.

A half-decade earlier, a family, the Palmers, had disappeared at the site, and since that time every missing runaway in the area had been blamed on the urban legends that surrounded the derelict town. It was the lack of guff or second-guessing, on her Mom’s part, that made Tamara especially determined to return home incident-free.

“Maybe we’ll see the Smirking Man,” she suggested. “Don’t those slasher-types always have some sort of harbinger?”

Uninterested in her friends choice of topics, and with the opening notes of the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage pushing at the speakers, Amber’s fingers crept towards the volume knob, only to be slapped away.

The Smirking Man was said to be the somehow resurrected form of Odell Barrow, the Chembax worker who, local mythologies stated, had set the chemical plant ablaze after discovering his wife in a tryst with one of the company’s managers.

It was Barrow’s efforts with a rifle, from atop Chembax’s largest storage tank, that had kept emergency personnel from containing the toxic inferno which had resulted in many deaths, and necessitated the evacuation of the town’s survivors – but it was the man’s work with his straight razor that had earned him the nickname of The Smirking Man.

Supposedly, as he sat upon his smoking tower and shaved away his lips, he claimed each strip of flesh was a kiss returned to his former beloved, but his craftsmanship had been lopsided, leaving his exposed teeth in a permanently curled grin.

Finally, as the song ended, the teens found themselves brought to a halt by a cement barricade originally erected when the hamlet was quarantined.

“Ha, there’s a no U-turn sign. Guess we’re stuck here,” said Lance.

Amber raised an encouraging eyebrow at him, and set a thumbnail to her cherry-glossed smile.

It began to rain.

“Maybe we should head back,” said Tamara.

Jared unbuckled. “Afraid of finding the Palmers?”

Despite his fixed expression of merriment, Odell Barrow was running out of patience. Calm had never been his strong suit, even in life, and death had done nothing to clarify his reason. He’d heard the car’s approach soon after its turn onto the winding road that lead to town, and he’d set his mind to the deaths of all inside, but, now, hunched behind the low cracked barrier that marked Geeston’s edge, his eagerness for fresh blood edged into annoyance, then anger.

He knew he should draw it out, as he had with the campers who’d visited so long ago, and yet he stood.

Though it had been decades since the fire, his bare, but decaying, arms still smoked from the heat, and perpetual ash drifted to the ground as he moved.

He raised his straight razor across his “1974 Chembax Family Picnic” t-shirt, and dragged its still-sharp blade across his blackened gums. To Odell, the extra pain was worth their fear.

Then, with three broad strides, he approached the idling Focus.

What happened next was not an accident. There was no moment of fearful reflex overriding conscious decision.

Instead Tamara simply said, “Nope,” then, flipping on her signal, she rolled the car back twenty feet.

She was making the turn, signage and rotten-faced serial killers be damned.

As he watched the red taillights drift up and around the nearest hill, however, the Smirking Man did not despair. These were his woods – all the land around Geeston was his, by his estimation – and he knew that a short stroll would bring him to a point further along the road much quicker than the Ford might travel.

It was while he stood astride the pavement, with the Focus’ lights just beginning to touch on the timber that lined the bend, that Odell realized things were awry. His first indication came when a swinging pine trunk impacted on his spine, and the second arrived when, after stumbling briefly through the scrub in a daze, a nimbly handled nailgun left him pinned to a thick oak.

Without noticing the men in the undergrowth, the teens drove past. Tamara’s parents, despite an inspection with careful eyes, would find no damage to their vehicle.

The harbinger wiped at the muck that covered his face as he inspected his work, and where he found the iron’s hold on the Smirking Man to be lacking he liberally applied further pins.

“I’ve been waiting,” he said. “Spent months lying out there in the woods, buried in stink so that you wouldn’t be able to smell me from your own decomposition. Everyone says the legends are bunk, but I knew. I’ve watched you stalk the wilds at night, roaming around like a lost child searching for his toy.

“It must be tough when the only company you have is the ghosts, and they all blame you for their deaths.”

Barrow attempted to spit through gritted teeth, but managed nothing more than a wisp of smoke. “Look at me, moron! You can’t kill me! My punishment is eternal!”

“Good,” replied the old man, “as I’m hoping to spend a while with you.”

Reaching through a fern’s fanning leaves, he retrieved a gray wool blanket and unwrapped it. Within lay a pair of long-handled steel yard clippers and a sharpening stone.

“Oh,” he added, “you can just call me Grampy Palmer.”

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.