Category: Mulligan Smith

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

Tonight we present Mulligan Smith in Wants & Needs
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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 our private investigator finds himself entering a den of iniquity with questions on his tongue.

Mulligan Smith in Wants & Needs

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

It wasn’t Mulligan’s favourite sort of place, but he was a man who believed deeply in an answer to every need – even if that need was not his own.

The Hungry Lion was situated in a former Chinese buffet that had had its windows blacked out by thick red curtains. The parking lot was well paved and the cement walkways leading to the disreputable business had clearly been recently refinished.

“Let me tell you about needs, Leo,” Mulligan was saying as he pushed his companion’s wheelchair along the ramp to the Lions curb. “The guy who runs this dimly lit cabaret needs to be at the center of things.

“Sure, the cash is good – he once told me that he even operates Seated Sundays as a non-profit charity, then rents himself the building for the write off – but I happen to be pretty familiar with Murray, and I know he must have been the sort of kid who grew up at the edge of every game of spin the bottle, of every pool party, of every prom. You know the type: In all the stories, but never the main player. He wasn’t the big chinned jock, the smart one, or, frankly, any of the Breakfast Club characters – but he does have The Hungry Lion.”

As he had repeatedly since first being fetched for this interview, Leo gave a mildly confused “huh” of agreement.

They pushed through the darkened glass doors and the first wave of bass hit their ears.

“Everyone needs a place,” Smith continued as he pulled open the interior entrance.

The darkness inside meant Leo’s unadjusted eyes could see only the woman writhing in the spotlight. She was wearing a pair of purple booty shorts, a Hello-Kitty-as-samurai tattoo, and a “Hello, My Name Is…” sticker over her heart that had had ‘Anya’ written in with a thick black sharpie – and nothing more.

“Anya, for instance,” said Smith, “is a nice lady who had the misfortune to fall for a jackass in a polo shirt that left her to raise twins on her own. She’s as sweet a human as you’ll ever meet, but she doesn’t like math and her winning smile made her teachers soft on her.

“She’ll be damned if she’ll let her kids starve, and, besides, she likes making people happy.

“It’s like I was saying: Everyone needs a place, even if that place has a bad rep.”

As he seemed to be hypnotized by Anya’s rhythmic swaying, the PI could no longer tell if his seated companion was paying him any attention. Approaching a round brown-topped table at the approximate center of the room, Mulligan was sure, at least, that he had not noticed the fact that the rest of the dozen or so patrons were also chair-bound though no seating had been supplied by the establishment.

After three minutes more of a White Zombie remix, Leo finally turned back to his apparent inquisitor.

“Uh, you’re from Haymaker right?” he asked, “so what’s up with this place?”

“You’re not listening, Leo,” Smith replied. “Everyone needs a place. This one is Seated Sundays.

“Most of these mooks paying too much for pitchers of domestic draft are injured vets who’ve come back from the war. It may surprise you to hear, but it can be tough for a paraplegic to get a girlfriend when buried in medical debts and suffering from the occasional bout of PTSD.

“That doesn’t mean they don’t need a little tender attention though. That’s how Murray got his idea for the charity, Seated Sundays. No cover charge for anyone in a rolling recliner, and a free lap dance for those who can show their dog tags. Donations are always welcome though, as Murray would gladly tell you.”

Leo’s too-small eyes grew closer together. “You brought me down here to pass the hat for a strip joint? Uh, thanks.”

Smith shrugged. “I wasn’t lying to you when I said I wanted to interview you on behalf of your insurance company, but, as you you’ve probably figured out, I’m no suit juggling actuary tables – but, hold on a sec, here comes a friend of mine, One Leg Mick.”

Having spotted the hoodied PI, the man with the lone lower limb had launched himself in their direction with sturdy arms. His high-speed stop was sudden, and spoke of long practiced braking.

“Hey, Mick, I was just telling my pal here about miracle flights,” Mulligan offered as his hello.

“Miracle flights?” asked Leo. His confused squint had only strained further at the newcomer’s appearance, but, as Anya pranced from the stage, his attention was again absorbed by the announced arrival of Veronika.

Despite the distraction, Mick said, “Hell, used to happen constantly when I worked at the airport, especially when security started ratcheting up.

“‘Miracle Flights’ are what the cabin crew called ‘em. Some frequent flyer who knows the system claims they need a wheelchair from the airport. They’re rolled on by the flight attendant, but somehow they walk out cured. Hell, where was that sort of healthcare when I came back from the war? Ha!”

“Huh?” asked Leo.

“It’s for priority seating,” answered Smith. “They fake a condition so they can get on the plane ahead of the rabble.”

Without warning the detective had Leo’s full focus.

“Everyone needs a place in the world,” Mulligan repeated to him. “You should’ve done some research. Your paperwork states your spinal cord injury – your SCI – is complete. Do you know what that means?”

“I can’t play badminton and Haymaker owes me an ass-ton of money?”

“Yeah, and it pays out better than being SCI incomplete, but it also means you shouldn’t be so pleased to see Anya and Veronika. Actually, these folks are all SCI incomplete – it’s the fellas with totally severed nerves who have trouble, uh, raising the flag in salute.”

Veronika swung wide on the pole, her thighs slowing her descent to the floor.

Red faced, Leo’s forearms dropped to his lap for as much coverage as possible, but One Leg, his smile now a sneer, backed away and returned to the group in fatigues that he’d left at his own table.

Smith, however, was not done: “What bothers me isn’t just that you’re taking money from people who need it – no, it’s more direct than that. Your wants give their needs a bad rep.”

As word of the forgery traveled from lips hovering above overpriced beer to ears aching from too-loud grind music, wheels began to align themselves towards the pair.

Mulligan turned, nodded to the DJ, and left to stand on the curb outside.

Veronika did not break her wiggle.

Of course Smith’s client, Haymaker Insurance, couldn’t accept an errant erection as proof of a fraudulent claim – but the investigator’s hastily snapped cellphone pictures showing Leo sprinting from the strip club ahead of a mob of angry ex-military men would certainly serve.

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 twenty-nine.

Tonight we present Mulligan Smith in Can’t Live with Them, Part 1 of 3
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(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

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

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

Tonight, Mulligan Smith, PI, finds himself face-to-face with a surly client, and the man’s nervous dachshund.

Mulligan Smith in Can’t Live with Them, Part 1 of 3

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

It was earlier than Mulligan liked to exist on any given day, but his client, Maxwell Dougherty, had demanded the meeting take place before the man had to depart for his desk. The account manager was straightening his crimson tie as Smith leaned the Tercel into his driveway.

This was an especially unpleasant situation for the private investigator, as he’d spent the previous evening consoling a woman whose missing son he’d finally turned up. She’d requested he drive her to the grassy lot where police technicians were retrieving what was left of his long-decayed corpse, then he’d voluntarily stopped at the bar just down her street to talk over how common suicide was amongst teens. Instead they mainly discussed their mutual love of mystery novels and dogs, though they were both between pets at the moment; Small talk, but the lack of serious subject matter had kept him from remembering that he should leave.

He rarely drank, largely because of how it made him feel on that very early, very bright morning, and because it often led – as it had last night – to his guilt covering the tab. His sympathies had guzzled half the value of his invoice, and that perhaps pained the detective the most. It meant belt tightening and having to watch idiots kick their puppies.

“C’mon and piss,” said the Windsor fussing, leg throwing, Dougherty.

It was obvious to Mulligan that the dachshund was too concerned with flying Oxfords to consider taking a moment to water the lawn, so he arranged a distraction.

“Hey, Max,” he said with a wave.

The client turned on his spotless heel. “Maxwell. I mentioned the same thing in my email, remember?”

Yes, in fact, Smith remembered quite well.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Actually, about that, I just had a few follow-up questions.”

In truth he hated to take a job – even a well-paying job – without meeting the client. The offer had arrived with a portfolio of information that he guessed wasn’t all that different than an account file Maxwell would have put together on an average work day.

Mulligan closed the distance with his hand extended, an awkward gesture that forced Dougherty to keep his eyes on the approaching handshake. Seeing his master’s distracted state, the dog turned a leg on a well-watered looking maple.

As the shake was exchanged – Smith was unsurprised to discover Maxwell was a squeezer – the detective opted to overstep his advance in hopes of catching something on his clients breath that might match the red flare of broken blood vessels across the peak of his nose. He didn’t have to get terribly close to confirm his theory.

Then the questions began.

“You were on good terms with your wife?” asked Smith.

“Yeah, we were in love,” was all Dougherty replied.

“Were the two of you in any fights just before she disappeared?”

“No.”

“Was there anything else out of the ordinary – was she away a lot? Distracted by her cellphone or the Internet?”

“Was she fucking someone else, you mean? No. I don’t have money to throw away on her having her own phone, and she could barely find our computer’s power button.”

Smith nodded, more out of a lack of surprise than any interest in affirming his client’s notions.

“You mentioned that she ran a daycare – any problems with the parents?”

“No. She was down to two kids, and she really just watched them in the morning until she walked them to school. Their folks do shift work, and they never discussed much beyond ‘how much do I owe you?’”

“Did she have any habits that might have gotten her into trouble?”

Maxwell’s voice grew thicker with this delivery, as if the gin on his breath was only decorative.

“She drank too much sometimes. We didn’t fight, but it could make her pretty bitchy.”

While Smith worked on his next question the dog barked a noncommittal hello to a passing cyclist.

“Shut up, Brutus,” said its owner. “She bought me this shitty mutt. I swear it’s about as smart as she is. I mean, who the fuck gives an animal as a present? I’d have it put down if the vet didn’t charge so much.”

Mulligan could guess, and projected loneliness would be high on his list of suggestions. He also now had some idea of why his client had taken him on:` He himself wasn’t entirely convinced the man hadn’t murdered his wife, and it was a short jump to what the cops might think.

“Anything more?” asked Dougherty.

“Nah, that’s all I needed,” replied Smith.

Maxwell turned back, pulling open the entrance. His toes narrowly missed the dachshund’s scrambling rear legs as the pup bolted inside.

The pet owner told his employee, “you better not be billing me for this time. You’re supposed to be looking for my fucking wife, not standing here bullshitting with me,” as he pulled shut the inside door.

Smith noted that, in his rush, he’d forgotten to lock it.

“I didn’t plan to actually start billing till nine,” Mulligan replied, “so you’ve got another five minutes.”

With a glance at his watch, the account manager said, “shit.”

Less than two minutes later Smith was pulling right at the corner’s stop sign as Maxwell accelerated away behind him.

The lingering PI then took another right, and another, and another. He didn’t bother killing the engine as he stepped out onto Dougherty’s driveway. He found Brutus excited to be unexpectedly free, and it required little coaxing to convince him into the backseat of the Tercel.

The Mulligan knew a lady who would actually appreciate the company.

(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 three hundred and twenty-four.

Tonight we present Mulligan Smith in From Beyond, Part 1 of 1
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by Aboard the Knight Bus

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 in which Mulligan Smith, private investigator, stumbles into an unlikely conversation with the dead.

Mulligan Smith in From Beyond

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

They’d left the sliding door open, and, from somewhere in the sprawl of townhouses and bungalows beyond the balcony, the smell of burgers cooking on an open grill had invaded the apartment. The day-long breeze that seemed to be rolling the sun slowly over the horizon also spared the occasional gust strong enough to toss the white curtains into a haze of lace, and every surge carried the smell of roasting meat further into the silent residence.

The occupants, Trish Adams, a thirty-four-year-old customer service representative for American Airlines, and Scott Clark, a thirty-eight-year-old mechanic and her live-in boyfriend, were leaning heavily over the living room’s broad glass-topped table. The small zen garden that normally filled the surface had been moved to the kitchen counter, as had a collection of guitar magazines and the vintage bottle containing essential oils and diffuser sticks. Now the space was occupied by only a tablet, and the display’s glow was all that stood against the shadows that had begun to creep from underneath the retro-styled couch and its matching chaise lounge.

The couple were not using the furniture, however.

Like eager teens they’d shuffled up to the expanse on their knees, their socked toes digging into the Kashmir rug and their trembling fingers only brushing the screen.

They had used the same approach on each of their previous spirit raisings.

The app that acted as their medium was a simple one: A brown rectangle filled from left-to-right with the alphabet, yes/no options, and, in the bottom corners, indicators for “hello” and “goodbye.” In the center, beneath the pair’s unguided hands, a representation of a planchette wiggled across the digital Ouija board.

Their breath was shallow and their eyes were locked on the device. On the common grass below the balcony, a pair of dogs began a loud and sharp shouting match, and the pointer stopped, aimed at the faux-wood background.

Scott whispered, “do you think -,” but his jaw locked at the largely expected knock.

With popping knees, he stood and answered. Behind the chain-locked front door stood a thin-faced man in a black hoodie.

“There was this old gent who held the entrance for me, so I didn’t ring up. I thought it’d be rude to turn him down, he had to brace himself against his cane to keep from being pushed over.” It was as close to a greeting as Mulligan offered, but it was enough to carry him into the seance area.

Trish remained in her stooped stance.

“Haven’t learned your lesson yet, huh?” inquired the private investigator. He worked hard to keep the smirk out of his voice, but failed.

The customer service rep gave a noncommittal smile, saying, “it was Scott’s suggestion.”

“Oh, bullshit, you were just as curious as I was,” said her boyfriend, as he reached for the dimmer switch on the plum coloured wall.

The room brightened, and Smith asked, “- and what did the phantoms say? No, wait – don’t tell me, I’ll tell you.

“For my first trick, however, I will reveal secrets to amaze and astound: For example, the three grand you told me you sent to the supposed ‘Urban Scholarship Federation’, of Dee-troit, wasn’t the only ‘donation’ you made, was it?”

Trish’s gaze lingered on the now-dark tablet as she spoke. “So I guess you’re sure now that the Urban Scholarship Federation wasn’t a real thing?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. The fact that they were asking you to wire transfer them cash via Western Union should have been a hint,” replied Mulligan, “but that’s not what I asked.”

“Nevermind, though, with my newfound psychic detective powers I’ll answer for you. You sent out two other sums – they were much smaller, and to private individuals, so you didn’t mention them in the hopes of not looking like morons for being burned three times before realizing it.

“At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. It’s better than the incredulous alternative.

”Now, you might think that I just dug up some receipts, or that I’ve peeked into your bank accounts, so let me tell you about a dead boy named Martin, a poor lad of fourteen who died of malnutrition because he kept secretly giving his already-meager supper away to his little brothers. Those unlucky kids, all seven of them living in that tiny house – and the shame of their mother not even noticing his slow starvation as she drank herself through a brewery’s worth of Milwaukee’s Best.”

Scott’s jaw had gone slack, leaving Trish to ask the question, “you – you found Martin’s family?”

Smith blinked. He exhaled. He blinked again.

“You really still believe?” he asked.

“No – I mean, you obviously don’t,” she replied, “but they knew so much about us! They knew about Uncle Kenneth’s cancer, our birthdays – Martin himself told us he’d talked to my Grampy on the other side!”

Mulligan shrugged. “You told them those things yourself, the moment you accepted the app’s request to access your social network data.

“Your favourite apparition, Martin, is only a ghost in the machine. He never really existed, and neither did any of the other poltergeists you were supposedly chatting with – and who all seemed to have mysterious money problems back in the living world.

“For my last trick, I’ll tell you what the Ouija was whispering to you just before I came in: Absolutely nothing, unless you were psyching yourself out. I know this because I was on hand yesterday when the police visited the Motor City college kids who wrote the spirit board program. My gas mileage ain’t going to be cheap, either.

“They were the ones pretending to be Martin and the rest.

“The pseudo-spooks were pretty careful about who they used their back door on – they apparently just wanted decent meals and tuition, not to be greedy – but you weren’t alone in being suckered.

“Still, I, uh, hate to say it, but there isn’t a ghost of a chance of you getting your cash back.”

Scott winced, and Mulligan told him, “frankly, it was a long drive back and I had time to think of a hundred more of those. I can keep going for hours before I have to give up the ghost, I mean, unless you want to just pay me.” The detective pulled a printed invoice from his pocket as he spoke.

Finally standing, Trish made for the front hall – and her cheque book.

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 twenty.

Tonight we present The Cost of Living: Part 2 of 3 – Mulligan Smith in The Best Medicine
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(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

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

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

Tonight, PI Mulligan Smith finds himself pondering a murder while reclining near a jovial man on the edge of death.

The Cost of Living: Part 2 of 3 – Mulligan Smith in The Best Medicine

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

The building smelled of peppermints and medicine, and Smith couldn’t wait to be free of its cinder block walls – yet he had a job to do.

Despite the murder that had taken place in the room, Mulligan was only on hand to look into possible negligence on the part of the nursing home. The scene of the crime was the last stop on his self-conducted tour – a trek launched under the vaguely-worded guise of his being a patient’s son – and the dead man’s empty cot provided a convenient, if too firm, surface on which to briefly rest.

Besides, bedridden Walt, the victim’s roommate for some three years, offered outbursts of chuckling and a constant stream of twitching, but no complaints.

Smith had been informed by Julius Crow, a talkative walker-toter the PI had encountered in the residence’s barren game area, that the laughing invalid had not spoken a comprehensible word in the length of Crow’s time wandering the converted mansion’s halls.

“- and that’s six years longer than the doctors gave me – six years longer than I wanted – so you better believe it,” the stoop-shouldered man had told Mulligan before completing his sentence with a loud snort. It was such a common conclusion that, by the end of their conversation, Smith assumed the man was used to providing the explosion as a method of punctuation for his hard-of-hearing friends.

“When I first heard about ol’ Gregor,” Julius had continued, “I thought ‘a death at an old folks home? Yeah, that’s a fuckin’ surprise’ – if you’ll mind my Frenches.”

Mulligan had interpreted this “hurk” as meant to be comical, but said nothing.

Crow had happily chattered through the detective’s silence. “Weird what makes the news, you know what I mean? For example, the staff here – especially the nurses – are a good crowd. It’s sort of an accident that they are – they’re certainly not paid enough to be, but they’re all doctors and such back in the countries they’ve come from. They like to practice their English on me, and I get the impression Deep Creek Manor’s lack of VISA requirements and flexible hours means they can work and still slog their way through school to be recertified. I feel for ’em in that respect, most already have more education than I ever did.

“Now, it definitely ain’t always perfect, but no batch of human beings ever is. What I’m getting at, though, is that sometimes staff just disappear – you talk to them on a Monday night and they say they’ll see you in the morning, then nothing.”

This grunt had seemed closer to a mix of disgust and wonder.

“The ornery buggers around here write ’em off because they aren’t pale enough for their taste, and if someone doesn’t show, they immediately say the missing person was probably busted by immigration. The other employees don’t want to raise a fuss and draw attention, and the Bargers – the folks who run the place – seem to find it easier to hire new people than to track down the missing.

“A dozen able-bodies disappear and no one says ‘boo,’ but a single old fart has his face chewed off and everyone starts runnin’ around with their hands in the air.”

Mulligan had shrugged as he watched a slender Japanese woman take up seating at the edge of a worn plastic-bottomed chair in the game room’s corner. She was drawing a wheelchair bound crowd as nurses rolled in blank-eyed patients.

The snort was what had brought Smith back to business. He asked, “you said things aren’t always perfect – what did you mean?”

“Look out on the garden in the back – it’s the story of this place. Beautiful bit of work once, probably been here as long as the land’s been settled, but now it’s just a riot of thorns and weeds. Even the poor buggers who had to jump fences and run from dogs to get here refuse to go in there – and why should they? The owners bought this place, filled it, then forgot about it.

”Same situation goes for the inside. Everyone does their best, but even with the Bargers’ endless pool of suckers there’s never enough staff – especially after lights out. If they think you’re immobile they don’t swing by to check on you very often. That’s exactly what happened with Gregor. Walt’s laughing aside, they were both basically vegetables – the Russian didn’t do much but drool and shit in the three years I knew him – so the night crew probably didn’t think to poke in on them. Then some crazy bugger snuck in there and got to gnawing on Gregor’s head while Walt just chuckled to himself in the dark. Could he even feel it? We’ll never know I guess. Hella past time for him to go though – for all of us to, really.”

His ears had remained focused, but Smith’s gaze had again fallen on the woman in the far corner. Her practiced fingers had extracted a frail looking flute from the depths of the white baby-sling she carried across her shoulder, and Mulligan had found himself wondering if the child inside might rouse when her practiced fingers and taut lips began to project a tune into the room.

It had not.

After contemplative nose-clearing from Crow, Smith returned to the task at hand.

“The people aside, you talk like you’d rather not be here,” he’d said, “six years too many? Past time to go? Doesn’t sound like you’re terribly enthusiastic about the facilities.”

“Ah, hell, it’s not that. Take Ms. Yamato over there – I know half the people in here with their mouths still working think she’s Chinese and not Japanese, and it don’t matter how many times I tell them otherwise. Imagine all these bastards up and around, bitching that illegals are ruining the country and video games are turning today’s youth into Godless killing machines? Death has its purpose, even if it’s not a pleasant one. Maybe some day we’ll be in space or downloading our brains, or whatever, but for now we’re built to make room for new ideas by being forced to let go of the old ones, even if we don’t want to.

“Besides – what else does a guy like Walt have to hope for but a visit from the reaper?”

Now, as Mulligan sat not five feet from the guffawing man, Mulligan realized that perhaps Walt had been looking forward to more than Julius might imagine.

Smith swung his legs beyond the bed’s edge and zipped his hoodie. With his shadow falling over the snickerer’s lumpy sheets, and his hand on the tazer in his pocket, he asked, “you just have a good evening, or have you been running a con these last few years?”

There was no answer, but the rolling of Walt’s shoulders slowed, and his blue eyes focused on his visitor’s face.

Mulligan nodded, convinced that the man was no danger to anyone who wasn’t immobile. “So, one day you found the symptoms on the downswing and you got the munchies? I doubt the guys investigating this are much used to dealing with the health problems associated with cannibalism, but I know kuru when I see it. You may not serve a lot of jail time, and I doubt you’ll ever be linked to whichever corpse originally gave you the laughing disease, but at least you’ll make a nice medical oddity for the doctors to prod – well, until it finally kills you.”

Would the lack of a diagnosis be enough to prove negligence on the part of the Barger’s? The PI didn’t know, but the discovery might be enough to earn him his paycheck.

As he departed, Smith was chased into the hall by a burst of involuntary laughter, and out of the building by the melancholy notes of Ms. Yamato’s woodwind.

He reached for his phone.

(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.