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Flash Pulp 040 – Mulligan Smith and The Casanova Suicide, Part 1 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Forty.

Flash PulpTonight: Mulligan Smith and The Casanova Suicide, Part 1 of 3

(Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3)

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This evening’s story is brought to you by MayTunes.com

A quest to dream of a journey that begins the pursuit of inquiring into an adventure.

That’s Maytunes.com

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – 400 to 600 words brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we present the opening chapter in a new on-going three-part serialization, ripped from the case files of Mulligan Smith, PI. In this episode, our hero is tasked with investigating the motives of a dead man.

Flash Pulp 040 – Mulligan Smith and The Casanova Suicide, Part 1 of 3

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

“I came home and there was a note on the table. It said: “I’m in the pool. Don’t come out. Call the police. It’s been great. Love you. Goodbye.””

Rhiannon Melby was 43, and wore her mix of blond and gray in a loose braid. She sat across the vinyl-lined booth from Mulligan, and as she told her story, she thoroughly inspected the rim of her glass of iced tea.

“I walked into the backyard, and there he was. When I read the note my first thought was that he’d drowned himself, but when I got back there it was almost as if he’d dozed off in the inflatable lounger after a skinny dip. It would have been a Kodak moment if it wasn’t for the pill bottle floating beside him.”

As she talked, the PI watched an untended three year old spin circles on the stained carpet. Her father was deep into an extended speech about the quality of the wings at that specific Denny’s, and was paying little attention to the layer of dirt accumulating on her white unicorn t-shirt and pink shorts.

“So he was nude?” Mulligan asked, an onion ring dangling from his fingers.

The child on the carpet had taken to playing peekaboo with the other customers, her father still busy punctuating his sentences with a greasy drumstick. In the booth at the end of the row, Smith noted a pot-bellied man with thick glasses attempting to appear as if he was staring at the menu, and not the girl.

“Yes.” She glanced out the window. “He used plenty of sunscreen though.”

Crunching down on the fried ring, Smith gave the mourning woman a moment to distance herself from the memory.

“I’ll be back in a sec.”

He stood.

Moseying past the server’s station, he grabbed a plastic cup full of cheap markers.

He returned to his seat.

“You’re sure he had no reason to be depressed.”

“No. The house is paid for, our salaries were good, and he didn’t have any addictions.”

“- that you know of.”

She raised an eyebrow at Mulligan.

“Sorry, just thinking aloud – what about your marriage?”

The man at the end of the row was leaning forward now, suckling at his top lip. His eyes were locked on the child’s scabby knees.

“Well – that’s a little more complicated. Ten years ago I went through a fight with uterine cancer. Shamus was fantastic. He paid the bills when I didn’t think we could, and he was there for me every moment I needed him. When it was over though, I had to be realistic,” she paused briefly as the wildling in the aisle threw herself bodily into a jet imitation, traveling the length of the row with extended arms and a mighty rumble. “We’d both been waiting for tenure before starting a family, and by the time I was done being saved, there wasn’t enough of me left to make that happen. Worse still – well, we loved each other, in an honest way, but we also used to spend a lot of time loving each other in a much more primal fashion. After the surgery, that part of me was just gone – I had the same brain, but I was living in a different body, and I needed to be fair to the person who’d carried me during the scariest thing I’ll ever live through. He wasn’t a swinger, but – he’d had friends since then. I’ve met them all; we used to dine pretty regularly with some of them, although less so with the last, Hannah.”

Mulligan busied himself picking at a crumb between his teeth that wasn’t there. Miss Unicorn had worn out her welcome with the group of college students loudly awaiting their order, and had begun to chat at a sympathetic young mother as the woman fed her baby.

“Have you talked to Hannah since?”

“Briefly, at the funeral. She seems just as distraught and confused as I am.”

“Do you know where they met?”

“She was a student of his.”

“Yikes – student-faculty relationships can get messy, have you considered that it’s a possibility she was blackmailing him?”

“No.”

Mulligan sighed.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but you may want to. I think all I’ll need to start is her number, if you have it.”

The young performer’s selection of spectators was running short, and Mulligan knew it wouldn’t be long before she’d completed her floor show for the old couple finishing their Moons Over My Hammy, three booths away. It would be Smith’s turn next, and after the PI, there was only the man with the probing glasses.

The widow retrieved a pen from her purse, jotting the digits along the edge of her paper place mat before sliding it to him. The two shook hands, and, wiping at the corner of her eye with a napkin, Mrs. Melby departed.

The little girl crept to the edge of his table, peering over the faux wood grain.
Plucking a thick brown from amongst the collection of markers, he smiled at the intruder. Using the laminated plastic of the desert menu as a rough mirror, he gave himself a curling villain’s moustache. The girl clapped her hands, her eyes igniting.

He offered her the cup.

By the end of it, he had come away with a navy blue goatee and bright pink devil-horns. Princess Jessica, as she’d introduced herself, had had more of an abstract artistic view, but she’d worked enthusiastically.

Her masterwork complete, she slammed the double handful of felt-tips back into the cup.

“You look like a clown vomited on your face,” Mulligan said, waggling the horns on his brow and smirking.

She gave him a sparkling double thumbs up, her smile buried beneath a hundred sweeping rainbows.

“Why don’t you go show your Papa?” Smith encouraged.

Princess Jessica screeched in delight as she shot back down the aisle.

Mulligan glanced at the disappointed face of the bespectacled man, then slipped a pair of twenties under the corner of his plate.

Pulling on his sweater’s hood, he made for the door.

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Some Notes On Geeston

Oddly, Sunday In Geeston has more biography in it than most of the stories I’ve put up via Flash Pulp. I could take you to that little office, and I wasted more than one afternoon with a man not unlike Eddie, who took quite a bit of enjoyment in spending Sundays waiting for people to climb the post office’s tall cement steps.

I worked for the Eddie-alike, although he was too weird to truly insert into fiction. I intervened one day during a particularly sad case of stair-climbing, and, despite the fact that I may have saved that old man a hip, I was greeted with a dour look when I returned.

The store he operated eventually went under and we stopped talking shortly afterwards – actually, the day after he spent an afternoon showing me his KISS doll collection.
KISS dolls

Crying Over Spillane'd Milk

I don’t usually quote large portions of articles, but it was tough to know where to stop with this one:

Son of NYC mobster Mickey Spillane falls to death

NEW YORK – The son of murdered Irish mobster Mickey Spillane tumbled out the window of his sixth-floor apartment in a fatal fall Saturday, police and his uncle said.

Robert “Bobby” Spillane, an actor who had roles on television’s “Rescue Me” and “Law & Order,” fell from his Midtown Manhattan apartment in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood near Times Square where his father, not to be confused with the pulp fiction writer of the same name, had run rackets back in the 1960s and 1970s.

No criminality was suspected in Bobby Spillane’s death.

Jim McManus, Spillane’s uncle and a longtime neighborhood power broker, called Spillane’s death a “terribly sad accident.”

“He was the nicest kid in the world,” said McManus, who is a district leader of the McManus Midtown Democratic Association, a political club. “He helped everyone.”

Butting out his cigar, he added: “Nice newspaper you’re running there, be a shame if something happened to it.”

Is “he was leaning against the window screen” the gangster equivalent of “she walked into a door”?

Also, “criminality”? Are we lookin’ at the criminality of this friggin’ mook or what? Let’s stick with “police have no reason to suspect foul play”, or even “the death was an accident.”

Bunny Killers

Listen, I know Night Of The Lepus, the “Giant Bunnies Attack a Town” 1970s horror movie, isn’t exactly known for its realism or tight plotting – still, I caught part of it on cable last night, and recalled something that I actually do find creepy every time I see it.

Night Of The Lepus Hug

(I apologize for the quality of the pictures, I took them with my iPhone, straight from the picture-box.)

I understand the value of the parent-child bonding that “Take Your Child To Work”-day can provide, but I’m not sure that it has the intended effect when you’re bringing your daughter to an animal testing lab full of angry rabbits in tiny metal cages.

This scene actually goes on to poke one of the rabbits with a large needle full of chemicals, while the two staff members tersely discuss their lack of any idea about what might happen as a result, all as the little girl watches on from the rear of the room.
Night Of The Lepus Lock up
Worse still, she needs to be there for the plot: she’s the MacGuffin that moves the infected rabbit out of observation and into another unmarked cage as “it’s her favourite”.

I realize she’s just a standard ’70s mop-headed child actor in a poorly plotted movie, but I choose to believe she was a pro-bunny sympathizer who fully understood her actions.

Whatever the case, ten minutes later it’s all giant rabbits and Deforest “Bones” Kelly shouting about how he’s a doctor, not a veterinarian.
Night Of The Lepus Poster

Flash Pulp 039 – Sunday In Geeston, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, Episode Thirty-Nine.

Flash PulpTonight: Sunday In Geeston, Part 1 of 1

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This evening’s story is brought to you by a creeping sense of anxiety.

– still, if you’d take the time to subscribe via iTunes, we’d appreciate it.

To subscribe click here.

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – 400 to 600 words brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we present a chiller tale centered on the small hamlet of Geeston, on a Sunday not unlike most others – in Geeston.

Flash Pulp 039 – Sunday In Geeston, Part 1 of 1

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

Sunday, June 21st, 1998

Eddie sat in the darkened recess of the tiny strip-plaza office. Over the gray movable barrier that made up the demarcation between the sitting area, and the shabby little walnut desk he spent his hours behind, he had a clear view of the red-brick post office across the street.

Mrs. Krukowski was pulling herself up the steep cement stairs, the effort sending her knobby knees popping beneath her beige raincoat. He knew the old woman: she’d been in to buy insurance for her prim Chevy Vega, and on her way out the door she’d helped herself to a pocketful of his green and white mint candies.

He licked his lips, his cheeks twitching in anticipation.

By the time she was at the halfway point, he was up from his chair, leaning over the desk, confident the shadows would keep him invisible behind the bay window.

She reached the landing, taking a moment at the black handrail. She moved to the door.

It was locked.

Eddie hooted.

“Suckers’ll do it every time! Everyone knows the post office is closed on Sunday.”

She turned.

Eddie was sure the distance was too great for her to have heard him, but he ducked his eyes, focusing on doodling rough circles on the ancient cork mat that covered his desk.

He didn’t notice when Mrs. Krukowsi finally broke the stare of her eyeless sockets, and began to move on down the street.

* * *

It was later, and a noise from down the block rattled his attention away from the display pamphlets he’d been arranging and re-arranging in the sitting area.

Glancing at the street, Eddie moved to the rear of the office, recalling that he’d intended to clean up his coffee nook.

On the road, a man was running. Over seven feet tall, he had to stoop to keep the baby carriage upright at such speeds.

The navy blue buggy was on fire.

Annoyed at his inability to open the flower-patterned metal canister he kept the sugar in, Eddie began to slam it against the fake wood grain of the small table he kept the coffee pot on.

His eyes remained firmly fixed on the dark brown stir sticks.

* * *

Night was falling, and it struck Eddie that he should consider locking up.

In the distance, a ringing began, wobbling in and out of his hearing on a panicked wavelength.

Dogs flooded the street. Their bellies were lean, and their eyes were milky. They moved as a wall, over two hundred strong. They ran shoulder to shoulder, nose to anus. He could hear the whine of the pack through the thick glass of the window.

Then the children came, and he seemed to remember having seen them before.

One boy let go of his lunch pail as he ran, the flying blue plastic box slamming into the face of a pudgy companion in jean shorts.

The injured boy fell, and was immediately trampled by twin girls wearing matching pink spangled t-shirts and white skirts.

Bringing up the rear was Monica Telfort. She was a volunteer driver for kids headed to Sunday school – a service offered up by some of Geeston’s high minded, to keep the young on God’s path while their parents slept off their Saturday night hangovers. Her good humour was legend amongst the chatterers who held court on the benches outside Monty’s convenience.

The notion that she’d picked up his own son that morning, to go on a picnic with his church-mates, slipped into Eddie’s mind.

She was screaming at the children, screaming and pointing into the distance beyond his view.

As Eddie watched, the woman fell to the ground, clutching at her throat.

No child stopped, and he could see tears and vomit on their shirts as they pounded past his window.

He backed away and sat down, deciding it was a good time to complete some paperwork.

His pale hand reached into his rotting and empty desk.

* * *

Monday, June 22nd, 1998

“I can’t feel a thing from my lower back to my ankles,” Les said, stepping down from the battered jeep.

“Sorry, but I wouldn’t risk running a car with actual shocks all the way out here, I’d just be asking to pay for something. Jeep-asaurus dies, I’ll unscrew the plates and we’ll just leave it here and hike out, find a payphone along the highway,” replied Bailey, slamming the flimsy door and pulling a green rucksack from the open trunk.

“Well, it’s not much of a holiday so far though, is it? At least back at the office my spine doesn’t ache.” Stretching, Les surveyed the buildings beyond the access road. “So, the town is pretty safe? I mean with the chemicals and everything?”

“Sure, the Chembax plant burnt down over twenty years ago now, just don’t go eating any moldy sandwiches, or rubbing moss into your eyes. It’s pretty clear around the buildings that aren’t charred cinders though, I guess the same cloud that gassed everyone settled into the soil – it keeps the forest from reclaiming everything. The rescue people took all the bodies and survivors away, but otherwise, things are pretty much Geeston, 1976.”

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm. The audio and text formats of Flash Pulp are released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Crime Never Bids

Hardy, a friend of mine who has a spider-sense for odd Canadiana, sent me this gubmint auction link.

I’ve seen my share of government auctions – I was expecting seized Honda Civics and grow-op houses – but no, this is actually general surplus, so it’s not JUST the former possessions of the incarcerated. (Although, yeah, there’s plenty of that too.)

Stretcher

One stretcher, slightly used? Yikes.

20,000 Straws

I don’t know where these came from – but I love the understated nature of the picture. At first I couldn’t figure out why the government was wasting my tax money trying to sell straws and plastic lids, but then I realized it’s actually 20,000 of each. That’s a lot of straw wrappers to blow at people.

Diamond Chips

I know what I said about seized assets, but wouldn’t you want to play International Super Spy with a bag full of real diamond chips?

Just pretend they weren’t actually wrenched out of old ladies’ ring-settings by a meth-head B&E specialist using a pair of rusty needle nose pliers.

My Hovercraft Is Full Of EeeeelsI actually WANT to believe this is a seized asset – that somewhere there’s a crime lord that once shouted: “Oh no, the cops! Quick boys, to the hovercraft!”

A Ghost Question

What if there really were ghosts, and not only that, what if they had a bit of an over-population issue?

What if every chamber you aren’t in is packed wall-to-wall with ethereal phantoms, which simply retreat to the unoccupied spaces as you move from room to room?
A Frame From The Film Stuck On YouI mean, I’m just sayin’.

Hairy

Just a quick thought: I’ve long maintained at least some portion of facial hair, and it’s always been a bit of a fidget source during my deepest thinking periods. Is stroking a beard/goatee reflexively while running your brain over a problem a left over relic from the grooming habits of our primate ancestors?
No, Neither Of These Are Me