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FP306 – Mulligan Smith in Customs and Customers, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and six.

Flash PulpTonight we present Mulligan Smith in Customs and Customers, Part 1 of 1

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp306.mp3]Download MP3
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by the The Hollywood Outsider.

 

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, discusses an odd series of incidents in a local Walmart.

 

Mulligan Smith in Customs and Customers

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

 

Walmart Mike was saying, “oh yeah, I knew a matchbook pro, back in the day. Burned down an entire fried chicken chain in the early ‘60s. Truth is, without the Internet, people talked to each other less back then, especially insurance companies. Sorry, what? Oh, yeah, I guess we got those, you’d have to check with electronics. Have a nice day.”

Mulligan knew it had been a long day for Mike. The news had run through the old man network that loitered on mall benches and in McDonald’s booths, and eventually reached the PI’s father, who’d then passed it on to his son.

Even now, hours after the incident, the ex-con’s face was unusually drawn. He perked up, however, at the sight of Smith lingering in the parking lot.

MulliganPeeling off his smock – an action Mulligan knew he referred to as “going undercover” – Mike threw a hand-sign to his manager that obviously meant “I’m taking a minute,” then strolled past the line of tchotchke-ball-dispensing change collectors and through the automatic doors.

“You wouldn’t believe what a dog crap and Huckleberry hash this morning turned out to be,” he said as a hello.

Smith shot him a questioning look, as if he hadn’t already heard the tale.

The ability to sincerely raise an eyebrow was, Mulligan felt, an essential tool of the business.

“Look, I’m as much of a feminist as the next guy, but this morning was a test of my well-heeled social inclinations, you know what I’m fuckin’ sayin’?”

Unwilling to interrupt, Smith simply shrugged.

The aging greeter continued his tale.

“Bunch of goddamn college freshman came in here, well, three of ‘em, and they’re recording video on their phones, like it’s the fucking zoo. Assholes were all dressed like they’d found their clothes at a Sally Ann, but they all think they’re Jeff Goldblum wandering into Jurassic Park.

“Things were busy though – every Saturday is a rocket full of chickens, really – and I didn’t have time to go yakkin’ to the higher-ups over something like tourists. That is, at least, till an elderly couple with maybe ten teeth between ‘em went trotting by. He was wound up about some remark that had been made regarding his shoes, which I found kinda funny considering his dental situation – but we can’t have hassling the customers, and it didn’t take much listening to figure the problem was the trio of donkey fondlers.

“I wander away from my post for a while, figuring I’ll go have a look and see what kind of words you need to use to scare the shit out of a trust-fund kid, and I find them, still recording, in the infant section.

“Now, there’s this lady, she’s got five runts, no ring on her finger, and she looked like she was making it work on less than I do alone. Not that every woman was a quiet domestic when I was a brat, but – well, things are different now. You’d never see a lady like that then. I mean, she wasn’t likely to shame Liz Taylor, but she carried herself like she was worth more than the sweat pants she was wearing.

“She didn’t look like she’d come up in the best of places, but you could tell she’d learned something of fear and courage and when not to take shit.

“Now, you see, the second youngest had started playing to the slumming cameras, ducking behind a rack of baby carriers and peeking at them, and, all the while, the clueless rich kids were keeping an educational wildlife film commentary going, talking like the kid was a rare baboon.

“Nothing clever, either. Stuff about how they could smell his shit downwind, how the baby in the stroller might be his, that sort of thing.

“If it were ‘76, I’da probably broke one of their knees, let the other two go through the trouble of having to drag him off and explain what happened – but, hell, if it were ‘96, I’da probably walked away without saying anything, so what does time count?”

Mike took a moment to clear his throat and wet the pavement.

“Mama caught onto the irony and wasn’t pleased. She considered the situation, weighed her surroundings, and said, ‘you talk to my lil ’uns like that again and you’ll be leavin’ a bunch of harem guards.’

“I don’t even think they know what she meant, they just started in on the laziest sort of name calling, you know, ‘white trash welfare queen.’ Honestly, that part hasn’t changed that much since I was young.

“Anyhow, as I mentioned, I’m as big a feminist as the next guy. I know she could’ve handled it herself, clearly bein’ a modern women and all, but goddamn, sometimes a guy’s just gotta get a bit chivalrous.

“I turn to the pillar beside me and grab the intercom phone. ‘Security,’I say, ‘we have three pedophiles in the kids section.’ The tourists realize I’m starin’ right at ‘em as I’m talking, and they start running for the doors. They’ve got their phones out, panic on their face – hell, they looked guilty enough to hang.

“At that point there’s this cowboy in jeans and leather boots who’s coming down the aisle from electronics. He looks at me, looks at them, and, putting two-and two together, figures he’s going to play TJ Hooker. He knocked over a rack of discount t-shirts doin’ it, but he managed to grab the slowest.

“We ain’t supposed to touch customers, for legal reasons, but we can’t stop them from tackling each other.

“The guy in front turns back, thinking maybe he’ll help his friend, and even that second of hesitation is enough that they were swarmed by managers, maintenance guys, and the loss prevention team.

“Eventually they went home, but not without doing a bit of sad sack crying in front of some uniforms. For my part, I said I must have misunderstood the situation and played dumb, just like every other time I talk to someone toting a badge.

“Before that though, you know what happens? I’m standing next to the mom – Bonnie – and we’re watching the guy in his vintage band shirt rolling around with crime-fightin’ Garth Brooks. I’m busy cooking up all the lies I’ll need to tell so as not to lose my job, and she turns around to ask me what I’m doing Saturday. Says her sister owes her a favour, and she makes a mean chicken pot pie, if I’d like to come over.

“She didn’t say it like she was extending a Sunday dinner invite to her grandpa neither.

“Well, she’s younger than me by twenty-five years, but, hell, I dunno – she IS a modern woman.”

 

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.

FP305 – Machined: a Collective Detective Chronicle, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and five.

Flash PulpTonight we present Machined: a Collective Detective Chronicle, Part 1 of 1

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp305.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by the The Hollywood Outsider.

 

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

Tonight we present a tale of digital detection and online exposure, of death, defeats, and endings.

 

Machined: a Collective Detective Chronicle

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

 

As she stepped forward, GoJo was feeling as if the auditorium had doubled in size since she’d shuffled through the backstage area.

She wasn’t used to wearing anything heavier than a t-shirt, and the suit jacket her mom had talked her into had brought on a sweat well before she was roasting beneath the theater lights.

Without thinking she put on the same fake smile she carried through family gatherings, but, when the familiar first slide flickered into view, the grin edged on genuine.

Skinner Co.“Hello,” she said, “my name is Josette Yates. I flew here from Michigan, but, like the rest of you, I’ve really come from the internet.”

Her delivery caught a few smirks, but the audience was generally silent.

”I’m part of The Collective Detective – do I have any fellow Editors out there? Any contributors?”

That raised some clapping, and a rear-row response that was garbled by the time it reached the stage.

She moved on, hoping it was something positive.

“Well, for those who aren’t so familiar: We’re researchers who use the mistakenly released archive of Internet traffic from the Bush-era tapping to look into unsolved crimes. We deal mainly in homicides, but there’s a small group of us who experiment in our spare time with looking for fraud.

“A hobby in our hobby, if you will.

“Sometimes we find things the police missed; sometimes we get lucky; most often, though, we come up empty handed.

The slides, which had gone from the proper spelling of her name to a vague structural chart of the organization, now stopped on a puffy-faced man. He might have been mistaken for a younger, plumper, Nicolas Cage.

“Do you know this guy?” she asked the crowd.

Several answers were shouted back, and she assumed one was correct.

“That’s right,” she continued, “it’s tech wonder Byron Newman – you may be familiar with his prolific social media updates, his savvy venture capital investments, his extensive complaints about poor design, or his surprisingly encouraging private correspondence – but, do you know THIS guy?”

Another puffy-faced man, bearded and mistakable as only perhaps a vagrant.

“This poor fella is Norris Barker, and at the time of the photo, he was caught up in a con game. Now, as I said, fraud isn’t really what the Collective focuses on. Murder is our business.

“Still, there are a few of us who like to dig through the archives with pattern matching software, just to see what we might stumble across. You’d be surprised how many former Nigerian ministers live in the US.

“In 2007, Norris was in love. He’d met a woman online, Sherry, who he spent hours exchanging emails, texts, tweets, and private moments with daily. She was a married woman, but her husband was a horrible sort. He was a systems administrator for the DMV, and always ready to leap to the keys to sooth her.”

The projected image shifted and a young Byron Newman filled the screen.

“Before I can explain 2007, though, I first have to go back to 1999. Our guru was three years out of university and full of ideas. Better yet, he’d managed to position himself on top of a mountain of cash, and was working with Big Thoughts Inc. in a converted Victorian house in San Francisco.

“He’d coaxed his small team into writing millions of lines of code, and he was well on his way to living his legendary no-sleep lifestyle.

“Six months later, though, the funding was gone – just as it was for every pie-in-the-sky project of the time.

“They did their best to license their technology to stay afloat. They’d built an advanced linguistics program, and they tried to cram it into being an automatic help agent for websites. You know, a box pops up with: ‘Hi, I’m Maria, how may I help you?’

”It would have been an easy task for the completed program, but the system hadn’t been designed to be dumbed down.

“They were all fired before it was finished.”

The presentation faded to a screenshot of the Wall Street Journal’s website pronouncing Big Think dead.

After allowing a beat to build dramatic tension, GoJo continued.

“Byron didn’t stop though. He saved a hard drive from the inevitable liquidation sale and brought it home, then started a race with his severance package.

“You can see his time disappear like a shadow in the logs. His porn browsing goes down, he stops searching for any sort of game walkthroughs, he even drops out of most of his forums, where he’d built up a reputation as something of a forward-thinking tech pundit.

“Two years later, with his benefits long gone and most of the things he owned sold, he’d covered a lot of distance. The problem, of course, is that at that point he also desperately needed more money.

“He’d been testing his work by launching instances and sending them into chatrooms. His early attempts weren’t terribly successful, but, by the time he was broke, he was consistently able to fool most reality TV fans. His program was not only capable of passing the Turing test, it had developed relationships and was continuing conversations based on snippets it was grabbing from news sites and other forums.

“Given his shut-in status, his application soon had more friends than he did. Byron had no one else to ask for money, but his code did. He started skewing his work towards grifting.

“This was no identity theft or one time Facebook con. He didn’t want a few hundred at a time, he needed thousands, perhaps millions, to properly complete his work.

“I came in not long after.”

A younger Josette appeared above the stage, though she wore the same fake smile. She was standing in front of a dilapidated country estate.

“Well, sort of. That’s actually me from just a year ago, after six months of investigating. You may notice that I look kind of spooked – that house felt haunted to me, even though I don’t believe in such a thing.

“See, when Newman started using his chat app to talk lonely folks on the internet into sending along money, traffic from his place suddenly increased ten fold. It’s a solid bit of coding, and most of the text it spits out is pretty original, but there was so much of it that duplication was inevitable, especially since most of the ploys were set up by Byron himself, and just the details changed from person to person.

“Tony’s ex-wife is a horrible woman and he needs money to feed himself because she took it all in alimony. Tammy’s a single mom with a naughty imagination and her kids need shoes. Martin’s Ma will be kicked from the home if he can’t pull together the monthly bill.

“That sort of thing.

“This is all from 2002 to 2007, but only uncovered eighteen months ago. We were hunting Nigerian ministers and came across two hundred and seventy-six battered Sherry-alikes. It seemed like a mass copy-and-replace job until we realized how much traffic he was pushing around.

“There was a hiccup in 2005, when Byron moved to the country, but it was easy enough to find him at his new nest – he was using twice as much bandwidth.”

The view flipped to an overhead satellite image of the sprawling grounds.

“In a case of literalism, Newman built a server farm on his farm and kept working. It’s hard to say how much of his time was invested in advancing his original idea, and how much was focused on squeezing cash from people, but the money continued to pour in. He did it in small bites, small enough that the bilked wouldn’t make a fuss, or even know they were anything but a good samaritan, but, in the end, Byron was maybe best described as a linguist and not a security guy.”

The image switched back to Norris Barker’s vagabond face.

“Barker, on the other hand, was. He was also, as I mentioned, in love. He probably thought he was confronting a vicious husband when he bought that gun – or perhaps he’d figured it all out. He posted nothing online that might give us a hint. It certainly must have seemed odd, though, that she’d gone through so much trouble to hide the source of her messages. Maybe he thought it was the brute’s work.

“The last thing he said to Sherry was in an email that read only, ‘I’m coming.’

“We know Byron Newman died August 25th, 2007, because Norris immediately punched a confession into his smartphone, explaining to his brother that he was planning to flee the country. That message was sent to a tower within a kilometer of the farm.

“We haven’t been able to find evidence of him since.

“What the broken-hearted murderer didn’t know, however, was that Newman had built the perfect alibi for him. Byron had long returned to his role of pervasive online tech guru, tweeting extensively, posting commentaries, and writing blog posts between rounds of spending stolen money.

“The problem was, he enjoyed the attention, but not the distraction. One day he simply split off a new instance of his program, named it after himself, and set it to keeping the world updated with his wit while he was blowing weekends in Vegas. Like everything he touched, it began to expand. It started handling all of the complex banking necessary to keep his assets hidden; it started paying the bills necessary to keep his lights on and the servers running; it started trolling Craigslist for local yard guys who accepted online payments.

“Twelve months ago we took our information to some scary guys in government-issued suits, and they promptly thanked us and showed us the door. A month after that, they came back and asked for our help figuring out what all had happened.

“Fifteen minutes ago, just before I took the stage, what we’ve begun to think of as Lord Byron’s Machine was taken offline.

The final image of the presentation appeared: A live shot of Newman’s last status update, hanging, twenty-minutes old, at the end of a stream of quick-fire chatter.

It read, “Can’t wait to see what Josette Yates’ secret TED announcement is.”

There was no follow up.

GoJo’s smile was fully real now, though it had taken on a hint of sadness.

She cleared her throat and said, “thank you for your time.”

 

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.

True Crime Tuesday: The Pettiest of Theft

Scratch a Thief
Today, for True Crime Tuesday, we present a trio of inappropriate appropriations.

Before we begin, however: I’d just like to say that spending quality time with your children is important, but, still, look into daycare if you’ve chosen a life of crime.

From SFWeekly.com:

Marcy Keelin went to the Safeway store with her 10-year-old daughter about 5 p.m. on Wednesday. The two loaded up on food that they had no plans on paying for.

Keelin reportedly told her daughter to wait inside the store, near the exit doors, while she got their car. The girl’s job was to push the cart out of the store as soon as she saw her mom pulling up.

Obviously, there was no backup plan. Store officials busted the girl as she walked out the store with the groceries in tow. Mom saw this unfold, and so she did what any terrible mother would do — she drove away, leaving the kid to clean up her mess.

This may count as poor parenting, , and rather stupid, but it still has that whiff of sweaty desperation – especially evident when food is the item being stolen – that brings some sympathy for the perpetrator.

There is no such saving grace for William Keltner.

How bad was Keltner’s plan? So bad it apparently required a discussion couched in South Park-ese.

From HoustonPress.com:

According to KTXS, Keltner’s alleged plan was as follows.

1. Take a TV worth $228 and put it in a cart.
2. Take off the TV’s real barcode and replace it with one valued at $1.17 and take it through a self-checkout line.
3. ????
4. Profit!

Now, the first two items had their comedy, but I think this last article is an idea that has legs.

From Newser.com:

For reasons unknown, a cleaning lady in Sweden allegedly stole a train around 3am morning and promptly crashed it into a home in an upscale Stockholm suburb. The twentysomething woman managed to board and start the unoccupied train at a station, and a rep for the company that operates the line says an investigation is under way into how, exactly, such a thing could happen. After reaching the last stop on the line, the train went off the tracks and into a kitchen.

Though it caused extensive damage to the home, no one inside was injured. But The Local reports that a woman, presumably the driver, was trapped in the wreckage for two hours. The driver is now in the hospital with serious injuries; she’s also facing charges of public devastation. As of this afternoon, the train was still inside the house as emergency crews determined the safest way to remove it.

Imagine, if you will, a revival of I Love Lucy by way of Breaking Bad.

Instead of a housewife falling into random misadventures, it’s a modern-day working gal falling into an occasional meth-based stupor. Ricky’s character could be changed into the overworked social worker who is constantly trying to keep her out of trouble. This, the pilot episode, would clearly end with her being ordered to clean the house she’d demolished – and right after quitting her horrible maid job!

Oh, Lucy.

Still, would today’s audiences believe she could steal a train and accidentally run it into someone’s house? Probably not.
The Avenger, Nov. 1939

FP304 – Coffin: Holiday, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and four.

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

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp304.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

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

 

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

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

 

Coffin: Holiday

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t guess, I observe.”

Bunny kept staring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coffin returned then, his arms full of fleece parkas.

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

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

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

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

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

Little did she know how wrong she was.

 

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

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

Freesound.org credits:

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

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

FP303 – Break, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and three.

Flash PulpTonight we present Break, Part 1 of 1

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp303.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

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

 

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

Tonight, in a moment away from the heavier content of recent releases, we meet a suspicious man with a foul temper, his wife, and the house they live in.

 

Break

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

“The studio is about to burst into flames!”

“Studio?”

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

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

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

“Sorry, sir?”

“Yes, look into it.”

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

“It’s winter,” replied Myra.

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

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

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

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

Dominic did, in silence.

* * *

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

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

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

“Of course.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In moments the incident was forgotten.

* * *

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

“Dammit, Godfrey!” he shouted.

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

His pounding did little good.

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

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

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

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

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

Relief doubled his tears.

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

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

 

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

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    True Crime Tuesday: Family Feud Edition

    Shirley Jackson's The Lottery
    Welcome to the first TCT of 2013! How were your holidays? Get any nifty presents? Get in any fights with family members?

    Urooj Khan was, unfortunately, long gone before the year rolled over, but, if they celebrated, I’m sure his family had a gift-packed tree – and a tense holiday feast.

    From CNN, emphasis is mine:

    One day, Urooj Khan literally jumped for joy after scoring a $1 million winner on an Illinois lottery scratch ticket.

    The next month, he was dead.

    To be fair, however, it wouldn’t be much of a True Crime Tuesday if a month later he was sunning on the beaches of Morocco.

    The Cook County medical examiner’s office initially ruled Khan’s manner of death natural. But after being prompted by a relative, the office revisited the case and eventually determined there was a lethal amount of cyanide in Khan’s system.o issue an amended death certificate that (established) cyanide toxicity as the cause of death, and the manner of death as homicide,” Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Steve Cina said Monday.

    It’s interesting, perhaps, that the tip was called in by a relative, but I find it even more so that cyanide poisoning slipped through the first sweep for causes of death.

    On June 26, Khan was all smiles at a 7-Eleven in the Rogers Park section of Chicago. Surrounded by his wife, daughter and friends, he held an oversized $1 million check and recalled his joy upon playing the “$3 million Cash Jackpot!” game, where tickets sell for $30 apiece.

    He would have to wait a few weeks to collect his actual winnings, which amounted after taxes to about $425,000. According to CNN affiliate WGN, that check was issued July 19, but Khan never got to spend it.

    I wonder what sort of daydreams Khan entertained in that money-less month? A new car? A new house? A new bride?

    Whatever the case, someone was preparing a special sort of celebratory meal:

    The next night, Khan came home, ate dinner and went to bed, according to an internal police department document obtained by the Chicago Tribune. His family later heard him screaming and took him to a local hospital, where he was later pronounced dead[.]

    If it was, as I suspect, his wife, Khan really picked a winner – but to murder him the day after collecting the money? That takes Powerballs.

    Ten Detective Aces 1936

    FC76 – Ten Foot Jesus

    FC76 - Ten Foot Jesus
    [audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashCast076.mp3](Download/iTunes/RSS)

    Hello, and welcome to FlashCast 76.

    Prepare yourself for: Native American bad guys, pizza perfume, found footage films, TNG maniskirts, and Coffin.

    * * *

    Huge thanks to:

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