That’s a wrap for this call! A huge thank you to everybody who submitted, commented, and shared these pieces. This has been a blast and I look forward to the next one!

In the meantime, use the comments on this post to vote for your favorite excerpts from this call! Just copy and paste the excerpt into a comment, along with the title of the piece it came from. You can put in as many votes as you want — just don’t vote for something you wrote yourself 😉

Doors. Gates. Portals. Barriers that are either open or closed, keep you out or let you in—and the reverse—real or imaginary, oak, iron, or gingerbread. Storm them, fling them open, or slam them shut and throw away the key

• GFE by Tom Andes

• Thousand Islands by Victor De Anda

• Dream Come True by Jim Wilsky

• The Casement Window; or, How I Met My Cat by Carlotta Dale

• A New Tradition by Kenneth M. Gray

• Door to Door by Keith Roysdon

• Sinclair Station. Twenty-Five Minutes by D. Christopher Bader

• The Last First Impression by Dylan Demasi

• The Nice Garage by Tom Milani

• Maman B by Jay Bechtol

Series editor:

M.E. Proctor writes the Declan Shaw PI series, Love You Till Tuesday & Catch Me on a Blue Day. She’s the author of two short story collections, and the co-author with Russell Thayer of Bop City Swing and Kansas City Breakdown. She’s a Derringer and Shamus Award short story nominee. On Substack at The Roll Top Desk.

Editor in chief:

James Maxwell is a technical writer from San Jose, California. He primarily writes crime, noir, and horror fiction. Some of his writing influences include Elmore Leonard, Philip K. Dick, Clive Barker, Jim Thompson, and Cormac McCarthy. He spends his time reading, watching films, listening to black/death metal, and playing video games.

His published works include the collection The Bad Sign: Crime and Horror Stories and the novella Put Your Life in the Pot.

Pistol Jim Press is an online literary zine that focuses on grimy flash fiction: Crime, noir, westerns, horror, speculative fiction, and sometimes even the non-gritty.

Maman B by Jay Bechtol

Bridgette wipes condensation from the mirror. The fog streaks into droplets and the dingy motel bathroom is reflected for a moment. The sleep she’s missed for the past several nights frames the eyes staring back at her. Eyes that don’t blink in unison with her own. The outline of her figure also unnatural. She turns on the cold water and splashes some into her face. No sleep, warped mirror, she whispers to herself and contemplates the cracks in the white ceramic sink filled with years of grime.

The faucet is cool in her hand, and a little black rooster tattoo in the soft flesh between her thumb and forefinger stares back at her with understanding. She cinches her towel, steps back from the sink, and watches her image fade as the steam reclaims the mirror. She sits on the toilet, drops her head into her hands and swallows a loud sob.

It has been six months since her friend helped her escape. Took her away from Alabama and Him. Just like Stella, her friend said, You and me, Bridge, finding ourselves in the islands. It almost felt normal.

In a small Haitian village outside of Les Cayes they met an old woman who ran a small restaurant. Oh, tifi, what you run from? The woman took Bridgette’s hand and her playful smile dropped into a frown of concern. Cheri, fear pours from you as sugar. You have run too long. What they call you, tifi?

Bridgette. Everyone calls me Bridge.

The creases around the old woman’s eyes deepened and stretched her mouth into a wide smile. Her head rolled back and she laughed, a long hearty sound that filled Bridgette with something she hadn’t felt in years: Strength. When the old woman stopped laughing, she wiped a tear from her eye and said, Bridgette, that man? He never bother you again. She dipped a small needle into a glass bottle of black fluid. Her fingers moved with deceptive speed and a small black rooster appeared on Bridgette’s hand. This is strength and now the invisible world will protect you.

The hot shower relaxes her some, but the filth still clings. She’d run to Haiti to escape. But in the six months after returning to Alabama, she hasn’t stopped running. Six months since the old woman told her she would be protected. Six months of back road motels—hiding, moving. Six months of Him tracking her. Two weeks in Biloxi, a week in Mobile, and so on. Now three days in Pensacola. She has a sixth sense—some of Him stays with her like the bruises and the nightmares. She can feel Him before she can see Him.

She sits on the toilet and the sobs subside. She believed the old woman. Wanted to believe that a tattoo could rewrite the past. Open the future. That there could be magic in the world. She rubs the rooster embedded in her skin.

The steam clears but the mirror remains cloudy. She straightens herself and wipes her eyes. She can see her reflection, its movements slower than her own. Like the video is on delay. She doesn’t have time to contemplate this. Her skin crawls and she senses His presence a moment before the motel door bursts inward and His voice bellows.

BRIDGETTE!

She lunges for the bathroom door, hoping she can push it shut and lock it before He figures out where she is. Her towel slips as she slams the door. She can tell by its weight that even if she can secure it, it will offer no help. The latch clicks and she depresses the small lock in time for the bathroom door to explode. His foot crashes through flimsy wooden splinters and rocks her backward onto the toilet. Her back folds over the rust stained tank and her head snaps into the blue tile still dripping with condensation.

How you doin’, Bridge? Long time no see.

She rolls her head forward, eyes struggling to focus. She reaches toward Him, Please, please just let me go.

He grabs her hand and yanks. His grip squeezes tight, a splinter of broken door digs into the rooster in her flesh and blood drips.

You think you are smarter than me? He screams into her face. She can smell the beer He drank two days ago.

Answering will only make things worse.

Bridge? You hearin’ me?

Then she sees it. Over His shoulder. It’s her image in the mirror, she thinks, except it isn’t. It moves with a grace she’s never possessed. Its skin lighter than hers, eyes that glow with the polished blackness of night.

It fills her.

He recognizes something different in her but cannot fathom the need to fear it.

She brings her hand up and clutches his throat. Words pour from her mouth. Like sugar. You mother fucking cock sucking piece of trash. Her fingers twist around his windpipe. The image in the mirror cackles and reaches toward her, through the glass. The mirror cracks. You god forsaken son of every whore that has ever walked this earth. She squeezes. His body goes limp and Bridgette shrieks in exultation.

The image in the mirror grasps His hair. For a moment Bridgette and the figure are locked in a tug of war. His body rips and the image wins. Drags His body backward, through the mirror which is now a doorway to another place. Into the invisible world. The mirror’s shards shred His flesh as He passes to the other side.

Then He and the image are gone. The mirror glass crashes into the sink and Bridgette stands alone in the small bathroom. She collapses onto the toilet gasping and grabs her towel. She wipes the blood from her hand and with a shaky finger traces the shape of the rooster.

And for the first time in six months—probably much longer—she breathes.

Bio

Jay Bechtol likes to write stories. And sometimes he does. His latest novel, Quimmering Springs, will be available in November 2026 From Crystal Lake Publishing. He can be found online at www.JayBechtol.com and on Twitter BechtolJay or in person in Homer, Alaska.

The Nice Garage by Tom Milani

Tom and Alison held hands as he drove. The concert didn’t start for an hour, which should have given them plenty of time to get to their seats, since the venue was a five-minute walk from where they currently sat in traffic. Unfortunately, the lot where they’d intended to park was full. The GPS showed several garages nearby, but in the last ten minutes, they’d managed to move only a hundred feet, reduced to watching the traffic light at the end of the block cycle multiple times.

When they finally got past the intersection, they had forty minutes to find a place to park and walk to the show. Alison pointed to a blue neon sign that said NICE GARAGE, the N winking like a firefly.

“There,” she said. “It’s open.”

Tom turned, and they proceeded down a ramp, rounding a corner where a few cars were scattered between the white lines that marked each parking space. Tom pulled straight into a spot that appeared to be waiting just for them.

They got out of their Mazda just as a blue car sped by in a squeal of rubber, followed by the rattle of the overhead door lowering. It closed with a thud that seemed to shake the building.

They walked up the ramp. On the right was an electrical box with blue and white lights. Tom looked for a button to push—some way to get the door to open—but there was only a reader a few feet away.

Alison grabbed a red handset mounted to the opposite wall. “I’ll see if I can get someone to open it.”

As Tom jogged down the ramp, a white mist rose from the floor, so thick he could no longer see his feet. On adjacent walls were two doors: one marked STAIRWAY, the other ELEVATOR. Tom tried each one.

Locked.

He turned. The mist was waist high now, and the sound of low murmuring followed him as he rounded the corner again, looking for Alison.

She was where he’d left her, the phone still in her hand. “They’re telling me they’ll send someone to see about letting us out, but they need to verify our IDs.”

“It’s a parking garage.”

“There’s a question of jurisdiction.”

“Jurisdiction?”

“That’s what they’re saying. Apparently, we’ve crossed a border.”

Tom understood each word Alison spoke. It was the sentences they formed whose meaning he couldn’t parse.

Alison hung up the phone. “We’re never getting out of here, are we?”

At the bottom of the ramp the mist roiled like silent whitewater. Tom hit the lock button on the Mazda’s remote. The horn sounded faintly, as if from far away, but the flare from the tail lights speared the mist like blood in water.

The murmuring grew louder, and outlines of figures began to appear in the mist.

“Do you see that?” he asked.

The figures rose, their eyes glowing red, the lower halves of their faces shape-shifting masks of blue.

Now the forms pointed at them, and their murmurs began to coalesce into words. “Move. Freeze. Get on the ground. Hands in the air.” The orders repeated as if in a loop, each identical voice coming from a different direction.

“What the hell is happening?” Alison asked.

Tom turned to her. “We should get in the car.”

She pointed down the ramp. “What about them?”

Hundreds of figures swayed, their voices growing louder, their eyes brighter.

Inside the mist, Tom lost all sense of space and time. His body felt weightless. The figures surrounded them, flickering like flames. He couldn’t see their car.

“The remote,” Alison said. Her voice echoed, as if at the end of a long hallway.

Tom pressed the unlock button. A path in the mist opened up, the car just a few feet from where they stood.

They jumped inside. Tom backed out of the space and headed up the ramp, following the narrow path in the mist they’d just passed through. He stopped a few feet from the door.

“What now?” Alison asked.

Tom shifted between reverse and drive, rocking the car and hoping to trigger some unseen sensor. Finally, he stopped. He looked in the rear-view mirror. The mist rose like a tsunami barreling toward them. Now the forms floated, their red eyes blinking like the sign outside the garage.

“Can you drive through the door?” Alison asked.

Tom turned. Her hazel eyes were beginning to glow, and her lips were losing their shape, smearing across her face. He tilted the rear-view mirror down but quickly looked away.

Tom shifted into reverse. As they backed into the mist, the red-eyed, blue-masked figures surrounded the Mazda, as if the car was submerged.

Tom braked and glanced at Alison. He didn’t recognize her. He was afraid to look at his own reflection. The figures outside beckoned. He felt their pull.

Before they could take hold, Tom shifted the car into neutral and pressed down on the accelerator. When the engine reached redline, he threw the shifter into drive.

The tires spun against the concrete before gaining purchase. The car shimmied as it rocketed up the ramp.

#

Although Tom and Alison never spoke of their time in the garage again, they weren’t the same afterwards. They began working remotely and stopped leaving their house. They had all their groceries delivered. Soon, the place they’d loved felt less like a home and more like a cell.

“I’ve had enough,” they said simultaneously, in the way of couples long married. Tom reached for his keys, and Alison reached for her coat.

They headed out in the Mazda, once again holding hands.

Bio

Tom Milani’s short fiction has appeared online and in several anthologies. His stories have been selected for The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2026 and The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2026. Places That Are Gone, his debut novel, was published May 2025. You can find him on Instagram milanitom, on Twitter tom_milani, on Facebook Tom Milani, and on his website: www.tommilani.com.

The Last First Impression by Dylan Demasi

I always hated working with these young guys. The enforcement game was becoming like tattoos. Used to be they meant you were a soldier, a biker, or an ex-con. Now, even the local cheer squad leader had a sleeve of cartoons and skulls.

Then there was this asshole. Sitting shotgun, flashing a high-end watch and designer sunglasses. Only record was a brief booking over a prank video. His side hustles were stocks and reselling overpriced sneakers for God’s sake.

“What do you use?” he said, trying to sound like he’d been around. I looked over at him in his black casual suit straight off the mannequin; some salesman had laughed all the way to his mistress over it, that was for sure.

“For what? You mean a gun?”

“Nah, I mean what name? I was thinking Mr. North.” The extra weight he put on the word made it worse. “In honor of North Clark Street, you know, where the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre happened.” He nodded approval at his own dumb idea. “So what do you use?”

“Abe.”

“What’s it from?”

“My birth certificate.” I let it hang long enough for him to drop the topic. Then I pulled the key from the ignition and told him to get out of the fucking car.

We met by the hood.

Christ, we looked like a before-and-after ad for a get-rich-quick scheme. Me in plaid over jeans and a Montreal Expos cap. Realized my mustache had been through tougher times than the punk I was stuck with. Anyone passing by would think I was a trucker dropping off a Porsche he just ordered.

“So, you ever have to kill these burnouts?”

Cops were idiots, but even an undercover one wasn’t that bad.

“You realize we’re out in the open, right?” I shook my head and refitted my cap as he looked around the quiet street and realized we were in the suburbs at nine in the morning. Well, a street with suburban dreams, anyway.

I pointed with my thumb over my back. Our goal was across the street from where I parked the unremarkable Camry. I didn’t know where it came from, and I usually didn’t ask. I took out a cigarette—the second-to-last one. I watched his foot start tapping something fierce.

“In a rush?” I mumbled between flicks of my lighter.

“Just feel like we should get to it, you know?”

“Junkie’s rush, kid. We’re above that. We’re a part of a business. Now calm down, at least pretend to look like you’re in control.”

He was getting on nerves I didn’t even know I had. I dropped the cigarette half-finished and headed across.

A dying 1950s dream sat behind the white picket fence. Ranch style with peeling paint and a roof job the roofers never came back to. I already knew why and where the money had gone. We stopped at the white gate. The kid put his hand on it, looking for the latch.

“What are you doing?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t abandoned the cigarette.

“Going in.” He said it with a form of condescension that had to come from a spoiled livin’.

“No, you ain’t.”

“What’s your problem? This is what we’re here to do, right? Scare the guy? We’re going to do that out here?” He still hadn’t removed his hand from the gate. That bothered me.

“That’s exactly what we’re gonna do,” I said, taking a step forward, straightening up to remind him of the extra inches I had in height.

“What did big guy say? ‘Don’t cross his door, but make sure you’re seen.’” He pointed to the gate. Fuckin’ pointed. Like he thought he was still in middle school, harassing other kids for their quarters. “This thing? This isn’t a door.”

“I ain’t got the dictionary on me right now, but a gate is meant to keep people out, meaning we don’t cross it.”

“The man in power said door.”

“I think you’re taking the order kinda literally, junior. The yard is his private property. That means danger. Especially for someone on edge.”

“Can’t be that private, if it’s public.”

My fist instinctively became a ball. I wondered where he learned that grin and how many times his mother regretted that lay.

“I know this ain’t a real resume sorta job, but you’ve had some level of teachin’, right? Basic common sense sorta stuff?” I was in his face. The type of distance that melted arrogance real quick. “We stand on the sidewalk. He looks out the window. We nod. Maybe, just maybe, you do the finger across the throat if you’re feelin’ dramatic. He gets scared. He does the job he’s being told to do. We get paid. Everyone’s happy.” Well… Except the guy in debt being forced into robbery, but I wasn’t going to say that part because it didn’t sound as good as an ending. And I wanted to say the word happy like it was a threat.

His hand let go of the gate. I backed away and looked towards the house as a blind snapped back into place.

“Guys like this got to play it subtly. Reminders that we’re everywhere. don’t want to rush ‘em, they might get desperate and bite…”

“Fuck that.” He kicked the white gate open.

The front door swung out like a mirrored twin.

Mr. North introduced himself with a smirk as cheap as his fashion.

He was met by the black mouth of a Remington.

I didn’t see where the shot entered, but I saw where it came out.

The bolt action gave me just enough time to pull a .38 Special from beneath my shirt. By the time the gate settled back into place, I stood there alone, gun at my side. Two chambers empty.

The street was filling with distant bystanders. Housewives poured onto porches, giving 911 an earful.

I turned to the getaway car and wondered if the next kid would be smarter.

Bio

Dylan Demasi is a Los Angeles–based writer of crime and horror fiction. He began his career ghostwriting comics before moving into entertainment marketing for brands including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, HBO, and America’s Funniest Home Videos. His work has appeared in anthologies like SNAFU: Contagion, The Perfect Day, and Eerie Lullaby, with stories forthcoming in Bad Intentions from Literary Garage and Witches Save the World from Eternal Haunted Summer. You can find him on IG: wordstiedtotraintracks.

Sinclair Station. Twenty-Five Minutes by D. Christopher Bader

Nelson Hascall had turned sixteen in May, which meant two things: He could drive legally, and he could make terrible decisions without needing anyone to haul him there.

By the end of summer, he had saved twenty-five hundred dollars working for Outlaw River Expeditions, loading rafts and rinsing mud off life jackets. Now he lay on his bed, scrolling Facebook Marketplace for trucks he could afford and trucks he had no business wanting.

The same 1979 square-body Chevy listing kept pulling him back.

The truck was old, sun-faded, and worn down to its bolts, but it had four-wheel drive, a bench seat, and enough dents to prove it already knew Wyoming roads. The price made no sense. Two cases of Coors. No questions. No refunds.

His dad could handle the beer. Probably. And if the seller took the deal, Nelson could keep his cash for repairs, tires, tags, and whatever else old trucks needed. It beat the alternative—a Nissan Altima listed for $2,399 that looked like somebody had driven it off the top of Heart Mountain, set it on fire, and then changed their mind halfway through burying it.

Nelson opened the message box.

Still got the Chevy?

He hit send and waited.

Within minutes, he had his reply.

Sinclair station. Twenty-five minutes.

Thirty minutes later, Nelson was still sitting in the passenger seat of his dad’s truck while his dad checked the clock on his phone. Two cases of ice-cold Coors sweated in the bed.

“I don’t think he’s coming, son.” His dad locked the phone and dropped it into the cupholder. “Maybe message the lady with the Altima. Or we can check out that Reliant Robin Mickey’s still trying to unload.”

Before Nelson could answer, something tapped the passenger window.

An old man stood outside, weathered and narrow, with a face Nelson almost recognized. The old man leaned closer to the glass.

“You got my beer?”

Nelson swallowed. “Uh, yeah. Where’s the truck?”

The old man pointed. A square-body Chevy sat across the lot, parked under the buzz of the Sinclair lights. Nelson looked at his dad. His dad looked back. Neither of them had seen it pull in. Nelson climbed out. His dad followed, grabbed the two cases from the bed, and set them at the old man’s feet.

“So,” his dad said, “you got the title? Bill of sale? Anything we need to sign?”

“I said no questions.”

Nelson stepped around his dad, eyes still on the Chevy. “What’s wrong with it?”

The old man handed him the keys. “Same answer.” He picked up the beer and started across the lot. Halfway to the darkness beyond the lights, he stopped and looked at the sky. “Be careful when it storms.” Then he carried the beer away and vanished behind the station, following a path neither Nelson nor his dad could see.

Nelson’s dad stared after him, then at the Chevy. “This is a terrible idea.”

“But it’s got four-wheel drive.”

His dad sighed. “Of course that’s your closing argument.”

An hour later, after two containers of Armor All wipes and half a roll of paper towels, the truck didn’t look half bad. Nelson tossed the last Taco John’s wrapper into the trash and stepped back to admire the truck. The dents, scratches, and rust spots gave it character. That was what he told himself. Looks didn’t matter anyway. He was the first guy in his friend group with his own wheels, and by Saturday they’d be riding out to the quarry with everyone piled in back. He dropped the tailgate. An electric pop snapped through his palm. Nelson jerked his hand away and stared at the latch.

From the west, thunder rolled behind the dark line of the mountains.

He climbed into the bed, stretched out beneath the open sky, and listened to the storm come closer. Then he reached behind the wheel well and pulled out the Coors he had stolen from his dad while they were cleaning. The can hissed when he cracked it open. Nelson took a sip and watched lightning twitch behind the mountains.

He must have dozed off.

A crack of lightning split the sky and rain scattered across his face. Nelson blinked against the drops, then tried to sit up. His shoulders lifted an inch before something pulled him flat against the bed. He tried again, heels scraping metal, fingers clawing for the wheel well. The tailgate latch clicked near his boots. Lightning flashed closer and the radio sputtered to life inside the cab. The bed hummed beneath him and a blue light crawled through the seams.

Another flash split the sky.

Lightning struck the hood, and the world went dark.

When Nelson came to, his ears were ringing. He was sitting at his desk, his laptop open in front of him. Dust filmed the keyboard. Dust coated the shelves. Dust lay thick across the trophies, soda cans, and river guide hoodie in the corner. The room smelled like an attic.

The Facebook Marketplace chat box blinked on the screen.

Nelson leaned closer.

In the black glass of the laptop, a face stared back at him.

Not his.

Weathered. Narrow. Familiar.

His hands moved before he could stop them.

Sinclair station. Twenty-five minutes.

Bio

D. Christopher Bader writes weird western fiction, dark humor, and stories about the strange things waiting just off the road. He is the author of This Ain’t Roswell and writes the Bridger Bulletin, a weekly newsletter featuring weird history, cryptids, and free reads.

X: DChrisBader, Website: dchristopherbader.com, Newsletter: dchristopherbader.com/bridger-bulletin.

Door to Door by Keith Roysdon

The young woman at the corner of his house was red-faced from the heat. She saw him kneeling in the garden.

“Excuse me, sir?”

She was polite. She was also close to heatstroke. They had dropped her off with orders to canvass ten blocks before they would find her and drive her back to the church. It was 95 degrees and humid.

The man looked startled. “Hi.”

“I’m selling magazine subscriptions,” she said and fell to the ground.

He pulled a green tarp—the kind you collect leaves on—over the spot where he was working. Then he walked over to where the woman lay. She was little, so it was easy to pick her up and carry her into the air conditioning.

Being out of the heat helped. It also helped when he held the water bottle from the fridge to her cheek. She sat up, startled.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You fainted from the heat. I brought you inside.”

“Where’s my backpack?”

He nodded to a spot further down the couch.

“I can’t lose my samples. They’d kill me.”

“Who sent you out, selling magazine subscriptions, on a hot day like this?”

“I belong to the Divine Light church. We sell subscriptions and other useful things to fund our mission trips.”

“Drink some water,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Kelsey.” She spoke between small sips. “Thank you for opening the bottle for me.”

She needs to drink more, he thought.

“I haven’t had any water since they dropped me off four hours ago.” She seemed alarmed at her own words. “But that’s my own fault! I should have gotten some water earlier. It’s not the fault of my youth pastor.”

He nodded. “Kelsey, I’m Anthony. You just sit back and drink that water and cool down.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Call me Anthony.”

She told him about the subscriptions she was selling. As she spoke, she pulled her thin shirt away from her chest to separate the soaked material from her body.

“Need a little more water?” Anthony asked.

When he came back from the kitchen, the first bottle was empty. He handed her the second bottle. The cap was already loose. Kelsey thanked him and rubbed the fresh, cold bottle over her neck and chest. Anthony watched, his breath quickening.

“That window AC unit is noisy, but it keeps this room cool, at least.” He watched her eyelids droop as he spoke in a low, monotonous drone. “It’s supposed to hit a hundred before the end of the week.” Her eyes would close and flutter open, close and flutter open.

She slumped back. Anthony took the bottle of water from her hand. “You are a little thing,” he said, squeezing her knee.

A knock came at the kitchen door. Anthony went to the door and peered through the glass. A man in a cowboy hat stood outside.

“What do you want?” Anthony asked.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the man said. “My name is Tex. I’m looking for a girl. She was selling magazines and other items in your area. Have you seen her? Tiny little strawberry blonde.”

“No, I haven’t seen her.”

“That’s funny,” Tex said, “Because I just asked at your neighbor’s house on the right-hand side, and they said she stopped there. But your neighbor on the other side hasn’t seen her.”

Anthony looked past the man’s shoulder. The tarp was pulled off the spot in his garden. It lay on the grass nearby.

Anthony’s mind raced. Did this motherfucker pull it off?

“Go away!” Anthony shouted through the door. The cowboy shrugged and walked around the corner of the house and out of sight.

Anthony waited a minute, then opened the door. He hurried to his garden and put the tarp back in place. He glanced around to reassure himself, again, that the trees blocked the view of his neighbors.

“Gotta take care of that little bitch now.”

Inside, the girl was gone. The couch cushion was wet. She had poured out the water he gave her. He checked the front door. Bolt thrown. She was still inside the house.

“Where are you?!” he shouted.

Upstairs, no sign of her. At least until she threw open the closet door and rushed out.

She plunged a short serrated knife into his chest. Anthony toppled down the stairs. Kelsey looked down at him.

“We also sell sets of steak knives, you old perv.”

From below, a shout: “Kelsey!”

“I’m upstairs. The old bastard’s at the bottom. Careful. He might not be dead.”

Tex checked Anthony. He did this by kicking him. Anthony didn’t move.

“Get your ass down here. We gotta go through the place and get out of here. Look for credit cards, cash, guns. And hurry, for fuck’s sake. Pastor’s gonna expect us to bring something back. The cops are gonna be all over this place soon.”

Kelsey asked, “What’s the hurry? It’s cool in here.”

“That’s a dead body, you little dumbass. A guy you just killed. And he’s got a shallow grave in his backyard with a girl in it.”

She stared at Tex then looked down at Anthony. “You were gonna kill me and bury me in your garden, weren’t you?”

She stepped over Anthony to follow, but Tex had stopped in the doorway.

“Get. Your. Steak. Knife.”

Kelsey giggled, then bent over the body. Anthony’s chest made a crunchy sound as she pulled the knife out.

She pointed the knife at Anthony’s blank, dead face. “You shouldn’t try to take advantage of a little religious girl.” Then, louder, “Hey, could we get a reward for killin’ a serial killer?”

Tex shouted from the next room: “No!” A pause. “Maybe… No!” He walked into the kitchen with Anthony’s handgun tucked in the front of his jeans. “Let’s just get out of here.”

They left the back door standing open.

Bio

Keith Roysdon is the author of the crime novels Seven Angels and That October. His short crime fiction appears in at least three anthologies in 2026 and has appeared in publications and sites. CrimeReads has published 75 of his pop culture pieces. He’s part of Constellate Creatives, an international company that publishes books — including Seven Angels — under its imprint.

A New Tradition by Kenneth M. Gray

They came down hard, slid to a stop, and the big man tumbled out into the snow. His assistants helped him to his feet, brushing off the snow and feathers.

“That goose came out of nowhere!” the big man in red said. He staggered across the roof and onto the chimney. “Are these chimneys getting smaller?”

“Nope. You’re getting fatter.”

“What was that, Stewie?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“And deafer,” Doug said.

“What?”

“Shut up, buttholes,” Julie said. “He’s drunk, not deaf.”

“Get over here, you three. Bring the chimney grease.”

Doug grabbed a half-empty bottle of bourbon out of the snow. “Sir, you dropped something.”

“What? No. Uh, that was here when we landed. Give it to me. I’ll dispose of it later.” He slipped it into his pocket.

Julie used her spatula to push grease into the gap between Santa’s belly and the chimney. “Suck it in, Tubby.”

“What?”

“Nothing, sir. Why can’t you leave presents on the doorstep like Amazon?”

“I don’t know who this Amazon fellow is, but they’re not just chimneys, Julie. Every Christmas Eve, they transform into magical portals—entrances into these fine homes. It’s a time-honored Christmas tradition. Tradition, something you elves have all apparently forgotten about.” He looked down at their sneakers, lingering on Doug’s Yeezys.

“You should start a tradition of eating a salad once in a while.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing, sir.”

Julie, Stewie, and Doug jumped up and down on Santa’s head and shoulders. The plus-size man took a deep breath and, with a squelch, disappeared down the chimney.

“Was that a fart?”

“Christmas tradition.”

“You okay, sir?” Julie yelled down.

“Aces,” he yelled up.

The big man staggered to his feet and felt a wetness spread through his pants. “Balls and garland, I’ve pissed myself.” He smelled bourbon. “Crap.” He yelled, “Throw down my sack. I left it in the sleigh.”

“You tore your nut sack?”

“What?”

“Nothing, sir.”

The Christmas bag landed with a thud.

Santa went into the kitchen, emptied glass shards from his pocket into a garbage can and wet a kitchen towel to clean himself. The chubby legend shook his head and said, “There was a time when they would’ve left milk and cookies out.”

He opened the fridge and helped himself to a chicken leg and a Michelob. He wiped his fingers and beard with the towel, returned to the living room, and went straight to the locked liquor cabinet. He was Saint Nick, and there wasn’t a door on Earth that could keep him out. He helped himself to a top-shelf brandy. He guzzled half the bottle and let loose a jolly belch. The burly man in red dragged his bag over to the Christmas tree. A purple plastic tree with a Labubu doll on top.

“What’s wrong with green needles and angels?”

He checked his list: Nintendo Switch 2 for Aaron and an iPhone 17 for Erin.

“Whatever happened to Tinkertoys and dolls?” He bent over to place the gifts under the tree.

“His butt crack is bigger than the plumber’s.”

Santa spun around to find two red-headed twins sitting on the bottom stairs.

“He’s fat and smells bad,” the boy said.

“I think he did a pee-pee in his pants,” the girl said.

“That was the bourbon!”

He heard the racking of a shotgun. A man came down the stairs and stepped in front of the children.

“Drop the bottle and back away from my kids, perv.”

Santa shifted his Christmas bag to protect his balls and said, “Relax. I’m only here to deliver these presents, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Don’t think so, you fat freak.”

“Daddy, we saw him drinking your special juice.”

“Not now, Aaron.”

“He peed his pants.”

“It was the bourbon!” The big man yelled, then he tossed the bottle of brandy at the father and dashed for the front door.

Santa smashed through the door and ran into the street, yelling over the shotgun blasts.

“Stewie! Get that fucking sleigh in the air.”

Stewie took the reins and yelled down, “Good to see you getting some exercise.”

“What?” Santa shouted as snow exploded around his feet.

“Nothing, sir.”

Stewie guided the sleigh down alongside the exhausted Santa. Sparks flew as it bounced off the pavement. Doug and Julie grabbed Santa’s red jacket and held tight as the reindeer pulled the sleigh up and away. Once they were safely in the clouds, Stewie went back and helped drag the big man into the sleigh.

After catching his breath, Santa climbed into the front seat and pulled a pint of bourbon from under the dashboard.

“Julie, sit up front and tell me about this Amazon method.”

Bio

Kenneth M. Gray is retired and living in New Jersey with his daughter and two furry overlords, Lola & Lolo. He has kept stories in his head for too long and is now setting them free. He is still working on it, and one day he hopes to release his illustrated story of Gleepglorp: A Tale of Love and Abduction.

• X- KennethMGRAY2

• Instagram - graykennethm

• Bluesky - kennethmgray.bsky.social

The Casement Window; or, How I Met My Cat by Carlotta Dale

“Whenever God shuts a door, he opens a window.”

Is that quote actually from the Bible, or is it just in The Sound of Music?

And can we talk about that flick for a minute?

It’s one of the Worst Great Movies of all time. There are numerous others, but I don’t want to ramble. The songs are treacle-award winners, the children are smirky and/or twee, the dresses are frumpy, and the whole thing is pure, unadulterated schmaltz. Even most of the cinematography is crap. And Maria. Dear God, Maria. So. Very. Chipper.

Honestly, the only character I’d hang with is the Baroness.

And why, you ask, was I lambasting a beloved musical? It’s completely the fault of a certain theater in Downtown L.A.

The Elysian.

Yeah, I made that name up. I don’t want to encourage thrill seekers.

The theater—it hadn’t been a first-run house—had shown The Sound of Music in June 2005, in honor of the film’s fiftieth anniversary. It shut its doors for good on closing night. The marquee is still in place, now reading:

THE OUND OF MUSIC

My brain kept on filling in the missing S with an H. A demonic hound would be a welcome addition. Like Bambi Meets Godzilla, except in the Tyrol.

Are you familiar with the Historic Core of DTLA? The early years of the twenty-first century were good ones, after a long decline. People wanted to live there, entranced by the idea of lofts in an architectural time capsule.

Lots of restaurants, lots of bars. Lively, you know?

But no theaters.

Don’t get me wrong, DTLA has a metric shit-ton of theaters—none of which show movies. They’re shuttered, or have morphed into churches, swap meets, and jewelry stores. One’s a nightclub.

A few of the theaters began life as legitimate houses, but most came into existence after the advent of moving pictures. Many of the buildings are still there, although some—depressingly—were demolished for parking lots. Insert Joni Mitchell lyric here.

I’d wandered into the alley behind the Elysian, riffing about the awfulness of The Sound of Music. I’ve always liked alleys. Liminal spaces, right? Eerily attractive.

And there it was. A casement window—the kind that swings out—was standing open. Like an invitation with no RSVP required. The loading dock doors were locked up tight, so it wasn’t open because of renovations.

The window was narrow, but I’d fit if I went in sideways.

On the other hand…

Might be a homeless squat. Lots of unhoused people Downtown. Most of them are gentle souls. Many are junkies. Some are mentally unwell. I didn’t want to intrude.

I slung one leg over the sill, calling out, “Anybody home?” Only echoes answered. I scootched in, testing the floorboards with my foot before pulling the other leg in.

It was dark, with dust motes drifting in the sunlight from the window. I fumbled with my cell for the flashlight, finally found the right button, and turned it on.

I was backstage—at the Elysian, maybe, but there’s a slew of theaters on that stretch—but the fire curtain was down, so I couldn’t see into the auditorium. Close to the window was a popcorn bucket filled with water, alongside a number of tiny bones. Odd.

Someone told me once that all theaters are haunted. I don’t know what prompted this assertion, but standing in the near-dark, I could believe it.

I worked my way across the stage, then down a short, curved flight of stairs leading to the house/audience area. The air felt heavy. The theater was old enough that the fire curtain was probably made of asbestos. God alone knew what carcinogens I was inhaling.

The cell phone didn’t exactly light the place up, but it would keep me from bumping into the Phantom of the Opera, should he materialize. Or maybe Swan from The Phantom of the Paradise. I could definitely take Paul Williams in a fair fight.

From what I could see, the place was fancy as hell. Lots of gilded panels and crystal-dripping sconces. A palace. They sure knew how to build ’em. I made my way up to the balcony. I didn’t know why, but I felt drawn there.

But it was empty.

“I’ve lost my cat,” a voice said.

In my defense, it was dark as Hades, and—once I’d wheeled the cell around—the voice came from a Black woman in a charcoal-gray outfit.

“Your cat?”

“Uh-huh. They said no pets allowed. Not much of a heaven, to my mind.”

“Heaven?”

“Yes, you know: heaven, paradise, the Fortunate Isles, the Elysian Fields. But I guess I’m stuck with it.”

“How did you get here?”

“I came to see the closing of The Sound of Music, one of my favorite shows. When it was over, I found I couldn’t leave. And my cat—”

It wasn’t the time to embark on a critique, so I asked if she’d brought her cat—some kind of emotional support animal?—to the movies.

She shrugged. “I take her everywhere. If you find her, will you adopt her?”

“Sure. But—you’ve been here since March? How do you—”

“The plumbing works, thank fortune. I dunno about anything else. Please find her.”

“But what about you? Can I bust you out, somehow?”

“Nah, I’m past all that. Just save my cat, okay? I opened a window, downstairs, hoping she’d find something to eat, but I’ve been frantic she’ll get run over.”

“I’ll look. Don’t worry, I’ll find her.”

“Thanks. She likes Fancy Feast.” And with that, she vanished.

I located the cat, mewing piteously, on the sill of the casement window. A steady diet of rodent and sky-rat had made her plump.

I wished I’d asked her name. Both their names.

“Hey, baby, you’re coming with me,” I said, slinging an arm around her. She was wearing a collar, with a heart-shaped nametag. MARIA, it said, in curly script.

Maria. Poetic justice, really.

Bio

Carlotta Dale lives in L.A., a city she adores from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, in a house that’s essentially an oversized cabinet of curiosities. She still uses adverbs—sparingly—and her novelette, The Parrots Come Again, is available on Amazon. Dale has had short stories published in Punk Noir Magazine, Pistol Jim Press, Literary Garage, Alien Buddha Press, Bristol Noir, Bunker Squirrel Magazine, Mythic Picnic, Private Dick Fridays, Pulp Punch, and Trash Cat Lit. She can be found on Twitter carlottadale38 and on BlueSky carlottadale.bsky.social.

Dream Come True by Jim Wilsky

Jackson Taylor lifted his chin slightly and locked eyes with Dr. Kate Hussman. He didn’t answer her right away and with each second that passed, the silence grew heavier. This first appointment was proving to be just as uncomfortable as he thought it would be.

Finally, almost reluctantly, he nodded his head and shifted casually in the large comfortable chair. The Dallas homicide detective was a sixteen year veteran who never rushed anything—an answer, a question, a decision or a feeling.

Hussman shifted in her chair too, uncrossing and crossing her legs again. In a way, the psychiatrist reminded him of Carly, his current girlfriend—a Fort Worth gal he’d met recently who had moved across the metroplex to take a new job. She was full of life, and her fresh outlook on everything was contagious.

Just a few dates so far, but there was something good going on between them. Something true and solid. He was forty-three, divorced and jaded as hell. In his eyes, he was damaged goods, but Carly didn’t care. Somehow she understood him.

Kate Hussman smiled at him softly and cocked her head to the side. “Was that a yes, Detective? You have a vivid, recurring dream?”

“Oh, yes. That’s correct, Dr. Hussman. I rarely dream. When I do, they’re so vague that I can’t really remember them. This one though… is different.”

She veered away from the dream question momentarily and picked up a thin file folder off the low coffee table. “Your record is, in a word, incredible. Your case clearance rate seems exceptional.” The change of direction she’d taken surprised him.

“I’ve been lucky over the years. Great partners, especially Nicky. Nicholas Katsinos.”

Hussman nodded. “You’re modest, too?”

“Not really. I’ve got a huge ego that I have to forcibly restrain most of the time.”

She smiled at that and looked back down, turned a page, then flipped back. “It’s too bad I’m not with DPD. I’d have a little more personal information.”

“I came to you voluntarily, Doctor—not because the Department forced me to. I’ve been a good boy, and no skeletons in the closet. Promise.” He gave her a small grin. “I’ll fill in with whatever specifics you need. No secrets here. I realize that file is brief, but I believe in short summaries especially when it’s about myself.”

Her smile stiffened, then it melted away all together. All business now. “How many homicide cases over those sixteen years, Detective Taylor?”

He paused. If he wanted answers and help, being elusive wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

She shrugged. “Just a rough number.”

“Well, some years are different. Just depends on how many murders—rates go up and down—how many detectives we had available, budget cuts, and so forth. But a safe number? Well over one-fifty, but under two hundred.”

“I see.”

“Well honestly, Doctor—and with all due respect,” he shook his head, “you don’t see. ‘What fresh hell is this’ isn’t just a Dorothy Parker quote.”

“Understood. Fair enough. Literally the stuff of nightmares?”

“Yes, ma’am.“

She closed the file folder and gazed at him thoughtfully, but it was also a clinical look. “Have you ever killed anyone in the line of duty, Detective?”

Taylor hesitated again as he turned the body of that question over in his mind, just to see if there was anything under it. “Yes.” His face held no expression. “Twice… Different cases.”

She made a note on her legal pad, then looked up, taking her reading glasses off. “Okay, let’s go back to where we were before I ran us off the tracks. Tell me about this vivid dream—the one you keep having.”

“Well, always the same upscale residence. Nicky is there with me. Always these massive double doors. Black, glossy, big brass lion’s head door knockers. We go inside. The place is completely empty but gorgeous just the same. I don’t recognize the house, but the smell, Doctor Hussman—that horrible, unmistakable smell of death. I do recognize that.” Taylor was staring at Kate Hussman with eyes that looked right through her.

She pursed her lips and frowned. “Is that all?”

“Pretty much. But with each dream, when we open those black front doors, that awful smell of death gets stronger.”

#

His follow-up with Dr. Hussman was tomorrow, but right now Taylor and Nick Katsinos were responding to a body found at an address in the exclusive Dallas neighborhood of Highland Park.

Katsinos swung them around a corner. “Uniform at the scene reported there was an open house at the address earlier today. The realtor’s car is still in the driveway. This’ll make three realtors in a month.”

“So Nick… You thinkin’ serial or what?”

“Well I mean, walks like a duck and so on, right? But hey, what do I know?”

Taylor pointed ahead. “This is it.” His eyes went directly to the two black doors as they stopped at the curb. The twin brass lion heads could be seen all the way from the car. He didn’t—couldn’t—move until Nicky broke the spell.

“Ready, Jax?”

As they walked up the brick driveway, Taylor recognized the cream colored Lexus. Her Lexus. Then Carly’s voice from weeks ago. “Realtors need nice cars!”

He hummed a deep moan. A low guttural moan of despair. Then, as Katsinos stared at him in confusion, he started to repeat a mantra of refusal. “No… No, no, nooo.”

His own voice woke him. He sat up ramrod straight, gasping and drenched in sweat. This one had been different. Much more detail. A clear warning. He fumbled for his phone, dropped it, picked it back up.

The screen shouted 7:37 am at him in big red numbers.

He dialed, breathing hard. C’mon… Pick up.

Voicemail.

He kept redialing while dressing, and he kept trying in his car. He banged the steering wheel.

“Pick up!”

Then she did. As Carly responded to his questions about her upcoming day, he knew the answers before she gave them.

Bio

Jim writes Crime, Historical and Western Fiction. In addition, he conducts author interviews titled Author Insights and classic book reviews under the title of Books of Great Impact. All can be found here Writing Wrongs | Jim J Wilsky | Substack He also co-authored a four crime novel series; Blood on Blood, Queen of Diamonds, Closing the Circle and Harbinger.

Thousand Islands by Victor De Anda

When she was a girl growing up in the crazy house, Mom and her sisters were forbidden from opening the door to nowhere. It was a second story door in Grandma Lola’s bedroom that was visible from the street below. Grandpa had built the house ages ago, but never got around to finishing the top floor after a heart attack killed him.

Mom never liked her home being called “crazy.” And she hated the doorway too. Grandma never removed it. Maybe it reminded her too much of Grandpa.

Opening the door was all my brother Max and I thought about. Every time we visited Grandma’s house, we scrambled upstairs to her bedroom to look at it. A large oak chest of drawers sat in front of it, blocking the path like a knight guarding a castle. The door looked brand new inside, but on the outside it was weathered and faded from the elements. There was no lock or keyhole on it.

Max and I imagined what everything looked like with the door wide open. The house was high on a hill overlooking the neighborhood, tall oak trees and arbor vitae everywhere. Sure, we could look out of Grandma’s bedroom window, but it wasn’t the same to us. Not even close.

One sad spring day, Max and I got our chance to do what my Mom never could. We were in junior high at the time.

Grandma had taken a tumble on the porch step. A neighbor spotted her and called Mom. The paramedics said it was a fractured hip and rushed Grandma to the hospital. Mom and Dad followed the ambulance and left us alone at the house. Told us they’d call with any developments.

No sooner had they left that Max and I ran upstairs. Together we shoved the chest of drawers aside to stand and marvel at the door to nowhere. While it still looked new, the doorknob handle was worn, dull in spots. Had Grandma been opening the door all these years? How did she get past the drawers?

Max and I locked eyes, then turned toward the door.

“We could get in big trouble doing this,” he said.

I shrugged him off. “Who’s going to find out? We’ll open it long enough to take a peek outside.”

“Someone’s going to see us and tell Grandma. And then we won’t hear the end of it from Mom.”

“No one’s paying attention.”

“I’ll tell them you made me do it.”

My heart was pounding as I placed my hand on the doorknob. It felt cool to the touch.

The bedroom phone rang loud as a fire alarm.

We jumped at the sound. Max picked up the receiver. Nodded his head to what he was being told. “Uh huh. Okay. See you.”

I stared at him, expecting a response. “Well? Who was it?”

“Mom says Grandma’s going into surgery. Her and Dad are coming back to pick us up.”

I turned back to the door. “Then we better do this quick.” With a swift turn, I twisted the doorknob and yanked the door open. A rush of cool air slapped our faces.

Max stood behind me, watching what was beyond the doorway. “What the hell?”

I glanced over at him. “You see it too, right?”

“This makes no sense. Where’s the lawn?”

For once, Max was right. Instead of a view of the neighborhood from up here, the area inside the doorway was a formless room of black space, dotted with bright white stars and glowing islands of multi-colored light. Thousands of them bobbed in the milky darkness of a night sky just beyond the open door.

I compared it with the view from the bedroom window. Outside was a bright spring day, the sun high above. But inside the door, it was dark as ink.

“Is it another galaxy?” Max said. “I’m confused. You better shut the door now.”

One of the balls of light moved closer towards the doorway, as if it was curious and wanted to get a closer look. Max and I took a step backward. Then we saw a familiar face inside the ball of light studying us. It was Grandpa.

My eyes welled up with tears and I wiped them away. Could it really be him? Max and I had never met our grandfather, but we had seen pictures. My skin buzzed. My heart thumped harder. All of this was alien and yet familiar at the same time.

I reached out my hand. “Grandpa? Is that you?”

He spoke. “Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. You’ve got to be Carol’s boys. I see the resemblance.”

I swallowed hard. “T-That’s right, sir. I’m Ben, and this is my brother Max.”

Grandpa smiled and his ball of light grew even brighter. “It’s a pleasure. What’re you two doing here? How’s your grandmother?”

Max stepped in front of me. “She fell and broke her hip. The doctors are fixing her up now.”

“Poor Lola. I do think about her. And how’s your mother? I hope she’s well.”

I smiled. “She’s okay. She told us you built this house.”

“With my own two hands. Didn’t get to finish it, though. I hope it still works for your Grandma.”

I nodded my head. “Did you know about this door when you built it?”

“Had a feeling it was special but didn’t understand why until after I had the heart attack. Now it gives me a chance to see my own parents, my friends, you know.”

Another ball of light grew in intensity and floated closer. It was Grandma. She smiled at us and moved next to Grandpa.

He looked at her. “Lola? Is that you? I’ve missed you so much.”

Their balls of light merged into one and they both smiled at us.

More tears streamed down my face.

The front door downstairs slammed shut and we heard the jangle of Mom’s car keys.

“Max, Ben, where are you?” said Mom.

Bio

Victor De Anda is an author living and writing in the Philadelphia area. His story “Bad Man Down” was included in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2025, edited by Don Winslow and Steph Cha. His novelette “They Eat Their Own” is part of the crime/thriller anthology Myopic Duplicity. Other stories of his have appeared in Dark Yonder, Shotgun Honey, Dark Waters, Yellow Mama, Mystery Tribune, and Punk Noir Magazine. You can find him on most social media as @victordeanda or at his website, www.victordeanda.com.

GFE by Tom Andes

The doors you open, I just can’t close.

It’s funny I’m singing that song. I don’t even like U2. But the night I met Staci, that was playing on the car radio—the tuner set to Live 105, the Bay Area’s alternative rock station.

Now, I’m sitting across the street from the Anchor Inn, staring at a door with chipped red paint, Room 6. On the seat beside me is my dad’s old police issue .38. My bags are packed, everything I want to take to Mexico in the trunk of my Miata.

I’ll tell you the painful truth: It’s not much. Forty-seven, half my life married to a decent guy who doesn’t deserve this, and I can fit everything in a Wilson duffel that isn’t any bigger than what my husband takes to the Anytime Fitness near our place in Livermore.

But life, like Mom says, isn’t fair.

Our kids are college aged, one majoring in Women’s Studies at Santa Cruz, the other taking a liberal arts degree at SF State. They’ll understand.

At least—Mom again—whatever doesn’t kill them will make them stronger.

Mom’s good with the clichés.

#

I met Staci on one of those rare San Francisco nights when I remember what I loved about this place, before it turned into a city of Waymo cars and tech bros with laptops drinking fifteen-dollar lattes. She was sitting at the counter in the all-night donut place on Market and Van Ness, wearing a feather boa. I’d been out with work friends, dancing. I sat next to her.

She was eating an apple cruller. She looked tired, pale. I felt shocked when she told me she was only twenty-two.

“Hard to believe,” she said, “right?”

She was four-eight, in threadbare Lululemon, a pink top.

At the door, a skinny guy in a leather jacket tugged on his soul patch while he watched.

#

Now that same guy is posted up outside her room.

I know all about Shayne, from the months we’ve been texting. He love-bombed her, taking her to fancy dinners at Westlake Joe’s, bringing her flowers. Then he got rough with her. Now he’s her pimp, posting ads on the sites they use to find the lonely men who come to her door, leaving their money on the dresser.

Tonight, three guys have come to her room, so she’ll have six hundred bucks—unless one of them asked for something extra, more than the GFE (or girlfriend experience).

That’s not enough to make a getaway, so I’ve got thirty thousand dollars in that duffel—a cash withdrawal I made this afternoon.

I told her all about Brian. He’s not a bad guy, but there’s no spark. I’m pretty sure he’s gay but doesn’t know it.

I said it was sad how I’d come here to be myself. But I’d married a man, so I was still in the closet—and not because of the stigma, but because I was afraid of something in myself.

We laughed about the alliterative names: Staci and Shayne, Beth and Brian.

To thine own self be true. That’s what Mom would say, spouting another cliché.

Then she’d sigh and tell me it was a phase, like the one time I tried to tell her what I am.

#

After she left, I ate the rest of her cruller. Under the plate, on a napkin, she’d written her number.

#

When the third guy leaves, I make my move. With my Giants cap pulled down over my eyes, the sleeves cut off my flannel, I look butch enough to pass.

Shayne gives me one of those chin-nods dudes give each other. His face changes, like he’s trying to place me.

“I’m here for the girlfriend experience.”

Taking advantage of his moment of surprise, I shove the gun in his ribs.

In the room, a box of Trojans is next to the bed. The shower’s running, steam billowing from the bathroom door. Staci comes out wrapped in a towel.

“Did you get the money?”

She shows her small, pointy teeth.

“In the trunk,” I say, “outside.”

Her lips curl, her mouth forming the words, telling Shayne the gun’s not loaded.

Maybe I saw this coming—maybe I smelled a rat, as Mom would say—because before I left the house, I loaded the gun.

Still, I can’t bring myself to shoot her. I pull the trigger, but I jerk the gun to the side.

The sound is deafening. The mirror shatters, a waterfall of silver sliding off the wall.

Shayne elbows me in the ribs. He twists away from me, the gun pointing at the ceiling.

The three of us fight for it, Staci stepping on my toes, Shayne grabbing my arms. When the gun falls, Staci comes up with it.

She points it at us, a cold look in her eyes.

“A pretty good line—” Shayne’s laughing— “about Westlake Joe’s, wasn’t it?”

Another explosion, and I clutch my chest, but I’m standing there.

When I turn, Shayne’s grown a third eye, off center in the middle of his head.

His head rolls to the side, the back half of it missing.

He looks surprised. He makes a gurgling sound, like a baby.

Of all things, that song comes back to me, Bono singing about saltwater kisses. I’m crying.

#

Light glints on black steel, the butt of the gun descending.

Then I’m on the floor, blood-ooze on my head.

“I’m sorry.” Staci rifles my pockets, taking the keys to the Miata.

She wipes the gun with her tank-top and squeezes it into my hand, like I’ve shot Shayne.

She pulls on cutoffs, sandals.

“You’ll think of something,” she says, “to tell them.”

I raise the gun, pointing it at her as she walks out the door, the smell of saltwater and the wharf blowing into the room, distant sirens.

I close my eyes, pull the trigger.

But when I look again, she’s gone, the doorway empty.

Bio

Shamus Award-winning writer and musician Tom Andes is the author of the detective novel Wait There Till You Hear from Me (Crescent City Books 2025) and Guess This is Kaput: Stories (forthcoming, Cowboy Jamboree Press). His stories have appeared in Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories 2025 and The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2025. He lives in Albuquerque, where he is a working musician. His latest musical release is Wonderful Days (Southern Crescent Recording Co. 2026). He can be found at tomandes.com.

SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED

This summer, enjoy a new guest call by Pistol Jim!

is the guest editor and curator for this call.

In 1,000 words or fewer, write a piece around the theme:

Doors. Gates. Portals. Barriers that are either open or closed, keep you out or let you in—and the reverse—real or imaginary, oak, iron, or gingerbread. Storm them, fling them open, or slam them shut and throw away the key.

Sub are open from June 17th through July 8th, 2026.

SUBMIT HERE along with a short author blurb and any links you want to include:

PistolJimMartine@gmail.com

Series editor:

M.E. Proctor writes the Declan Shaw PI series, Love You Till Tuesday & Catch Me on a Blue Day. She’s the author of two short story collections, and the co-author with Russell Thayer of Bop City Swing and Kansas City Breakdown. She’s a Derringer and Shamus Award short story nominee. On Substack at The Roll Top Desk.

Editor in chief:

James Maxwell is a technical writer from San Jose, California. He primarily writes crime, noir, and horror fiction. Some of his writing influences include Elmore Leonard, Philip K. Dick, Clive Barker, Jim Thompson, and Cormac McCarthy. He spends his time reading, watching films, listening to black/death metal, and playing video games.

His published works include the collection The Bad Sign: Crime and Horror Stories and the novella Put Your Life in the Pot.

Pistol Jim Press is an online literary zine that focuses on grimy flash fiction: Crime, noir, westerns, horror, speculative fiction, and sometimes even the non-gritty.

That’s a wrap for this call! A huge thank you to everybody who submitted, commented, and shared these pieces. This has been a blast and I look forward to the next one!

In the meantime, use the comments on this post to vote for your favorite excerpts from this call! Just copy and paste the excerpt into a comment, along with the title of the piece it came from. You can put in as many votes as you want — just don’t vote for an excerpt out of a piece you wrote yourself 😉

Time is a dog’s breakfast shoved in a blender and spun out like a crazy woman’s quilt:

• Time Management, Inc. by Carlotta Dale

• Rubberneckers by Scott MacLeod

• Long Count, Long Con by Bob Armstrong

• A New Stitching by Thomas Trang

• A Hiccup in Time by Kenneth M. Gray

• Wilbur by Drew Gummerson

• Tin Foil Hat Day by Tammy Blakley

• Time Smudges by Victor DeAnda

• The Bombshell by John Tures

• Quilts by Laura Winterbottom

• Time is a Dog's Breakfast by Collings McCrae

• 10:22 by Jody Wenner

• Not From Around Here by Linda Robinson

• A Continuity of Wilhelm Ducks by Jared Leys

Series editor:

Craig Terlson’s fiction has appeared in Mystery Tribune, Carve, Hobart, Punk Noir Press, and many other literary journals. He has written essays on the writing craft for Write magazine, Lit Hub, and on his Substack: Craig Terlson Talks Story. He always recycles on Fridays.

Editor in chief:

James Maxwell is a technical writer from San Jose, California. He primarily writes crime, noir, and horror fiction. Some of his writing influences include Elmore Leonard, Philip K. Dick, Clive Barker, Jim Thompson, and Cormac McCarthy. He spends his time reading, watching films, listening to black/death metal, and playing video games.

His published works include the collection The Bad Sign: Crime and Horror Stories and the novella Put Your Life in the Pot.

Pistol Jim Press is an online literary zine that focuses on grimy flash fiction: Crime, noir, westerns, horror, speculative fiction, and sometimes even the non-gritty.

A Continuity of Wilhelm Ducks by Jared Leys

Wilhelm the eider duck unholstered his pistol and fired off six shots at the man lurching toward him in the dark alleyway.

Wilhelm the duck unholstered his pistol, aimed, and fired a shot at the man in the dark alleyway.

Wilhelm the duck raised his pistol and fired at the man.

Wilhelm raised his pistol and pulled the trigger.

Each of these bullets travel through the waterfall of possibilities, trace toward the man, through the man, past the man, and out the other side. Paradoxical bullets flutter and thread forward, collapse into a particular moment, and concur that something, somehow, happened.

Five of the shots flew wide of the target, clattering off the alley walls, chipped bricks scattering across the ground—one bullet struck the man in the throat, dropping him to the ground, blood burbling from his mouth.

The shot struck the man in the chest, dropping him to the alley floor, a mist of blood splattered on the wall.

The shot struck the man in the leg; he drew his own gun and fired back.

Wilhelm’s pistol refused to fire.

The duck pondered whether he ought to select his preferred outcome for this event. Not that he could, he figured. Not that he would, because it already happened. But, perhaps, in the moment there was room to move.

Wilhelm the eider duck unholsters his pistol and fires off four or five or six shots—let’s say four shots—the bullets flying at the man lurching toward him in the dark alleyway. One, two, three bullets strike the man, dropping him to the ground, the fourth bullet is never fired. It is unnecessary. Three bullets do the trick.

The duck looked at the man on the alleyway floor. He had been tracking the criminal all day. Somehow it had come to this. He couldn’t quite recall how anymore. He holstered his pistol and placed a call to the precinct.

*******

Or,

Wilhelm wakes up on the pond, dawnlight filtering over the water. A feeling passes over him, a sense that the frustrating passions of humans would ruin his day. And so, despite the urging to perk up and go to work, he decides to rest a little longer. The fleeting problems of people could wait for another day.

Bio

Jared Leys is a multi-genre writer, most recently having published a book of poetry, Hibiscus Tea. He claims ducks are the future of fantasy and science fiction. In the meantime, he operates the Fantasy Duck blog.

Fantasy Duck:

Fantasy Duck

Book Reviews and Duck News

By Jared Leys

Not From Around Here by Linda Robinson

“What we got?”

“Male. Gunshot. Body’s been here a few months. No black fly larvae present.” Coroner smacked his neck, leaving a bloody splot. “Cause of death uncertain.”

“The charred sucking hole in his chest isn’t enough?”

“No, Chief. The ME calls it.”

“Call me Chief again and Leo will explain why not.” The sheriff ducked under crime scene tape.

“The ballistics will be weird, Chief. Autopsy, too. Entry wound is unusual. We need a bullet. Bite marks—arm, leg stumps should be dripping blood. Corpse is gooey in the middle.”

“Wait here until the Marquette forensic lab picks up.”

Seney County Sheriff Saima Aalto turned to walk away, snarled. “Don’t call me Chief.”

Chief Deputy Leonard Wagoosh glanced at the squad room windows later that same day, walking in a miasma of burnt coffee, sweat, somebody’s aftershave.

Sheriff Aalto opened her door, whistled. “Zoom link is up from Marquette Lab. What you two got?”

“Deputies re-scoured the crime scene. No footprints, casings, DNA.” Wagoosh glanced at his file. “ME said bite marks have traces of coyote saliva, mountain lion, um, wolverine.”

“Mountain lion? DNR denies there are any. Wolverines’ve been gone since 1800. Wolverine?”

“Yeah,” Wagoosh handed the page to the sheriff. “Polymerase chain reaction testing...”

Aalto snatched the page. The computer chirped. “Hello?” Lab director Esther Lopez shared her angry face. “I’m wondering who had custody of your crime scene, Sheriff? Body wasn’t shot there. He seems not shot then either.”

“You mean he’s been dead longer?”

“Dead more than 100 years.”

Lopez’s face shoved sideways, a big man with a visor appeared. “The murder weapon is a revolver, 1861-ish.”

Wagoosh agreed. “Flattened bullet. Military revolvers were designed to kill humans—impact over velocity.”

Visor nodded. “Black powder along the anteroposterior diameter.”

“The what now?”

“Distance front to back,” Wagoosh interpreted.

Perkins snorted.

Lopez reappeared. “The point. No DNA, no ID. No weapon, no bullet match. Sending your mummy back. Happy trails, Sheriff.”

Wagoosh leaned elbows on knees. “Time portal.”

Officers stilled, stared. “Midcontinent Rift System,” he said, stretching. “Billion years ago Turtle Island almost tore apart. 1800-mile scar, Canada to Kansas. Superior is the deepest basin. Water filled it. Many legends. If I was a time tramping assassin, how I’d go.”

The door slapped open. “Chief, we got another body.”

Aalto growled.

Everyone scrambled.

“What’d we catch?”

“DNR Ranger on the scene at Sand Point reporting a body, chest shot, like Mosquito Beach.”

Sheriff Aalto snatched keys from the hook, holstered her gun, hollering, “Six Pack—you and Wagoosh to Sand Point. Big Fine with me. Everybody take a radio!”

Aalto lit the siren, careened onto H58, scattering pedestrians. “Wo,” yelled Big Fine.

“Six Pack, where you?”

“Pursuing DNR in pursuit of vehicle, H58 entering Docks. Black RAM pickup, plate 1 Whiskey Kilo, Quebec 547.”

“Copy. We see you.” Perkins and Wagoosh were running as Aalto and Moilanen jumped out.

“Perp’s in blue MTI 440X.” Wagoosh on the radio, spun around as Sheriff Aalto yelled at guy loitering on his 388 Skater, twin Mercurys bubbling the water.

“Commandeering this boat. Wagoosh!”

Sheriff Aalto twisted her radio to Channel 16. “PAN-PAN-PAN. All vessels in vicinity, we are in visual pursuit of blue MTI 440x speedboat doing 120 knots, moving north lee of Grand Island. Single occupant, green jacket.”

The 440x slowed. “What the bloody hell?”

“He’s pulling back on the throttle. He’s going to stuff the bow!” Wagoosh roared.

Green Jacket put one foot on the gunnel, dived into Lake Superior.

Wagoosh yanked the throttles, circled the surface maelstrom around the foundering 440x. Sheriff Aalto scanned starboard.

“The water temp’s about 10C. If he’s not dead, he’ll be hypothermic in 15 minutes.”

“Wagoosh.” A dark circle spread from the perp’s dive entry edge, splashing counterclockwise with the sound of high wind water.

“Howah! Mishipizheu.”

“Back away, Leonard!” The props boiled as the Chief Deputy reversed. The waterspout rose. In its center was their suspect in a green jacket, revolver tucked in his waistband. He somersaulted into a dive as the spout collapsed.

Sheriff Saima Aalto zipped her jacket. “Are you filming this?”

“Affirmative,” Wagoosh yelled past his phone.

She jumped.

Bio

Linda Robinson writes and draws from the rocks and trees of Michigan. She is the author of Chantepleure, and the prizewinning screenplay I Hear Ephesus Is Lovely This Time of Year. Her fiction appeared in Strut, Hobart, Peninsula Poets, Healing Garden Journal. Nonfiction showed up in the South Lyon Herald, and Sir Terry Pratchett’s inbox. Once.

10:22 by Jody Wenner

I had a nervous habit of saying the time out loud when I looked at the clock. It always calmed me down, which made no sense. Time was a twisted construct that should have caused more anxiety. Instead, for me, the opposite occurred. It was grounding.

This time, I’d merely whispered it. 10:22. The exact moment my husband tried to kill me. We were in bed. My hand grasped the quilt his beloved mother had made for us. I hated that damn blanket. It smelled like mothballs no matter how often I washed it.

“Why do you have to always do that—say the time out loud?” His meaty hands were around my neck. He grunted, tightening his grip.

“You could just divorce me,” I croaked.

“Sounds messy.”

We’d just been watching a crime show. That was the defense the husband had used. We’d argued about it. I had said that divorce is a hell of a lot cleaner than murder. Jack snorted. What an ass.

“I don’t have to do it anymore. I’ll stop the time thing.” I kicked at his legs.

He loosened his grip. “It’s not just that, Becky. You think that’s the only thing that bugs the shit out of me?”

“What else? I’ll change it all.”

Jack shook his head. “It’s too much. I don’t think you could.”

“Just tell me. Please. I want to know. It’s that or prison.”

“You think I’m going to get caught? I’m too smart for that.”

If I could have laughed, I would have. “That’s what they all think,” I managed.

Maybe my strange habits drove my husband nuts, but he had his own stupid quirks that made me just as annoyed. Well, except for right now. He removed his hands from around my neck and he used his big, dumb sausages to count out what I did that drove him to want to kill me. He couldn’t list anything without using his fingers. Like a child.

When he got to number seven (that I spit when I got too excited while telling a funny story), I launched a wad of saliva in his face and kicked him in the groin with everything I had. While he writhed in pain, I yanked my mother-in-law’s quilt from my body and thrust it over his head before I bolted from the bed and ran.

Lucky for me, I was small and quick, and he had the body of a beer-guzzling sloth. I was out of that house before he’d even finished climbing the stairs.

#

“The show we’d been watching ended at ten. We discussed it. At 10:22, that’s when he started to strangle me.” I looked right at him when I said this in court. “I ran to the neighbors and got there at 10:47. The police took the picture of my neck as evidence at 11:31.”

That was the one thing Jack and I had in common. We both loved to watch crime shows. I guess he was gathering ideas for how to kill me, but I was learning how to survive. I wasn’t going to change for anybody. Fuck that.

Bio

Jody Wenner is a developmental editor and a writer of over fifteen independently and traditionally published mystery and thrillers. Shorter works can be found in Punk Noir, Mystery Magazine Weekly, Urban Pigs Press, Pistol Jim Press, and Thriller101. You might also find her walking her dog, obsessively knitting, or at www.jodywenner.com

Time is a Dog’s Breakfast by Collings McCrae

Time is a dog’s breakfast shoved in a blender and spun out like a crazy woman’s quilt, and I’m the fool who tried to iron it flat.

Yesterday, or maybe Tuesday, I found my grandmother sewing thunderclouds into the tablecloth again. She hummed a song that hadn’t been written yet—one my daughter composes when she turns forty and learns to forgive me.

The needle dipped and rose, silver lightning in slow motion. Every stitch blurted sound: sputtering rain, splashing puddles, pattering footsteps, and the sigh of a closing door no one had opened.

“You can’t keep mending it,” I told her, because that’s what I always say.

She didn’t look up. “And you can’t keep breaking it. Pass me the blue spool.”

I gave her the red one and glared.

Her dog, a lumpy brown creature named Kepler, was busy lapping up the waterfall of stray minutes rushing under the table. Grandma’s needlework constantly ruined the floorboards. I replaced them monthly, I think.

Kep preferred winter sewing, crunchy seconds still brisk to the tongue. Summers were too soft, too pink, too slow.

Sometimes he’d nose through the future and gag on next Thursday. The fullness of time never agrees with him, but he insists on chewing it anyway.

Across the room, the clock suddenly decided it was a metronome. Each tick matched my heartbeat until my chest stuttered to keep in sync. I tried to slow my breathing to confuse it, waving the blue spool right in its face. The clock, insulted, skipped an hour out of spite and reset itself to a melancholy three‑thirty, where all sad thoughts live.

“This is out of control,” I whispered.

“Calm down, have a warm drink,” Grandma said.

I made tea. The water boiled before it poured. The cup filled with steam and mocked me with thoughts no cup should have. Grandma acted like it didn’t happen. I took a sip, tasting school chalk, tears, and a Christmas morning that might’ve been someone else’s. The flavor lingered, nostalgic and wrong.

The phone rang—it always does at this point.

“Don’t answer,” Grandma warned, snipping a rogue thread. “It’s just time calling itself back.”

“But what if it’s me?”

“It is. That’s why you shouldn’t answer.”

I did anyway, of course. Some loops crave their own failure.

“Hello?” I said.

“Don’t forget to feed the dog,” my own voice echoed from farther down the timeline.

Kepler looked up, guilty, a fragment of afternoon sticking from his muzzle.

“Seriously?” I said.

He burped; tomorrow rolled under the sofa, gathering lint and indecision.

Grandma sighed, patting the seat beside her. “Sit. The world’s unraveling again.”

I sat. The fabric shimmered like oil on water.

“Which part this time?”

“Childhood. Someone dropped the bobbin.”

I leaned in and saw flashes of bicycles, scraped knees, baking bread’s orange sweetness, and the reverb of a father’s disappointment. Threads tangled and rewove in panic.

“Can we fix it?”

“We always do. But it never stays fixed, does it, boy?”

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure who she meant: the boy who remembers, or the one who forgets every swishy whirl?

Outside, the day began to melt. Buildings slouched into puddles of shadow.

Kepler barked once, loud enough to reorder the calendar. The sky hiccuped, and suddenly it was December again, colder in hue and gentler in circumstance.

“Hand me the snips,” Grandma said.

I passed her the scissors.

“The other kind.”

I hesitated, then offered my wristwatch. It ticked backward now, shedding seconds like dandruff. She took it delicately, clipping the strap. The hands spun wildly, then froze at nowhere in particular.

“There,” she said. “That ought to hold for a while.”

“For how long?”

She smiled without looking up. “Until the dog gets hungry again.”

Kepler wagged his tail, eyes bright with mischief—a faint yellow crunch of something inevitable between his teeth.

Then, the world folded in on itself. Hours creased over minutes, days ruffled like angry paper. I blinked. Grandma disappeared. The tablecloth lay quiet, spotless, threadbare.

The dog remained, wagging through centuries, awaiting his next meal of moments.

And me, the fool with the iron, trying again to press eternity flat.

Bio

Collings MacCrae is an American author best known for the Fox Argall Mysteries, which feature a neurodiverse criminologist. Drawing on over 40 years in healthcare consulting and personal experience with autism in her family, she writes twisty relationship-forward novels exploring neurodiversity. MacCrae lives in Florida next door to her kids, so she also writes middle-grade fantasy books.

Quilts by Laura Winterbottom

Maria stared at the glowing baubles in the sky. The stars were aglow and it was full dark outside the window of the hospital room. The chair was yellow and red and had beautiful flowers, poppies (Ha, irony!) on it.

The hospital was built for the mentally ill, people like her. People who had lost it so much emotionally that they listened to the song Time by Pink Floyd again and again, the repeat button losing its lettering from Maria pressing it so many times.

Maria pulled the quilt over her chest, her breasts were loose in her tee shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra, she realized, and continued to gaze out the window. She wondered if the stars were what different religions of the world claimed them to be. The souls of those who had passed before her. Clusters of brightness—oh, to be a cluster of brightness. Instead, she was stuck in this hospital room.

She had killed a man. She was told she’d killed her boyfriend. But she hoped he wasn’t a star. He didn’t deserve to be a star. He had hit her and pushed her too many times to be such an amazing entity in the universe. She had killed him during the opening of Time. She always loved the way Nick Mason had arranged that opener. The repetitive beating and tick-tock tick-tock of the clock in the beginning and the guitar strumming.

She couldn’t remember how she did it, which she was somewhat glad for, but all she could remember was that song, and the drumming. It stood out so well in her mind. In fact, she couldn’t even remember at this point how it all went down.

Thoughts of her best friend, Clara, with short black hair—that bob and the hazel eyes always lined to perfection. Clara had been there, Clara had taken her to the hospital that evening too, 6 months ago. Where is Clara now? She hadn’t come to visit.

Whatever, though. Maria was just glad she was far away from Mark, who she hoped would never be a star, hanging in the sky, gazing over her much like she believed her mother did, doing her own great gig in the sky. Maria would never have another gig again. She met Mark at one of those gigs where she played keyboard.

Too bad within a month, he had pushed her against the wall and grabbed her face in his hand and told her she sucked, something she had never heard from someone’s lips before about her keyboard playing.

She was glad Mark was gone, but she still could not remember how he died. The nurses and doctors had given her an idea where, and she resolved it to her living room and those poison flowers he had ingested while her dog ate his breakfast on the floor. Clara had brought over a “special” tea that day she remembered. Why didn’t Clara come to visit? The thoughts stirred as she felt her medication—that the hospital had insisted she take—finally lulling her to sleep.

She was compliant because she was afraid not to be. She could not remember much, and maybe this medication would help her remember what happened to the man who had been beating on her.

Yet here she was.

Another night with the quilt pulled up high, over her ears, over her eyes, even over her nose. The scent of the hospital lingered; antibacterial, bleachy, but somehow not clean. Her mama had once owned the quilt, the one with watermelons sown on. After eleven years it still smelled like her, like perfume roses.

As she climbed on top of the tiny mattress, she grinned. She was free.

Bio

Laura is a former “journalist” who now rescues cats and writes whenever she can while hanging out with her two favorite felines. She is working on her first novel, and plans to release a memoir about her own mental health this year.

LauraW.substack.com

Twitter.com/me0mixalot

The Bombshell by John Tures

Colonel Jacques Horloger stood over his female captive, bound tightly to the chair. Her makeshift time bomb could destroy a room—or a portion of a train track. He pulled the pin, setting the device in motion, and pushed it under her chair.

“Thirty minutes is all you have left, Miss Cecilia Early,” he stated to the redheaded bombshell. “It is a fitting end, for all of our trains you derailed with such explosives.”

The MI-6 agent’s retort was muffled by the scarf tied over her mouth.

“Au revoir, Mademoiselle Early.” The Vichy French officer blew her a kiss before turning to leave. He frowned, noting the military uniform hanging by the door. When this shed was destroyed, he would know which enlisted man left it there. The one missing his uniform would face a severe punishment. Horloger slammed the door, gave orders to the sentry, then strode across the field to his headquarters at the ski lodge in the French Alps. It would be far enough from the blast to be safe.

Horloger, as his surname implied, came from a long line of clockmakers and watchmakers. For him, timing was everything. Harsh penalties were dispensed to any subordinate who was late. He sent the trains full of French Jews and undesirables to concentration camps on time. An ally from Nazi Germany, Adolf Eichman, copied his style.

That was the case, until trains began derailing all over France. Those destroyed carried Wehrmacht, S.S., or munitions—never prisoners or foodstuffs. Horloger’s hunt for the bomb-maker never considered it was a woman. But he tortured enough French resistance members to find her identity and capture her before she could destroy the train laden with gold bound for Berlin.

Heading up the stairs, Horloger paused. There was still time in his schedule for one little pleasure. He retraced his steps. Ten minutes had elapsed. He would savor the next ten in the shed, and falsely promise Mademoiselle Early a prisoner exchange—or make the bombshell his personal captive, then change his mind with enough time to depart. Which would be sweeter? Her frantic eyes, her muffled cries, or the hopeless wriggling against her bindings above the ticking time bomb?

As he approached the shed, he frowned. The sentry quickly saluted, but he had been standing by the door instead of marching around the shed, as ordered. The locks came off the shed door, and sure enough, the chair was sans belle dameisele. The bomb was gone too, as ropes were strewn across the floor. An open window blew a cold night breeze through the room.

Horloger executed the sobbing sentry with a single pistol shot, then sprinted across the field, barking orders to an aide to immediately summon every officer to the map room. They would need to coordinate their search for the Mi-6 agent in the darkness, before she reached rails with the bomb to stop the gold shipment.

Entering the map room, he bumped into a thin military messenger, face covered by a scarf except for the eyes, who quickly departed the room. He gave that uniformed soldier little thought as he ordered the other officers to select areas to search for the missing bombshell. The crowded map room was already a cacophony of shouts and orders.

It was then that he noticed the letter on his desk addressed to him in a flourished script.

From the envelope, he retrieved the letter. Though he could read the words about “a dog’s breakfast,” a “blender” and “a crazy woman’s quilt,” he knew not the meaning of those British idioms.

But he recognized the last line written.

Le temps est écoulé!

In English it stated, “Time’s up.”

“Everyone, stop now!” the colonel growled. As conversations ground to a halt, he heard the tiny ticking sound. Peering under the large table where the map was placed, he spotted Mademoiselle Early’s bomb.

Only five seconds remained.

He had forgotten to check for the military uniform hanging by the door in the shed. She must have been the uniformed messenger with the scarf covering all but her eyes.

Colonel Horloger’s last thought was to admire the bombshell’s timing.

It was perfect.

Bio

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and raised in El Paso, Texas, John A. Tures was first published writing sports for the El Paso Herald-Post in high school. He earned his doctorate at Florida State University and writes a weekly column for newspapers and magazines. His book Branded was published by Huntsville Independent Press. He thanks family and friends for listening to his stories.

Time Smudges by Victor DeAnda

You can be surrounded by other living beings and still feel alone. Your naked body on display, hands and feet strapped to a cold metallic table. The alien scientist looming above you drags his magic wand onto another section of your scalp and squeezes a button. Your brain tingles, neck muscles tighten. Time blurs.

#

Sadie’s tight grip on my hand fades as I describe the mission. Her eyelids flutter when she realizes I’m leaving them all behind. Locked in a tight embrace, I inhale her smell as if it were the last time. Her body stiffens.

#

Your head sizzles like a fried egg. What year is it—2165, or 2615? Have you been here for months or hours? The alien scientist seems to understand your confusion and backs off, letting you rest for a bit. The binder tying your left hand is looser now. After some wriggling, you manage to free yourself from it. The scientist makes another sweep with his wand, presses the button.

#

I giggle at Nick and Abby running barefoot through the wet sand at Honolulu. Soon I’ll head to Houston for six months of isolation training and psych evals. NASA doesn’t just send anyone on a 20-year solo mission into space.

#

Sweat rolls down your temple. How long have you been in this alien lab? Your left hand is free but you keep it hidden, waiting for the right moment. But what is time anymore? The scientist presses his button.

#

I’m kissing Sadie goodbye, my palms framing her face. Mission launch is in 36 hours, but I’ve got to quarantine first. More tears stream down her freckled cheeks. I remember her watery blue eyes, the same color as the tidal pools at Hanauma Bay. By now, she’s forgotten the way I used to look at her.

#

The scientist leans in closer when you make your move. You strangle the egghead with your left hand, and he drops his memory wand. The other creatures watch what’s happening without moving. You nod to your other tied appendages. He frees you from the table when time smudges again with no button push.

#

Nick’s born and three minutes later, Abby makes her entrance. Both of them six weeks premature. They look like tiny aliens, grasping each other’s hands like they’re communicating telepathically. Sadie and I are a crying mess. It’ll be two months before we can bring the twins home and finally sleep at night.

#

Now you’re holding the memory wand to the alien’s temple like it’s a gun. Guiding him out of the lab. Hostage-taking is a new thing for you, but your ship is waiting. It’s time to go home. You release the scientist and scramble for the docking collar. Time smears again without any encouragement.

#

Sadie’s tired, her eyes bleary and hair disheveled. Her video transmission breaks up across the span of time and space. Between the glitches, I understand the message. She wants a divorce. I record my reply and hit send. It’ll take 48 hours to reach Earth. Time enough to delete my response, but I don’t. It’s not fair to her to keep up this charade. And just like that, I lose my family while I’m 250 million miles away from home.

#

You’re running naked through the hallways of the alien ship. Looking for your own ship. Is this happening now, or is it another memory? How old are you now? Fifty or seventy? Time smears again.

#

I listen to Nick and Abby babble at each other and it sounds like an alien language to me. My mind goes to the future and the sights I’ll see. My heart is torn.

#

Now you’re lost on this alien ship. Cold and tired. Footsteps clomping behind you. Soon the aliens will find you. It’s time to end all of this. You lift the memory wand to your temple. Your breathing eases and your heartbeat slows to a patter. You press the button and hold it as long as you can.

#

The fireplace at home is cozy with Sadie, the kids, and me all huddled together under a quilted blanket. It’s warm and invigorating. I could spend minutes or millennia here.

Bio

Victor De Anda is an author living and writing in the Philadelphia area. His story “Bad Man Down” has been included in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2025, edited by Don Winslow and Steph Cha. His novelette “They Eat Their Own” is part of the crime/thriller anthology Myopic Duplicity. Other stories of his have appeared in Dark Yonder, Shotgun Honey, Dark Waters, Yellow Mama, Mystery Tribune, and Punk Noir Magazine.

You can find him on most social media as @victordeanda

https://www.victordeanda.com/