Flash Fiction for the Cocktail Hour Volume I Eleven Suburban Noir Stories Cathryn Grant Published by D2C Perspectives These stories are works of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living, dead is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-9831868-6-1 Cover photography and design by Lydia Schufreider. Copyright © 2010 Cathryn Grant Smashword Edition, License Notes Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support. Visit Cathryn online at CathrynGrant.com What is Flash Fiction for the Cocktail Hour? Like a shot of vodka, flash fiction is a quick hit to the brain, a startling peek into another’s life at the end of the day. You can think of it as an alternative to a martini. CONTENTS A Thousand and One Bottles of Wine Tranquility Sitting with the Dead Amputation Superior Out of Options Under Surveillance Reverberation Work After Dark For Temporary Relief Love Is Blind A Thousand and One Bottles of Wine CORRINE WAS NOT going to have a glass of wine with her salad. She was done with drinking. During the time she’d been with Nick she calculated they’d consumed nearly a thousand bottles of good wine – Cab, Chardonnay, table red, Pinot Noir. What had that cost? She didn’t even want to think about it. Where had it gotten them? Lots of laughs, conversation that was deep, or so they thought. It also got them lots of nodding off in front of the plasma screen. The wine blurred the rough edges, but only while they were sipping. Everything turned sour in the mornings. No more wine, she’d vowed. No more drinking. She was into yoga now, focused on being in the present moment. The present moment was blurred to pulp when she drank wine. She plucked at the spandex that clung to her legs like cobwebs. She wasn’t sure if the tight fabric looked good because it showed how slim she was, or looked bad because it left nothing to the imagination. Even that scab on her left hip might be visible. “What would you like?” asked the server. “A Caesar salad, with the shrimp instead of the chicken.” “Anything to drink?” “A bottle of Evian. 16 ounce.” The waiter discreetly disappeared. Good. Clever boy, he’d picked up on her lack of desire for small talk, for wine, for butter with her bread. The waiter was slow to return with her sparkling water. She found her leg getting jumpy, the back of her neck itching like she was wearing a wool sweater instead of a tank top with spaghetti straps. She lifted her hair off her neck and stared at the lily on the table. Every other table was full – couples and groups, girl friends laughing. No more wine. No more drinking. Along with the thousand bottles of wine, she estimated she’d slammed down nearly that many cosmos in the past six and a half years. All those nights out with the girls, dissecting the men in their lives, looked a bit blurry in the rear view mirror. Her friends. Her gang. Her buddies. Or so she’d thought. Turned out, without a man to throw into the conversational soup, she didn’t have much to say. They really weren’t particularly intrigued by the details of her work, creating on-line marketing collateral, touting the supposedly superior features of a device that spent its life in an enormous, climate-controlled room and kept their email and text messages flowing. Her salad came. The water was half gone and everyone around her was soaked in conversation, laughing, sharing bites of food off their tiny plates. “Do you have the Grgich Hills Chardonnay by the glass?” The waiter shook his head sadly. “Only by the bottle.” “Then I guess you’ll have to bring me a whole bottle. Thanks.” She poked her fork into a piece of shrimp and let it melt on her tongue. Tranquility EVERY MORNING AT six George spread the newspaper on the kitchen table. He slurped his coffee and enjoyed the only moments of tranquility his life had to offer. The remainder of each day was consumed by demanding employees, followed by requests, complaints and musings from his wife, and monologues from his children. But from six to six forty-five a.m. he was alone with his coffee, his crossword puzzle, the news of the world and his thoughts. It displeased him when the paper hadn’t arrived by six. All he had were those forty-five minutes and he didn’t like if even half of one of those moments was stolen by the tardy paper carrier. Today he stood on the front path and waited. The newspaper sailed out the car window and landed in a puddle of water left by the automatic sprinklers. It hit hard enough to make a smacking sound but not hard enough to spray water across his ankles. George grabbed the paper. Too late. No matter how hard he tried, he was never fast enough to prevent the water from seeping inside the inadequate plastic bag. Instead, the folded paper acted like a sponge, the newsprint blossoming as water flooded its porous pages. That woman saw the wet ground, saw the entire expanse of his driveway where she was provided plenty of room for her sloppy aim. The thing was, her aim wasn’t really that sloppy, since she managed to hit the puddle every day. It was deliberate. She saw the dark spots of pooled water shimmering under the street light in the winter, or glowing in the summer morning sunrise. It was passive-aggressive, he was sure of it. Hitting the puddle allowed her to feel better about her sorry life delivering papers. She resented the people on her route, living in nice neighborhoods, the kind of people who still read newspapers, who could afford a subscription. She wanted to deliver misery into his life. He carried the dripping mess into the house and dropped it on the kitchen counter. He pulled the paper out of the thin plastic bag and was rewarded with a spray of water across the cuff of his shirt. Nice. He dropped the bag into the trashcan and kicked closed the cabinet door. Gingerly, he began to unfold it. The water had soaked every section right across the fold. Rage swelled inside him, filling his chest like water threading its way through the fibers of the paper. It traveled through his tiniest blood vessels until he felt his brain was going to explode. His calls to the newspaper, all 142 of them, logged in block print into his spiral notebook, had accomplished nothing. They apologized, offered to drop off a fresh copy, but it was too late. By the time they arrived, his morning would be spoiled. He had no idea whether they’d spoken to the careless delivery person. Had she simply ignored them? It was entirely possible the subscription department cared as little for his comfort as the carrier did. Either way, nothing had changed. The next morning he was ready for her. It was all up to him. He planted himself in the center of the largest puddle. He waited for her headlights to sweep around the corner, shining in his face as she approached his property. The passenger window of her car was open. The paper sailed toward him. He ducked, but not low enough or fast enough. The paper smacked his jaw. He staggered back. His heel hit the sprinkler head and he fell onto the lawn, landing hard on the wet grass. Immediately the water soaked through his slacks. He hadn’t realized a flying newspaper would hit so hard. It felt as if his jaw had been knocked sideways, slightly misaligned. Her engine revved and she darted away from the house. “Hey!” he yelled. “Hey! Come back here, you bitch.” Her car rounded the corner at the opposite end of the street. George pushed himself to the edge of the lawn. He stood and picked up the paper. It wasn’t as soggy as usual, but still damp from falling into the puddle after hitting him in the face. He turned toward the house and heard the muffler-free rumble of the paper carrier’s engine. As he turned, a plastic bag flew out the window, moving much faster this time. Instead of the flat shape of a folded newspaper it was round. He watched it soar in a perfect arc. He’d known she had great aim. The pain was unbearable when the object crashed into his skull. Sitting with the Dead I WANTED TO like my grandson’s fiancé, but I really couldn’t. The first time I met her, she rubbed me the wrong way. She wore a dress with thin straps over her creamy white shoulders. Each time she reached for her wine glass, the strap on the left slid down her arm. The side of her breast popped out like the egg white emerges from a crack in a boiling egg – a silken bubble. After six weeks the girl has him wrapped around her pinky finger, or maybe I should say her ring finger. I love my grandson, he’s good-looking. He’s so smart he graduated from Princeton University with two degrees, but so dumb he doesn’t see this girl is sucking him into her vortex. I may be an old lady, living all alone with my youth and my secrets buried in hard-packed clay, widowed for more than half my adult life now, but I’m not stupid. This girl, Clara, is silly and shallow and seductive in a bumbling, obvious way. But it’s more than that, so much more. She shamelessly informed me she dabbles in ungodly activities. Well, mostly just one ungodly activity – she’s a medium. It’s difficult for me to believe that this kind of thing still exists, that anyone would be gullible enough to believe it was possible to communicate with the dead. The girl actually conducts séances, for a fee. What kind of fool parts with money to talk with a dead relative? Let the dead stay dead. The minute she announced that she held these sessions for grief-stricken prey, I snuck away from the dinner table. I went to the basement and pulled Volume S of the encyclopedia off the shelf. I don’t use the encyclopedias much any more, they’ve been in a dank corner below ground since Charlie passed – nearly thirty years now. I discovered that séance comes from the French word for sitting. This girl sits with the dead, or so she claims. She talks to them. They talk to her. It might be real, or it might all be mumbo-jumbo. Either way, my grandson has a thick skull. When I mentioned he might be rushing in, he laughed. I got bolder and suggested he didn’t know her as well as he thought. He said, Grandma, Clara and I know each other inside and out. I didn’t like the sound of that. Do you want lonely people knocking on your door at all hours? Do you want the lunatic fringe in your living room? He laughed harder and said he’d already had plenty of encounters with the lunatic fringe. I sit at my kitchen table, drinking hot water with lemon. There must be a way to persuade him to find another girl, a way to pry open his eyes and make him see. A girl who believes in séances will not be a good addition to what’s left of our tiny family. I don’t want that girl in my house. I don’t want to look into her eyes, watch her wink at me over her glass of Zinfandel. There must be something I can do before he makes a terrible mistake. I grab the flashlight and head down the wooden stairs to the basement. The steps are a bit wobbly, the whole staircase shudders with each touch of my foot. I shove the flashlight into my apron pocket so I can hold securely onto both railings. Cobwebs hang between the bookcases and the concrete wall. I brush them away. Goose bumps run down my arms because I wouldn’t see a spider if it leapt at me in this dark space. I hope the cobwebs are abandoned. The toe of my boot is scuffed. I scrape it on the part of the clay floor where the earth is loose and uneven. I hope the shelves of encyclopedias over his skull are enough to keep Charlie’s mind occupied, to keep his thoughts from wandering to the way his life ended. I hope he doesn’t have any ideas about sitting down and chatting with Clara. Amputation RAIN SPLATTERED ON the back of his neck. Water pooled at the corner of the yard. The drainage hole between the concrete and the brick planter box was inadequate for the quantity of water that sucked at its tiny opening. There had been too much rain this year, but it wouldn’t stop, no matter how much he wished for it. His mind was dark, as goopy as the stalks that had fallen from the elephant ear plant, rotted into a pulp that was plastered across the concrete path. Slippery stuff covered the ground, decomposing life that would nurture the soil, he supposed. He couldn’t stop thinking of the decay in his own body. The yeasty skin and rank smell between his toes, the crevices filled with bacteria after fifty years on the planet. He should clean the yard. He should stop flopping on the sofa every night, sipping topaz-colored liquid from a sparkling glass, a slap in the face for his decrepit condition. How had his life skipped over that image on the pages of Cigar Aficionado, hair that grew from a scalp that was scrubbed free of dead skin, clothes draped over a lean, muscled form, an easy smile? The photograph was air-brushed, but it sold him that sixty-five dollar bottle of scotch. He walked to the corner of the yard. Floating in the backed up water was a plastic figure. A toy that one of those skinny, loud girls next door had tossed over the fence. He picked it up. It wore a hard plastic skirt and a body-hugging turquoise tee shirt. He pinched the arm between his fingers and bent it out to the side. In his own shoulder, he could feel the tearing pain. Applying more pressure he pushed until the arm snapped away from the joint. The arm was as thin as a straw between his fingers. He let it fall into the water where it floated aimlessly. He tossed the one-armed figure over the fence and knew he was a bad person. He bent and fished the arm out of the water, cradled it in his palm. Too late now to undo the destruction. Slowly, he eased himself down, first to a squat, then sitting in the three-inch deep slough. Cold water quickly saturated his pants, numbing his skin. He wanted her back. And in contrast to the water his tears were warm and soft as spring rain. Superior THE BLACK SUV in front of her glistened, shiny as a cockroach with a hard, slick back. The silver license plate frame was engraved with black letters – Superior. As if that wasn’t arrogant and in-your-face enough, the bottom edge of the frame added – Believe it. Tina clenched her fingers around the sticky plastic steering wheel of her Honda until her hands ached. She wanted to ram her car into the bumper, but knew it wouldn’t make a dent worth talking about and would only cause more trouble for her. As if she didn’t have enough already, with her daughter missing again. The light turned green. Traffic at her left moved forward. The Mercedes didn’t budge. Tina slammed her fist on the horn and held it there, enjoying the pain that assaulted her ears. The driver of the dream machine probably didn’t hear the bleating horn, what with hermetically sealed doors and surround-sound stereo, or a cell phone piped directly into the ear canal. What she wouldn’t give for a car like that. All it took was money, something that had been MIA all her life. There was movement at the edge of her peripheral vision. She glanced at the sidewalk to her right. Two guys were slouching along, staring with mouths partially open, looking at Tina, and slowing their steps. She shook her hair and tried to relax the muscles around her jaw. There was one thing Tina had going for her, and that was her looks. The driver of the black car was compelled to announce on her license plate that she, and all those connected to her – high-income husband, smart, athletic kids – was better than everyone. Of course, most people thought they were better than others. Even Tina recognized that tendency in her self. She was broke, had a kid headed for trouble, couldn’t find a decent guy, but she knew she was better looking than any woman in the ratty apartment complex where she lived, better looking than the mothers of her daughter’s classmates. They might have pedicures and manicures and hundred dollar haircuts, but Tina had the kind of looks that didn’t need all that. Men, at the end of the day, didn’t care about painted nails and carefully clipped hair. If they were honest, they preferred messy hair, a long tangle down to a woman’s waist, like Tina’s. The guys watching proved that. They were staring at Tina, not the woman in the Mercedes. It still wasn’t moving. Tina leaned on her horn again. A thin arm emerged from the driver side window of the Mercedes. A bracelet, shimmering with red stones, swung from the sudden movement of the arm. The middle finger emerged, pointing straight up, informing Tina she could wait until the driver was damn good and ready to pass through the intersection. Tina’s pulse quickened, the pounding increased until she was aware of a vein in her throat fluttering, her temple throbbing, all the blood in her body rushing to put that bitch in her place. It had to be something that would leave Tina free to go about her business without fear of an unpleasant encounter with a police officer. She shifted her left foot to the brake, pressed hard, then shimmied her right foot over to the gas. She pressed it a quarter of the way to the floor. The engine roared, then squealed. The Mercedes didn’t move, still shoving those words in Tina’s face – Superior, as if the entire vehicle was flipping her off. Tina slammed the Honda into park, flung open the door and walked toward the driver’s side of the Mercedes. The woman’s head was turned toward the opposite curb, watching the same guys Tina had seen leering at her. As if she smelled Tina’s skin, the woman’s hand dropped to the armrest, hit the button and the window slid shut before Tina could say a word. Off to her right, Tina saw the flicker of someone running. She heard a door slam. She turned, only half aware, and watched as her Honda lurched into reverse, backed a few feet away from the Mercedes then swerved around it, screeching between the Mercedes and the curb. It took off down the street, the two ogling guys inside. Now, the Mercedes driver decided to move through the intersection. Tina stood in the middle of the street. A car honked and swerved around her. She watched the license plate frame grow smaller. Superior. Believe it. Out of Options KARLA HAD NEVER seen a dead body before. When she was twelve, they’d tried to make her look at her deceased grandfather, but Karla refused in such an elaborate way that she’d been excused from the funeral altogether. This was worse, far worse. Most of her revulsion, she realized, came from the not knowing. Not knowing if it was male or female, not knowing how long it had been there, whether she’d have to face decay, whether the eyes would stare at her. Her neighbor leaned out the apartment window and shouted across the narrow parking strip to the carport where Karla stood. “What are you standing there for? You’ve been staring at that dumpster for twenty minutes.” Shelly seemed to have nothing better to do than analyze Karla’s behavior. She didn’t want to tell Shelly there was something in there. It poked out from the mound of white plastic bags tied securely with red straps. It was half covered by flattened cardboard boxes and enormous glossy black garbage sacks destined for the landfill where they would languish without decay for thousands of years. She should call the police, let them deal with it, but she was responsible for the upkeep of the twelve-unit apartment complex. It might be better to keep the police out of it. She couldn’t imagine the owner being happy with a corpse on the premises. Yet another job would slip through Karla’s fingers. It was an elbow. More than the bony point was exposed. The top of the forearm and the bottom of the upper arm were also visible. She couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. She didn’t want to know it was there, but once she’d seen it, once her mind wrapped around the recognition of human flesh, she couldn’t turn away. She didn’t want Shelly involved. Once Shelly got her nose into things, the whole neighborhood got involved. There were three options. Call the cops and have her complex marked with the stigma of inappropriate death. Or she could wait until late tonight to come back and see what was in there. She could ignore it completely and hope it was covered up and carried away undiscovered when the garbage truck came next Tuesday. She shoved the pruning sheers into her hip pocket and took a step closer to the dumpster. It smelled … like sour milk and bad eggs. “What’s so interesting in that dumpster? You throw something away by mistake? I know what it is, you want to go snooping through your tenants’ trash and now you can’t because I have my eye on you.” Turning to face Shelly would encourage her, make it appear as if there was going to be a conversation here, and there was not. Now Karla had only two options. Shelly was too curious, she’d keep that dumpster in view all night. Every night Shelly’s kitchen window glowed with light as she sat there enjoying slow shots of tequila. Karla stepped back from the dumpster. She should call the police. She didn’t understand why that hadn’t been her first response. There was no reason to hesitate. Curiosity? Did she have some sick desire to see what it looked like? She shivered. No. Never. Doubt? Maybe it wasn’t really a human elbow, maybe it wasn’t an elbow at all. It was simply her imagination skating out of control. How ridiculous would she appear, circled by black and whites, only to have them tell her she was a silly girl imagining things that weren’t there. She could be discreet, not tell them what she’d found. Perhaps they’d send a single officer. She could request a detective, ensuring a white or gray sedan, but that would raise questions. A normal person would call the police. A logical person would call the police, but Karla continued to stare. She hadn’t moved her feet in several minutes. Shelly hadn’t spoken in the same length of time, but Karla could still feel her eyes – watching. “You are one weird girl,” yelled Shelly. Karla wiped her hand along the base of her skull to remove the moisture pooled there. She’d hesitated too long, piqued Shelly’s interest. Right now, she whispered to herself. If she turned and went back to her apartment right now, the incident would be over. On Tuesday, the garbage truck would grind into the narrow strip, lift the dumpster in the air and everything would be buried, swept out of her life. She turned and hurried away from the dumpster, toward the corridor that led from the parking strip to the garden at the center of the small complex. When she reached the end of the darkened corridor, Shelly was standing at the opening, her hands on her hips and her elbows pointed out, blocking Karla’s way forward. “What’s going on out there?” “Nothing.” Karla edged to her right. Shelly moved in front of her. “Why do you look so guilty?” “I don’t look guilty.” “You’re all jumpy now, standing there like a fence post a few minutes ago. What’s in that dumpster?” Shelly pushed past her, shoving Karla against the concrete wall. Only one option was left now, she couldn’t pretend she’d never seen the elbow. She heard the dumpster rattle as if it had been hit by a truck. There was a sound coming from Shelly that started as a low moan and swelled into a bellow that echoed through the corridor. Karla knew she’d wavered too long. Her options had been ticked off by the force of Shelly’s will. Now there were none left. Unless a new option had presented itself. She pulled the pruning sheers out of her pocket and moved to the end of the corridor. Under Surveillance TONY KNELT ON the grass, the knees of his pants growing damp from the dew that soaked in before the sun came up. He stabbed the blade of the weeding tool into the ground, deep in the soil, wiggled it around the roots until they released their grip, then pulled out the weakened dandelion. That young couple two houses up the street let all kinds of wild stuff grow in their yard. They allowed dandelions to sprout and go to seed. The result was big pulpy stems flopping around Tony’s yard. He inserted the blade at the base of the next weed and heard the sound of a car creeping down the street. It was the first sighting today, like clockwork. Twice a day on weekdays, the car came down the street, varying from one to three times on Saturdays, never on Sundays. He knew what that car was doing. Someone was watching the houses, studying patterns in parking and yard work and lights turned on and off. A dark blue sedan – a Nissan – with tinted back windows. The windshield and front side windows weren’t tinted, but he could never seem to catch a glimpse of the driver. He always tried hard not to look like he noticed the slowly moving car as it pulled into the cul de sac across from his driveway, navigated the circle, then back out to the end of the street, stopping at the corner before turning right. He’d attempted to talk to his neighbor on the left about the car. One night when Bill came home from work, well past dark, Tony accosted him the minute he emerged from his car. Bill’s shoulders had twitched and his head shot up, and he’d backed against his open car door like he wanted to run, but was trapped by the steel brackets holding the door behind him. For over half an hour that night, Tony urged Bill to express concern, explained that someone was watching the street. Of course Bill had never seen the car turning in the cul de sac. He left for work before the sun came up, and arrived home when it was setting. He acted as if he didn’t believe Tony, that Tony was reading something into the situation. Tony suggested that Bill come out in the yard on a Saturday, work in the yard all day like Tony did, and then he’d see the pattern. Bill acted as if he couldn’t wait to get away from Tony’s rush of words. Finally Bill pushed Tony out of his way, slammed the car door and hurried to his front porch, mumbling that his wife had dinner ready. Bill was too complacent. It looked like Tony was going to have to figure out the right course of action all on his own. He considered calling the police, but it was difficult to picture how that would play out. A patrol car sitting in front of Tony’s own house would serve as a warning the suspicious driver. It would be like those ridiculous checkpoints for drunk drivers they published in the newspaper. Easy enough to avoid. Besides, the police had grown increasingly sluggish about showing up in a timely matter when Tony had called about that pipsqueak dog barking all day long, and when he’d insisted they come check out that repeated sawing sound coming from the vicinity of his roof. The last time he called they said he needed to think of the most logical explanation, not the most sinister. Some public safety. Tony sat back on his haunches. Sweat ran down the back of his neck. That was enough weeding for today. Tomorrow he’d tackle the duplicate square of lawn on the opposite side of the front walkway, neat as a folded tissue. He turned carefully. The car hadn’t maneuvered the cul de sac correctly and was backing up for a three-point turn. Without thinking, Tony bolted across the street. He rushed at the side of the car. The driver must have seen him coming, which was logical since his six foot, five inch frame was hard to miss. The bastard panicked, hit the gas too hard, the car still in reverse. Then the car stopped too fast, tires screeching like a trapped possum. Tony hit the side of the car hard, his fists landed on the roof and his shadow fell over the half-open window so that even this close, he still couldn’t tell who was driving. Now he saw the outline of a baseball cap. He stuck his arm in the car to grab the bill of the cap, and the window raced up, trapping his arm. He yelled and tried to pull it out, but it was pinned. The window lowered an inch or two and he stumbled back clutching his arm. “What the hell is wrong with you?” A woman. “Wait until my husband hears this. I told him how every time I drive my son to school you’re out here staring at me. Like you’re up to no good.” The car lurched back again and she shot toward the opening of the cul de sac. The back fishtailed slightly and the edge of the bumper slammed against his leg. He fell to his knees. A rock embedded in the tar gouged his kneecap and blood flowed quickly, forming a dark, wet spot. Reverberation FIRECRACKERS POPPED LIKE GUNFIRE. Bruce hated those noises. He turned on his side and slipped his arm around his wife’s naked waist. It felt so good to lie with her, covered with nothing but a sheet. The air barely moved outside the window. He’d always hated this holiday. It was animalistic, the glorification of war. They ignored all the death and mutilation, the lifelong grief of watching your best friend’s guts splash onto the ground. While bits of flame and gunpowder shot through the night, hearts thumped to that stupid song about rockets glaring red. If any of those morons lighting fuses had ever picked up a gun, faced down someone who wanted to kill him and lived every moment of every day in fear for his life, they wouldn’t be caroling about bombs bursting in the air. They wouldn’t shriek with bloody delight when they heard an ear-splitting boom or saw sparks race into the dark sky and explode overhead. Bruce turned again. A boom echoed through the window. He bolted up, accidentally kneeing Lorraine in the thigh. She woke. “What’s wrong?” “God-damned fireworks.” “I didn’t hear them.” He stroked her hair. She was exhausted. She’d been at her mother’s all day, cleaning and cooking meals before her brother came to pick up the weekday shift, sharing the care of a woman in the last months of her life. Another firecracker exploded and Lorraine sat up. She leaned against him, resting her head on his chest. He could feel moisture from her scalp through her fine, wavy hair. It was comforting, but the explosions still panicked him. He heard the whine of a roman candle shriek through the breezeless dark. He eased himself away from her, swung his legs over the side of the bed and went to the window. None of the firebugs were visible from the bedroom window. An enormous grapefruit tree blocked the other yards, its yellow globes reflecting the streetlight. He saw nothing but he continued to hear the booms and whistles. Nothing showed the stupidity of the human race more than fireworks, making a party out of the worst that human nature had to offer, oohing and ahh-ing over the mimicry of war. It disgusted him. It made him want to pull out his revolver and take them all out. Let them know what gunfire was really like. “Come back to bed and cuddle with …” the rest of Lorraine’s words were swallowed by a yawn. “I’m going to get a soda. Want anything?” “No thanks.” She sank back onto the mattress. He walked down the hall. He pulled a can of coke out of the fridge and stood in the living room, looking out at the dark street. The whistles and shrieks tore at his mind like the talons of a bird of prey. The carbonation sizzled against his teeth, probably rotting them away while he stood here doing nothing but wanting to kill someone. Another whistle and a pop rattled the window in its track. Bruce pulled open the drawer at the side of his easy chair. He lifted out his .45 and fondled the nose. This wasn’t a game. Playing with fire and skull-shattering blasts of sound. The soda can was empty. He flattened it slowly, pressing down until the rim cut into his palm. The crunching of the aluminum sounded like teeth grinding in his head. More blasts rattled the single-pane window. “Bruce.” Lorraine’s voice was faint, calling from down the hall. “Come back to bed.” Outside, three teenaged boys lumbered past the edge of his lawn. One had a can of beer shoved in his back hip pocket. The boys laughed. The one with the beer in his pocket shoved his buddy off the edge of the curb. The boys paused. The one with the beer pulled out a sparkler and a lighter. He snapped the wheel. A flame jumped up and licked the tip of the sparkler. The stick sprang to life. The boy twirled it in his fingers. He jabbed it at his friends, who jumped back. He lifted the sparkler over his head. Bits of sizzling flame rained down around his arm, but didn’t touch his skin. He tossed the sparkler into the street. Bruce went to the front door and opened it. He raised his gun and aimed at the boy who’d thrown the sparkler. Another series of blasts exploded across the sky and he felt the reverberation in every bone. Work After Dark THE BUILDING IS DARK except for the lights in her office. The hallways offer a dim glow of safety lights, and the break room blinks into brightness when she passes the motion sensor. She’s on her third cup of coffee now. It’s already 10:30pm. The presentation slides should be complete in another hour, once her teammates, all working from their homes, email their content. She heads back down the hall to her office. It seems as if there are others in the building. Perhaps there are, on other floors, or in the north wing, but she can’t hear them, doesn’t see them. The dark offices she passes emit odors and changes in temperature that hint at the presence of human life, but it’s just the residue of the daylight hours. She feels compelled to look over her shoulder as she turns the corner to her hallway. Three doors down, the light from her office spreads across the carpet. She tosses a quick glance over her shoulder. She turns and walks a few steps back to look down the empty corridor leading to the break room. No one is there, but the temperature is suddenly warmer, breath that’s more than just the air coming out of her lips. It’s possible the climate control reset itself. At her desk, she feels the need to pee, but her hands tremble slightly from the silent trek down the hall. She’s not ready. She wakes her computer from sleep and sets her coffee cup on the desk. The phone rings. It’s so loud in the enveloping silence that she shudders and nearly falls forward off her chair when the force of her movement sends it wheeling away from the desk. She picks up the handset. “Hello?” “How are you this evening?” A telemarketer? At the office? It seems improbable? But she recognizes the false friendly tone and the scripted speaking points. “I’m working.” “I know. And we’re here to help.” “Who is this?” “Do you want to reduce your working hours? An attractive young woman like you shouldn’t be alone in the office half the night. You should be out enjoying yourself. Entrepreneur Industries can help.” “I have a job. Thanks.” She reaches forward to replace the handset, but the voice keeps speaking, “And such a cruel one that forces you to stay alone in the building after dark.” She glances at the doorway. Why does she have the sensation the caller can see her? She knows he can’t. It’s a fluke, a script. The words could apply to any female. “I’m not alone.” “Oh, come now. Don’t lie to me, it’s so pathetic.” Something flickers in the hallway. She stands and steps closer to the door, unsure of what she saw. The reflection, down a long hall and around a corner, of the light shutting off in the break room? That’s not possible. Her own eyes playing tricks? Her lashes fluttering? “Why not give me a chance. I’ll tell you how you can work from home for a very small investment. And guarantee essentially the same salary you’re making now.” You don’t know what salary I make, so how can you promise that? She feels something on her spine, a slight chill. Just a few minutes ago, the air was warmer. She shivers multiple times. She should hang up, this is wasting time, there’s work to be done. “Why would you want to work alone in a deserted building?” “It’s not deserted.” “Have you seen anyone during the past two hours?” The overhead light flickers violently. One of the tubes goes out. She gasps and a little cry escapes from her mouth. “Are you ok, miss?” “I’m fine. I need to go now.” “Wouldn’t you feel safer if we stayed on the line?” “Who is ‘we’?” “Just an expression.” She hangs up the phone, slams her laptop closed and stuffs it into her bag. Now the only thing to do is make her way out of the building and across the lot to her car, parked under a safety light. It’s not far to go, and she’ll be fine, the building is empty. For Temporary Relief SURELY THE DRUG STORE at eleven p.m. was the most depressing place within the city limits. The lights were too bright over a dizzying array of aisles packed with things that no one really needed. Small bags of chips and flower pots shaped like rabbits were interspersed with items of desperation – toilet paper, sponges and pain killers. Right now, Beth urgently needed that last item. The pain in her lower back had settled into a throbbing so intense her left hip joint wobbled dangerously with each step, as if the next movement would prevent her foot from connecting solidly with the floor. She would collapse in a burning heap of shame and hurting. The hurting more than the shame. What she hated about the intensity of the lights was how they highlighted the starkness of existence. It was so sad that civilization had come to this – an unthinking need for warehouses stocked full of more stuff than anyone could use in a lifetime. It seemed as if the human drive to satisfy needs with goods had developed into a cancer that spread its tentacles around the globe, choking the oxygen out of it. She pressed her hand into the flat part of her back between her hips and stumbled forward. Her eyes watered from the glare, too many lights, rows and rows, like relentless sun, ripping apart the ozone and burning the flesh off her body. So many things, pathetic things, racks of rubber sandals, pens and clips and pads and scissors and hundreds of liquids and pills that were meant to relieve physical misery but in reality accomplished nothing. “Can I help you?” The clerk was small, childlike with large, greenish eyes. Her hair was dyed too black for her freckled skin. Makeup coated her face, ringed her eyes, glued her lips into a half smile. “Looking for those pills, for back pain. Over the counter.” Beth’s voice was a whisper as she tried to gasp for breath over the pain. “Why are you leaning on the shelf? I don’t mean to be rude, but I think I saw you slip something into your bag.” Beth closed her eyes. “Pain. Can’t stand up.” “The camera’s recording.” The clerk pointed at the corner above the shelves of toothpaste. “You won’t get away with it.” “I didn’t put anything in my purse, just remind me where the pain relievers are.” The girl lifted one shoulder toward the next aisle. She turned away, shoving boxes of toothpaste into an open space on the shelf. A lot of toothpaste. At least there weren’t so many impossible choices for back pain. One brand, that she knew of. It didn’t remove the pain, maybe eased it a little. The drug always made her feel loopy. At least that provided some relief, slowing her mind so she almost didn’t care that her back hurt so badly she couldn’t even sit in a chair. She found the pills. They were on the bottom shelf. Of course they were. Now she’d have to squat and try to stand again without weeping in pain. Asking the clerk to help was out of the question. She lowered herself gently and plucked a box from the rack. Outrageous – $8.99 for twenty tablets. She took a deep breath, preparing for the pain when she stood, not ready to use all those muscles that were somehow tweaked out of position. She felt the shelves closing around her, towering like they were boasting of their endless ability to display products. The video camera was hidden from her view. That probably meant it couldn’t see her, either. She grabbed a second box of tablets, dropped it into her purse and shoved herself to a standing position all in one movement. The pain was like a booted foot in her back, but at least she was mobile again. She trudged to the end of the aisle and turned toward the front of the store. The pain was less intense now, maybe the squatting and standing had helped. At home, she’d have a cup of tea, take two tablets and lie on the couch. She’d look at her clean empty coffee table and her single black and white photograph of Yosemite Falls and enjoy two hours of relief. The box promised more, but she knew from experience, she’d be lucky to get two hours of dulled pain. Love Is Blind UNTIL NOW, NOT SEEING had never been a problem for Marie. Her parents raised her to believe she could have anything a seeing person could. Rather, she could have anything a seeing person found meaningful. She couldn’t drive a car. She probably wouldn’t ever play golf, but who would want to? She had a satisfying career as a therapist and a perfect marriage. Not just friendship and trust, but love defined her relationship with Hank. Wasn’t love all about trust anyway? It was necessary to trust the other person with your thoughts, or you couldn’t really know whom you loved. Marie was adept at cooking. She’d learned to use a gas stove by listening for the delicate changes in the intensity of the gas to gauge the temperature. She knew all her pots and utensils by feel, and although she couldn’t dice an onion as quickly as a seeing person, the result was a much finer pile of onion bits. She knew this because she’d run her fingers through the slick pieces of onion when Hank made dinner, and she’d felt the large chunks of onion on her tongue when they had dinner at their friends’ homes. Tonight, Terri was coming to dinner, alone. It was her first visit since Brian had been murdered. Marie had never known anyone who was murdered. She tried to talk to Hank about it, tried to ask whether he had the same questions about murder, about death. But Hank wasn’t interested in discussing it. He said she was morbid. The funeral had been awkward and Marie wasn’t sure why. It was one of those times when she had a heightened awareness of her lack of sight. Perhaps because people weren’t talking much, and there was no way to tell whether or not they were crying. The general silence made her feel excluded. When she offered her condolences to Terri, she hadn’t received a vibe back. Was that caused by her blindness or was it something else? The very fact that she thought it was something else fed her discomfort. What would they say during dinner? How did you talk about a murdered friend? A deceased husband? Hank took care of that. The dinner conversation consisted almost exclusively of his mindless chatter. Words tumbled over each other about work, sports, food, a veritable spray of disconnected thoughts flying across the table so that Marie felt the mist of them landing on her face. She could tell he hadn’t eaten anything, could still smell the chicken on his side of the table. Only once or twice did she hear the touch of his fork on the plate. “Aren’t you hungry?” “Oh, it’s delicious,” said Terri. “Hank?” “Not really. But it’s great, as always. You’re a fantastic cook, Marie. You know that.” “I wasn’t fishing for praise. I’m wondering why you’re not eating.” Hank’s chair scraped away from the table. There was a change in air movement as he stood. “I’ll pour the last of the wine. We can go into the living room where it’s more comfortable.” Marie heard Terri’s chair push out from the table. Terri’s heels clicked across the wood floor. She’d left the dining room. Marie stood. “I’ll carry your glass,” said Hank. “I can carry my own glass.” “Just trying to help.” What was wrong with him? Suddenly, it felt as if they were strangers, as if he was treating her with extra care. After all these years, he was too deferential. It must be Terri’s presence, but she didn’t recall him ever behaving this way when Terri and Brian visited together. In the living room, Marie picked up her glass. She held the stem between her fingers, and sipped the wine. Terri and Brian sat across from her on the couch. Glasses clinked on the stone coasters. The scrape of fabric rubbing across the sofa told her it was true. There were fingers touching fingers she couldn’t see, a shifting in the cadence of their breathing. She smelled the increased pungency of Terri’s fruity shampoo. They were sitting thigh to thigh on the couch, assuming she was blind. About the Author Cathryn Grant’s Suburban Noir fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Her short story, “I Was Young Once” received an honorable mention in the 2007 Zoetrope All-story Short Fiction contest. Her flash fiction has been published at Every Day Fiction and anthologized in The Best of Every Day Fiction Three. She is the author of the psychological suspense novel, The Demise of the Soccer Moms and the Madison Keith psychological suspense series. The first two Madison Keith novellas, Fatal Cut and Shallow Water are available now as ebooks. Connect with Cathryn online: My website & blog: http://cathryngrant.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/cathryngrant Facebook author page: https://facebook.com/CathrynGrant.Author