Photo Finish

by Adam La Rusic

A painful kick to my shin woke me. Squinting against the harsh fluorescents in the office, I bleared up to see Kim holding out my hat and coat.

“Come on, Gerry. It’s show time. Let’s ride,” she said.

The police scanner sputtered with the kind of staccato dialogue that indicated something big was happening. I leaned forward and cranked the volume, bowling over a collection of styrofoam coffee cups in the process.

“10-47. We’re going to need more units,” the scanner blurted. Hostage! Cruisers headed to the area like swarming wasps. Every other news beat in town monitored the police bandwidth and I bet they’d be clamoring at the bit for this one. We had to get there fast.

“What’s going on?” I asked, accepting the hat and coat, forcing myself awake.

“In the car,” she said.

“Hang on,” I said, but she didn’t. Grabbing my camera bag and checking my battery supply, I took off after her.

Among the Moabites

by Michael Hartford

The first time Wilson saw them was when he opened the medicine cabinet one groggy morning in search of aspirin and his toothbrush. Between the familiar can of shaving cream and the plastic tumbler that held his toothbrush, lying on his crushed and twisted tube of toothpaste as if it were a luxurious pillow, were two tiny people. They were no bigger than his thumb, and a little pinker, lounging in a tangle of spindly limbs. One of them lifted its head from the toothpaste and he slammed the door shut.

Mrs. Branson Calling

by Johnny Compton

He checked the slip of paper in his pocket yet again. Kayla: 555-6213. She had drawn a smiley face encircled by small hearts after the last digit. She was young, a few weeks past her twenty-first birthday if she had been honest with him, and chances were it would not develop into anything serious, but she seemed nice and Shaun was a hopeless sucker for a nice girl. Maybe it was the alcohol applying a rosy tint to his immediate memories of her. Then again, maybe he genuinely was enamored with her, and she with him. Hell, she must have seen something she liked in him; she had even bought him few drinks. A small gesture, but he had been out before with girls who were undoubtedly interested in him but hadn’t bothered to pay for their own drinks, much less buy him one. So maybe…

The Cutting Room

by Shane Jiraiya Cummings

Read by Damaris Mannering

Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.

The plaque gleamed, caught on the cusp of shadows and fluorescent light. Burnished copper letters. Stark Roman font.

“This is the place where death delights to help the living.” Parrish’s recital of the phrase was now ritual as he donned the second pair of latex gloves. They snapped into place with a satisfying echo that hung in the air. Smells of rubber and disinfectants clung to the place, thinly  masking the stench of decay.

The plaque had been there for as long as he could remember, even before the tenure of crazy old Doc Kaufmann, who once famously ate a cadaver’s eyeball, and perversely, taught him everything he knew about forensic pathology.

“Doctor Parrish?” The diener said, throwing his concentration into turmoil.

“What is it, err… Greg, wasn’t it?”

“Gary. The body’s been prepped.”

No Tomorrows

by Steve Cooper

Six months ago, it was all sugar and no shit. Six months ago, in a private Istanbul club called *Imshi*, I’d snorted coke out of the shallow belly button of an ex-Soviet farmer’s girl, reared on Georgian corn, marinated in Belorussian vodka, garnished in best Turkish blow. Say what you want about the Eastern Orthodox Church, the college of bishops really knows how to throw a party.

The fat commission on that job, though, was running low, and now I was in Leeds, in a filthy hole of a club called *Tiggers*, leaning back against the bar with a little plastic bottle of water and watching the crowd. The boys were thin hungry jackals and the girls were glittering, animated sausage-meat. The place was slaughterhouse-romantic.

I’d come to meet a man on borrowed time. Horton had been borrowing time since 1673, and I had come to loan him a little more.

The Skull-Faced Boy

by David Barr Kirtley

He turned his eyes back to the road, and in the light of the high beams he saw a man stumble into the path of the car. Without thinking, Jack swerved.

The car bounced violently, and then its left front side smashed into a tree. The steering column surged forward, like an ocean wave, and crushed Jack’s stomach.

Dustin wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. He flew face-first through the windshield, rolled across the hood, and tumbled off onto the ground.