Rapunzel’s Room

By John Dodds

In the showers later, she raised her right arm and examined her armpit minutely. Even after having shaved it yesterday with the LadyShave it still seemed hairier than it should. Normally, at worst, it was like the chin of a cartoon character like Desperate Dan or Fred Flintstone, a constellation of black dots. Now it was almost full length again. The hair had grown long enough to curl into a matted bush beaded with droplets of perspiration. It simply wasn’t possible. Unless it was caused by those vitamin supplements she had been taking. Those, and the performance enhancers so she could work out longer and harder.

Across The Darien Gap

by Daniel Braum

Alexa shuffles on the dance floor with the seven others we’re traveling with. Her long black hair is coated in sweat and Costa Rican grime. She smiles and for a moment I can believe she is carefree, despite all our running and fear.

She keeps her distance from a short Indian man who is spinning in circles with his arms extended and eyes closed. A big, almost toothless grin spreads on his wrinkled old face. He’s definitely had a few shots of guaro too many.

I picked up the seven others between here and San Antonio to bring us to nine. Makes us easier to mask. Harder to scrye. Now we look like just a bunch of nobodies heading to the gap, leisurely. Not in a beeline. Nothing that will call attention to our pursuers.

Memories of the Knacker’s Yard

by Ian Creasey

“How long have we had this one?” I asked, shivering in the morgue’s chill.

“Two days,” the white-coat guy said. I didn’t know his name. I try to remember the lab people and support staff, but turnover’s too high. This line of work burns people out faster than a crematorium on overtime.

“What did you leave it that long for?” I said, annoyed. “Waiting for the killer to turn himself in?”

“We were waiting for the ghost to show up,” he said.

I shook my head in disgust. “Look, when someone’s been murdered, they want us on the case. If their ghost doesn’t turn up in twenty-four hours, that’s because it can’t.”

That was the problem. If a ghost complains that it’s just been murdered, it can help us by describing the killer, or at least telling us about its enemies. Investigating a murder without a ghost is much harder. The slashing was the third this month, all without ghosts, and the eighth this year. Or was it the ninth?

Hell, when you lose count of the corpses, you know you’re losing.

Finding Allison

by Glen Krisch

Disarming and cruel. Two words could sum up Allison’s smile, and that’s all he had left of her. Her smile hid right behind his eyes, pushing at his brain like a tumor — that angled, curt, and thick-lipped smile. Even the day before she left, they seemed collectively twined together, a seamless mass of flesh, two shadows of one body. Now he was alone with a gun in his lap.

Doghead

by Craig A. Strickland

She felt polarized with excitement and fatigue, and her hot eyes suddenly brimmed with tears as they scanned the room, at the dusty wine bottles in the rack in the corner. At the tiny T.V. on the nightstand, at the refrigerator magnets; little cartoon pigs holding scraps of coupons and phone numbers. Finally, at the window, half-closed blinds revealing only the Toyota’s front wheels resting on the parking lot, five feet higher and right outside.

Something dripped under the car. Steadily. Almost – a trickle. If that was oil she had a hell of a problem.

Connecting Door

by Richard E. Dansky

They weren’t even trying to be quiet now. The idea of keeping it down had become a joke, a sort of high-decibel sotto voce. Ian felt red rage bubbling up within him, and hammered on the door with the flat of his hand. “Come on, you assholes, cut it out! I need to get some sleep here.” More pounding, hard enough to hurt now. “Would you please just keep it down, or so help me God, I’m coming in there and I’m going to kick your asses!”

There was no laughter now. No noise. No profanity. Just silence. Ian hit the door once more, mainly out of momentum. His hand made a weak, wet noise, a soft slapping sound. He drew it back, suddenly unsure of what to do next. Keep pounding? Go back to bed? Wait?

A sound came from the other side of the door then, a quiet, rasping noise accompanied by whispers and titters. It took Ian a moment to realize that it was the sound of the chain being pulled off the door on the other side of the wall. The noise from the street seemed to vanish. The door in front of him loomed larger, brighter, and more threatening. Suddenly, he was acutely aware of the weakness of his situation, of why a middle-aged man in his underwear should not threaten multiple obnoxious drunks in the middle of the night.