Good Advice

by Richard E. Dansky

“You got beaten up a lot as a kid, didn’t you?”

That’s what Jerry Brower asked me, and the entire Central Carolina Writers’ Workshop burst into nervous laughter.

I looked up from the short sketch I’d been reading from and turned to face my questioner. Jerry Brower sat at the end of the table, down past a gauntlet of laughing faces. He, at least, wasn’t laughing, and for that I was silently, desperately grateful. I nodded to him, slowly.

He nodded back. The laughter stopped.

Bag Man

by Scott Sigler

I swallowed. I didn’t want this to happen. I knew the game. Bag Man always called the cops and gave them a code. He gave that same code to the victim. Even after two years of killings, the fucking cranks were still calling 9-1-1, claiming the Bag Man had called them and that they needed protection. His codes solved that problem. He was a damn courteous kid.

Thing was, the codes became more of a warning to the cops than a way to separate out the sick, attention-starved loonies. The cops wanted to confirm Bag Man’s targets — not so they could stop him, but so they could stay the hell out of his way.