Tag: episodic fiction

an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

Sunny Day Parasol Co.

Case File #10: Brimstone

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

The flat edge of my hook pick slid into the narrow crack. I braced my knee against the hull’s sickening rock, the whole procedure a grim reenactment of the dentist who’d torn a wisdom tooth from my jaw last year. The relief at the time, when it finally came, was probably the whiskey talking. It sure as hell hadn’t been in the dentist’s technique. My ribs ached for days afterward.

The square panel popped loose with a wet, suctioned thwack, spitting out a blast of freezing, diesel-slicked air. It hit me in the face like a fistful of brass knuckles, carrying the rotten-egg stench of the river water sloshing just beneath the deck.

I plunged my good right hand into the darkness, steeling myself for the shock of freezing bilge. My fingers didn’t find water; they found cold, dry iron.

an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

Sunny Day Parasol Co.

Case File #9: Slag Point Slip

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

Stillwater Moorings was a cruel, dark joke. The water in this part of The Choke was a chemical soup, a shipyard graveyard littered with rusted hulls and skeletal docks. The air hung thick with the metallic miasma of decay and industrial waste—the signature scent of a forgotten port.

I tracked Boyle to the end of Pier 4. His office was a miserable shack of grimy, corrugated tin that rattled in the cold breeze. Inside, the gloom was barely pierced by the sickly yellow flicker of a sputtering kerosene heater. Boyle himself, a heavy man with a slump, wasn’t counting money; he was hunched over a crumpled racing form, poring over the odds with the grim focus of a man searching for one final win.

He didn’t look up when I kicked the door shut behind me.

an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

Sunny Day Parasol Co.

Case File #8: Dredging Up Leads

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

“So,” Cookie said, sliding a plate of fries onto the table. “You gonna tell me why a walking statue wants to turn you into a paperweight?”

I grabbed the bottle of ketchup and gave the bottom a hard whack before remembering my burned fingers and it sent a nasty jolt of pain, a little deadly dagger that traced a line from my palm to my elbow. I considered asking Cookie to do the honors when I saw the cheap, red sludge escape its glass prison and splurt onto the chipped ceramic plate. A generous third of the bottle, enough to coat the next helping of grease without having to risk the razorblades of agony shredding my arm.

an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

Sunny Day Parasol Co.

Case File #7: Teeth Are Rent

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

Gallow didn’t bother to try to grab me, he just extended the stasis field in my direction. As my rear foot left the parapet, the air in the middle of the alley thickened into a cold, invisible molasses. My momentum died a drawn-out, gasping death; its final rattle was the only fast thing about my rain-drenched descent. I wasn’t falling; I was drifting. My arc flattened out, the cafe’s rooftop now a cruel joke I was destined to miss. Instead, I was going to hang there, a suspended fool in the ceaseless drizzle, until the Foundry’s enforcer reached out and plucked me from the sky like a rotten apple from a tree.

an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

Sunny Day Parasol Co.

Case File #6: Between a Gallow and a Hard Place

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

I pushed the door open.

The office was exactly as I’d left it, only wrong. The air was thick, like cheap cigarette smoke, and the silence was heavy enough to cast a shadow. The ceiling fan was frozen in mid-spin, a broken promise of a breeze. A water droplet hung suspended in the air, halfway between the scarred ceiling tile and my rust-stained bucket. The dust motes in the shaft of street light weren’t dancing; they were stuck in place like insects in amber — a still-life of a dead moment.

And sitting in my client chair, looking like a statue carved out of gray meat and bad intentions, was a man in a rubberized trench coat. He didn’t breathe. He didn’t blink. He was just a shape in the gloom, a problem I hadn’t ordered.

an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

Sunny Day Parasol Co.

Case File #5: A Permanent Tuesday

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

Kogan threw a heavy velvet cloth over the retort, a gesture that strangled the light and the visual connection. “Dredge wasn’t moving ordinary stolen goods for the Johnson who hired him, Locke. Not by a long shot.”

He walked to the door and worked the locks with the practiced care of a man who didn’t want unexpected company. The deadbolt slid home with a weary sigh. The second lock clicked like a rat trap. Then the heavy iron bar dropped into place with a definitive, bone-jarring clank. He flipped the sign in the grime-stained, chickenwire-reinforced shop window to “Closed,” turning the world outside into a dull rumor, and dimmed the lights, making the room a cave of shadows and secrets.

an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

Sunny Day Parasol Co.

Case File #3: The Kiss of Verdigris

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

The walk away from a fresh corpse is always longer than the walk toward one.

The rain spat its static-kissed venom onto my trench coat, a thousand tiny drumbeats dancing off my shoulders before dissolving into the crackling cobalt-spark of the alley puddles at my feet. I slipped from the streetlight to shadow, leaving the spreading chalk outline of a problem for the boys in blue. That’s when it caught my eye — a sickly green stain creeping across my glove. The corrosion from the dead man’s identification coin had left its signature, thin, poisonous tendrils still foaming where they’d kissed the laminated identification papers. A dirty reminder of a dirtier business.