With apologies to Stephen King for the title.
Another fiction prompt from my good friend, Jolene.
Here are your story line (+ can’t kill MC):
Gerald Hailstone had the necessary paperwork. What he didn’t have, as it turned out, was authorization to share that paperwork.
An oversight. Obviously.
(more…)
Another writing prompt from my good friend, Jolene. Must use all 4 elements, not allowed to kill your main character:
I regretted telling my therapist about the lucky underwear. Sure, it brings me luck. You know what I mean. They’re good for increasing my chances at winning at meat raffles, make it easier to score some digits from the ladies at the bar, helps on loot raids with my guild… that kind of luck. They aren’t my shield, for chrissake. They just make me lucky.
But she insisted I use them for therapy. Ugh.
“Are you wearing your lucky underwear today, Steve?” she asked at the far end of the strip mall where she had asked me to meet her.
(more…)an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir
This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.
The Meridian Club had been a monument to high-stakes vice; now, it was just an open wound catching the city’s freezing rain. Red and blue police lights pulsed through the ruptured doorway, casting long, fractured shadows across the pulverized baccarat tables and the sea of abandoned chips.
In the dead center of the devastation, Cross stood up from the gray ash and dusted off his suit.
(more…)an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir
This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.
Kogan’s lead ampoule shattered under my bandaged knuckles. The purified salt and cold iron filings scattered across the green felt, but the dead quicksilver didn’t just spill… It leapt. It shot from the broken glass like a liquid soul, violently drawn to the impossible shape of the Black Sulfur token.
It hit the velvet exactly as Cross’s rotting entropy and Gallow’s crushing stasis slammed into the table.
The ignition didn’t produce a fireball. It produced an execution.
(more…)an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir
This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.
Cross’s amused smile vanished, replaced by a look of ancient, profound annoyance.
I sat dead still in the crushing quiet, my breath shallow and held tight. The dull, rhythmic ache from the deep cuts on my left hand from the shattered neon glass was a sharp, ordinary pain, the only thing anchoring me against the impossible physics tearing the air apart. My bandaged fingers held steady over the lead ampoule, caught in the dead center of a hurricane where absolute stasis was locked in a brutal collision with pure, corrosive entropy.
(more…)an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir
This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.
“I’ll pass on the gin,” I said, keeping my posture relaxed but ensuring my right hand rested casually near the slit in the midnight blue silk. “It dulls the reflexes, and I prefer to keep my head clear when I’m collecting a fee.”
Cross’s smile didn’t waver. He leaned back, his tailored suit seeming to absorb the harsh glare of the chandelier above us.
“Fair enough. Though I notice you are traveling remarkably light for a retrieval job, Miss Locke. Tell me you didn’t leave my property sitting in the back of that rented hack you took from the Brass Canary. It would be a terrible shame to lose our investment to a common cab driver.”
“I wouldn’t insult either of us by being careless,” I said. My left hand, wrapped tight in fresh white gauze, went to the velvet clutch resting in my lap. My burnt fingers brushed the velvet, feeling the unnatural, freezing weight of Kogan’s ward humming against the escrow token.
(more…)an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir
This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.
The scalding water of the club’s cast-iron shower felt like an exorcism. I stood under the sputtering spray until the hot water tank coughed its last, watching the black, sulfurous grime of the past eighteen hours… Had it only been eighteen hours? …swirl down the drain like a broken promise.
I stepped out into the humid, cramped bathroom and dried off with one of the thick, luxurious towels The Canary kept around — one of several small luxuries afforded the employees who worked the club. I winced, tracing the deep, clean glass cuts across my left hand, then carefully redid the bandages. A girl gets used to the sight of her own blood in this city.
Margot had left a dress hanging on the door. Midnight blue silk, the kind that whispered promises. It was cut on the bias to cling like a second, dangerous skin, but with a slit high enough to allow a full, unimpeded draw from a thigh holster. I strapped the heavy snub-nose to my leg, the cold steel a comforting anchor against the soft fabric, and slipped the silk over my head.
A sharp knock rattled the frosted glass of the door.
(more…)Another prompt from Jolene/Chico’s Mom. I’ve not participated in the last few because I was focused on Vivian Locke’s noir, but I thought I’d give this one a quick stab between my longer efforts.
Not quite clocking at 1000 words, I followed the prompt on her site which included four elements (and a wild card)
The story was only lightly edited after it was written, so forgive me if there are any flaws.
Comments are always appreciated.
Sad beep. Sigh.
Sad beep. Sigh.
Sad beep. S—
“Nuthin’?” asked the little shit at the register who couldn’t be more than fifteen, judging by the he sparse, fuzzy apology for a moustache boys his age favored.
(more…)an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir
This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.
I carefully wrapped the impossible token back into the velvet and shoved it deep into my coat pocket. The brimstone receded, swallowed by the scent of old fryer grease.
Leviathan’s Cross was the mark of the Meridian Club. They wouldn’t let a banged-up, worn-out gumshoe like me past the bouncers at the door of that upscale joint in a hundred years, let alone to the back room where I could suss out which of the fat cats was my likely Johnson and shake them down.
(more…)an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir
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.
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