Category: Fiction

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Bonus Short Story: Horizon of Pastels

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Early 90’s metal blared from the speakers of his ’68 Camaro. Over the dash, the waxed polish of the blue coat and white racing stripes gleamed in the bright light of the desert around it. She had her head in his lap, sucking him off. Between the vibration of the 396 V8 and her vigorous strokes, he was in utter heaven. He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other between her legs as she splayed out across the leather seats. Her sundress flapped in the hundred-mile-an-hour breeze while her throat groaned against him.

His fingers were wet inside her as she thrust her hips back and up to get off. He suddenly understood how kings and emperors felt. They were Gods among mortals, a half-dozen women on their knees for them at any time. All he had though– or needed for that matter– was her and the car. The three had been running together for months, every night out doing one drug or another, and at some point ending up in a similar position before passing out.

That was of course, all in secret. Likewise the mornings had always come too early and the glaringly recognizable car had to park down the street to drop her off at home. She walked the block in the near-darkness, her sneakers scuffing gravel the whole way. He watched her every step to the house and into the door, even despite the difficulty. And always, before leaving for wherever he was headed, he waited long enough for her to sleep, revved the engine and sped past too fast to be seen.

She never knew anything of it, but he knew exactly what he was doing. So did her father. He couldn’t see the car, but he sensed it’s owner. Always though, when he went to check on his daughter, she was fast asleep in bed– still sore from their sex hours before. If only that fat, abusive prick had known, he’d have killed them both for it.

He was one of those types that always hid their abuses in community participation. He’d take the family out to church on Sundays, and the quiet, reserved family would silently participate in the sermons. Sometimes, they’d even stay after to mingle with the other members of the congregation. She and her mother never betrayed the secret, no matter how much they wanted to, but from fear rather than love.

When she was younger, Karen– or Kay, as he always called her– had made the mistake of saying something to him about the abuse. Jake showed up the next day with a squadron of cops and a loaded .45. They pulled everyone out of the house, took them into separate interrogation rooms, had female cops examine the women physically. There was nothing to suggest abuse. Kay’s “dad” ended up beating her half to death when it was all over, but when in the hospital, everyone insisted she’d been mugged the night before, walking home.

That was the last time Jake got the law involved. Ever since then, he’d taken matters into his own hands. The prick couldn’t blame anyone when he woke up some mornings with swastikas burned into his yard, or his tires slashed, or with broken windows in his car. He always called the police, and they always took his reports, and did absolutely nothing. Most of them had gone to school with him, took him at his word. It was the same reason he’d gotten away with the beatings and escaped the interrogations unscathed.

Everything changed recently though. How he’d pulled it off, Jake didn’t know, but he knew what he’d pulled off. Kay had been in to see a gynecologist for a cursory examine after turning eighteen. Somehow the bastard got hold of her medical records, or bribed a doctor, and found out her cherry’d been popped. He also found out she was on birth-control, as opposed to the anti-acne pills she’d said she was taking.

The beating she received then only stopped when Jake showed up. The house was wrecked. Glass was shattered all over the place. Kay and her mother were barefoot in the middle of it. Blood spotted the creme-white carpets where Kay had been tossed and shoved around. Jake had been lucky enough to get a call from one of Kay’s friends. The two had been on the phone when her father came in screaming, she heard the first thuds of heavy fists, and immediately hung up.

Everyone knew Jake was bound to do something, and that calling the cops only made things worse in the long run. What they didn’t know, and few did in fact, was Jake’s proficiency with his .45. He’d spent months at the range, learning pin-point accuracy shooting at every range. He’d also learned to control his adrenaline through street-fighting, and had a morbid fascination with human anatomy.

The only thing that kept him from driving the Camaro through the front room was the fact that he’d still need it afterward. Instead, he kicked the door in off its hinges. The .45 was up and aimed straight on the old man. The snake-faced monster was poised over Kay. She lie, sprawled on the floor in her sundress, hands and feet covered in blood.

Her father actually had the gall to bark orders at Jake. He didn’t sway. His voice was calm, firm. He kept his gun and eyes level on her father, “Kay get off the floor. Get in the car.”

“Move and I’ll break your neck!” He spat at her. Jake repeated himself calmly, feeling adrenaline flood him. Her father spat again, made a move, “Son of a–”

The .45 cracked. The aim was perfect. The bullet whizzed past his left ear, close enough for a friction burn. He recoiled with a yelp. Kay skittered toward Jake. She rocketed out the door and into the street, climbing into the car.

“I could’ve killed you,” Jake said simply, unmoving. “I will if you follow me.”

The old man gave a roar, and moved to lunge. The gun angled down. Two rounds blasted his kneecaps. He fell in screaming pain. Jake lowered the gun as the monster howled and screamed pain and obscenities. He gave a final look to Kay’s mother, who stood slack-jawed to one side of the room.

“I wasn’t kidding. If he follows me, I’ll kill him,” he said, turning for the door.

Over his screaming pain, her mother called, “Take care of her.”

He stepped for the door, hesitated just before it. His head cocked a little to the side as if to speak, but he had no words. He started forward again. A few moments later, sirens screamed nearby as the Camaro’s engine revved. It’s tires squealed and it tore away from the house.

Since then they’d been driving, only stopping long enough to refuel, sleep, or fuck. They finished together; she threw back his semen like a pill and he sucked his fingers dry. She sat up with a smile, leaned against the passenger door. The bruise on her cheek was just beginning to yellow, but the light played off her face with an angelic glow, accenting her blonde hair with bright highlights.

“How was it?”

She threw back her head with a laugh, giddy from her newfound freedom, “Magnificent.”

He laughed with her.

They didn’t know what the fallout back home was, or if there would be any. For all they knew, they were fugitives, but something in Kay’s mother had told Jake she wasn’t going to make a case of it. Who knows, maybe he’d liberated her too, or opened the door for her to do it herself. Personally, he didn’t give a damn. He had Kay, she had him, and they had the car with nothing but an open road and a horizon of pastels ahead. Most of all though, they had life.

That was more than enough for anyone.

Short Story: Bad Business

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 4 Comments

Rain pelted the ground in sheets of cascading waves just beyond the alcove of the Flaming Hat Pub & Grub. The place was one of those dives built on sincerity and hope, and when that died, it attracted the same flies every elderly tavern’s corpse was prone to.

Yan Federoff wasn’t one of the flies though. In fact, he hated bar flies and the Flaming Hat more than most people stuck there against their will. Part of it was the name; it was a stupid name, more than likely a contributor to its own downfall. It was never intended as a homosexual establishment, and that made “Flaming” all the more pointless– especially given the bigoted owner that often tended the bar.

Maybe it was the air that always stank of stale beer and stagnant piss. That seemed more likely, Yan thought. He exhaled a long plume of smoke through the waterfall pouring out decades-neglected gutters. His smoke disintegrated into the sheeting rain, and he suddenly knew that was it.

The place was like an old cesspool of bile and death, and you couldn’t smoke in it. That was why he hated the place. It didn’t help that every time he was supposed to contact someone there, everything inevitably went tits-up.

His mind started to broach the subject, but he stopped before it could. Too many bad memories, too much life left to live. Dwelling wouldn’t change the past, and he didn’t believe in regret anyway. As he saw it, if you hated life, you changed it. Otherwise, quit bitching, ’cause hindsight’s always 20/20.

A new-model auto-car rolled along the street from somewhere in the distance. It was sleek, all curves and plastic, like a beauty pageant contestant with more intelligence. The door opened unceremoniously. In the dim recesses of the car’s rear bench-seat, an old, white-haired man was leaned sideways. He looked into Yan’s eyes, gestured him into the car.

Yan did his best to appear formal and stiff as he plunged through the storm for the car. Last thing he wanted was to be wet, but appearing soft in even the slightest way could spell death for his business. The last thing he needed was someone joking with wannabe world-dominating buddies about the guy “afraid of a little rain.”

He slipped into the car, directed to the bench-seat opposite the man’s. Even after twenty years, it was eerie to sit in a car with no driver or cock-pit. All of that stuff had been phased-out, replaced by state-of-the-art computer processors and navigation software. Most cars were just a couple of bucket-seats and a pair of doors now, everything else was under the hood. Pissed the auto-mechanics off something fierce when their industry went totally belly-up, save those few lucky enough to be employed by corporate garages.

Yan took his seat across from the man whom thumbed a cell-phone to punch in an address. Its information was transmitted via wi-fi to the car, read by the processor, and its door shut. A short ding sounded, and the car began to roll forward.

“Mr. Federoff,” the old man said. His voice was gravel in a tin can, rattling out sounds rather than speaking. “You have something for me?”

Yan reached into his jacket pocket, produced a small flash-drive. He handed it over, “As requested, everything to be found on Moscow’s heads of state.”

The old man took it, slotted it in the car’s armrest. A holo-screen appeared in front of him, projected from a diode in the ceiling. It tracked his eye movements as he shuffled through active windows for the drive’s contents. He settled on one, nodding slowly to himself. Sub-folders opened in a cascade of detailed documents and various, image files.

“Very good, Mr. Federoff,” he rattled off. “Very good, indeed.”

“And my payment?” Yan asked, his face blank.

The old man fished a similar flash-stick from his front blazer-pocket, leaned through the projected screen to hand it over. Yan took it. The car rolled to a stop and the door opened on pouring rain.

“Thank you for you work, Mr. Federoff,” the old man said stiffly, cutting off the diode’s projection. “Now, please leave.”

Yan remained still, indifferent, “After I verify the credits.”

He dug a cell-phone out of his pocket, hovered it over the flash-stick. The old man chewed his teeth with a half-snarl, aggravated at the implication that he might stiff a man for his work. Yan didn’t care. He’d seen enough weasels in high-end cars with caviar tastes on off-brand, box-wine budgets to know cred-transfers were the only ways to verify their stories.

A bar flashed on the screen to acknowledge the old man’s claim. Yan leaned forward and half-walked along the car and out into the rain. He stepped out, instantly soaked by the storm.

“Pray we never meet again,” the old man warned.

If Yan were younger and more flagrant or arrogant, he’d have laughed at the insinuation. It was posturing, a lashing out of wits at his implication. Yan had learned the hard-way what that could do to future prospects though– or even present bodily blood-content. Instead, his jaw tightened, added a harsh angle to his left jaw. He gave a micro-nod, and the door shut. The car pulled away along the street.

Yan stood, drenched, on the sidewalk to rubberneck the area. A couple of younger Asian women were hobbling together beneath an umbrella, trying to keep in-step with one another, but it was otherwise empty. He slipped into the shadows of an alley before they could get a glimpse of his face or figure, keyed up his internal comm with a thought, and dialed a number from his mental directory.

A tone sounded a few times before a tin-rattling gravel voice answered. He was silent as the old man repeated “hello” a pair of times.

He sensed the tone about to go dead, “Izmennik.”

Thunder cracked as if a lightning had struck the street ahead. A fireball erupted through the downpour. Windows shattered along the buildings. Glass shards melded with rain, indistinguishable. Screams from the Asian women told Yan all he needed to know. He slipped under a door-way’s overhang to light a cigarette, then fished the hood of his sweatshirt from beneath his jacket, pulled it over his head.

“Piz da,” he muttered.

How could the guy have really expected him to blackmail every one of the heads of state? That was as good as declaring war on Russia. More importantly, it was putting himself directly in the cross-hairs of every agency in the country. He needed them more than the payday. The SVR alone was one of his best suppliers of information, his trade. The last thing he needed was some brown-nosing rich bastard trying to make a name for himself by outing politicians, or worse, puppeteering events through them.

But he couldn’t turn down the money. Who could? Who would for that matter? Instead, he cooked up the scam with a few friends in the FSB, fattened his bottom line, and took out a problem for the government. No one would be anymore the wiser for his betrayal, and if it did come out, it would only seem logical. After all, anything else was just bad business.

Preview: Hijack

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Coming next week: Hijack

Lone-Wolfe Shipping’s refusal to phase out drivers for A-I Rigs has caused their so-called “non-compliance” to turn public opinion against them. Owner/operator and CEO of Lone-Wolfe, Gail Wolfe, must attempt to discredit the perception before it puts she and her employees on the street.

In a world where money is power, the mega-corp trying to buy her out is a God. It’s also become the number one suspect in the sudden death of one of Gail’s veteran drivers. Unfortunately, she cannot even begin forming accusations against them until she learns the true cause of the accident that killed him. Investigating it proves more difficult than anticipated though as red tape and road-blocks appear at every turn.

Follow Gail as she and her ace mechanics battle the forces allied against them to uncover the truth before Lone-Wolfe’s drivers are out of a job– or worse. Can Gail clear Lone-Wolfe’s name, or will she find herself wheels-up, her company and drivers beside her?

Hijack is a Sci-Fi novella beautifully mixing intrigue, emergent technology, and transnational shipping with the ethical dilemma of automation in human-made industry. You won’t want to miss a single moment! Read it here, starting November 4th, on the Logbook!

Preview:

Presently, Gail was focused on the back-office and the silhouette behind its frosted glass. She stopped to hand a file to Walt Thacker, a dispatcher with a beer-gut larger every time she saw it.

“Latest pay,” Gail said unceremoniously. “Make sure Brianne gets it before shift-change.”

He grunted an “eh,” in reply.

Truth was, she didn’t care to hear his Hutt-like wheezes anyhow. She glanced at the frosted glass, checked her watch, 7:30 on the dot. “Who’s here?”

Xavier Knaggs replied, “Suit.”

Gail’s face turned red and she stormed for the office, “Son of a bitch!”

Poetry-Thing Thursday: Endless Circle

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Broken glass and showers of sparks,
rain down on the asphalt,
that’s slick-black with ice.

A foot hammers pedal to metal,
unaware of tragedy on the horizon,
that’s rushing to greet it at light-speed.

Across the neon-soaked city of money and night life,
a new mother gives birth at the same instant,
that life leaves the accident victim’s eyes.

A seemingly endless circle is formed by these events,
but it is only after viewing them from afar,
that we begin to see their form.

Without the benefit of perspective,
the world would be one dimension; all flat,
no height nor depth, only a dot on a page.

Imagine what we might see,
if zoomed to the grandest scale–
stars, galaxies, a universe.

Perhaps, like neurons and synapses in the brain,
they are connected with purpose.
Perhaps then, we are but DNA– or something smaller yet,
with a role just as great.

Then again, perhaps not.
Only time,
and perspective,
of the endless circle,
may tell.