Vampire Vending Machine

The subway tunnel was dank and slick, and yet the platform was a dry, warmly lit haven against the chill of the night above it. On one of the wooden benches, Jason Roberto Cousins sat patiently even though four trains had sped past him into the darkness without him even lifting his head. He was headed nowhere in particular, he merely wanted to peruse the newspaper while enjoying a black cup of coffee from the Dunkin Donuts kiosk without being disturbed.

The Visitor from Abroad

            The vampire edged across his lavishly decorated great hall, stepping towards a woman in a very Ophelia-esque dress who was draped across a low couch, her eyes half opened like a drunk’s.

The Happy Hearts

It had nothing to do with the ambiance: there was only so much that decaying motifs of birds done in lead-based paint could do for someone. It had everything to do with the fact that the slots were so tight and the odds of winning at any of the table games were abysmal.

Tisiphone

The police cruiser rolled to a stop on the dirt patch in front of the Joiner’s trailer, and the radio inside crackled, “Officer McQueen, what is your current location?”

White Noise

4:10 is our favorite bit- the management

      Taylor Caussyn poured herself a cup of coffee from one of the staff room pots, made a few polite morning missives to her co-workers, and then retreated to her most isolated of offices. The J. Edgar Hoover Building, like most corporate edifices, was organized from top to bottom, highest to lowest with the Director’s office on the top floor and Taylor Caussyn buried so far below ground that she was outranked by the mechanical room and the expansive evidence storage facility that were located above her.

Finely tuned (Part three)

            “It's a strange feeling, isn’t it?”

            Bernie’s head rang like a drum, and the smell of something burning choked his breath and made him nauseous.

On a Roof top

            Tim woke up the way that he usually did after one of his blackouts: on a rooftop, naked, and covered in blood. He closed his eyes again and groaned, the strange, beating ulcer of a conscience deep inside his brain throbbing slightly as he looked at the human remains surrounding him.

Finely Tuned (Part Two)

        Sing Sing was not well known for its comfort, a fact that Bernie became painfully aware of as he sat in his cell on death row. His trial had lasted all of three days before he’d been found guilty of twelve counts of assault and four counts of murder.

Finely Tuned

                  Bernard Hughes was born in 1918, just as his father returned from the war. Even though his father had never been on leave and his son looked nothing like him, Calvin Hughes loved Bernie, even if he was never once proud of him.

Chapter Twenty Three

            “What the hell was that?” Said Rosie. She was standing outside a forlorn Methadone clinic and David was painfully aware of the looks that the patients shuffling in and out were giving him.

            He shifted awkwardly and stuffed his hands deeper into his pockets, “You mean George Fletcher? The guy who confessed to the killing?”

Once upon a road...

 

            When Roland had started along the road, the sun had just been setting but the air had been pleasant and warm, despite the heavy feeling that usually came before a storm.  Now, not three hours later, the rain was pissing down and the canvas trench coat that he wore did little more than cling to his skin wetly.

Chapter Twenty Two

   

   “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new breakthrough in our case!” Eddie beamed, his eyes wide with excitement.

Chapter Twenty One

David finally dozed off.  It had been a terrible day and he needed some rest: tomorrow would be equally challenging, and so when he closed is eyes all he could think about were the countless twists and turns of the case. David needed the peace that only sleep could deliver. 

Chapter Twenty

            Lee Finch stared at the screen of the coffee shop’s television set and stirred his iced coffee with short, sporadic stabs. His sneering mouth curled even more as he watched Dr.. Jamison explaining to the camera about how the death of Darcy Tucker was most likely caused by blunt force trauma and not a gun shot for what had to be the fifteenth time.

Chapter nineteen

       “What do you mean that the evidence is inconclusive?” David found himself practically yelling into Dr. Jamison’s face, his eyes wide and disbelieving.

Chapter Eighteen

“Go for a walk, Billy.” David scowled through the sea of young hipsters who were standing in line for their coffees. It had taken him all morning to convince Rosie over the phone to meet with him, and even though she had finally agreed, he was almost certain that she wasn’t going to be there.

A Cold Night Somewhere Else...

 

       Even though it was the dead of winter, a small tent revival had come to the sleepy town of Louisburg, Ohio, and despite gusting winds and long nights, it had gathered a small and devout crowd. The large canvas monster that the traveling group had pitched had sat silently for three long days before opening its doors on the dusk of third night, inviting people inside with the promise of portable heaters and warm drinks to enjoy whilst their souls were being cleansed.

Chapter Seventeen

        David hated prisons; they smelled like bad sneakers on a humid day, which was certainly, the product of too many people crowded into a tight space with poor air circulation. A murmur started at one end of the prison and rose in volume as David moved through the central corridor. Many of the prison’s residents were incarcerated because of One Week Window and David was the face they could blame.

Isn't it obvious?

Chapter Sixteen

            The first few phone calls from the viewing audience were the usual: a man convinced that he himself had killed Darcy Tucker, another who thought that it was a conspiracy from a company that mass-produced baby food, and a woman who was very adamant that Darcy Tucker was killed by a group of alien raiders sent here to steal human ova.

Chapter Fifteen

       David sat at his desk and tried hard not to sneeze as the makeup artist that Reindt sent over carefully powdered his face. Since it was the first official day on the case, Billy was going to be filming David taking calls from the viewers and generally doing what the director liked to call “that cop stuff.”

Chapter Fourteen

            “Goddamn it,” Al Reindt grunted, rubbing his hands over his face, “All I’m asking for is some professionalism.”

            Doug, the poor intern that was standing in front of him with a camcorder audibly shaking in his hands, muttered, “You didn’t really give me much to go off of…”

Chapter Thirteen

The living room carpet was soft enough to lay down on, a fact that Holly Tucker had never truly appreciated until she had a toddler scooting around on it.

"I want to die"

       “There’s a suicide clinic down the road.” Alendine Trippet kept her half-moon glasses fixed on the report before her. If she had a credit for each time an adrenaline junkie or bored debutante had made this request, she would have had her own house inside one of the Domes.

Welcome Back to one Week Window

Chapter 12

      “Welcome back to One Week Window, the show where the fans are just as important as the cops.” Eddie glanced over to Al Reindt behind camera one with a large grin, expecting to get a thumbs-up for his ad-libbing.

Chapter Eleven

       David stared up at Billy as the man started to roll the camera, it’s cold, dead eye trained on the image of John Richland on Armstrong’s desk, “Why don’t you tell the viewers at home why it is that you are so keen on digging up the past?”

Christina2

       It had been three weeks, and every day when Sera went to work at Rawlins, McGuire and Smith, and each day she had to step over the woman who had set up shop on the steps leading up to the place. Sera wasn’t wealthy: she, like all of the others living below the Domes, scraped by on her wits and good luck.

The Saint- Part Three

There was a special section of the city that hadn’t fallen into complete and utter ruin like the rest. It was nestled against one of the umbilical poles holding up a Dome , and the four or five buildings that stood there actually looked clean and almost elegant until the smog cleared a little and one stood within fifty feet of them.

Chapter Ten

       “Turn the camera off.” David grunted, his fingers white on the wheel. Billy, who had been flipping the camera back and forth between Rosie in the back of the car to David in the front, blinked at him and shook his head, “I can’t. I have a contract.”

The Saint-Part Two

      “You really expect me to get on that thing?” Karen scowled at Robert and she gently kicked at the front tire of an ancient motorcycle.

Perfection 2000

        Sergeant Airen Dey sat awkwardly at the edge of the spa bed, her eyes fixed on the tiled floor that was almost entirely clouded in shadow, considering that the only light in the room came from four candle simulations that had been brought in to make the mood more womb-like and relaxing, or at least that is what the pamphlet had said.

Chapter Nine

David pulled up in front of a tiny apartment complex that practically screamed “student housing.” It had taken him most of the night cross-referencing the data base at Atlas to come up with Rosie’s last name and address, and now that he was here he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing.

Les Bercaux

       In New Crimea, there were the wealthy, the poor, and the people who were so penniless that they belonged to a new group entirely.

Chapter Eight

Lee sat at a table at a local coffee dive that was home to all of the local hung-over drunks on their way to work while trying to keep their out of control alcoholism a secret.

Chapter Seven

David sat at his customary table at Stephano’s, the local bar where most of the ‘One Week Window’ staff spent their off hours. It wasn’t quite a dive, but it certainly wasn’t the upscale urban hang out that its owner had desperately branded it as. A few tables away from where the detective sat perched two female analysts, trying to drink their Irish coffees while a cameraman tried his best to flirt with them.

Into the Fire

            Without fail, every time that the stench of gasoline sputtered into the crisp, choking billows of smoke, the red and amber gleam of the flames lighting up the inside of the warehouse, Art felt the same sting of excitement in his guts,

Chapter Six

        The corporate offices of Atlas Communications, now doubling as the police headquarters as well, sat in a nondescript office building a block away from Still Waters Mortuary.

The Saint – Part One

Life had become a series of binary choices for Karen Comstock. Rent or telephone bill? Food or electricity? Karen had quickly discovered that desperation and stress can temper the strong and crush the vulnerable, and she had become as brittle as porcelain.

Chapter Five

    Dr. Lauren Jamison adjusted her mask and glanced up at the observation deck above the surgical theater that Atlas Communications had built for “One Week Window’s” live autopsies.

The Prodigal Father

The machine whirred to a stop, and as soon as it had shut down, the two technicians shot each other meaningful looks. The man inside was one of the Serpent’s top paying customers and every week he spent an entire day inside the Love Machines without more than a quick break in between sessions to down some nutrient supplements and mop his brow.

Chapter Four

             It was company policy that the detectives on ‘One Week Window’ wait a full twenty-four hours after the network picked up the case to discuss it with the bereaved family. 

An Ordinary World

Todd Adams sat in his boss’s office on the eighteenth floor of the Guardian Insurance Company with his head lowered. He knew that Peter Stewart saw any sort of personal issue as a distraction but he couldn’t wait any longer. “Yes, Todd.”

“I need time to be with my son. He’s very ill.”

            “You’ll have to wait.”

Chapter Three

David Armstrong threw the cruiser into reverse and began to back up, trying to put as much distance between himself and the Tucker home as he could.

The Mothman Story

            “So,” Johnnie Taylor smiled awkwardly at the technician who was prepping his machine, his hands questing to cover his genitals as he stood before her stark naked, “Is this the weirdest request you have gotten?”

Chapter Two

The television chirped to life and began blasting the familiar exhilarating, dark tones of ‘One Week Window’s’ critically acclaimed opening theme. Even though the show was relatively new, it already had the entire nation glued to their TVs, all of them waiting impatiently for the next bit of evidence.