“The Girlfriend Problem” by Matthew Sorrento

And I would kill for him, still would, ever since we met. Do it or I’ll kill you, he told me. Times like this he’d turn on me, hit me. Didn’t matter what we’re doing, getting smokes, or dope, or him smashing me in bed. With him, it’s always there. You’re going in with me,he said, […]

“The Coming Storm” by D. V. Bennett

Pulling up carefully on the latch handle, Jack Winslow stepped out of his Chevy Impala onto the lonely tree-lined street. The intense rain and wind would cover most sounds, but he was careful not to allow the low-register thump of his car door to cut through the din. Repossessing a motorcycle in the middle of […]

“Border Feud” by Lance Mason

That summer in Oxnard was hot, humid in the mornings, with dew on the grass, and it smelled of the lima bean harvest and the sugarbeet mill out on Wooley Road. Now it was night, just on nine o’clock under a low, lemon moon, and Chuy Muro, in his ’39 Chevy coupe, was pulling across […]

“The Kick The Bucket Tour” by Jo Perry

The light turned red while the driver regaled her passengers with details of Ramon Novarro’s torture-murder. That’s why the Kick The Bucket Tour’s roofless matte-black van lurched so late from Laurel Canyon, where Novarro lived, into the tangle of westbound traffic on Sunset and forced a motorcycle cop to swerve into the next lane. Oops, […]

“XXX Marks the Spot” by J.L. Delozier

Ella flounced from the theatre, her diamond earrings scattering angry slivers of red light down the deserted street. Not a cab in sight. Not at this hour; not in this part of town. He’d planned it that way. She stomped one glittery Louboutin against the curb and turned on the lanky man hovering at her […]

“Green Men on Horseback in Baltimore” by Clarinda Harris

On the circles, green statues ride like South American  liberators above the breeding vegetation—Robert Lowell, “July in Washington” I. Walking down the steep hill from the Washington Monument toward Centre Street, Kilo and I descend into a steamy tunnel of heat. July in Baltimore. John Eager Howard and the Marquis de Lafayette bushwhack green […]

“Down Solo” [excerpt] by Earl Javorsky

Charlie Miner wakes up looking down at his body on a gurney at the LA County morgue. When he moves closer to the body, it pulls him in and he is able to make it get up and walk around. Charlie, a down-on-his-luck, heroin-addicted insurance fraud investigator, leaves the morgue with two priorities: to get […]

“Luck” by Mark SaFranko

Denton was nothing if not a success in life. After a brief struggle in his twenties he succeeded in finding an audience for his work, which included novels and stories and screenplays, two of which were purchased by Hollywood. He had fans, many of them adoring, all over in the world. He realized that he […]

“A Couple Words, a Kite, a Piece of String” by Robb T. White

“How can a single photograph start all this?” The big cop asks me that question a second after he introduced himself as Detective Baquero. I look at him, our eyes locking briefly. My fingers laced together, shoulders hunched in a meek posture. I’m on his turf and I have to be careful. That doorknob I […]

“Capital Story” by Nick Sweeney

“I am an Albanian,” the man said, and drew me out of a daydream. He looked at my face, which was trustworthy and kind, or so people had often said in their descriptions of me. I took in his sharp chin shaved blue, and his eyes the colour of keys. His ivory teeth presented an […]