“Pity the Night” by Mark Krajnak

You know what it’s like. You set up the job, check all the angles, fine tune the mark. And what happens. Some greaseball with a yappity yap mouth comes in screws it all up. There’s always a couple of ways to handle that situation. There’s one way . . . And then there’s YOUR way. […]

“The Baby Doll Murders” [excerpt] by James O. Causey

Tierney’s room was three blocks off Fremont, on a quiet side street. He paid twenty a week for the converted bachelor apartment which consisted of one small bedroom and bathroom. In the bottom bureau drawer, hidden between two undershirts, was a hundred and eighty dollars. My stake, Tierney thought sardonically, putting the money into his […]

“Make Mine Bloody” by Paul Greenberg

“That woman has the charm and personality of a mackerel. How she makes a living here, I’ll never know,” said Johnny. “And she can’t make a drink for shit. This thing tastes like a bloody nose,” said Bobby. “Hey, what the hell is this anyway?” “A Bloody Mary, extra bloody, just what you asked for,” […]

“Lambs” by Kent Anderson

Farm-to-Market-Road had iced up and it took longer than usual to drive the thirty miles from the dark little farm town of Midvale out to the Old Man’s bleak 640 acres in central Idaho. Even driving carefully, my truck fishtailed on the frozen snow, but I’d learned to keep my foot off the brake and […]

“Awoke by D-Ray’s B-Day Muddle” by Chas Hansen

“Awoke by D-Ray’s B-Day Muddle” for Dennis McMillan When the obits fall silent, dreams take up the slack I was lecturing labyrinthine digs in strait-laced Kansas. Rather, some whelp was ignoring me until Gary C and D -Ray Showed with drawls so rich we soon flowed like tepid syrup Towards a Brutalist lecture hall while […]

“Riot at the Cattle Prod” by Jim Ruland

The Cattle Prod was packed with every kind of punk in Southern California. Every rowdy boy and reckless girl she’d every partied with was here. Not the actual people per se but the personas they projected, because everybody went undercover at the punk rock show. The sick-of-it-all sons and daughters of dildos and douchebags, each […]

Interview: Iain McIntyre by Andrew Nette

On The Fly!: Hobo Literature and Songs, 1879-1941 (PM Press) is a new anthology which brings together dozens of stories, poems, songs, stories, and articles produced by hoboes to create an insider history of the subculture’s rise and fall. Adrenaline-charged tales of train hopping, scams, and political agitation are combined with humorous and satirical songs, […]

“The Silver Dagger” by Robert Cooperman

Silver Dagger—the Daughter “All men are false, so says my mother . . .”—“Silver Dagger,” American folk song Mother says I must give up the young man singing love songs outside our window, hoping I’ll run off with him, or let him in, though if I did, Mother would slice him like a ham, with […]

“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 […]

“Rehab” by Martin Goolsarran

The lights stung my eyes as they flittered awake to the clinical glare of fluorescent brilliance. The white walls, blinds, and polished-steel runners on the bed screens gleamed a million dollar smile back at me when my eyes had adjusted to the splendour. The sound of the heart rate monitor ran a steady patter of […]