“What Dora’s Daughter Did” by Charles Rammelkamp

“I mean, I know her from the neighborhood,” the woman in the manager’s kiosk at the supermarket said to the lady on the other side of the counter. “But I don’t know know her.” I was loitering by the freezer with the weekly frozen food deals. Stouffer’s Frozen French Bread Pizza, Healthy Choice Grilled […]

“Honky-Tonk Nights” by Robert Cooperman

Scottie always drank longnecks: easy to smash a guy hassling him or making a move on his woman, who wasn’t necessarily his wife, though Loretta didn’t have to know that, except she always did, when he staggered in skanky with beer and perfume fumes. Too much effort to throw him out or leave him: […]

“Whiplash Redemption” by Mark Krajnak

Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust. Everything dies, baby. Both the wicked and the just. That would be a true little ditty, ain’t it? The question is, what do you do with that time between the cradle and the pine box. Are you a productive member of society . . . Or are you […]

“No One Is Innocent” by Paul D. Brazill

Marty Cook got out of his Mini Cooper, locked up the car and, with Sisyphean resignation, slowly trudged up the hill. He shivered and pulled his long black overcoat close to him. His short breaths appeared in front of him like spectres. The moonlight oozed across the city’s dank cobblestones like quicksilver; creeping between the […]

“Poor Roy’s Picaresque” by Joseph Hirsch

The myth is that the knight fights the Dragon. The truth is that the Dragon teaches men to breathe fire, Obviating the need for knights. Taking this time machine to Brooklyn now, think of Poor Roy Luck and life against him. No, he wasn’t cross-eyed But other than that, he was fat, small, and bullnecked […]

“Hellbenders” by Chris McGinley

Sheriff Shelby Hines thought about his own burial. He needed a breather before he started the last leg of a climb that ended at a tumbledown trailer high up on Black Owl Mountain. From his position, he could see the side of the single-wide, a beat-up structure with broad lines of soot under the eaves. […]

“Why?” by Gerald So

Allie asked in a stolen moment why I joined up to fly. Leaving the ground for fun was nuts enough, she said. Why do it for war? I didn’t want to fly straight, I said honestly. Straight was too easy. I wanted to buck and roll. So what if cannons and planes shot at me? […]

“A Tragedy of the Common Man: Sam Ross’ He Ran All the Way (1947)” by Jay Gertzman

She, humming: “Got a man, crazy for me, he’s funny that way.” He, blustering: “If I have to live, I’ll [kill to] do it.” Sam Ross’ He Ran All the Way (Farrar Straus, 1947; Lion books, 1950) is one of the best noir crime novels of the classic period and one which offers the deepest […]

“The Myths” by J.D. Smith

One: The gun just went off. People can say what they want, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe them. This is just what people say when they don’t know what they’re doing, or they know damn well what they’ve done and they’re trying to cover their ass. It turns out the same either […]

“It’s a Noir World” by Woody Haut

“It’s a screwed up, bitched up world . . .” (Lou Ford in Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me) Was it always like this? The feeling that nothing is real. Not just ersatz, but a fake of a fake, a photograph of a photograph of the world falling apart. That food you’re eating, it’s probably […]