Fiction

Announcing Writing Without Rules: From the Notebook

Hello there—please excuse this random non-pop culture-related post, but since you’ve subscribed to Writing Without Rules: Deep Dives I thought you might be interested to know I’m launching a second Substack.

As you probably know1, I write at least one short story every month, longhand, in a spiral notebook. I’ve been doing this for decades, and have 35 battered notebooks filled with stories. Some of these turned out very well—some have sold to quite respectable places. Some are not so great, but many are great2 but not marketable for one reason or another.

But I want these stories to be read, so I’m launching Writing Without Rules: From the Notebook. For $5 a month (or $50 a year), you can read 4 of my short stories a month. That’s a pretty good deal, I think—just $1.25 per story. More like $1 if you spring for the year. And since I have a local bar that sells me shots of very cheap whiskey for a buck, you can be assured that every month you are buying me a round of drinks, as god intended.

Writing Without Rules: Deep Dives is going to remain 100% free. Some of you have pledged to pay a subscription for it, which I absolutely appreciate, but I think it works better as a free newsletter. If you enjoy my fiction or just my writing in general, consider signing up for From the Notebook. The stories will run the gamut of genre and style and will come from various times in my career, so lord knows what you’re going to get3.

The newsletter is launching on October 1st, 2023. Hope to see you on the mailing list. As always, if you have any questions, hit me at jdxs@jeffreysomers.com or anywhere on social media where I actually show up.

Collections Chapter 8

Photos by Ali Karimiboroujeni and Aleksandar Pasaric

I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

8.

I woke up into a splash of ice-cold water, lungs surging and tendons straining. Blinking water out of my stinging eyes, I tried to move and found myself tied pretty securely to a simple wooden chair. I tested my bonds once more, pulling hard, and then forced myself to relax. I’d been tied up pretty well, and no amount of grunting and flexing was going to make the knots any looser.

Blinking, I looked around. It was dark, but light leaked from under two wide automatic doors. I was up on a loading dock, the concrete shining damply in the dim light, the air heavy and rotten-smelling, like produce left sitting too long. I was up by the plastic sheets that led into the warehouse, with the driveway where the trucks backed in a few feet below me. A set of steps had been cut off to my left. It was cold; I’d been robbed of my jacket and sat barefoot in just my pants and undershirt. I approved of the theft of my shoes; it was a good psychological trick, to make me feel naked and unprotected. If they’d been serious they’d have spread broken glass around me to discourage any movement at all, but the floor was empty and felt cool against my feet. I wasn’t scared, only because if people were planning on killing you they didn’t abduct you in front of witnesses and then leave you tied up for hours while they planned your murder—they just followed you to a dark lonely place and shot you. They were maybe planning to beat on me a little, but I’d taken plenty of beatings.

I leaned back on the chair, testing the balance, and it creaked under my weight. I settled myself again and took a deep breath, looking around the place again now that my eyes had adjusted. A pair of cherry pickers sat off to one side, dormant and cold, and a pile of wooden skids reached for the tall ceiling to my left, an abstract sculpture. A single skid piled high with boxes, wrapped in thick plastic, sat on the lower floor of the dock, forgotten or rejected. The boxes were blue and yellow, but I couldn’t tell what was supposed to be in them.

I bent my head down and examined the rope on my legs. They’d tied me a little too high, up close to the knees. I worked my feet flat on the floor, shifting my weight forward, and carefully leaned until I was bent over and standing on my feet. It was a strain to keep from falling over, and my back complained, and my legs trembled as I moved my feet in tiny increments, turning myself around in place so my back was to the bay doors and the four-foot drop to the floor. My breathing seemed loud, but I couldn’t hear anything else, and wondered if they’d wandered off to discuss the best way to beat information out of me.

It was slow going; each step was a tiny, wobbly project. Sweat dripped from my forehead onto the floor, and the trembling in my legs made me feel like I was dancing my way towards the edge, the blood rushing to my brain pounding and making me think of aneurysms. When I was just an inch or two away from the edge, I straightened up a little and took several deep breaths. I was going to make a racket, and had to be ready for my minders, whoever they were, to come running the moment I dropped. I craned my head to try and gauge the landing; I didn’t want a chair splinter to stab me in the fucking ass, though what arcane geometric equations I was going to use to prevent it were a mystery to me.

When my heart rate approached normal again, I leaned back until gravity grabbed on and pulled me down.

The chair splintered into five big chunks and pain shot through me, radiating out from my back into my limbs. My head smacked back onto the concrete and my vision swam, a shivery feeling of weakness swept through me, lightheaded and happy to just lay on top of a broken, splintered chair. I pushed myself up onto my elbows and kicked my legs free of the broken pieces. The rope on my wrists was loose, now, but still knotted together, so I leaned forward and slid my arms under my ass, then rolled back and put my legs in the air and bent at the knees, pulling my legs between my wrists.

I could hear commotion up above me, beyond the twin doorways separated from the dock by hanging sheets of thick, cloudy plastic. I didn’t bother trying to work the knots; I leaped to my feet and had just enough slack between my knees to walk over to the dock and duck down, pushing myself as flat as possible against the edge. I heard the sheets being pushed aside.

“Fuck,” someone breathed.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

I looked up at the edge of the platform right above me, keeping myself still. I didn’t know if there were more of them, the whole crew waiting just beyond the doors, but it didn’t really factor into the equation. I couldn’t huddle against the dock hoping they just left without checking the space out, so I was going to have to deal with them and if that brought more assholes, I was just going to have to deal with more assholes.

A grin tried to twitch its way onto my face. My heart was pounding light and agile, my limbs were warmed up and ready. So far this had been the best week of my life.

The sole of a shoe appeared above me, just the very toe of it slipping over the edge, a distorted, elongated man in a suit rising up from it. He was one of the guys who’d been with Rusch in the limo with me, his suit a little too tight, his neck exploding from the collar like a mushroom.

I stood up and took hold of his belt, bracing my legs against the dock and giving him a twisting yank as I spun myself. He sailed out with a grunt, landing on his face, gun flying. I launched myself after him and landed hard, putting a knee into his kidneys and my fingers into the thick mop of dark hair on his head; I took hold, lifted up, and smashed his head down as hard as I could.

The second guy crashed into me, and I let out a whoop of sudden delight as we rolled on the gritty floor. I could tell it was going to be easy; he was a big guy but he didn’t move well, and he’d been hiding behind a gun for a while, thought it could solve all his problems. He hit me hard in the face with something heavy and unforgiving, leaving a searing cut behind. I pushed him off me and rolled over on top of him, and with a quick jerk got the rope on my wrists up over his head and around his neck. Planting my knees in the small of his back, I pulled my arms back into my chest and choked him.

His big, heavy arms flew up and beat randomly at the air. For a second I gave in and just enjoyed it: The exertion, the application of force, the dry creaking sound of the rope and his abused tendons, the wet noise he made as his tongue flopped around in his mouth. I could have done this all night, enjoying myself, but I reminded myself that I had work to do.

“Go limp,” I said breathlessly. “Go limp, and let’s talk.”

No more assholes had emerged from the interior of the warehouse, so I figured we were alone. He kept flopping his arms and legs, hoping for a lucky shot. I gave the rope a quick yank, getting a strangled, chewy grunt out of him in response.

“Go limp, you cocksucker,” I hissed. “You’re making me sweat.”

After another second or two of struggle, he finally quit, dropping arms and just lying there. I counted to three and then loosed the rope slightly. He took a deep, shuddering breath that informed me he’d had too much fucking garlic for lunch, and started to cough.

“Where’s Rusch?” I asked, my heart rate slowly returning to normal.

“Not,” he said, panting hard, “not anywhere near here.”

“What the fuck does she want from me?”

“Falken,” he sputtered. “We need this Falken.”

“Why? What’s Falken got this freakshow needs so bad?”

He made more gurgling noises in his throat and then sucked in a deep breath. “Nothin’. We need Falken.”

I considered that. I’d only met Falken a couple of days ago and I had quite a grudge against him already; wanting him dead in a couple of more days wouldn’t surprise me in the least, and these guys had the feel of people who’d been knee-deep in Falken forever.

I nodded to myself and tightened the rope around his neck again. Instantly he began flopping about, swinging his arms and legs around wildly.

“All right, all right,” I said, breathing hard and straining my arms. “I ain’t gonna kill you. Just putting you. . .out.”

He went limp, and I relaxed my arms, muscles burning, sweat streaming down my face despite the cold. I checked hi pulse and breathing, and pushed him off me with a groan. I wanted to lay on the cold floor for a while, but I didn’t know what kind of window I had, so I sat up, rolled the fat kid over and went through his pockets, eventually finding a set of car keys and a dull penknife just sharp enough to cut my bonds. I thought about my shoes and coat, but decided to gift them; I wanted to be on the road heading somewhere immediately. I groaned up to my feet and climbed up to the dock again, pushing my way through the plastic sheets into a brightly-lit office area, where a coffee maker and two cups sitting on a steel desk, still steaming. I stopped, because my shoes and coat were sitting on the desk too, the coat neatly folded. As I took a moment to slide my bare feet into the shoes, I had a crazy moment where I wondered if they’d shined the fucking things, too.

Out in the parking lot, the limo sat, pristine, not a scratch on it. I stared at it uneasily as I approached. It was big and blocky, and old-style American steel behemoth extended back beyond its safe limits, black and shiny and it should have had scratches and dents, signs of the collision The Bumble had caused. Instead it was perfect. I wondered if there was a fleet of these old mothballed limos, battered ones swapped out as needed.

I slid into the front seat and turned the key, and the engine bloomed into life with a soft purr.

No one was sitting in my smashed apartment when I got home; dawn was just an hour away and the dark had taken on that anticipatory glow that preceded morning. I crunched my way through the debris and snatched up the bottle of Scotch Phin had left, took it into the bedroom, and lay down on the bed with it cradled in the crook of my arm.

For a while I just enjoyed the pleasant feeling of strained muscles, throbbing bruises, stinging scrapes. Everything ached, and I reveled in not having to do anything else, of having no more labors for the moment, just lying there enjoying the pain.

My wrists and ankles burned where the ropes had been, and my lower back throbbed, overextended. I wanted a shower and a change of clothes, coffee until my kidneys floated and eggs, and bacon, and toast with butter. But if I showered my feet would get gritty from the dirt on the floor, and my suits had been tossed on the floor, my shirts wrinkled. And when morning came I was sure Frank would send someone to remind me about my debt, and the good Doctor might want to come and discuss the failures of her hired goons, and all I wanted to do was drink myself to sleep and start over some time after noon.

I didn’t get around to lifting the bottle. I had almost fallen asleep when the phone rang.

I let it ring four, five times. I didn’t have an answering machine or voicemail, just like I never carried a phone with me. If I wasn’t there to talk, I didn’t need to hear it. After the sixth ring I stretched out one arm, wincing happily at the sharp tug it caused in my back, and picked up the receiver.

“Where the hell have you been?” Rachel hissed.

I smiled, picturing her. “Getting kidnapped and beat-up.”

She snorted, sounding fuzzy and distant. “Your preferred evening activity,” she said. “They deserve it?”

I nodded, closing my eyes, liking the sound of her voice. “Of course.”

“Of course,” she sighed. Rachel knew me. I’d never touched her, once, even though I’d wanted to. But she’d never done anything to deserve it.

“Well, put out the good china. I’ve been sitting on your gal down in the lovely burg of New Brunswick, and it’s been a hoot. A lot of people in and out, a lot of equipment in and out. No limousines, one red-haired woman that might be the one you mentioned. Then about an hour ago the woman herself got into an Econo-Van apparently made of rust and started driving.”

I nodded, probing the sensation of a darning needle thrusting down from my lower back into my upper thighs. “Where’d she go?” I said, thinking about the flash of a white suit I’d glimpsed in McHale’s. The professor, or professors, got around.

“Better put on some pants,” she said, sounding amused. “She just parked outside your building and I’m pretty sure she’s on her way up.”

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Collections Chapter 7

Photos by Ali Karimiboroujeni and Aleksandar Pasaric

I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Collections every week throughout 2023. Download links below.

7.

When I got home, it was dark again, and I knew the place had been ransacked the moment I stepped onto the landing. Miggs’ blood was still there on the floor, dull and brown, and my door sagged open, the lock blown and one of the hinges torn off. I stepped into the kitchen and something crunched under my shoes. I wasn’t surprised, although when I turned on the light the sheer violence of the search seemed excessive: Everything had been torn up and dumped on the floor, the cabinet doors torn off the hinges and thrown, the fridge left open, all my booze smashed up. The living room hadn’t had much to toss and was just a jumble of overturned garbage and torn-up paper. I couldn’t even get into the bedroom, easily; I climbed over the overturned bed and cut-up mattress and poked into the closet. They’d found the cut out floorboards sure enough, but the false bottom was still in place. Then I went back into the kitchen, found the one chair they hadn’t broken into kindling, sat down and lit a cigarette.

Word moved fast. Frank speculates like a fucking old lady about my thrifty lifestyle, assholes show up and toss my apartment looking for a leprechaun tied up in a cupboard with a pot of gold. I wouldn’t move the money now; I had to assume I was under someone’s watchful eye. They hadn’t found what they were looking for, and they’d expect me to panic and either bolt for where the money was hidden, leading them to it, or pull it out of its hiding place to move it elsewhere, leading them to it. The safest thing to do would be to leave it right where it was, and let them assume they could scratch the apartment off the list.

I spent a few pleasant minutes fantasizing about what I would do to whoever it had been when I found out. Broken fingers and toes, smashed kneecaps, paper cuts on the tongue—all for starters. It was fun, coming up with thing to do to someone I had permission to beat bloody. I usually had to work within parameters, when on the job. Parameters were the whole point of the job. These rare moments when I could just let my mind roam over someone’s pain points were fun.

I heard the feet on the stairs, and waited with legs crossed, leaning back with one arm draped over the back of the chair, watching the dark hall behind the sagging door. The man who appeared in my doorway was short and round, red in the face from the walk up, his thin white hair looking pink, lit from below by his scalp. He was wearing a good suit wasted on his pudgy frame, tailored for some other man, his cuffs swimming around his shoes, his overcoat a bit too snug around the middle. He stood there breathing hard for a moment, and then smiled.

“Got roaches, huh?”

“Hullo, Phin,” I said. “Funny you showing up like this.”

He blinked and frowned. “Crikey, you don’t think I sent the demo team here, do ya? Fuck. I’m here on friendly business.”

I shrugged. “Frank wouldn’t like me talking to his competition.”

Phin’s smile returned. He was sixty or seventy years old, I thought, but his face was smooth and pink like a baby’s. If you just saw his face, and if he colored his hair, he could pass for forty years old, maybe younger. “I hear you and Frank maybe aren’t the best of friends right now.”

I shrugged. “Frank and me ain’t never been friends, Phin.”

He stepped gingerly into the apartment on his tiny feet. Phin Lanzmann was a man who should have stayed thin. He didn’t have the legs to be fat. “I just thought I’d pay a friendly visit, see if an old man could offer some advice,” he said, breathing hard as he made his way carefully over to the sink. “You’re an excellent asset, kid. You clear debts like nobody’s business, and I could use someone like you. You’re steady, you don’t kick up dust, you tithe like a Catholic.” He started pawing through the cabinets over the sink, his back to me. “I came here personally to let you know that if you were thinking about employment opportunities, if you were, maybe, unhappy with the way that ape of an Irishman treats his people, my door’s open. And I could make sure there were no repercussions.”

I smiled, bouncing my leg. “I’m touched, Phinny. Though I don’t think Frank would see it as the same thing as me changing jobs like a civilian, y’know? More like treason.”

He plucked a miraculously preserved glass from the cabinet and spun back to face me. “I didn’t say I could make sure he’d be happy, kid. I said I could make sure he couldn’t do nothing about it.”

He began picking his painstaking way through the room again, breathing hard enough to worry me a little. I didn’t doubt there were three or four of his guys downstairs, standing around alarming my neighbors, and I imagined me going down there to tell them their boss had a fucking heart attack in my kitchen.

I decided to play along a little. “Frank’d want my debt paid off either way.”

Phin shrugged. “I’d cover that for you. Not for free, but no juice on it, you pay me back off the top of your take.”

That was a real offer. I was surprised; I thought Phin was just here to stir shit up. I watched him as he moved, scanning the floor, and suddenly, like an ice fisher with a spear in one hand, he knelt down and came up with a half-full bottle of Scotch, Glenmoranjie, 10 years old. He held it up and beamed at me. Why all the crooks I knew were so fucking happy all the time was a mystery. Still huffing and puffing, he overturned a half-broken chair and dropped onto it across from me. He uncorked the bottle with his tiny yellow teeth, spat the cork across the room, and poured three fingers into the glass—and Phin’s finger were fat and sausage-like, meaning the glass he handed me was heavy. I clinked the glass against the bottle and took a sip as he tipped the bottle back and swallowed a healthy dollop.

“Listen, kiddo,” he said when he came up for air, more breathless than before. “I’ve always liked you. You know why?”

I smiled, shaking my head. “Everybody likes me, Phin. I’m charming.”

“No. I like you because you know your fucking place. You know how to interact with people. You’re friendly to me, but you don’t cross lines. You can beat the tar outta just about anyone—I’m not flatterin’ you, it’s just the truth, I’ve never seen someone with shovels for hands like you who knew how to use ’em like you do—but you don’t. Most shitheads in your line of work they beat on everyone, all the time, because they’re afraid people will forget to be scared of them.”

I shrugged. “Anyone wants to refresh their memory on what I can do, they’re always welcome to take a swing.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I hear Miggs Bender was the last one to take that ride.” He leaned forward. “Listen, like I said, I like you. So here it is: Let me buy you out. Change religions and let me settle this with Frank for you, because, kid, you ain’t never gonna collect that debt. Follow?”

I frowned and took a swallow of my own whiskey which he was so generously doling out to me. “You saying this is a set up?”

He shook his head and thrust out his lower lip. “No. It wasn’t on purpose. Frank lacks the imagination. Frank got played, you got played, y’all got played. You’re never gonna find Falken.”

I smiled suddenly, something dropping into a slot in my head. “Because he’s dead, huh?”

Phin leaned back again and smiled. “You’re no average bear, kid.” He handed me the bottle and stood up with a groan, planting his fat hands on the small of his back and stretching. “Welp,” he exhaled, waddling towards the door. “I don’t want to keep you from your housecleaning, kiddo. Think about my offer. It’s sincere.” He paused in the doorway and looked back at me over his shoulder. “I would never let my goons treat you like this over a debt. Frank’s a lot of things, but smart ain’t one of them.”

With that, he stepped into the shadows of the hallway and I could hear him making his graceless way down the stairs.

Dead. Rachel had told me Falken had been dead for years, but I’d seen him a few days ago. He’d taken the loan from Frank’s boys a month ago. He hadn’t been dead for two years, and I wondered if he wasn’t dead now.

It was just my luck that the same bartender was working at McHale’s when I walked in. He blinked at me, his eyes still puffy around the yellowed bandage across his nose, and then snatched up the phone behind the bar.

I put up my hands. “Hey, it ain’t like that, huh? I paid for the drinks, didn’t I?”

He didn’t drop the phone, but he didn’t call anyone either. The place was a little more lively, a dozen people sitting around listening to Johnny Cash and smoking cigarettes, drinking beers. The old lady with the half inch of makeup troweled on was in the same spot, looking slightly more bleary. I kept my hands up as I approached the bar, then slid into a stool and pushed one hand into my pocket, producing a fifty and sliding it over to him.

“For the trouble. And I apologize.”

That was good enough for him. He made the bill disappear professionally and I relaxed, settling in. I’d left my collar unbuttoned and hadn’t bothered with a tie, but I’d changed into a fresh shirt and a pair of brand new silk socks. You simply could not overestimate the power of new socks.

“Rye,” I said, in a mood. “Whatever you have. A double.”

He poured me a healthy dose and I nodded, taking a long pull and setting the glass down carefully. I made another fifty appear on the bar. “The guy I was after the other day, he comes here. He ever here on your shift before?”

You had to start somewhere.

The kid nodded. “Sure.” His voice was pinched and nasal.

“What do you know about him?”

He shrugged. “Girl drinks. Fruity shit, Bloody Marys when he’s hungover. Doesn’t talk much, I don’t know his name.”

I nodded. “When’d he first show up?”

“Far as I know, couple months ago. Just comes in, reads the paper, sips a drink. Stays a few hours, then leaves.”

I sighed, letting my eyes roam the bar. I saw myself in the big brassy mirror across from me; I was slumped and tired, the bump on my forehead still angry and pronounced. I looked around the whole place in reverse, trying to scare up a sensible follow-up question, but I couldn’t think of anything. Falken had come here and had a few drinks, said nothing, and gone home, and I wasn’t going to walk in and find him sitting there waiting for me, eager to get that beating he’d missed out on. I was no professor of human thought, but when someone came looking for you to break some bones, you displaced.

I paused, studying a figure in the mirror. I leaned forward a little. “Hey—is there a skinny old lady in a white suit behind me, or am I going fucking crazy?”

The bartender glanced over me and then nodded, looking back at me. “Skinny old woman, white suit, check. She’s got two guys who might as well have MUSCLE tatted on their foreheads, too.”

It never ceased to surprise me: You broke someone’s nose, half the time it made you best friends.

“Thanks,” I said, spinning myself around and crossing my legs. “Doctor Rusch! So good to see you again. How was the drive north?”

She’d either changed into an identical white suit, or she had only one and just wore it whenever the occasion seemed to justify some form of ridiculous formality. She frowned, making smacking sounds with her lips. “North?”

I started to say something smart in reply, but it was robbed from posterity by a half-glimpsed rush from the corner of my vision, an explosion of pain and white noise inside my head, and the floor, rushing up to greet me like an angry old friend.

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Detained Chapter 28

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below.

28. Candace

She’d surprised herself with the detail she remembered: The back trail that ran from the old dump in a meandering line ending at The Sprawl, the little-known private road with the hefty gate that led very near to the old cabin, even the general layout of the trees around the structure. She had a moment of amazement that it had been years since she’d been there and longer since she’d actually partied there—for a short, intense period of her life everything had centered on The Sprawl, where every weekend and some weeknights there was a party, drama, and people.

She missed the people, she thought. Sometimes she missed the party. She didn’t miss the drama. And after this evening, she thought, she wouldn’t need any more drama, she’d gotten her fill.

She glanced at Mike, walking silently next to her, and wondered if they would have known each other if he’d gone to school here, lived her. Probably not, she thought. She liked him tremendously, now, but there hints that he’d been a terror as a teenager. The money, for one thing. Had he been a rich kid? She couldn’t quite remember and made a mental note to clarify that. But he had a preternatural confidence—she thought he was more comfortable in his own skin than anyone she’d ever seen before—and that meant he was probably one of those Golden Boys in High School, the kind, ironically, that she and Jimmy would have mocked.

She thought it was amazing, though. He’d walked into the place just hours before, but she felt completely comfortable with him, as if she’d known him for years. Part of it was the stress, the trial-by-fire aspect. Part of it was just his personality; she’d never met anyone so quietly confident yet so easy. He wasn’t a peacock, or a mansplainer (well, not much, which was itself a triumph).

Well, Dad, she thought. If the world ends tonight, apparently it’ll be my fault, and for a girl who never got off her ass to go to school, that’s got to be pretty goddamn impressive.

She had to swallow a laugh, thinking about how it might look on a resume: Candace Cuddyer, high school diploma, ten years waitressing experience, poor taste in men, destroyer of worlds.

Poor taste in men. The first time she’d been to The Sprawl, Jimmy had taken her. She’d been fifteen and she’d had to climb out of her bedroom window and climb down the trellis while wearing a skirt somewhat shorter than her father would have liked. She realized halfway down that she had planned badly: Not only was Jimmy standing almost directly below her and no doubt getting a good look up her skirt, but she was getting pretty filthy climbing down and her carefully prepared outfit and makeup and hair were being transformed into a mess. Plus, it occurred to her that dignity was hard to come by when you came climbing out of windows for a boy.

But she was committed. Climbing back up not only increased the odds that Dad would hear her and wake up from his usual late-evening nap in the easy chair to investigate, but would also constitute a retreat. An admittance of failure. Not to mention doubling Jimmy’s window of opportunity to see her underpants. She would have to emerge from the front door sheepish and admit that her plan to escape the house in stealth had been a bad one.

Sometimes you just have to put your head down, she heard her father say, and eat the meal you’ve prepared.

She managed to dismount with a modicum of grace while evading Jimmy’s probing hands, which had become insistent. She remembered that they hadn’t slept together yet; the Prom Night Massacree, as her father eventually called it, was a year off. At the time she wasn’t even sure she liked Jimmy Haggen, for all his swagger. He was sarcastic and liked to tease her and got into fights. But The Sprawl was too good to pass up.

It was legend to two generations. For the older folks, her Dad’s age and older, it was officially known as the Patterson Place. Originally a modest hunting lodge built by Cornelius Patterson during the oil boom, it had been inherited by Sally Prentice Patterson seventy years before. Sally wasn’t local; she’d been the bride of a Patterson boy brought to town, an unhappy, unhinged beauty who was famous for wandering into town and shoplifting small items from the stores, followed by men her husband had hired to pay for everything behind her back.

When her husband died, she inherited the sagging Patterson fortune, already quite diminished from poor business decisions, and proceeded to dispense with the remaining funds by adding onto, of all things, the nearly-forgotten cabin out in the country. For years she hired builders in waves, fired them, hired more, changed her mind, had brilliancies she sketched out on scraps of paper and demanded that contractors create for her. The small cabin began to sprawl into a complex of rooms that had little relation to each other. It had a plethora of doors leading to the outdoors or, in three cases, to walls. The sections of The Sprawl had little relation to each other in terms of design or materials. It was insanity, and had ceased to be useful on any level.

When Sally Patterson died, The Sprawl was abandoned, and forgotten, and, of course, rediscovered by teenagers. It became legend for the younger generations as a place to go drink beer, make noise, and be seen.

Candace remembered her first nigh at The Sprawl. She’d strutted in knowing her skirt was provocatively short. Hard rock and smoke in the air, she’d felt like she’d arrived, at the age of fifteen. She would make her mark. She was one of the Cool Kids, now. She proceeded to drink eight shots of something red and spent the majority of the night throwing up in the back woods while a sad, soggy boy wearing glasses and a dour expression nobly stood guard over her.

She realized with a wince of shame that she couldn’t remember the boy’s name. Or even what had happened to him. Jimmy Haggen, she remembered, and that was somehow wrong.

She hadn’t thought of The Sprawl for years. She’d gone back once when she’d been twenty-three, a six pack of beers and a strange feeling of sadness hanging on her, and she wandered around for fifteen minutes or so. The Sprawl was a dump. Somehow she’d missed that during all the old parties in high school. It was filled with rot and mold, the windows and roof leaked, critters lurked in all the shadows, and decades of teenage parties had left it carved up and battered.

After that, there’d been no reason to go back.

She blinked at the fading fireball as it rose up into the night sky, fading into smoke. She heard shouts from just up ahead, and then King was rushing back past them, skidding to a halt and leaning in to whisper urgently at Hammond.

“Your friend Mr. Haggen is pretty handy with IEDs,” Hammond growled as she stormed forward. Mike launched himself after her and Candace struggled to keep up. “We just lost a man.”

“Shit,” Mike whispered.

Candace felt a cold wave of shock wash over her. “An IED?” she whispered back.

“You can make one from a gas can, a battery, and a fucking clothespin,” Mike whispered. “If I know that, bets are good Jimmy knows that. And a lot more. We’re going to have to be careful.”

She shook her head even though he wasn’t looking at her. It wasn’t the IED itself. She totally believed Jimmy could build a bomb using just stuff he found in his car. He’d always been that way, the smartest idiot she knew, a guy who could fix your car and figure out what was wrong with your computer but who couldn’t hold a job. It wasn’t that—she found it hard to believe that Jimmy Haggen would risk killing people, would just casually make a bomb and sit back waiting for someone to step on it.

And it could have been her.

She didn’t think he could have made too many explosive traps, unless—and this was no longer as crazy as she would have expected—he had them pre-made in the bed of his truck. He’d known they would come this way, and to her mind that meant that he knew she would be the one leading everyone to The Sprawl. No one else—not Glen Eastman, even—knew the back ways and hidden trails the kids used the way she and Jimmy knew.

And that meant he’d set a bomb to go off even though she might have been the one to step on it.

The shock soured into anger and hurt. Jimmy Haggen had always been an asshole, she knew that. An unhappy asshole, too smart for everyone around him, too unstable for any sort of sensible life, too angry to admit he was the cause of many of his own problems. But he’d been her asshole. She’d had little patience for him, but she’d loved him in an obscure way, a primal way, the way you loved people who were fundamental parts of your life, even if you hated them on a higher level.

She’d gone to prom with him. And sure, that hadn’t gone well, but not many girls could say their prom dates had not only slept with another girl on prom night, but thirteen years later had tried to murder them with an improvised explosive device.

Hammond came stalking back towards them. Candace was impressed with how calm and stone-faced she was. “We keep going,” the Colonel said. “My bet is Haggen didn’t have the resources or time to plant more than a small number of these devices, so he likely spread them out along several possible approaches. Odds are this one is now clear.” She turned to look over her shoulder, then back at them.

“Haggen is obviously not going to go quietly,” she said. “I’ve ordered my team to use force. We won’t be trying any negotiation. This is now an assault on a known hostile. If either of you has an objection, this is the time to voice it.”

“You’re going to kill him?” she asked. She saw Mike turn to look at her out of the corner of her eye, and she willed him not to say anything.

Hammond pursed her lips slightly. “Not if we can help it. I want to have the new models finished before we make any crucial decisions. That means for the moment I am following the previously established protocols: You four should be kept alive and in place until tomorrow. I’ve pushed the Mission End Time to noon as discussed with Mr. Malloy, but I don’t want to change any other parameters until we have data. So if we can take Mr. Haggen alive, we will.” She looked at Candace. “If not … we won’t.”

Mike studied her. His stubble made him look shadowed. “You ready for that?”

She started to react, to be defiant. Who was he to worry about little old her? She thought furiously that she’d probably had a lot more experience with death than he ever had. She’d skinned enough animals, buried enough uncles—then she froze, remembering him saying she died and it was my fault in that soft, hopeless voice.

You really can be a hopeless bitch, she thought. He’s just being decent to you.

“I’m okay,” she said. “Really.”

He smiled, and she liked it. Unlike her father, who would have frowned in worry, or the boyfriends she’d had—including Jimmy Haggen—he wasn’t going to treat her like she might break.

They crept forward in a line, and she was aware of the tension, of the fact that they might encounter another IED despite Colonel Hammond’s conclusions. Any one of them might end up dead. She wondered why Hammond’s orders hadn’t included just shooting one of them—or all of them. If she, Jim, Mike, and Mr. Eastman were supposed to spark the end of the world, somehow, why not just kill them all?

Because Raslowski’s models said, if they did that, something even worse would happen.

The realization hit her and she stumbled a little. Of course—if she found out someone was going to end the world, her first thought would be to just eliminate them. The fact that instead of just sending someone with a gun to kill them all they’d sent a platoon and built a secret computer lab told her that killing them would only lead to something worse.

No wonder Hammond’s willing to go to all this trouble, she thought. The alternatives aren’t good.

She saw them running models—model after model, tweaking details, always coming back to the same conclusion: The only way out was to keep the four of them in the bar. Break whatever chain reaction had been quietly happening all their lives.

“Stop!”

She stumbled into Mike. Jimmy’s voice, booming out in the darkness. Except, she realized as she got her bearing, not quite darkness: She could see the eerie glow of a propane lantern. They were close.

“Don’t come any closer!” Jimmy shouted. “Or I’ll erase you all.”

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Detained Chapter 22

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below

22. Candace

She turned to follow Mike and Raslowski out the front door. It felt strange to leave the bar, suddenly, like she was exposed. As they walked towards his car, she glanced back at the building, the blazing lights so familiar, still promising the sort of familiar, warm, safe space she wasn’t sure she’d ever experience again. They were heading into the unknown. She was with a man she’d met three hours before and a scientist who was only telling part of what he knew, and apparently the future of the world hung in the balance.

She wondered if she’d ever see the place again. Then she wondered if she had maybe hit her head earlier in the day. Slipped in the shower and was right now half-drowned in the mildewy horror that was the old clawfoot tub. It would explain a lot about her day.

Mike’s Land Rover was an older model, dented and beat up. “This is what transient millionaires drive?” she asked.

He smiled a little as he fished his car keys from his pocket. “New cars get more attention. Expensive new cars get stolen, vandalized, broken into. It’s like people don’t like rich folks.” He shrugged as he unlocked the doors. “Besides, it’s a rental.”

She snorted, grunting as she helped him load Raslowski into the back seat. The physicist cried out in pain several times when the bolt in his shoulder was jostled. When she opened the front door she found the passenger seat piled high with books, notebooks, a battered and abused tablet computer, old-school print maps that had been folded in some sort of mockery of the idea of folding maps, coffee cups, and fast food bags. The scale of the pile stunned her.

As Mike climbed into the driver’s seat he glanced over. “Ah, shit, sorry. Here.”

He leaned over and swept it all out the door and onto the pavement. She laughed a little and climbed in. Why not? she thought. World’s ending anyway, according to Raslowski. And we’re the Four Horsemen.

The fact that there were four of them was, she thought, surely a coincidence? And then she heard her father’s voice, saying it’s just a coinkydink. The old man had been fond of that sort of wordplay, and Candace could remember many times when she’d rolled her eyes at Mr. Cuddyer’s puns. Coinkydink had been one of the better ones.

The drive was quiet and dark, the only sound the engine and the only light his headlights dancing over the trees and the pavement. It was easy to imagine that they were the only people left alive, that the world had ended already, that they had it backwards: The doom was external, and was coming for them.

As they came up on the building, Raslowski sat forward, putting his head between them. He was breathing hard. “Don’t go in the main entrance. Go past and look for a service drive.”

The facility was a one-story building of yellow brick, with mean little windows spaced along the top. There were loading bays on one end, a huge parking lot of cracked blacktop in front, and a small two-story addition on the end with the glass doors of the main entrance. Floodlights had been set up, and still burned brightly, giving the whole place a fake daytime look that reminded her somehow of the Moon Landing photos: Everything looking brittle and overly-lit.

Mike drove past the front gate; it was just chain-link that had been secured with a length of metal chain.

“That’s just for show,” Raslowski said as if reading his mind. “This place is hardened, trust me.”

The service entrance led to the loading docks and was blocked by a similar chain link fence. “Smash it,” Raslowski instructed, and Mike pushed the pedal down and sent the rental crashing through. The noise was a lot louder than she’d expected. If anyone was alive in there, she thought, they knew someone was coming.

“Go past the loading docks and around the back,” Raslowski said. They slipped past the eerie, empty loading bays and turning into the unlit area behind the building. The weeds hadn’t been trimmed back, and it was like driving into a sudden jungle, making the whole installation feel like it existed in a different world, someplace wild and ancient.

“Stop.”

Candace helped Raslowski out of the car while Mike stood guard with the gun.

“Over there,” the scientist said, gesturing with his bound hands. “The door.”

Concrete steps led up to a security door, steel painted green. Candace could see it had a magnetic locking system. A keypad had been installed in the wall next to it. She led Raslowski to the steps and up to the keypad, Mike trailing behind. The silence was almost perfect; aside from the breeze in the overgrown weeds, there were just their own sounds: Their steps on the dry twigs and grass, the soft noise of their clothes. She thought it was oddly peaceful after the violence at the bar.

On the landing just outside the green door, she saw that the keypad had no markings: Just sixteen buttons, four by four, without any indication of their purpose.

“A little help?” Raslowski said, gesturing.

Candace looked at him. She was suddenly conscious of the risks being taken. They’d come out here alone, assuming they knew what the situation was—abandoned facility, one slightly off-balance scientist running around. What if they were wrong? What if it was a trap? She was certain she was the stupidest woman in the world. Of course there would be another squad of soldiers here, probably already on their way to arrest them.

There was nothing for it but to go forward, though. She put her hand on the keypad.

“Top left,” Raslowski said. “Bottom row, second from right.”

She keyed in the buttons as Raslowski called them. There was no indication that anything at all was happening, aside from the plasticky sound of the buttons as she pressed them. Raslowski kept issuing instructions in what appeared to be an endless code that had no numbers or letters, just memorized button positions. After what seemed like the hundredth of them, there was a soft click and the green door sagged inward. Candace stepped aside.

“After you,” she said to Raslowski, and Mike smiled.

They followed him into a dark corridor, pitch black. She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out her phone; the screen showed no signal, but she thumbed on the flashlight and directed it ahead of them, the battery at 33%. The hallway was empty, and led directly to another door that looked a lot less secure.

The green door slid shut behind them, and the sense of being in an enclosed, dark space was overwhelming.

Raslowski reached for the door’s handle, and Mike stepped forward quickly and grabbed his arm.

“No rushing through and locking it behind you,” he said. He turned to look at Candace. “Who knows what dark maze of unfamiliar rooms and corridors is in there.”

She nodded. Carefully, they edged through the door more or less as a group. Candace felt gritty and gross. She wanted a shower and a fresh pair of jeans. She’d settle for some dry shampoo and clean socks.

They were in a small room that was obviously a security office. Four large flat screens were mounted to the wall, and a bank of computers lined two walls to their right as they walked in. Four empty chairs lay chaotically on the floor, as if knocked over in a hurry. Raslowski, with Mike still holding his arm, walked over to the door across the room, paying no attention to the screens. He opened the door and she followed them through, thinking that the place felt empty, if nothing else, and no one had come to shove an AR-15 in her face.

She found herself in a huge room, in boiling heat, buffeted by an incredible humming noise.

The whole building was one massive space, the size of a football field. And it hummed.

“Servers,” a voice said, making her look over her shoulder in surprise. “Possibly the largest cloud of computers in the world, though of course we can’t know for sure because it’s all top secret.”

The new voice belonged to a woman, a young girl in a white lab coat Candace couldn’t possibly believe was worn by any actual scientists. She was tall, wearing a sensible skirt and pink blouse, her bright red hair tied back in a no-nonsense bun that she was instantly jealous of, her own brunette curls always resisting any sort of sensible arrangement. Candace thought she was absolutely gorgeous, albeit the most pale woman she’d ever laid eyes on. She thought that if Legs here turned out to have an advanced degree of some sort she would hate her for life.

“Myra,” Raslowski said, sounding weak and tired, his voice thin and whiny, “they don’t have clearance.”

Mike smirked and raised the gun. “I hate to disagree with you, Doc,” he said. Then he looked at Myra, and Candace hated herself for studying him for any signs of being instantly in love with this tall, skinny girl in cat’s-eye glasses who looked like she knew how to dance—like, really knew. “Myra, is it? Doctor Myra?”

Myra adjusted her glasses. “Well … no. No doctorate for me.”

Good, Candace thought, and felt ashamed.

“Myra is my computer liaison,” Raslowski said. “She speaks machine language and Assembly.”

“Just her here?” Mike said, looking around. They were all sweating. Candace noted the perspiration stains on Myra’s coat with a note of sour triumph. “In this whole big place?”

Raslowski made a face. “We are a need-to-know group,” he said, breathing hard. “Small and efficient was the way to go. And no one knew we were here, Mr. Malloy.”

“Wait,” Myra suddenly said, putting a hand up to her neck and fiddling with a simple gold chain that hung there, “you’re Mike Malloy?” She turned to look at Candace. “And that means you’re … Candace Cuddyer?”

Candace glanced over at Mike and he met her gaze, smiling slightly in a way that felt private and personal and for her and she felt some of her tension drain away. And then she felt like an idiot. She wasn’t going steady with the man. They’d just met, and she was a grown-ass woman, and if Myra had the best-looking legs she’d ever seen and was smart enough to the computer geek on a top secret government project, so what? Candace thought her shoes were ugly, and that was good enough for the moment.

“Well, yes,” Mike said, looking back at her. “Why?”

“You don’t understand,” Myra said, smiling nervously. “The whole project was moved here because of you and Mr. Eastman and Mr. Haggen. We’ve been tracing your threads for months now. You’re, like, the closest thing we have to superstars in here.” The look on her round, pretty face froze and soured. “You know, because—”

“Because we’re supposed to end the world,” Mike said, turning and winking at Candace. “We heard. We don’t believe it, but we heard.”

Candace thought it was interesting, the difference in the story: Raslowski made it sound like they’d moved the operation here because of the location’s simplicity, the lack of variables. Legs had just siad they’d come specifically for them. She wondered if Mike had noticed it.

“Oh, it’s true,” Myra said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose and sounding to Candace’s ears completely and totally sincere. “The model is very clear. The four of you, if you were allowed to go about your business tonight—well, we’re not sure, because the apocalypse is a data dump beyond anything we’ve ever modeled before, frankly. All we know is that you four, in that bar tonight, were the key. Beyond that we couldn’t tell.”

Myra,” Raslowski hissed.

She looked at him, blinking blankly. Candace thought she must have some sort of spectrum thing going on, as pretty as she was. “Oh, right. I just assumed, since you brought them here, that it was okay.”

“To be fair,” Mike said, holding the gun up. “He didn’t have a choice.”

Myra suddenly seemed to understand what was going on. She looked at Raslowski and frowned. “Are you hurt, Emory?”

He waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, but … it’s a casualty of war. Look, Myra—there have been some developments that have enriched the data set. I’ve agreed to re-run the model to see whether the outcomes have changed.”

“Oh,” Myra said, nodding. Then her eyes widened. “Oh! As in, no end of the world. All right, come on.”

Not as smart as she looks, Candace thought with mean, petty satisfaction.

Myra started walking briskly into the server farm. They followed, slower, Raslowski leaning on Mike and moving at little better than a shuffle. Myra led them through what felt like a maze of humming machines. To Candace they were just black boxes; there were no screens or wires. The heat was incredible, even though she could see the central air ducts every few feet, and could feel the rush of fan-pushed air.

Towards the rear of the building was a metal security door, another unmarked keypad set into the wall next to it. A bright red and yellow sign proclaimed that ONLY AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT. Myra punched in the lengthy code and stepped aside gracefully, following them in to a dimly lit, constrictive tunnel. It sloped downward, and Candace became aware of the weight of the world above them and around them. They walked far longer than she thought possible, the downward slope steady. At first the tunnel had been cooler than the server room, but as they sank it grew warm again.

She turned to glance back at Mike. He smiled slightly, gun in hand but pointed at the floor, his index finger alongside the barrel. She tried to decide if it was feminist to admit she liked having him watch her back.

The tunnel ended at another security door, which led to a blindingly white room. It wasn’t terribly large, but it was lit with what felt like several thousand white fluorescent bulbs. The temperature dropped suddenly, and she found herself shivering as they squeezed in. There was a vibration under her feet. The only furniture was a single metal desk with a keyboard and mouse and a chair. A huge screen filled the entire wall across from the desk.

Candace looked around. “What is this place?”

Raslowski sat down in the chair, sweat shining on his forehead. “This,” he said slowly, “is where we change reality.”

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Detained Chapter 11

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Detained every week throughout 2021. Download links below!

11. Candace

When Mike re-entered the bar area, trailed by a short, angry-looking female soldier, Candace was startled at how beat-up he looked. His demeanor was grim, and her relief at seeing him look relatively whole and healthy gave way to sudden apprehension. She looked at Glen, who was leaning against the bar with her, and then at Jack, who stood behind it, and exchanged worried looks with each.

“You look like a man could stand a whiskey,” Jack said, keeping his deep, rumbling voice low.

Mike nodded. “Jesus, yes,” he said, sitting—or, more accurately she thought, dropping into one of the stools unsteadily.

“Jimmy?”

A complex wave of emotions ran over his face as Jack slid a slopping shot glass over to him. “In the back. He … he was a hero back there. You left the monitor on—”

She gasped.

“—and he distracted them so I could turn it off. Your Mr. Haggen’s a hero.”

Wow, she thought. Not a phrase I ever thought I’d hear.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that, son?” Jack asked. “You had moves.”

Mike looked at Candace. “I picked up a few things in my travels. I spent some time training with a bunch of mixed martial arts fighters. Just to learn.” He rubbed his jaw. “Jimmy gave as good as he got, though.”

Mike picked up the shot glass and looked around. He leaned in close. “Did you find out anything?”

Glen cleared his throat. “In fact, she did. She found out that Dr. Raslowski there is a world-famous physicist.”

“Who left his swanky job under mysterious circumstances last year,” Candace added.

Mike frowned. “A goddamn physicist?”

Glen assumed a pose Candace recalled well: Teacher at lecture. Even in gym class, Mr. Eastman had been fond of offering tidbits of history and other subjects, often telling them that just because gym class was for their bodies didn’t mean they couldn’t also expand their minds. She also recalled the whole class groaning dramatically whenever he launched into one of his lectures.

She had no urge to groan now. She looked around to make sure the soldiers weren’t near them, listening in.

“He worked at the Holzman Institute,” Eastman said. “Which I’ve heard of.” He looked down at the floor suddenly. “Not, mind you, that I really understand what they do there. out of my league, definitely. It’s wild stuff. You heard of String Theory?”

No one reacted. After a moment, Mike sighed. “I have, sure.”

Eastman nodded, looking up with an expression that Candace thought she would classify as excited. “String Theory’s the simple stuff compared to what they were doing at the Holzman. We’re talking fundamentals of the universe here. Like, the basic building blocks of reality, that kind of stuff.” He looked down again. “Like I said, I don’t claim to really understand it all. But that means our Dr. Raslowski is one of the most brilliant men in the world. Who got fired for ethics violations.

Mike blinked, every part of his body seeming to ache and burn. “Oh, shit.”

Oh shit is right,” Eastman said, nodding. “I think we know something else, too. That old factory up the road? You said was blazing with light, crowded with people? Someone’s been cooking up something in there, and they lost control.”

“Lost control of what?” Candace asked.

Eastman shrugged. “Who the fuck knows? Like I said, I don’t claim to understand the man’s work.”

Mike sighed. “You put the words fundamental forces of the universe and lost control together, and—”

“—we’re fucked,” Jack finished, sounding, Candace thought, cheerful.

She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense, though. Why us? Why come here? If they lost control of … something—I don’t know, say they got Godzilla up there and he snapped his chain—then why in fuck would they think they were safer here? Or better able to run things from here?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Mike downed his whiskey and coughed. “Mr. Eastman?”

Eastman rubbed his chin. “I’m no expert, but if I had to have a theory I’d say you have to apply the old Occam’s Razor. What’s the simpliest explanation for needing to be here?”

After a moment, Mike nodded. “Us.”

Eastman nodded. “Us. We’re the only thing here that can’t be replicated, that can’t be found anywhere else. It could be. It’s possible. I know it sounds nuts, but it’s logical. Therefore it’s possible.”

Candace frowned. She felt like she was running on an ice rink, trying to keep up without falling on her ass. “So what does that mean? Why would they need us?”

Mike gestured at Eastman, who shrugged. “I don’t know. They don’t seem to want anything from us. They seem content to just sit on us.”

“Like they’re waiting for something,” Mike said, looking around. “If there was an accident, maybe they don’t know if it’s a chain reaction or something.” He nodded to himself, warming to a concept. “Think about it: If we assume they’re up there at the facility tearing open the fabric of reality or something, and there’s an accident, the first step might be containment, right?”

Eastman nodded, so everyone else nodded.

“So, what’s the containment area? How far does the problem extend, whatever it is? Maybe they know, maybe they don’t. Maybe this bar lies inside some sort of Red Zone, or maybe they’re just being careful. Either way, maybe Dr. Raslowski runs the numbers and says, okay, if nothing happens in the next ten hours, we’re golden. So they might decide to sit on us and see what happens.”

“So then why not just observe?” Candace said. “Why shoot poor Mr. Simms? Why keep everyone in here?”

“Someone panicked,” McCoy said.

“Or maybe our actions have something to do with it,” Mike offered. “I don’t claim to understand the fundamental forces of the universe either. Maybe they need us to stay put, and the only way to guarantee it is to hold us by force.” He sighed, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know. I’m just glad the man’s not a Structural Biologist and we’re not going to die of some alien virus.”

“None of this changes anything for us,” Eastman said. “It’s exactly the same situation. We’re trapped in here with armed soldiers who have demonstrated they’ll kill us. The only difference is that now we have to worry about wormholes or something.”

They all stood in silence for a moment. Candace found herself taking a physical poll, checking herself for injuries. She couldn’t believe in the chaos she’d escaped without a scratch.

“So what’s the point, then?” McCoy asked, pouring Mike another shot of whiskey and then taking a sip straight from the bottle. “We just sit here for the next nine hours, asking permission to take a piss and hoping we don’t accidentally piss off a jumpy kid who’ll shoot us dead?”

“There’s another problem,” Mike said, picking up the second shot and staring at it. “These soldiers. You notice they don’t have any identification? No nametags, no patches, no insignia. They’re not in communication with anyone that we’ve seen.” He looked around. “They’re off-book. They’re unacknowledged. Or, you know, private, someone’s private army. Officially, they’re not here, right? Which means none of this is happening, officially. That’s their fallback—if everything went according to plan, there would be a cover story. Some explanation. Or we’d just be warned that no one would believe us. They’d just deny anything ever happened.”

“So?” McCoy asked, taking another slug from the bottle.

“So, they killed a man,” Mike said. “Now they have a mess, and they have a bunch of witnesses who might make it a point to seek justice or revenge or whatever.” He slammed back the shot and put the glass back on the bar. “And we know some names. I will bet you Hammond or Raslowski or some of the grunts are thinking, right now, that maybe the cleanest thing to do is kill us all.”

Another round of silence met this. Finally, McCoy shook his head. “Naw. Simms was an accident. A mistake.”

Mike nodded. “And when the nine hours is up and they all breathe a sigh of relief because their little problem didn’t happen again? They’re going to allow us to just go our merry way, to call police and journalists, to hire investigators to look into Simms’ death—and the facility down the road?” He shook his head. “I know people with money and resources. Rich people. When you have money and resources, you start to think you can make any problem go away, and it makes you cruel and it makes you do things you shouldn’t do. And no one has more money and resources than the U.S. government.”

“If it is the government,” Candace mused.

“Oh, it’s the goddamn government all right,” Glen Eastman said dourly, “but let’s not forget all of this is conjecture,” Eastman said. “We’re still operating with a real deficit of actual information. We could be way off.”

Mike nodded. Candace thought about it. “But Mr. Simms is dead,” she said. “And we know who killed him.”

McCoy looked at her. She held his gaze. She’d known Jack McCoy pretty much her whole life, and he knew she wasn’t one for panic or hysteria.

“And since we don’t know why they’re so terrified of any of us getting out of this bar,” Eastman said, “we can’t in good conscience leave, can we?”

McCoy raised one bushy eyebrow. “What’s that?”

Mike nodded, and Candace knew what he was going to say. “I agree. We shouldn’t try to get away. We don’t know what’s happening. If there’s something that could endanger other people, we have to stay here. Until we know exactly what’s happening, I think we have to do everything except escape.”

“Then what do we do?” McCoy asked slowly, as if still processing this suggestion.

Again, Candace knew what Mike was going to say, and she felt a thrill when the words were spoken out loud. “We can’t run away. But we can’t wait to find out if they just liquidate us. We have to turn the tables. We have to take over.”

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The Bleeder

You can’t always control where your muse takes you. I was surprised in 2020 that my brain started noodling on The Ustari Cycle again, eventually leading to Idolator. I really enjoyed revisiting Lem and Mags and that greasy world of blood magic. Apparently my underbrain really enjoyed it, because shortly after publishing that story I started thinking about a new idea. The result? The Bleeder, coming March 15, 2021 and available for pre-order.

In the world of blood magic, Bleeders are often treated as livestock — as sources for sacrificial blood. When he makes the desperate decision to join a risky magical heist, Lem Vonnegan’s refusal to bleed anyone but himself for his spells causes tension from the get-go — and then things go really, really bad.

Here’s a video teaser for ya:

Are you excited? I’m excited. You can pre-order The Bleeder right now!

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Detained: A Novel

HAPPY NEW YEAR, boys and girls! I hope y’all made it through 2020 without too many scars. As we slide into 2021’s DMs I’ve decided to try another little literary experiment: I’m going to post a novel chapter by chapter here on the wee blog this year. One chapter a week every Monday, starting next week.

It’s called Detained, a thriller with a dash (well, more than a dash) of sci-fi:

The employees and patrons of a remote rural bar get the shock of their lives when they’re unexpectedly and violently detained by a secretive military unit. The soldiers think this will be easy duty, but some of the people they’re detaining have unexpected skills … and when they fight back, things take a turn for the deadly — and the very, very weird.

I write a lot, and sometimes novels fall by the wayside because I either can’t figure out who would want to publish them or because they’re missing … something, usually quite mysterious. This is one of those novels.

I’ll be posting it here weekly, which will take us through to December. Each chapter will also include download links for PDF, MOBI, and EPUB files for that chapter. Then when the whole thing’s been posted I’ll make a complete novel version available as a complete PDF, MOBI, and EPUB download right here on the site for free. I hope you enjoy!

New Podcast Episode

I done did it again: A new episode of The No Pants Cocktail Hour is up for your listening enjoyment.

This time around I discuss my short story No Great Trick, which was written when I was still commuting into New York City every day for my job, skulking in an office full of cubes and exhausting personal drama.

The story was published in 2003 at the defunct Drexel Online Journal, but I pubbed it here on this blog a few years ago, so you can read along with me if that’s your thing!

Aces.

IDOLATOR

SO, I done went and wrote a new Ustari Cycle story. Idolator is set in the We Are Not Good People universe, and is a standalone story set after the events of that novel.

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It’s funny how inspiration strikes. I last worked in this universe in the 2017 short story Nigsu Ga Tesgu, which was published in the anthology Urban Enemies. I didn’t consciously decide not to work with these characters and this magic system after that — there just wasn’t an inspiration to do so.

Then a few months ago I had an idea. Riffing off the idea of The Entertainment in Infinite Jest, I thought about a magical artifact that compelled your attention, that took over your pleasure centers. And then I wondered how it might be used to enslave people, and the chaos such a thing might cause. When you put magic, chaos, and darkness into a box and shake it, what comes out is an Ustari Cycle story starring Tricksters Lem Vonnegan and Pitr Mags.

The story is up for presale and will go live on December 15th. There’s a handy free sample available at Google Play, if you want to see what you might be reading before you buy.

If you’ve never read anything in this series, this is an easy way to dip your toe in and see if it might be for you. And if you have read the other stories, I hope this one lives up to the rest!