CHAMPAGNE FOR MY REAL FRIENDS, REAL PAIN FOR MY SHAM FRIENDS
ISSUE 2
“The saddest thing about betrayal is it never comes from your enemies.” ~ Margaret Atwood
New Friends
by
David Milner
He made them beautiful. Men, women, children he tended. Faces in final repose, for him to remember. His dead. A mortician by trade, Tyler had taken on the directorship of the funeral parlour after his older brother Jeremy had died. Jeremy never had a wife. Never had much of a life considering.
“What’s yer wife think, work you do?”
“After twenty-seven years?” Tyler was preparing coffee at the two-ring electric stove in the office.
“You ever want a young bit on the side, we’ll arrange that.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” Tyler smiled politely.
His wife didn’t know the extent of his debts. Nor the depths he had plunged.
“After the coffee, you can help me unload the van.”
His new friends were soberly dressed men, you wouldn’t much notice them, precise in their movements. Impossible to read over a card table. They brought him bodies. And body parts in bin liners. Incinerator ash. Rid of business no questions asked. Tyler’s heart ached. Ached. His prayers thus far unanswered there was only forgiveness.
“You make a decent coffee, Tyler.”
“Turkish. I have a rich Peruvian….”
“Don’t need a commercial.”
“Dash of brandy?”
“Decent. Not having one yourself?”
“I’m up to the gills in coffee this morning.”
He mixed the ash of the poor souls the McGiverns had tortured and butchered into the dark coffee. He didn’t smile as they drank.
“You ready, Tyler?”
A light rain was falling.
“At your service, so to speak.”
He was working on potions. A man needs a hobby. Concoctions that would kill slowly. Slowly, slowly.
He loved his wife.
Only the best cosmetics that money could buy. To make them look like film stars. Dear friends.
His life’s work, the dead.
Bio:
David Milner’s stories have appeared in print and online at Duality Books, Spillwords Press, Impspired Magazine. His plays include, I’m Still Here, performed live on Resonance 104.4FM Radio, and Shinwell: An Extra Break For Breakfast, published by Impspired Books. He adapted and directed his story, Into the Breach, as a short film for the Rise of The Resistance festival, screened at Bloomsbury Theatre and Wellcome Collection. A founder member of the punk band Vee V V (Edils Records), David finds his stories when he’s out and about, or they find him. He lives in South London.
Sunset Cruise
by
Aimee Kluck
Fletcher removes two life jackets from the Splendor, the 40-foot Bermuda Sloop. Two remained. One of course, for Gloria, the nervous poor swimmer. He doesn’t need one. He’s the captain. His cheating wife, Vida, and his so-called friend, Ernie, the cock, can fight over the last jacket, if it comes to that.
Fletcher stocks the cooler with ice and champagne. The three arrive as the sun descends in the cloud-streaked orangey sky. Gloria, dressed for a storm, carries emergency supplies. Vida sashays down the dock in her polka-dot capris and oversized dark glasses. Ernie brings chips and dips.
Once settled, they shove off, motoring out of the harbor, into the choppy channel. Fletcher and Ernie raise the mainsail.
Vida steers. “Into the wind.”
Then, Fletcher captains and Ernie pours champagne.
“A toast to us!” Vida clinks her plastic flute with them.
Fletcher lowers his glass, won’t drink to that.
The wind picks up. The sun dips down.
“Raise the headsail,” Fletcher yells. He pulls the lineswhile Ernie, up on the bow, lets out the sail. When it flutters with the breeze, Ernie wabbles back. Fletcher takes the wheel from Vida. Ernie steps onto the deck.
Fletcher cranks the wheel hard. “Coming round.”
Smack. The boom strikes Ernie’s head. Which snaps back, all the way till he crashes. Ernie hits the deck. Gloria screams. Vida screams.
“Sorry, dude.” Fletcher secures the boom.
Vida kneels beside her downed man. “Ernie, baby, you okay?”
Ernie mumbles incoherently.
Fletcher tugs Vida to him. “It’s just you and me again, babe.”
She staggers back. “I’m drowning in this relationship, Fletch.”
In the cockpit, he rummages around and pulls out the life jacket, places it over her head, and, smirking, tightens the buckles.
As Vida tacks, the boom swings around. Smack. Fletcher hits the deck.
Bio:
Aimee Kluck writes about irritating and obnoxious people, undone by champions of revenge and good taste. Her short stories appear in numerous anthologies and online magazines, most recently in LAXtras Anthology and Punk Noir. A member of MWA, SinC, & Short Mystery Fiction Society. Formerly from New England and San Francisco, she lives and dances in the streets in southern California.
http://www.aimeekluck.com 
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Johnny’s Last Fall
by
Roy Dorman
Eddie and Johnny have been friends since one day back in the second grade.
That day, Eddie had taken some money from the lunch money box, and because he was not a first offender, even at age seven, he was the prime suspect.
Eddie hadn’t ever spoken to Johnny before, but that day he told him his dad would kill him if he got in trouble again.
“The Principal’s up there talkin’ to Mrs. Gunther,” he whispered. “He’ll be back here in a minute. Here. Take the money and say you stole it.”
Johnny took the money from Eddie and turned it in to the Principal, saying he’d taken it and was sorry.
“Johnny, I’m disappointed in you. Let’s not have something like this happen again.”
But that had just been the first of many falls Johnny would take for Eddie.
Now they were twenty-two and in a run-down hotel in Philadelphia.
“I’m gonna take a shower, get dressed and split,” Eddie said. “We’ll meet up later. They’re comin’ for their money around noon and you’ll be here to give it to ‘em. They don’t know what I look like, so you’ll be me.”
While Eddie was in the shower, Johnny looked in the satchel on the bed. Dirty socks and underwear. He looked in the fast-food bag by the door and found the money.
He took the Glock from Eddie’s coat and a pillow from one of the beds and went into the bathroom.
Using the pillow to deaden the noise, Johnny shot Eddie in the face and then turned off the water.
Taking the money, he walked out of the room, set the “Do Not Disturb” card on the knob, and headed to the train station.
He’d take the fall for this one.
Bio:
Roy Dorman is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Benefits Office and has been a voracious reader for over 70 years. At the prompting of an old high school friend, himself a retired English teacher, Roy is now a voracious writer. He has had flash fiction and poetry published in Black Petals, Bewildering Stories, One Sentence Poems, Yellow Mama, Drunk Monkeys, Literally Stories, Dark Dossier, The Rye Whiskey Review, Near To The Knuckle, Theme of Absence, Shotgun Honey, Punk Noir, The Yard, and a number of other online and print journals. Unweaving a Tangled Web, published by Hekate Publishing, is his first novel.
Primarily for the Game
by
Frank Sonderborg
He was a Champagne Charlie. Drove a Ferrari. Had a new Bentley and two Range Rovers in his triple garage, along with a full-length snooker table. I always liked him, and I assumed, he liked me. He grew up in Surrey with Arab Princes with Tigers in their back gardens for neighbours. And could spin a yarn. His old man was one of the few. A Spitfire pilot. Educated at the right schools. Yes, all the ingredients to be a success. And yet at heart, he was a scam artist. A conman. Small of stature, maybe suffering from that infamous small man syndrome. He loved shagging tall blondes. But married small Asian women. Three times to be exact. Maybe I was to blame. Maybe I was just stupid.
I knew exactly who he was but still handed over my life savings to him. For that sure-fire, can never fail, investment. His partner in crime was an ex-CIA agent. A smooth-talking Texan. With a, trust your life too, airline pilots voice. I sat in the office as they planned the heist of investors money. I kept telling myself it was all borderline legal. Fools and their money easily parted. If it was illegal, we could all go to jail.
It never crossed my mind Charlie was in it primarily for the game. The thrill.
I went to jail. Charlie and Coltan are in the wind. His AI Cybercoin was worthless. Just marketing hype. And I was left carrying the can. Which it seems was always the plan. I have eight years inside to fester. I hope to meet him on a foreign sunny beach painting his boat. And watch that smile disappear, when I bury my homemade shiv, in his suntanned belly. Primarily for the revenge.
Bio:
Frank Sonderborg was born in Dublin, Ireland, Shares his time between the UK and Spain. And does his best to write interesting stories. His stories have appeared in: Action: Pulse Pounding Tales 2:, Noir Nation 3: Noir Nation 5:, Pulp Modern JFK Issue #6, Pulp Alternative, Shadows and Light, Dances with Words, Thrills, Kills ‘n’ Chaos:, ShotgunHoney, Twist and Twain, Talkingsoup, The Copenhagen Post, The Yard Crime Blog and Punk Noir Magazine.
A splendid delivery ... with a special mention for David Milner's rumination on death...