CHAMPAGNE FOR MY REAL FRIENDS, REAL PAIN FOR MY SHAM FRIENDS — ISSUE 4
A PUNK NOIR Magazine series
“If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.” ~ Charles Bukowski
Friends Like These
by
Peter Bertlessen
Blood seeped through the makeshift bandage on Santos’ ribs as he staggered into the abandoned slaughterhouse up Route111. The sign out front read Thick-Cut Bacon. Though no pigs, save those with badges, had been here for years.
Peña and Rourke were already there. His partners. Confidants. Friends, he’d known since the academy. And only rank-and-file members who knew he’d been undercover with the Jalisco Cartel for the past two years.
“You look like shit, shat out twice,” Rourke said.
“And you look as lovely as ever,” Santos replied. He winced as he tossed a duffel bag onto the old conveyor belt. “It’s done. Covers blown, but I did it. Names, ledgers, everything we need to take Gonzalo down, is here.”
Peña’s eyes drifted from his while Rourke stared him down.
The door groaned open, and the air filled with that familiar stench of death and cheap cologne. Santos felt a shiver needle up his spine. “Fuck!”
Gonzalo flicked open his lighter and took a cigarette to his mouth, “Buenos noches, señor Santos.”
His pulse hammered like war drums as the betrayal hit harder than the bullet wedged in his side.
Peña’s voice quivered, “It’s not personal…”
“Don’t kid yourself, darling, you sold me to the devil to wash your hands. Doesn’t get more personal.”
Gonzalo grinned, pulling his gold-plated Magnum, “And they sold you out cheap, mijito.”
Santos reached into his pocket, not for his gun — he wouldn’t make it that far. He needed to toggle the tracker SWAT was monitoring.
The sirens wailed, and bullets ripped flesh from bone as Gonzalo emptied his clip on all three.
Santos always knew that Rourke was dirty, but not the kind of guy who’d bury him to save his skin. And as for Peña, well, that just broke his heart.
Bio:
Peter Bertlessen was born of midnight movies, mixed tapes, and creased spine paperbacks. While he ventures to say he writes, a more apt description would be that he stabs the pages to watch them bleed. His previous works can be found in Punk Noir, Starlite Pulp, Frontier Tales, Bristol Noir, Close To The Bone, Literary Garage and random scraps of paper strewn atop the nightstand. The self-described historian lives with his wife and their four boys in Southern California.
Butter and Salt
by
Robin Cannon
Pat’s service was in a small chapel. The carpet was beige, so thin that the chairs still scraped through the fabric. His mom, his sister, and an uncle who’d driven in from Camden. And them. That was all of it.
The celebrant had a printout. She had a quiet voice, and read the theFoodBoi follower count as if it was a credential. She talked about the photograph from Séance that got forty thousand likes in a single day. She held up a tablet. Pat grinning, fork raised, lit for camera and looking expensive.
None of them had been to Séance.
Afterwards they stood outside in the January cold. Huddled together around a shared cigarette, trying to hide from the breeze that swept up South Broad Street. Their breath made clouds. Sam had her hands in her pockets. Dre kept looking up at the sky like he was checking something.
“Fucker ate a baked potato for dinner at least three nights a week,” Marcus said. “Butter, salt, and that was it. You couldn’t even persuade him to have sour cream.”
Nobody quite laughed. But they didn’t not laugh.
Pat had a hundred thousand people who knew his handle. There were three of them talking about potatoes and butter.
Sam wiped her face with her sleeve.
“Let’s get a drink,” said Dre. “We’ll buy one for him, too.”
Bio:
Robin Cannon writes and publishes professionally focused and fiction work at
, and this particular story is within their core fiction setting Static Drift (https://static-drift.com/
).
Julie, Julie,
What A Friend You Were
in The Old Days
by
William Kitcher
Julie was part of our group all through high school – oh, she was so good-looking, with a smile that could kill, and had an edgy personality for a 17-year-old – but none of us continued the friendship past then, probably because she was a bit of a scammer – skipping out on bar tabs, joyriding in stolen cars, pilfering booze and pills from our parents’ houses – so I was surprised to get her phone call saying she was going to show up at the twenty-fifth reunion of our underachieving high school class.
We talked and reminisced and speculated for a while and I agreed to pick her up at the train station.
We went to the reunion’s opening night at the local arena, ice missing, set up for lacrosse.
Julie was charming and apologetic to everyone she might have wronged, glided through the crowd like a smooth princess supplicating herself to her subjects with utmost humility.
I followed her around like an obedient spaniel.
We skipped out to my car in the parking lot, whooped as we emptied our pockets of the wallets and purse contents we’d stolen, and we swapped spit for a bit until she said, “Ohmigod! I left my purse in there. It’s on the green table by the door, the one where we got our name tags and drink tickets. Can you get it for me, please?”
The cops found my car near the train station, its doors unlocked, empty wallets with my fingerprints on them strewn everywhere, the trunk open, and my toolbox missing.
Bio:
William Kitcher’s stories, plays, and comedy sketches have been published, produced, and/or broadcast in Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Czechia, England, Germany, Guernsey, Holland, India, Ireland, Nigeria, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the U.S., and Wales. His stories have appeared in Punk Noir, Rock And A Hard Place, Shotgun Honey, Fiery Scribe Review, Ariel Chart, New Contrast, Eunoia Review, Defenestration, Yellow Mama, and many other journals. His comic noir novel, “Farewell And Goodbye, My Maltese Sleep”, the second funniest novel ever written, was published in 2023 by Close To The Bone Publishing, and is available on Amazon.
Heh. Very nice work. The third one was my favorite. But Butter and Salt feels more substantial.
Great stories!