Destiny & Other Short Stories
from My Bloody Valentine: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
“Roses are red, violets are blue— just like dead bodies” – The Crypt-Keeper
It’s Saturday February 8th and welcome to chapter 8 of Punk Noir’s My Bloody Valentine Series.
Today’s stories are scandalously sordid and savagely sadistic, perfect for a scornful Saturday morning.
If you enjoy them as much as I did, please Like, restack, or scribble graffiti about them on the wall of your local university or cop shop.
Cheers always,
– Stephen J. Golds, editor-in-chief
What You Want for Valentine’s Day? by Pamela Ebel
Jackie watched her husband turn away and sit on a bucket next to the anchor.
Her neck ached from his choke hold.
“You fuckin’ bitch. Don’t ever dance with my buddies again.”
“Clint it was a line dance and…”
“I tell you when to dance and don’t say what you want for Valentine’s Day either.”
A rig tender roared by pushing a wave into the skiff. Clint wobbled and started to fall, forgetting about the anchor’s spiked arm.
“Clint…”
“Shut up!”
Jackie smiled.
“For Valentine’s Day I just want you dead.”
Bio
Pamela Ebel has been published in Shotgun Honey, YELLOW MAMA EZINE, Kings River Life Magazine, The BOULD AWARDS 2020 and 2021 Anthology, Tomorrow and Tomorrow 2021 Anthology and other venues. Her poetry has appeared in the Delta Poetry Review. A native of California, she now concentrates on tales from her original home state and tales from the highways of the South. She also knows, like the Ancient Greeks and the Irish, that as a southern writer you can’t outrun your blood.
She has turned to writing full time as of 2020, obviously either perfect or bizarre timing, and this will be her fifth career. She lives in Metairie, Louisiana, with her husband and two cats.
Contentment by Ed Teja
Standing on the corner, catching my breath in the cold morning fog that shadows the streets, the tidal wail of sirens, rising and falling like movements in a symphony, washes over me.
Their anguished call echoes off the hard concrete and steel surfaces this city is made of.
Those approaching sirens summon no fight-or-flight conflict in me. I stand here in the cold, content, embracing the warm knowledge that they will find you soon. I left you unmoving, still, alongside the one you loved far more than you loved me.
Bio
Ed Teja is a full-time writer and part-time martial arts instructor. A member of The Short Mystery Fiction Society, his recent publications include stories in magazines such as Black Cat Weekly, Punk Noir, Yellow Mama, Black Petals, Thrill Ride, Wyldeblood 13, Anotherealm, Mystery Tribune, and several Crimeucopia anthologies.
Oh, Fudge! by Roy Dorman
Valentine’s Day. Caleb Byrnes figured there would be mucho cash in the till at Cathy’s Candies.
At two minutes before closing, when Cathy had checked out her last customer, Caleb made his move.
“Hands in the air, bitch. I want all the money. Now!”
Looking scared, Cathy raised her hands. But then she smiled.
“Hey, Officer Jenkins. Be with ya as soon as I finish up with this customer. I put aside a pound of that Key Lime Pie Fudge you like to give the Mrs. on Valentine’s Day.”
Sighing, Caleb set his Sig Sauer P238 on the counter.
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 Punk Noir, 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, and a number of other online and print journals. Unweaving a Tangled Web, published by Hekate Publishing, is his first novel.
Destiny by Raymond J. Brash
Destiny,
My parole was finally approved.
I get out Valentine’s Day. Funny, right? Same day they took me away from you. Haven’t heard from you since.
I know you told the feds. It’s ok. That’s why I took the fifteen-year deal, so you didn’t have to testify.
Plenty to catch up on though, like what you didn’t tell them.
Remember where I asked you to be mine, where you said yes, where the desert stars washed that empty valley in a pale gold?
You didn’t tell them what we buried there.
Be mine again and neither will I.
— Felix
Bio
Raised on both a farm in north Georgia and the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Tobago, Raymond J. Brash currently resides in Denver, Colorado where he enjoys reading and writing speculative fiction, noir, and anything that crushes multiple genres into a pulpy, edible mash. Raymond has stories in Shotgun Honey and the National Flash Fiction Journal’s Flashflood, where he was nominated for Best of the Net.
These stories appear as part of My Bloody Valentine, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series.
PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.
Subscribe for a regular dose of hard-boiled flash fiction, straight to your inbox.
I'm especially fond of what Ed Teja did with this one....