Fast Crimes Page 6

  Moving through the house, it all felt different. Cold, sterile, unfamiliar—it wasn’t his home. There were no children to fill the house with energy and light. It wasn’t that they couldn’t have children, or that they couldn’t afford them. Nevertheless, it had just never happened. How perfect the world would have been if he had just come home to find the message:

  Tom,

  I’m pregnant!

  It could still happen, he supposed. He was still young enough to get married again and have kids. But that meant finding someone, getting to know her and falling in love. At the moment, he couldn’t see that happening. At the moment, he couldn’t see how he was going to make it through the week. Stop it, Tom! He couldn’t start thinking like that.

  Tom bent down and picked up the marker pen that belonged with the whiteboard. It was the kind that had a sickly-sweet stink when the cap was removed and its odor clung to the air for several minutes after use. He removed the cap and inhaled its perfume. Somehow the smell was comforting but at the same time painful. How many times had he smelled that fragrance over the last ten years? He sighed.

  Swiftly, Tom replaced the cap on the marker. He had taken too big a belt off the bloody thing and a spike of pain jabbed his brain. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get a headache. Tom dutifully replaced the pen in its penholder attached to the whiteboard.

  Tom gazed at Susan’s message again and remembered all the messages they had scribbled on it. And if he looked really closely, he could see the faint scarring where each message had been written then not quite erased. Non-permanent pens weren’t totally non-permanent and the board’s pure whiteness was discolored. Only the corners were still virgin. Tom touched the tainted area, in order to magic back to life the messages of yesteryear.

  But nothing happened and Tom’s flight of fancy was brought crashing back to earth. The messages hadn’t always been so loving. After the first year of marriage, fewer and fewer of the messages were of love than of routine. So many had started with, “Don’t forget…” or “I need you to…” and more latterly, “Do I have to repeat myself every time…”

  Until today, he had almost forgotten the messages that began with, “I’m so glad you’re my husband.” Or, “We can’t make love if you’re not here.”

  In recent years the message board had become a drill sergeant that barked silent commands every time he went into the kitchen. God damn it! This board had fired off more messages of rebuke and disdain than it had ever sent of love. So, why the hell was he keeping this monster alive? Even with its last breath it had nothing nice to say, only a message requesting an errand to be run.

  “Sod you!” Tom cursed the whiteboard.

  He stormed back to the sink and retrieved the cloth he had thrown earlier. He shoved the cloth under the cold tap and wrung it out. He wanted to make damned sure that the cloth was wet enough to eradicate the order in a single wipe.

  With vengeful thoughts, Tom raced back, armed with his weapon of mass destruction. How many times had he left an affectionate message only to find it replaced with an insult? How many times had he done what the message had asked only to find another saying he hadn’t performed well enough? How many times had a message been an anagram of “HATE,” or “FAILURE.”

  “How many times, Susan?” Tom said bitterly.

  Tom threw back his arm with a fist packed with cloth. He had read his last foul, hateful message. His fist followed through and crashed into the wall next to the message board, missing it by an inch. He couldn’t do it.

  If he destroyed that message, Tom destroyed himself. He had put up the message board out of love, born out of a loving request. The message board stood for much more than the lousy note recorded on it. “Don’t forget to pick up some eggs and milk on the way home.” It might be a crappy epitaph but it shouldn’t be removed. Tom bandaged his throbbing hand with the cooling cloth as tears rolled down his face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Tom returned to the sink. He had a frying pan to scrub. He aimed a steady stream of warm water onto the pan and squirted a generous amount of dishwashing liquid over the nonstick surface. Absently, without looking at the pan he was scouring, Tom studied the garden. His gaze settled on the mound of freshly dug earth in the seclusion of the apple tree, up against the back fence where he had buried his wife this morning. He hadn’t meant to hit her so hard with the frying pan but she shouldn’t have gone on and on about forgetting the eggs and milk. Tom examined the frying pan and watery blood that trickled down the sink. After he finished cleaning the frying pan he had the floor to mop. After all, the message board had once demanded, “Don’t leave the kitchen in such a bloody mess.”

  The end

  Author Note

  I made my professional bones writing short fiction, and fairly short fiction at that. When I started out, there were plenty of markets looking for stories only a few pages long. The stories featured in this collection saw publication in Woman’s World, the side of a coffee can and in a Vegas soft porn magazine, just to name a few.

  These short stories taught me a lot about storytelling. Every word had to count and I had to be judicious with storylines. Most importantly, I learned to compress my tales in order to tell a lot of story with the minimum of words. These elements put me in good stead when it came to writing novels. A book, even if it’s 500-pages, has to be efficiently told. A 500-page story has to be complete in 500-pages…not 700. Those skills get a good workout when you have to tell a tale in five pages.

  The collection includes two stories featuring a new character that I hope to adapt into a book series, Gemma King. She and her husband are casino investigators and it’s based on my wife and me and our experiences as private investigators in that field.

  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the stories. They're something you can fit in with a cup of coffee.

  Acknowledgements

  “Honor,” originally published in Gentlemen’s Cabaret, January 2002.

  “The Scrimshaw Man,” originally published in Bone Ballet, Iguana Publications 2005.

  “The Raffles Tavern Burglar,” originally published in Story House, July 2005.

  “Spit,” originally published in Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine, Jan/Feb/Mar, 2003.

  “The Stash,” originally published in Short Attention Span Mysteries Anthology, Kerlak Enterprises, Inc, 2005.

  “A Second To Register,” a previously unpublished story, 2019.

  “The Polite Intruder,” a previously unpublished story, 2019.

  “Bumps In The Road,” originally published in Black Petals, Vol. 4, Issue #1, Autumn, 2001.

  “Nightfall,” originally published in Woman’s World, October 2009 (but modified for this volume).

  “Shortchanged,” a previously unpublished story, 2019.

  “The Message Board,” originally published in Gentlemen’s Cabaret, June 2002.