Summer bludgeon, p.1
Summer Bludgeon, page 1
part #1 of Unsettling Seasons Series
SUMMER BLUDGEON
A DISTURB INK BOOKS ANTHOLOGY
UNSETTLING SEASONS
EDITED BY
H. DAIR BROWN & ROBIN KNABEL
For the people of Ukraine, who persevere, and therefore inspire. May the summer bring peace. Наші серця з вами.
"Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs."
—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
FOREWORD
Originally inspired by an earworm involving song lyrics from the 1978 film, Grease, “summer lovin’” became “summer bludgeon.” Voila! A theme for a new noir collection was born. Disturb Ink Books sent out a call to the creative world, asking for artwork, poetry, and stories that explore the dark corners of the human heart.
And then we asked them to set their tales in the sunniest, brightest time of the year.
Undaunted, they invited us into workspaces and showed us people at odds. They pulled back the curtains, and let us peek at broken familial relationships and strained friendships. They put us in the passenger seat next to characters navigating situations where romantic love has gone very, very wrong.
We had (us) a blast with these creative works, and we think you will, too. Be prepared to reconnect with some “old flames” from our other anthologies and to fall head over heels for some newer writers, poets, and artists on the scene. Summer Bludgeon happens so fast...
—Dair & Robin
NOTES
Because we are fortunate enough in this collection to have writers from all over the world contributing to Sinister Century, you’ll see a variation in the spelling of some words from story to story. The editor has chosen to respect the spelling of the country in which the author writes.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
CONTRIBUTORS
The authors of the individual stories, poems, and works of art retain the copyright of the works featured in this anthology.
* * *
‘A Daughter’s Love’ © 2022 Ewan A. Dougall
‘A Swing and a Mistress’ © 2022 Jahmil Effend
‘Bag It Up’ © 2022 Allison Vincent
‘Benny’s Last Hike’ © 2022 Juleigh Howard-Hobson
‘Cerulean Pools of Arizona’ © 2022 Corey Lynn Fayman
‘Checkmate’ © 2022 Robin Knabel
‘Complicated’ © 2022 Elliott Orchard-Blowen
‘Consternation 2bb © 2022 Edward Michael Supranowicz
‘Coonhounds, For Instance’ © 2022 Justin Thurman
‘Crimes Against Fashion’ © 2022 Amanda Nicholson
‘Death by Porn’ © 2022 Amanda Nicholson
‘Dinner for Two’ © 2022 Ken Luer
‘Double Play’ © 2022 Bev Vincent
‘Evidence’ © 2022 Frank William Finney
‘Help Yourself’ © 2022 Brandon Barrows
‘Hopelessly Devoted’ © 2022 Katie Brunecz
‘Nest’ © 2022 Mark Thomas
‘Nightshade’ © 2022 Edward Michael Supranowicz
‘Old Friends’ © 2022 Gay McKenna
‘P’ © 2022 Lee Pletzers
‘Rendezvous on the Riviera’ © 2022 Elyse Kallen
‘The Block’ © 2022 H. Dair Brown
‘The Class Ring’ © 2022 Shannon Lawrence
‘The Dullingham Murder’ © 2022 Chris Wheatley
‘The Getaway’ © 2022 Brian J. Smith
‘The Glass Cage’ © 2022 Joseph J Dowling
‘The Last Summer’ © 2022 Christine Eskilson
‘The Tangled Web’ © 2022 Eric Knabel
‘This Small Matter About Some Diamonds’ © 2022 JM Connors
‘Song of the Summer’ © 2022 Jacob Steven Mohr
‘Stuck’ © 2022 Yvette Viets Flaten
‘Tony Rock n’ Roll, or The First Last Day of Disco’ © 2022 Sebastian Corbascio
‘Wasted’ © 2022 Cath S Nichols
‘Worse Things’ © 2022 Joseph S. Walker
“I PUT MY HEART AND MY SOUL INTO MY WORK, AND HAVE LOST MY MIND IN THE PROCESS.”
-Vincent Van Gogh
CONSTERNATION 2BB
EDWARD MICHAEL SUPRANOWICZ
Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is a Jar, The Phoenix, and other journals. Edward is also a published poet who has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.
EVIDENCE
FRANK WILLIAM FINNEY
That’s the knife he used
to butter up the boss.
* * *
The one he hid
beneath his bed.
* * *
The one they found
when the coroner came round
* * *
to pronounce
the both of them dead.
Frank William Finney is a poet from Massachusetts. He lived in Thailand from 1955 until 2020, where he taught at Thammasat University. His work has appeared in The Plentitudes, The Thieving Magpie, Variant Literature, and other places. His chapbook, The Folding of the Wings, from Finishing Line Press is available now.
BAG IT UP
ALLISON VINCENT
AIR. The word flashed in yellow against a backdrop of orange, rapidly deepening into maroon before fading to black. It ricocheted off the inside of Maria’s skull, startling her into consciousness as though she had been napping in the dry pantry between lunch and dinner service and someone had dropped a heavy-bottomed saucepan into the sink. Had she been napping, she would have shot off her stock stool and ran back to the kitchen to put out whatever fires Julian, the head chef, had started in her absence. But now, Maria had no sense of her body or where she was. She only felt the tightness in her chest, the blackness surrounding her, and her thirst for AIR. Maria tried to inhale.
I can’t breathe. I CAN’T BREATHE. She sucked in through her nose, but only felt the futile flex of her throat and abdominal muscles. What felt like latex fingers protruded into her nose. Nothing filled the void in her lungs. Opening her mouth was difficult. The hinge of her jaw dragged against gooey resistance, like stirring molasses. When she finally felt her teeth part, something slick and chewy filled the gap of her mouth. It tasted black like chemicals, like plastic. There was no air here.
Panic directed her arms and legs to do something. They, too, were stymied by the heavy yet pliable material that engulfed her. She could wriggle, but doing so only gave her the sensation of sinking. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. If I don’t do something, I’m going to die. Maria gathered all of her strength, rocked herself from right to left, and wrenched her neck to her shoulder. There was a wet POP as the ring of her mouth jerked free from the plastic. In this pocket of air, her lips felt no obstruction. In between gasps, her lungs ached as they inflated. Sweat glued her hair to the sides of her face. Tremendous pressure on her chest made it hard to breathe. So she negotiated the bellows in her chest and watched her heartbeat pulse in increasing red shots behind the blackness of her eyelids. She felt light-headed. This world, though dark, spun. She was slipping away, circling the drain of consciousness.
It felt like a panic attack, which Maria hadn’t had since bread class in culinary school. All the pressure of generating the perfect loaf, so much of the chemistry beyond her control, her professor glowering at her proof. It was too much. But that was the point: to feel that stress before she was at the helm of her own kitchen. To be a chef was tough, especially for women. But Maria was tough. And she was a great chef.
She was only a sous-chef, granted. But it was for one of the premier restaurants in New York, Julienne, the punny name derived from her shitbag owner and head chef, Julian. And with how frequently that drug-addled asshole was absent, she essentially was head chef. With her as captain, it was smooth sailing for Julienne. She could handle pressure.
So breathe, goddamnit. In and out. In and out. She soothed herself back from the brink until her hammering heart eased to a fluttering against her breastbone.
With her breath finally in check, Maria became aware of the throbbing in her left shoulder. It hurt. Badly. She also recoiled from the smell that enveloped her: rotting bones, rancid meat, and spoiled vegetables. She knew that smell. She was in the goddamn dumpster behind Julienne.
No. Absolutely not. I cannot die here.
“HELP!”
She meant to send her voice screaming upward like steam erupting from a kettle. What came out was a croak, barely audible to her own ears in her muffled cell. Her throat was ragged from labored breathing. Any hope of rescue from calling for help died with the pitiful bounce of her ravaged voice off the garbage bags entombing her. No one was coming to save her. She’d have to claw herself out.
Focusing all of her energy on her left hand, she wiggled her fingers. She could still move them, thank God. Maria formed a fist and forced it against her thigh, crinkling the plastic of the very heavy bags from the last few nights of dinner service. She bent her elbow and slowly wheeled her fist across her torso until she reached her left shoulder. Her fist hit something metal and sharp. It cut her knuckles. She hissed in surprise as the fist retreated, and then she gingerly reapproached, wrapping her fingers around the bla
It came back to her in flashes with the steel against her palm. Dinner prep for her menu. Julian was MIA. Again. The staff’s paychecks were nowhere to be found. Again. She addressed the troops: “Look, we have reservations. I know this is bullshit, and I’m sorry. Who’s staying to cook?” No one leaves. They stay for her out of both loyalty and respect.
Dinner service.
Closing.
Cutting the staff for the night.
Waiting.
The pull at the alley door.
The jingle and thud of keys being dropped.
The snick of the bolt shooting home.
Julian.
They argued. He was clearly high. Again. He looked like shit. Someone had blackened his eye and set his nose at a new angle since last she had seen him. Dried blood with flecks of coke ringed both nostrils like sugar rimming two daiquiri glasses.
“Where the fuck is our money?”
“Your money? Where the fuck is my money, Maria? Where’s the take from tonight’s tickets?” he licked his lips. She could hear the dry crackle of tongue raking dehydrated skin.
“My staff was about to go home without paychecks again–”
“Your staff?”
“So instead I paid them out of tonight’s tickets. You can snort your whole life up your nose if you want, but not our money. I’m calling the New York Department of Labor, you piece of shit.”
“You what?” Julian’s spine straightened, and his eyes darkened.
“I’m reporting you. And I’m shutting all this down. I’m calling the staff and telling them not to come in tomorrow.”
The slap.
It streaked across her face so fast she barely felt it. Suddenly, she was looking at a different part of the room. The hot sting bubbled up to the surface of her skin as she turned her head back to see he had plucked the butcher’s knife from the block.
“Now you listen to me, you little bitch, I’m in it up to my fucking toque with some bad people, and they want their money, so you will continue to drag your ass in here and cook with the rest of these ingrates. Do you understand?”
She kept her pupils locked on his. Knowing that kitchen like the back of her hand, she didn’t need to see to know that the salt cellar was six inches in on the meat counter. She ran a tight ship. Mise en place, motherfucker.
Julian stepped toward her and flourished the knife. “What are you going to do, huh? Report me? You know, people go missing in this city every day. Especially women coming home from the night shift. So I don’t wanna hear any more of this–”
In a flash, she grabbed the cellar with her left hand and thrust the salt into his dilated pupils. He smashed his eyes shut and swung the knife laterally in front of her face. She leaned back and heard the whip of air split by the blade as it passed in front of her nose before bashing the stone cellar into his temple. Julian let out a squeal of pain, and Maria dashed around him towards the alley door. Midstep, her chin jacked toward the ceiling as dull spindles of pain radiated from the crown of her head. He wheeled her around by the hair. As his red, blotchy face came into focus, so did the raised point of the knife. He brought it down into the meat of her left pec. She gasped.
“Oh shit. Oh no, wait!” Julian’s hand shot away from the handle as though it were electrified. “What did you do? Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. I just wanted to scare you. Oh… FUCK YOU!”
Maria’s hand instinctively went to the handle, now pointing at him accusingly from her chest. Don’t pull it out. Something deep in her brain kept quietly repeating, Don’tpullitoutDon’tpullitoutDon’tpullitout. She looked from her reddening chef’s whites up into his bloodshot eyes. They were full of hate and fear. She fell back but didn’t feel it. All she could feel was the handle of the knife in her hand. And then nothing.
“Don’t pull it out. Could knick something important on the way out. Keep it steady,” she whispered as she tightened her grip on the knife. With an incredible amount of force, she was able to snake her right arm, the good arm, up and through the bags to the dumpster’s metal edge. The tips of her fingers wrapped around the edge until they hit the hard plastic cover. Not much real estate to hoist her body weight with.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” She thought of her ex-girlfriend, Katie, the climbing enthusiast and health nut who refused to eat her gourmet meals.
“It’s nothing personal, baby. It’s just too rich. Too fatty. It compromises the liver.”
She was vain but had a great ass and was forever trying to get Maria to go to the climbing wall with her. She’d smile at Maria with her harness and stupid climbing shoes hanging from her strong hands, her taped fingertips. Maria told Katie the only thing she wanted to climb was the James Beard list. Shortly thereafter, Katie climbed atop some fitness instructor, and then that was the end of that.
In the black, she gripped her fingertip around the interior edge of the dumpster. She should have gone to the stupid rock wall after all. Her hands had always been strong from gripping knives and hoisting pots, but not in the fingers. Not like a climber’s. Her muscles were all wrong for this kind of work.
Still negotiating her leverage in her fingers, pain announced itself in her good shoulder. With her left hand tightly holding the knife to keep it in place, she pulled as hard as she could on her fingertips. She felt the bags on top of her shift. Her feet kicked down in search of something to push against. She found a foothold on top of something sturdy, but when she put her weight into her legs, it gave way. The sudden jerk shifted her grip on the edge of the dumpster, and the nail of her middle finger snapped off to the bed.
A second, raspy scream emanated from her core. Then she heard the alley door open, heard Julian’s voice go from muffled to decipherable. He muttered to himself, “Can’t leave it like this. Gotta cut it up. Bag it up.”
Once again, Maria couldn’t breathe. She held as still as a statue except for her right hand, which silently slithered its way around the butt of the knife. For a moment, there was nothing. Then steps crunched closer to the bin. The top of the dumpster creaked open, and Maria shut her eyes before the light found its way to the crevice she was hiding in. Weight was being removed from her as he hefted bags out of the dumpster. Finally, the bag that had been covering her was removed, and she saw the light of the streetlamp through her eyelids.
“Oh, Jesus. What did I do?” Julian was crying.
There was the sound and smell of his vomit hitting the alley. Then his sniffles stopped. She heard him grunt, felt the dumpster shift slightly, and then she felt his weight land beside her. She willed her face to remain still despite the rising panic that she was about to be spatchcocked like a chicken.
She listened as he knelt beside her until she could smell his breath, then with a scream, she ripped the knife from her shoulder and, with all her might, buried it into his soft, fleshy belly. He erupted in howls of pain. She pulled down on the knife until it caught something solid inside of him and used it to pull herself up to sitting as he slumped down. She yanked the knife free and then slashed across his splotchy neck.
Blood splashed out in jets, and she watched as the creases of surprise slowly smoothed into lifelessness on his face. She stuck her finger in the knot of his neckerchief, pulled it free, and grimaced as she put it into the wound of her now badly bleeding shoulder.
“Please, you insufferable asshole,” she patted down his jacket and then pants, “Please have your fucking…” She pulled out the cellphone and let her head thud back with a smile against the dumpster’s wall.
“Ow.”
After the police were called, and the ambulance arrived, and the blood transfusion and stitches had been applied at the hospital, there was no holding off the reporters. They wanted the story in all its gory detail. Maria recounted as best she could. Finally, once the details had been exhausted, they wanted to know what was next for her.
