Tom Moses

He gathers all his friends in a single place.  He thinks he has me grasping at straws, he thinks I believe Randy and Ricky are capable of all this on their own.  The revenge story is a tired plot, I’ve heard it at least a dozen and recited it on my own at least twice before I was twenty, the son of a bitch has no idea who he’s toying with.

The fucker’s guards go down easy; they’re not even worth a third bullet to make sure.  Guns aren’t very satisfying; a million assholes can squeeze a trigger, some of those assholes actually know what they’re doing.  Fists and blades are what I’m looking for, but I’m not an idiot. All these sons of bitches will be packing at least a nine mil. or even a forty-five. read more »

“…have been burning well into the morning.  The third such fire erupting since the predawn hours, we are still waiting word from Global Securities chairman Marc Spector, but to this hour no one has been able to reach Marc Spector.”

There hasn’t been anything new in the news since before I can remember.  Just a load of heartless hate mongers with their own agendas to push down peoples’ throats.  I wanted to relax for a Saturday, take a load off, rest up and plan my next move; but the phone will probably start ringing in the next few minutes and I’ll have to find something to say to the Press.

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Flames lick my skin; singe the hair at my legs.  I walk through the fire and yet I feel no pain.  I look all around as would a curious child, everything seems so upside down.  It’s like a fever dream, the floor is above me, yet I walk upright…just on the ceiling.  I can feel the prickling texture of the drywall at the bottoms of my bare feet.

It’s so very strange, where am I?

{You humans are funny creatures,} a voice calls out to me, familiar, I’ve heard it sometime before.  I look behind me, expecting to be sucker punched by another pansy but I see nothing.

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Orange burns through the overcast gray the best it can, only succeeding in small efforts to defeat the coming rain.  Across the four-lane street from an old friends’ house, the suns’ last grip on the daylight hours cause my eyes to strain.  The wind is slow and as quiet as the sidewalks are empty.  It’s a ghost town here and an impending sense of dreads takes the forefront of my mind.

All the foot traffic ceases and changes direction before the people come near Manny’s place.  And just like it is some Middle Eastern village in the middle of nowhere, I know something violent is coming.  All the signs are here.  There are no witnesses, no bystanders, even a cops’ cruiser makes a U-Turn at the intersection not twenty yards east of Manny’s small house.

I don’t like this one bit.

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Time inches by in slow motion.  I’m sweating enough to be living in a fever dream and it feels like months since she asked that question.  She’s got a tight grip on my Silver Star, something I was a little too proud of from my stint in Grenada.  I wasn’t even twenty years old, one hell of an idealistic Lance Corporal, a fresh face in Force Reconnaissance and looking to make a name for myself.  Goddamn, I should have died then, just like so many other days.

“Did you?”  She repeats, even though my silence is answer enough, she wants me to say it.  Hell I wouldn’t doubt she wants me to deny it.

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I hate hospitals.  The sterile smell of the halls, the soft colors on the walls, I’ve been to too many in my life time and there are too many memories attached to them.  None of it matters right now; I think my brain is entirely numb to anything except the anger.  Cops said this was a mugging, but what kind of mugger leaves behind an envelope of cash after shooting a man?

“Frenchie, what the hell were you doing with that money?”

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The trio of cops groaned, and watched as their new team leader bolted across an open field with tiny explosions kicking up the grass all around him.  He sprint until every muscle in his legs screamed to make him stop, his lungs were about to burst when he saw Prodic’s body and he skidded across the wet grass and scrambled to check if he were all right.  Nearly lifeless eyes shuttered open and a smile tried to form on his lips.  He tried to speak, but only dribbled blood instead.

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There it was, once upon a time, a young man of twenty years who sat bored in his second round of American Literature classes.  Almost nodding off to the monotone voice that rebound and echoed in his brain, just before the words of a graduate student sat in for the real instructor he paid tuition in order to listen to seeped out of his brain and were lost to the airwaves forever.  He heard the muffled sound of emo rock bands screaming about their god-awful lives in the ear-buds of the student behind him. read more »

The street lamps were dim and yellow; the few that worked hardly provided enough light to keep the streets safe at night. Jackson kept his eyes roaming while he canvassed the area from the safety of his Honda. Counting the illicit customers coming and going from the yellow house on the corner of Third and Elm, seeing no apparent pattern at this time of night, but all the same the plan did not matter to whatever pattern the customers took, there were no innocents in this equation.

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Jules slid his feet over the polished tile floor, walking had proven difficult enough but really, why was there any hurry? The officer stuck closely behind him and Jules thought about how funny it was that no one else paid any attention to his presence. No stray glances, no gawking, not even an unkind phrase was good enough to acknowledge him. He kept on the straight path toward the elevators guided only by the officer’s occasional word: “Right” or “Left”.

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