Second Saturday Stories

The record player lets out a grainy wail that startles my attention to the skipping needle. When I look back my sob is replaced by an outcry of terror.  Louise sits in the brown dress she wore that day, but it’s been mottled with dirt, dirt I know comes from a fresh grave she’s somehow crawled out of.

She sits across from him on the table looking down at him giving him a look at the web of spider veins crawling up her extra long legs.  He tracked them far enough to see the blue steel of a small calibre weapon strapped to the inside of her thigh. A widow’s bite, he’d heard it referred to. She sucks on a cigarette while the cops Harry brought with him comb the place. Behind the dining tables a kid sweeps up awkwardly, his hand in a makeshift bandage.

In the end my gamble pays out and Roger’s greed wins over his blood lust. It was a choice I wouldn't see him make again. 

If the group goes through with this suicide mission, Percy could lose the only lead in a case getting colder by the minute.

I place the flat of my hand on the next set of swing doors, thinking I’d see Sally Calls’ razor thin face appear in the circular porthole glass. His eyes blazing, the feel of a knife sliding into my ribs. I slid through the door, my heart hammered in my ears.

The stranger is willing to part with a substantial bribe in order to keep Percy from being pulverised, but does this random act of kindness hold a barb?

I feel my legs start to twitch. I move my weight to the balls of my feet. The conversation is turning ugly, why can’t this old skeleton go haunt someone else. I feel the weight of the revolver in my waistband but my mind shies away from it like a bad memory. 

Ho Percy.” Harry whispered “what in God’s name are you doing to yourself?” Still clutching the trash can the officer meets Harry’s gaze and lets out a low whistle while the other move their tear through the living room.  “You try the hospitals?” the cop asks Harry.  He can only shake his head. 

“You lost or something?” I speak through a fat lip and watch her eyes crawl over the covered record player in the corner, the puddle on the floor, my old desk, anywhere but my face. “You can stare." I tell her "I know I look beat up.”

Inside she hesitates, caught by the eerie silence after the cacophony of car horns outside. The name next to a buzzer matches the one on her now useless scrap and she lets it tumble into an overflowing waste basket. She checks the buzzers again and notices a different name, one she wasn't sure she'd find. The man she spoke with told her it had been a long time Since Percy and Louise Slate ran All Seeing Investigations, and that if it was still there then he must need money in a bad way.