Second Saturday Stories

I remember getting out of the July heat in Nancy's. I sat nursing a cup of coffee despite the sun. I hadn’t slept in two days tailing a bookish husband as he cavorted through the brothels and underground casinos with a vigor that would make the Romans blush. After tailing him to the Crimson Lady I’d earned a break. His wife would get her divorce, or enough hush money to move out of the dive they shared

A half packed suitcase laying open on his couch brings with it the crashing realisation that he's running out of time to leave his apartment and disappear into the streets of North Bay. 

I don’t remember if any words were said, or who swung first. All I remember is putting every ounce of anger behind my right hand and stepping in. One of us spills blood on the concrete. The next memory I have is Harry driving his fist into my cheek and my vision erupting like a flash. 

When a wealthy woman hires him to find her husband, Percy sees it as his chance to escape a life that is becoming a noose around his neck. Using the case to lose himself in the city, Percy wades deeper into a landscape of greed, violence, and corruption of the human spirit. 

She froze and kept her eyes shut tightly. Something appeared before them anyway: a short man with a gun. “It’s time to go, nurse.” “Where is my husband?” “Gone.” “Where?” “I don’t know. Nowhere you want to go.” “Do you believe in what you are doing to us?” “I don’t believe in anything.”

Fans of The Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks won't want to miss this fragmented tale that examines what happens when you plum the darkness of your mind and ask: just how well do you know yourself? 

The thoughts in his head overflowed and spilled from his ears, trickling down the sides of his jaw until they reached his chin. He could hear the recruiter in his mind. “You like to take risks eh? So do we. Why not do something real before you die?”

The story plays the high octane pace of a Sunday at the speedway in time with the grimness of armed combat in a way that is as haunting as it is beautiful. You will feel that lazy evening sun warming your skin while smelling the gun powder. 

Her mind should have been focused on the open range ahead of them, or the way that in a few yards they reached a divergence in the pathway, but the peaks around her kept calling her attention and Bronwyn found herself transfixed by them. She was looking for familiarity she realised with sickening surety. Her past called to her over the span of time and at once she held the same pre pubescent fear she’d held in the mines. The toddlerkin fear of things that bite in the night.

Bronwyn Ironcraft and her brother Everitt trek through the white expanse of the Greytusk Mountains set on winning the prize money that will fund their search for Bishop, their missing brother. Caught in the grip of a horrifying flashback, Bronwyn makes a mistake that may kill a fellow contestant. Has she driven their goal out of reach? and, what's worse, has she killed a man?