GIVEN TO AIR (published in Six Sentences)

Somewhere west of Cherry Hill, where Route 30 merged with the Turnpike, the first rays of sunlight broke through the morning in an explosion of red, yellow, and orange hues that lit up the sky. Porter steered his Harley through the toll booth, feeling the power of the engine between his legs and a comforting familiarity in the vibrations from the road. He opened up the throttle and felt the cold rush of air in his face as he accelerated into the car lanes. He knew Donna would find his note taped to the refrigerator in their Jane Street kitchen and laugh when she got to the part where he wrote that something was broke between them, but he didn’t know how else to say it – beyond the things already spoken, too much remained in silence between them. She never took his clumsy attempts at finding the right words seriously, even when it was all he had left to give. As the white lines and the miles rolled past like the years he had wasted chasing dreams that would never come true, Porter wondered if she would really miss him as much as he hoped.

GOT NO REASON (published in Unheard Magazine)

Mercy had sworn it would be the last time he touched her, no matter what kind of promises he made, and she is determined to see that through. She knows his promises aren’t much different than his threats, and the words become worthless after he finishes off a couple of six packs. He spends most nights filled with drunken bitterness; simmering in anger that rages the longer he sits on the couch, watching reruns of old cop shows and thinking about all the things that might have been. Mad that the years have rolled past so quickly and unable to appreciate anything he has. His violent explosions once the six packs are gone leave her hurt and bloodied, stuck inside the double-wide for days until the swelling goes down and the bruises fade enough that she doesn’t have to hide them.
By then he has forgotten all of his apologies. When the words don’t mean anything there is no reason to remember them.
It’s going to change, Mercy tells herself. She made a promise that she intends to keep.
No way she ever wants to smell his hot, nasty breath on her face, or feel those rough calloused fingers scratching her skin again. There’s no excuse for the things he does to her, no matter what kind of explanations he gives. The little tenderness he offers through the sobs and tears never go far enough to erase her pain or make it disappear completely. Never quite makes up for what’s been lost.
He just doesn’t understand any of that.
Mercy waits until she hears the familiar pop of a beer can opening in the kitchen, then the refrigerator door slamming shut, bottles and cans rattling on the shelves as he stumbles back through the living room. Knows it won’t be long before he pushes his way into the bedroom with bad intentions written all over his expression. Mercy had found that old thirty-eight on the top shelf in the closet, loading the bullets that had been rolling around the nightstand drawer, and sits on the bed now with the gun in her lap.
In the darkness of her room, she waits.
Mercy knows she’s done pretending to be just like other girls, and wonders if her Daddy is going to feel the same kind of pain she’s felt for years when she pulls the trigger.

The Way It Crumbles (published in Darkest Before The Dawn)

“Got your Nine?” Cheese asked.
Twist nodded.
“Keep it tucked inside your pocket,” Cheese said between sips of Pepsi. “Make it easy to pull when the time comes to use it.”
Twist didn’t say anything – his eyes never left the front of the discount liquor store on Raymond Boulevard. He sat quietly behind the wheel of the Sentra, his head resting against the seat, taking in everything up and down the street. Nothing escaped his stare. It was a hot Tuesday afternoon - the store’s neon sign blinked off and on in the sunlight, like a beacon pointing the way towards hope, refuge, and salvation. They had been watching the store for at least an hour but in that time saw only a handful of customers, and Twist wondered about the size of this score. No way it would get them more than a couple of bucks, he worried. It didn’t seem worth the effort.
“Ain’t important what they got in the registers,” Cheese told him.
Twist shot him a look. “It’s a waste of time if all we gonna get is a couple of twenties and some cold six packs.”
“Gonna be a decent score. More to it than just the money in the till.”
“How you know that?”
Cheese smiled. “Guy who manages the place don’t go to the bank more than once a day,” he said. “That means he still got last night’s cash sitting in a bag underneath the counter, just ready to be taken.”
“And how you so sure about that?”
“I know how things work,” Cheese said with certainty as he eyed the street. “Know all about this store.”
He was all cockiness and street – short, compact body like a point guard, hair cropped short, and a thin trim line of stubble stretching beneath his chin. Attitude, style, and a cocky smile.
Twist leaned back and waited. His expression was hard, tired, and weary, and his eyes heavy and drawn. His hair was cut high on top and shaved close on the sides, and a deep scar cut across his ebony skin from his right eye to the corner of his mouth. Barely eighteen, he carried weariness and anger that came from needing things he couldn’t have while everyone else got what they wanted......

READ THE ENTIRE STORY AT:
http://www.darkestbeforedawn.net/?q=node/34

FALLING DOWN (published in A Twist Of Noir)

My short FALLING DOWN which was originally published in Powder Burn Flash is up at A Twist Of Noir:

http://a-twist-of-noir.blogspot.com/2009/06/twist-of-noir-094-kevin-michaels.html

As writers I know we are not supposed to become enamored of the charcters or stories we write, but this one flowed so easily and was a real pleasure to put down on paper. I'm glad to see it getting some more exposure.

Shimmer (published in Tuesday Shorts)

Somewhere south of Bordentown she stopped talking, leaving only the songs on the radio to fill the silence. While Springsteen sang about hurt and lost love I wondered when it was that everything between us had changed; what we once shared had slowly faded over time until there was nothing left. Now there was fear in her eyes, subtle cracks in that stoic expression I’d known since childhood. Pain that doctors couldn’t ease any more. I searched for words to bridge the distance but they stuck in my throat, and we drove home in a quiet so heavy it hurt.

Bailey (published in 6S Vol 2)

On a sidewalk near Vesey Street, Bailey shook his cup and smiled at each person as he asked them for spare change. Dreadlocked and dirty, the sores on his arms covered by long sleeves, he tried hiding the shame in his eyes while ignoring the occasional taunts of “get a job you fucking bum.” Even though he was used to it the words always hurt, almost as much as the sneers businessmen gave him and the way women stuffed coins back in their purses, turning cold shoulders to him as if he were invisible. Inside Starbucks the Assistant Manager started towards the door again to chase him away for the third time that morning; Bailey was hurrying to put his belongings back in his cart when the first plane slammed in the Tower. Within hours the neighborhood that he knew had drastically changed – those same men and women now looked just like him with dazed expressions and blank stares, afraid and fearful of all they had lost. And in the horror of that day, when it all fell apart for so many, Bailey smiled as he realized that for once he wasn’t alone with his fears any more.

Deals, Concessions, and Bargaining Power

Published in DARKEST BEFORE THE DAWN:

http://www.darkestbeforedawn.net/?q=node/26

The Story Teller (published in 6S Vol. 2)

I would read her stories on quiet summer days as we sat along the river, just the two of us stretched out in the tall grass, hidden in the shade of the pine trees lining the banks of the Mullica while a gentle breeze cooled our skin. She liked the way I read to her and said it wasn’t just the stories but the sound of my voice – how I would give some words little twists of emotion, along with the emphasis I put on certain sentences to make them stand out, and I loved the way Katie would giggle when I mispronounced the vocabulary words we had learned in Miss Rittenberg’s English class only weeks earlier. Her body would sway slowly from side to side before she dropped her head in my lap, closing her eyes to listen as I read; the hours and days that passed never mattered back then, neither one of us ever imagining we could run out of time or that it would pass so quickly. Some days we dreamed about a world beyond the Mullica and our little New Jersey town - as the years went by we talked about a life together and a world waiting to be explored; Katie would take my hand in hers as I told another story about the places we could go and smile at the depth of my ambition and the strength of our growing love. Now, I am left to fill our days with stories about the places we have visited while wishing that for a little while we can return, if only in our dreams - some times for just a few moments my words unlock a memory long since buried and her eyes light up with a recognition that is both rare and fleeting. All I can do is hope that the next time I read to her I will again see that glow in her eyes and the spark that lights up her expression when she briefly remembers the life and the love we have shared.

Hard Streak (published in Powder Burn Flash)

Every drunk had a story, Hurley thought; he didn’t need this guy going on about his poor luck. It didn’t matter to him. There was nothing different about what he had to say and it was nothing he hadn’t heard before.
He was somebody from the neighborhood named Danny Ryan; middle-aged with faded blue tattoos etched in his arms and a face that looked years older than it really was. A guy who worked day jobs unloading cargo at Port Elizabeth, then spent what he made on beer and cigarettes once he cashed the pay check.
Ryan leaned forward, his elbows digging into the bar, talking to an audience limited to the evening bartender wiping glasses with a soapy rag, some kid in the corner who hadn’t spoken in an hour, and Hurley on the stool next to him. Hurley took a sip of his Bud and pretended to listen without really paying much attention. The thing with most drunks was that they could carry a conversation entirely on their own as long as you let them go on and didn’t disagree too vehemently with anything they said.
A drunk unchallenged, fed a steady stream of beer and whiskey, could go on for hours.
“Haven’t had much luck in a long time,” Ryan said. He took a hard swallow of whiskey, grimacing as the liquor burned his throat. “Things been a little tight.”
There was always something with guys like him – poor luck, a bad day at the track, numbers that didn’t hit. Life was a lottery ticket they could never cash. Hurley had learned through the years that you had to work for everything; if you wanted it bad enough you had to take it, although he was a little down on his own luck if you believed in things like that. He had spread out his debt among three different loan sharks, just so he wasn’t in too deep to any one guy on the street, but he couldn’t cover the vig on what he owed without something changing soon.
“Welcome to my world,” he muttered.
The guy let out a small laugh.
Hurley didn’t see anything funny about that. He wasn’t desperate but he could feel the pressure mounting - there was nothing as worrisome as the fear that crept into your thoughts when you had no money. He had a twenty-two tucked inside the waist of his jeans, pressed hard against the small of his back; most times he felt the cold steel against his bare skin and got a sense of comfort and reassurance, but that was missing now. If something didn’t change soon he would be forced to take on the kind of high risk, low yield jobs like liquor store and gas station hold-ups he had done as a teenager. A handful of twenties was still better than nothing, he thought.
Ryan shook his head at the misfortune written in Hurley’s expression.
“Things are tough, huh?”
Hurley returned his own hard stare. “So how is it that you got all this shit going bad around you and you’re sitting here laughing?” he asked. “Parked on your ass all night, buying shots of whiskey if you got no money?”
Ryan smiled and patted his shirt pocket. Hurley watched the smile widen as Ryan reached into the pocket and pulled out a thick roll of bills.
Hurley let out a low whistle.
“Got almost three grand here,” Ryan said. “I’ve been playing the ponies all my life but never got a taste of anything meaningful at the track. Never had a winner that paid big money. Never had enough cash to put down on a sure thing I knew was going to come in. I never won.”
“Then last night I dropped a hundred on a thirty to one long shot at Monmouth Park. Never thought the horse would win,” he said. “Or I could get that lucky.”
Hurley stared at the wad of fifties and hundred in Ryan’s hand.
“Hell of a story.”
“Been going through some bad luck the last couple of months,” Ryan said, “but this will make things right.”
Hurley shook his head. “Let me buy you another drink,” he offered. “That kind of good luck deserves another round.”
Ryan shook his head.
“Ain’t like me to turn down a free drink,” he said, “but I got to get home before the old lady starts giving me shit.”
“The last thing I want to do is give her cause to be going through my pockets while I’m passed out on the couch in front of the TV,” he said. “That happens - I won’t ever see a dime of this money again.”
Ryan peeled off a twenty and dropped it on the bar, waving at the bartender as he slipped the remaining bills back in his pocket. “Keep the change, Eddie,” he called.
Hurley tossed a five on the bar.
“Wait up,” he said. “I’ll walk with you.”
A biting March wind tore into them, two solitary figures walking alone on the dark street, and Hurley turned up his collar against the cold. He wrapped a hand on Ryan’s shoulder as they turned a corner, slowly easing the twenty-two out of his pants with the other. “Three thousand’s a lot of money.”
“Maybe some of my good luck will rub off on you,” Ryan said with a laugh. “That’d be some story, huh?”
“Too bad your luck’s run out,” Hurley said.
He pressed the gun barrel into the flesh peeking out between the drunk’s wool coat and ski cap and quickly squeezed the trigger. Ryan’s throat exploded in a spray of blood and tissue; he clutched at the widening hole under his chin before staggering forward then crumpling dead to the concrete. Hurley took the bills from Ryan’s pocket then eased the twenty-two back inside his coat as he hurried down the street.
A score’s a score, he figured.
That was the only kind of story that mattered to him.

THINGS WE LOST ON TUESDAY (published in Six Sentences)

http://sixsentences.blogspot.com/2009/02/things-we-lost-on-tuesday.html

- Revelations
- Chains That Bind
- Fly Away
- 10-60
- No Quarter
- In Darkness of Dawn