Posts Tagged ‘two for tuesday’

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The Talisman

In Fiction on April 30, 2013 at 11:10 pm

empty bar undead detective new orleans

The Talisman

“You took a piece of my heart?”

“Isn’t it romantic?”

I frowned. Les Moelleux was clearing out as we drank, and apart from the few dancers that remained, undone in the laps of patrons in dark corners, we were alone.

“And your story about someone robbing your place? That was a lie?”

Madelaine smiled.

“Well… it was half true. The other half is that they wanted me dead, too.”

She sipped her drink and swirled the ice.

“I needed you to help me stop them,” she said, “but, when you couldn’t do that, I needed a talisman for protection instead.”

She fingered the chain around her neck and winked, but I was done with this game. My hands were shaking. Read the rest of this entry »

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Her Body Begs For Death

In Fiction on April 24, 2013 at 10:37 pm

Gaslight

Her Body Begs For Death

Les Moelleux was shining like a riverboat in the rain that night, the gaslights burning like a thousand tiny fires in a thousand cozy hearths. A loud zydeco tune was spilling from behind the windows, frantic with accordion and rub-board rhythm. The music itself wasn’t so unusual—the joint was as Creole as crawfish étouffée, after all—but what did strike me was the voice, sultry and sweet, that flowed along with it: It was Madelaine’s.

When I pushed through the door, she gave me a bashful, baleful glance and just kept on singing—as if she hadn’t put three slugs in me just the night before:

Elle dit qu’il est trop tard
Elle ne parle qu’au passé
Son corps implore la mort
Elle ne peut plus respire Read the rest of this entry »

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Les Moelleux

In Fiction on April 17, 2013 at 2:34 pm

new orleans french quarter building

Les Moelleux

Madelaine Meilleur: The broad that shot me, that killed me—then brought me back to life. I was turning it over in my mind as I walked, plugging in the numbers, but it just didn’t compute.

She had a place in the French Quarter, a cute little burlesque where the girls were razor thin and just as sharp. I don’t know where she found them—they were like creatures from another world—but every time I’d gone in, they’d worked me over like they were fixing to eat me for dinner. Madelaine had been convinced someone was about to rob the place. She wouldn’t say who or when or why, but she insisted I was the only one who could stop them. Read the rest of this entry »

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Postmortem

In Fiction on April 3, 2013 at 1:33 pm

Various_scalpels

Postmortem

“You come here in the middle of the night and tell me you were dead yesterday, Sean. What am I supposed to think?”

“Think scientifically, Charlie,” I said, and I sat on the table. “You’re a doctor, after all.”

“I’m a coroner.”

“Even better.”

Charlie sat on his stool and eyed me carefully, his gaze drifting to the crimson-stained X on my chest.

“Three to the ticker?”

“Yep.”

I peeled back the tape and let my heart pump its congealed refuse onto Charlie’s floor. If he hadn’t believed me before, he sure did then. Read the rest of this entry »

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X Marks the Spot

In Fiction on March 30, 2013 at 10:11 pm

duct tape

X Marks the Spot

The thing about being dead is that it hurts like hell. When you come back, I mean, like I did, the wounds that put you down are still there­—they just refuse to heal.

In my case, it was the three bullets that shredded my heart like Christmas morning wrapping paper. And—all those clichés about broken hearts aside—there was no way I could forget the woman who’d done it to me, not with the searing fire that tore through my chest every time the old thing went thump. So when I got back to my office, I filled a crystal tumbler with Glenmorangie and kept at it until the pain subsided. Read the rest of this entry »