THUGLIT Issue Twelve by Leon Marks, Rob Hart, Justin Porter, Mike Miner, Edward Hagelstein, Kevin Garvey, T. Maxim Simmler, J.J. Sinisi Page A
Authors: Leon Marks, Rob Hart, Justin Porter, Mike Miner, Edward Hagelstein, Kevin Garvey, T. Maxim Simmler, J.J. Sinisi
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special about it. People have been murdered everywhere, all over, and for all time. Whether in illness, in anger, in war, or in chains. The entire country is just like this backwoods, Kansas motel. I'm old, girl. I don't look it, but God I'm old. I've seen too much of this dark republic to think that scorn and hate don't fill every goddamned corner of it. I've seen it in Augusta, Montana and Blacksburg, Virginia; in Springer, New Mexico, on Medford, Long Island and even in the dewy morning fields of Ashburn, Georgia. Blood and murder everywhere I've been."
Her head rose and she met my eyes for the first time since I left the room. They contained the only color left in my world. "Because you're the Salesman."
" That's right. Because I'm the Salesman."
I shifted into drive and slowed past her, careful not to spray gravel as I pulled away. I left the Starry Nite Motel in the opposite direction we had come from. In my rearview, I watched her shadow fade from view, obscured as she was by the darkness. She could place me at t he scene. She could ID the van.
I checked the mirror once more , but she was long gone. Gone to the ghosts. Gone to dust. Murder stalked all four corners of the world, I thought then.
An intersection without a light was just a half-mile away. I turned and began following the road as the cornfield consumed the van from either side. The green stalks stretched and yawned in front of me; growing at the tips, pulling away for what seemed like forever and the fog and the mist and the ghosts broiled around the van like smoke as the metal bullet I was in shot down the barrel of a cornfield and straight through the heart of the country.
Suicide Chump
by T. Maxim Simmler
Truth is, if it weren 't for me, Geoff would've kicked the bucket three months ago, so one might be inclined to think he'd milk his new lease on life, carpe the bloody diem and show a bit of gratitude instead of being an obnoxious, parasitic haemorrhoid and fuckmonger. So, given the opportunity, you can bet your right testicle that I'd do it different this time. I'd stay in the pub half an hour longer, and the one and only time I'd have heard Geoff's name then would've been in the local news section of the Mirror; a little paragraph about some sad tit who caught his ride into that good night under the last train from Lime Street and had his tribe scattered halfway to Piccadilly.
Everything 's a fucksight easier in hindsight, innit?
My day had already been one huge cluster of black shite and buggery. I had spent ten hours trying to tweak and salvage a financial analysis we had managed to botch up so badly, it was begging for a mercy shoot. An epileptic toddler, banging his head randomly on the keyboard, would have come up with better figures . I had drawn the short end of the stick and had to call our biggest customer, breaking him the news that by the end of the week, his portfolio was going to buy him a pint and a hole in the sand in Zimbabwe. Three generations working hard and honest, investing wisely and warily, each one passing proudly a stately asset to the next to preserve, and we fucked it up in five minutes flat. Just because someone was too busy getting his pole waxed by the new research assistant to notice a sudden, steep drop of the index swap curves. A few minutes later, a money shot worth seven-point-four million was dangling from the girl's nose.
If the customer hadn 't been quite the annoying cunt and the blowjob so stellar, I would have been devastated. Also, to survive in the world of high finance risk management, it helps to be a bit of a sociopath.
But I knew that we were looking at a long dry stretch now. A lot of our clients would stop returning our calls and pull out their investments. Our competition would make sure that within a month, even the one or two prospective punters who came back from a long holiday under a rock had a detailed report and a snarly Forbes column in their inbox. This might explain
Her head rose and she met my eyes for the first time since I left the room. They contained the only color left in my world. "Because you're the Salesman."
" That's right. Because I'm the Salesman."
I shifted into drive and slowed past her, careful not to spray gravel as I pulled away. I left the Starry Nite Motel in the opposite direction we had come from. In my rearview, I watched her shadow fade from view, obscured as she was by the darkness. She could place me at t he scene. She could ID the van.
I checked the mirror once more , but she was long gone. Gone to the ghosts. Gone to dust. Murder stalked all four corners of the world, I thought then.
An intersection without a light was just a half-mile away. I turned and began following the road as the cornfield consumed the van from either side. The green stalks stretched and yawned in front of me; growing at the tips, pulling away for what seemed like forever and the fog and the mist and the ghosts broiled around the van like smoke as the metal bullet I was in shot down the barrel of a cornfield and straight through the heart of the country.
Suicide Chump
by T. Maxim Simmler
Truth is, if it weren 't for me, Geoff would've kicked the bucket three months ago, so one might be inclined to think he'd milk his new lease on life, carpe the bloody diem and show a bit of gratitude instead of being an obnoxious, parasitic haemorrhoid and fuckmonger. So, given the opportunity, you can bet your right testicle that I'd do it different this time. I'd stay in the pub half an hour longer, and the one and only time I'd have heard Geoff's name then would've been in the local news section of the Mirror; a little paragraph about some sad tit who caught his ride into that good night under the last train from Lime Street and had his tribe scattered halfway to Piccadilly.
Everything 's a fucksight easier in hindsight, innit?
My day had already been one huge cluster of black shite and buggery. I had spent ten hours trying to tweak and salvage a financial analysis we had managed to botch up so badly, it was begging for a mercy shoot. An epileptic toddler, banging his head randomly on the keyboard, would have come up with better figures . I had drawn the short end of the stick and had to call our biggest customer, breaking him the news that by the end of the week, his portfolio was going to buy him a pint and a hole in the sand in Zimbabwe. Three generations working hard and honest, investing wisely and warily, each one passing proudly a stately asset to the next to preserve, and we fucked it up in five minutes flat. Just because someone was too busy getting his pole waxed by the new research assistant to notice a sudden, steep drop of the index swap curves. A few minutes later, a money shot worth seven-point-four million was dangling from the girl's nose.
If the customer hadn 't been quite the annoying cunt and the blowjob so stellar, I would have been devastated. Also, to survive in the world of high finance risk management, it helps to be a bit of a sociopath.
But I knew that we were looking at a long dry stretch now. A lot of our clients would stop returning our calls and pull out their investments. Our competition would make sure that within a month, even the one or two prospective punters who came back from a long holiday under a rock had a detailed report and a snarly Forbes column in their inbox. This might explain
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