We gather for drinks like in those movies with a detective with a British accent. The confronting of the suspects and we’re all there.
Untitled by Mary Grimm
read more
Special Issue: Holiday Noir 2019
Is This Our Lives Now? by Mary Thompson
I buy a cat for Christmas. So I now live on the top floor of a thirty two storey apartment block with a balcony, a spindly palm tree and a cat.
The Itch in Her by Francine Witte
It’s Christmas but there’s the itch in her. A heart itch, she calls it. It started when Harry stopped calling. And that was forever ago.
Christmas Carol by Morgana MacLeod
After a night of rotisserie sleep, turning over and over your firepit bed, you wake weary, ashes in your hair, heart pumping sludge. Even tinsel wilts in the heat, humidity suffocating sparkle.
Café Mozart Dreamin’ by Tracey Meloni
Judie bangs on my hotel door. “The dressmaker is here! Hurry! You have Christmas lunch with Noah at Café Mozart at 1PM!”
The Three Men by Al Kratz
And it came to pass, on such a winter’s eve, in a dark stable, that two thieving hands of two different men brushed against each other while grabbing the back of a sleeping mule.
The Gift by Steven John
His daughter sent him a mobile phone for Christmas, together with instructions on how to turn it on and charge the battery. There was an earplug on a long, fiddly wire to help him hear her, when and if she had a moment.
Lopsided Angel by Meg Pokrass
This was the quality Christmas had: Mom working on her plans of escape. Dad with his closed-door dreams. The Christmas angel drunk on top of the tree. Dad had recently come to think of Mom as a threat to his happiness.