Florence, Italy – 1789 Carlo Signori had been eight years old when they’d taken his testicles.Castrating juvenile boys stopped the hardening of the ribs as they blossomed into manhood, allowing for greater lung capacity, while the bones of the throat never fully developed to hinder the voice box. This was the secret of the Castrati,…

1955: The Killer had figured the pumpkin patch would be a safe spot to lay low, until the cops worked their way south towards Main St. He’d had trouble from the moment he’d arrived in Half Moon Bay. He’d snuck into the stake bed of a delivery truck in East Palo Alto, and despite all…

1. The roots of this story likely go back much further than anyone involved in it would care to admit. I was younger and thinner then, and I’d been two years on a merchant ship ferrying men and munitions across the Atlantic during the Great War. I suppose it had given me a feel for…

Ray “Killer” McElhone stood sweating on the small stage in his ratty baggy pants and porkpie hat, which were kind of his trademark. The room was dense with drifting smoke, and he was pretty sure some of it was coming from the old ceiling fan’s crummy wiring. The odor of beer-soaked wood and drunken sweat…

Luiz was about to close up his little corner bodega for the night and go home to his family, when the Stranger came in; and he knew he was going to be home late—or not at all, maybe. Because the Stranger had to die. One of Luiz’s earliest memories was his abuela’s funeral. She’d been…

“Ray?” Ray looked up from a pile of paperwork from the County. He wasn’t in the mood for anything Carl Klein was about to tell him. “What?”“We got one that won’t burn.”Ray’s family had owned the Vanderbosh Funeral Parlor since 1967. He was 35, and had had bigger dreams than running his family’s business—but here…

PITTSBURGH, PA- DECEMBER 24TH, 2017 There were only three other passengers on the trolley when Orrin got on. It wasn’t one of the new cars that pulled up to him on the freezing Carson St. platform, but rather the old bullet-shaped type with a squashed nose, one single headlamp, and a domed roof capped by…

[appearing here courtesy of FILMINT (2020)] https://retreatsfromoblivion.com/2021/01/17/fiction-all-you-need-is-a-gun-and-a-girl-by-jim-towns/