Joe has written several stories across different genres. Most of these have been published in magazines, for example, Thriller UK Magazine, or in anthologies such as the bluechrome 2003 Anthology. From time to time short stories will be posted here and any feedback is welcomed.

The first story here, 'Listen' was originally published in a bluechrome anthology and was described by a reviewer as a story that 'remained with you well after you had finished it'.

The second 'A Slice of P.I.' is a rough and ready spoof of the old Raymond Chandler books and 40s noir films, written in that style and full of references to old films which most people probably haven't even seen. This was first published by an internet site who obviously got most of the jokes and should therefore get out more...

Listen

Listen, let me tell you how it happened, 'cos you know, sometimes people say things and stuff gets all twisted up. Jenny always was a bit crazy, a bit strange a few people said, but she was my girl, always has been, whatever anyone's told you. Yeah, we'd had a row, but that was nothing. Everyone has rows, don't they? Thing is, that was all sorted. I went round to her Nan's place and we were okay. She was back to herself, said she wanted to talk to me. She was the one who said we should go up to the roof and I thought okay, hot night and everything, it'll be cooler on top of the block. Lots of people go up there, it's only six floors up, so you don't get too dizzy or anything. Mind you, you got to be careful what you run into on top of the estates. Check it out before you get too close. You can't be sure something ain't happening that you don't want to be involved in. But where Jenny's Nan lives, that's usually all right, you know, it's usually quiet. I've been up there sometimes on my own, just for the quiet.

So we're sitting up there on the roof, right in the middle, backs against one of those big stone blocks they've got up there and she's holding my hand and we're just talking about things, the people we know and how we shouldn't row and all that and then she starts up again about the same stuff as always. 'Can't we get out of here? We could get out of London, the two of us, go live by the sea somewhere'. She hates living on the estates, but I've told her a hundred times, we can't just leave. She was thinking we'd go and claim the benefits somewhere else, but it ain't that easy. You know, I'm looking for a job and everything, I can't just up and go. I've got my connections and people trying to help me here and you can't just chuck it all for a change of scenery.

Then she goes all quiet and she says, 'Are we always going to be together?' I don't know what to say to that. I know she wants me to say, 'yeah, always', but this time I didn't say it. I didn't want to hurt her or anything, but I just couldn't say it. So I just said that always is a hell of a long time and we're both young and laughed it off.

But she looked at me. Just sat there looking at me. It was a bit spooky really. Then she says what do I mean by that, so I say that, you know, maybe she'd meet someone else she'd like better than me and she jumped straight in and said, no, that wouldn't happen and then I said, well what about Billy and that was a real stupid thing to say, 'cos that was what the first argument had been about. Bill said she'd been coming on to him in the pub and I should never have believed him, 'cos he's a liar through and through, but he said it and I asked her and we rowed.

But not this time. Now she just looked at me again, kind of sad and I felt bad for bringing this up, so I said I was sorry and Bill was always pissed and didn't know what was going on anyway, everyone knows he drinks like a fish, so you couldn't really believe anything he said even when he wasn't lying outright. And she said, 'well, why did you then?'

So I told her that I didn't believe him now, but she had to admit that in the past, when she'd been doing the drug stuff and got out of her head a bit, she'd done some pretty dumb things. 'Yeah,' she said, 'but not like that.'

But she wouldn't look at me and I thought for a second that maybe I should have believed Billy, until I realised she was beginning to chill and I asked her what she'd taken and she said nothing, only a couple of downers 'cos she'd been uptight about us and everything. I asked her how many was a couple and she showed me the packet, there must've been eight or nine left in there and I took them off her, I didn't want her to have them and she didn't complain or anything, so I reckoned I was doing the right thing and that's how I came to be carrying them. They're not really mine. Then we had the silence again with Jen just looking at the sky, which I got to say was real clear. It was also real quiet suddenly. Not silent, I mean you could hear things in the distance, but it was things on their own, you know. Someone coughing, and a TV from one of the flats coming on, and there was a car off in the distance starting up and driving away. Everything was clear and Jenny said, 'Can you see those stars? They're so bright.'

And then she told me that some of those stars were dead, they didn't exist anymore, but we were still seeing the light from them, light that they'd sent out years before. She thought that was the saddest thing, these stars throwing out light and then dying, leaving something behind them that one day would just fade away and no-one would notice. I asked her how she knew all this and she said, 'I know lots of stuff like this, stuff no-one else wants to know', said she collected it all, all the stuff no-one else wanted. What, like me I said, as a joke, but she didn't think it was funny and suddenly she was crying, real quiet, so quiet that I didn't even know it for a minute.

So I put my arm round her and said everything would be all right, but I didn't really know why she was crying, I mean, it was only a joke, right? And she sat there for a while and then pushed me away and said it wasn't going to be all right and didn't I ever want to get out of here, didn't I want to do something, anything, but not here, not with the same people going nowhere? And I got to tell you, man, she scared me a little, 'cos suddenly she jumped up and started talking fast, like she was crazy, all about wanting to do something different, something special and I wanted to calm her down, so I said, sure, we'll do something, we got time, we're not much more than kids, we can do anything, we can go anywhere, whatever you want, Jen, whatever you want.

'I want to fly away,' she said. I thought she meant try something new, go somewhere new like she'd said, but she was talking crazy still, said she wanted to jump up and re-light those dead stars up there, started whirling around on the roof and then danced right over to the edge. There's that two foot wall there all around the roof, so as you can't just slip off and she jumped up on it like it was round a front garden and started walking, no, sort of skipping along it and now I'm really scared and I tried to talk calm, but I'm thinking she's out of her head on something and my voice is really loud when I call to her to come down.

And she turns to me and smiles the biggest smile I've seen from her in weeks and she says: 'it's okay, we're going to fly together, just like you said'.

Then she sort of half turned away from me. I thought, no, she's going to jump, God, she's going to jump and I ran over to her and grabbed her arm and yes, maybe from below, it could've looked like we was fighting, but I swear, God I swear, I was trying to pull her back, but she kind of slipped and I couldn't hold her, I had her arm for a second, I could feel her arm, but I couldn't hold her, it was too much and I heard her land. Man, I heard her land.

She just wanted to get out of here, away from all this. But it can't happen that easy. Not for people like us. Not from here.

Can I go now? I've told you what happened. Can I go now?

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A Slice of P.I.

It was a dark LA evening, when the door of my office flew open and she stood there, framed for a moment in the doorway, the picture of loveliness. It was only for a moment though. Maybe I shouldn't have put those rubber stops on the wall. The door rebounded and there was a muffled cry as it slammed shut in her face.

I stayed where I was. It could be a trap.
Seconds passed and the door opened again, but slowly this time. It's difficult to look good while you're holding a handkerchief to your swollen nose, but somehow she managed it.
"You looking for me, kid?" I said.
"Are you Mr. Marlow?"
Her voice was muffled by the handkerchief, but I could tell it was low and throaty. Maybe she had a cold.
"That's Wolram, lady."
"Oh," she sounded surprised. They all do. "But on the door, it says…"
"Yeah, I know. The sign writer was dyslexic."
"Well, that was a little careless of you, wasn't it?" She had lowered the handkerchief now and was recovering her poise.
"Uh-uh," I said, "guy couldn't tell where I put the decimal point on the cheque. I saved eighty-one fifty and for that you can call me anything you like."
We stared at each other for a while. She was the first to crack.
"May I sit down, please?"
I examined the angles. It could be a trap. I would be alert.
"You go ahead, sister."
She gasped: "How did you know?"
"Lady, with your manners, you had to be either in the church, or the medical profession."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Maybe you are a detective after all."
"That's what it says on the door, doll. 'Detective - Private'."
"No," she replied. "Actually it says 'Defective - Pervert'."
"Yeah, well the guy couldn't spell either and most of my clients can't read, so I figured it wasn't too important. Now which is it, lady, Nun or Nurse?"
"Do I look like a nun?" she asked.
I considered that for a moment and then for a few moments more. She didn't look like a nun.
"What's this about, sugar?"
She didn't say anything, just bit her lower lip and jiggled her foot up and down a bit, like she was considering something. It would have looked cool, if her shoe hadn't fallen off.
"What's anything about, Mr. Wolram? Love, lost innocence, family betrayal - "
I cut in quickly before she could go on…and on.
"I get the picture, doll, it's about power, money and sex. Why don't you take it from the top?"
I sat back and lit a Camel. She makes the office a touch crowded, but the smell is better than most cigarettes.
"I'm looking for someone, Mr. Wolram, I'm looking for my brother. He lived with me and Mother in a small town in the Mid-West, but he got into bad company. He was a pool player and he went off to the big city to make his fortune." Her voice started to crack. "We haven't seen him in over two years and now he's stopped writing…"
She broke down then, a convincing performance, but I wasn't buying a ticket. Something in the tilt of the head, the catch in the voice, darken the blonde hair and…
"You will help me, Mr. Wolram, won't you?"
I leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath. Not a good move, since I was even closer to the camel now.
"You haven't told me his name, sister," I said softly.
"His name's Steve…" she hesitated slightly, "Steve Morgan."
"So your name is Morgan too?"
"No, it's Browning. I got married."
"You've no ring."
"I'm divorced."
"You kept your married name?"
"Yes, it's better - "
She stopped herself and I jumped in.
"Better than your maiden name? Better than Morgan? What's wrong with Morgan? Except that it's not your maiden name, is it, lady?"
She gasped and started to speak, but I cut her off.
"Spare me the Browning version. You may be looking for Steve Morgan, but he's not your brother, sister. He's not any relation to you at all. In fact he's a slightly down at heel P.I. specialising in set up divorces who calls himself Mike Wolram!"
She cried out and almost fainted. This time it wasn't an act.
"That's right, doll, don't ask for Steve Morgan, 'cos you'd have to whistle all night for him. I buried him long ago, when I was turned over by a dark haired beauty called Maud Hummelrupher. She always hated the name, so she called herself Browning."
I was standing up now, leaning forwards on the desk.
"I always knew that one day you'd come walking in through that door, I just didn't know you'd try it so literally. You couldn't make it without me, could you? You bled me dry as a pool hustler and then you threw me away and now you want to find me again."
She'd found her voice at last, but it was different, desperate now.
"Steve, we were good together, we made lots of money. I always looked after you, I cared for you, you know that’s true."
I walked round the desk towards her.
"It's not true, baby, you never cared about me. You remember that night in the garden, Maud? You told me it wasn't my night. I had to throw the game against the New Yorker. Not my night! I was so hot that night, I could have won playing left handed with a car-jack tied round my wrist. Instead I lost and he went on to the national championships. What did I get? A one way ticket to Snookerville. You should have looked out for me, Maud, you should have looked out for me."
I was standing over her by this time and she had shrunk back in her chair, but the anger had left me. All I wanted to do now was to somehow get her out of my office. The window seemed the preferable option, but I turned away from her. The next sound I heard was the click of a revolver being cocked.
"You shouldn't have spoken to me like that, Steve," she said. "You don't know what I've been through in the last two years."
I didn't turn around.
"Why don't you tell me, sugar, I ain't going no place. But I would like to sit down."
"Sure, Steve, but not at the desk. Move over to the straight chair there, by the little table. I don't want you hiding where I can't see you."
I sat down on the wooden chair next to the small table with the bird ornament on it. It was a special piece given to me by a grateful chocolate manufacturer after I'd found out who was stealing his special formula for crispy nut candy blocks. It wasn't valuable, the Malteser Sparrow, but it was special…
Maud was still talking, rambling through the last two and a half years. I started to pay attention, after all I still didn't know what she wanted from me. I sat still. That's what you do in a trap.
" - and then I met John. After all the years of scraping the barrel, at last I was up in society. No more seedy bars, hustling with low-lifes like you, no more cheap drinks and greasy diners. I would be up there at last."
"Senator Johnathan Lynn," I said. "Now it begins to make sense. He's got a reputation as a churchgoer, a man of principle, a stalwart of society."
"And I married him."
"And got all of that pillar of the community baggage with him, eh? Maud Lynn! You can't have been too happy about that!"
"I was ecstatic!" she almost screamed at me. "I was finally mixing with classy people, people who used handkerchiefs instead of spittoons and went to the theatre instead of the drive-in."
I tried my soothing tone to calm her down. I didn't want the gun to go off by accident, while she was spitting fire.
"So what happened, doll-face, what went wrong?"
"Nothing went wrong, Steve, but the rumours started. Who is she? Where did she come from? What did she do?"
"They wouldn't buy the small town schoolteacher line, huh?"
She moved closer to me.
"I couldn't even use that one. They would have checked. And eventually someone would come crawling out of the woodwork and wreck my life."
I knew now what the score was. I could hear it on the radio coming from the office next door. The Rams were up in the third and playing a passing game. That was no good for me. I had to run with the ball.
"So you started going back, didn't you, baby, back through the old address book, killing off your old acquaintances, anyone who could bring you down." As I spoke, I edged my hand nearer the sparrow on the table next to me.
"That explains the recent murders across the State, doll, but did you have to kill the priest? He wasn't anything but an old, broken man."
"Yes, I had to." Her face was hard now, a mask of hate and desperation. "He could have recognised me. Who do you think it was who broke him in the first place?"
"So it was you who killed Thursday." My hand was at the base of the ornament now and creeping up.
"Yes, I killed Thursday on Wednesday, leaving me enough time to drive to Reno by Friday and team up with John for Saturday's opening of the Sunday schoolhouse. I didn't think it would rate a mention in the press here."
"It didn't, babe, but I got a call from Thursday's widow asking me to look into it. She didn't know that me and Thursday had a common connection called Maud Hummelrupher. It took me a day to work that one out, but once I had that, I knew I was onto something. We've been working this case from opposite sides, honey and now we've met in the middle. Tell me, how did you find me?"
She hesitated, shrugged and shifted the gun slightly. After all this time it must have been getting heavy.
"I didn't. Coming here was chance. I was going to hire you, to find you. It's turned out to be a cheap transaction. I don't regret this, Steve, we had some good times, but most of them were lousy."
She took aim with the revolver. I needed to throw her off balance for a second.
"Wait, Maud! Don't do it! You may not regret it now, but one day you will and maybe for the rest of your life. We're just two people who've been something else on the way up this hill of life and we don't really amount to anything, but - "
"Stop it, Steve, there's nothing you can say that will make any difference. This is just the roll of the dice."
"Chance, eh?" I said. "Well, c'est la vie, baby, or even, c'est la mort."
I hit the switch at the back of the sparrow and the dart tipped with curare sped out of the bird's mouth and buried itself in her stomach. At the same time I threw myself sideways off the chair as her reflex action triggered the gun. A hole the size of my fist appeared in the back of the chair. When I looked around, Maud was lying in a heap on the floor.
The cops were going to go doolally about this one. As I reached for the phone I looked back at her. All she'd wanted was to swap a place in the bars for a place in the stars. But it ain't that easy.
As the man said, when you hustle, you use muscle and when you're straight, you use weight. She hadn't understood the difference between the two.

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