Tag Archives: murder

The Man at 100 Forrest Avenue

100

Photo by Lauris at Pixabay.com

“Are you sure he lives here?” Emily Long had been a stringer for the AP for the past three years and if this story panned out, it would make her career.

“100 Forrest Avenue, Panama City, Florida. There’s no mistake.” Quentin Street called himself a consulting detective, like how Sherlock Holmes described himself. Emily had checked his credentials after he had first texted her, and he had been licensed as a private investigator in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and New York for the past twenty-five years, ever since she had been alive in fact, so that much was legit.

“But you’re accusing him of…”

“I know the allegations against him, Ms. Long. We are here to see what retired General Watts has to say about them.” The middle-aged detective, dressed in his signature blue jeans and garish Hawaiian shirt, raised his hand to knock on the door when it suddenly sprung open revealing a bald man of extreme age wearing khaki shorts, a “I heart Florida” t-shirt, and a scowl.

“I’m not deaf, you know. Come in Mr. Street. I assume this is Miss Long accompanying you.”

“How did you…” Emily slipped her hand inside her jacket pocket and turned on the audio recording app on her smartphone.”

“You can turn that thing off, Missie.” Watts’s piercing gray eyes seemed to bore a hole in her head. “I’m ready to confess to the murder. I thought the IED would cover up the clues.”

“It is true that they did, General.” Street stepped across the threshold, glancing at both of Watts’s hands, assuring himself that the elderly man wasn’t armed. “But it didn’t eliminate the witness.”

I wrote this for the twittering tales writing challenge hosted at like mercury colliding. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 280 words long. My word count is 277.

Actually, having no “challenges” in my gmail inbox, I “borrowed” this one from Fandango. The image reminded me of something you’d see in a Sherlock Holmes mystery, so I crafted one. I used a random address generator and came up with Panama City, Florida, which is home to the 153rd Cavalry Regiment. The rest was easy.

EDIT: I goofed. I thought it was 280 words but as it turns out, the challenge is 280 characters. My bad. I withdraw from the challenge, but I might as well let the story stay up on my blog.

So That’s What Happened To Grandma

shed and mirror

© Dawn M. Miller

Lionel thought it was a strange place to put a mirror until he saw a piece of paper taped to it saying “Free.” Then the glass was a swirling black as if thousands of iron filings were being moved around by an unseen magnet.

He gaped in awe as another image appeared. “Grandpa’s shed.”

He remembered playing there as a boy. Then a younger Grandpa appeared.

“What’s that he’s dragging? The man slipped and the heavy tarp unfolded for a moment, spilling out part of its burden. Lionel recognized the corpse from old photos. “So that’s what happened to Grandma.”

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields flash fiction challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

Given the mirror, I thought I’d add another wee chapter to my Dark Mirror series along with tales such as Reconstructing Gwen and Darfur Misspelled. If I had more than 100 words to play with, I could have expanded this a bit, but hopefully it tells a complete story anyway.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Death by Bic

messy desk

© Yvette Prior

“Between the booze and the coffin nails, it’s like a monument to death, right Turner?”

Detective Gerard Harrington waved his hand over the desk of the deceased while nodding at Officer Dawn Turner.

“I guess so, Sir.” She wasn’t a fan of the flamboyant homicide investigator’s style, but everyone in the department knew he was the best in the business. “So this was a murder?”

“Nah. It’ll take an autopsy, but I’m betting these leaky cigarette lighters he collected did him in. Lung disease didn’t help, but it was the butane fumes that killed him.”

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields flash fiction challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 95. Do you know how hard it is to write a murder mystery in less than 100 words?

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Only One More

soap

© Fandango

It felt so good to get the crap off of his body, even the nausea-inducing odor with which he was always saturated after each job.

This was number eleven. Only one more to go. Each of these increased the chance of him leaving some clue, though so far, the police were chasing nothing more than their tails.

Looking down, the last of the blood was swirling around the drain, about to be consigned to the sewers.

He turned off the shower and grabbed the towel hanging outside. Drying himself off, he thought of the oath he swore over his family’s graves.

A year ago, the infamous “Gang of Twelve” raided his father’s house, tortured and raped his mother, his sisters, and his daughter, beat and tortured the boys and men, then finally murdered them, all because of rumors that the patriarch had a horde of gold bullion.

They never found gold, but the ex-intelligence agent, who had been traveling that weekend, vowed to end each gang member in the most brutal manner possible. Only one more death until he achieved his goal. But even if the souls of the dead would rest easier, his own spirit would be haunted forever.

I wrote this for the 12 August 2018 edition of Sunday Photo Fiction. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. My word count is 200.

Interestingly enough, I’d just taken a shower before sitting down and writing this story, so the feeling of getting clean was very fresh for me, if you’ll pardon the unintentional pun. For some reason, the smell of blood (like from a bloody nose) popped into my head. The rest of my tale just fell into place.

To read other stories based in the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

The Lady in Black

woman in pool

Image credit Mari Lezhava via Unsplash

The lady in black, as the tabloids dubbed her, had drowned in Victor Fountain’s swimming pool five years ago and now she was back. Marcela Saenz was twenty-eight when she died. Mr. Fountain, CEO and President of one of the top software engineering companies in the world, was on holiday with his family at the time and had no knowledge about how the personal assistant for his company’s Marketing director had gotten onto his property.

The coroner declared the case death by misadventure. Based on the contusion on the back of Ms. Saenz’s head, and the amount of water in her lungs, he determined that she must have fallen into the pool, struck her head against the side, rendering her unconscious, and subsequently drowned.

Her body was found by Johnny Morales, an employee of a pool cleaning service, some forty-eight hours after she died. The nineteen-year-old quit his job the next day.

Marcela Saenz drowned in Victor Fountain’s swimming pool five years ago today. The pool had temporarily been drained to repair a cracked drainage pipe.

Continue reading →

The Long Wait for Retribution

naddaf

PHOTO: Mohamed Naddaf has been jailed for at least eight years. (AAP: David Crosling)

I know why Norman Sharp was convicted of the murder of his wife Inbar Rahal in Melbourne. His story was that he found her in their car, beaten, stabbed, and bound. Sharp took her inside and treated her wounds, not calling for help because DHHS had already threatened to take their three children because of filthy home conditions.

Authorities found him hugging her corpse five days later.

He went to prison and the children to foster care.

To this day, Sharp continues to declare his innocence, and denies any knowledge of how Inbar had come to be so mistreated.

As for the Jinn who had possessed him, I’ve only been hunting him for twenty years, but his grievance with Inbar spanned centuries. One of Inbar’s ancestors had murdered his own daughter, whom the Jinn had possessed because he loved her. The Jinn had his revenge and someday, I’ll have mine.

I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw writing challenge. The idea is to use a Google Maps image/location as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 150.

Today, the Pegman takes us to Melbourne, Australia. Naturally, I looked the place up, but there was way too much information for me to quickly decide on a topic, and I need to get the yard work done before it gets too hot.

I looked up their local news and found the ABC news story Death of woman ‘slow, miserable and avoidable,’ judge tells husband. I used the basic facts of the case as the basis of my story, changing some of the details and, of course, the names.

I also researched Exorcism in Islam and found a Jinn might possess someone because they are dangerous to the Jinn, they are in love with the person, or just because the Jinn is evil.

I created my “Jinn hunter” because I needed a narrator.

To read other tales based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

The Industry

abortion industry

Image found at the European Centre for Law and Justice – ACLI Site Banner – Credit unavailable

Dr. Edna Thomas had drawn the proverbial short straw this month, and was assigned to the “Disposal Unit,” a slight euphemism for the plant that provided for the orderly disposal of what was left of the aborted “material” once the stem cells and other useful biological components had been removed.

Since inadvertent contact with the remains was always a possibility in so massive an operation, she had donned the required smock and gloves, though she wouldn’t use the mask and protective lenses unless the needed to personally examine the “leftovers” on the “production” floor.

“Reynolds, have you go the latest audit info uploaded to the database yet?” She turned to the IT tech sitting next to her at the control console in the glassed-in observation room.

“Just now, Doctor. Nationally, we’ve extracted and processed 108,773 units this month alone. That should keep the bosses happy.” Glenn Reynolds seemed to authentically enjoy his work here, and was totally unphased by all of the blood and tiny body parts passing by in buckets on six parallel conveyor belts.

“What about our plant?”

“Statewide? Wait one. Yes, here it is. Just over 2,100.”

Continue reading →

The Halloween Monster

monster

© Liz Young

Arthur stopped off at his sister’s last night, realizing he was too drunk to drive home from the bar. Staggering into her backyard the next morning, he discovered the apparition. Melissa followed him, looking bemused.

“Like it? I’m putting it out front for Halloween tonight.” It was then he noticed she was pointing a pistol with a silencer at him.

“Hey, what’s that?”

“Last year, you got off on that drunk driving charge where you killed a little girl. I’m fixing justice.”

That night, Melissa got a lot of compliments on the realistic display of a monster in a cage.

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt to craft a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

For some reason, I thought of a man who was hung over coming across this scene and being totally bewildered. The story wrote itself after that.

To read other tales inspired by the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Lorenzo’s Gulls

gulls

© wildverbs

“Come, my friends. I’ve got more food for you.”

Lorenzo Thornton had been friends with the gulls for decades, but then he was as good a murderer as they were scavengers. He’d found easy prey in hitchhikers and runaways along the coast highway near his cabin behind the white dunes, and his private graveyard was only a few hundred yards away. No one would miss his victims.

But he never buried the bodies before the gulls came and picked them clean. He knew they loved him, and he loved the gulls. They were the only thing he did love.

At seventy-eight, he sat in a lounge chair, drank a bourdon, pondered his disability income from wounds suffered in war, and his successful kill rating in the decades since. It was in the afternoon sun of July when he dozed off and his black heart finally stopped.

Then the gulls gathered, hundreds of them, and they watched and waited. As the sun began to set, they allowed Lorenzo to provide them one last meal.

I wrote this for the 173rd FFfAW Challenge hosted by Priceless Joy. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long. My word count is 173.

Of course I looked up Gulls and discovered that they’ll eat just about anything, living and dead, and sometimes will “feed in association with other animals, where marine hunters drive prey to the surface when hunting.”

It wasn’t hard to write my wee tale after reading that.

To discover other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

Stones

park

© Michelle De Angelis.

The beautiful park, the gentle couple strolling just ahead of him, the cool of the summer evening only made a dull impression on him, all because her blood had added one more stain to his soul.

“She was only three years old, God. Why did that butcher have to murder her?”

Detective Keith Simmons was due to retire soon. This would be his last murder investigation and he thought he’d seen it all. Then he saw the blood and her torn, battered body.

He suppressed sorrow and summoned rage. Prison was too good for that scumbag. There was a better justice.

“Excuse me.” He looked up and saw one of the people who had been ahead of him. “I believe you could benefit from this.”

Keith mutely accepted the note she was holding. As she turned back and started walking with her companion again, he unfolded it and read, “The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them.”

Tomorrow, he’d visit the child’s family again. It was his first stepping stone.

I wrote this for the 172th FFfAW Challenge hosted by Priceless Joy. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for creating a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long. My word count is 175.

Yesterday, I read a news account (actually several) about how a man with a knife attacked nine people, six of them children, at a girl’s third birthday party. The three year old died.

After reading it, I wrote my own commentary, feeling the hope being drained out of life because of such events.

Today, I’m trying to be a bit more optimistic and not let things like this defeat my spirit. It isn’t easy.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.