"Greg McDuffy?"

The window flies open. Harrison has a leg out when I shoot him in the chest. He falls, crashes into the juniper bushes below. A woman walking a dog can't wrap her mind around what's happened. Stares up at the window, back at the bushes, up at the window, back at the bushes.

"No. My name is not Greg McDuffy."

I pump the shotgun.

Billy wets his chinos. Trembles morph to shakes.

"I have a wife and a little girl. Please "

I drive to the office. I want to listen to Jimi Hendrix's Live at Woodstock one last time, but my ears are ringing like a tornado siren is going off inside my head.

I reload the shotgun and grab an envelope from the glove compartment. Go straight to Vickie's office and sit across from her. The gun is on my lap.

"Well, look what the G.o.dd.a.m.n cat dragged in," Vicki says. "Should've known it was you."

"Cops are looking for me?"

She lights a Misty 120. Vickie was never much for company policy. That's why she never ascended past bureau chief. "All over the scanner."

I hand her the envelope.

"What's this?"

"My manifesto. I want it printed on the front page."

"You're s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with me, right? Your manifesto? Who do you think you are, the Unabomber?"

"You should be grateful," I say. "Rose Lensing? Harrison Willis? Billy Macklowe? You despised these people. I've made everyone else's life "

"You think you're a savior or something? Bulls.h.i.t. You're satiating your own twisted desires."

A vein in my forehead throbs. "No, you don't understand. I used to think like you do. I thought I could change things by exposing corruption or shining light on the good people do. But that does nothing. The world needs action direct action. Other people don't have the stomach for this calling, but I do. I'm like the garbage man, I "

"Then make like the garbage man and can it, you crazy f.u.c.k." She drops the cigarette in a bottle of diet soda and it hisses. "You exact revenge against anyone who crosses you not even that, anyone who irritates you. You're an ordinary psychopath, buddy, not some kind of altruist."

I brought the gun because I wanted to take out a couple of cops. But I find myself aiming at Vickie.

"This your solution to everything?" Her blue eyes blaze. "You think I've got anything to lose? I've got at least another decade before the s.h.i.tbirds in corporate let me retire. At which point I will retire to a coffin."

Sirens sound in the distance and keep getting closer.

She drops my manifesto into the shredder and presses a b.u.t.ton. The grind of the machine mixes with her laugh, hoa.r.s.e and mocking. "What you got up your sleeve now, Garbage Man?"

Three cruisers speed past the window and turn into the parking lot. Car doors slam. I run out into the awful, crackling sunlight. Dry gra.s.s crunches under my feet and my whole body itches and my head vibrates with noise.

The cops are yelling at me the way cops do. They are blurry and very far away, like I'm viewing them through the bottom of a gla.s.s.

I raise the Mossberg. But I have no will and pressing the trigger might as well be lifting a boulder.

I wonder what getting shot feels like.

Chris Rhatigan made it out of the newspaper industry alive. Now he writes short stories for places like A Twist of Noir, Pulp Metal Magazine, and The Flash Fiction Offensive. In November, he will have a story at BEAT to a PULP. If you like short crime fiction, check out his blog, Death by Killing.

Threshold Woman.

By Richard G.o.dwin.

Late June, fireflies bomb the window of my Buick as I drive slowly to Sultry.

Her brother Carlos calls her Anna, he doesn't know her secret name, the one I use as I hold her shivering in my arms.

She is clear as diamonds, soft as petals.

She shimmers in her own perfume.

A diamond is an allotrope of carbon and it's less stable than graphite.

There is nothing artificial about Sultry.

I remember the first time, I enter it again. I feel her there trembling beneath me, I can hear her slow soft pants, I can see the vein stand out on her neck as she tenses.

She is swollen with desire.

She stiffens with pleasure.

She tightens.

As if she is harnessed by a tourniquet.

I am working for her brother Carlos, a smart a.s.sed f.u.c.khead who steals cars and beats people up. He is a small time crook with big time aspirations.

He watches his sister with the obsessive scrutiny of a jealous lover.

He carries a pair of dusters with him wherever he goes and he collects the teeth of his victims.

He puts them in a box and rattles them at you. It is a small black box with the image of a snake on it.

My first day at work with him he gets into an argument with a business colleague.

I watch as he punches the guy's lights out and stands picking his teeth from his knuckles at the front of his office.

Carlos is fiercely protective of his sister and we all think he has the hots for her.

He treats her like some medieval bride.

I see her walk up the steps to his office.

First impressions are that she is beyond beautiful. There is perfect grace and s.e.xual depravity merged into one in her face.

I watch the way she moves, she knows.

She changes her body language for Carlos.

She looks in my direction, I know.

She has azure eyes set in a face that looks like alabaster.

She has thick black hair that just shines in the sunlight. And she moves like she is on heat.

Carlos uses me as a heavy.

I rent collect for him, nothing too severe just an occasional smacking.

That night as the heat sears the air he is out of town and asks me to keep an eye on Sultry.

It is not a hard job.

I turn the ignition off.

I walk up the path to her house the one she shares with Carlos and I hear my leather soles tap tap on the burning concrete.

I want to f.u.c.k her and remind myself I'm there to do a job.

I think of Carlos' box of teeth.

I ring the bell at the appointed time.

Sultry opens the door dressed in a bathrobe.

It is loose at her shoulders and her hair is wet.

There is s.e.xual calculation in her eyes.

"Come in," she says.

She barely stands aside as I slide past her.

I follow her through to the living room and turn my back as she goes into the bedroom.

There is a mirror on the wall.

She drops her robe and bends into her tights, pulling them up her full-toned legs.

She turns and sees me watching her.

There is this frozen moment when we are both seeing the mirror image of our desires and it is unspoken.

She has this perfect female figure.

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are full and her nipples dark and rounded.

I can see the outline of her shaven c.u.n.t inside her pantyhose.

Her a.s.s is tight and she has a beautifully shaped hollow between her thighs.

I consider if it's her beauty that makes Carlos mad.

I make myself a drink and sit down as Sultry comes out and puts some music on.

She is wearing a low cut black dress.

I want to touch her.

"Who's this?" I say.

"You don't know who this is Mack?"

"Sounds familiar."

"Neil Diamond. Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon."

And she starts to dance.

There is pleasure in her face and I wonder what she looks like as she comes.

I sip my Jim Beam.

I pour her one.

As the music floats in the air she stretches in front of me bending into me with no disguise at all of what she wants of me.

And I wonder if she knows she is safe or wants the danger.

Her skin is glowing, it is full of some emollient only the most beautiful women have.

She has a highly refractive index, her s.e.xuality can cut gla.s.s.