Clark Mannish was pacing around in the lobby bellowing, "Hello? Anybody here?" when Romeo stepped out of the hallway to greet him, mere moments after he had banged on the desk bell. The guy was a mess, as guys always are after untold days on the road in varying states of shamed anxiety, or angry resentment, or depressed resolve, or some combination of all that and more for having been exiled from New York City. Romeo wasn't yet privy to what Mannish had done to earn himself a stint at the Bella… Continue

Madge lay in Romeo's arms, sleeping in her soft way, as light as a doll against his chest. He felt his body begin to settle against the mattress, the tension of the day loosening its grip on his muscles, his jaw unclenching, his mind giving way to allowing the sounds of crickets, night birds, the soft click and whir of the oscillating fan, and his own steady heartbeat to blend together and fade out into beautiful, blank sleep. The jolt that went through his head when the front desk bell… Continue

Frank's wife never told him she wanted a divorce, she just went out and got a dog. He came home from work one day, stuck his key in the lock and was puzzled to hear barking on the other side of his front door. He was confronted in his own foyer by a snarling new adversary––some sort of Chihuahua, Terrier mix––that had all the charm of a foot-tall gargoyle. He stood there, briefcase in hand, ready to shield himself should the thing decide to launch an attack, when he heard Charlene call out from… Continue

She couldn't get her eyeliner to go on straight. Her eyes kept tearing up and twitching under the sharp edge of the pencil. She rubbed at the lines with her finger, but that smeary, smoky look didn't work on her, her eyes were too intense already. She laid the pencil down beside the sink, grabbed a cigarette out of her pack, lit it, and sat down on the toilet to smoke. She looked into the half open eyes of the corpse, haphazardly submerged in bloody bath water and whispered, "God damn you,… Continue