Check out the magazine and newspaper kiosk of the future. Hubba hubba…

He starts by accumulating facts, as many facts as he can. He sifts through them with meticulous precision, leaving no leaf unturned, no page unread. He thinks of the corpse, dismembered much in the same way he had dismembered insects as a boy by pulling off their limbs, one by one, before tossing their thoraxes into the trash. He sighs, sifts some more. It is late, but he does not rest. He lights up a cigarette, drinks another cup of coffee.

When there is a knock at the door he does not startle, does not show any hint of surprise on his face or in his movements. He puts down his pen and purple notepad, looks up from the pile of facts on his desk, and walks, calmly and without the faintest hint of hesitation, to the door. One hand is rubbing his stubbly chin, while the other rests upon the pearl-inlaid handle of the .45 caliber at his side. He may appear composed, but he is not stupid.

And now his hand is on the doorknob, is turning it in a clockwise direction, and the door is opening: slowly and with purpose. She stands before him, the woman both of his wildest dreams and of his worst nightmares. She looks the role: tall, blonde, busty, etc. A true femme fatale in the flesh. Well, come in, he says, still rubbing his chin with one hand while fondling the handle of his gun with the other. She does, and the door closes behind her.

Here you are, she says, placing a brown, rectangular package tied up with brown string onto a corner of his desk, directly beside a volume with a green cover entitled The Investigator. I nearly got killed trying to retrieve it. Did you—? he says, but before he is able to finish his sentence her dark-red lips are upon his own, and he is sinking, sinking, allowing himself for one single moment of self-deception to believe that she might be completely innocent.

But when she removes her wet lips from his, he realizes his mistake, for she has a gun already pointed at his belly. Get down on all fours, she says, but he does not move, remains as placid as he was when we first saw him at his desk. I have work to do, he says, and nobody, not even you, is going to stop me from doing it. That’s what you think, she says, the corner of her mouth upturned perversely. She cocks the gun, her finger massages the trigger.

The frame freezes, and the man sitting in front of the television screen takes a single cigarette from the pack lying on his cluttered desk and lights it, then sips from his coffee, which has gone quite cold. He reaches out and picks up the unmarked, rectangular brown package that someone had apparently dropped off for him earlier today. How had he missed this before? As he leans forward to lift it up, a piece of ash falls into his coffee, and he curses.

At the precise moment he is about to open the package there is a knock at the door. The man puts the package in the top drawer of his desk, stands up, and walks toward the sound, his hands at his sides. As he does, a book with a green cover falls to the floor, though he does not seem to notice it. He places a sweaty hand on the doorknob, begins to turn it to the right, but then realizes that the door is locked. He unlocks the door, opens it.

No one is there. Strange, the man says to himself, and then returns to his desk, leaving the door open a crack. He then pulls the top drawer open and extracts the package. He holds it up to his ear, shakes it, but after doing so he still does not have any clue as to what it might contain. He looks back at the television screen and wonders what will happen to the man with the gun pointed at his belly. He picks up the remote and…

Bang! She is standing in the doorway, a smoldering pistol in her hands. The man is slumped over in his chair, blood running from the hole in his belly, staining the unopened package in his lap. She picks up the package, puts it in her bag (made of recycled paper, of course), and glances at the television screen, where it appears that a film has been paused mid-scene. Curious, she takes the remote from the dead man’s hand, presses >Play.

Bang! The woman goes down. I’m sorry, Bessie, the man with the .45 caliber, which boasts a pearl-inlaid handle, says, but you were bad. You killed Frederick P. Cobblestone, killed him because you knew he was sleeping with your best friend, Kate. And then you dismembered him just for kicks, didn’t you? Well, looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me, eh? And, by the way, did you really think I don’t know what you did to his girlfriend?

The woman gasps, stops the tape, kills the television. So, he did know after all, she says to herself, clutching the blood-spattered package under her arm. She leans in toward the desk, takes a sip from the dead man’s cold coffee, and then lights a fresh cigarette. She knows she should leave immediately, but something catches her eye. It is the book with the green cover, lying on the floor. Wait, no, it isn’t the book she had expected. She turns toward the door.

But now, in the doorway, stands one Frederick P. Cobblestone, all sewn up like new, sporting several scars. He is holding a gun. Bang! She goes down, her belly bleeding all over the already-stained package. Fred smirks to himself. He turns on the television set and the VHS player, presses >Play. The film’s plot, however, he finds completely implausible. Ignoring the bloody package, he picks up the green book, tucks it under his arm, and exits.

__________________________________________

Marc Lowe is currently pursuing his MFA in fiction at Brown University. His work has appeared in various journals, including 580 Split, Big Bridge, Caketrain, elimae, Farrago’s Wainscot, >kill author, Retort, The Salt River Review, Sein und Werden, and Storyglossia. His novelette, “Girl with Smear,” appears in issue 3.4 of Prick of the Spindle, and in early 2010 a collection of 23 short fictions will be published by ISMs Press as an e-book. Visit www.malo23.com for more information.

I am an inspector. I inspect women’s drawers (both kinds), their clothing, their hairbrushes and toothbrushes, their soaps and shampoos. I inspect the inside of their mouths, their ears, their privates, searching for elusive answers to their enigmatic nature. I inspect their credit reports, their receipts, their recent purchases: shoes, coats, hairclips. In short, I inspect anything that begs to be inspected. That is my job. That is what I do.

Take, for instance, my most recent case. Twenty-six years old. Hazel-green eyes. Sharp tongue. Was a stripper in a nightclub for two years. Currently works as a checkout clerk at a bookstore specializing in Crime and Mystery novels. (Never read any of them myself; I prefer Proust to Poe, Chekhov to Chesterton.) Dumped her last boyfriend after he got her pregnant, and extorted money from him for an abortion by threatening to call it rape. Cute.

Yes, a real cutie. Bumped into her at a party of a mutual friend, a guy who knows everyone worth knowing in this shitty town. Got to know her over a drink or three. Said she was “available,” but only to men who weren’t interested in anything apart from sex and conversation. Told her I was her man, that I was only interested in exploration, not in engagement rings. That night, we explored each other. In the morning, I explored her stuff.

I sniffed out more than just her cheap bottles of perfume when I got up to use the toilet; there was cash in the till, a safe I discovered hiding behind a large painting of a pot of melting flowers in the living room. I wanted to inspect more, inspect the pile of papers on the floor, where the combination might be found, but she was calling me from the bedroom, and I had to go back. What do you do? she asked, startling me. I’m a journalist, I said. A writer, of sorts.

Oh, a writer! she exclaimed. What kinds of articles do you write? Journal-istic things, I replied. I cover murders, mostly, though occasionally I also do write-ups on restaurants in the area. Interesting, she said, as she stroked my naked back (we were sitting in bed now). What made you decide to write about murder? Just simple curiosity, or…? Oh, I don’t know, I lied. I suppose it’s human nature to be interested in such macabre things. It’s a job.

We were silent for some moments. She stopped stroking my back abruptly and said, I have something to show you. Come. I followed her into the living room, where I had seen the safe and the stack of paperwork. Can you keep a secret? she asked. Yes, I said, though I had no idea of what she was getting at. She smiled at me then, a conspiratorial look in her eye. OK, turn away for a moment. I heard the sound of the large flower painting being moved.

I admit that I contemplated seeking out some sort of object — anything heavy would do — and clobbering her over the head with it once she had opened the safe. I wished to inspect it, you see, for what I imagined was inside, and then make off with my reward. I was slow on the uptake, however, and when the smell hit me I nearly fainted. Look inside, she said, inviting me to poke my head into the dark, smelly hole. I took a deep breath and put my head in.

Inside the safe I could make out the faint outline of some object, but it certainly wasn’t money. No, it was something I hadn’t expected. A rotted human head. The head of her ex-boyfriend, the one who had gotten her pregnant, she said, without any hint of emotion. I pulled my own still-intact head out and gulped a mouthful of air. She was still smiling at me, wondering, apparently, what I was thinking. I tried not to show any emotion.

That’s not all, she said. Would you like to see something else? I nodded, despite myself, as she closed the safe. Come back into the bedroom, she said. I obeyed, despite my better instincts. I was shivering, and also feeling nauseated by what I had seen in the safe. Sit down, on the edge of the bed, she told me. Again, I obeyed. She handed me a brown, rectangular package with brown string tied around it. Open it, she said. I want you to inspect it.

My unsteady hands began to untie the string. I paused for a moment. Where had I seen this brown package before? I was filled with a sense of foreboding. I dropped the package on the bed. Tell the truth, I said, I lied to you before. I’m not a journalist, and I’ve never covered any murder cases before. None of this is my business; it’s not my gig. I mean, thanks for sharing your secret hobbies with me and all, but, actually, I must be going, as I’m late for an…

She hit me over the head with what she later referred to as a “blackjack,” and I went down. I awoke tied up and naked, a gag in my mouth, lying beside the pseudo-Surrealist painting of flowers, which once again hid the safe from view. I wanted to inspect so many things, for this woman was truly a mystery to me, but with my wrists and ankles tied I could do no such thing. I lay there for hours, waiting, watching a tiny spider wend its way up the wall.

Occasionally she unties me, beds me, then lets me sniff at her hair, her armpits, her feet. She even allows me to inspect her wardrobe, to sample her skin salves and to smell her stockings. She says that I am a good slave, and that if I continue to be a good slave, she will let me live. (She has assured me that the head in the safe isn’t the first.) I don’t object to this arrangement: I am still an inspector, she still an enigma. Everything is in its proper place.

_______________________________________________

Marc Lowe is currently pursuing his MFA in fiction at Brown University. His work has appeared in various journals, including 580 Split, Big Bridge, Caketrain, elimae, Farrago’s Wainscot, >kill author, Retort, The Salt River Review, Sein und Werden, and Storyglossia. His novelette, “Girl with Smear,” appears in issue 3.4 of Prick of the Spindle, and in early 2010 a collection of 23 short fictions will be published by ISMs Press as an e-book. Visit www.malo23.com for more information.

Savvy Bookishness

More times than not we consider ourselves savvy individuals, especially when it comes to literature. After all, it’s what we do, and think about, and dream about. But, after reading David Shields’s Reality Hunger, our proclaimed savviness is under construction. Are Shields’s concepts the stuff of a manifesto, or do they merely parlay the insight of thinkers from the past? Luc Sante weighs in on the NY Times. Speaking of manifestos, where do war veterans turn when they want to relive their experiences through books? Tim O’Brien comes to mind. But where else? Lewis Carroll was a tricky fellow; perhaps he should have been a mathematician, which leads us to The Big Short, a book about numbers and the housing crash of 2008. Elsewhere, John E. Bolt is interviewed in Bookslut, a critic pursues her fascination with taxidermy, and the Guardian figures the value of publishing the advice of aging poets is worth its stock in gold. Talk about savvy. — Kevin Murphy

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