Category: Guest Authors

By Greg Bullard

Welcome to part three of the nine part fiction series “Immortal Blues” by Greg Bullard. Returning to the scene of the crime offers few new insights aside from the fact that our killer means business. Did you miss parts one and two? You can catch up here, and then here.

Clear liquid, with a shimmering, silvery quality on its surface, danced unnaturally in the crystal goblet before me, lit only by the dim twilight of morning. I let my eyes trail down to the hand that held that goblet. I could just make out the vague outline of my fingers. The sky behind them was distorted only slightly by my otherwise looking-glass clear skin. Beyond the window, the stars, as seen through my hand and the goblet it held, gave shape to a road which led to a great stairway and in the far distance beyond a forest of stars twinkled in the light before dawn.

My focus returned to the crystal goblet as the first rays of morning sun peeked above the tall buildings of 5th Avenue to my east, across Central Park. The light passed through my windows and struck the contents of my goblet, which instantly changed to a fine, ruby wine. The light shattered into a thousand shards that flared and played amidst the fine crystal of the goblet and beyond, casting a Kaleidoscope-pattern of deep red splashes across the room. My hand holding that goblet was opaque once more with long, thin, strong fingers of unmarred alabaster skin. Had I human hands, they would be scarred and rough from use, calloused from countless hours spent with a sword, but I don’t have human hands.

Sighing wistfully as the road disappeared with the dawn, a road I may not take again for many years, I drank deeply of the wine. I took nourishment and strength from the care and love with which it was made. Each sip was a feast compared to the best of food made by even the most caring hands of man, a whole plate of which was merely a nibble of the sustenance I truly required. No amount of love and care invested into food or drink made in this den of banality and despair could match a tenth of the care my people take in crafting a simple table wine.

Sitting cross-legged on the thick rugs covering the floor, I closed my eyes and cast my thoughts back to the attempt on my life. I lived within the details, savoring each one. By the time I woke from my reverie, I had come to two conclusions. The blues man played with unnatural skill, and the person trying to kill me had left one other thing behind – a bullet.

Later, walking back to the scene as it were, the sun was high in the sky as I turned east and south in NoLita towards the Lower East Side. I stopped to get a loaf of fresh, hot Italian bread from a bakery I favored and tore off pieces it as I walked, chewed and thought. I had believed I was just wandering aimlessly last night, but had something drawn me down to the Lower East Side? Or had someone divined that I would be there? Normally those tricks don’t work on me, but clearly I wasn’t the only factor, there was the blues man to consider.

Stopping outside the alleyway where my assailant had been crouched and waiting; I let my senses really drink in the place. What I perceived made me feel queasy and oily as if I was soiled just by proximity, but that’s normal for this part of town.

Strangers walked by in a steady stream – disheveled, dark, forlorn masses brightened only periodically by the rare person with a hopeful smile or the odd child with a magical laugh.

At closer to 7 feet tall than 6, wearing my long, black coat, broad-brimmed, black hat, black clothes and knee-length black, soft-leather boots, I should have stood out. I should have collected stares, but no one paid me any undue attention. I had that quality about me. Even in the brightest of days and under the scrutiny of the brightest of human minds, there are shadows within which I could disappear or at least be unnoticed.

Extracting a small pouch from the pocket opposite my watch, I undid the leather thong and sprinkled the tiniest bit of silvery, metallic shavings into the palm of my hand. Pulling the string tightly closed with my teeth, I tucked the pouch away. Bending over my hand I whispered words in a language not regularly spoken in this world. I could feel the True Silver shavings squirm and align in my palm.

Opening my hand, I saw an arrow formed, pointing to the opposite side of the street, the back drop of where I’d been standing when the shot was fired. At a break in the vehicle and foot traffic, I crossed the road and followed the arrow. As my orientation changed, so did that of the arrow, aiming steadily towards a single point. In a matter of minutes I found the hole in the brick left by the bullet which had been fired at me.

With my thumb I held the base of the arrow in my palm and whispered again over my hand. Instantly I felt a tugging sensation. Sending my thoughts along that feeling, I held my arrow under my thumb and pulled back slightly. Bits of brick and mortar grated and dribbled out of the hole before me, tiny grains of reddish brown sand falling into the garbage at my feet. Then, with a sudden shift and a breaking sensation, the bullet or rather the bullet fragments, broke free of the wall and landed in the palm of my hand.

Black and gnarled, with jagged edges, the bullet was fragmented into five large pieces that gave off a sharp, familiar, repulsive odor. Quickly opening a second leather pouch, this one empty, I tilted my palm and dropped the bullet fragments and the tainted shavings of True Silver within. Inspecting my palm carefully I saw the livid, angry red marks where the metal had touched my skin. The wounds were minor; the cold wrought iron had not burned me too badly.

I was certain of one thing now; someone was definitely serious about killing me.

About Greg Bullard:
Greg currently resides in Austin, TX, trying to do his part to Keep Austin Weird. While his wife, Julia, and daughter, Emily, both work hard to keep him on his toes, it is Julia’s red editing pen that does the most work. When he is not muddling his way through some fiction, he usually writes about What Greg Eats.

By Greg Bullard

Welcome to part two of the nine part fiction series “Immortal Blues” by Greg Bullard. In part two we meet The Crone, Isabella, and her granddaughter Marisela. In search of answers do we instead get more questions? Need to catch up? You can start at part one here.

An hour past midnight, I’d made good time; Isabella would still be up. With a click I flipped shut my watch and slid it back into my pocket. Tilting my head up and to the side I eyed the moon, bright and high in the clear sky, it’d be full in a few days. Sighing inwardly I turned left and stuck to the street lights, skirting the edge of Prospect Park instead of walking through it. It may be late, but I couldn’t take the chance of being seen in the moonlight, too many questions.

I covered the last few blocks warily. Already it had been a long night. Someone was trying to kill me, leaving me with two big questions. First, I wanted to know who. Second, I wanted to know how they could have a gunman waiting for me in the shadow of an alley I hadn’t even known I was going to pass by until I wandered aimlessly in that direction.

Minutes later I could see Isabella’s house in the distance. Dim light filtered through the age-stained, white lace curtains, spilling out onto the stoop of the old brownstone. I could feel the power of the wards even as I approached.

Seconds later, standing in front of the doorway, I waited. There was no need to announce my presence, they knew I was here. When the door opened a lovely girl of medium height, in her early 20s, wearing a white dress craned her neck back to watch me as I towered over her. Her full, petulant lips sat below large, dark brown eyes. The flawless olive skin of her face was framed by straight, long, black hair.

“Marisela,” I said in a rough, whispered tone, inclining my head slightly by way of greeting, “May I speak with your grandmother?”

“It’s late, she’s asleep,” she answered in curt, clipped tones.

Tilting my head to the side, I nodded at a tiny bowl of honeyed milk and fresh baked bread sitting on the sill, visible through the window and said, “She’s expecting me. She always leaves an offering for the Wee Folk when she expects me.”

As if on cue the frayed voice of the old woman cut in from beyond the hallway, “Please show our guest to the sitting room Marisela.”

“Yes Grandmama,” she answered, stepping back to allow me into their home.

Without needing a guide, I took the first left and passed through a dark velvet drape to the dim sitting room beyond. A windowless room, there were no electric lights, and it shown with the flickering illumination of the few dozen candles burning within.

“Can I take your coat?” Marisela asked. Her words were polite, but carried the usual biting tone she used with me.

“No thank you Marisela,” she flinched at my use of her name, “I shan’t be long.”

“Good.”

Preferring to stand, I looked around at the paraphernalia around the room. Some of it was truly mystic, some just the trappings of the job – placed to set the mood for the marks, lubricant as it were, to help squeeze the extra dollar from wallets grown stiff and rusty in a bad economy.

A Tarot deck, worn with age, sat face down on the table at the side of the room, but for the single card upturned in the center, the Knight of Swords. It wasn’t there just for ambiance. Most of her patrons would never see that particular deck. She had been expecting me.

Marisela stalked into the room purposefully and handed me a fine porcelain cup of black tea, sweetened with honey and softened with milk. I raised it in salute to her, or in this case, to her back as she was already leaving, and I drank.

Shuffling out of an adjoining hallway on tired, old feet, assisted by a twisted, wooden walking stick, Isabella thumped and drug her way to a comfortable chair and sat heavily. She wheezed for a moment. I let her catch her breath.

“Death came calling for you tonight,” she pointed a long, tobacco-stained fingernail at me and laughed a throaty laugh that threatened to send her into a coughing fit she might not survive at her age.

“A pity, I wasn’t home,” I tried to sound dark and mysterious. I have a reputation to uphold.

“Ask your questions,” she spat the words more than she spoke them.

I ticked the questions off on the ends of my long, slender fingers, “Who is trying to have me killed? How did they know to have someone waiting in that alley?”

“What do you have for me?”

Pulling the sweat-stained wad of folded bills from my pocket, I peeled the outer bill from the stack and tossed it down to the table in front of her.

“We don’t want your filthy money,” Marisela hissed from where she stood in the shadows of the darkened archway beyond the sitting room.

Raising my eyebrows at her, I declined to respond. Gesturing at the bill, I told Isabella, “The killer was paid with this. It’s all I have to tie him to whoever hired him.”

With a quickness most wouldn’t consider possible from her parchment-leather, worn, arthritic fingers, Isabella pulled a small athame from the cord at her bosom and deftly sliced a thin edge off of the bill.

Pulling a pouch from the pocket of her peasant dress she removed an intricately carved pipe and began stuffing it with tobacco from the pouch. When she judged it set, she took her long pinky nail and scooped out a hollow in the center of the tobacco and deposited the strip sliced from the bill.

Lighting a taper from a black candle, she applied it to the pipe and drew a deep breath until the tobacco caught and began to burn with a sharp, sweet aroma.

Turning to the bank of candles at her right, she exhaled a slowly spreading cloud of smoke. Twisting and turning in her chair, she watched the smoke dance and play in the guttering light, swirling with the slight movement of air in the otherwise still room.

Presently she waved her hand through the smoke, dissipating it before she turned to me, took another draw on her pipe, exhaled, then leaned forward and spoke, “The man who was paid with this bill had instructions.”

Her voice changed slightly as she intoned, “A tall figure of shadows and lies will come tonight and stand at the window of the blues man. Kill him.” Standing, she waved me off and turned to hobble from the room with the thump and drag of her slow steps.

Taking this as just the opportunity she had been waiting for, Marisela said, “I’ll show you out.”

Separating four bills from the stack, I set them on the table and turned to leave. Just before I crossed the threshold of the door I spun quickly and reached a hand out to cup Marisela’s cheek. She froze beneath my touch.

I tilted her chin up as I leaned forward. Separated by less than a foot our eyes met and locked. I spoke softly but clearly without a trace of the rough whispered tones I typically used, the singsong lilt of my voice brushed aside her animosity as I said, “Thank you for the tea, Marisela.”

She trembled beneath my touch and her cheeks flushed. She cast her eyes down trying to break from my intense gaze and mumbled softly that I was welcome.

Leaving her shaken and short of breath in her doorway, I stepped outside once more. My long coat swirled about my knees as I drank in my surroundings before turning and walking quickly away. It was important that I make it home before morning twilight.

About Greg Bullard:
Greg currently resides in Austin, TX, trying to do his part to Keep Austin Weird. While his wife, Julia, and daughter, Emily, both work hard to keep him on his toes, it is Julia’s red editing pen that does the most work. When he is not muddling his way through some fiction, he usually writes about What Greg Eats.

By Greg Bullard

Welcome to part one of the nine part fiction series “Immortal Blues” by Greg Bullard. In our first installment there is gun fire, spanakopita, classic blues music, and eventually a decision to visit The Crone.

The world slowed down around me – the same way it always does when someone tries to kill me. I’d love to sound all blasé, remark that this is so tedious, but truth is, to this day my knees still get shaky when someone tries to ice me. It doesn’t matter that they’ve almost no chance of succeeding.

On this particular cool April night, I had just rounded a corner in the Lower East Side when that feeling hit. You know the feeling – ok, probably not – but it’s like your head is suddenly submerged in a bucket of ice water. You come out frosty and alert, senses firing on all cylinders, the world moving in slow motion, acutely aware of everything. That’s the feeling I had now.

Briefly I mulled over what was special about tonight that someone should try to off me, but I came up with nothing. I’d just left this little Greek place in Greenwich Village. Their spanakopita was worth the trek. It was made by the gnarled fingers of an old Grecian grandmother whose face had so many lines it looked like she’d worn out a few bodies getting it there. She didn’t have many years left on her, so I went a few times a month. In my situation, you have to be mercenary about these things. It all goes by in a blink.

I was walking along towards no particular destination, head full of cobwebs, submersed in the sensory deluge that is New York City – a cacophony of sights, smells and sounds fit to drown out everything else in the world when that frosty feeling hit. I took stock of my situation.

Mostly I could smell the bucket at my feet, full of cigarette butts soaked with run off from the earlier rains. Nearby, dinner was almost ready for someone – meatloaf I think. Beyond that, I could pick up rank body odor muted only slightly by the last traces of soap used earlier in the week; both were topped with a fresh splash of cheap beer.

I was facing the wrong way; I didn’t see my would-be assailant. All I saw were the tenement slums of the Lower East Side, broken in spots by the black iron bars of a closed business. Most of those doors had been shuttered for years or more.

From a cracked window overhead spilled the dulcet tones of a blues guitar. Blood dripped from the end of each dying note as the calloused fingers of the blues man picked out each sound and gave it up to the world as an offering of his pain. I paid attention to which window it was. When I sorted out this life and death shit, I had to pay him a visit.

The only other thing I heard was the creaking metallic strain of the spring in a double-action revolver as the hammer drew steadily and quickly back, cocking the gun to fire.

I swung my head around to catch a glimpse of my assassin. I locked gazes with him and took the full measure of his thoughts. He was scared. He wasn’t a killer; he was a hard-up loser paid to pull a trigger for the cash it took to ride his addictions straight to hell. Poor, sad bastard.

Click. The hammer passed its first position on the way back to locking full before crashing forward onto the firing pin.

There were at least seven ways I could kill him in that interminably long tenth of a second playing out in slow motion as his gun readied to fire. Instead, I nodded my head imperceptibly in his direction, reality twisted slightly and I took a step to my left, into the shadows.

Fire blossomed from the end of the gun and at speeds that were fast even for me the bullet travelled the distance between us and collided with my chest, neatly piercing the skin, shattering and rupturing the bones and organs underneath. The relative silence of the nearly abandoned city street was destroyed by the report of the gun. The fading echoes were punctuated by the thud of my body collapsing back in a heap, eyes open to reflect the glint of the odd street light not burned out from neglect.

At least, that’s what he thought happened.

I moved unseen on noiseless feet to my killer’s side and lifted the bundle of cash from his pocket. He didn’t really need it and after he tried to kill me, I really deserved it. Besides, it could lead me to whoever hired him. His eyes were fixed on a spot on the ground, twelve feet in front of him, where he was certain he was watching my lifeless body bleed out on the pavement. He turned and ran.

The acrid smoke from the spent cartridge nearly drowned out wet cigarettes, unwashed bodies and cheap beer. Overhead, the last note of Robert Johnson’s, “Hell Hound on my Trail,” spilled out of that same cracked window and hung in the air just like the smoke, drowning out the world around it.

My eyes lingered on the spot where I’d just died, at least as far as my junkie, killer friend was concerned. My stomach flip-flopped, but I was determined not to lose my spanakopita. I wiped my forehead on my sleeve, even though I wasn’t sweating. Settling my hat back on my head, brim down low, I took comfort in the shadows hiding my face.

My fingers closed on the wad of cash in my pocket. Would my answers lie there? The Crone would know.

In the distance a woman screamed, a long keening wail that ripped and tattered what calm remained within me.

I took off at a brisk pace, my steps chewing up the distance as I made for friendlier streets. Behind me the blues guitar launched into the oddly upbeat Blind Lemon Jefferson song, “See That My Grave is Kept Clean.”

About Greg Bullard:
Greg currently resides in Austin, TX, trying to do his part to Keep Austin Weird. While his wife, Julia, and daughter, Emily, both work hard to keep him on his toes, it is Julia’s red editing pen that does the most work. When he is not muddling his way through some fiction, he usually writes about What Greg Eats.