THUGLIT Issue Two by Justin Porter, Buster Willoughby, Katherine Tomlinson, Mike MacLean, Patrick J. Lambe, Mark E. Fitch, Nik Korpon, Jen Conley Read Free Book Online Page A

hand.
    Everything after that was a blur.
    The boyfriend bulled forward, grabbing for Roberto’s gun. Both men staggered back into the room and toppled to the floor. Beer bottles t umbled out of the Circle- K bag and thudded off the carpet. The senorita screamed.
    They wrestled for the gun. The young man rolled on top, gripping Roberto’s wrist s, squeezing tight with iron-vis e fingers. He reared back and hammered downward with his forehead, smashing Roberto’s nose.
    Cartilage gave way with a sharp crack . Blue-hot pain flooded Roberto’s senses. Warm blood poured from both nostrils. His vision blurred and for an instant, the world faded away.
    With all his remaining strength, Roberto jammed the short-barreled revolver against the boyfriend’s chest and squeezed the trigger.
    Three shots cracked like thunder. Bang.  Bang.  Bang.
    The young man’s eyes went wide then lost their light. He shuddered and flopped forward. Dead weight.
    Roberto shoved the corpse away and pushed himself up. A few feet away, the senorita huddled in the room’s corner, shaking uncontrollably. Sometime during the fight, she’d retrieved Roberto’s stolen Berretta. Now, she held the pistol in both hands. Its barrel wavered.
    “You killed him,” she said, her voice little more than a murmur. Then the gun went off.
    A window shattered behind him, the sound like crashing cymbals. Roberto flinched and wrenched his .38 up. Reflexes took over and he fired once without aiming. The senorita rocked back against the wall. The Beretta slipped from her delicate fingers.
    Roberto scooped up the fallen gym bag and walked over to her. He wanted one last look. The senorita sagged against the wall, her legs sliding out from out under her. Below her left breast, a perfect red circle grew wider and wider.
    “Hospital.”  The word fell from her lips in a labored gasp. “Please, take me to a hospital.”
    “And why would I do that?”
    “I remind you of her. I remind you of Maria.”
    The senorita gazed up at him with wet eyes. Her body trembled and her skin turned pale gray. Yet even with her life fading away, she was beautiful. Just like Maria had been that night Roberto caught her with another man and shot her dead.
    “Sí,” Roberto said. “You’re just like her.”
    He raised the gun.

Monster
    b y Marc E. Fitch
     
     
     
     
    A psychiatric ward is actually the sanest place on earth. It is the only place where a visible wall of glass separates the sane from the insane, the mentally competent from the mentally compromised. Here I am talking to a guy who is telling me in a slurred, rolling tongue that God talks to him in an audible voice and gives him visions of the future. In here, he’s insane.  On the outside, he could be president. Luckily, I work here, so I’m always on the sane side of the glass, regardless of what that may actually mean. I got the job because some sociopath pulled a nurse over the medication counter by her hair and pummeled her, and all that the other nurses could do was sit and watch until security came. That’s the problem with a profession like this dominated by women; when shit got real physical and real bad, they were left out in the cold, stark reality of a world that doesn’t give a shit about being politically correct.
    This is also where I met Matthew—a fey, balding, quiet little man, chinless like a turtle and depressed because his best friend, some woman named Mindy, had died recently. It is also where I met his husband Gilbert. An elderly, disabled, tight-skinned pack of bones with a limp, sporting a gold-handled wood cane and dressed in a buttoned- up sport coat and jeans like he was ready for a day of yachting on the sound. He barked at me about his rights as a husband to know any and everything about Matthew that the doctor had written. I told him we couldn’t give him the file. He told me to go fuck myself and that he didn’t need to be lectured by a drop-out. He was a bully. He bullied Matthew and