Free Seven Deadly Pleasures by Michael Aronovitz

pointed the gun downward. He fired twice out the window. There was no roar and echo like the movies, just a pair of hearty pop sounds. I heard screams and moans outside and noticed that the sirens were closer.
    My captor walked over and sat on the bed. He rested his forearms on his knees.
    "Go take a look, son."
    I struggled up and made it to the window. The plumber was flat on his back with his eyes open. There was a jagged area where his forehead used to be and the balance of his scalp lay in the grass like a hairy, down-turned soup bowl.
    "I killed him," the cabby said. "It's your duty to turn me in." I turned and he had the gun offered out to me butt first. He nodded at it. "This is useless to me now. Go on, take it."
    I came away from the window, snatched away the weapon, and aimed at his forehead.
    "Just stay right there. The cops will want a big story out of you."
    He laughed. He stood. He bolted for the door.
    "Hold it!" I shouted. I aimed at the ceiling and pulled the trigger to fire up a warning. I got nothing but an empty click. His voice was a teasing, receding call from the stairway.
    "You think I'd hand you a gun with bullets left in it? Boy, are you stupid."
    I looked at the gun in my hand and realized how badly I'd just been screwed. He had been wearing gloves. Now my blood and prints were on the weapon. I even had motive.
    His last words were muffled, but I heard them from the basement.
    "Better get a new lock system, kid. This deadbolt was a piece of cake."
    There was the faint slam of a door and then other slams of car doors out front. I looked through the window and gasped.
    There was an army of cops outside in the street, cruisers crisscrossed on the pavement and angled up both sidewalks. Orders were being shouted and the troopers were falling into patterns, real cowboy shit, long-barreled guns two-fisted across roofs and hoods. I blinked. Members of a S.W.A.T. team dressed in military black were assuming positions on rooftops parallel to my small fortress which was now considered hostile. They had big rifles with scopes and a couple of men were positioning cannon things that looked like small missile launchers.
    I backed away from the windows and ran downstairs for the door, to throw it open, to run out and blare the truth to them all, to go down in a blaze of glory.
    Tina's clipped and amplified voice stopped me. They had given her a megaphone.
    "Joe? Joe, please come out slowly with your hands held high. I love you so much."
    She's alive.
    I fell to my knees and wept into my palms.
    The mask came back. It forced its way into my brain with such force it was almost physical. Relief swept through me and already I was beginning to sort the mess and fabricate stories. I got to my feet and looked at my watch. 10:01. I sighed and looked around for something white to wave.
    There would be an investigation and I would have a lawyer, maybe a team, good, strong masks all around, thank God.
    In the kitchen, I grabbed a handful of white paper towels. Peace. Truce. At last. Still, on the short trip back through the living room I was not mentally focused on my lawyers, my newest excuses, or the pain in my left hand. I was not thinking of the impending trial or how much bail or whether it would hurt when they threw me face down in the dirt to cuff me.
    I thought of none of these things, for my mind was on Tina. Sweet Tina and whether I would ever again feel the taste of her rosebud lips through the thick skin of both our clever masks.

Quest for Sadness

    I ordered my butler to fetch me a shotgun. To this he raised an eyebrow and revealed the trace of a smirk.
    "Uh huh."
    "Just do it," I said.
    He stuck a long green blade between his teeth, even though I had told him not to chew grass in the house. He hooked one thumb under the dirty blue strap of his overalls and used the other to push the Marlboro cap higher up on his forehead. He smelled of Pennzoil and gas-powered gardening tools.
    "Winchester or Smith & Wesson?"