DEAD NOIR

Chapter 1

“You remember your first one?”

I didn’t, but then I been here a long time. Got a lot of first ones on my hands, not that any of the blood stuck there since. Helped that there was never any blood in the first place, but I’m sure my finely honed sense of apathy contributed. “Of course,” I lied, “doesn’t everyone?”

“Liar,” she said, taking a cigarette from the goon at her left shoulder. Tapping the remnants of its predecessor from her cigarette holder, she attached the cig to the ebonite holder and accepted a light from the same thug. He was all hard angles and bones and was enjoying himself, if his Cheshire-cat grin was anything to go by.

But then, hard to find a mug that doesn’t sport a grin from ear to ear down here. When you live in Marrow, you try and find a way to see the bright side of it all. Or pretend to. Regardless of your sentence, you follow that rule from the first day here until you get grassed, Gasked, or gone.

Everyone in Marrow laughs at the same joke. The sad thing is no one really gets the punchline. 

Worse, none of us want to pretend that we don’t know the score. Hells, most of us pretend that the game isn’t rigged.

 “Fine,” I allowed, fessing up to my fib. “I don’t remember my first. It’s been a while.” I pointed at the puff of smoke seeping from her blouse. “You should be careful, by the way. Those things ‘ll kill you.”

Her laugh was as dead as the rest of her, a soulless, mirthless cackle that had no warmth of humor. “That’s alright. Death and I go way back.” She took another drag, the smoke escaping in a dry haze from between hissed teeth.

“Oh please,” I groaned. “If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with so I don’t have to listen to posturing.”

My bellyaching unsettled her for a second. Scratching at the hole where her nose used to be, she tried hard to peer into my soul.

The trick was on her, though. I hadn’t had a soul for a long time. Gave that up even before I arrived in Marrow: I’m just another working stiff here, punching a clock until the Powers That Be decided that I’ve served my time and got to move on out to a true rest. If she was looking for anything deeper than a vague commitment to my work, she was going to be sorely disappointed.

“I’ve known a lot of women like you,” I continued. “All of them think they’ve got the inside track on a Made Man’s heart. Sorry to break it to you, but what do you think ’ll happen when another leading lady crosses over and moves in to his flat in Marrow? You think he’s going to have any more time for his comare then?”

Her hired muscle bristled at each shoulder, smug smiles turning to cold grimaces, but they were paid to take offense. Judging by the thick, unimaginative expressions, they were newer around here, and they’d leave just as quick. As babes or bones, made no difference to me, so long as I didn’t leave with arm in arm with them.

Besides, my words failed to hit her for anything worthwhile. Flicking a bit of ash from the end of her cigarette, she conceded the point with a shrug. “Charlie loves me. We go far enough back that he loved me when I arrived, and he still does. I’d say I’m in a good enough position.”

“Is that why you grassed the kid? She threaten to unseat the queen bee from her nest?”

“’Hive,’” she corrected, the amendment coming with another unconscious scratch. “And no… She caught it because she ended up somewhere she shouldn’t.” Another shrug. “Besides, what do you care?”

“Me?” I asked. “I don’t.” I relaxed, or pretended to – outward apathy or not, it was hard to be completely at ease when in the next few minutes I could be on an intimate date with a landscaper. Or headed Back, and I wasn’t looking forward to that experience either. Others may want to wear skin again, but if my past lives were any indication, I’m better off dead.

The game’s rigged anyway.

But for now, I focused on playing the one in front of me. “The kid was some great-great-something or other to someone.” I shook my head. “You know how it is. A kid gets taken before her chance to really become something here, someone complains to someone else, and someone…” I indicated myself, “gets a sharp kick to chase down the person who put her in the box.” I nodded my head in my captor’s direction in vague flattery. “Was ice-cold of you to send her back to her people the way you did. Daisies your call?”

“No…” she denied. “It just happened to be luck of the draw. Could have been daffodils for all I cared.”

“She your first?” I asked when she said nothing further. Been around the block long enough to know that the longer a silence went on between two people, the greater the chance that there’d be a pine box in someone’s future.

I earned a second, dark chuckle, though this one was more weary. “No… Third. One before I came to Marrow, one since then, and her.” She rubbed crooked fingers against a smooth, pale face. “It’s never easy, is it? But you’ve been at this a while. You’ve seen them go both ways, haven’t you?”

I swallowed back the memories. “Yup,” I admitted. “Pulled the trigger more than enough, and every time I hate doing it. Not supposed to be easy, though. That’s why you get the job, though – so you understand what you screwed up the first time. Or in my case, the fifth.”

“It’s easier to do them here, though, isn’t it?” she pressed. “Back in the World, you see the light go out in their eyes, you know that you sent them here. Here? You can pretend that they’re getting another chance because of you, or maybe they finally get to leave this all behind.” She waved at the rest of the world hidden beyond the room’s 1920’s art deco.

Gods, I couldn’t wait for the fashion wheel to circle back around again – I hated the roaring 20’s the first time around and I’m still not a fan. I must admit, though, that I do look good in a white suit on the off chance I get to wear one. Which is never, but I’m still holding out for the day that I get to move onto something better in this city than running down those taking advantage of the newly dead.

“Sure you can,” I agreed vaguely. “But you forgot something when you grassed the kid.”

“What’s that?” she asked, genuine curiosity in her eyes.

“Human contact matters more here, doesn’t it? In the World, you see what? Two generations forward or back? Three if you’re real lucky, and four if your family pops them out when everyone’s young. But here?” I pointed past walls scarred by scallop print. “It’s a miracle of life, babe. Well, so to speak. Who knows who you run into, and what they were like when they still breathed… Your entire line is here.”

“Maybe for you, but not when you go young like me,” she countered. I heard pain in her voice, the first sign of weakness I had heard all night. And it had been a long night.

I twisted the dagger with laughter. “I’m an orphan, compañera, so a guilt trip doesn’t mean much. No ofrenda to worry about, no one to wait for, and no one to look forward to. I exist simply to do my time and move the hell on to somewhere better.”

“You don’t want to go Back?” she asked. “Give the wheel another spin? See if it’d be a little more fair this time around?” She took another drag on her cigarette, no longer exhaling, just letting the vapor curl seductively through her the space in her collarbones. If I still had a nose, I imagine I would have wanted to bottle that particular perfume to sell later – and Eau Dame did have a certain ring to it.

In another life maybe…

“No,” I shook my head. “While I’m not crazy about here, I hated it there more.”

“You sound like Charlie. Pity,” she apologized. “You’re going one way or the other in a minute. If it were my choice, I’d out you to sleep, but Charlie? He told me that you need to go Back. Said something about you needing to send a message to the Names not to sic a triggerman on him in the future.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, and not because she accused me of being a Name lackey. I wasn’t the type to knuckle under to authority – my Eternal Affairs record spoke for itself. And it wasn’t because she made her intentions clear to pin a few flowers to my old bones: I get threatened all the time, and her vague promise didn’t make the top five this week.

A man of my inconsiderable talents almost always rubbed people the wrong way. But usually the triggerman – or woman (given that death is the great equalizer, we’ve gotten quite progressive here) – is kind enough to offer a one-way trip into true Death.

If I knew that version of Death came without an asterisk, I might even take it. But when you’re still paying off your debt to the Powers… I doubt they’d allow me to an early retirement.

“Why are you doing his dirty work?” I asked her, playing for time. “If he’s so ready to send me Back, he should be the one pulling the trigger. Honestly, I thought I was going to run into him here and…”

“You got me and the boys instead,” she finished.

I nodded. “Oh well… Which of them is going to do it?” I asked, pointing to her golems. “Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dumbass?”

She finally offered a smile of her own. “Me, actually.” She extended one hand into the pull-out desk drawer, pulling out a Gaskin and pointing it at me. If I still had a heart, it probably would have been in my throat. Not out of fear – I mean, I knew what the Gaskin could do – I usually carried one myself. But I was afraid because the last thing I felt like doing tonight was getting sent Back. No more waking at the crack of dawn to shamble to my dead-end job to sip terrible coffee and have my bones ache from the mountains of paperwork.

I knew it wasn’t much, but it was a living.

A living. I kill me sometimes.

“Mind if I have a puff before I go?” I asked.

“You sure?” she asked, the smile going sly on her face. “Didn’t you just tell me that these things will kill me?”

“Oh absolutely, but if I do go Back, I’m going to have to wait for an awful long time to legally get a pack. One more before I go?” I asked again.

Had she had any skin, her lips would have pursed. “Fine,” she said eventually, though she kept the Gaskin on me. She indicated the mook at her left shoulder, motioning my direction.

Tweedle Dee came sullenly, but that he came at all was enough for me. Like I noticed before, he was tall. In life he was probably a big man. Not gorilla big, but an athlete for sure. And new blood here, so probably still a step behind what Marrow life required of him. The bulge high on his chest told me everything else I needed to know.

I let him make the mistake, his bulk coming between me and my executioner, one of his hands going for cigarettes, the other the lighter. A good move when attending to the needs of your boss’s side piece. Less so when dealing with a flatfoot who had little to lose by taking a slim chance.

Yeah, he was a rookie alright.

I threw a balled fist into his gun arm. If I could put any muscle behind the move, I would have snapped it like a twig. But I had no more flesh on my bones than he did, so I didn’t little more than cause a small fracture in his humerus.

Unsurprisingly, he didn’t find my assault very funny, the lighter falling from his hand as he fumbled for the bulge under his jacket.

I let him get the Degrasser halfway out before I disarmed him, clicking the safety catch off and putting two into his chest. I used his falling bulk to shield me from his mistress’s salvo, putting my return fire into his comrade before I got caught in a crossfire. Ignoring the sudden smell of fresh flowers and grass, I put a last shot into the dame’s Gaskin, the weapon falling in two pieces from her hand.

Keeping my purloined weapon on her, I went over to Dee, kicking the wounded man onto his back and retrieving his fallen weapon. My eyes not leaving her, I put two more into the muscle – hardly sporting, but I didn’t need the distraction right now.

My would-be executioner sighed, sitting back down in the plush chair behind the desk. “I guess you were right. Those things killed me, didn’t they?”

“No,” I said. “But I will.”

“I didn’t want to do the girl, but I had to,” she admitted. Shoulders rose and fell in confusion. “I don’t even remember actually doing it, but… After I read Charlie’s letter…” She shook her head, her expression unreadable and yet still convincing. “I just couldn’t shut my eyes anymore to the filth of the city anymore. You understand, don’t you?”

If I was a gentleman, I would have told her I understood. But chivalry is dead, like all of us, and I had buried that as deeply as my sense of fair play. “Where would you like it?” I asked.

She tapped her left breast. “I know anywhere will do eventually, but there’s something that just… works about aiming here, don’t you think?”

I let my borrowed Degrasser respond for me, the gun speaking two eloquent arguments before retreating to a roost in my jacket.

She fell back against the chair, the first signs of flowering already peeking through her jacket. Hyacinths. The humor was too much to ignore, and I let the grin spill across my face.

“You said you don’t remember your first, but you’ll remember me, won’t you?” she asked, her voice already fading. “I don’t want to go knowing I left nothing behind.”

“I lied before,” I lied. “I remember every trigger pull, both the babes and the bones. I’ll remember you, too,” I promised.

“Liar…” she accused. “I’m just another tally mark, aren’t I?”

I didn’t respond until her face was hidden behind a beautiful riot of green stems and blue flowers. It really didn’t get any easier pulling the trigger, no matter how many times I had been forced into it.

I lie about a lot of things, but I never lied about that.

“Yes, you’re just another tally,” I told the newly blossomed garden. “Just another lost soul gone to rest. Only difference is you get to sleep for good now.” I picked up the receiver from the phone on the desk, flicking the dial slowly, already dreading the mountains of paperwork that I’d need to fill out because of tonight.

© Kurt S. Avard 2026