TWO STORIES
ONE
Even when we had no money for the electricity, Elsa managed somehow to buy me this suit for our wedding day. She wanted everyone in the village to know that we were going to loft over our given stacks in life. I’ll never forget that on our wedding night she told me she believed in our potential more than she believed in that of any God. Secretly, if it were possible, this made me want to love her forever. But outwardly I warned her that she mustn’t speak such ways when they could be listening. Because—of course—they were always listening.
She just laughed in that schoolgirl way of hers and told me to shove a corn cob where the dogs didn’t know how to wash properly. I desperately wanted to believe that she was right, so I pressed the hand of my new love and tried to forget about the troubling words she had expressed.
After my wife was disappeared, I never thought I’d be able to go on. This is the suit I wore when I married her, and this is the suit I wore when I buried her memory. I have worn it all of the days in between. Today this is the suit I wear as I prepare to discover for myself where it is that the missing go.
Story by Michael R. Kuntz
TWO
Two young men died in a Miami club this past Friday. The Miami PD’s official statement declared the cause of death as a currently unnamed club drug that has managed to find its way into the Miami nightlife scene masquerading as ecstasy or speed. As the 8th and 9th deaths from this new substance in the past month, it would appear southern Florida has the beginnings of an epidemic on its hands. This man you see here is Gilbuerto Gacha. He owns over 16 hectares of Colombian jungle and a hotel on E 1st St. He is on several United States Government watch lists including those of us at the DEA and the CIA. It is suspected he has the hands of several of the city’s largest drug organizations in his pocket. His involvement in the local narcotics scene is recent, initially acting simply as a supplier. However informants have led us to believe that he is polluting the product that he supplies. His hotel has recently received a 12 year supply of soap bars from an undisclosed supplier in China. We have reason to believe the soap is merely acting as a mode of transport for between 2 and 3 tons of unrestricted research chemicals he has been cutting his supplies with for additional profit. With deaths up from last months total of 4 and no concrete way to trace the origins of the drugs used by the victims, Gacha may soon prove to be one of the larger rats the city of Miami will have to exterminate.
Story by Mark Khoury