The Kiss: An Anthology About Love and Other Close Encounters(24)

“What do you mean?”

“I suppose we are talking about Smith’s neighbors, right?”

“Right,” Bigham agreed.

“Maybe in the back of their minds they know something is there. That it’s something very, how shall we say, not right. It’s there when they go out to their cars in the morning to go to work. Maybe they think ‘It’s coming up from the ground’ or ‘It’s those trashcans across the way.’ Something like that. Or maybe they’re afraid to know what they know. Like the neighbors must have known near Buchenwald or Auschwitz.”

“That’s a pretty bleak look, don’t you think?” Ralph said.

“Well, you asked,” Delores said. “But I’ll tell you what. What gets me is that girl kissing him. Letting him feel her up and everything. Like she said, she knew there was some smell there. Something ‘underneath’, she said. She just didn’t know what it was, though.”

“Underneath,” Ralph said. “Yeah. That fits.

The two lapsed into silence for a moment.

“By the way, dogs do it,” Ralph said.

“Do what?”

“They do what Lonnie Smith did. They find a carcass like that, then they play with it and roll around in it and get the dead smell all over them. I never figured that one out satisfactorily for myself. Why dogs do it, that is.”

“Dogs don’t do that!” Delores said.

“You have never lived in the country,” Ralph said.

Delores paused for a moment.

“True,” she admitted.

“But I think I know why,” Ralph continued. “It’s only a theory, and in this instance it only applies to the dogs.”

“I’m dying for you to tell me,” Delores said.

“I am willing to bet that Necrotizing fasciitis bacteria is nature’s only true and effective flea and tick treatment.”

Delores raised her eyebrows. “Ahh. I get it. But what about Smith? Why would he act like a dog? And why the hell didn’t his flesh start rotting?”

Ralph shook his head. “Since we’re having him held at the hospital pending a full toxicology report, I will guess that he’ll be found to be a carrier. And, by definition, carriers are immune. Classic Typhoid Mary syndrome.”

“Fleas and ticks,” Delores said, and shivered.

“Probably,” Ralph said, “he has skin problems when he isn’t messing around with dead bodies.”


Ralph detected Delores’ shudder.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back down to the hospital and see what the lab guys have got so far. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

“You’re on.”





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George Wier lives in Austin, Texas with his lovely wife Sallie, two dogs and two cats. He has been writing in earnest for more than twenty-five years, and is the author of the Bill Travis Mystery series and co-author of Long Fall From Heaven (2012). He also writes science-fiction, steampunk, and is an avid short-story writer.

Visit his website at http://georgewier.com





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For a Soldier


Jason Deas


The war ended and kids streamed home. All of them left something behind—some more than others. Morgan returned with tattered baggage.

His parents drove him home from the airstrip. He didn’t say a word except that he wasn’t ready to talk. His mom and dad seemed to understand.

At home, Morgan went upstairs alone, shut the door, put his kit bag down and sat on his bed as a rush of images flooded his mind. Fear, joy, pain, brotherhood, loss. He’d never felt more out of place and surreal than he did at that moment. Homesick for the jungle, he sobbed quietly into his hands. He had a love/hate relationship with the bush and at that moment his heart splintered in new directions. He felt as though he’d been chewed up and spit out and wished he’d been swallowed like his best friend Crimson.

Morgan put on a Black Sabbath album and stared at a picture of the two of them as he wondered what Crimson would be doing if he’d made it home. The song tickled his ears and he shuddered with pleasure as he peered into the faces in the photograph.

Morgan took off the Sabbath album, put it back in its sleeve, and replaced it with a Jackson Browne record and turned off the lights. Even before sleep his head began to spin as if he were already in dreams. It was the first time in memory he’d gone to sleep without a gun. Sitting up in the dark, he blindly felt around under his bed until he recognized the familiar form that comforted him like a pacifier. He retrieved a gun his father had bought him on his eighteenth birthday. Rubbing his finger past the trigger he wondered how many times he’d pulled the one on his military weapon. Without doing so, Morgan knew exactly how it felt, what it sounded like, and even what it smelled like. With the gun in his right hand and his dog tags in his left, missing the night sounds of the jungle, he slept.

After six hours he awoke on the floor beside the bed. In the middle of the night he’d ripped off the sheets and moved to the comfort of the hard floor. With his gun still in his right hand he thought about the day ahead and all the proper things that should be done by a soldier home from war. His parents would want to have the entire family over for a homecoming dinner and the thought soured his mood.