EconoClash Review #7

By J.D. Graves

Lucky Number Seven of EconoClash Review presents nine quality cheap thrills of neo-pulp lunacy that will push the envelope of genre limitations. Themes of hard luck and ill fate weave throughout this fresh anthology featuring: time slipping lovers, day-drunk step-dads, fantastically stoned fairies, brawny tavern heroes, haunted beauty queens, underestimated female lawmen, blown-cover spies, smack fiend postmen, and even honest to God cowboys. All of them fighting to survive worlds they unwittingly created themselves.

Whether you find top notch schadenfreude to be your guilty pleasure or anonymous up-vote, the seventh issue of ECR is your lucky ticket to a world of quality cheap thrills. Read original stories by Simon Broder, J. Travis Grundon, Angelique Fawns, Matthew X. Gomez, Willow Croft, Russell W. Johnson, Scott Forbes Crawford, Kevin M. Folliard, and Mack Moyer only in EconoClash Review #7 from Down & Out Books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Down & Out Books
• Release date: Apr 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005753924

Book preview

ECONOCLASH REVIEW

QUALITY CHEAP THRILLS

#SEVEN

J.D. Graves, Editor-in-Chief

Copyright © 2021 by EconoClash Review

Individual Story Copyrights © 2021 by Respective Authors

All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

EconoClash Review, an imprint of

Down & Out Books

3959 Van Dyke Road, Suite 265

Lutz, FL 33558

DownAndOutBooks.com

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Art by Duane Crockett

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author/these authors.

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THRILL ORDER

Welcome Thrill Seekers

The Platform

Simon Broder

Speculative/Horror

Son of a Gun

J. Travis Grundon

Crime

High Adventure

Angelique Fawns

Fantasy

Death and the Mountain

Matthew X. Gomez

Fantasy

The Lights Went On In Georgia

Willow Croft

Horror

Rough Justice

Russell W. Johnson

Crime

Vaquero’s Vengeance

Scott Forbes Crawford

Western

X

Kevin M. Folliard

Spy/Noir

Last Delivery

Mack Moyer

Humor

Cheap Thrill Biographies

WELCOME THRILL SEEKERS

LUCKY NUMBER SEVEN. You don’t know this yet, but this book in your hands is now your lucky charm. Fate would have it so. I understand if you do not believe me. Luck and Fate are all past tense words created to help you and me sleep better at night with the choices we made during the day. And so now you can rest assured, that by reading this, your luck has just changed for the better. And if it doesn’t, it just wasn’t your fate. But we can never know either until we’re looking in the rearview. ECR believes when it comes to luck and fate, we make our own of both.

2020 is in the rearview mirror and I for one am only looking forward from here on out. Quality Cheap Thrills will be everywhere and they will be cranked to eleven. Lucky for you 2021 is nothing but green lights up ahead. Your reality is what you make it. At any moment tragedy is waiting to adjust your perspective, make you rubberneck at the dumpster fire while someone else watches you watching them. There’s always someone looking at the bottom from the top. And those on top like the view enough, they will do whatever it takes to keep it. Why wouldn’t they? Up there those sunny days seem to last forever. Up there where the blue sky stretches into the infinite and you can forget the cold hard fact those at the bottom know well, that no matter how good you think you got it, everything in this life is temporary. Like the young lady on our cover who just realized the hunky man is just ones and zeros. And if he’s just a simulation in her reality…what does that make her?

Between these pages nothing is as it seems. Do not take your luck for granted and if you do—like the characters presented in these nine tales—be prepared to think quickly or else suffer your fate.

Each of these lucky stories drive you to the edge of your own reality. Go ahead, thrill seekers, peer over at the void…scream if you want to…hock a wad and wait to hear it hit the bottom. We’ve got spies coming in from the cold, fairies looking to get high, jaded romantics, time slipping lovers, criminals, postmen on smack, and even honest to God cowboys. All of them fighting to survive worlds they unwittingly created themselves.

Your reality is what you make it.

And as always, do your part by remembering what my godfather always told me while peeling oranges in his garden:

If YOU READ it, You Must REVIEW it!

Keep up the good fight!

—J.D. Graves

Back to TOC

THE PLATFORM

Simon Broder

It was 9:42 PM on a Wednesday evening when Martin watched Lisa die.

They were standing on the platform at College subway station willfully ignoring one another when it happened. They had just come from seeing the play The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia for Lisa’s birthday. As they’d been waiting for their train, Martin had been replaying the events of earlier that day in his mind, wondering if he’d screwed up for real this time.

Earlier, she had pretended to like the bath bombs he’d given her and then they’d gone to Fran’s for dinner—a fast-food excuse for a proper diner if there ever was one—and he’d been cutting into a steak sandwich when the words poured from his mouth.

I don’t love you.

He had meant it, but he hadn’t meant it to come out like that, and almost straight away he assured her that he cared about her—that she meant everything to him. But it didn’t matter. He saw the life go out of her eyes when he said it. He’d cut her deeply and there was no stitching the wound. She hadn’t argued with him or demanded an explanation or an outpouring of emotion. Instead, there was just a single sandy tear which she’d tried to hide.

But after that her misery was clear. She hadn’t said a meaningful word to him in three hours. It wasn’t the silent treatment, exactly. She hadn’t cut him out entirely. But there was a coolness and somehow that was worse. As they had walked down the stairway littered with fast food wrappers leading into the subway station, she’d bummed a token from him. But she hadn’t said, honey, lend me a subway token. Instead she’d called him pal, the word itself callous.

She was treating him like a friend she barely knew—a casual acquaintance. He’d given her the token and while his wallet was out he’d pitched a toonie at the street kid strumming a ukulele against the wall. The guy leered at Martin with teeth stained brown, but seemed thankful. For a moment, Martin envied the kid. No more than fifteen or sixteen with an evident drug problem and lack of a fixed address—the kid still had years to get his life together. Next to Lisa’s iciness, that kind of freedom seemed like a fantasy.

But then she died.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her form appear in the space above the track. She landed stiffly, but right away scrambled over the filthy track, looking for something. Martin could only watch slack-jawed as she found the third rail. The shock fired her reverberating body into the gap under the platform. When he peered over the edge, he thought he could smell burning in his nostrils, but he wasn’t sure if that was just his imagination playing tricks on him. He wasn’t sure that any of it was real. He searched his throat for words, trying to call for help, but found nothing. All he could do was hold his mouth in an O and stare.

Holy shit!

The words didn’t belong to him—Martin had somehow forgotten that there was anyone else on the platform beside himself and Lisa. He couldn’t register who had said the words. He was totally transfixed by the macabre vision in front of him, his wife’s lifeless body the only thing he was capable of perceiving.

A bustling arrival broke the spell. Paramedics climbed down to track level and strapped Lisa onto a stretcher, but their effort was hopeless. They wheeled her charred body away.

Martin tried to piece together everything that had happened that day. He had woken up married to a beautiful woman and now she was gone. First, he’d destroyed their marriage and then she’d destroyed herself. As Martin stared ahead blankly, a form loomed over him.

Did you know her? the cop asked. Can you tell me a little bit about what happened?

Martin stared dumbly at the officer.

If only I could do this day over again.

The alarm woke Martin up at half past eight. Lisa always slept through the first few blares, but when he didn’t hit the snooze button right away, he could count on her rolling over and screeching at him to turn the damn thing off. Their morning routine was a constant strain on their relationship—him working 9 to 5s coding games while she could sleep all day. She always told him he’d think of things differently if he had to upsell pint specials and deal with cranky old men whose steaks were never cooked the way they asked for. But some mornings while he was wiping the sleep out of his eyes and staring lonesomely down into his half-empty coffee mug, he wasn’t sure which one of them