Akashic Books have published one of my short stories

Akashic Books who were the first publishing company to publish 2015 Booker Winner Marlon James, have published my story "Dubmisstep" as part of their "Mondays Are Murders" noir in real locations series.

You can read it here

http://www.akashicbooks.com/dubmisstep-by-marc-nash/

Microclimate - Friday Flash

The wind was blowing the sheet rain away from the vertical. Where the trajectory propelled through the wash of the streetlamp, it was briefly illuminated like tracer fire. Then it dived back out of the spill into the blackout just above the ground. Only the bombination of their report against the concrete, evinced their persistence.

The occasional dipped car headlamps bounced their skittering rays along the slicked road. Cast an illusion of the rain recoiling upwards off the tarmac, spiting gravity. Even from those headlamps with their own runty wipers to keep their lenses clear of waterborne refractions.

The cars precipitated a further, less transient coalescence in their wake. Those miniature rainbows formed in oil stained puddles by the kerbside. Molecule to molecule interdiction with the forsaken slick perdus, while the rest of rainwater sped by through the gutters plunging towards the storm drain.

As with the car headlamps, the mound of matter on the pavement was wreaking a distorting effect on the local meteorology. Its bulk served as a levee, damming up the water coursing across the paving flags. Until the flow reached critical volume and spouted like a cataract, inroading the gutter.

The blood running with the runnels of rainwater failed to break up into any rainbow spectrum. Blood being thicker than water but not oil, it just sat there in its own immiscible layer, gradually diffusing through the sheer volume of the rain.

The blood was seeping from a body. Where the bullets of rain hit that body, their soft-tipped heads penetrated the sodden clothing and bit into the flesh. In the dark, it appeared that the lump of flesh was being riddled by gunfire.

As the body lay there with its mouth draggled open, the rain zeroed in. Maybe the corpus would be extinguished by drowning rather than exsanguination from the hole in its gut. But the water kept sluicing back out through the downturned corners of its mouth. The body seemed like it was trying to speak, but only liquid words poured out.

The wind was also whipping through the body. As if the skin breach was a vacuum sucking in the air trying to staunch itself. The street litter propelled along in the gusts brushed the body, but none would stop to seal the hole. The magma eruption of blood that had attended the initial piercing, had ebbed as the tectonic waves of pain subsided into equipoise. The body's internal pressure now effaced by the sensation of the driving rain against the numbed flesh. The body's temperature had dropped closer to that of the surrounding atmospehere, so that the weak puffs of expiration emerging from the mouth no longer condensed against colder air.

Inside a building, another body was drumming its fingers against the window sill in syncopation with the rain striking the pane. A cloud had descended upon that body and occluded the previously warm front. A storm was surely building.

This story is published in my third collection

available from Amazon

Grise (#FridayFlash)

He cocked index and middle finger together like a pistol and pressed them against the side of the tumbler, measuring out the gargle of whisky he poured into it. He tapped the same cub scout salute to lever the brim of his hat up from over his eyes. The clock face emerged into his purview. Midnight plus one. The Broad was a no-show. Again.

He cupped a barely shaking hand (the whisky was faithfully adhering to its task tonight), over his lighter. The recalcitrant flint being reluctant to yield its Promethean secret. Like every ugly critter in this town. The coruscating flame threw more light than the overhead naked bulb ever did. But then it died, leaving a small orange diadem at the tip of his cigarette, hovering in the gloom like a firefly.

How many missed appointments did that make it now, three? Four? Not very good recall for a so-called seamus. He was supposed to keep on top of the facts. His jagged laugh serrated the smoke plume as it wound upwards to do battle with the lightbulb. Draping its cloying veil around the blue lamp, the darkness thickened imperceptibly. Watts struck back and burned its angry wake through the dissipating murk. 'Know just how it feels' mused the Private Eye.

This felt little different to a stakeout, other than he was using a glass rather than swigging straight from the bottle as he did when in the car. He still employed the empties to relieve himself though, seeing as his rent didn't cover the use of a commode. What exactly was under surveillance right here right now? The wreckage of his life. A forlorn cactus his office's ambience had managed to suck dry even into death, stood in a saucer marked by the dirt outlines of extinct water trails. Then there was a bonzai tree, like a little old gnarled homunculus permanently holding him under scrutiny. Both had initially been provided by his receptionist in an attempt to personalise the office. To suggest a human being resided within. But she had eventually beaten her path of retreat from the film of dust that leached out all colour. Leaving these two ugly memorials behind. Now they more resembled miniaturised victims of medieval torture implements; the iron maiden and the back-breaking rack. He had plenty of heresies to recant, but no Confessor to hear him out.

Of course, there was no reason to believe that his missing client case had been a frail. What had he got to go on? Nothing much. Just a mark in a diary. A single barred gate in the cross country run of life's ledger. It's not as though any contract had been signed. He wasn't on any retainer. He just put his card out there, his half-baked self-promotion with a wrong digit in the address, but he had run out of money to have them reprinted. The telephone number was correct though. They could still reach him by that.

He drained the glass and cub scouted his hat back down over his eyes. There was always the possibility of tomorrow. Some new client to walk through the door and misdirect him about their misconceived affairs. The world was full of Broads, Frails and Stiffs. Law of averages says one of them must roll up to a halt at his door.

Yeah right.

Room 1201 was up on the thirteenth floor. Nose bleed territory. Where the elevator to such high altitudes was perpetually out of commission. The clock still read one minute past twelve.