Hard Bite and Other Short Stories Read Online Free PDF

chunks out of the frame, slamming grille-first into a protuberance, leaping backwards in a corkscrew dive. As flames lick the interior, opera windows burst into a thousand flying shards. The car takes another crushing rear-end jounce. Flames reach the gas tank and the Grand Prix blasts into a fireball, consuming the whole car. Including the man in the back.
    Chad steps on a pebble in the driveway and the pain brings him back to here and now. Maybe he’s still a little drunk. It seems like a good idea, but is it really? He should call the cops, really should. The time is 7:46 and counting.
    He walks back inside the house. Finds a pair of gardening gloves in the back door, shoves a pair of shoes on his feet, and gets a 40-ouncer of tequila from the kitchen that he and Laura brought back from Tijuana the last time they were down. Tells himself if the Grand Prix keys are missing, it’ll be a sign to call the cops. In the front hall, the keys are right where Jasmine tossed them.
    He pulls gloves over his hands and goes back out to the car. Puts his gloved hand over nose and mouth before opening the door. The smell still makes him retch. He slides behind the wheel and cranks the driver’s-side window down, then wrestles the top off the tequila and takes a good pull. If the car won’t start it’ll mean it’s time to call. The starter rumbles to life on the first try. Okay, he’ll head back to the PCH northbound. If he gets stopped, he’ll just say he was heading straight for the police station to get help. He was still mulling it over when the gear slips into reverse. He throws one arm over the backrest of the passenger side and inches down the driveway, avoiding the dull stare of the backseat driver. †

 
     
    Mama Knew
     
     
    It was the suckers that pushed me over the edge. He took them up when I put my foot down about the cigars. The stogies came out of his mouth and he stuck the suckers in. Not only did that little white stick poking out of his pie hole look stupid, but the candy rattling in his teeth drove me insane.
    Tinkle, tinkle, rattle, clank.
    And then he chewed the dang thing crunch, crunch, like ground glass going around in there. I tried earplugs, but the sound of my own breathing was worse than the rattle.
    I just needed it to stop.
    It was a mistake getting married, but Mama died so sudden and I was missing someone to be close to. It came as an awful surprise, since she passed two short months after Daddy died when it was all supposed to be hunky dorey—just Mama and me, happy at last.
    Anyway, Mama was gone, and I met Brock and married in way too much of a hurry. Lo and behold if he didn’t start up with the same stuff Daddy had plagued Mama with all their marriage. Oh, Daddy was terrible. Mama was always saying she was ready to kill him. And she was. But she never did. Daddy up and died first.
    Brock surely pulled every trick in the book to make me want to kill him too, just like Mama went through. Oh, the hours I stayed up with her, as she shook with rage and wept over the very same things it turns out! Like hogging the TV remote and secretly turning the heat DOWN, when we wanted it UP. Brock and Daddy, two peas in a pod. Brock caught onto the toilet lid business early on (how Mama used to shriek about that one)...but the toothpaste cap? Not in this lifetime.
    Once the bee got in my bonnet, I watched all those reality crime shows where one spouse has the other murdered, and they proved very disappointing. It never worked out. Hit men are idiots and leave clues, and before you know it, you’re in jail as well as out ten grand to the hit-idiot.
    An accident seemed the way to go. Trying to set it up as assailant unknown was tricky. Once the police suspected murder, they trolled for the teeniest clues. But an accident, open and shut, cut and dry, now that was something else. They just collected the stiff and went to lunch.
    There were many scenarios to consider: falling downstairs, bleeding to death,