Selected Short Stories Featuring Ghost Dust

Ghost Dust & Selected Short Stories

  by Nicolas Wilson

  Hi.

  I’m Nic. This is my first short story collection, out in the spring of 2013. These and a collection of my journalism will be available for free at various etailers and from my website: www.nicolaswilson.com.

  Interspersed with the short stories, you’ll find snippets of novels I’m working on or have finished. I’m calling them entertisements, because the word amuses me. Some are available for purchase now, others will be available soon. I also encourage you to check my website for other projects of mine, including RSS feeds of stories that update weekly, and a newsletter so you can stay informed when my new work comes out.

  I sincerely hope you enjoy these stories, and thank you for reading.

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  Table of Contents

  Hypotenuse: A detective and a witness become acquainted as he investigates the death of one of their neighbors.

  Colossus: An arctic scientist explores the habitat of the Colossal Squid, and finds a secret even larger than the cagey mollusk.

  Support: An Explosive Ordinance Disposal officer connects with his family as he wrestles with an especially difficult day in Iraq.

  Something to Say: A forensic tech examines the body of a woman murdered outside a police station.

  Why There Are No More Dragons Or Unicorns: A father's tale of the last dragon and unicorn.

  Turing's Test: A computer with a personality disorder mulls its own idiosyncratic existence with its human roommate.

  Only Numan: A young man with a genetic predisposition toward unstable genes is given the opportunity to become a part of governmental experiments to develop superhumans.

  Prisoners of War: A forensics anthropologist and a left-for-dead Marine track a war criminal, in post-war Vietnam.

  Raider: A woman comes to grips with her own identity and mortality while breaking into an Egyptian pyramid.

  Dante's Infirmity: An old man and his family struggle to preserve his humanity and independence, navigating the medical establishment, as he approaches the end of his life.

  The Ghost Club: Mr. Houdini and Mr. Doyle explore the question of life after death.

  Suicide Spear: Humanity takes the battle to an alien homeworld's doorstep, after decades of a devastating war of attrition.

  Hang Around: A cowboy, a Buddhist monk, and others relive the results of one choice.

  Ghost Dust: A patient reflects on the aftermath of 9/11.

  Bloody Hands: A community shares responsibility and blame after a young boy's call for help.

  Green Thumb: A Department of Agriculture employee has a chance run-in with a farmer covered in chemicals. This short story was eventually expanded into a novel, Dag, now available.

  Dogs of War: Two Explosive Ordnance Disposal soldiers recover together, after nearly dying in an explosion. This story is part of a novella, Dogs of War, available for free to newsletter subscribers.

  Nexus: The crew of an interstellar star ship try to screw the alien species they meet before their corporate backers can screw them. This is the opening chapter of Nexus, coming summer 2013.

  Hypotenuse

  It’s supposed to be my night off. I can’t tell if I’m asleep and dreaming of sweating in my apartment, or if the neighbors’ loud sex/fighting has pulled me out of my stupor. But I must be awake because there’s a pounding at the door nearly as heavy as the one in my head, and I’m staggering towards it.

  It’s a uniform, a little nervous and a little pissed that he’s my wake-up call. “It’s my night off,” I tell him.

  “Yeah. But we’ve caught a few other bodies tonight. So it’s not your night off anymore.”

  I squint at him. “I’m drunk.”

  He squints back at me. “No, just hung over. Besides, it’s not like you have to drive anywhere. Body’s downstairs.” I mutter something about pants and try to slam his hand in the door, but he’s more awake and sober so he moves it out of the way in time.

  My clothes, which I’m pretty sure I remember passing out in, are splayed out like a body at the foot of the bed, as if I died in them and then evaporated out. I’m not sure what I spilled on them, but it’s formed a solid blob of cloth connecting my shirt to my pants. My slacks are dark enough that nobody’s going to notice unless I have to peel them apart. I slip my head through the shirt and look at my red tie. It's just a little too disheveled to tighten, but I’m in no mood to retie it, so I ball it up and throw it at the trash can. It floats peacefully onto an old Big Mac wrapper smeared with what I hope used to be mayonnaise.

  I strap on my shoulder holster, reach for my jacket, and then the knocking comes back at the door. Before I even consider why, I squeeze the grip on my gun. I open the door, and it’s just the uniform, shifting nervously in his too-polished shoes. “You shouldn’t pester a man when he’s armed.”

  “I thought maybe you’d passed back out.” Oh, if only.

  I step out into the hall, pat my jacket to make sure my keys are in it, then look at the uniform. “Tell me you brought me coffee.” His hand’s empty, but shaking. He’s probably just had a whole Red Bull. Kids these days. “On the corner there’s an owner-operated café, Lucinda’s. Lousy coffee. This time of morning she’s probably pissed in it. That should wake me up.”

  He walks me down the steps to the apartment at the end of the hall. I knew the girl who lived there- knew her in the sense that I’d seen her around and knew her name, and kept intending to ask her down to the piss-coffee café but never had. “Who found the body?” I asked.

  “Neighbor from upstairs, the floor above yours. They had plans to go to the gym, I guess they were work-out buddies. The door was open when she got here, and that’s when she found the body. Another uniform is upstairs with her in her apartment; she’ll be ready for questioning when you need her.”

  “No hurry,” I tell him. “If she really only saw the body then there isn’t much the scene won’t tell us. If she knows anything else, the more tired she is the more likely she’ll be forthright.” I pause at the threshold of the apartment.

  The uniform notices my reticence. “I’ll be back with your coffee in a moment.”

  “And not a second longer,” I say, thankful for the small psychological push, and walk in. Claire is leaned up against her bed in the main room. No blood, no gore, no rape; thank God for small favors. “Has the ME been and gone?” I ask the uniform who’d been watching the scene.

  “Naw. He’s with Mahoney across town. Murder-suicide by GSW with a possible sexual assault. So he’s running late.”

  “Beautiful.” I walk through the apartment. I’d imagined being invited here. Everything is as I expected, like the floral patterns in the kitchenette, except where it's not (but still fits), like the rabbit motif in the bathroom. Then the uniform gets back with my coffee. “If it’s black, I’ll kill you.” His eyes widen, but he pulls a mound of creamers and various sweeteners from his jacket, and piles them on the kitchen counter in front of me. “You,” I eyeball him, “shall live. For now.”

  I huddle over the gooey black beverage, pour in various creamers and shake in sweeteners until it turns caramel and I take a sip. “Mmm. Can barely taste the piss anymore. Next time, spot me some Starbucks, or at least a McDonald’s coffee.” He shoots me a look, a nonverbal question of if there'll be a next time, and I return a half-nod in reply. It certainly wasn't my first.

  Now normally I wouldn’t be as big a pain in the ass, but with just the two of them here it seemed a golden opportunity for both school and theater. “Now, presumably, the two of you would someday like to be real police. Don’t take that the wrong
way. We all start off as dumbass unis, but the difference between an old man walking a beat and real police is knowing things. So gather around, children, it’s time to learn.”

  “It wasn’t a robbery; killer knew the vic. There’s no sign of forced entry, nothing rifled through, even her wallet and car keys are still in her purse on the counter. And that scarf, that scarf around her neck was brought here to be the murder weapon. She’s very particular. Look at this room; there’s a very specific design scheme at play. Look at her in all of those pictures, it’s the same. Bright red scarf with those clothes? No.”

  My coffee mule perked up. “How can you be sure nothing’s been taken? Place is a mess.”

  “You can never be sure, but the mess, that’s from the struggle. Burglary: drawers would be open, contents spilled out. Obvious valuables in plain sight would be missing. But the drawers are all closed. All of this mess,” I motioned to clothes, blankets, books and pillows scattered around the floor, “is from two people fighting. Look at the rest of the house, closet, bathroom, all pristine.”

  “Killer was someone she trusted enough to let in the door, trusted enough to turn her back on- and that’s when the killer wrapped the scarf around her throat. And she fought like mad to get loose. She was a small woman, but she put up a good fight, and that tells us something. Killer’s either a man, smaller in stature, or a woman. If the scarf was worn here,