Mystery Hour
A 9-year-old girl trick-or-treating in a black-and-white Halloween costume got mistaken somehow for a skunk. The lead detective on the case is borderline Asperger’s. Covering an entire wall of her grubby office is one of those conspiracy theory maps, with all the pins connected by strings. “I’ll break anything in order to figure out how it works,” she’s famous around headquarters for saying. Her brisk confidence irks male colleagues. “Go away,” one shouts, “and take your shitty forest!” She can’t hear him. She’s out in a far corner of the city collecting evidence of the refulgence of pearls of blood.
From Guest Contributor Howie Good
Howie is the author most recently of Spooky Action at a Distance from Analog Submission Press. He co-edits the journals Unbroken and UnLost.