There was a man who loved his daughter, and as such loving fathers do, wanted her to be most happy. The problem was a simple one, she wished to marry; and she being very beautiful would surely have no difficulty in finding a husband—no difficulty were it not for the fact that this loving father was a pirate, the captain of a black-flagged ship that sailed the Caribbean preying on merchantmen from every land.

YOUNG BOY LEANING OVER BAKERY COUNTER

“Hank.”

 What’s wrong now? “Yeah.”

They walk the shady paths of the park. He pushes the carriage, which holds their sleeping child.

“Have you told your secretary we’re going on vacation?”

How did the man become trapped inside a jar? Don't let the megaphone fool you. He can scream all he wants, but he will remain trapped, splashing in the briny depths. Something horrid this way comes...

Her hair is long—part down the middle, just passing her breasts. She looks back at me intensely, curious as to what I think of her.

Her eyes are brown—beautiful and almond shaped. But there’s age beyond her years behind those eyes.

This ain’t gonna sit right with most of you out there, but I’m swearin’ it’s the truth. Every word of it. And I’m puttin’ the lingo down here ‘xactly like it happened. 

First off, I’m about as simple as God breathed life inta. Growed up in a little Texan town in Bandera County. Hill Country. Little town called Pipe Creek, population less ’n two hundred back in the 50’s an’ most of ’em my blood kin. I worked daddy’s farm, growin’ mostly pecans that with little rain an’ too much sunshine ended up worth less ‘n a hill of beans, but we Floyds kept a-plantin’, kept our achin’ backs an’ skin-raw hands to the plow. We was decent folk, believers in our Maker where every Sunday we sat in our family pews at the Little Rock Church. Like I said, simple. Far as smarts go I never passed the fourth grade ‘cept on a bicycle,  

Damn, how could I forget it? Zip is going to be furious. Everything she’s taken care of, and I forget the matzoth. And it’s almost sundown. Well, I’ll grab a box and hopefully they’ll have the express checkout working.

Moses Cohen’s mind was racing, but that was nothing new. “Occupational hazard,” he always rationalized. “Lawyers do a lot of thinking.” Maybe it was all that thinking that made him absentminded. It seemed like things were always last minute.

When I had finalized a thorough lavation, I withdrew a murderer’s hands from the rose-tinted water. The hideous deed was done, and now the chimes struck 4:00 A.M.  In haste I swaddled trembling fingers with the old man’s blue monogrammed bath towel. “V.E.,” it read, “Vincent Exeter,” who now in death could only signal to my wracked brain the appellation, “Vulture Eye,” and the blue towel, the milky blue of that hideous eye.

Hark! A pounding on V.E.’s front door. A phantasm of the mind, perchance?