He Didn’t Say That, I Did – Noir Goddess: Ida Lupino by Kate Laity

Noir fans know what the rest of the world needs to learn: Ida Lupino rules. The goddess of the genre had an all-purpose muse. She started out acting and then turned to directing, seeking more control over her life and her stories. In the minority of women directors (an absence continuing unaddressed: despite periodic ‘year of the woman’ claims in Hollywood, the boys

CROSSOVER by Cecelia Chapman

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Skin Seeker by Lily Childs

Her neck glistened in Romeo’s rear view mirror. Perspiration bubbled up through her skin and popped against the hair curling at her nape. She’d be mouthing at the driver in the Chevy behind if Romeo hadn’t taped her up and painted a grin over the bumps where her lips should be. Strapped, wrist by wrist to either side of the backseat she looked like she was straddling a honey. Honey wasn’t there; the leather between her thighs gleamed clean.

Shake Moves On by Pamila Payne

The corpse at the bottom of the pool lies on her back, illuminated like a ceramic mermaid decorating an aquarium. Her serene face tips up, seeking the surface twelve feet above. Her pale, naked limbs look longer than they should, distorted through the water’s strange lens. Her lurid red hair gently snakes out from her head like seaweed. As the

Grub by A J Humpage

It burned on his tongue and scraped down his throat, leaving behind a deep, smoky aftertaste. The heat exploded in his stomach, made him cough.

Chris Grogan refilled his glass and found his voice above the music in the next room. ‘That’s some serious shit.’

Requiem by Katy O’Dowd

‘I will miss you.’

‘So you have said.’

‘Do you have to go?’

‘I do.’

‘Will you come back to warm an old man’s bed again?’

‘I will.’

Lacrimosa’s heart, supposing she had one, felt suspiciously heavy. She didn’t like the feeling. He was just another conquest after all.

‘Then come. Time grows near and we have taken too much of it already when we should have been preparing.’

In the Pines by Jodi MacArthur

The snow falls soft and red in the pines, as does the knife from my hands. The moon sings above the frost and layered mist. I look at the blood on my hands still warm, now cooling, and I shiver. I feel sore, tense, as if I’d just ran for my life or fought off King Kong, but I am uninjured. The blood splattered on my WICKED WOMAN tee and the