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Latest Stories

March 19, 2024
Fantasy Stories Wondering Monk

Just My Imagination

The alarm clock went off and started playing an awful tune. Tom opened his eyes and closed them back, squinting. He reopened one eye and stood up to stop the torture. The phone was on the desk, in the furthest spot from the bed. Although he changed his way of…
March 19, 2024
Science Fiction Stories Ocelotlzin

Earth Is Dead

Recording… It doesn't matter who I was; I probably lived a long time ago, and I am now just a voice someone added to the audio-visual records. What is essential is the recollection of events that lead to the current state. So, a little history needs to be…
March 08, 2024
Flash Fiction Benoit

Some Enchanted Evening

It was a rugby tackle with tears: Chrissy burst in, sobbing and babbling, hugging James. Her face was all wet, eyes wild. What…? My parents split up, Dad has moved in with his boyfriend and I cannot join them. I am shut out. I have lost my dad. Torrent of…
March 08, 2024
Horror Stories Marvel Chukwudi Pephel

In The Hands Of My Legs

The car pulled up in front of the large salon. The neon sign, that sexy broad thing, on the salon'sroof read "Mr. Gil's All-night Salon". The exhaust pipe of the car was pumping solid smoke, theswirls moving from the car and towards the salon.…
March 07, 2024
Mystery Stories Vanessa Leigh Giles

Casualty of Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Chapter 1 Until Death do us Part ‘Ring, ring!’. I answered the telephone and asked, “Hello, good evening. Who’s this? “Hello.” This is Dr. Smith from Red Cross hospital. “Is this Mr. Locke, John?”, he asked, hesitantly scratching his bald head. “Yes, doctor.…
March 07, 2024
Crime Stories Robert Pook

Bar Room Trigger

Another return journey on footpaths so familiar. He strides across each crack in each paving stone. Regular loose drain covers sidestepped. Mapping long ago mapped in Richard’s desolate mind. His pace hastened by the sight of the oncoming storm. Quickening…
March 04, 2024
Horror Stories Ano Chinemerem

Sanctity

Where should I begin? I could begin by telling you about this comely boy, whom every notable person around the streets agrees his smile could charm the bills off one. Between one smile, there was his goodness, his dreams and humanity—a little far ahead?— but…
March 04, 2024
Flash Fiction Emanuel Diaz

Et Mortui Partium

As Rafael stepped out into the rain, it wasn't the ordinary drops that fell from the sky. Instead, it was a storm of souls, each one taking the form of shimmering jewelry as it cascaded toward the ground. Rubies, diamonds, and sapphires twinkled amidst the…
February 29, 2024
Poetry Jing Li Ava

London

‘Am I in London?’ "I am." Where is Elizabeth? Happy living story All of your chapter Bounlance joy Please my heart Power hand Wise mind Our baby Vow vow Love all love Miss I miss Endless wonder Bring us together Love all love Miss I miss For everything My…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Rob Pook

Life Sentence of The Smith

Born nine months after his country won the World Cup.A child prodigy.Cast off at age twenty-four.Husband, father, emigree, away on the other side of the world.The blue-collar life.The dreams of success.The search for fulfillment.The long years of empty…
February 29, 2024
Mystery Stories Joshua Lowther

The Operator

Jason looked over to his right, his eyes barely able to focus themselves on the subject of his attention. His neck ached terribly from the strenuous movement. He was tired. The captain’s gaze came to rest on the rookie sonar operator sitting tense at his…
February 29, 2024
Flash Fiction Salvatore Difalco

The Chute

At dusk, we left our unit with a soft pink bundle. I carried it through the wet streets and into the black woods. I said I’d take it all the way, the bundle, but that we had to drop it in together. My wife’s green eyes flashed. “Don’t make me do that.” I…

When I was a rookie cop back in 1982, I was assigned to the 13th Pct. in Manhattan. My first tour happen to be a Tuesday into Wednesday midnight shift. Roll call partnered me in radio car with a real old timer in the command.  Police Officer Charlie Hauck was a grey haired, 35 year veteran of the NYPD. All of that time he had spent on patrol in the bag assigned to the 13th Pct.

 

Charlie was a man of few words. “I do all the driving“......”Don’t touch the radio.”  This was a typical keep your eyes open and your mouth shut ride.  He would ride around, (keeping his cop hat on) while pointing things out in terse statements. “SRO Hotel, hookers and junkies,” he would say, nodding toward an old dumpy building on East 28th Street. “Madison Square Park, homos and he/shes cruise here.”  That was my introductory tour of the precinct.

 

After a few months of being tested by the other old hair bag cops, I guess I passed when they realized I was not a “rat.” I saw things that were not exactly kosher, and I kept my mouth shut.

 

******

 

One night I was working with another old timer, it was a quiet 4pm to 12am shift on a Thursday evening. Over the radio we heard “13 Adam - 10-2”; which meant sector Adam was directed to report to the Station House. We rode around with no reaction from my partner.

 

Every 20 minutes or so, the call came over. Each RMP sector car in order had to “10-2 the command.” When it was our turn, we walked in to the station house and the Desk Officer nodded to the cells, one flight below the main floor.  “Let’s go, kid” my stoic partner said as he led the way to the stairs down to the cells.

 

As we entered the poorly lit, dank, urine smelling cell area there was a huge twenty something year old white male cuffed from behind to a chair. The Sergeant said, “Frankie, this is Monk, he just got out of Riker’s Island last week.”  I had heard about him from Charlie, he was dubbed “Monk the Cop Fighter” because he always fought the cops.

 

Here’s the skinny on Monk. He lived in a shithole on East 27th Street with his “mother” and “brothers.” His mother was known as Mandy, though she might as well be called Fagan.

 

Mandy took in abandoned kids, like Monk, and taught them how to steal; from shoplifting and burglary to street muggings. She’s been doing this since before Charlie came to the 13th Pct in the 1950s’. Monk took pride in being a big guy and fighting cops. The original “gentle giant.”

 

Monk was back in the neighborhood from jail now and the Sergeant wanted him to understand that he had to be a good boy from now on. If do your crimes, we will collar you, but don’t fight the cops was the message. Take the collar like a gentleman.

 

The Medium (a beating) was the Message (sorry, Marshall McLuhan.)

 

So that was it, Monk took assorted types of beatings from every cop on Patrol that night. Monk was then dumped, unconscious, eyes swollen closed, missing a few teeth, bloody and broken in a rat infested alley by the East River.

 

And it worked. He was collared about five times within the next year and DID NOT resist arrest. Even I locked him up for some bullshit disorderly conduct-drunk beef and he acted like a perfect gentleman.

 

******

 

One cold, rainy evening I responded to the FDR Drive for a Motor Vehicle Accident involving a motorcycle. There he was, Monk the Cop Fighter, DOA with his defiant eyes open. Monk was splattered in the road like a bloody Jackson Pollock painting with a stolen motorcycle on top of him. We had to inform Mandy that Monk was dead.

 

We drove over to the fourth floor walk up shithole Monk called home and knocked on the door. Mandy answered and said “What the fuck do you want?” I took off my hat and told her in my most sincere manner I used for normal people that Monk was dead along with the circumstances of his demise.

 

She just looked at me and slammed the door.

 

No emotion, no feeling, she just didn’t give a shit. He was expendable and would soon be replaced.

 

The sicko cops who worked steady midnights at the 13th Pct. made a makeshift memorial in the broken urinal of the locker room bathroom with dead flowers and condoms with a sign that said, “Rest in Hell Monk the Cop Fighter.”

 

I guess society does not want to believe it needs people like us to keep the Monks of the world away from people like them.

 

Ignorance is bliss.

 

 

******

 

Frankie Rembly has observed the transition of his city from its past wild days to the present sterile bubble that is now New York City.  He enjoys the renaissance of creativity in writing for television.  He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

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