Martin Ross

“Xocōlātl” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #227

Pender’s face crumpled almost as the cocoa hit his palate. A heavy “WTF?” almost escaped his lips – along with a slug of thick, acrid sludge – but he caught the self-satisfied grin pushing through Valindez’ dense beard and swallowed defiantly.“Is this some kind of childish prank?” he demanded quietly, depositing the insulated tumbler on the camp table between them with as much dignity as he could muster.Valindez arched his brows in mock innocence. “Indeed not. You had mentioned two weeks ago that a cup of hot chocolate was what you desired a...

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“Souls-A-Swappin’: An Alexis Chatt Novel of Paranormal Romance as by Anita Brake, AKA J.D. Robbed, AKA Martin Ross” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #226

Disclaimer: A sequel to “Hearts A-Pfishing: A Romance as by J.D. Robbed”Chapter 12Atlanta, GeorgiaAlexis adoringly poured Dvlknsh another cup of hemoglobin-infused Mozambique AA, stroking the spot where the Latvian mob had ripped a patch of hair and scalp from the Syburslovenian hacker to create a clone capable of doubling Dvlknsh’ plagiarized output.The genetic doppelganger turned out to be encoded with probing psychological insight, and when it killed off half the male population of Cherry Stream (the Virgin River clone that regularly topp...

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“Pilgrim's Egress: A Mike Dodge Holiday Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #226

“Yeah, I don’t mind that so much,” Cousin Greg replied in an octave that suggested the contrary. “It’s when they have to shove it in your face all the time.”I nudged my chair gently back, an inch or two to allow graceful egress. Load-bearing plastic against composite garage flooring does not permit such a thing, especially at Thanksgiving, and Sarah glanced toward my end of the table. Rainbow Greg was in full dudgeon, and he gave me merely a flickering side-eye as I rose. Brother-in-law Jake soon would rally as well against rampant face-shov...

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“Seen: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #225

After my dad passed, I attended my first and only art auction. In my little sister’s living room. Nine pieces in all, staged on the couch, the maple hearth over the faux-birch faux-fireplace, the guest chairs, Grandma Kendricks’ old rolltop desk.It was a round-robin process, the spoils divided evenly between the three Dodge siblings. I came away with a landscape of hazy western hills and narrow pines, a study of the Alamo, and a still of two lemons and a teapot. Oil on sturdy eighth-inch boarding of the type used to ship provisions in and pr...

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“Dog Day Aftermath: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #223

A insane amount of this is true, though nobody died…November 10, 1979Indiana State UniversityTerre HauteWhen a poet laureate comes to town, folks just by god gotta know about it.OK, so it was the poet laureate of Illinois, a few miles on the wrong side of the Wabash. But Gwendoline Brooks had been named to Jimmy Carter’s Commission on the National Agenda for the Eighties (get mugged, call a cop; need a little vision for what promised to be a letdown decade, you want somebody who knows their Modernist verse). Besides, this was a universi...

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“Separation” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #221

Kristen’s REM cycle crashed again into the guard rail. The one constant, morning to morning, was the heron.It was symbolic of nothing -- simply the last inhuman face she’d seen before the Miata and Tod simultaneously punched holes in Lake Springfield..Something clattered above Kristen’s head, followed by a disembodied curse. That, too, was part of the morning ritual, along with defoliation, granola, stout deep roast drowned in Hazelnut Coffeemate, the digital Journal-Register, the customized multivitamin, the Zoloft, the daily trailer for a ...

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“Passage” by Martin Ross

CAUTION: Oh, much cursing.In the beginning, Merrill took little notice of his companion. The Gateway was a popular portal in a storm, and this late October afternoon, the worlds outside the reinforced concrete refuge were fit neither for man nor beast nor, as Merrill oft reflected, those somewhere in-between.It wasn’t a particularly pithy observation, but the combo of vestigial wit and self-deprecation was worth the occasional goodwill of some woke liberal arts/social sciences undergrad in need of a nobility fix or minimart clerk in need of ...

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“Simon’s Gospel” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #219

To Cassie FinchCAUTION; Language, possible religious triggers, discussion of women’s reproductive rights.The table felt funny.That generally went without saying. Simon knew by rote the number of steps from his apartment house to Warshinski’s on Division, how many lights he must chance on the morning pilgrimage (two), and how many coat hooks he must count from the entry step-down to rear booth (Warshinski’s was OG Chicago). He could smell 30 feet before Mrs. Warshinski slid his standing order onto the formica with a mute pat on the shoulder. ...

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“Aggregation” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #217

CAUTION: Language and grisly images and reality TVNothing had happened at the mansion seemingly in forever. Which kinda, sorta was the whole point.“I don’t give a fuck about manatees,” Mason growled. He then glanced anxiously down at the headset hanging about his neck with his $350 readers and the wood-gripped director’s lens finder that supposedly had belonged to John Ford. He’d hoped for a gig on Yellowstone or at least Yellowstone 1972, and after some flunkie for Taylor Sheridan told him who John Ford was, figured it might help give him s...

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“The Telltale Cup: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

I actually could feel the quiet tension build in the room. It was what the place was made for, all best intentions aside.Novels were being written, now faster if not better. The heart-pounding crush of late-semester reality etched the faces of scattered young people who’d imagined the clarity of stimulated isolation might somehow bring a brighter future into focus. Transactions that had begun with aspirational camaraderie were turning adversarial. At the table behind us, sisterhood was eroding rapidly into jagged shards of “sibling” rivalry ...

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“Bad Moon Risen: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

The home was erected in 1935, a totem of privilege amid sweeping poverty and uncertainty born of a horrific world war, a global plague that had filled American cemeteries, and the abrupt and abject failure of hallowed financial institutions.Abominable taste wasn’t merely its origin story – the design was an amalgam of then-popular architectural fads, portentious “classic” touches, and the homeowner’s narcissistic whims. Nearly a century later, the house at 340 West Winwood was no longer anything anyone might call a showplace, save each fall,...

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“Good Night Sun: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #214

“Oh my God, just look at that sunset!”Mike stirred, swallowed a sigh with a residual essence of his morning chorizo, and lowered his Kindle.Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye. While he’d read the thing a dozen times over the past 40 years, Mike’d downloaded it that morning after listening to some $300 haircut with a New York honk mangle a cordial “muy bien” into a preening “muy bueno” to the inscrutable delight of the lobby breakfast host. Mike understood maybe one word of the host’s sardonic response to a server before he spotted the tubby ...

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“Hearts A-Pfishing: A Romance as by J.D. Robbed” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #213

Dedicated to and based on a concept by Danschneider Arroyo, for every scammed author and lover everywhere...Chapter 54East Vrmlmelmnsk, SybursloveniaAt last, Alexis’ heart’s desire was within one GPS turn of fulfillment, and her desirous heart thumped rapidly as she crossed the landfill beyond the village bazaar.The trans-Atlantic journey, the loss of her luggage at the charmingly quaint bicycle-powered Aeropotschk carousel, the succession of taxis and taxi robberies, the bribes to countless provincial cops, the chicken she was coerced to bu...

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“The Big Picture: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

NOTE: Only Jill Bolte Taylor is real. We graduated together from Terre Haute South Vigo High — a memory now wiped from this brilliant, inspirational woman’s mind.Professor Deshpande and I were seated in buttoned club chairs before a massive flagstone hearth that might have accommodated a black rhinoceros on a spit. Robust flames devoured the cellulose and oxygen within its gaping maw, relishing the meal. The spines of the gilded volumes flanking the fireplace were aligned as if with a micrometer.The professor was unexpected but welcome compa...

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“Visitant” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #210

News of the alien invasion had dominated the news around here for several days, but Oscar and Nicole saw no option but at least to try.Nicole already had lost two cousins to the inhumans’ violence in their town two states away, and there was little reason to believe there would be much mercy or humanity when they reached their destination. They controlled the water and food supplies, battling and battering the resistance. They apparently had been bred to hate the humans who ventured into their appropriated territory, and had no hesitation in...

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