Martin Ross

“Everything Possible: A Curtis Mead Story” by Martin Ross

“I need to confess,” the woman stated.It was on the bright side of 11 a.m.: Curtis Mead had been called out on an early morning shooting downtown just as he’d brought the needle down on his New Zealand Dark Roast pod. After seeing the body off, after questioning the half-dozen white-collar witnesses and destitute spectators who’d set out early for coffee or coffee money, after officiously but diplomatically telling the local media to find a private corner for self-fornication until the sun had at least crossed over the Courthouse dome, Curti...

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“The Adventure of the Turret Goner: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

Gadzooks: Strong language. “Ah, Holmes…” my trusty sidekick murmured.“Yes, Watson?”“So you’re Holmes, now?” Det. Curtis Mead mused. “I’M the sidekick? You want to oversee the evidence collection, maybe question the suspects? Wouldn’t mind you wanted to do the paperwork after this shit’s done. And swear to God, if you call me Lestrade…”“Didn’t know you were a Doyle fan.”“And just why not?” I was skating near the polar bear end of the ice. “Must be like a million Sherlock Holmes books out there — most done-to-death dude ever. Even Kareem Abdul...

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“The Mc’ler’s Tribute” by Martin Ross

Dedicated to Russell Mickler, the forger of fantasy and fancy, whose tales of the intrepid and virtuous halflings and their neighboring realms deserve so much more than a Tolkien glance. Russley planted his broad quarterling rump in his beloved Lazyboar recliner, caressing the bristly but somehow supple upholstery he himself had crafted after battling the great beast Porkham to reclaim the Dark Swamp of Treyf from the armoured, terraforming Fieldsmiths. Russley’s fine leather Croqs, cobbled by the Croq Monsieur who lived in the Sandalwoo...

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“Short Stuck: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

“…So of course, I got the short end of the stick once again.”“What’s that even mean?” I asked.Jay blinked, and stabbed a fry into his Heinz. “What do you mean, what’s that mean?”“Literally. Or I guess metaphorically. A stick is a stick – it has no long or short end.”“It’s just an expression,” Jay muttered. “You want me to be a little plainer? There’s soccer moms next door.”That he’d been leering at the millennial school-day lunch bunch since “I’m Erin” had recited the lunch specials, rendered his sensitivity suspect. “If you’re suggesting wh...

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“Stewed Over: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

It’s the thought that counts.Wonder what Albert Einstein might have made of that one. Would he have dropped quantum theory and devoted his life to crafting fine sachertortes and punschkrapfens? We’d all still know his kindly, fuzzy mug from the Harry and David’s fall catalogue, but we’d gobble Al’s pastries for that “little taste of prewar Vienna” rather than to assuage our postwar nuclear angst.I wouldn’t have entertained that thought if I hadn’t been hangry when I ran into Deanngela Hofstra at the Gemm’s Mart. St. Patty’s had passed leavin...

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“Mine Craft: A Mike Dodge Intrigue” by Martin Ross

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’"Mending Wall"Robert FrostMost folks believe Robert Frost was a big wall guy. But verse is an iffy basis for popular discourse, especially hereabouts where poetry is for eighth graders and the Hallmark Store and the occasional bar band that actually buys that the Friday crowd is craving original works that illuminate the human experience of bar band dudes.In point of fact, Fro...

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“Karakuri-Netsuke: A Mike Dodge Minimystery” by Martin Ross

Seth Waldron’s living room was overpopulated with hares and dogs and mice and octopi and dragons and spirits and skeletons and not a few couples engaged in eternal copulation.“Ah, you’ve found the shunga,” the master of the house breathed behind me. Dad had a 30-year run of National Geographics shelved in the new bedroom I demanded at nine, and it didn’t take long for me to develop a literal Indiana jones for the more fascinating anatomical aspects of sub-tropical anthropology. I couldn’t feign studying the use of cowrie shells as indigenous...

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“Mum: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

“Well,” the elfin gift shop volunteer reflected. “I suppose it depends.”There are three basic types of hospital volunteers. She was the third variety, and so came around the counter to peer at Ecumena’s meager floral selection.“Frankly, a nice houseplant provides a positive life force, and do you know, I read somewhere that a tropical like a spider plant can purify the air in the room?” “Verna” related, almost breathlessly.“My wife wanted something more, ah, ornamental,” I smiled, almost apologetically. She patted me on the forearm. She unde...

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“Jeff and Gina's Wedding: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

“Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”I immediately shifted for a look-around. Sarah’s fingers, resting softly on my right paw, constricted into a vice I might not have anticipated from one who forced me to scientifically document her lunchtime fats and calories.Just as Sarah’s tender(er) mode had activated the second the organ sounded the bride’s approach, my Pavlovian adolescence kicks in when I hear those words followed by even the slightest rustling or throat-clearing. In film – or at least the genre of film Sarah prefers com...

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“Like Hell: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

“In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there…”Saanvi was running exceptionally late, so I decided I’d roam the halls of academe. Academe wasn’t thrilled.I’d met two of what sufficed as the University’s finest within about fi...

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“Perfetc.” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #188

“It was a perfect day.” For a nanosecond, I think it’s an auditory hallucination.Part of the blood on his face, his arms, the Jimi Hendrix tee, is his. Only people with tubes and pipettes and machines will be able to distinguish that that isn’t.The blood on my fingers, my “Keep The Immigrants/Deport the Racists” tee, is of the same composition, though as the minutes pass, the blend richens with fresh arterial. My skin is unbroken, but whatever perfection he found in this day is now draining onto the sidewalk and soaking through my shirt.**No...

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“The Cat, The Dragon, and The Maneki-Neko: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #187

The mid-September breeze caressed my newly shorn neck, and I felt like the shit, senior heavyweight class.At the right-angle gutter between the Dollar Palace and Sandy’s Beauty Supplies, warm, brisk cross-currents had trapped a dust-devil of discarded Rescue Squad Subs wrappers, dead Fireball nip bottles, used vape pods, and even a deceased Trojan kiting about like a Man-of-War in a hydrothermal vent of sadness. The sirocco coursing in from the Beltway bore an incense of double-stacked burger, non-trans-fried chicken, cumin and curry and gar...

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“Deader Yet: A Mike Dodge Story Within a Story Within a Story” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #186

“Yeah, I remember the little asshole.”It wouldn’t have won me a Pulitzer or a National Book Award or even 112th Place in the Bad Hemingway Contest, which ended in 2005.But it was enough of an opener for the half-dozen or so writers left in the Press Room to turn from their late afternoon deadlines, and for a couple to grab a now-lukewarm Coke and join Rich Hawksley and I at the table.This was a year after United Airlines stopped underwriting bad Hemingway, and the National Agricultural Federation Annual Policy and Bad Motivational Speakers C...

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“Opposite Days: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

“So when I was 16, I visited Broadway for the first time with my high school drama club,” Dr. Carol Brandauer began.It seemed like an odd departure point. But if I’d learned anything in the course of 30 years interviewing agronomists, economists, and political scientists, it was that academics enjoy a leisurely stroll to the point.“Of course, we saw ‘Rent’ -- Mr. Ricci even got us an audience with Jesse L. Martin – Ed Green on Law and Order or Barry’s dad on The Flash, if you never saw the musical or the movie…”No law a globally renowned soc...

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“Mrs. Wexler's Things” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #182

“Things are coming back,” Mrs. Wexler said.At some point, Dorothea Wexler might have suggested a goose had walked over my grave. For me, it’s always something dank and slippery circling for the kill or at least a succulent chunk.  Dorothea Wexler at 94 was nearly as petite and and pixie-ish as 80-year-old Dorothea Wexler. But for me there’d been a 14-year void between the two, from that first Sunday bulletin “Aftercare” listing through a displaced hip, a Monday Silver Alert resolved by Tuesday morning drive-time, and periodic praye...

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