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SF Johnston started writing fiction seriously in 2004. He has published works in Amsterdam Scriptum, Web Mystery Magazine, and the print publication Doses of Death. His short story "Jimmy Crick" recently won both the First Place Prize and the Reader's Choice Award at Jason Evans' Midnight Road Contest. Although originally Canadian, SF lives with his wife and two children near Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where he works as a professional copywriter and editor. He is also the current President of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. For more information, visit his website at www.sfjohnston.com.

Jimmy Crick by SF Johnston

See if I don't climb that pole, says Jimmy Crick. Kisses me hard, we all laugh and up he goes. I say hey and he looks down and I flash him my titties because they're new and I love him more than I love my own breath. He gives me his white-tooth smile, slips and grabs the line, his face all twisted.

Frank drives out from the station and I'm on the ground with Jimmy, my ear on his heart like we was sleeping. Just like that. But it don't beat my name no more, all I hear is them saying he's dead Ellie. He's gone.

After a bit Frank starts up with his Ellie you too pretty to be alone, and the years pass on by, and I don't know why, I just go and marry him to get the dead out of my soul, which it don't.

One day he's in my face in the double-wide how I loved Jimmy Crick more than him. Then he's calling him Jimmy Crisp and punching me and such, and then I'm bruised in the bath and he's got the toaster saying if you love him so much.

And if I hear one more yellow-tooth snore. So I get the deer gun, make some noise, and Frank stops. Throw the ladder in his pick-up and drive on out through the night to the pole.

Want to grab that line, I want so bad to go see Jimmy Crick.

See if I don't.

THE END