Editor’s Note: We’ve been honored to publish Dan Coleman’s “Professor of Death” short story which, due to its length, has appeared in three parts this month: Part I, Part II, and herewith, the final chapter of the author’s triptych. Please read them in order for full appreciation. ** Robert dressed in dark clothes and arrived at the banker’s estate in the East Hamptons just after 2:00 a.m., Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. The site was secluded off a main road and down a winding lane. He surveyed the area with night vision field glasses. Except for a subtle breeze and ruffling leaves, all was calm, the sky moonless, overcast, therefore pitch black. Very good conditions. He exited the car near the gate and blew the dog whistle several times. No dogs on the estate at least….
“Professor of Death,” by Dan Coleman Chapter II
In his other profession, Robert Fountain was an assassin. A highly skilled and experienced, highly paid and very well-connected killer of important people mostly of political persuasion, but occasionally a high-class criminal or two. At least he thought he was. Lately, he was beginning to wonder if it were still true. This career began long before his academic one when he dropped out of college after a year to join the Army in the heat of the Vietnam War. He was sent to officer candidate school and trained as a Special Forces commando, eventually serving three tours in Vietnam. On his first tour, he was promoted to captain two months before his twenty-first birthday, making him, at the time, the youngest captain in the U.S. Army. He was a major when he got out,…
“Professor of Death,” A Short Story by Dan Coleman
Editor’s Note: This short story will take you through a few unexpected turns with each chapter. You may begin to think you are being treated to a horror/fiction story and then maybe it’s really about a romance. Or is it? In any case, we hope you enjoy each chapter. We present these three intriguing chapters of the short story “Professor of Death” – beginning tonight and continuing throughout the week. ** Things were getting a little too scary to suit Robert Fountain. He could feel the times changing around him, sense the movement of sinister winds, like the rolling in of a tidal wave, and he didn’t want to be standing on the beach when it got there. He was a man with two professions, one public, in which he was a respected authority of some…
“American Child” – A Poem by M. Sullivan
I’ve walked along the maps of my home around the bends of the Housatonic River and up Mount Greylock hanging over Jamaica Plain I’ve run my fingers over the shores of Nantucket and felt the Mystic and run my gaze over Watatic the high Wachusett and felt the rumble of the Mattapan line and wandered the streets of Swampscott and of Chappaquiddick I remember the first bus I took to school named the Cummaquid Chief and how I thought as I shook afraid that the bus would be driven by a head- dressed brown- skinned face- painted man with leather moccasins and fierce gaze the names meant nothing to me no near mountain no great cove nothing that lay in the midst of waters nor far off among the waves there was no place I…
“Satiety,” and Other Poems by Brian Rihlmann
SATIETYthere used to be a much longer delay between hope and disappointment now, I pluck the fruit and it withers in my hand I know it’s bitter before my tongue does soon I’ll leave the fruit and nourish myself on emptiness I’ll chew the blue of the sky I’ll taste the black of the night and be filled ** REBORN and when the pain finally goes as inexplicably as it came we grab its arm to drag it back through the door like a spurned lover saying “please stay… I didn’t mean it” we believe if we let it go then it has no more meaning than a passing cloud a brief summer storm a dead leaf blowing down the street in the wake of a truck it must mean something more than that we think— we think so and thus it is reborn to scream at us through all our days and nights ** QUIT WEARING OTHER…