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About the Author: Ed Teja is a former Caribbean boat bum, martial artist, freelance writer, and magazine editor. His cross-genre stories have appeared Thrill Ride: The Magazine, Wyldeblood 13, Anotherealm, Mystery Tribune, and the Crimeucopia anthology, CRANK IT UP!
A harsh setting sun cast lengthening shadows through the parking lot, distorting the shapes of things, destroying clarity. Her eyes would adjust, her brain would compensate soon enough, but she was in no rush.
Getting out of Zelda, her old Toyota, Tina reached under her jacket, to the small of her back and felt the reassuring touch of her revolver snug in its holster. Comforted, she locked the door and relished the moment, the sense of stepping into a surreal world. The world of a Las Cruces strip mall.
Not stepping into it, exactly.
You couldn’t step into such an amorphous place. No, she flowed into it, blending with the soft contours of a universe with few hard edges. Her shadows bounced and stretched and twisted over concrete sidewalks and fake adobe walls like a dancer joining in some deranged ballet.
A rather cool southwestern theme park.
Especially cool for Las Cruces, New Mexico, which always struck her as a rather large, sprawling suburb of a city—a place of monochromatic malls and motels and housing, with a historical center where tourists went to find any character of the old West.
Business brought her here … to Las Cruces … to a dreaded mall.
At least the meeting would be in a bar.
And the bar was a surprise.
Stepping in from the glare, momentarily blind in the gloom of a dimly lit room, its predominate lighting a neon sign behind the bar proper, a sign spelled out the name: “Kelly’s.”
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