Neon Nights

by Shea E. Butler

About the Author: Shea E. Butler has a passion for storytelling in all its forms. She is an award-winning filmmaker for her screenplays, her short films and web series and is a published author. Her short story, “Giving Up The Ghost,” was the featured cover story in the November 2019 issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine and her short story, “Do Not Go Gently,” is published in the 2020 Black Veins Anthology. Shea divides her time between Vancouver, B.C. and Los Angeles, California.

Excerpt

The oil in the puddle swirled slowly, in a lazy kaleidoscope of colors, as the water reflected the flickering neon lights of the overhead sign—Kitty’s Kats: Exotic Dancers—with its outlandish outline of a woman sitting in a chair, legs spread in a suggestive pose. A red-beaded Jimmy Choo, with a five-inch stiletto heel, lay abandoned on the gravel-pitted alley inches from the liquid rainbow. It was an odd sight amongst the used condoms, rotten food and tangled heaps of garbage that littered the vicinity. A swarm of mosquitoes buzzed in the night air around the puddle of water, the sound mimicking the electric hum of the neon sign.

A slim-boned hand, nails buffed short with clear polish, reached toward the abandoned pump. A reverent voice sighed, then murmured, “Man, now that’s a damn shame. Waste of perfection, if you ask me.” James Alonquin Mendelsohn, better known as Jam, crouched down, careful not to get the cuffs of his immaculately pressed Balmain trousers dirty.

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