Here is my story for my own crime fiction fairy tale contest. The story, “The Master Cat,” is based on the fairy tale “Puss in Boots.”

The Master Cat

Ronnie slammed the bottle of Beam down on the bar, sending a fountain of whiskey shooting from the neck and onto his shirt and the floor. “Goddammit! I’m sick of this!” he shouted.

Catherine, a lanky, angular girl with long raven hair, stopped swinging on the pole and stood looking at him. “What’s your problem?” she shouted over Motley Crue’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” blaring from the club’s speakers.

“What’s my problem?” Ronnie asked. “Did you happen to notice that you’re dancing for one person?” He gestured to Toothless Chuck, who sat with his head down on folded arms, dozing oblivious to the music, the commotion or the naked woman in worn thigh-high black leather boots gyrating a few feet away.

“So? He’s all we get at 5 on a Thursday. It’ll pick up,” Catherine said.

“Sure, pick up to where we have five guys in here buying the cheapest beers they can to meet the minimum so they can stay long enough to get a nice image or maybe even cop a feel to fuel their jerk-off session back at the dorm later. This is ridiculous. I oughta have more to show for my life by now,” he said, slumping against the back of the bar.

“You got me, Sugar,” she said, stepping off the stage. She slid behind the bar, threw her arms around Ronnie’s shoulders and raised one leg up to rub her thigh against his crotch. He reached down and grabbed under her leg and pulled her close.

“OK, so I got a washed up lesbian stripper for a best friend who splits the profits with me when she takes a customer back for a handjob,” he said. “Can’t wait to go to the high school reunion and watch everyone turn green with envy over the way my life has turned out.”

“You know what? Fuck you. That’s uncalled for. I’m an exotic dancer, not a stripper,” she said, smiling. She went around to the front of the bar, pulled out a stool and sat down. The scrape of the metal legs against the floor roused Chuck for a moment, but he looked around, seemed unimpressed by what he saw, and settled back down to continue his nap.

“Don’t you think I’m tired of this, too?” Catherine said. “But I’m also tired of you bellyaching about it. It’s obvious you’re not going to do anything for yourself, so I’m going to do it for you. Give me a two weeks and some cash, promise me a new pair of boots, and I’ll make you the king of this town.”

Ronnie raised his eyebrows and gave her a smirk. “Really? You’re kingmaker now? This I gotta see.” He opened the cash register and made a sweeping gesture across the till. “It’s all yours.”

Daylight spilled through the club’s front door as two young men in khakis and pastel button-down shirts entered. Catherine clambered back onto the stage, grabbed the pole and began a slow hip shake to “Superfly.” “Two-drink minimum, gentlemen,” Ronnie said to the customers. “Let me see some ID and we’ll get you something to drink while you watch the lovely Puss in Boots do her thing.”

***

Catherine came out of the apartment at the same time as her neighbor. He was dressed all in black, his hair exquisitely coiffed, sunglasses perched atop his head. He gave her an appraising up-and-down look and whistled. “You the new tenant?” he said as he pulled his door shut.

“I am,” she said with a raised eyebrow. “I figure a mover like you would pay better attention. I’ve been here for a few weeks now.”

“Well, I’m noticing now, sugar,” he said.”I’m Tony.”

“Catherine,” she said. “You can call me Cat.”

“So, what’s your story?”

“I’m Ronnie Miller’s girl,” she said, walking away from him down the hall.

“Miller?” he asked, hurrying now to follow. “Should I know him?”

“If you’re at all connected in this town, you should be ashamed if you don’t. He’s an important man, has his finger in many pies,” she said with a smirk. “So, what’s your story? You look like a player, but if you don’t even know Ronnie…”

“I run a couple of clubs for Mark Carabas,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

“Rings a bell,” she said as they stepped out into the street. “Street thug or something?”

He laughed. “That’s maybe how he got his start, but Mr. Carabas is a diversified businessman now. Of course, I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side. He may be more Wall Street than backstreet, but he takes care of business.”

A long, black limo pulled to the curb in front of the building. “That’s my ride,” Catherine said. “Be seeing you.” She stepped in and the car sped away, a puzzled Tony watching it weave through traffic.

***

“You heard of Ronnie Miller?” Tony asked as Lamar unloaded cases of expensive whisky in the back room of the Marquee Club.

“Sure,” he said. “Who ain’t heard a Ronnie?”

“Seriously?” Tony said, idly counting a stack of bills and sliding it into a bank bag. “What’s he do?”

“What doesn’t he do?” Lamar said. “Seems like he’s into a little bit of everything.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tony said. “Just checking. You know, gotta protect Mr. Carabas’ interests.”

Lamar settled into the driver’s seat of his truck, then pulled out his cell phone. He called the number on the back of a business card tucked in his visor. “Hey, I was just in there and he asked about that Ronnie guy,” he said. “Fifty bucks, right? That was the deal.” He listened, then hung up and drove away.

***

“Go buy yourself a really nice suit,” Catherine said.

Ronnie, who was washing glasses behind the bar, looked up at her with a frown. “Why the hell would I do that? I hardly make enough to keep this place open and keep you in boots.”

“Just do it. Armani or something. I need you looking good.”

“Are clothing stores open on Sunday? I could go tomorrow.”

“If you’re gonna drop a couple grand on a suit, they’ll be open,” she said.

“A couple grand! Remind me why I’m doing this again?”

“How would you like to get out of this dump and start earning some serious money?”

“What? I think you know the answer to that one, Cat,” he said. “Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

***

Catherine and Tony were again standing on the curb in front of their building.

“You need a ride?” she asked.  “I’m going to run by Ronnie’s and do some errands, but I could have the driver take you wherever.”

“That would be great,” Tony said, looking at his watch. The limo pulled up again, and Catherine stepped in. She looked back at Tony. “You coming?”

He climbed in and sat across from her, rubbing his hands slowly across the soft leather seats. “Nice ride. This his?”

Before she could answer, the driver lowered the divider between the front and back. “Where to today, Miz Catherine?”

“400 Castillo, Phillipe,” she said. “We’re having an event tonight.”

“Of course, Miss,” he replied, raising the divider.

“An event, huh?” Tony said. “A little dinner party or something?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘little,’” Catherine said. “Unless you think 400 guests is little.”

Tony whistled, then sat back, admiring the interior of the car and his fellow passenger, who slowly crossed one long bare leg over the other. This dame was smokin’ hot, he thought. This Miller guy’s gotta be doing all right if he can afford to keep a piece of tail like that happy.

The divider lowered. “We’re here, Miz Catherine,” said the driver. Tony glanced up and saw what could only be described as a mansion. It was gated, of course, with ornate brickwork everywhere he looked.

“This is Miller’s place?”

“Just tell Phillipe where you need to go, and he’ll take you there,” she said as she opened the door to get out. “Phillipe, I’ll need you back here in an hour.”

Tony nodded at the door as it slammed closed. He saw Catherine give a little wave to the car as it pulled away.

***

“Are you sure this is kosher?” Ronnie asked as he nervously straightened his tie. “I mean, these are some high rollers. They’re not going to want to rub shoulders with a strip club manager.”

“That’s why you’re not a strip club manager tonight,” she said, brushing his hands away to fit the dark tie. “Tonight, you’re Ronnie Miller, successful businessman. You don’t need to say what you do. You just need to insinuate that you’re involved in a lot of things, some of them maybe a bit unsavory. These fat, pink stuffed suits will love the idea of having a drink with a mobster and they’ll never question you.”

“But I’m no mobster!”

“Exactly!” she said. “You deny it, of course. Every legit businessman envies those on the other side of the law, and every crook aspires to legitimacy. Just wing it and have fun. I’ll grab you when the time comes.”

Catherine was right, Ronnie thought later. No one wanted specifics. As long as he had a drink in his hands and whispered about his, um, diverse interests, while giving a knowing wink, no one questioned him. In fact, they would offer their own sly signal — a raised eyebrow, smirk or thoughtful “hmmm” — to indicate that they knew what he was.

Catherine came around from time to time to check on him, but Ronnie still had no idea what was going on. Her only advice? Be yourself.

About an hour into the party, there was a commotion by the front door. Cat swept by, gathering Ronnie by the lapel as she went. They went to the door and Cat, whispering something to a couple of beefy security-looking guys, pushed through the door and onto the expansive front porch, Ronnie trailing behind.

“Hello, Tony,” she said to the man who wasn’t Mark Carabas. Ronnie recognized the crime boss; it would be hard not to, what with his mug in the newspapers and television reports on a regular basis.

“Hey, Cat. You made it sound like this was the place to be tonight, so I figured you wouldn’t mind if Mr. Carabas and I came to Mr. Miller’s party.”

“My party?” Ronnie said. “Cat, what’s going on?”

“I believe there’s been some mistake, Tony. I never said this was Mr. Miller’s party. You misconstrued,” Catherine said. “She turned to Carabas. “I’m terribly sorry sir. I’m just the event planner for this symphony fundraiser. Invitation only. Mr. Miller here,” she turned to gesture to Ronnie, “is a guest.”

Carabas appeared to be chewing something, his jaw clenching and unclenching. He grabbed Tony by the arm. “This is what I get from my number one guy? You have me on some blueblood’s front stoop begging to get into some fundraiser? You outta your mind?”

“But boss, you said I should keep my eye open for new talent, and I thought…”

“Actually, the talent here is pretty obvious,” he said, wagging his chin at Catherine. “This young lady has obviously got it together. Maybe I should hire her.”

“Oh, Mr. Carabas, I’m afraid I’m not on the market. Mr. Miller, however, has considerable management experience, and as you can see, he is obviously quite successful,” Catherine said.

“Oh yeah?” Carabas said, turning to Ronnie. “You ever run a club?”

“I have, sir,” he said.

“Sir? I like this guy!” Carabas said. “Listen, Tony, you dumb ogre, why don’t you take a hike. You’ve embarrassed me one time too many.”

“But sir, there’s some mistake,” Tony sputtered.

“Now he makes with the ‘sir’ stuff,” Carabas said.

Just then, as if silently summoned, the two muscle-bound security guys stepped onto the porch. Tony looked up at the wall of hard flesh and straining T-shirts in front of him, ducked his head and turned to walk away. Carabas threw an arm around Ronnie’s shoulder and let out a laugh.

“How would you like to come work for me, kid? You could start by running the Marquee, and we’ll see where things go from there.”

***

Ronnie leaned back against the bar, a glass of Glenlivet on ice in his hand. He looked up to see the door to the Marquee open as Cat walked in, weaving her way through the after-five crowd of stockbrokers and hedge-fund managers to get to the bar.

“How’s it goin’, King?” she said. “You liking your new gig?”

“Loving it,” Ronnie said. “I don’t know  how you did it, but somehow this all worked out.”

“Ah, that’s what I was waiting to hear,” she said. “I believe you owe me a pair of boots.”

Patti Abbott has a flash challenge up at her web site to write a story that includes the line, “I really don’t mind the scars.” Here’s my submission.

Countdown

10…

We were so close that her heart and my heart were touching, as if fused together. She looked up at me, her eyes clouded with confusion.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“I have a confession,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s going to tear us apart, but I can’t keep on like this.”

“Oh, God. I should have known,” she said. “Too good to be true. What, you’re married?”

“No. Remember when you said it was the worst thing and the best thing to ever happen to you? Well, please keep both possibilities in mind.”

9…

It was the first time we had made love with the lights on. It wasn’t teen-aged apprehension or the shame of flabby thirty-somethings gone to seed. There were simply things she didn’t want me to see. I knew they were there. They didn’t affect me. At least not the way she thought. She was worried about the surface, how she looked. But I was in love, and appearances didn’t matter. She was beautiful, and the flaws did nothing to take away from that. She was baring herself to me. I felt like it was time to reciprocate.

8…

“I really don’t mind the scars.”

She stood looking at herself in a full-length mirror affixed to the back of the bedroom door. She turned this way and that, twisting to find the right angle to take in another part of her body. In bra and panties, the scars were clearly visible. They snaked up her forearms, made red splotches on her lower legs and angry welts along her neckline.

“You don’t mind them, do you?” she asked,

“No,” I said. “Now come to bed, and this time let’s leave the light on.”

7…

“I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without you,” she said.

She sat next to me on the couch in my apartment, her legs up under her, her head on my chest. I didn’t respond, simply ran my fingers through her hair. It had grown out into a bob that made her seem younger.

“I kind of feel like I’m falling for you,” she said.

“That’s not a surprise,” I said, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her upright. “I’ve been taking care of you.”

“No,” she said. “It’s something more.”

6…

Mr. Jennings paced back and forth across the back room. I caught a glimpse of collegiate flesh through the door to the front of the tanning salon.

“Is this going to be a problem for us?” he said.

“No, sir. It’s under control. It’s strictly professional.”

“It had better be,” he said, stopping directly in front of me. “There’s no room for guilt in this business, David.”

I nodded. “It was my mistake. I’m just trying to make it right.”

“Just don’t make it any worse.”

5…

“You’re doing what?”

Chris had just gotten back from picking up payments. We were sitting in the back of the salon.

“It’s only until she gets on her feet. I’m responsible, so I thought I’d help her out.”

“Well, she is hot. Saw her picture in the paper,” he said. “What did the fire to do her?”

“She has scars, but the doctor said they’ll fade with time.”

“Guess she won’t be coming in here any time soon,” Chris said with a laugh. “These piece-of-shit beds would finish the job.”

4…

“Did you get that from me?”

We were on my couch, watching TV. She had pulled aside the collar of my button-down to reveal a small, red scar in the shape of a heart.

“I guess. It’s just like yours,” I said, pointing to her neck. “Your necklace must have heated up in the fire and branded both of us when I carried you out.”

“I still don’t know how to thank you.”

“There’s no need,” I said. “Right place, right time. I was lucky.”

“No,” she said. “I’m the lucky one.”

3…

I wheeled her to the hospital door and then helped her up and led her to my car.

“You’re sure you want to do this? I’ll be getting in your way.”

“Nonsense. I have plenty of room.”

“OK,” she said. “I guess I should expect no less. You didn’t miss a day the whole time.”

“Figured you could use the company. Now I figure you can use the help.”

“My guardian angel,” she said, rising onto her tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek.

“Something like that.”

2…

I rushed in, pulling my jacket over my head to repel the flames already licking along the walls. The screams were coming from a bedroom in the back. I kicked in the door and found her trying to open a window that had been painted shut. I grabbed a blanket and picked her up in my arms. Holding her tight against me, I rushed back through the blaze and toward the sanctuary of the front yard.

1…

I packed the explosives next to the natural gas line that fed the furnace. It needed to burn so hot that no one could determine a cause. Mr. Jennings’ had made that clear. I wasn’t sure if it was an insurance thing or something more. He assured me the house would be vacant.

I stepped out to my car parked halfway down the block, and whispered a countdown under my breath. I fingered the trigger, heard a muted blast, and then everything was aflame.

Then I heard the scream.

Chuck Wendig has a flash fiction challenge up at his blog around the discovery of some Scotch left behind by famed sea captain Ernest Shackleton. Here’s my stab at it.

Endure

Rape and pillage. How else to describe what this waste of skin does when his Caddy rolls out of the garage every morning? Sure, he’d call it “building shareholder equity,” or “diversifying the portfolio across a range of market sectors,” but what he was really doing was a reverse Robin Hood.

Which is why I was sinking into a Corinthian leather chair in Don Skiffelt’s den with a bottle of 100-year-old Scotch in one hand, an old revolver in the other.

It had been two days since Skiffelt pink-slipped 250 of us. There must be a reason, you’ll say. Stealing? Under-performance? Missing goals? Nope. Want to know what it was? An analyst in New York had suddenly decided the company wasn’t as valuable today as it was yesterday, and the shareholders balked. Skiffelt, as president, chairman and CEO, had to act fast to assure them the analyst was wrong, so he canned five percent of his workforce. Just like that — gone. Wall Street greeted the move by bumping up the share price a few cents, and all was right with the world, for that day at least.

Except for me and 249 of my brothers in arms, forced to look for a job in the worst economy in decades. In no hurry to start that process, I spent the first two days on the couch.

So, I’m watching documentary after documentary when one starts about Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance. I’d heard the name, but didn’t know the story. Here’s the broad outline: Sea captain takes a ship toward the South Pole, ship gets stuck in ice, crew camps out for two months. He risks a trip in a small boat to get help, leaves most of the crew behind. A lot of drama in between, but the upshot is that he comes back and rescues them. All of them. Now that’s a leader, damn it.

Not like Skiffelt, who jettisons staff like so much dead weight at the first sign of trouble. Then, an update: Someone just discovered five crates of Shackleton’s whisky. Century old and smooth. I looked at my bottle of Busch Light and cursed Skiffelt anew.

I had started to drift off with thoughts of Skiffelt, Shackleton and spirits in my head, when I woke with a start and realized what I needed to do.

Sitting in his den, I saw the shine of headlights scroll along the living room windows across the hall, and knew it was time. A couple of minutes later, I heard the click of a key in the back door and the sound of someone shuffling in. A light came on in the hallway and then Skiffelt passed by on his way through the house. I cleared my throat, the sound cutting through the quiet house. Skiffelt stopped.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

“In here, Don. Why don’t you come in, slowly, if you please.”

His head poked around the door jamb. “Who’s there?”

“Just call me Pink Slip, Don,” I said.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “And what are you doing with that bottle? Do you have any idea what that’s worth?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “A real good idea. Laphroaig 1887, correct? Only known bottle in existence. You paid $3,500. Probably worth more today. You plan to open it the day you retire.”

“How do you know all that?” he said, a whine creeping into his voice. He was talking about the Scotch, but his eyes were on the gun.

“Because I used to be somebody, Don. You’ve had me over, albeit with 500 of our closest friends. You were so proud to show off your latest purchase. Of course, that was before you shitcanned me.”

“Look, I know that’s an emotional experience. Perhaps we can –”

“We can what, Don? Work something out? I don’t think so. You see, I know your kind rules everything. If I kill you, which is what I really want to do, I’ll go to prison and some other dickface will rise up and take your place. If I steal from you, I go to prison and you just replace what I took. No, I need to take something irreplaceable.”

“You want the Scotch? Take it. No harm, no foul.”

“Nope. Again, too easy. And while it’s irreplaceable, you could just buy something just as rare with the money you made by laying us off. Hell, you could buy it with the money you’ve made in the time it took to have this conversation. And I could see why you’d want to,” I said, holding the bottle under my nose for a sniff. “Opened it when I got here. Gotta let it breathe, right?”

I got up from the chair, and took a healthy swig from the bottle. “Damn, Don. That is smooth. What was that, probably a fifty dollar pull? Hundred? Mighty nice.”

“What are you going to do?”

I stepped up next to him and stuck the barrel of the gun to his temple.

“It’s what you’re going to do, Don. I want you to piss in this bottle, top it off. Don’t miss, as I’d expect the help won’t be back until Monday. Then we’re going to cork it and put it back on the shelf. That leaves you with a decision: ‘Do I taste it or do I pour it out.’ You’re good at decisions, Don. Let’s see how you do when there’s no self-interest at play. Either way, you lose.”

I took one more swig as he pulled himself out. I pulled back the hammer on the gun. The sound, echoing off the walls, was enough to literally scare the piss out of him. He sobbed quietly as the bottle filled.