Real Estate suited Jane perfectly. Several times she sold houses to people who weren’t hunting. The most improbable: she came home thrilled to have closed on the old Turner place. Crazy. I said, “We’re going to Red Lobster, Baby!” I’m talking Admiral’s Feast platters. Everyone in town figured it would be slowly reclaimed by the elements before a living soul would move in. Jane was legally obligated to disclose the murders to the Buyers. A Travel Writer and a Spiritualist, the magic crystals kind. She broke it to them, in case they missed it on television—police jackhammering Turner’s driveway, solving six disappearances.

—From the author’s in-progress manuscript, In the Location Business, a collection primarily of microfictions.

Todd Mercer’s

short collection Ingenue was a winner of the Celery City contest. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, is available free at Right Hand Pointing. Recent work appears in Beatnick Cowboy, Flash Frontier, and Literary Yard.