See the doggie. Do he bite?

Now and then, for no good reason, life will haul off and knock a man flat. I wrote  a zombie short story for no good reason last year, and it just got published by Tales of World War Z. Check it out, and please leave a comment on their site! Sharp-eyed readers will get how I was inspired by the old Old Yeller movie, um, pretty quickly.

OLD PENDEJO
by R. Narvaez

It doesn’t seem so long ago I hated that dog with all my heart.

I was just back from the war, about two months, still feeling like I was cleaning sand out of my private parts, if you know what I mean. I also had the bum ear and the bum leg from the war. So all in all I was feeling pretty useless to my family. We were in a tight spot, with Dad long gone, my brother Jorge deep into the meth, my sisters married off and living back in Mexico, and with a tiny sheep ranch that pretty much had no sheep. Well, there we had the two left. Ma tried to hold our family together. She kept saying the Sun always had to shine again sometime. But I could see in her eyes that things looked bad even to her.

The dog just showed up one day, probably looking for scraps. I saw my brother out front, playing tug-of-war with it with an old rope.

I told him, “Jorge, get that pinche dog outta here before it gives you rabies.”

“It’s a great dog,” he said, but I could see it was nothing but a curly-haired mutt, big empty patches of skin on it. Maybe it’s great grandma was a border collie, maybe, but the apple had fallen pretty far from the tree.

“It’s a mangy dog,” I said.

“Could be a great sheep dog,” he said.

“We ain’t got but two sheep, brainless,” I said, but he ignored me. I figured the dog would figure soon enough there wasn’t much chow for him here and then move along . . . .

Read the rest here.

JURACÁN

by R. Narvaez

I’d never seen so many dead dogs on the side of a road as in Puerto Rico. The strays must go out of their way to kill themselves. Or maybe Puerto Ricans just don’t like dogs. I was in a cramped rental car, driving my three aunts to my cousin’s wedding in Ponce. It was a ten-minute ride, and I’d already seen four dog carcasses. Tongues hanging out. Guts. Blood. It took some of the buzz off.

“Qué pasó con los jodio peros en la highway?” I said.

“Se dice perrrrros,” my Titi Juana said.

“Perrrrrros,” I tried.

“Perros,” Titi Gloria said.

Then Tíia Nidia said, “No sé, mi amor. Toda la gente manejan como loco aquí.”

I could see how the roads in PR could drive you crazy. There wasn’t always a traffic light where you needed it. A lot of the blacktop hugged the sides of mountains and were crazy-narrow so that your side-view mirror hung over a thousand-foot drop into nothing but jungle.

To read more, buy the book! Buy the book now!

Gory art by Jeff Karnick.

My short story “Ibarra Goes Down” is now up in the current issue of Yellow Mama. Thanks, Cindy! Here’s a few opening lines. Warning: This story is a smidge rated R.

Ibarra Goes Down
by R. Narvaez

It’s all right, Larry, I might as well get all this off my chest. I’m just a tax lawyer, certainly I’m no criminal mastermind and not a talented criminal attorney like yourself. The truth is I’ve been holding all of this in for too long, and whether or not this helps my case with Detective Duran here, I’ll fucking explode if I don’t talk.

Here it is.

I only care about two things in this world: number one is my family. God help you if you ever do anything to my wife and my three beautiful kids. And, two . . .

Read more at Yellow Mama.

But check out the press pitch:

“Brand-new stories by: Mistina Bates, Jean Rae Baxter, Lawrence Block, Joseph Bruchac, David Cole, Reed Farrel Coleman, O’Neil De Noux, A.A. Hedge Coke, Gerard Houarner, Liz Martinez, R. Narvaez, Kimberly Roppolo, Leonard Schonberg, and Melissa Yi. With a foreword by Richard B. Williams, president & CEO of the American Indian College Fund.” Edited by the salacious Sarah Cortez and lascivious Liz Martinez.

Listen to the podcast we did for Seth Harwood’s CrimeWAV.

My story “In the Kitchen with Johnny Albino” from Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery is featured on the scholar and gentleman Seth Harwood’s crime short story podcast CrimeWAV. Very big thank you to Seth. I hope you all enjoy the show.