Autumn Noir (Anthology)

Find some of your favorite authors and discover some new ones. Includes tales by Bev Vincent, Bethany Maines, Teresa Trent, Brandon Barrows, Stephen D. Rogers, and many more from the crime, mystery, noir, suspense, and thriller genres. Includes the following stories & poems:

‘A Slice for Stanley’ © Teresa Trent
‘Abscission’ © Dustin Engstrom
‘An Orchid to Die For’ © Wendy Harrison
‘Anathema’ © Robin Knabel
‘Autumn Heat’ © Oisin Breen
‘Death & Flying Saucers’ © Matthew Kresal
‘Escape Velocity’ © Bev Vincent
‘Every Single Funeral’ © Bethany Maines
‘Golden Silence’ © V.S. Kemanis
‘Hand Shadows’ © Rikki Santer
‘Hope Is an Opiate’ © Bob McNeil
‘Killer in a Diner’ © Nathan Squiers
‘Let It Go’ © Brandon Barrows
‘Misunderstood’ © Elif Offner
‘Nineteen Creaks’ © Peter DiChellis
‘Perdita’s Shoes’ © Kat Devitt
‘Poor Insect’ © D.P. Blanchard
‘Sensing the Fall’ © Stephen D. Rogers
‘Shadow Over the Hill’ © Matthew Chabin
‘The Block’ © H. Dair Brown
‘The Last Phone Booth’ © Lamont Turner
‘The Warbler’s Song’ © Vashelle Nino
‘The Weak Man’ © JM Connors
‘Those Forgotten Places’ © Mary Rajotte
‘To Bury Larry Little’ © W.E. Wertenberger

**This title was originally published as Autumn Noir: An Unsettling Reads Anthology.**

Disturb Ink Books publishes fiction that lurks in the haunted land where quiet horror and psychological thrillers meet.

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“The fallen leaves in the forest seemed to make even the ground glow and burn with light.”
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter


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FOREWARD

For this anthology, we invited fellow writers and artists to create original pieces that would sweep us up in tales about the other, moodier season of change. The stories and poems you’ll find here skew toward the gritty, the atmospheric, the strangely, dangerously beguiling. Some mysteries unfold as gently as a wisp of chimney smoke. Others bring the heart-thumping thrills of an end-of-summer storm. In all of them, you’ll find characters as vibrant as fall foliage and dialogue as crisp as autumn air.

We were once again humbled and delighted by the submissions we received, downright floored by the talent, in fact. We hope that you’ll find these works as wonderfully unsettling as we did. Be prepared to recognize some of your favorite authors and to discover some new ones.

To paraphrase Bette Davis, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy read.”
—Dair & Robin


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"Escape Velocity"
By Bev Vincent

Until the day Sierra decided it was time to disappear, start a new life somewhere else, she had a regular gig at a tiki bar a block from her apartment, playing steel drums with a band whose members were mostly from Jamaica. Their audience consisted primarily of businessmen staying at the Embassy Suites next door, sipping Mai Tais and Zombies with their pulled pork sandwiches and hot wings. It helped pay the bills, and the music was fun to play. Rik, the lead guitar player, was kind of cute and had limitless access to good ganja, so she hated to give it up. 
But it was time to move on. This part of town had become too dangerous for her. Maybe the whole city, but she wasn’t ready to surrender yet. She could move a few dozen blocks north or west, and it would be like living in an entirely different place. With her dark-but-not-too-dark complexion, she could blend in almost anywhere. 
Wearing the blue silk kimono Abel had given her as a birthday present last summer, she sat at her rickety kitchen table and composed letters to people she thought might miss her. “I have to go away for a while,” she wrote to each of them—all men, a realization that startled her. 
“Don’t try to find me, and above all else: I’m not missing. Don’t call the police!” She drew a smiley face after that instruction, because calling the police was the last thing any of these men would ever do. 
When Sierra finished the eighth and final letter, she stuck Forever stamps onto the upper right-hand corner of each business-sized envelope and tossed them on the table by the front door. She would drop them in the apartment complex mailbox in the morning on her way to wherever she decided to go next. 
She looked around the place she’d called home for the past…what? Two years, almost. The paintings on the walls had come from a store that supplied cheap motels, and the sparse furnishings came from resale shops and Goodwill. Her needs were simple, and not having many possessions made it easier to pack up and leave on a moment’s notice, something she’d done several times in the past. She would have been in her car already, heading north or west, looking for a place that felt like it might be home for another year or two or even three, except she needed to go to the Credit Union in the morning and close her account. 
Her two suitcases were lined up beside the door. Whatever didn’t fit inside them was staying behind. She would sleep atop the bare mattress and brush her teeth with a finger and the last glob of toothpaste in the travel-sized tube sitting on the water-stained plastic shelf over the sink.
Not that she was likely to sleep. She was too wound up. Would they come for her tonight? Surely not. But soon. Very soon. Once they figured out how much she knew, their only option would be to silence her. And when they found out she knew where the dingus was and what it was worth, they’d do things to her to make her talk. And then they’d do things to make her stop talking. Permanently. 
Maybe a few dozen blocks wasn’t far enough. Maybe she had to head east. A long way east. Back to where she’d come from all those years ago, vowing never to return. They wouldn’t think to look for her there and maybe, just maybe, in a few years she could return and cash in. 
She’d gotten so close. Her reward was sitting there like the little golden figurine in that Harrison Ford movie, resting on a pressure plate, just waiting for her to swap it out with a bag of sand. But, no, the boulder had started trembling, and she knew she’d never be able to grab the thing and get out alive. Not now, at least. 
She comforted herself with the knowledge that no one else was likely to figure it out. They were all too stupid, every single one of them. Even Abel, and he was the brightest of the bunch. He’d trusted her. He’d even fallen for her, a little at least. 
It was ironic, then, that the letter she dropped on her way to her car the next morning, bleary-eyed and jumpy—the letter that fell from her hand and was swept away by a breeze—was the one with Abel’s name written on the front of the envelope in her distinctive blocky hand. The letter in which she confessed almost everything without asking for forgiveness, because forgiveness wasn’t his to give. Even if it was, he wasn’t likely to give it, and she’d never see him again, anyway. What difference did it make?
Would things have turned out differently if the letter had reached its intended recipient instead of blowing on that breeze, along with the dead oak leaves fallen from the grove separating the apartment complex’s parking lot from the busy street out front? Sierra would ask herself that question over and over in the difficult days to come, but it was a question without an answer. 
She dropped her apartment key through the slot in the office door, feeling bad that she hadn’t yet paid September’s rent, not to mention October’s. Maybe they could sell her abandoned belongings to make up for it? 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - "I have to admit this collection was not at all what I expected; I mean, you get the feel of autumn in every poem and story, But I love how unpredictable this collection was, and everyone's incredible take on the subject matter...
Each story keeps you on the edge of your seat, and all have an exciting take on the theme in their own unique and sometimes subtle way...So even me, a non-noir/crime/mystery reader, can get absorbed into this collection. There is definitely a story in there that someone will love." -Nat Whiston (Goodreads Review)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - "A fantastic selection of crime, mystery, and thrillers guaranteed to please short story lovers.
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2021
The folks over at Unsettling Reads have provided us with another collection of short stories, this time moving from horror, sci-fi, and fantasy into the genres of crime, mystery, suspense, and thriller. I’m happy to say that I enjoyed this collection even more than the previous one. Autumn Noir is divided into three parts, each representing a theme inspired by the words of some of the greats.

Part One: “In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb.”—Dennis Lehane. There are a variety of stories and characters represented by this section, though my favorites were “Abscission” by Dustin Engstrom, “Sensing the Fall” by Stephen D. Rogers, and “The Block” by H. Dair Brown. I thought Dair’s story, in particular, really captured the spirit of the theme for this first section.

Part Two: “Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.”—Gillian Flynn. “An Orchid to Die For” by Wendy Harrison and “Every Single Funeral” by Bethany Maines were my favorites in this section."
-Russell Gray (Amazon Review)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - "Autumn Noir is a collection of diverse writers who bring us diverse characters with diverse stories. Each character is either searching for a place to belong in the world or existing In a place that may or may not be familiar to readers - all while interacting with its worldly inhabitants. Compulsively thought-provoking, this collection will keep you turning its pages as you figure out where in the collection you belong." -Tom (Amazon Review)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - "Stories that get under your skin! As one of the co-editors, Robin Knabel, stated, Autumn Noir contains stories that get under your skin. This anthology contains an exciting collection of stories, some will make you smile, others will send a chill down your spine, and others will keep you guessing the outcome. I loved it! Oh, and there are a few poems, three I think, sprinkled throughout the book."
-Kathryn Lane (Amazon Review)