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    Violent Impulses: A Short Story Collection
    Violent Impulses: A Short Story Collection
    Violent Impulses: A Short Story Collection
    Ebook62 pages54 minutes

    Violent Impulses: A Short Story Collection

    By Liz Pardo

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    About this ebook

    In the latest version of Violent Impulses, author Liz Pardo adds two new bloody short stories to the mix ("The Hermit of Sapphire Road" and "Revenge is a Dish"). Each story examines a momentary, brutal interaction between human beings, but each protagonist deals with their impulses in the same way: bloody. Violent Impulses was the first short story collection published by Liz Pardo, way back in 2014.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLiz Pardo
    Release dateAug 26, 2014
    ISBN9781311393609
    Violent Impulses: A Short Story Collection
    Author

    Liz Pardo

    Liz Pardo is a left-handed, multi-racial designer, tutor, and writer, originally from Southern California. Currently living in the Midwest, Elizabeth recently received her third academic degree in Visual Communications. She intends to use this degree to unlock her students’ critical thinking skills through visual/virtual worlds, such as video games. She generally writes flash fiction, short stories, poetry, and sometimes longer prose.

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      Book preview

      Violent Impulses - Liz Pardo

      Violent Impulses: A Short Story Collection

      Copyright 2023 Liz Pardo

      Published by Liz Pardo at Smashwords

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy.

      Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Copyright Page

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Mrs. Talbot’s House

      The Hermit on Sapphire Road

      A Believer

      Talent

      A Day’s Work

      Firsts

      Revenge is a Dish

      About the Author

      Connect with Liz Pardo

      Acknowledgements

      I dedicate this new version of Violent Impulses to myself—to the little girl known as inday, a half-formed thought-creation that was starved, neglected, and ignored. I am never going back again.

      Mrs. Talbot’s House

      Richie Granger had a need. A very specific need. Sure, eating was a need—so was drinking water and sleeping. But Richie’s need was greater, different… he might even call it grander. Heroin was his grand need and to scratch the near-constant itch, Richie perfected a way to steal from helpless people. It was actually by accident he figured it out. Richie broke into a house—five years ago, he was just a kid and really didn’t know what the hell he was doing—and the older man was wheelchair bound.

      Richie didn’t want to terrorize or hurt him, he just wanted to steal some valuable stuff and sell it. The old man let him take cash, jewelry he kept of his dead wife, and some small gold antique knick-knacks. Richie made a decent sale of the jewelry and kept one of the gold knick-knacks in his backpack.

      Five years later and the jobs were more than easy now. It kept him with a tiny apartment, a steady paycheck and a way to feed the need.

      Richie only fed the need at night. He was very disciplined about it. Only once in his seven years of doing heroin did he ever lapse on that. In the morning, he’d get coffee and a bagel from a local coffee joint and walk five blocks to the hospital. There, he’d enter through the front entrance and pretend to be visiting one of his sick relatives.

      That’s when the work began. He’d carefully scope out hospital rooms and older patients—were they ever going home? Was someone watching their house? Richie wrote down what he could after slipping into their rooms when they were asleep and no nurses were around.

      Some days were great, others were busts. It was lucky for Richie there were five hospitals within walking distance—and one old folk’s home. The old folk’s home was much harder to wander into without having a pass, but sometimes he got away with it.

      One time when he was desperate, he stole from an old woman who had just died in the old folks’ home. She was wearing a pearl necklace and two gold rings and Richie guessed the attendants hadn’t noticed she died. He waited a solid minute before pulling her jewelry off.

      The dead woman’s body made a low moaning sound that freaked Richie out, but the jewelry came off easily enough and he slipped out before she could protest any further.

      Richie was like a cat—he led a very charmed life. He wouldn’t say it was hashtag blessed but it was decent. He’d never had a bad trip, never been late on rent, no matter how crappy the apartment, still looked presentable for a junkie, and had never been caught on any of his jobs.

      The older folks he tried not to terrorize must have appreciated not being terrorized because they never called the police about anything he ever stole… or, if they did call the police, they never mentioned him.

      —

      He was sitting in the local coffee shop looking over the newspaper and there on the third page was a picture of a dilapidated street with big old Victorian houses on it. It was black and white and a bit grainy but from the photo only the lights were on in one of the houses.

      It was some kind of photo contest from what Richie cared to read. The picture was very well set-up—Richie had dabbled in photography in high school—and there was something about the Victorian house with the lights on that made Richie wonder… wonder who lived there.

      He

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