steven nester

“What is the saying,” said Rodt in his thick accent, “The grave is half full?” “Wrong,” said Smartt. Rodt sounded ignorant and unclean, as if he had a mouthful of pickled herring. Everything that came out of it stank, thought Smartt. It didn’t matter what the guy said, it all sounded like he was a […]

Richard “Ditch” Brodie checked the lock screws on the four karabiners that secured the tandem jumper to his harness as the Twin Otter screamed to 10,000 feet, the altitude where skydivers fell from the plane to laugh at death for as long as they dared. The four lock screws were not properly fastened. The plane leveled off and when the pilot choked it to a stall, Ditch gave the client thumbs up and they rolled from the cargo door into the emptiness of the world that spread beneath them. The FAA would not approve.

“Whoa,” Marty said through the helmet-mounted walkie-talkies. “This is better than sex!”

Sexy Sadie what have you done? I’m belly deep in the shag on a creepy crawl in search of talent in a north Dallas McMansion when there’s trouble. My head bumps into what I think is a chair leg but it’s the cold steel of a double barreled shotgun. I think: What would Charlie Manson […]

I stick out my thumb by a strip mall ghost town west of Platte and out wait for bad luck to happen. Five minutes later it does. I’m riding in a beaten down Galaxie 500 with bald tires, heavy enough not to get blown off the Nebraska plains, with a cornpone operator sitting next to […]