NOIR MECHANICS is published occasionally from Los Angeles, California, a wholly owned subsidiary of some huge multi-national or other.

NOIR MECHANICS requires your contributions for its pages. Send prose, close to 1500 words (copy-right it first!) with obligatory pseudonym and fabulously phony bio, to the editors. Quickly! Next issue's theme: "Pestiferous Conduct". Our editorial policy is: If it makes you feel all dark inside, you're on the right track.

NOIR MECHANICS is ungrammatical. It should be MECHANICS NOIRE.We know that. And don't care. Never mistake attitude for ignorance.

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Copyright 1996 by original authors
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Big Cool Long Hard Hand - Episode 2
JERZY PLATES will have you pissing up a rope in this gripping saga of one man against a bunch of other guys.

Dark Pocket - Part 2
Sifting through the detritus of wooden nickels, an airport locker key and a half-eaten pack of Violets, RIFF DIXON jams with a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. Enthralling!

Behind Enemy Lines - Part 2
PAOLO DIHN takes you right to the edge of allegory in this morally ambiguous, eyebrow-raising trek through the miasma of modern warfare.

Elmer - Part 2 - by JOHN CHEESE
(Editor's note: We hired a sophomore American Lit. student from Dartmouth to write these blurbs for the Table of Contents but when he got to this one, well, we don't know what happened but one night at 3 A.M. we found him blubbering and sobbing over the word processor muttering to himself, "I can't go on. I'm through. I don't know what anything means anymore. It's all so sad and hopeless." We called his mother. He's better now and we keep him on doing odd jobs around the office and licking stamps.)

You Always Get What You Want
MITZI GAYNOR, struck down by hit-and -run years and lying on the unhappy pavement, trying desperately to get the license number of fleeting fame. In doing so, she glimpses Xanadu. A juicy read!

Festering Backwater - Part 2
JACK HAMMER explodes the myths of vegetarianism as we continue slogging waist-deep through the muck and mire of a modern megalopolis looking for a decent restaurant. An unreasonably entertaining conte devot!

Mr. Moses Venus Has a Restless Night/
From the Same Whirlpool
Before warm milk, before Som-i-nex, even before Magic-Fingers, BECCA POGSON-JONES weaves a tale told from the arms of Morpheus.

Bug City
Ripe with romance and rife with road-kill, JOE DON WILLIAMS makes you re-examine everything you've ever learned. And more. An instant classic!

Metronome Ticking
CECIL COURT COPELAND dabbles in Post-Ironic Minimalist Nihilism in this chanson de geste of love gone wrong.

Possessed by a Demon
Somewhere between White Plains and the deep blue sea, FRANCESCA PIATEK goes mano a mano with Molock in a panople of breathtaking animal thrills.

Noir Mek
Little Lorenzo lost the dingus! His thorax is against the wall! Like a snake in a box, ART DETHH's black lines writhe before your eyes. Suitable for framing, destined to be colorized in some rude future.

About the Authors

Back Cover Photo by KLOCKO