"The Albino Dies" by Tim Lieder (Fiction)

Blood would hit the paper Rudolph

This is a Substack extra in addition to the current reviews of John Cheever Stories and The Book of Job (Iyov). I sold it to Big Pulp in 2012 and Bete Noire in 2017. I also wrote “Santa Claus Dies” and “Frank Dies,” so I had a theme at the time. If I wrote it now I might have used a different title. I might have self-published it in my Xmas story collection next to “The Man in the Red Suit” and “The Xmas Video” had I remembered it.

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Vincent sat at the bar, drinking cheap vodka from an expensive glass. "Here Comes Santa Claus" played on the jukebox. Other patrons avoided him, not because of his condition with the white eyebrows and pink eyes. They avoided him because they knew his reputation.

Vincent knew things. For most of his life, the knowledge had given him an advantage. He knew which women would fuck him and which friends would betray him. There was a time when he would use that knowledge, but it always went somewhere else. Finally he took the lessons from Bhagavad Gita and just let his life happen.

In fifteen minutes, Sam Lipshitz would walk into the bar, stand behind Vince nt and unload a semi-automatic into his skull. Blood would hit the paper Rudolph hanging near the hard liquor. Vincent knew his fate as much as he knew his social security number and the name of the first girl he fucked. The headlines would read “Albino Dies in Mob Hit.” If something happened to Paris Hilton, the headline would read “Albino Dies.”

To read more, either buy Big Pulp, Sep 2012 or

He finished the vodka and ordered a double chocolate martini. It was a woman's drink, but he was curious. Vincent knew that the Santa Claus song would end and the next song would be a "I Will Survive" followed by Bing Crosby. Only that morning, he talked to a woman from the community center and saw the cancer eating her away. His abilities stopped being fun a long time ago. He’d have dinner with a business associate and he’d see that man lying bloody in a barber chair. He would walk down the street, bump into a stranger and he’d know how that stranger would die. He’d see the head cracked in the windshield with the tree breaking the grate. He knew which priests were abusing hookers. He knew which businessmen were stealing. He knew the justifications.