Datlow, Ellen (ed) - Final Cuts / Датлоу, Эллен (ред) - Окончательные варианты [2020, epub, ENG]

Das Gesicht short fiction by Dale Bailey Drunk Physics short fiction by Kelley Armstrong Exhalation #10 short story by A. C. Wise Scream Queen short fiction by Nathan Ballingrud Family short fiction by Lisa Morton Night of the Living short fiction by Paul Cornell The One We Tell Bad Children short fiction by Laird Barron Snuff in Six Scenes short story by Richard Kadrey Insanity Among Penguins short fiction by Brian Hodge From the Balcony of the Idawolf Arms short story by Jeffrey Ford Lords of the Matinee short fiction by Stephen Graham Jones A Ben Evans Film short fiction by Josh Malerman The Face Is a Mask short fiction by Christopher Golden Folie à Deux, or the Ticking Hourglass short fiction by Usman T. Malik Hungry Girls short story by Cassandra Khaw Cut Frame short fiction by Gemma Files Many Mouths to Make a Meal short fiction by Garth Nix Altered Beast, Altered Me novella by John Langan

JORDAN HARPER was a fixer for the studio. Not a high-level fixer—the kind who sorted out problems with the stars, arranging abortions and sudden marriages and unexpected corpse removals and so on—because the studio he worked for didn’t have any stars. Pharos Pictures was firmly second-rate, B movies only, and the one time they did have someone with star power, Peggy Karolobian (who the world would later know as Carole Stannard) she was only there long enough for one movie and the time it took MGM’s lawyers to break her contract. Jordan still had to arrange abortions and sudden marriages and remove unexpected corpses, but he didn’t do it for stars. All the dirty work he managed was for middling actors, and hack directors and fringe-dwelling producers, and there was always a calculus involved. The studio didn’t swing into action to protect everyone on the payroll. How much was that person worth to Pharos Pictures? If the studio was going to be compromised, if the perpetrator was perceived to have some future value, and their sins were not too difficult to paper over, Jordan would be called in. If not…let ’em twist in the wind. That’s what Sol Theakston liked to say. He was the decider, as president of the studio, son-in-law and nephew of the moneymen back East who funded the whole operation. Even B movies were expensive. It was rumored Pharos was a cash-laundering operation for Theakston’s family, who were still better known as the Goldberg rum kings, since they hadn’t changed their surnames like Sol. . . .