A few years ago, I skipped out on NaNoWriMo to instead participate in a series of short story prompts that the library I worked at at the time was offering as a little challenge. Technically, I had written a novel earlier that year, so that was my justification in not doing the full NaNoWriMo experience.
Regardless of that, I realized recently that I never did much with those short stories after completing them. A few friends and one or two family members read them (and, I guess, anyone at the library who felt so inclined), but that’s it.
So, I figured why not change that by posting them here?
This week and next, I’m going to upload a few of the short stories that I wrote back then, as well as include the genre of the story and the prompt that inspired me to write the story in the first place.
While I’m generally proud/happy about each of these short stories, please note that they were written in, essentially, a straight rush through with minimal planning or editing. Nor have I gone back to extensively polish them up. They just exist as they are.
I hope you enjoy!
HISTORICAL FICTION
~~ Your character is living through an event in history, but something goes a little differently than normal. ~~
The Unseen Front
(August 1944, The Battle of Toulon)
Jacob Collins had thought he was prepared for everything that the Second Great World War could throw at him.
And, to be sure, he was prepared for the horrors. His father’s stories of the First War hadn’t been for nothing.
His unit had been back-up at the Battle of Normandy, and the carnage he’d seen there would no doubt worm its way into the most entrenched parts of his mind for the rest of his life. The literal limbs he’d had to pick through in the mostly futile effort to recover the dog tags of fallen soldiers. The piles of organs he and the other men had tried to convince themselves was just blood and mud. The uncountable, unimaginable scale of bodies all along the beach.
Jacob took it all in, and he did it with an impassive expression on his face. Unmoved, unbending. The rock his fellow men could always depend on.
His wife, Emma, had always told him that his stoicism was both a blessing and a curse. Had told him that the more he kept contained inside, the more it’d eat away at his very soul.
He knew she was right. He knew that the sorts of things this war had shown him would prevent him from ever getting a good night’s sleep again. He knew he’d wake up screaming even if he did slip into unconsciousness. And he knew that the things he’d done to keep himself and his men alive would show itself in his very eyes once he got back home. Emma would know. His neighbors, friends, and family would know.
His two-year-old daughter, Evelyn, would know…and that was, perhaps, the most upsetting aspect of it all.
But none of them would know what Jacob had seen.
Their sympathy and compassion was one thing, but no human being truly is capable of imaging the horror of war without seeing it firsthand. No human being genuinely believes that their fellow man is capable of the sorts of travesties that Jacob had witnessed being forced upon the Allies, and that he himself had dealt back onto the Axis. Nothing prepared a person for that, and those safe from the front lines of the war could never truly comprehend it all.
Regardless of the lasting consequences, Jacob’s father had prepared him to handle the horror of war in the moment, and so he was doing just that.
But what Jacob had not been prepared for was a moment of shocking, almost comedic humanity, in the most unexpected of places.
Following the command of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, the proud but weary members of the British 21st Army Group had poured into France to drive the Germans out and reclaim the country for the Allies. Jacob had, of course, been near the back and side of the charge, his small unit specializing in taking down flanking enemies and picking off ambushes lying in wait for the main force.
Eventually, the fighting had reached the city of Toulon, a port city on the Mediterranean Coast that would have, had it not been for the guns, bombs, fire, and screaming, been quite beautiful. A notable French naval base had once been a point of interest in the city, before the desperate Germans had scuttled the whole fleet as the Allies pressed in. The city was, frankly, a mess, but it was a mess that the Allies were determined to liberate.
Trailing after their fellows as was often the strategy for Jacob and his team, he had led his men on the outskirts of the city, near the waterfront. Their clearing of the German forces had been methodical, but not without losses. A house collapse took out two of Jacob’s men, a German ambush ended a third, and the fourth man cracked under the pressure and ran, vanishing into the depths of the city-under-siege.
It had been when Jacob gave chase on the deserting fourth man that had led to the situation he was now currently in.
He’d gotten tunnel-vision, fixating on the deserting British soldier, and turned blindly into what had ended up being a quaint, mostly intact waterfront bar. His incredible reflexes had kicked in right as he saw the German man aiming a gun at him, and it had been miraculous that he’d gotten off a shot at all, but there was simply no way he could’ve escaped the fate he’d blundered into.
The German’s bullet had torn straight through his leg, causing him to cry out in pain and topple onto the floor of the bar. While facedown, he’d heard the cries of the German, Jacob’s own bullet doing the same thing to that man’s leg as his had to Jacob’s. Piling onto the unbelievable coincidences inadvertently constructing a very unstable pile of absurdity, both of their guns had jammed after that single bullet exchange. The weapons had become useless.
And so had, effectively, the men themselves.
Neither man able to fight through the pain and stand back up to continue assaulting one another, the two had simply crawled to opposite ends of the bar and leaned back against the walls, facing each other. And so it had been for almost ten minutes, the two mortal enemies staring at each other but unable to bring their scuffle to a close due to their malfunctioning weapons and leg injuries. For Jacob’s part, he’d practically attempted to stare a hole through the German, manifesting some sort of metaphysical wound that would finish him off. Obviously, he’d managed no such thing.
And then, to Jacobs surprise, the tense silence (otherwise punctuated by the distant booms of gunfire) was broken by the German man leaning to the side, grabbing an untouched bottle of wine from the bar rack, and speaking in broken English.
“Well…should make most of it, ja?”
*****
Leon Keller had never wanted to join a war, and certainly not one in whose cause he did not believe in.
But Herr Hitler had taken that option away from him.
The madman was insistent on continuing his futile quest of domination, and it quickly became apparent to Leon that the only choice available to him was to join the war effort in the vain hope of securing an Axis victory and bringing an end to the violence and bloodshed.
He wasn’t a devout believer in Hitler like his two older brothers, or an attempted martyr like his father. He was a man who wanted a future for his wife, Marie, and his young son. And the thought of standing by and doing nothing while the Allies bombed his home and killed his family terrified him. So he had joined up, and he had hated every single second that he spent pulling the trigger on ‘enemy’ soldiers. Each life he took stole away a part of his soul too.
It had become even harder to keep going once it became blisteringly apparent that the Allies were going to win the long, bloody confrontation. It had eventually gotten to the point where Leon realized it would be better to flee back home, sweep up his wife and son, and sneak into an Allied country and beg for sanctuary. Or, at least, that had been the plan until his commanding officer caught wind, and Leon found himself on the front lines of the next battle, where he would surely die.
The Battle of Toulon.
And yet, fate had still shined upon Leon, albeit in a twisted, wry sense.
As his fellow German soldiers died all around him, Leon had found himself holed up in a small waterfront bar, trembling with fear as the sounds of the encroaching Allies blasted all around him. Firing upon the British soldier who entered the bar had been more instinctual than anything, which is why his shot had so thoroughly missed the mark and hit the leg instead of a more vital area.
Leon had then been so overcome with shock that the pain of his own leg being torn into by a return bullet that he barely felt the pain. Instead, he’d merely tossed his jammed gun aside, crawled to the wall, and rested his head back. Minutes had passed by, then, and he could practically sense the fury radiating off of the British man. Leon, on the other hand, was feeling oddly calm, and though it may have been from the trauma, found himself having to resist the urge to laugh.
Eventually, a bottle of wine within arm’s reach had caught his eye, and Leon had found himself reaching for it before he could even consciously realize what he was doing.
“Well…should make most of it, ja?” He said to the British man, well aware his English was spotty at best.
The British man’s baffled expression was yet again almost enough to spur Leon to laugh. Whatever the other man may have possibly believed Leon could utter after picking up the wine bottle, it wasn’t that.
Without waiting for a response, Leon uncorked the bottle and took a long swig. It wasn’t aged as long as he’d have liked, but given the circumstances, it was damn-well the most delicious wine he’d ever tasted. The only thing that kept him from downing the entire bottle was the irresistible compulsion to slot the cork back in and roll the bottle over to the British man. It only felt right to share the wine given they already shared bullet wounds and a bleak outlook of survival.
The bottle hit the man’s foot and came to a rest, and impossibly, the man’s eyebrows rose even higher.
“What…is happening here?” The man uttered, finally speaking. Leon was surprised at how gruff and dispassionate his voice sounded. Whereas Leon felt himself cracking at the seams from the war, this British man appeared to have opted to harden his heart to the violence instead. It was obvious everything still bothered him, of course, but Leon had to admit some respect for holding it together at a surface-level.
Leon shrugged in response to the man’s question. “Drink, friend. What else to do?”
A long moment of silence passed…and then the man finally leaned forward to grab the bottle. He winced as he did so, and try as he might, Leon could still hear the repressed gasp of pain. But, finally, the British man reclaimed the bottle, uncorked it, and took a long swig.
For a moment, he almost looked set to spit the wine back out, but the emotion in his eyes was one of delighted surprise and not disgust. No doubt his reaction came from being unused to the delicacies afforded to a beautiful waterfront city when not in war, and the taste of the wine was shocking his system back into what the world had once been before Hitler’s reign of terror began.
Or at least, that’s how Leon had felt after tasting the wine, and he chose to believe the British man felt something similar.
Eventually, the man paused his drinking to speak. “This…is some fine wine.”
“Eh.” Leon shrugged again. “Fine, ja? I have better at home.”
This time, the British man’s perplexed expression was too humorous to ignore, and Leon burst into laughter. To his surprise, the other man joined in quickly after, though he clearly was trying to keep his laughter contained to quick professional bursts, and not fall into the almost manic cadence of Leon’s own laughter. The British man then rolled the wine bottle back to him, and Leon graciously accepted it.
After another hearty drink, Leon put a hand to his chest. “I am Leon. You?”
The British man rolled his eyes, but the slight relaxing of his shoulders made it apparent he was finally embracing the absurdity of their unlikely camaraderie. “I’m Jacob.”
“Did not expect doing this today, ja?” Leon quipped.
Jacob let out another laugh/sigh mix. “No, no. Not at all. Can’t say I hate it, though. Anything beats dying, I suppose.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “Even if our odds of getting out of this aren’t very good. Longer we stay here, the more we risk being collateral damage.”
Leon understood the gist of his weary compatriot’s sentiment. “Ja. Should be moving on?”
“Crawling on, more like.” Jacob winced as he flexed the leg he’d been shot in. “Hurts like hell, but I think I can manage. You?”
Leon did the same, gasping as he did so. “Eesh…ja, hurts like hell. But I can make work.”
Jacob put a hand against the wall to brace himself in preparation for standing. “Then, I suppose this is it, Leon. You know we’ll have to kill each other if we cross paths again, yeah?”
Leon pursued his lips, unsure of how to answer. The logical reply was ‘yes’, or at best ‘unfortunately yes’, but his heart just wasn’t in it. Leon was tired of killing. And, he was beginning to realize that he didn’t have to keep taking his orders on the chin. Was he really going to let a single failed desertion attempt and beating from his commanding officer force him into a never-ending struggle of life and death? Was he that weak-willed?
He opened his mouth to reply…
…and the most arrestingly beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life walked into the bar.
*****
Jacob’s jaw dropped at the sight of the woman who walked into the bar, and he could see that Leon’s had done the same. It was hard not to have that reaction.
The woman was a vision of perfect beauty straight from the pages of a fairytale. Tall, smooth-skinned, and having possession of a refined aura and grace. Her vibrant red hair flowed almost ethereally around her shoulders, and matched her soul-searing crimson eyes. She was wearing a silver, nearly-sheer dress that clung to her curves in a way that was almost impossible to avert one’s gaze from, and the subtle smile playing across her dark lips made it apparent she was aware of the effect she had on the two men.
But whereas Leon seemed temporarily stunned by the mysterious woman’s beauty, Jacob found himself trembling for an entirely different reason.
Her eyes.
Or rather, her pupils.
They were a narrow, elongated slit that, beneath the woman’s otherwise inherent seductive allure, radiated with pure malice.
She wasn’t a human…and, having studied much French history and culture during his years of university, Jacob instantly recognized who the woman was. Or what she was, in point of fact…however little logical sense it made.
The woman was a Melyzin. Or Melusine, as it was often translated outside of France. A half-serpent, half-woman water spirit.
The Melusine held Jacob’s gaze for a long moment, and the air of chilling terror that washed over him as she did so left him shaking uncontrollably. However, as if sensing that he recognized what she was, she instead shifted her gaze to Leon, and began approaching him with a sensual prowl that seemed to utterly ensnare the German man’s mind and body.
Jacob’s eyes widened in recognition.
Our souls. He thought to himself. She’s come for our souls. The war has drawn her in.
The original Melusine myth did not involve a fearsome monster at all, but there were plenty of other folklore tales Jacob had read in university of Melusines accosting innocent villagers and dragging them into the watery depths. It had been said that the Melusine feasted on the souls of humans, lacking their own. And a soul tormented by fear, hate, hunger, trauma, and all other manner of unseemly things would surely provide as richly emotional a meal as a soul could.
And what better soul than that of monsters like us? Jacob internally bemoaned.
The Melusine finished her approach to Leon and knelt before him. She placed a hand on his cheek and he stiffened, letting out a strangled yelp. No doubt from such a close distance he was noticing her eyes, and perhaps even feeling the undoubtedly cold, clammy touch of her hand on his skin. And yet he still stared straight into her eyes, unmoving, and Jacob knew that the Melusine was about to feast. Leon would be first…and he would be second.
Unless he did something about it right now.
Biting his lip to keep from audibly groaning in pain, Jacob stretched forward and reached a hand into his left boot, where his fingers clasped around a small emergency knife he always kept stashed in there. Once, it had gotten him out of an otherwise deadly ambush, and now it appeared that it may do the same thing yet again. Or, at least, Jacob hoped it would, as he curled back his hand and let the knife fly towards the Melusine.
With pinpoint aim, the knife jammed itself point-first into the creature’s back, right between her shoulderblades, and the Melusine let out an ungodly wail.
She then proceeded to rip the knife out without hesitation, whirl around to face Jacob with pure fury in her eyes, and charge back across the room towards him.
Jacob had about a second to process the horror of the most terrifying sight he’d ever laid eyes on in his life, before the creature was upon him, snarling and gnashing her teeth. With one hand she clenched tightly around his neck, and with the other she stabbed her elongated, sharpened fingernails into his stomach, each nail sinking an inch into his belly and provoking him to scream from the searing pain.
With the strength only a supernatural creature could possess, the Melusine effortlessly foisted Jacob up from the ground, and her sultry smile turned venomous as her lips spread wider than humanly possible, and her brilliant white teeth grew longer and serrated. An ugly cracking sound echoed through the room as the creature’s jaw dislocated, ripping open and providing ample space to devour Jacob’s head in one bite.
Jacob fought back…or thought about fighting back, but for the first time in his life he found himself petrified by the terror of the situation, by the acknowledgement of his own fragile mortality. He had only enough mental processing capacity to dully wonder if this primal panic is what had passed through all the men he’d killed during this war, and as the Melusine leaned forward to rip off his head, he wondered if this death was his justified punishment.
He closed his eyes as his head entered the Melusine’s mouth, her horrific breath perhaps the last thing he’d ever smell, and her saliva dripping onto his skin the last thing he’d feel.
And then there was an earth-shattering boom.
*****
The moment Jacob’s knife stabbed into the Melusine’s back, the hypnotic hold she’d had over Leon had been broken.
Leon had almost broke from the cavalcade of warring thoughts fighting against the impossible reality playing out before him.
Melusine weren’t supposed to be real, and yet here one was. Leon had always truly believed he’d make it back home to his family, and yet he’d come within an inch of his life. Leon had never thought of himself as unable to face a challenge if his loved ones were on the line, and yet a single glance from the creature’s gaze had rendered him useless and vulnerable. Leon had been unable to process all of this at once, and his already shaken mind had threatened to break.
Until a brief glimpse of human logic anchored him to a grounded reality, and Leon recognized that Jacob had just saved his life, and in turn, invoked the full animalistic wrath of the Melusine.
And only Leon could do anything about it.
Leon had proceeded to kick himself into a gear he hadn’t known he possessed, as he scrambled after his previously discarded gun. The weapon was not wholly useless thanks to the jammed chamber, and by hammering his fist against it he was able to free the jam. He had then prepped it to fire again as fast as his trembling hands could go, aimed it at the beast, and fired.
Had he been an inch or two off, his bullet may very well have ended Jacob’s life instead of saving it.
He hadn’t missed.
The bullet had torn straight through the creature’s chest, and then had impacted against the wall, thankfully missing Jacob due to the angle the creature stood at. It had also been pure luck that the beast hadn’t chomped down on Jacob’s head reflexively, and had instead reeled back from the pain with a mighty roar, dropping her limb prey back onto the floor.
The Melusine glared at Leon with a brief, fleeting glimpse of fury, before the expression was replaced with one of agony. Blood leaked profusely from the hole in her chest, and she seemed to sag from the weight of continuing to stand. With a frenzied roar, she ran out of the bar, and with each step her powers of shapeshifting faded. Scales replaced flesh, and her legs began to merge back into a serpentine tail.
Twenty seconds after she left the bar, Leon heard a distant sound of splashing, and knew that the creature would not be back…if she even survived.
Tossing the gun aside, Leon limped over to Jacob’s side, the British man staring out at the world through hazy, unseeing eyes. Leon tried waving his hand in front of the man’s face, but to no avail. Resorting to an old trick his father had taught him instead, Leon tucked two of his fingers into his mouth and blew out as high-caliber a whistle as he could, and almost chuckled with relief at how Jacob flinched and blinked himself back to reality.
Leon then set about patching the wounds on Jacob’s stomach, though he could feel the man’s eyes boring into him as he did so.
Jacob’s voice was hoarse when he spoke. “Was…all of that real?”
Leon huffed a laugh. “Ja. Strange, no?”
Jacob’s lip twitched in an approximation of a smile. “Strange is one word for it, yeah.”
“But, so is this, ja?” Leon added, pointing to himself and Jacob. The other man nodded ruefully.
Leon finished everything he could do with Jacob’s wounds, and then leaned back. As he rested his hand against the floor, he felt his fingers touch glass. Grasping the object, Leon hoisted another pristine bottle of wine from the floor, and held it towards Jacob with a proud grin.
The British man fought valiantly for a moment, before bursting out into laughter. Leon joined in, and soon the bottle of wine had been uncorked and both men drank their fill, slipping into a rapport of telling stories about their lives and reminiscing on what they both aspired to do whenever they could go back home.
For a brief, blissful moment, the war being waged outside of their little bar stopped existing, and the two men temporarily remembered what it felt like to be human again.
Mystery/Thriller
~~ Someone beckons you to follow. What do they want to show you? Do you follow? What do you find? ~~
The Alleyway
It was Thursday. The middle of the work week. Three dreadful days down, two more horrible shifts to go. On the surface, I was holding it together, but underneath my too-bright demeanor and the smile that didn’t reach my eyes, I was struggling to hold it together. I hated my job.
Which was funny, because I used to love my job.
But it, along with many other things, had simply started to lose meaning after my brother was murdered.
A month ago on the dot, actually.
I still hadn’t gotten over it, despite my best friend’s insistence that I shouldn’t be letting it eat away at me so much. That my brother had brought it upon himself. That he’d deserved it.
A horrible sentiment to say aloud, usually…but my brother was anything but usual.
Oliver Rosenthal was the kind of kid in school who smiled wide, got great scores, was a teacher’s pet, and then dealt weed in the bathroom and raked in more money on a daily basis than the teacher’s got paid. And he got away with it for far longer than he should have, all because of his ‘golden boy’ status. He did get caught eventually, but a stint in juvie certainly didn’t change his hustling ways. They really only got worse after high school.
He had a reason for being so hard on the grind, and one that most people didn’t know. Our mom’s chemo treatments drained the family bank account in the blink of an eye, and Ollie’s drug dealing (and many other illicit quick-cash schemes) were the only thing keeping the bills away. I took up a job waitressing, but that hardly made a dent in things.
It kept me far away from dark alley shootings, at least.
Ollie’s problem had always been patience. He could’ve gotten a steady job like me, but that wouldn’t have paid the bills off fast enough for his liking. Ollie had always believed himself to be unstoppable whenever he set his mind on something, and never even remotely considered the long-term consequences of his actions.
I went no-contact with Ollie shortly after graduation, when he started shaking down people for money when they didn’t pay on time, and when I watched his rampant drug dealing ruin the incredible futures a few of my closest peers had been building throughout high school. It especially bothered me that he never seemed to care. As long as he got the money to pay for mom’s treatments (as little help as they seemed to be doing in the past few years), then there was no line Ollie wasn’t willing to cross.
One short jail sentence. And then another. He just kept pushing, harder than the world itself could push back.
For as much as I hated thinking about the things he’d done, I could never deny that his money wasn’t what was keeping mom alive. Thankfully, after college, I landed an office job that paid just enough to cover the rent of my cramped little apartment and mom’s medical bills (and the tracest amount of spending money for my burgeoning gacha addiction), so I no longer needed to depend solely on Ollie.
And that was enough for the universe to just throw him away, I guess.
Police said he was found dead in an alley, a single bullet hole right through his forehead. First-degree murder, most likely, but it wasn’t as if the police stood a chance at ever catching the perpetrator. There were no cameras in the alley where he’d died, no witnesses, and it was in a bad part of the city anyway. Within a week, it was clear that the police were washing their hands of the crime and moving on with their lives.
My best friend wanted me to do the same, as did all sorts of personal acquaintances. You know the type. The ones that crawl their way out of the woodwork after you’ve endured a tragedy, only to insert themselves into your grief to try and steal all the sympathy for themselves. Grief roaches. The same sort of sycophants who pouted and moaned about my mom’s continual medical suffering, yet never chipped in a single cent to cover the bills when we were struggling.
“Gigi, you poor thing. You’ve suffered almost as much as I have, and you’re half my age!”
“This is how Oliver’s life ends? Gigi, I’m so sorry for your hardships.”
“Isn’t it a relief, Gigi? To know that he can’t hurt you? Because, really, how long until he turned to you for money too?”
God, it was exhausting to listen to, and it was exhausting to think about. I’d spent more time blocking numbers in the past month since Ollie’s passing than I did all throughout high school and college. I didn’t have any sympathy for the people willing to trash Ollie’s name when the dirt on his grave was still fresh. I didn’t even have it within me to grant any leniency due to them not knowing all of his money hustling was for my mom.
And it was for the same reason that I still couldn’t move on, a month later: I missed him.
More than I thought possible…I missed him. I ached to see him again, to talk to him again, to crush him into an embarrassingly tight hug (as I’d done frequently when we were younger, as I was always taller than him).
But he was gone, and for as much as the world told me that was only a good thing, my heart couldn’t disagree any more strongly.
*****
I walked back to my apartment, by Thursday shift having slowly dragged its rotting corpse over the finish line. The singular saving grace was that, because it was the middle of July, the sun was still shining bright in the sky, which was enough to trick my mind into thinking I still had plenty of time before bed to get all my menial tasks done and find some relaxation.
Not that my relaxation had been anything but staring at the walls of my room ever since Ollie died…but…oh well.
I strolled down the city street I walked every week to get to work, my apartment only five blocks from the office that fought to its last breath to make itself my secondary residence. And today had been especially rough, as I’d realized with a hopeless moan instantly upon arriving through the door that I’d forgotten my cell phone at home. So that meant I went the entire day music-less and gacha-less during my lunch break.
Even the small joys were being ripped away from me.
The only upside (if it could even be called that) was that the lack of a phone meant I didn’t have much else to do on the walk home but stare at my surroundings. Observe other people busying themselves with rushing home or bar hopping. Breathe in a little of the air on the cool breeze (which, yes, okay, felt pretty nice). Not that my commute home had anything out of the ordinary to stare at.
Until I saw movement out of the corner of my eye right as I passed an alley, a claustrophobic little passageway tucked between a pizza place and one of the medical outreach centers mom often went to for treatment.
A rational corner of my brain assumed it had to have been an animal of some kind, or perhaps just an employee of the pizza place slipping around back for a smoke break.
The irrational corner of my brain convinced me to stop and take a look, even as I could already feel a wave of disappointment knowing each second spent loitering on the street was a second of relaxing at home (or trying to relax at home) wasted.
I slowed my pace and turned towards the alley…and saw my brother, Oliver, standing there.
It was so jarring I couldn’t help but sputter a laugh.
Despite how little sense it made, my very first thought was that it truly was Ollie standing before me, alive-and-well, having faked his own death as some sort of new money-making scheme. It was exactly the sort of cruel thing everyone else expected of him…but as one second of staring at his sudden appearance turned to five, I knew in my heart that that wasn’t true. Ollie wasn’t a good person, but if there was anything in life he loved, it was his family. He wouldn’t put us through the emotional turmoil of losing him and burying him just for a scheme.
Well…there was also the additional evidence of Ollie’s sickly pale complexion, the festering wound of the bullet hole in his forehead, and the fact that, upon closer inspection, I noticed he was actually floating about two inches off of the ground.
It was his freaking ghost.
“You’ve…gotta be kidding…” I murmured under my breath, entranced by this spectral apparition of my deceased brother.
And then somehow it got even stranger, as the ghost of Ollie waved to me, and jerked his head in the direction of the depths of the alleyway behind him. He then turned on his heel (or…pivoted his floating body?) and moved deeper into the alley.
He wanted me to follow him.
A patently absurd idea. Ghosts were never a good thing, no matter how much all those Halloween kids movies wanted me to think otherwise. A spirit from beyond the grave was bad news, and not something I had the mental capacity to get involved in at the moment. It would be best if I just ignored the apparition of Ollie, passed it off as some sort of sleep-deprived hallucination, and went home.
And yet my feet were already moving, propelling me quickly into the alleyway, a sense of desperation compelling me into chasing down the specter of Ollie before he vanished into thin air.
Maybe I was seeking some sort of closure with him. Maybe it was because the alley his spirit was leading me down reminded me of the alley his body was found in. Maybe it was because I had a death wish, and was willing to risk Ollie’s spirit leading me into some sort of Satanic ritual sacrifice. Maybe a little bit of those first two, and none of that last one.
Whatever the reason was, I slipped into the alley, hurrying along on Ollie’s ghostly heels.
The ghost of Ollie’s pace was quick, and I stumbled along in a very clumsy display, trying to keep up. I was so distracted trying to both move fast and avoid the junk and debris in my path that I nearly collided with Ollie when he came to a sudden stop. Or…rather, I did collide with him, passing temporarily through his incorporeal form.
It was a…chilling sensation, touching a ghost.
But more chilling was Ollie’s serious expression, and the fact that he held up a finger to shush me right as I opened my mouth to berate him for floating around so haphazardly. A quick flick of his eyes directed my gaze towards what he’d wanted me to see.
We weren’t alone in the alley.
Instead of leading out onto the next city block, the alley actually closed in between the pizza place, the medical center, and whatever building faced the opposite direction on the adjacent city block. Because of the height of the buildings, and the time of day, very minimal light filtered into the enclosed space, and it was only because of those shadows that my arrival hadn’t been noticed by the other two people standing there.
I ducked behind a trash can with an almost commendable amount of coordination, managing to avoid making noise and drawing attention to myself. Ollie floated right beside me, but his steely gaze was locked solely on the two mysterious individuals conversing. By pressing my head against the brick wall, I was able to peer around the trash can and see them, while still maintaining most of my cover.
I strained my ears to listen.
“She’s just some nobody.” One of the people said, their voice dripping with disdain. “I don’t know why this is so difficult for you.”
She was wearing pink nurse’s scrubs, and still had her messy blonde hair tucked up into a haircap. No doubt she was an employee of the medical center. At my best inference, I would’ve placed her at around thirty or so years of age. There was a hardness in her eyes (a detail I could make out as my own vision started adjusting to the darkness of the shadowy alley) and a threatening edge to her voice that indicated she was under a lot of stress.
“…I am trying to be discreet.” The second person replied, and the rumbling bass of their voice took me by surprise.
Looking closer, I couldn’t make out much aside from their above-average height and stocky musculature. Their face was concealed by a hoodie pulled low, but I could pick out the stubble of a well-shaven beard. They appeared to carry themselves with confidence, shoulders back and head held high. And yet, they were also clearly subservient to the nurse…in whatever this secretive, clandestine relationship was.
The nurse scowled. “She’s a wage-slave piece of dirt, Brockton. She’s made even less of her life than her brother.”
The tall man, apparently Brockton, hesitated a moment. “…you asked for neat and tidy, Louisa. Just like her brother.”
“Then why haven’t you killed her yet?” The nurse, Louisa, hissed.
I stifled a gasp. The two of them were talking about plotting someone’s murder, and though I tried to rationally think of any way that I could possibly be misconstruing their conversation, nothing came to me. I was overhearing the plans for a killing!
“She won’t be lured away like her brother was.” Brockton protested, in his monotone voice. “She keeps to herself, yet still has a circle around her of friends and acquaintances. Getting her alone has been…impossible, so far.”
“You said she lives by herself!” Louisa grabbed Brockton by the neck, and the absurdity of her tiny frame actually grappling with him almost caused my anxiety to bubble forth into a laugh. “Kick the door down and slit her throat! Make it look like some of her brother’s gang enemies coming to collect! I don’t care, just get it done!”
“…it will be messy.”
Louisa smirked. “It will be necessary. I don’t know how the hell her brother realized our clinic’s prescriptions are useless placebos, but we make tens of thousands a month on them. And I’ll be damned if I let some bleeding-heart brat take us down.”
“Are you so sure his sister even knows the truth?”
“Can’t be risked.” Louisa shrugged, and her nonchalance sent shivers down my spine. She pulled out her phone. “I’m on the clock in a minute. Get it done tonight, Brockton, or you’re going down with me when this is all over.”
The big man grunted in acquiescence. Louisa turned and walked towards the medical center’s back door, slipping inside. Brockton did the same but with the pizza joint, sliding inside an employee-only entryway.
I, meanwhile, felt like vomiting.
The two of them weren’t just planning any murder.
They were planning my murder.
And they’d already been responsible for Ollie’s death too.
Shakily, I glanced at the ghost of my brother, whose expression had turned to one of remorse. He flicked his saddened eyes at me and nodded slowly, confirming that everything going through my head at this moment was true, and that I was coming to all of the correct conclusions.
My brother had discovered a corrupt medicinal scheme, and he’d been killed for it. Even in death, he’d been trying to care for mom and me, and this unjust world had taken him away, uncaring and remorseless. And now, thanks to what his ghostly spirit had just helped me witness, I was the only one left to stop this greedy, moralless nurse from stealing money from the sick, vulnerable, and desperate.
Ollie put his ethereal hand on my shoulder, and though it obviously passed right through me, the sentiment was touching enough to bring a tear to my eye.
“Oh, god…” I moaned, caught between a whole confusing flurry of emotions.
What am I going to do?
And there’s two of the stories! Stay tuned for more next week!
The Contrarian Corner 