On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 166, of 240 so far.

Be The Adult

“This is my dad,” the girl said from the front hallway, gesturing to Bill. The boy stepped forward and extended his hand, and Bill shook it.

The boy’s name was Hutchison, and it was his first name, which Bill thought was a ridiculous situation for a boy. He loved his daughter Sophie, though, and so here he was. He could see the slight nervousness on the boy’s face, and he understood it well. A seventeen-year-old, meeting the parents — or the parent, in this case.

“Hi,” the boy said, and Bill smiled as well as he could. It felt like he’d been at the dentist and half of his face was still numb, but he hoped it at least looked vaguely genuine, for his daughter’s sake.

“Come on through and we can all sit down,” Bill added, gesturing to the living room door, and he let the two teenagers go ahead of him.

He noted that Sophie was holding the boy’s hand now, and he had a sudden vivid recollection of when he’d been in the boy’s position himself, decades ago, meeting the family of a girl whose name and face he could no longer remember. He clearly recalled the warmth and reassurance of her slim fingers laced with his own, though, and more importantly the sense of validation and endorsement — and even protection — that they brought.

He took a measured breath, resolved to try and be reasonable, and he walked into the room. They were already sitting on the couch opposite his favourite armchair, which was a positive start. The boy turned to look at Sophie, and Bill caught sight of a tattoo he hadn’t noticed; high up on the boy’s neck at the back.

Be reasonable, he told himself again.

He could already hear Sophie’s voice in his head, chastising him — or worse, becoming upset — if he asked about the tattoo, so he forced himself not to broach the subject.

“Can I get you anything to drink, Hutchison?” he asked. “Is it Hutchison you prefer, or Hutch, or…?”

Sophie rolled her eyes, but Bill honestly couldn’t figure out what he’d said that was wrong. For his part, the boy just smiled.

“Just Hutchison,” he replied. “And no, I’m fine.”

Sophie looked around at the boy with something like approval on her face, and Bill decided to just sit down. He already knew that the boy was at the same school as his daughter, and that they’d met there, so that was two questions he didn’t have the opportunity to ask.

“So what do your mother and father do?” he asked instead, then immediately wondered if it was an inappropriate enquiry. Sophie didn’t seem to mind, though, and the boy looked no more or less comfortable than he had a moment earlier.

“She works in a shop,” the boy replied. “No idea what my dad does, or where he is.”

Be the adult, Bill told himself.

“Well it’s good to finally meet you,” Bill said. “I hope Sophie hasn’t been winding you up about today. I know it’s not easy to meet someone else’s parents. I can remember doing it myself.”

“Nah, I’m not bothered,” the boy said, and Sophie quickly laughed in the way that all women somehow learn, to appease and to entreaty both sides in a nascent conflict; to apologise for a man, but without provoking his pride by letting him know that his actions required apology at all.

Bill found that he didn’t enjoy this particular development. It was like his daughter — a teenaged girl only minutes ago — had abruptly become a young woman, but proceeding on instinct and imitation rather than experience. He had hoped that her first bring-home boyfriend wouldn’t require a laugh like the one she’d just produced.

Every father feels like this, every time, he told himself, but he wasn’t sure it was true. He also very much didn’t like the unmistakable sparkle of challenge in the boy’s eye, nor the smirk that was aimed towards Sophie.

“So what have you been doing this morning, dad?” Sophie asked, and again all that Bill could think of was that he had seen countless women in this role before — perhaps all women, everywhere and forever. Negotiators, acting on behalf of a foolish man who either couldn’t read a situation, or didn’t care to. On the face of his daughter, he could see his own foolishness as a younger man, and it was a wonder and a dismay to him.

You were once this boy, Bill told himself, but he dismissed the thought as untrue. It was too much of a stretch. Wasn’t it?

“Puttering around,” Bill replied, smiling at his daughter. “Some tidying in the back garden. And I did some work earlier.”

“Where’s your wife?” the boy asked suddenly, his gaze fixed on Bill, and it was then that the veneer over the mood in the room fell away.

Maybe she’s hanging out with your father, Bill thought but did not say, drawing the required strength for self-censorship from the sudden panicked look on his daughter’s face. Sophie’s head had whipped around and she was glaring at the boy, and when she tried to pull her hand away from his, he tightened his grip to keep hold of her.

Bill was slightly surprised at how quickly he found himself across the room and standing in front of the two young people. The boy was clearly surprised too, and became more so when Bill’s large hand clamped onto his wrist, squeezing the slender bones and compressing the nerves, eliciting a bark of pain from the boy as he instinctively released Sophie’s hand.

The girl was up from the couch and out of the room in a moment, and Bill registered the sound of her footsteps thumping up the stairs towards her bedroom. She might have been crying, but he’d have to ascertain that later.

The skinny boy had lost his fight now, and he seemed to weigh nothing at all as Bill dragged him from the room and once again into the front hallway, pulling the door open with his free hand. He released the boy’s wrist, and less than a second later he closed the same hand around his throat. He easily encircled two-thirds of the boy’s neck.

The grey eyes looking up at him, so flinty and challenging earlier, were wide now. The boy seemed to have nothing to say, but Bill did.

“You’re not somebody I’d like her to know,” he said quietly, then he threw the boy down the three short steps to the path, and closed the door.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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