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’d love to have you as a subscriber to the weekly free story. You can subscribe via email here. Unsubscribe any time, from the link in every issue.

You can also get the entire collection of stories as a set of epub files for your favourite reader device: an overall collection, and also genre-specific volumes!

Here's story 276, of 288 so far.

Please note: permission is expressly denied to input any part of the story below into a machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) or Large Language Model (LLM) system in any form.

Bring Her Back

Some deaths are someone else’s fault, and they’re probably the easiest because at least you can assign blame.

That was the thought that had fastened itself onto Scott Russell’s mind, going round and round like a mantra, or a stuck record. He took another sip of the vodka and coke he’d been nursing for the past hour, wondering when the day would end. He didn’t usually add mixers to his drinks, but his sister-in-law had brought it to him and said that the sugar would help. To her credit, she’d been right.

He’d discarded his tie somewhere and opened the top two buttons of the starched white shirt. He wouldn’t miss the tie; he’d only owned it for a day and a half, and he very much hoped never to need it again. Simple black fabric. No, the tie wasn’t what he’d miss at all.

His wife Jenny, on the other hand… yes, he was going to miss her. He already did. He now understood just what it really meant to miss someone — in the profoundest way; as a fucking profession, to be continued ceaselessly until death took him too — and that was what today was all about.

The funeral service had probably been nice. It had probably been warm, and sentimental, and comforting. It had probably even included a gentle joke or two, as was the usual way. It had probably been all of those things, but Scott had sat in silence, in a stunned state, because no-one should have to bury (or indeed cremate) the one they promised to love forever and always.

Until death do us part, his mind whispered. He understood that now, too.

Some deaths were someone else’s fault. Murder. Drunk driving. Whatever other mayhem the universe can and often does orchestrate. But sometimes, it’s just your time. That was what the doctors had said: that it was just her time. And that’s one part they got wrong, because it absolutely was not her time, and should never have been her time.

Sometimes, a heart — one that’s full of life, and love, and an endless capacity to see the best in people — just stops beating. It gives up, and there’s nothing they can do, and they say it was just her time. As if it’s part of a plan, or perverse design. As if that could ever be true.

But it’s not, Scott thought. It’s just random chance. You can’t control it. When you love someone, you just wake every day and roll the dice. Gambling with your heart.

He rolled his eyes at himself, and took another sip of his drink. He knew that he should circulate a bit, through this house that used to be theirs and was now just his, and let his fellow mourners comfort themselves by trying to comfort him. It’s what she would have wanted him to do. And so he did.

It was another half an hour before he had the chance to be alone with his thoughts again. He’d been caught in an endless stream of condolence and reminiscence and if-there’s-anything-we-can-do. Everyone who came up to him was apologetic, as if his wife’s sudden and catastrophic heart attack had been their fault. Everyone said they were sorry. Scott was sorry too, but he didn’t think that any amount of apologies could ever make it alright again.

“It was a nice service,” said a voice to his right.

The words came from a man he didn’t recognise, dressed in a sombre navy blue suit, white shirt, and black tie. The guy was of that indeterminate age between thirty and forty, and he had one hand casually tucked into his trouser pocket. The other hand was a closed fist, and every few seconds, he shook it, making a rattling sound that was maddeningly familiar but which Scott couldn’t quite place at the moment.

“Yes, it was,” Scott replied. It was the same answer he’d given to everyone else. “Jenny would have liked it.” It was the most ridiculous and possibly insane comment — nobody would like their own fucking funeral service; by definition, they only happened when you were dead — but it seemed to be the expected response. The other man only nodded.

“Are you a colleague of hers from work?” Scott asked, but the man just shook his head, seeming disinclined to expand upon the gesture, and truthfully Scott didn’t really care who he was anyway.

Usually, the person who’d approached him would now offer their condolences, and perhaps even clasp his shoulder or shake his hand (if male), or kiss him on the cheek with a greasy smear of vampiric red lipstick (if female), and then finally bugger off. This man, however, made no move to do any of those things. He just stood there, looking impassively at the dark-clad people having their murmured conversations all around, and occasionally he rattled whatever it was he had in his hand.

“Are you a gambling man, Mr. Russell?” he asked, and Scott paused with his glass of vodka and coke halfway to his lips.

“Excuse me?” he asked, and the man glanced at him briefly, offering a crooked grin.

“I find it very satisfying,” the man continued, nodding at his closed fist, which he opened for just a second or two, revealing four red dice with vivid white dots on the faces, before he closed his fingers again.

He turned to look directly at Scott now, shaking the dice in his hand to emphasise each sentence. “It’s just random chance. You can’t control it.”

The conversations around them faded into the background. Scott lowered his drink without having taken a sip. The hair on the back of his neck felt like it was standing on end. The man continued speaking.

“Gambling is simple. There’s an upfront cost. An element of chance. And a potential reward. That’s all. When a man gambles, he relinquishes the illusion of control. I find it freeing.”

“I… suppose so,” Scott said. His throat was dry. A distant part of his mind remarked that this was the first time in more than a week that he didn’t feel completely consumed by his grief, but the thought was replaced immediately by a wordless note of caution.

“I don’t believe I caught your name,” he said, and again the man gave him a crooked grin.

“Doesn’t matter,” the man replied, and then he suddenly pointed at Scott as if he’d reached a monumental decision. He used the hand that held the dice, so that the gesture itself made the small cubes rattle. Then, still pointing at him, he shook his fist again, and again, and again. Each time, the rattling sound diminished, until it stopped entirely.

“I’ll be back to speak to you tomorrow,” the man said, and when Scott opened his mouth to protest, the man waved away the unvoiced objection. He lowered his hand now, and let it hover near Scott’s drink. It took Scott a moment to understand, and then he raised his own other hand, palm upwards. He felt a small cube drop into it. The man pushed Scott’s fingers closed over the dice.

The man nodded, and then walked away, quickly crossing the living room and passing into the hallway, and presumably to the front door and away. Scott could only stand and mutely replay the interaction.

After at least half a minute, he lowered his head to look at his own closed fist. He opened his fingers slowly, and there it was: just a simple red die — but blank. His brow creased in confusion.

He brushed his thumb across the wooden cube to roll it over, and sure enough, there was something inscribed on the one hidden side that it had sat on. Scott lifted his hand to read the tiny letters.

BRING HER BACK, it said.

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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