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 192, of 240 so far.

Catching Up

McCafferty hadn’t been back in this part of the city for fully thirty years, so the various changes in the surrounding streets disoriented him a little.

Back then, he was referred to mostly by his first name, which was Jonathan, but anyone who dared to try that these days would have a very bad time of it indeed. Lifting one hand from the steering wheel, he took the laminated invitation card out of his jacket pocket and glanced at it.

30-Year Reunion! it said, in pretty letters printed on expensive stock.

It had been that kind of high school. It had been other things, too, mostly because of the kids who had been there with him. He laughed quietly to himself. Other men would have been nervous about the event, but other men weren’t Big Jack McCafferty.

He manoeuvred the enormous Bentley through the evening traffic deftly, then indicated and made the turn into the long approach road which would take him once again to the school, after all these years. When the first of the buildings came into sight, it looked exactly the same to his eyes. Immaculate, warm, inviting, and not at all institutional. The colours were friendly, and the architecture was clean and somehow spoke of intelligence and refinement, despite boasting absolutely none of the grey stone or studded wooden doors within archways that were more commonly found within its general price-range of educational facility. Instead, it was airy, panelled in glass and light-coloured bricks, with ramps alongside stairs, and clear signage everywhere.

A properly-run place, McCafferty thought. It was a phrase, and a judgement, that he reserved for only a handful of organisations — including his own.

He brought the big car smoothly to a halt in a vacant space within the litter-free parking area, facing back towards the access road for ease of departure later. There were plenty of other vehicles there already, despite the late hour, and indeed McCafferty had timed his trip so that he’d hopefully be the last one to arrive, with everyone else already inside. The lights, music, and hubbub of chatter coming from the gymnasium building nearby showed that he’d probably succeeded.

He killed the engine, got out, and went around to the boot. For a moment, McCafferty considered opening it and taking some things out, but then he looked around. It was getting dark, there was a pleasant breeze in the still-warm air, he could faintly hear one of the songs he’d loved to listen to when he was sixteen years old, and there were some honest-to-god balloons taped to the doors he’d soon be walking through. Starting out heavy was the wrong tactic.

Besides, real men brought the guy to the tools, not the other way around. That was another one of his personal sayings.

The music changed, and McCafferty didn’t know the new song, so he decided it was as good a time as any to make his entrance. His casual-looking suit was tailored, and cost thirty-five grand, which didn’t even place it in the top ten within his wardrobe. His shirt alone cost more than the probable budget for the evening’s event, and his shoes would have bought any one of the other cars sitting out here in the rows around his own.

When he got inside, there was no reception desk, so he went straight through into the hall. The party was in full swing, with a makeshift bar at one side, tables around the other edges, and the rest of it serving as a dance floor. He recognised every single face, even though they had all changed in the ways that time brings.

There was Linda, but with short hair now. And Collins, tall as ever, but bald and dressed too young. Oh, and there was Sarah, in the flesh. He recognised that figure easily, even though parts of it had gone fifteen degrees south, and another fifteen east and west at the same time.

McCafferty couldn’t help but smile.

“Oh my god; Jonathan!” said a delighted voice nearby, and he glanced in that direction to see another of them. It took a moment to match the name to the face, but that was all.

“Cunningham,” McCafferty said, eyeing the bulging belly that hung over the other man’s cheap jeans. “You’ve hardly changed a bit.”

It took more than twenty minutes to circumnavigate the place in that way, stopping for lots of brief conversations when he was recognised but not initiating any himself. McCafferty considered getting a drink, but he didn’t drink on the job, and tonight he was most definitely on the job. He hadn’t built one of the largest and most feared criminal empires in the region by being sloppy, or bending his own rules. So he wandered on, making pleasantries he didn’t mean with people he didn’t care about, until he found the guy he was looking for.

Seaver was at a table, but standing, and McCafferty could see that he was with the same two fools he’d always led around when they were all at high school for real. He shook his head, then walked on over, and three heads looked around.

“Jonathan!” said Seaver, all smiles and warmth, but with that barely-noticeable hint of caution in his eyes that McCafferty saw easily. So he remembered too.

“Not so much these days,” McCafferty replied, then grabbed Seaver by the hair, yanked his head down, and broke his nose on the table in less than a second.

These were the times when he felt truly alive. McCafferty remembered the boy that he’d once been, and he remembered the bullies like this one, and the pranks, and the beatings, and all of it. Truth was, he was grateful, because it had made him the man he was today. But the man he was today didn’t pass up the opportunity to settle old scores, and this score was just about the oldest there was.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” said one of the fools, and McCafferty took him straight down with an elbow to his jaw. A moment later, he was fairly sure he heard a scream from across the gym, but the music made it ambiguous.

He grabbed Seaver, still conscious at the moment, and dragged him over the table and onto the ground, keeping a grip of his collar. The second fool came towards him, so McCafferty dropped him too with a single strike to the throat. Then the music stopped, which meant that McCafferty didn’t need to lean down next to Seaver’s ear to be heard. He did it anyway.

“Come with me out to the car for a minute,” he said. “We’ve got some catching up to do.”

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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