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 170, of 240 so far.

For Starters

When the black hood was finally pulled from his head, Dean’s situation got even worse.

The place looked like a basement, or a store room, and there were no windows. It was dimly-lit, and there were indistinct and dusty shapes in the corners. His focus, though, was on the man standing in front of him.

Dean knew exactly who he was. Everyone in the neighbourhood did. Mr. Cooper, the old man who shuffled around the streets a couple of times a day, going for a walk or getting a newspaper or whatever it is that old people do while they wait to die. His clothes were shabby, and the hair he had left was white. Cooper stooped a little, and he walked with a stick. Not worth stealing from, and not enough of a threat to bother with.

But Dean’s opinion on that last point was evolving quickly.

“I expect you’re wondering why you’re here,” Cooper said, sounding cheerful enough, and with only a trace of the wispy, whispery, breathless way that old people sounded.

Dean nodded, because it was all he could do. He was tied to a chair, wrists behind the back rest and ankles lashed to the legs, and he was pretty sure that his ankles and wrists were also tied to each other. He had a gag in his mouth, and his chest was also bound to the back of the chair. He couldn’t move, and he’d definitely tried during the past several hours of silence before he’d heard the door opening.

“Then I’ll tell you,” Cooper said, sitting down in the only other chair. “You and your mates stabbed someone a few weeks ago. You probably stabbed a lot of people. But this was someone I knew. A friend from way back.”

Dean’s eyes widened. He remembered the other older man. The guy had been an ordinary looking bloke, older than Cooper by a few years, and he had smelled of booze. He’d been walking home. The problem was that when one of Dean’s crew had asked the guy for the time — a common gambit — they saw that he was wearing a vintage Rolex diver. The stupid old bastard didn’t want to hand it over, even though there were five of them and they were all carrying, and it had gone the way that it always went. Dean could even remember that the old boy had got a punch in, and that it had turned out to be his death sentence.

It all went down at the back gate of the park. One of Dean’s crew had filmed it on his phone, as they always did for a fight. Dean hadn’t watched it yet.

“You’re probably thinking that you’ll not tell me anything,” Cooper said. “Then later you might end up telling me something just so I’ll let you go. But that’s not how this is, son.”

Cooper reached into his coat pocket and took out a mobile phone, and for a moment Dean thought that he was going to take a photo of him. Then Dean saw the distinctive stickers on the back of the device. It was the same phone he’d been thinking about.

“I already saw it all,” Cooper said. “I already know. What you don’t know, though, is that the man you lot killed was an honourable guy. Fought for his country. Then he came home and he had a family, and his wife died just a few years ago. He had a daughter too. I saw her at the funeral. She couldn’t understand how something like that could happen to her dad. But I understand just fine. Because I served alongside him.”

Dean thrashed at his restraints again, just as uselessly as all the other times. He looked around in desperation, spotting a little table at the side of the room with some junk on it. He noticed that there was a length of garden hose, some tools, and some cleaning products. They looked like they’d been there for a while, except for the hose. That looked new.

Cooper followed his gaze, and nodded. “No-one bats an eyelid if an old man like me buys stuff for his garden. But we’ll get to that. Here’s what I know. There were five of you in the video on that phone, including the guy who recorded it. Three of them are dead. You’re number four, and the other one is in the back of a van outside, sleeping like a baby. I’ll be talking to him later on.”

Dean felt a warm sensation, and it took him a few moments to realise he’d lost bladder control. He was shocked at the degree of embarrassment and shame he felt, the emotions even edging out the fear, at least briefly.

“That does happen,” Cooper said, nodding at Dean’s crotch. “Don’t feel bad about it. It’s involuntary. Most people piss themselves when they know they’re going to die.”

Dean shouted through his gag, the fabric filling his mouth, but all he could make were a few indistinct sounds. Cooper shook his head as if he’d understood every word, and disagreed with the sentiment.

“No, son, that doesn’t matter,” he said. “There’s nothing you can say. No begging, no pleading, no threats, no bribes. You’re past all that now. The only thing you still need to do is die. And it’s going to take a while for us to get there.”

Cooper looked at him for a long moment, and it was only now that Dean saw the bruises on the old man’s knuckles, and the flecks of what might have been blood on his fingernails. Cooper turned and walked over to the table, picked up the hose, and wound it into a stack of loose loops, each just a little larger than the span of a man’s outstretched fingers. He walked back to where Dean sat, then held up the flail of plastic tubing.

“I don’t much go in for the fancy stuff,” Cooper said. “Electricity and injections and stress positions. Don’t see the need. You can break a man with whatever you’ve got lying around the house. And kill him, too. You should have worn jeans, son. But all you little bastards wear tracksuits, don’t you?”

Dean wasn’t able to give a reply, and Cooper didn’t wait for one. He raised his arm above his head, then snapped the loops of hose straight down onto Dean’s thighs, at least six or seven of the loops making contact simultaneously. The pain was unbelievable.

Dean was crying already, heart thumping in his chest, and it felt like his legs had been severed where the hose had struck him. Cooper raised his arm again, and Dean felt his whole body shaking within his restraints.

“Just so you know, it’s going to get a whole bloody lot worse than that, son,” Cooper said. “This is just for starters.”

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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