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 185, of 240 so far.

Gaslight Pro

Finlay had been given the tip by a man at the pub, after too many drinks and not enough discretion.

The other guy was divorced too, though Finlay wasn’t sure if he was speaking from direct experience of acrimony or not. In any case, when the lights of the pub flashed to announce last orders, the man had leaned in, breath reeking of booze, and spoke in a whisper.

You need to check out this web site, mate.

He’d given Finlay the site’s address, then they’d both left, separately. Finlay hadn’t seen him in the pub since then, and he wasn’t entirely sure he’d ever seen him there before that night, either.

When he woke up on his own couch the next morning, fully clothed and desperate to pee, the whole latter half of the previous evening was a blur. But a shower and some breakfast had put that situation mostly to rights, and Finlay had a dim recollection of typing something into his phone. Sure enough, there it was. He waited another hour until his headache had abated a bit, then grabbed his laptop and opened a private browser window.

The site looked like so many others these days; big and bold, with sharp letterforms and lots of whitespace. Images were tastefully rounded at the corners, and subtle animations and transitions accompanied his exploration. He had sat there, oblivious to everything else, for more than an hour.

His first reaction was that it was a spoof, but the more he read, and especially when exploring the various service offerings and price plans, the more he realised that it was anything but.

Finlay found himself thinking of his ex-wife, which was generally a bad idea. He felt the old familiar feelings of anger and betrayal, and in his mind he saw the faces of her and the man he’d found her with. He saw the home they’d shared, and the small trailer full of things that he’d taken away from those twenty-six years of his life. Most of all he saw the face of his daughter; a face he hadn’t seen in almost two years, because her mother had made sure to poison her against him. He wondered if he’d ever actually see the girl in person again, up close instead of glimpsed at a distance. And then of course the anger took over completely.

He clicked through the site, and he opened new tabs in his browser, and he fetched his credit card. The subscription plan for the service he’d selected was exorbitantly expensive, but he’d been on social media a few days before and seen that his ex had discarded yet another man — there had been several since Finlay — so he knew that she was currently unattached. It was a window of opportunity. He clicked the Buy button, allowed the computer to scan his face, and saw the green checkmark that indicated the purchase had been successful.

On the site now, listed as an active plan in the account he’d created, there was a single entry.

Gaslight Pro

There was a fairly hefty up-front payment, and then a recurrent monthly fee, with a minimum term of one year. The company was apparently headquartered abroad, and its local service providers were freelancers, which the site called artists. The terms and conditions expanded upon that title, calling them performance artists and entertainers, but Finlay knew that it was just a bit of legal misdirection for the purposes of indemnity. Complete anonymity was assured, and the service agreement was very clear on the fact that the company would not hand over any customer records in response to any police enquiry or even a subpoena.

Finlay sat back, unsure if the buzzing in his head was from the last of the alcohol, the hangover, the anger, or the anticipation. He knew that it would be a while before he started getting any updates, but that was fine. He had nothing but time.

A month later, he saw on the site’s client dashboard that his assigned artist had met his ex-wife, seemingly by chance, and had befriended her. Two days later, they had coffee together. Then a lunch the following weekend. Two weeks after that, the agent slept with her. Within six more months, they were living together.

The updates were frequent by that point, and detailed; Finlay had to admire the professionalism of it all. Point-by-point accounts of the conversations, and the engineered disagreements, the arguments and confrontations, then the reconciliations, and the love-bombing, and all the rest of it. There were even planned milestones, which gained a green checkmark when they were reached.

Subject has started to doubt her own recollections, said one.

Subject has become isolated from her social group, said another.

It was at around the eleven-month mark that Finlay logged in and saw the checkmark he’d been waiting for. He read it aloud.

“Subject has started to blame herself for perceived relationship failures.”

There was a vengeful smile in his voice, and he pointed at the laptop’s screen in victory. In his opinion, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer lady.

The site was like a drug, and he had even gone out and — carefully, at a distance — watched the artist at work more than once. The feeling of power was even better than the revenge. Truly, it was a service-oriented economy.

All too quickly, his anniversary of first buying the package rolled around, and when he logged in he was greeted by an expiry notice, indicating that his artist would immediately terminate the relationship and disappear from his ex’s life — but there was also the option of continuing the subscription, and the relationship, for a further year, at the revised and higher rates.

Do you wish to renew your plan? the site asked, in those big and beautiful letters.

“Damned right I do,” Finlay muttered to himself, and he clicked the Buy button.

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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