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 284, 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.

Impediment

The service was humanist instead of religious, which surprised no-one who was present. The young couple were just that — young — and for them, religion’s trappings seemed as faintly disquieting as they were ridiculous.

The couple themselves had attended three other weddings in the last eighteen months, of their mutual friends from university, and not one had taken place in a church. Lavish venues in converted but still listed buildings were now the norm, which suited the parents’ pride and the young adults’ overdeveloped sense of tacit irony.

The celebrant took great care to describe the principles of a humanist wedding, and to emphasise the informality as well as the personalised nature of the service and vows. On this occasion, there would be no tying-together of hands, but the assembled guests would at least be treated to the groom’s mother reading an extract from a poem. The first song in the order of service was Stand By Me, and the wedding party was invited to improvise as they wished.

The stranger bore it all with calm detachment.

He had attended his fair share of weddings in his previous life, with his own friends and family. His suit was of the least distinctive kind, and his tie’s colour was subdued. He wasn’t in the least bit memorable, and he smiled perfunctorily at anyone who made eye contact, whilst talking to no-one. If anybody had asked, he would have told them that he was a cousin of the bride’s mother — an identity he had chosen because the bridal party was smaller than the groom’s — but it would have been a lie.

No-one asked. Mingling was usually kept for after the service.

The celebrant spoke of the circumstances of the couple’s first meeting, some of their shared holidays and notable life events since then, and of course about their love for one another. Of the intersected and now intertwined paths of their lives, and their promise to see out that future together, come what may, as husband and wife.

The bride’s mother paid rapt attention from her aisle-side seat in the front row, on the right side. Her own husband sat beside her, and it didn’t escape the attention of certain other guests that he would periodically look up towards the ceiling, his gaze moving around as if admiring the elaborate wooden roof. After all, even fathers sometimes shed tears of happiness and pride.

The stranger paid little attention to the family members. He was sitting almost at the rear of the venue, which was an orchard’s converted storehouse on the grounds of a stately home in the Scottish baronial style. The decor was varnished rustic, and lent a certain pagan quality to the proceedings. Beneath his crisply-pressed white shirt, a small medallion hung from the stranger’s neck, tarnished and eroded, but still visibly bearing the mark of a crow’s foot. It was the first thing he had taken when he stepped into his new life, leaving behind all that he had been before. It was also his only permanent possession, his clothes and everything else he carried to be discarded soon after he had fulfilled his task here today.

There was laughter as the celebrant made a joke about the groom learning the important lesson that his wife is always right, and the cadence of his voice and confidence of his delivery marked it as one he’d told hundreds of times before. It had the air of a catechism, and indeed it could rightly be described as such.

Another reading, and this time a very likely apocryphal quote from a scientist about the nature of love, drawing murmurs of approval from the crowd. The material was well-chosen, and the celebrant’s pace had quickened now, as he began to feed on the audience’s enthusiasm. The photographer, a middle-Eastern man who perhaps lingered slightly too long on the multitude of bridesmaids in their matching dresses, moved around with no thought to whose view he might block, but never remained in one place for long.

The best man was called up now, and predictably pantomimed having misplaced the rings before triumphantly producing them from his pocket. The bride-to-be fluttered a hand of mock relief to her white lace-clad chest, as the celebrant grinned his approval.

The lipsticked aunts and the belt-cinched uncles straightened in their ersatz pews, for the time of the exchange of vows had clearly arrived, with the only remaining obstacle being the required preamble. The celebrant reiterated the principles of the Humanist Society, making proud note of its evolved view of the union of marriage. The couple had apparently written their own vows, and would be reading them without further direction in just a moment.

“Now, the question I have to ask, which I very much hope no-one will answer”—laughter, with just the barest hint of nervousness, from the bride’s mother—”but is there anyone here who knows of any lawful impediment to the joining of these two people in matrimony? And wanting your dinner sooner doesn’t count.”

More laughter, and some of the youngest guests looked around briefly, eyes wide, but the celebrant only smiled and nodded, satisfied that no-one present was going to speak out.

The stranger stood up silently, leaving his suit jacket unfastened.

Heads began to turn immediately, and the celebrant noticed the movement and blinked. “I hope you’ve just chosen a bad time to go and find the bathroom,” the man joked, unease now evident in his own voice.

The stranger ignored him, focusing his attention instead on the groom who was now frowning in his direction. The young man could barely have been twenty-five, and his mother — who sat with her own sister, and no husband in sight — looked affronted.

The stranger gave a nod that was almost a small bow of respect, stepped out into the aisle, and in a single smooth motion he drew a silver dagger from within his jacket. Every eye in the place had only an instant to widen as he balanced it in his hand, and then he flicked his forearm forward expertly.

The blade whispered in the air and flashed in the light, and then it was embedded to the hilt in the groom’s chest.

Red bloomed through the white cotton of the young man’s shirt, and as he fell backwards, the last thing he ever heard was the stranger’s voice from the doorway at the rear of the room, somehow carrying to every corner despite his quiet tone.

“Your father’s debt is repaid in full,” he 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.

Find Out More

I'd love to hear any feedback or other thoughts; you can find my contact info here.

I encourage you to share this story with anyone you think would enjoy it. If you’d like to receive a tale like this via email every week, you can sign up to receive them here.

Thanks for reading.