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 211, of 240 so far.

Natives

“The lateness of the hour is leaving its mark upon my mind,” Reeves said suddenly, looking up from his writing desk to glance at the wall clock, which indicated it was a little after nine in the evening.

His manservant, a gruff-looking but soft-spoken and steadfastly loyal individual named Spencer, appeared in the open doorway a moment later, as if summoned into being by an incantation.

“Perhaps a drink, sir? And a break until morning?”

Reeves smiled. The other man’s tone was as patient and respectful as always, but from long association he could detect the note of affectionate weariness in his servant’s voice. Spencer had made it clear on a number of occasions, though never too forcefully, that he disapproved of his master’s penchant for excessive working.

“Both,” Reeves belatedly replied, and Spencer nodded.

“Very good, sir.”

By the time Reeves had tidied his papers, cleared his desk and closed the lid, a glass of brandy awaited him on the small table adjacent to his favoured armchair in the sitting room across from his study. A fire had been burning in the hearth for some hours already.

Reeves took his accustomed place in the armchair, and then noticed that the evening edition of his preferred newspaper was also laid out for him, draped over a footstool which had been moved from its usual location for the purpose. He grimaced.

“What’s going on in the world today, then?” he asked aloud, intending it only to be a musing of no consequence, rather than a direct enquiry. Spencer, waiting nearby to see if his master required anything further, remained appropriately silent. But then Reeves cocked an eyebrow at him, and Spencer cleared his throat.

“I have not had much time to look beyond these walls today, sir,” he replied, his voice dripping with his customary and enthusiastic disdain for the press. “Though I must allow that I noticed a disquieting headline regarding the Far East.”

Reeves harrumphed, waving a dismissive hand at the offending newspaper without looking towards it again, and picked up his drink. The spirit’s sweet richness burned his throat and then warmed his belly, a much-needed antidote to the day.

And a ward against the night, I daresay, he thought, a small frown playing across his brow.

He hadn’t been sleeping well of late, and he knew that Spencer was well aware of it. Indeed, his faithful companion had several times roused himself from bed to offer this or that soporific concoction. It had been going on for several weeks, and despite Spencer’s repeated offers to summon a doctor, Reeves had always rejected the idea. It was just a perfectly normal consequence of working a little too hard, and there was surely no sinister aspect.

“What’s on the cards for tomorrow?” he asked instead, and without hesitation Spencer reeled off a thankfully short list of appointments, none of which were especially pressing in importance. Perhaps he could have his man reschedule them all, and instead take a day off. Almost a blasphemous thought, right enough, but there it was nonetheless.

Reeves took another sip of brandy, letting it sit in his mouth this time, tasting the complexity and the alcohol. When it became uncomfortable, he swallowed, admiring the shifting patterns of the fire as refracted by the glass, then he set his drink down and rubbed his eyes.

Impulsively, he stood up and went across to the nearest window, which gave a view out over the hill and down towards the nearest village. The drapes had been drawn earlier by Spencer, but Reeves pulled the rightmost one back. The season still afforded a small amount of quickly-fading light in the sky, even at this hour, and it took only a few moments for his eyes to adjust. He could see the cluster of lights about three-quarters of a mile distant, and his memory filled in the details that his eyes could not currently perceive.

The largest dark shape was the mill, of course, and then the bridge leading to the primary thoroughfare, which was cobbled, and wound lazily westwards before joining the village proper, at which point it became the Main Street — and indeed the only one with a name. The entire population was perhaps a hundred souls, and all of them were indentured to the company which also employed Reeves himself in a supervisory capacity.

A glimmer of movement drew his eye, and he quickly spotted one of the little torches that the natives used in place of candles or some other more ingenious and sensible source of illumination. That they were paid in the mere necessities of life taken from their own lands was perhaps an injustice, but hardly more so than abandoning them to primitivism. With the oversight of the company, they now had reliable agriculture, clean water for drinking and bathing and irrigation, and the self-respect that comes from applying oneself to an honest task each day for the betterment of your own people.

Reeves nodded, as if trying to convince himself of something, then he returned to his armchair, picking up the newspaper on the way. He had only to scan it for a moment to see the headline that Spencer had likely been referring to, and he scratched his ear absent-mindedly as he read it.

China claims tenfold efficiency gains in new spatial folding drive, it said, in slender and elegantly serifed lettering.

Reeves had heard the claims before, but he still felt a frisson of unease. Such a thing would certainly upset the financial markets. He would have to make some enquiries in the morning. For now, he threw the newspaper aside and once again took up his drink. Spencer immediately retrieved the newspaper in silence, and carried it from the room.

Reeves drank deeply, his gaze drifting inexorably to the strip of the window he could still see from where he sat. Most of the light in the sky was gone now, revealing the stars, and two of the three moons that criss-crossed their way around the wretched little world.

The inhabitants had a ritual, which he had seen with his own eyes, where they would flatten themselves against the ground in worship when each of the satellites reached its perigee. They had a lot of rituals, in fact — though fewer now that the company had taken charge.

Damned uncivilised, he thought.

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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