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 255, of 266 so far.

Paranoia

At first, he thought the flight attendant was just a little aloof. God knows it was the kind of job that would make you hate your fellow human beings.

Her smile never reached her eyes, and at times her gaze bordered on coldness. She performed her duties adequately, but there was something just a little bit off.

Like she’s running down the clock, Cutter thought.

But that was nothing unusual either. Everybody counted the moments until their working day was over. It didn’t mean that anything was wrong. You had to be careful about paranoia, as he’d been told many times. Certain jobs could make you see things that weren’t there — and that certainly included his.

You also had to listen to your instincts, though, and Cutter’s instincts said that the situation was wrong. It was a vague voice in the back of his mind at first, slowly growing in volume, and it jumped by about eighty decibels when the flight attendant glanced at the time for at least the third occasion in the last ten minutes.

Made your first mistake, he thought.

Cutter dropped his gaze to the pocket on the back of the seat in front of him, stretched his back, and casually unfastened his seatbelt. He took the in-flight magazine from the pocket and turned to the snacks section, quickly surveying what was on offer and then continuing to look at the glossy pages without seeing them.

He assessed his immediate environment. There were limited options for improvised weapons in an aircraft cabin. There was very little space to move around, and there were several hundred innocent bystanders to worry about. There wouldn’t be any onboard security on this flight either. Then there was the fact that the woman almost certainly had a firearm somewhere nearby, which she’d retrieve when the time was right.

On cue, she handed a passenger a miniature can of cola, and checked her watch once more.

Cutter knew that the timepiece was worth somewhere north of three hundred thousand Euros. It wasn’t a knock-off. She wore it disdainfully — almost arrogantly — and as he took another careful glance at her face, he could see a certain bitter and detached amusement playing across her features briefly.

“Sorry,” he said, turning slightly towards his seat mate, a slimly-built man with thick spectacles and an ebook reader device, “but could you let me out?”

The man blinked at him and then got up to allow Cutter to step into the aisle, returning to his seat afterwards. The service cart was still eight rows away, and he wasted no time in going to the rear of the plane, quickly using the bathroom, and then lingering for a few moments in the galley area, apparently doing some light stretching exercises.

From his vantage point, he picked out the three others easily. The male flight attendant working the opposite aisle, up towards the front. The large man wearing headphones and watching a movie. The severe-looking middle aged woman reading a magazine. They looked like ordinary passengers, but each one of them made Cutter’s instincts raise a wordless alert.

He put his hands in his pockets, his right fist curling around the object he’d easily removed from the plane’s bathroom fittings using the key on his keychain that folded out into a pared-down multitool. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. He walked unhurriedly back towards his seat, then went straight past it and approached the service cart. The flight attendant glanced around at him after a moment, and he gave her an apologetic smile.

She pursed her lips in suppressed annoyance, then pulled the cart to one side to allow him to pass. When Cutter stepped up beside her, though, he stopped and tilted his head towards her, speaking barely loud enough for the two of them to hear. His free hand came to rest on the edge of the cart.

“It doesn’t have to happen this way,” he said.

To her credit, her eyes betrayed absolutely no surprise or confusion, and nor did she respond. Cutter smiled, continuing in the same quiet tone.

“You and your colleague over there can keep serving drinks, the big guy can watch his film, and the headmistress can read the rest of her magazine. Nobody needs to be any the wiser. We get where we’re going, and you all walk away — that’s a promise.”

“Where would be the fun in that?” the woman replied, and some subtle shift in her expression, or perhaps an unconscious movement of her body, brought a realisation to his mind with utter certainty.

It’s in the cart.

He gave a small laugh and nodded, as if they’d shared a joke, and in the next instant he grabbed the bulky credit card reader device from its cradle on the edge of the cart and clubbed her on the left temple with it. She dropped like a stone, and Cutter glanced around quickly to see if anyone had noticed why.

“I think she’s fainted,” said an old woman two rows ahead, already getting out of her seat, but Cutter’s focus was on the opposite aisle, and the man standing some twenty feet diagonally ahead. The male flight attendant locked eyes with him, and Cutter immediately dropped to the floor.

The expected pop of gunfire never came, but there were screams from that direction a moment later, but Cutter ignored them as he flipped open the red locking latch on the large lower tray door of the drinks cart beside him. It was the only compartment that had been locked, and it was tall enough to hide anything from a pistol up to an assault rifle. It held neither.

The device was surprisingly compact, and had the look of precision engineering. It was black rather than silver, had no visible access panels, and its upper surface was smooth and blank except for two features.

The combined biological and radioactivity hazard symbols were deeply etched, and filled with luminous yellow-green paint. The display was backlit in virtually the same colour.

Cutter focused on the digits for a moment, repeating them in his mind, then did a quick calculation and twisted the bezel of his diving watch until its forty-six position was aligned with the minute hand.

Fourteen minutes to go, he thought.

He closed the tray door and locked it once more, withdrew the object from his pocket, and took a measured breath. Then he stood up.

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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