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.

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.

Here's story 237, of 240 so far.

Past Midnight

Harrigan got the nod from the guard while he was sitting in his cell, listening to another inmate being shivved further down the row. The guard was unperturbed, and Harrigan smiled. He liked it when everyone played by the same rules.

The guard didn’t need to say a word to convey his message, because it was such a frequent occurrence: Harrigan either had an incoming phone call, or a visitor. Most days he had at least one or the other.

He got up from his bunk, glanced at the hard lines of his own face in the laminated plastic mirror mounted to the wall with twelve screws, and walked straight past the guard without any further acknowledgment, because none was needed.

Three men were just leaving a cell ahead of him, and none of them looked in his direction, such was their haste to be somewhere else. Harrigan didn’t slow, but he did glance into the cell in question as he passed, and sure enough, he recognised the pinch-faced little French kid who had been trying too hard to make a name for himself since he arrived a few weeks earlier. He wasn’t quite dead yet, but his eyes were glassy, and Harrigan doubted that the kid was even aware of his last moments on Earth.

Had it coming, he thought, maintaining his unhurried pace as he continued in the general direction of the visiting area, which was also where the phones were.

Harrigan had lost a brother a few years ago. Not a blood brother, because he had no siblings, but a brother nonetheless; Miguel, a member of his organisation, who had died after being shot three times by a man who just happened to be passing by when Miguel was getting ready to torch a little local deli with the owner and his family still inside, after they’d been late with their payment for the second time.

Harrigan felt the old anger rising up. The passer-by turned out to be some kind of law enforcement, or military, or something; Harrigan had never found out. But the guy was bad news all the way down. Five of Harrigan’s other senior lieutenants had died by the following day, and then the actual cops came. Anonymous tip, the lawyers said, but Harrigan knew it had been the same guy. The only name that came out for him was Smith, and that was as good as no name at all. He hadn’t been at the trial. It all smelled like a cover-up, and Harrigan had been handed the third prison stretch of his life, this time for fifteen years.

Just like before, he’d be out a lot sooner than that. He still had money, and lawyers, and he still had guards and parole officers either on payroll or concerned for their wives and children. He was running this place already, and he’d been here for only a little over a year. The lawyer said he’d probably be out in another two. He could live with that — especially since he had things to look forward to.

Another guard was waiting near the phones, and the man just pointed to the door further down the hall that led to the visiting room, which was like a cafe with everything bolted to the floor, and the kind of table service that came with batons and tasers. Harrigan smiled again; so it was an in-person visit after all. That was encouraging.

The lawyer had been in to see him two weeks ago, and had quietly informed Harrigan that they had a lead on the location of Smith. There had even been a photo, grainy and taken with a long lens, but clearly the same man. He was living quietly on a country estate, working as gamekeeper and groundsman. Apparently, these days his name was Jones, which was no more likely to be his birth name than Smith was, but that didn’t matter just yet. What mattered was revenge.

Harrigan had dispatched his best soldiers, telling them to make sure that Smith died last, after every other person he could be made to identify in any capacity. Kids, if he had any; his parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, and even old granny if she was still around. Friends and associates. Everybody, and all in front of him, slowly and badly. God help him if he had some daughters hidden away somewhere. And then Smith himself was to lose his skin an inch at a time, before poetic justice: he’d be torched, just like the little deli was meant to be.

The visitor would be Harrigan’s head man, Kessler, coming to tell him the job was done. There would be evidence later, once Harrigan was out, for him to enjoy; certainly video, and the skulls he’d asked for. But for now he’d just settle for the confirmation.

Yet another guard opened the door and Harrigan walked into the visiting room, and he saw Kessler at the furthest table, over in the corner. The other man was facing away from him, but was easily identifiable by the leather jacket he always wore, with the patch on the right shoulder. It was his badge of honour, covering a split in the material where he’d been stabbed years ago.

Harrigan went over, noting that his privileged position had once again been heeded: no guards in the room, which was against regulations but according to his wishes, and Kessler also had a folded newspaper in front of him, which was contraband in here because it could upset the inmates or conceal something dangerous.

“I’m in the mood for good news,” Harrigan said, rounding the table to take a seat opposite the other man, but when Kessler raised his head, Harrigan’s blood ran cold — because it wasn’t Kessler.

“Then it’s going to be a bad day,” Smith replied.

For an instant, Harrigan considered getting up again and leaving, but both ego and anger held him in place. He had only just begun to grapple with whether to reply or to launch himself across the table when Smith unfolded the newspaper, drawing his eye immediately.

The printed sheets concealed no foreign object, but the paper had been turned to page four, where a double-spread fairly revelled in news of the gruesome deaths of ten unpleasant men, one of them a senior enforcer in a notorious crime syndicate. It was the evening edition from the previous day. Harrigan’s eyes skipped from heading to caption to pull-quote, his blood-pressure fluctuating. The piece ended with a note that a lawyer connected with the syndicate was also missing.

His own name was there too, of course, with mention of his incarceration, and a file photo from his arrest. Even in newsprint, the face in the photo was much less pale than his own.

“You sent them for everyone, and they got no-one,” Smith said. “But you picked the game, and I’m going to play it. When you get out of here, you’ll be the only one left.”

Smith leaned forward a little, his face still relaxed, and his voice still steady and even silky with crystallised menace.

“There is some good news, though,” he said. “You’re going to get an early release in a couple of months, courtesy of a friend of mine. And I won’t be waiting at the gate. But I will be waiting.”

Harrigan searched for a response, but for once he couldn’t produce one, so Smith kept talking instead.

“Won’t be on your first day out, or week, or maybe even month, but you’re going to wake up one night and I’ll be there. Once you’ve had time to really understand what you’ve lost. And then I’ll show you how it all ends.”

He slid the newspaper to the centre of the table, and stood up without making a sound. Smith looked at Harrigan for a long moment, and the worst part was that there was just nothing at all behind the stare. No triumph, or contempt, or even anger. Just empty black, like the gaps between the stars.

Smith nodded, and then he walked away, and Harrigan had to turn his head to catch his closing words.

“See you past midnight,” 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.