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 189, of 240 so far.

See Slow

Ellis willed his pulse to slow, focusing on his favourite advice in his mind.

Don’t lose your head.

It wasn’t always easy to follow, especially with five men standing across from him, blocking the exit from the fancy hotel suite, three of them visibly armed and all of them dangerous.

He already knew who they were, at least in a general way. They were obviously from one of the casinos, so they were organised crime. The specific casino didn’t matter, because there were plenty that had good cause to be annoyed with him. Ellis was an exceptionally successful gambler — so successful, in fact, that he had to strictly limit his takings in order to avoid drawing too much attention. Clearly, he’s failed in that endeavour somewhere along the line.

“Let’s just all stay calm,” he said, drawing a snort from one of the beefier guys on the left, who looked like a rhino stuffed into a shiny suit, his comically thin necktie giving the appearance that his spherical head was mounted on a selfie stick.

“Too late for that,” the middle guy replied, confirming Ellis’s suspicions that he was the man in charge. The guy was taller, more refined, and wasn’t holding a weapon. His stance was casual, and evoked control, with a hint of cruelty. His suit was not shiny, but it was impeccable.

“I could give you back the money,” Ellis said conversationally, not really expecting to be taken up on the offer — at least not without additional stipulations. “I could even give you a bit more on top, for your trouble.”

“We will be taking the money, but you’re the one who’s got trouble,” the boss replied. “What I can’t figure out is how you did it. We’ve been over and over the footage. You’re not a card counter. You’re not even that good. But you won pretty big.”

“Not that big,” Ellis countered, and the boss nodded thoughtfully, clearly having already intuited that Ellis could have gone much further if he’d wanted to.

“That’s the other part,” the boss said, glancing casually at two of his goons, who began to move towards the edges of the room. “You cut yourself off, right when you were on a streak. Maybe you were trying to avoid this kind of situation. That didn’t work.”

Ellis just nodded, responding to both statements at the same time.

“So what’s going to happen is three things,” the boss said. “You’re going to give us back your full winnings. Then my colleagues are going to hurt you for a while. But before all that, what we’d love to know is how you cheated in the first place.”

That’s the big question, isn’t it, Ellis thought.

The problem was that they wouldn’t believe the answer — though calling it a problem was an exaggeration. He had no intention of lying to them, and in fact he would indeed tell the truth, but there would be no physical consequences. He would also be keeping the money. For the same reason that he was able to consistently win at the card tables, he just didn’t need to comply because he had no cause to be afraid.

He sighed, and then he nodded as if he was going to acquiesce to the man’s demands. Ellis raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, glancing at each of the four ancillary thugs in turn before fixing his gaze again upon the boss.

“I see slow,” he said.

The boss quirked his head in the manner of someone who hasn’t quite heard something properly, and expects the statement to be repeated. Ellis obliged, and after a moment, the boss frowned.

“Not a good time for jokes or riddles,” he said, then he glanced at the shiny rhino, who began to move forward. Ellis had been expecting that, and he exhaled. Then he shifted his perspective.

From his point of view, it always seemed a little bit like a pause button. Everything froze, at least for an hour or so until there was a flicker of subtle, stop-motion movement. It was usually about five thousand times slower than normal, which he knew because he’d timed it once, but not for him. He could do whatever he wanted while he was seeing things that way.

Ellis could get up and walk around a card table, say, and spend a full minute checking everyone else’s hand before sitting back down, and only a hundredth of a second would have passed for his opponents and the dealer. Too quick to be picked up on CCTV, too, though he had to be careful when 120FPS cameras were starting to be widely available. It wasn’t like he couldn’t see even slower if he wanted to, anyway.

It was also very, very useful for getting out of sticky situations.

He moved forward and took the rhino’s arm, lifting it and aiming the weapon at one of the other goons, then Ellis used the rhino’s own finger to pull the trigger. Nothing happened, of course — but it would, eventually. Then he repeated the setup with the target of the shot, and the other pair. That took care of them. The only man who would be left alive when things returned to their usual pace was the boss, and for a moment Ellis actually considered letting him experience the confusion and the shock and all the rest of it. The man was a criminal, after all. But that would be unwise.

Instead, Ellis picked up the metal platter from the room service trolley, inspecting it. There was still a fair bit of residue from the elaborate cake he’d had for dessert, but the edges were slender, and physics would do the rest. He held it in the air, squinting to make sure it was at just the right height, and gave it the tiniest shove. It remained in place, hovering there against gravity, but it would move soon enough, five thousand times faster, straight across the room towards the man’s throat. Then Ellis left.

By the time he reached the street below — via the stairs — and shifted his perspective back again, he was too far away to even hear the four simultaneous gunshots, and certainly not the whisper of a metal disc through the air.

“Don’t lose your head,” Ellis said to no-one in particular, then he picked a direction at random and started to walk. There were plenty of places to gamble in this city, and he felt like playing cards.

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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