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.

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Here's story 282, 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.

Squeezed

The brain surgery was experimental, they said, and I laughed.

Surely all brain surgery is experimental, I said, and they laughed, but their laughter was the uncomfortable kind. I told them to go right ahead, and I signed all the forms, because what the hell else was I going to do?

They talked to me about the risks, but none seemed — in my layman’s understanding — to even remotely compete with death. They told me that some degree of minor damage was unavoidable. They told me about neuroplasticity and cerebral recruitment, and I noticed that they used the same tone of voice people adopt when they’re bullshitting a child that the world is a lot less horrible than it actually is. I wouldn’t become a vegetable or anything, they said — my intellect would almost certainly remain the same. But there would be changes.

They were right.

It’s remarkable how quickly things start to move when some doctors find a tumour pressing against your premotor cortex. I love the National Health Service, in the way that you love a grey-muzzled, loyal old hound that doesn’t run around so much anymore (but used to), and very occasionally shits his bed, but still looks at you like you hung the moon and the stars. The kind of love that’s constant and unconditional, but fully acknowledges faults and suboptimal qualities. Yes, they’ll dick you around for years to get a hip replacement, and yes, their answer to any mental health issue is a box of serotonin inhibitors and a download code for guided relaxation exercises. But when you really need them, things happen.

The accident complicated things, of course. I was fairly banged up, but I was lucky — people come out of car wrecks a hell of a lot worse off, or even dead. The airbags did their job, and at least it wasn’t head-on. The other guy was drunk, and went straight through a red light and tried to park his Audi in my fucking passenger seat, but he survived it too. I don’t remember the crash, but I do remember them putting the collar around my neck and lifting me onto the stretcher. Then just a blur of lights, and the sound of the MRI machine. That’s when they found the tumour. Lucky me.

They said I should be grateful, catching it by chance at an early enough stage. I said that I was. Maybe I was even telling the truth.

They cut your skull open with a little saw. Lift a piece away. Head shaved beforehand, of course, and painted yellow with the sterilising stuff. Then they do their thing. It was lasers, mostly. I woke up with my head reassembled and stitched back together, looking like… well, looking like I’d been in a car accident. I had that thought at the time, and I laughed. The pain knocked me out again.

That was almost a year ago, and I’m fully rehabilitated now. My hair never grew back exactly the same way over the surgical scars, but after a couple of months you really couldn’t tell. My lack of cognitive impairment was a matter of some celebration amongst the doctors — but it was the muted kind; almost polite. Like they were secretly just glad they hadn’t fucked it up. That’s when I realised just how experimental the procedure must have been.

They asked if I’d noticed any changes, and I said besides not going to die you mean, and they laughed again (in the uncomfortable way), and then they said but genuinely though, anything at all that seems more difficult or more confusing, and I said no. They said that’s wonderful, and they seemed very pleased, because they had no idea that I was lying.

The drunk driver lost his license, of course, and was banned for a year. He got two months in jail, of which he served four weeks exactly, and a fine of £1,000 — plus a victim surcharge of £115. I think about that number a lot: a hundred and fifteen quid. Not an even hundred. Not a hundred and twenty. This weird, in-between figure, taken from some list in the details of some law somewhere, that puts a value on what happened to me.

Considering what I got, I should have been paying him instead.

I have a picture on my phone. It’s a diagram, really, and it’s from wikipedia. They’ve got all manner of things on there. It’s like the biggest textbook you’ve ever seen. The diagram is of the human heart, and it’s got a label for the left anterior descending (or LAD) artery, which has another name too: the widow maker. I read an entire article about it. The gist is that if it gets blocked, you’re fucked. It’s useful knowledge.

It was around month four of my recovery that I took my latest dose of painkillers without picking up the glass of water. Without picking it up using my hands, I should say. I looked at the glass, and I knew its size, and its weight, and its smoothness and coldness. It’s my favourite glass; of course I know what it feels like. But I could feel it in my head, too. So I picked it up — in my head — and over it came.

I progressed from there.

Month five, I pushed a guy into the river without leaving my own living room. I could see him down the hill. He was fine, if a bit surprised.

Month six, I killed a seagull (they’re damned scavengers and vermin, always getting into the bins, and I don’t care what the council says about them being a protected species). I just slammed it into a roof. The thing was flapping like mad, all the way down. I laughed at that.

Month nine, I could lift my own chair with myself sitting in it. That was around the time I stopped walking around my own flat, at least when the curtains were shut. Why bother, when you can just float? Or bring things to yourself instead.

Month eleven, only a few weeks ago, I went to see the drunk driver. It was a Wednesday night. His address was a matter of public record, and I parked two houses down. I was about to get out of the car when I saw the man himself — taking out his recycling, of all things. I watched as he dumped the cardboard into the green bin, then I counted no fewer than nine glass bottles smashing into the bottom of the purple one.

They might have been sauce jars, for all I know.

It was dark, and I was two houses down. They might not have been booze. But it pissed me off. So I shut my eyes, and pictured the diagram from my phone, but superimposed on his chest. That big artery; the widow maker. And I squeezed, and kept squeezing. I counted to sixty. When I looked up, he was on the pavement, not moving. I drove away.

Two days later, the local paper said it was a heart attack. They were right.

Before this all started, I was thinking of running for local office. Before the accident, I mean. Get involved, and try to make a difference. There’s a big problem with the state of politics in this country.

Now, I have a better idea.

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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