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 152, of 240 so far.

The Value of Things

The man sat quietly, looking out of the large window adjacent to his seat. The train was moving quickly, and the views were dramatic due to the hour; sunset was fast approaching, and the landscape beyond the glass was awash in golden light and shadow.

The boys, though, paid no attention to the spectacle. Their predatory eyes were on each of the very few other passengers in turn, as they prowled the carriages like hyenas. There were three of them, none older than seventeen, but that was plenty old enough to cause trouble if they wanted to — and they did.

The man noticed them in his peripheral vision, and he had heard them approaching, but he give scant consideration to a roving pack of teenaged thugs. The boys were loud and crass and rude, but so were all boys at one time or another, and there would be more of the same to replace them, every year until the end of time. They would grow out of it, or they wouldn’t. It mattered little to him. He had seen it all before, more times than he could count.

He knew that their purpose was one of two things, as it always was for such people: intimidation or acquisition. The former was better, but still deplorable. Unfortunately, in this case he could already tell that their goal was the latter.

The only other people on the carriage besides the boys and the man were a solitary middle-aged woman who looked down on her luck and harried, and a boy even younger than the roving pack, also travelling alone. The young boy was farther from the hyenas than the man was, and so the man knew that the younger boy would become their primary target once they’d passed him. Young people had expensive electronics these days, and the lone adolescent would be easy pickings for three older boys.

The man took a calming breath, and took out his own mobile phone; a newer model. He also moved his arm such as to draw up the sleeve of his woollen coat, exposing his wristwatch, which cost more than any of the approaching boys would ever earn in a year without breaking the law. Their eyes finally settled on him, scanning like the vultures they were, and he knew the moment that they realised they had found gold amongst the silt of the railway carriage.

They wore the uniform of socio-economic demarcation and deprivation, and of juvenile delinquency: cheap black branded sportswear, though their only running would be from the police, and they had their hoods up even though the train was warm. They had their heads dipped to avoid the surveillance cameras, an instinct trained into them at a young age.

No face, no case, went the maxim of the modern young offender, the man knew.

The leader of the boys sat down heavily, directly across from the man. The other two took up sentry positions, blocking any exit from the group of seats in either direction. Both of the standing boys had one hand in a pocket, where bladed weapons doubtless hid. The leader, though, had his hands on his own thighs, and he leaned forwards. After a moment, the man met his gaze with an expression of utmost calm.

“Nice watch,” the leader of the hyenas said. The man nodded.

“It was a gift from my father,” he replied. It wasn’t true, but he wanted to give the boy an opportunity to show decency.

“Now it can be a gift from you to me,” the leader said instead. His comrades laughed, making a braying sort of sound. The man just tilted his head, pretending not to understand. The leader got right to the point.

“Give me your fucking watch,” the boy snarled, “and your phone and money.”

“No,” the man said immediately.

His voice was quiet, his posture was relaxed, and he looked deeply into the boy’s eyes. He could see everything that he needed to see, and he knew that the boy wouldn’t hesitate to attack him in order to not only steal his belongings, but to restore the boy’s own stature with the other hyenas.

“You want to fucking die?” the leader asked, but he asked it as if it was rhetorical, whereas in the present circumstances, it seemed to be a vital enquiry. Sure enough, the boy took a folding knife from his pocket, holding it in a way that showed he had used it for its intended purpose before.

The man watched all of this taking place, viewing it like a play he had watched a thousand times. He smiled a sad smile, and the boy across from him wrinkled his nose as if the very gesture was offensive to him.

“I’m not going to die anytime soon,” the man replied, and now he leaned forward too. The boy withdrew slightly, his body language telegraphing the fact that this was not part of the usual or expected scenario.

“You sure about that?” the boy countered, making a little stabbing gesture with the blade, but it was a weak and somehow impotent movement. He had lost the reins of the situation.

“I am,” the man replied. “Because I’ve lived well, and lived fairly. These things you want are just tokens of that. They’re not the rewards.”

He suddenly reached out and gripped the boy’s forearm, and the boy froze in place, completely unable to move. His young and clear eyes widened as the man kept talking.

“The rewards are your health, and the good regard of others, and your peace of mind. You have none of those now, do you?”

The boy who had been the leader, and both of his comrades who had now slumped into chairs of their own, felt a weakness creep over them. A sickness, shrivelling them from inside. They felt nauseated, and exhausted, and fragile. All of their vigour was gone in the space of a handful of moments. They looked ghost-pale, emaciated, and their eyes were sunken and bloodshot. None of them could even lift themselves from where they sat.

The man stood up, looking with resignation upon the faces that had been young recently, but were now those of people ravaged with advanced deterioration and some nameless disease.

Their true faces, he thought, seeing that the leader’s blade had fallen to the boy’s own bony lap, never to be picked up again. The man leaned down towards him, knowing it was the only way to be heard.

“I know the value of things,” he said. “You only know the cost.”

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.