Second Saturday Stories

I register the cannon she’s got aimed at my gut before she changes her mind and introduces the stock to my cheekbone. She connects and my legs decide they’ve carried me long enough. The world doesn’t gently swim away like in a whiskey drunk. Instead darkness falls as fast as lead and I’m in dreamland before I hit the ground.

When Percy gets caught with these secrets he's confined to a cell and subjected to the merciless, conniving side of Carson that kept him alive on the battlefield.

I feel the panic skitter just below my throat. from above me I swear there’s movement. Like someone standing just beyond the reach of my vision. I lick my lips to call out, sure I can see the crown of someones head, wisps of brown hair sticking up. I think of my dream. I hear the slap of tarot cards on my desk. I move to take another step, and an explosion of sound makes me jump. 

Percy realises the goal they have directly aligns with revenge he's wanted to take against Salvitore Collisetta and his organised crime ring for months. Counteracting his bloodlust are increasingly realistic dreams of his dead wife warning him against trusting the charismatic Roger Carson and his band of hellbent soldiers.

The record player lets out a grainy wail that startles my attention to the skipping needle. When I look back my sob is replaced by an outcry of terror.  Louise sits in the brown dress she wore that day, but it’s been mottled with dirt, dirt I know comes from a fresh grave she’s somehow crawled out of.

She sits across from him on the table looking down at him giving him a look at the web of spider veins crawling up her extra long legs.  He tracked them far enough to see the blue steel of a small calibre weapon strapped to the inside of her thigh. A widow’s bite, he’d heard it referred to. She sucks on a cigarette while the cops Harry brought with him comb the place. Behind the dining tables a kid sweeps up awkwardly, his hand in a makeshift bandage.

In the end my gamble pays out and Roger’s greed wins over his blood lust. It was a choice I wouldn't see him make again. 

If the group goes through with this suicide mission, Percy could lose the only lead in a case getting colder by the minute.

I place the flat of my hand on the next set of swing doors, thinking I’d see Sally Calls’ razor thin face appear in the circular porthole glass. His eyes blazing, the feel of a knife sliding into my ribs. I slid through the door, my heart hammered in my ears.

The stranger is willing to part with a substantial bribe in order to keep Percy from being pulverised, but does this random act of kindness hold a barb?