Samurai and Other Stories
Page 20
“It was Duncan’s fault,” he began. “We were just a few days into the diet and we started talking about targets. Between the six of us we decided to lose around ten stone.
“‘That’s a full person’s worth,’ Duncan had said. And that’s what got me thinking that we should make ourselves a promise. So I had the contract written up, that we would go on until enough weight was lost to add up to a person. It was my idea that we sign it in blood, to seal the deal.”
He laughed bitterly.
“It was supposed to be a joke... just something to focus our attention. How was I to know that it wasn’t all bullshit?”
“Well, you know now,” I replied. I lit a second cigarette.
“I had an inkling when Annie died,” he said. “And then when the other two were taken at the office, I knew something was up. So I did some reading. Two nights later something scratched at my door after I’d had my supper, but I’d taken precautions and put up the protection. And it’s kept working.”
“You’ve been here ever since?”
He waved at the detritus around us.
“Welcome to my world.”
“And you knew how to stop this thing, but you let it take your friends anyway?”
He shrugged.
“I figured if it was pestering them, then it wasn’t pestering me. Beside, if they had any smarts of their own, they could have figured it out the same way I did.”
I was getting angry now, and had to push it down. “They died horrible, piteous deaths you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.”
He shrugged again.
“Shit happens,” he said.
I had nothing more to say to this thing. The white beast had more humanity in it than he would ever have.
I stood and walked to the front door. He followed me and stood in the hallway.
“So you have no regrets for their deaths?”
“Survival of the fittest,” he said. “I win.”
He closed the door on me.
I turned to leave.
It stood there in the shadows beside the small porch... a white figure as tall as a man but unformed, featureless save for a gaping maw of a mouth. It swayed from side to side and keened in a high wailing like a child’s sob.
Survival of the fittest.
I turned back to the front door and wiped a smudge down the length of the protection spell. Then I walked away. I heard the door crash inwards as I reached the end of the driveway.
I might only have imagined that I heard the screams.
But I smiled anyway.
William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with twenty novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines. He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company. When he's not writing he dreams of fortune and glory.
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ISBN: 978-0-9922182-2-5
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Publication History
Samurai in the Kindle ebook of the same name.
Rickman’s Plasma , Creature Feature, Ghostwriter Publications, 2009
Home is the Sailor , Holiday of the Dead, Wild Wolf Publishing, 2011
Turn Again , Null Immortalis, Nemonymous 2010
Inquisitor, Historical Lovecraft, Innsmouth Free Press, 2011
The Scotsman’s Fiddle, Mountain Magic, Woodland Press, 2010
The Toughest Mile, The Game, Seven Realms Press, 2011
The Havenhome, High Seas Cthulhu, Elder Signs Press, 2007
The Yule Log, This is horror ezine, Winter 2011
Living the Dream, Watch, Phoenix Imprint Press, 2011
The Shoogling Jenny, Specters in Coal Dust, Woodland Press, 2010
The Haunting of Esther Cox in the Kindle ebook of the same name.
Dancers in The Weekly News newspaper in June 2007.
The Brotherhood of the Thorns in the Kindle ebook of the same name.
The Young Lochinvar in The Mothman Files, Woodland Press, 2011
A Slim Chance in A Cat of Nine Tales, Rookhaven, 2012