Via twitter, I discovered that another enterprising soul (young Teddy Leach) had already read it, and done a Dramatic Commentary on the text. His take on it made me giggle, so I figured I’d steal the idea and do my own commentary. I’ll be doing it in chunks of roughly five chapters, whenever I can be bothered.

You should also read Teddy’s too, because he is hilarious and has a different take on certain things that I do. But read mine first. I have the better beard.

And so begins the experiement. Notes in blue are by me, everything else is as written.

*

AN: Special fangz (get it, coz Im goffik) 2 my gf (ew not in that way) raven, bloodytearz666 4 helpin me wif da story and spelling [Did she not want to help you with the author's not then? What a great friend]. U rok! Justin ur da luv of my deprzzing life u rok 2! MCR ROX!

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way [Hi, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way!] and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips [Your hair sounds like an exotic form of reed that grows around distant ponds in a fantasy kingdom] that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears [The only possible definition of limpid that I can see you reaching for, dear, is “completely calm; without distress or worry”, owing to the fact that you probably don't have transparent eyes, and I think you may wish to amend your testimony]and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie [I don't know about you, but I just can't find someone properly sexy unless they share my blood]. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white [So are most vampires'. Rarely are they jagged and black]. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots [Today I was wearing SLUT SLUT SLUT and SLUT. It really brings out my sexual promiscuity]. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow [You're a mime, aren't you?]. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about [Because the sun is so prep, yo]. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them [It is my sexiest finger, and I wanted to show it off].

“Hey Ebony!” shouted a voice. I looked up. It was… Draco Malfoy!

“What’s up Draco?” I asked [I dread to think what someone has inserted into young Malfoy to make him act in such a way as he is about to].

“Nothing.” he said shyly.

But then, I heard my friends call me and I had to go away [Fuck you, Draco. I have a cadre of cackling harridans to hang out with!].

AN: IS it good? PLZ tell me fangz! [No.]

*

AN: Fangz 2 bloodytearz666 4 helpin me wif da chapta! BTW preps stop flaming ma story ok! [No.]

The next day I woke up in my bedroom [I had gone to sleep there, so in all honesty I would have been shocked to wake up anywhere else. Like the cellar or the store room of Harrods]. It was snowing and raining again. I opened the door of my coffin and drank some blood from a bottle I had [Doesn't she know that mineral blood is just a massive con by the soft drinks industry? You can get equally as good blood from local sources for a fraction of the price]. My coffin was black ebony and inside it was hot pink velvet with black lace on the ends [The eye-gouger deluxe model]. I got out of my coffin and took of [I believe you mean 'off'] my giant MCR t-shirt which I used for pajamas. Instead, I put on a black leather dress, a pentagram necklace, combat boots and black fishnets on [The classy look. I approve]. I put on four pairs of earrings in my pierced ears [Pierced? That's not very emo of you, dear], and put my hair in a kind of messy bun.

My friend, Willow (AN: Raven dis is u! [No, it's Willow. If it was supposed to be your friend Raven then just call her Raven]) woke up then and grinned at me. She flipped her long waist-length raven black hair with pink streaks and opened her forest-green eyes [She grinned at you without opening her forest-green eyes? Does she have slut-dar?]. She put on her Marilyn Manson t-shirt with a black mini, fishnets and pointy high-heeled boots. We put on our makeup (black lipstick white foundation and black eyeliner.)

“OMFG, I saw you talking to Draco Malfoy yesterday!” she said excitedly. [OH EM EFF JEE!]

“Yeah? So?” I said, blushing [Good thing you had plastered your face with white foundation so as to hide the blush, eh? The last thing you need is for people to suspect you of human emotions].

“Do you like Draco?” she asked as we went out of the Slytherin common room and into the Great Hall.

“No I so fucking don’t!” I shouted. [Methinks the slutbag doth protest too much]

“Yeah right!” she exclaimed. Just then, Draco walked up to me.

“Hi.” he said.

“Hi.” I replied flirtily. [Do you mean 'flirtatiously'? If so, please show me how you did this. Try as I might, I've never been able to have a woman at 'hello']

“Guess what.” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“Well, Good Charlotte are having a concert in Hogsmeade.” he told me. [Nothing is 'well' about this]

“Oh. My. Fucking. God!” I screamed [awkwardly and somewhat shrewishly]. I love GC. They are my favorite band, besides MCR.

“Well… do you want to go with me?” he asked.

I gasped [because I had no idea that was coming! I mean, guys are like so deep, you know?].

*

AN: STOP FLAMMING DA STORY PREPZ OK! [Shan't] odderwize fangs 2 da goffik ppl 4 da good reveiws! FANGS AGEN RAVEN! oh yeah, BTW I don’t own dis or da lyrics 4 Good Chralotte.

On the night of the concert I put on my black lace-up boots with high heels [Notice she puts on her boots before the rest of her clothes]. Underneath them were ripped red fishnets. Then I put on a black leather minidress with all this corset stuff on the back and front [You mean you put on a corset?]. I put on matching fishnet on my arms. I straightened my hair and made it look all spiky. I felt a little depressed then, so I slit one of my wrists [As you do]. I read a depressing book while I waited for it to stop bleeding [The Big Book of Teenage Angst Clichés, by Ebenezer Crow McDarkenbroody. A classic tome] and I listened to some GC. I painted my nails black and put on TONS of black eyeliner. Then I put on some black lipstick. I didn’t put on foundation because I was pale anyway [Except when I was blushing]. I drank some human blood so I was ready to go to the concert [This isn't just blood, this is M&S extra virgin blood].

I went outside. Draco was waiting there in front of his flying car [Chicks dig the car]. He was wearing a Simple Plan t-shirt (they would play at the show too), baggy black skater pants, black nail polish and a little eyeliner (AN: A lot fo kewl boiz wer it ok!).

“Hi Draco!” I said in a depressed voice [Great start to a date, there].

“Hi Ebony.” he said back. We walked into his flying black Mercedes-Benz (the license plate said 666 [Except it didn't, because that's not even enough characters for a vanity plate]) and flew to the place with the concert [The place that you've already forgotten the name of? Tip: it's Hogsmeade. Probably the Hog's Head, seeing as it's the only venue in the entire town mentioned in canon]. On the way we listened excitedly to Good Charlotte and Marilyn Manson. We both smoked cigarettes and drugs [Rebels]. When we got there, we both hopped out of the car. We went to the mosh pit at the front of the stage and jumped up and down as we listened to Good Charlotte.

“You come in cold, you’re covered in blood They’re all so happy you’ve arrived The doctor cuts your cord, hands you to your mom She sets you free into this life.” sang Joel (I don’t own da lyrics 2 dat song [Yes, I worked that out myself. These three university degrees aren't just for show, my friend]).

“Joel is so fucking hot.” I said to Draco, pointing to him as he sung, filling the club with his amazing voice [Seriously, woman, you're on a date. This is not how you ingratiate yourself to your potential suitor. I speak from experience here].

Suddenly Draco looked sad.

“What’s wrong?” I asked [Like a moron] as we moshed to the music. Then I caught on.

“Hey, it’s ok I don’t like him better than YOU!” I said [Lying like a vile example of womankind].

“Really?” asked Draco sensitively [Deluding himself like a pathetic example of mankind] and he put his arm around me all protective.

“Really.” I said. “Besides I don’t even know Joel and he’s going out with Hilary fucking Duff. I fucking hate that little bitch [But if he wasn't, and I did know him, I wouldn't even look twice at your pale, pig-eyed face].” I said disgustedly, thinking of her ugly blonde face.

The night went on really well, and I had a great time [But I couldn't help but wish Draco was Joel]. So did Draco. After the concert, we drank some beer and asked Benji and Joel for their autographs and photos with them. We got GC concert tees. Draco and I crawled back into the Mercedes-Benz [The band having taken everything below our knees as payment for the autographs], but Draco didn’t go back into Hogwarts, instead he drove the car into… the Forbidden Forest!

*

AN: I sed stup flaming ok ebony’s name is ENOBY nut mary su OK! DRACO IS SOO IN LUV wif her dat he is acting defrent! dey nu eechodder b4 ok! [Look, I'm sorry. I can accept the odd spelling mistake, but 'eechodder'? No. F. See me after class]

“DRACO!” I shouted. “What the fuck do you think you are doing?”

Draco didn’t answer but he stopped the flying car and he walked out of it. I walked out of it too, curiously.

“What the fucking hell?” I asked angrily. [It takes a sterling wordsmith to say that pleasantly]

“Ebony?” he asked.

“What?” I snapped.

Draco leaned in extra-close and I looked into his gothic red eyes (he was wearing color contacts [As does everyone else in this fanfic. Sorry to spoil that for you, but honestly]) which revealed so much depressing sorrow [As opposed to the uplifting sorrow that just about manages to get me through every day] and evilness and then suddenly I didn’t feel mad anymore.

And then… suddenly just as I Draco kissed me passionately. Draco climbed on top of me and we started to make out keenly against a tree [I... I'm not sure you can really do it that way]. He took of my top and I took of his clothes. I even took of my bra. Then he put his thingie [Penis] into my you-know-what [Vagina] and we did it [Fucked like sexually inexperienced school children destined for a future appearance on Jeremy Kyle]for the first time.

“Oh! Oh! Oh! [It's magic, you knoooooow. Better believe it!]” I screamed. I was beginning to get an orgasm. We started to kiss everywhere and my pale body became all warm. And then…

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!” [Told you, Jeremy Kyle]

It was…Dumbledore! [Oh.]

*

AN: STOP flaming! [Shan't] if u flam it menz ur a prep or a posr![Can I be both?] Da only reson Dumbledeor swor is coz he had a hedache ok an on tup of dat he wuz mad at dem 4 having sexx! PS im nut updating umtil I get five good revoiws!

Dumbledore made and Draco and I follow him [Astonishingly, that should have been 'Draco and me', but at least she's trying]. He kept shouting at us angrily.

“You ludacris [...] fools!” he shouted.

I started to cry tears of blood down my pallid face [Sudden stigmata is a sign of Vampirism, fyi]. Draco comforted me [Does the man have no shame? Leave her be, lad, Dumbledore is cross enough as it is!]. When we went back to the castle Dumbledore took us to Professor Snape and Professor McGonagall who were both looking very angry.

“They were having sexual intercourse [So she can't spell ludicrous, but she manages sexual intercourse?I'm calling bullshit on that] in the Forbidden Forest!” he yelled in a furious voice.

“Why did you do such a thing, you mediocre dunces?” [That's it, lads. We've hit the pinnacle of insult science. Pack away the beakers, unhook the bunsens, we've hit the Telos] asked Professor McGonagall.

“How dare you?” demanded Professor Snape.

And then Draco shrieked. “BECAUSE I LOVE HER!”

Everyone was quiet. Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall still looked mad but Professor Snape said. “Fine. Very well. You may go up to your rooms. [And NO fucking. Got that?]“

Draco and I went upstairs while the teachers glared at us.

“Are you okay, Ebony?” Draco asked me gently.

“Yeah I guess.” I lied. I went to the girl’s dorm and brushed my teeth and my hair [With the same brush] and changed into a low-cut black floor-length dress with red lace all around it and black high heels [I also wear heels to bed]. When I came out…

Draco was standing in front of the bathroom, and he started to sing “I just wanna live” by Good Charlotte. I was so flattered, even though he wasn’t supposed to be there. We hugged and kissed. After that, we said goodnight and he reluctantly went back into his room. [I would have been reluctant too. The sort of woman who wears heels to bed is someone I can really get behind, WINK WINK]

While a load of things have been going on, the important thing is that I’m trying to knock out a chapter-per-week webnovella thing called There’s Always a Girl. To keep it from clogging up this site, however, I’ve gone and given it its own.

So, if you’re looking for something to read, check out http://theresalwaysagirl.wordpress.com

Hopefully I’ll be back here with other stories before too long, though!

-

The anti-piracy message was playing on the TV, but it could fuck off. There was a murder to solve, one I may have committed, and I didn’t need some Hollywood propaganda filling my head with what I ‘wouldn’t do’.

I had, in fact, done most of the things the TV was currently informing me that I would not do but, considering my present predicament, it was perhaps best not to try and argue. It wouldn’t have been an issue if I could recall exactly whether or not I had done the deed, however. I was mostly sure that I was innocent, and so had taken up the case not to clear my name – you cannot clear a name that has yet to be tarnished – but on the grounds that my proximity to the crime meant that I could get an unchallenged look at the evidence.

Finding anything of any specific value was somewhat undone by all the blood. It was universal, from ceiling to floor, and it made picking out individual objects difficult. Blood makes good camouflage, it seems, especially when it permeates everything like a sticky red film. It was in my hair.

My hair that I had had freshly cut that morning.

There was blood in my hair.

I couldn’t see it – what mirrors were present were saturated with crimson – but I could feel that unpleasant sensation of hair sticking together. I ran a hand through my hair, separating the strands, only to find it resetting a few moments later. My hands were also dripping with blood, I noticed. That was, admittedly, a suspicious sight.

The room was a bed room, discernible only from the presence of a bed, and not very big one at that. That is to say, the room wasn’t big. The bed took up a good quarter of the room and would have drawn the eye on its own, without the mutilated corpse laying resplendent upon the soaked sheets.

I don’t mean resplendent do I? No, that’s quite the wrong word. It’s a block in my mind, shutting out the horrors of that image with non sequitors. Either that or, little by little, I’m losing my mind and not noticing.

In any event, a cursory glance around the room told me nothing that I didn’t already know. If there had been a weapon – and there had – it had not been left in the room. The astounding amount of blood implied some form of explosion, but I smelled nothing that would back that up. Then again, what does an explosion smell like?

My reputation as a detective, while technically correct, places perhaps more credit upon me than it should. Because I am a well spoken and somewhat gifted amateur it must therefore follow, in the minds of some, that I am infallible. The common misconception is that I know all there is to know and flick through it like a mental Rolodex to cross-reference every clue, every rumour, every single atom of intrigue. This is not true.

If I’m feeling particularly kind I could cite a dozen professional police officers whose intellect and deductive powers far exceed my own. Of course, I am rarely feeling kind to any degree, let alone “particularly”, so for the sake of verisimilitude I will say this: I am the best at what I do, but that does not mean I am infallible, nor does it mean I am the best at everything. Most things, perhaps, but not everything. Everyone needs to consult from time to time.

I may have needed a consult to deal with this. My strength lies in piecing together the contradictions and the inconsistencies, the actual acquisition of those pieces being something to which I am out of practice. Still, I soldiered on, sifting through the sodden papers that littered the floor, the contents of the desk drawers, the wardrobe. In truth, I searched everywhere I knew would not contain anything of worth. Only the corpse itself would tell me anything, and I wanted to avoid that as long as possible. Foolish in hindsight, especially considering the appearance of the thing were I to be caught there, but the simple do not hold a monopoly on foolishness.

At last, all forms of procrastination exhausted, I turned my attention to the corpse. It was looking at me with a glassy eye. A raging fear came over me and I plucked it out – there were no eyelids with which I could hide it and I was not having the thing staring at me as I worked. I hurled the eye over my shoulder and heard it impact with a wet “plop”.

I heard the scream in the same way you hear the music of a neighbour, as a strong vibration of the world around you. It started highly pitched, working its way into an audible form after a few moments. It was then I turned and saw the woman, stood in the now open doorway, her white face made whiter by the reddened surroundings.

To her I must have looked like some hideous Victorian spectre made flesh, stooped over a corpse and plucking out bits of flesh. Again, with hindsight I would, perhaps, have not removed the eye. I would have at least checked over my shoulder before I did so. Even the most skilled interlocutor would find it hard to explain away that image.

There was a click-clack as the woman primed a shotgun. I hadn’t noticed she was carrying the weapon, the screaming having been the focus of my attention, but as I watched the unspent shell drop into the advancing pool of blood my attention snapped to the shotgun and refused to budge. My intuition told me that she was unused to firing the weapon and that it was not in fact hers. She had cocked the shotgun like a character in a TV show, expending a perfectly serviceable shell for the mere threatening sound. The owner of such a weapon would not do that, they’d know the correct way to threaten someone with a shotgun is to merely point it at them and say nothing. No, she had fallen into the trap of thinking that the TV-style threat was more useful, and perhaps it was to her. Perhaps it gave the woman the courage to stand up to the blood-stained predator in front of her. To a man with some knowledge, however, it indicated a weakness on her part.

Not that this weakness was helpful, you understand. A shotgun is a popular weapon precisely because you don’t need to know much about firearms. At that distance, in that room, she was likely to hit me regardless of where she aimed. The spread of the weapon would make up for her timid nature. And timid she was, the woman was shaking violently and I could have sworn I head the firing pin rattling dangerously close to the shell. I considered what I could say to calm her down.

My mind rebelled and, instead of an intelligent and disarming explanation of the situation, I leapt out the window.

You can find part one here, and part two here!

In my experience, those who beg for mercy seldom deserve it. That said, I’ve never held mercy in much regard anyway. It’s an act, as illustrated by the fact you will often be begged to “show” it. Mercy isn’t real, it’s just a charade to help us feel better about ourselves; like make-up for the soul.

That was terribly pretentious of me, wasn’t it? I’d apologise, but there are far darker things I should apologise for first, and I’m not about to do that. Scribble that down in your little moleskine notebook if you please, perhaps you’ll find it important when the time comes. I’ve taken a lot of time to carefully craft this letter, to provide your psychologists with plenty of juicy things to chew over, I’d hate for any of it to go overlooked.

Anyway, back to mercy.

While mercy itself is often used as a linguistic key to unlock some of the weaker areas of the mind, such as conscience, the moment someone tries to turn that key can be invaluable in getting a handle on their character. The weaker you are, the quicker you play the mercy card, and the quicker you surrender to the sort of hideous bastard I’m quite sure you think I am.

It is, as I’m sure you know, all about power. It’s not the kill that’s the pay off, it’s the moment you make them beg for mercy, the instant they realise their life is no longer their own. From the moment we recognise our independence as people we are aware that the mind drives our earthly vessel around however we see fit. We walk, we talk, we sing, we dance, we interact however we choose. We are a society of sovereign nations, and the worst thing that will happen to most of us is a mild border skirmish.

Eventually, however, someone like myself will realise that individual sovereignty is only true so long as it is believed to be true. So much of life is belief held as natural law, and once you see the distinction so many more questions become apparent. What is stopping everyone from going out and committing murder? It would be hard to argue that the answer was anything other than morals, or rather the codification of a set of morals into law. I’ll let you think about that for a moment.

I understand that what I’m saying is not really anything new to a learned man. You yourself have probably been to university, obtained a degree, possibly even a masters. Perhaps you attended the University of Bath and read Psychology and followed it up with a masters degree in the same from Southampton. If that were the case, you’d undoubtedly have come to similar conclusions.

It is not the intention of this letter to wax lyrical about human nature, about the darkness that lurks in the heart of man and is only mollified and constrained by the gleaming bastion of a law man’s badge. The purpose of this letter is, above all else, to tell you a story. Maybe the story will be helpful to your investigations, maybe it will give you a valuable insight into the mind of a depraved killer. Ultimately, how helpful it is to you is of little consequence to me. What matters to me is that you read it and understand that the above is the preamble, the background information. I think that will be important.

We begin with a young man reaching the end of his teenage years. For the most part they were uneventful. He spent his youth devoid of any romantic entanglements, his crippling lack of self-esteem and anything approaching physical attractiveness having the lion’s share of the responsibility for this, and had instead thrown himself into the search for academic excellence. Unfortunately, he was just not built for the life of an academic. The knowledge he could absorb, but the scholarly discussion of said knowledge was beyond him. Though he tried, there was little he could do to avoid sliding into the centre of the pack.

Perhaps you have been in a similar position, the realisation that everything anyone had told you in your youth was a lie, although perhaps not. Perhaps you graduated with a first class degree, then with a distinction, and were immediately snapped up by the police force for a “job with prospects”. If that were the case, then I could understand how you would believe the lies told to children about them being “special” and having “potential”. It is, I’m sure you can understand, a hard thing to hold onto when you realise your position is life is within the majority, not above it.

Depression would not be the correct word to describe the condition of the young man’s mind, perhaps malaise would be better, but in any event he was in a sufficiently dark place for the doubts to start creeping in. They say that darkness is the absence of light, and perhaps that is why dark thoughts have an easier time appealing to a mind than lighter ones. The young man descended into debauchery, of a kind, and that was where he truly found himself.

His identity was in a state of collapse. The foundation he had built upon – the kind words of his parents and grandparents, the polite affirmation of his intellect from old teachers – was incompatible with the present, so he started anew. It’s amazing what you can do with the anonymity of the internet and a free email address.

It is remarkably easy to find friends on the internet if you know where to look, and it didn’t take long for the young man to learn this. He built new personae quickly, slotting them into various communities with nary a problem, building names and lives and histories for them as he did so.

Then there came the inevitable day where, at work or the library or a pub, he gave the wrong name, a name created for the internet. Though the social awkwardness of such a moment was minimal it opened a door in his mind, one that caused him to question exactly who he was any more. By this point he had spent considerable time and energy into building a series of characters inside his mind, each with their own unique kingdom to rule. But what if they were allowed to leak out into the real world?

Each and every character he had created was designed to attract of repel a certain kind of person. He realised, in a sense, that they were all him but also that they were all alive and malleable. What was stopping him from changing personalities like one would change their clothes? Nothing. And while many people will have mused over the idea of becoming someone else, of changing the things about themselves that they hate, the sad truth is that a person can never really change. By the time you reach the sort of mental maturity that allows you to notice your own faults you are, almost definitely, locked into who you are, for better or worse.

Our young man, however, was special, at least in this regard. He no longer had a personality of his own, and his ability to craft and wear artificial ones was truly unique. Some would label it insane, perhaps going so far as to use the term “mental illness”, but there was a certain rationalism to his choices that don’t quite fit with how I feel about the term. Perhaps I am wrong and the young man was truly mentally ill, I’m sure you will be able to tell me eventually, but I think not. I wonder if psychopathy is a more correct term? I suppose it doesn’t really matter, the important thing being that this coloured his actions.

Though he had started to see the absurdity of everything most people take for granted, the underlying core of morals was too firmly embedded to ignore. No one personality could act immorally, but the utter genius of his system meant that adopting a certain personality would change the standards for what exactly was immoral.

Allow me to illustrate this with what I would label the most startling example available. A few months or so into his new lifestyle as a paper doll, he created a new personality. This one differed from his previous creations in that it was of a fifteen year old girl. What he did with this personality is, I think, called “grooming” in the modern parlance, but again it fails to capture exactly what was occurring. I have met a selection of paedophiles and, on some level, they all know that what they are doing in wrong, whether that is shown in their remorse or their willingness to keep their taste on the hush hush. When our young man was wearing this specific personality, however, what he chose to do was not, in his eyes, wrong at all. Fifteen year old girls the world over have gone out looking for love on the internet, why should he be any different?

I can guess your mind finds the notion repulsive, and perhaps even hypocritical. You can, and in all likelihood will, claim that he himself knew or else why would he don that personality, and you may even be right. While I could argue against you, I concede that it would be a difficult prospect.

I met the young man not too long after his new personality started to pay dividends. Technically, I had met him at a much earlier time, but with each new personality comes a new meeting, and I had not met the one he was wearing at that time. He was going by the name of Geoff, a mild, if slightly sardonic, barman from Lewisham. Our conversation was dull and not particularly enlightening, but I got much more out of him that evening with the application of the right amount of pressure. I’ll allow you to fill in the details yourself at this point.

Most of the above I knew before our prolonged conversation took place, though our chat certainly helped to clarify it. I was still young myself and rather inexperienced, so I listened intently as he spoke. There was little of worth, although his notions regarding the veil of belief struck a chord with me, I must confess, though his reaction to them did not.

What our young man had done was the most long-winded and tiring way of freeing oneself from the veil. In that moment I saw that the most efficient and beneficial way to do so was to simply unlearn the idea of morals. Our young man had bypassed them with a serious of masks, but that was treating the symptoms and not the cause.

I thanked him when he begged for mercy. It was an odd thing to do, I grant you, but I felt as though he had helped to answer some questions that had been swimming around in my own head for a long time. I dare say that given enough time I would have worked it out on my own, but there’s nothing wrong with taking a short cut when one presents itself. I’m sure you yourself wouldn’t begrudge me that. Still, that is not to say I showed him any mercy. My opinions on that matter, as laid out above, had been decided long before I met our young man.

From what I understand, he was the first of mine that you found, and I salute you for that. I hope you have had better luck in tracking down his family than I did, though I understand it must have been difficult. Even knowing all I did, I still never knew his real name. I knew his given name, and most if not all of his costumes, but never his real name. I wonder if you do.

I also wonder if your mind interrupted your reaction to that last paragraph at any point, particularly around my somewhat sloppy reveal of the state of our young man. Surely you had already worked out that I had done away with him, but I am intrigued as to what point your mind attempted to persuade you that his death was no great loss, that the murder of a man who treats children as his sexual prey is actually a good thing. Whether you agree with that thought or not, I am certain that it was there, tickling the space behind your eyes. On some level, you wonder if it was necessary, if fighting fire with fire is justified in this case.

Before you decide on that, however, there is one thing I must make abundantly clear: his sins were of no consequence to my decision.

I did not pick him because of his sexual preferences, nor his mental state, lifestyle, upbringing or anything of the sort. This was not a case of vigilante justice. The rules you adhere to are a deception, passed from parent to child for generations. The sooner you come to realise that, the easier you will find it to understand me.

From my understanding, there is a high risk in this letter for me, as there is with any correspondence with the police. I’ve taken many precautions in delivering this letter to you, though I understand that hand-delivering it to your home may have been somewhat foolhardy, but I feel it was worth the risk.

I don’t like to deal in threats, they just seem so pointless. There will likely be someone who will read this letter after you who will contend that the threat of violence is worse that violence itself, and they will invariably be the one with the least experience of actual violence. That I know your address could certainly be construed as a threat, but I would prefer you look upon it as a sign of respect. Likewise with your academic history. Similarly, I would like you to convey those feelings to your wife, Denise, if you can catch her between shifts at St. John’s Hospital. No need to bother Jenny with this, what with her Year 9 options on the horizon.

That I know all this about you and yours is merely a healthy respect for your skills as a detective. Needless to say, I’ve read your case history and found it to be very impressive. I want to assure you that you yourself are safe from me. It wouldn’t do to add you to my resume, especially as you are not my type in any case.

I do hope you noticed my deliberate omission there.

Perhaps I should end this letter here. I believe I’ve conveyed my message quite clearly. If not, I suppose that will only reflect poorly upon myself. Perhaps I am in the cells as you read this letter, hoisted by my own hubris in thinking I could deliver a letter to the officer in charge of my case and escape unscathed. As I write this, I have no idea of whether I will soundlessly post it through the door or brazenly summon you with a ring of the doorbell, isn’t that interesting?

The thrill is not in the chase, nor the capture, but in being chased. If this letter turns out, one way or another, to be my downfall then so be it. But, if that is not the case, it should serve to add a little fuel to the fire. Perhaps I will send another letter further down the line, although obviously not by hand, and fan the flames a little higher. It is always more exhilarating to flee for your life.

I wish you luck. Godspeed.

Your Friend

————————————————

The sound of black powder weapons firing echoed off the stone walls of Lateral Esplanade, the main route between what amounted to docks in Rand City and the city proper. Three particularly brutish men had been chasing me for about half an hour, shooting at me whenever the opportunity arose.

‘Trixie!’ one of them drawled, dragging out the last syllable. ‘Please stop running.’

It sounded like an exasperated appeal rather than the threat it should have been, but I’m not quite dim enough to fall for that old ruse. You don’t spend a year as a Hostess without knowing when someone is lying to you. Then again, if I hadn’t spent that year as a Hostess I might not have three idiots shooting at me with military grade weaponry.

‘I like running,’ I shouted back, doing my best to sound cocky and not terrified. ‘It’s good for the heart!’

Another peal of weapons fire, and three bullets smashed noisily into the stone wall near my head. I had taken cover behind a rusted cart, the metal orange-red but still more than good enough to save my bacon for the time being, but I was short on places to run to. I don’t get shot at very much, and running away had seemed like the right option at the time. The problem with this particularly attempted at fleeing, however, was my general lack of composure and dignity; it’s very easy to track a girl dressed like a schizoid schoolgirl who is rocking neon hair and screaming like a banshee.

Mum would be proud.

I heard the noisy clicking of spent black powder barrels dropping to the cobbles. A different man called out, ‘A lead injection ain’t quite so good for ya though, yeah?’

‘Tell me, how can you shoot that thing while carrying about the Big Book of Clichés?’ I nervously quipped. The intent was to keep the nervous part out of that description, but calm quipping was a little beyond me at this juncture.

There was another hail of shots, two thirds of which bounced off the cart with a noisy twang sound, the last taking another chunk out of the wall.

If only I could have rolled back the clock and slapped my uppity, youthful self across the face before she had time to offend the High Slut Princess of Rand. Oh the things I would have done to me to stop me having landed me in this mess. Or something.

That wasn’t her name of course, the High Slut Princess. She had a more normal and inconspicuous name in reality, though by the time I’d learned it I was mere minutes away from my eventually fatal mistake. And yes, I know, it says a lot about my work ethic that I only bothered to learn my boss’ name shortly before I resigned. I do tend to go about some things backwards.

I hadn’t made a good Hostess. I could manage certain aspects of the job very well, specifically the physical bits, but my attitude was somewhat lacking. Hostesses are supposed to be pliant and submissive, which is not something I find easy to do. As a result, I spent a great deal of time pissing off my own customers and generally being difficult. Naturally, this brought me to the Slut Princess’ attention.

The unwritten rules of Hostessery (or whatever the word is) state that a client is well within his rights to chop an offensive Hostess into tiny little pieces while also demanding a refund. Turns out that only works if the intended Hostess doesn’t run away. Running away confuses clients long enough for them to forget they hate you, I trick I pulled on more or less a weekly basis. This got me dragged before the Slut Princess, who I then called the Slut Princess, and ran away before she had time to rupture something in her brain from apoplectic rage.

That was a week ago. Apparently it had taken her that long to decide she hated me enough to have me killed. Quite petty for someone so rich.

Another volley of shots smashed into the wall, and I ran again. The two vocal thugs were shouting lewd insults at me, which would have been nice under less murderous circumstances, but I didn’t take the time to respond. I was too busy trying to weave a path through the discarded remains of Rand’s attempt at a fishing industry. Barbed wire nets with hand-cranked generators attached were idly sat on the cobbles. I soared over them like the athlete I could have been were I not a reprobate. At least one of the men behind me was not so lucky. I allowed myself a small grin.

This was a good sign that I was going to be alright. I mostly coast through life, falling into fortune and running away from danger. Working for stuff is not really my scene, I’m more a social manipulator. I decide roughly what I want and make other people do the hard work with the promise of sexual favours and the odd flash of cleavage. Having big, beautiful eyes also helps, with the sexually repressed.

Odds were, the other two thugs would cripple themselves so long as I kept running. Good thing I’m quite a svelte person, really. Not much weight to shift, not too much blood to pump, makes running peasy.

My mind buoyed with proof of my divine protection from the goddess of luck, I gambolled round a corner and smashed my face into a wall. As much as I love Rand City, its propensity for hiring the cheapest architects around makes me hate it at times. The wall wasn’t attached to a building or served any purpose other than to shut off a perfectly legitimate alleyway. I swore, panicked, and tried to climb over the wall.

In retrospect, that was a pretty moronic thing to do.

Lateral Esplanade is pretty much entirely condemned, every single building that flanks the road being abandoned and is a state of severe disrepair. In fact, some of them were never properly built in the first place, the builders all being foreign nationals from one of the many nations that hate us, from before we knew they hated us, and neglected to use mortar in any of their brick constructions. I should have known that it would have been easier to tear the wall down than climb over it, but my fear addled brain overruled rational thought, and was itself overruled by the darkness of falling masonry.

I awoke moments later with blood in my eyes, a splitting headache, and two tarnished metal shot-barrels pointed at me. At least the wall was gone.

‘Hello,’ one of the men said. I groaned at him and tried to get up. ‘I’d rather you just stayed there, missy,’ he said, pushing me flat with his foot. ‘Less messy all round, I think.’

I’ll admit to having been perilously close to begging for my life at this point. It might have worked too. Beauty is the only weapon I know how to use effectively, being as I’ve had a lot of time to practice with it, and I know that when used correctly it can get inside a man’s head and drag out all the little insecurities and private thoughts that he had hidden away. Coupled with begging, this can become a powerful tool of self preservation. Men are suckers for damsels in distress, even if they are the ones causing the distress.

Of course, this all hinges on not looking like you’d been dug out of a hole in the ground. I didn’t think that my masonry makeover had done much for my looks at that point in time.

I watched as the two barrels slowly rotated and dropped away, the loaded barrel taking its place. At any other time I would probably have tried a witty remark about the interesting design of a black powder weapon, but I didn’t want my last words to be mechanics related. There is literally nothing more boring than mechanics. Except, perhaps, mathematics. Anything with numbers really, boring.

The fresh barrels clicked into place and I closed my eyes. I don’t get shot at, let alone actually shot, so I didn’t know if I’d see the bullets before they hit me, and I wasn’t willing to find out. I screwed my eyes shut and screamed, hoping that would stop me from hearing the shots as well as seeing them.

It didn’t.

Two shots rang out and the air smelled thickly of black powder. It took me longer than it should have done to realise I was still screaming, somewhat shameful I will admit. I shut up and risked opening an eye.

The barrels were gone and, slowly, I sat up to search for them. As I turned I spotted them, gripping in the hands of their owners still, although their owners were currently flat on their face, tiny rivers of blood tricking into little pools between the cobbles. There was a sound from the darkness where alleyway met esplanade and I looked up.

‘Sorry it took me so long, miss, but those nets are a little unpleasant.’

The third thug, the silent one, was stood at the end of the alleyway, two expended barrels smoking at his feet. The light was gleaming off something attached to his belt, reflecting upwards to his weathered face, sinking into the patch that covered one eye. He took a few steps forward and the reflective object on his belt coalesced into a badge. He was a watchman.

‘Lieutenant Egregious Barnes, at your service,’ he said, a little too calmly for a man that had just introduced the squishy parts of two men to the outside world.

Oh, I liked him.

———————————————————————

‘Must we go through this charade every time we pass a new law?’ the Shadow Minister enquired. ‘It’s not as if he’s really giving assent.’

The First Minister was trying to ignore the Shadow Minister. It was the job of the Shadow Minister to be the one nobody wanted to talk to. He was the spycatcher, thieftaker, and all-round wetworks man, but seemed to spend more time second-guessing every single democratic convention than actually doing any work. The job of the First Minister, however, was to listen to these complaints and give them the attention the People had decided they deserved.

‘You know full well that he is,’ the First Minister said.

‘What I know,’ the Shadow Minister replied, ‘is that every time we pass a new Act, we bring the document up to the Royal Chambers, read it to an unconscious and most likely deceased man, then grab his hand and forcibly make him write a signature.’

‘Your point?’

‘He’s the only King on record as having over two hundred different signatures! Half of them aren’t even his own name. We all know he’s dead, why do we insist on putting on a song and dance just to make the people think he’s still hanging around?’

The First Minister turned suddenly and slammed the Shadow Minister into the nearest wall. The ceremonial briefcase used for transporting the original document of any given Act fell to the floor with a clatter. The First Minister’s eyes were bulging.

‘The King is NOT dead, Shadow Minister, and to assert as much is treason. I thought you of all people would be aware of this. He has lived for nearly five hundred years!’

The Shadow Minister squirmed. ‘But he’s been comatose for over four hundred of those years.’

‘Because he isn’t needed! He only awakens when democracy fails, that’s what the Hansard says. Sometimes the world needs a tyrant, and we’ve got one in reserve. Legally he is still the head of state, whether awake or not, and a law he doesn’t approve cannot be a law!’

The First Minister’s eyes were bloodshot now. He was very close to the Shadow Minister’s face.

‘Kings are the anchors of humanity,’ he continued. ‘What is it that makes people obey laws, huh? It’s fear. Fear of a good and tyrannical king. It’s not the Watch that’s keeping people in check, they number barely a thousand in a city with over fifty times that number. If the populace get it into their mind to do something, nothing can stop them.’

‘But what can the king do about that?’ the Shadow Minister spluttered.

‘He doesn’t need to do anything! It’s the fear of what he might do that keeps them in check, reigns them in a little. Sure, it doesn’t stop them completely, but it keeps them a little civilised! How would you maintain that civility? The belief in human kindness?’

The First Minister exhaled slowly and gently removed the Shadow Minister from the wall. He ran a hand through his own hair and straightened his tie. The Shadow Minister did the same, albeit in a much more nervous fashion, then stooped to pick up the briefcase.

‘You may think this is but a mindless convention, a throwback to the old day,’ the First Minister said softly. ‘The thing is, we are nothing without convention. We only manage to exist in a society because someone, long ago, managed to instil upon the world the great lie that we are social animals. We’re not, of course, but everyone thinks they are. This little convention is part of that.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Then answer me this,’ the First Minister said as he recommenced his journey to the Royal Chambers. ‘Are you afraid of what would happen if the King woke up?’

And there, hiding in the pit of his soul, sat that very fear.

This is quite a dark story, be warned.

———————————————————

It’s seeing them break that’s the fun part. Murder is a means to an end, and that end is the supplication of the target. Ending a life is quick, easy and boring, but ruining a life requires a delicate and precise touch. Too much pressure and the target will fight back, lock down and become unbreakable. Too little and you’re no more than a nuisance.

The man in the chair was teetering on a very literal knife point. He was closing in on the moment of truth, the point at which the artist becomes distinct from the amateur. Anyone can torture information out of someone, the liberal application of pain is a simple thing to do, but to truly get inside someone’s head is an art. You can’t teach the sort of skills you need, it’s all innate knowledge. Psychological training can help, or any sort of ‘science’ that deals with human interaction, but in the end it all comes down to God given talent.

Not to sound egotistical, but I am the Rembrandt of my field. Perhaps not the top of the tree (there is a man in the North who I reckon could hold that spot) but certainly close enough to brush the highest leaves. Take the man in the chair, for instance. Teddy Brunswick, P.I. Word on the street is that the real police have started roping in these whores of justice to do some of the more boring legwork, leaving the boys in blue to do the real detective work. Running files, taking statements, interviewing witnesses, that sort of thing. I didn’t realise they were so short of officers down at the station.

Of course, a man with such a pitiful job has nothing to fear from me, at least under normal conditions. I’m not a psychopath, I don’t go hunting dark alleys for meat to carve up. I deal with people who have the capacity to become loose ends, or people with the ability to track me down. A speculative killer. The bright, the brave, the unique all have reason to fear me, but a glorified receptionist in a trench coat can consider himself off the hook.

This is unless he starts showing initiative.

Common practice does not usually involve keeping track of every detective trying to bring me in, that would be tiring. In the early days, that may have been possible. Back then I was young and inconsequential, not even worthy of a throwaway column in a newspaper, and certainly not of a high enough rank to warrant a nickname. To be fair, my early killings were the scribblings of a child, certainly not something to be rewarded, so a small cadre of coppers, no more than four, was enough for me. But the more you kill, the larger the task force grows to bring you in. You get more lines in the press, more armchair psychologists trying to explain your motives, and more penniless private detectives thinking they can make their name by getting clever.

Teddy had been one such man. I had caught him breaking into one of my many flats, an act which in and of itself would have warranted some serious repercussions had he not flashed his badge at me. Members of the union get special badges rather than cards, probably to appeal to notions of importance and mystery that are fostered by all good noir films, but they don’t actually have any legal power. Not that it would have mattered if they did.

I subdued him and set to work.

I won’t go into detail on the physical aspects of the act. I understand that many people are of nervous dispositions, and the cut and thrust of it all might be a little too much for them. It is the mental aspect that I prefer in any case. When all the bones are broken, the flesh neatly sliced and perhaps and eye carefully attended to, you will still have someone ready to fight you. The human mind is designed to stand firm against physical pain, enough so that mind over matter is quite applicable. Take out the mind, however…

Teddy had been in the chair for upwards of seven hours, only two of which had been with me in the room. The remaining five had seen me mingle with the people outside, acquiring provisions and generally building up the appearance of a well-adjusted, normal, ignorant member of society. Teddy used this time to steel himself against the fear of a repeat of my earlier concerto of pain. I dare say that the image of myself, straight razor in gloved hand, striding through the door, would run around his battered little head for as long as I allowed.

Upon my return, the good eye lazily swivelled towards me in a groggy frown. I pulled up a chair and sat across from him, barely an inch between our faces.

‘Are you a policeman?’ I inquired.

‘What?’ he replied.

‘Are you a policeman?’ I repeated. ‘It’s a simple question. I’m quite sure I haven’t induced amnesia, that would require considerably more force that I applied.’

‘No…’

‘Yet you have a badge,’ which I deftly plucked from my coat pocket and waved in front of his face. ‘I assume you wanted me to at least believe you were a policeman, else why would you bring this little thing along with you?’

His eye dropped to the floor. I allowed him a moment of self-reflection, not too long, then slapped him hard across the face.

‘Answer my fucking question, Teddy,’ I said politely.

The eye flicked back up at me, much more awake than it had been before. ‘I’m a private detective.’

‘Oh I know that, Teddy. I’ve met a few of your kind, actually. Very few have flashed a badge at me, however. You’re in a minority of one there.’

‘I don’t… I…’

Confusion is not necessarily a helpful tactic, but it is fun. It spreads seeds of fear around the mind like a dandelion clock caught in a strong breeze. Tiny pellets of fear that you can nurture, grow them so that they crack the mind like a paving slab. Art should be fun.

‘You may not be a policeman, but you certainly want to be, don’t you? It’s why you have the badge, why you flashed it to me, why you were poking around my home without cause. You like the idea of being the hero, yes?’

He nodded slowly.

‘I’m glad you agree. I imagine you don’t often agree with people. You’re an arrogant shit, yes? You probably tell people that you were “too good” to be tied down with the rules and regulations that come with a real badge. An intellect as great as yours needs the freedom that comes with being your own boss, the lack of accountability that comes hand in hand with a lifetime behind a camera lens. The perfect job for a man whose criminal record precludes him from a position in the police force, I suppose.’

What remained of his eyebrows rose.

‘This is all supposition of course. I only know your name from your rather extravagant and garish business cards, after all. Still, if I had to guess, I’d say you are a pervert, a sexual delinquent. Perhaps even the sort of man who would take his telescopic lens up into a tree one evening, or to the skylight on his loft conversion, point it at a neighbours window. That about right?’

I had lit a fire behind his eye, which more or less validated my suspicions. The man was a pervert, a braggart, and generally a difficult man to be around. He had decided he was important, a delusion he clung to so strongly that no amount of evidence could tell persuade him otherwise. The self, above all else. Typical human being, a perfect example of the breed.

‘Fuck you!’ he screeched. ‘You don’t know me!’

‘Oh but I know exactly who you are,’ I said with a smile. ‘You’re a child with a plastic badge and a popgun playing policeman amongst the rapists and the murderers. A king of an insignificant kingdom, one with no subjects. A pile of meat and calcium with no purpose. A paper tyrant in a world of scissors.’

I leant in a little closer and attended to his other eye.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, university getting in the way and generally being annoying, but I’ve found the time to get one done at last.  As with a lot of the shorts I do, this one is concerned with developing a character in The Difficult Second Novel, so consider it a bit of backstory.

Not very long, and not very detailed, but I think it does what it needs to.  Hopefully I’ll get to do some proper stuff again soon though.

————————————————–

Having been a courier for many years, Vernon Equinox knew the benefit of a nice sit down and something to eat. Today’s little break was to be held at a restaurant on the road between Paradigm City and Tole’s Palace, one of the more well travelled roads in the country and better dining as a result.

Vernon was ferrying a large amount of cash today, people preferring not to let the banks do it as their coaches were robbed suspiciously often. There were rumours that banks had begun robbing themselves as both a way of making some invisible profit and adding some spice to what was, by all accounts, a rather dull profession. Whether the rumours were true or not didn’t bother Equinox, he never used banks himself and all the suspicion brought some great business his way.

He slipped a hand into his pocket and fondled the collection of notes he had taken as “commission” from his package. There was an unwritten rule for couriers – technically it was written, but various addenda had labelled it obsolete – and it stated that, when transporting hard currency, it would be unacceptable to pilfer any for personal use. This was unless, of course, it was a lot of money, then no-one would really notice so it didn’t matter.

It had occurred to him at the start of his journey that the money could have been used to buy a cheap autocart from the merchants on Purity Row, or possibly rent a top of the line model if he so wished. It would have gotten the job done quicker, possibly even within two hours, but that didn’t really convince Vernon.

There was something about walking that relaxed him, he could zone out for prolonged periods and just soak up the beauty of nature without having to worry about things like pedestrians and other autocarts. When walking, your brain could take command for you and steer you out of the way of people and potholes and whatnot, you didn’t really need to be inside your head for most of it. For Vernon, a two hour drive would feel longer than a sixteen hour walk.

The restaurant waited at about the half-way mark, and it was as good a place as any to stop for a breather. There were other places, sure, but none quite as ostentatious and grand, and seeing as the client was paying, he could probably afford it.

Before long he crested another of the small hills in the road that ran its entire length, and he spied his destination. Tole’s Palace, the biggest building on the planet, sat in the distance like a giant grey brick, its features obscured as a result of pure distance. It filled most of the horizon, and it took Vernon a moment to see the restaurant, nuzzled in the eight mile shadow of the palace. He missed it every time, even knowing exactly where it was, and there was always the moment of fear that maybe, just maybe, he had imaged the place.

This time, it was real.

He strolled up to the door, straightened his clothes to look more presentable, and walked in. The place was full of people, as expected. Dozens of tables were scattered around the room, adorned with regal table cloths and silver cutlery, perhaps a flower if the waiters had felt so inclined. The room was painted in such a way as to add artificial space to the room, although that was entirely unnecessary, and supposed-crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling. It was so opulent that, even carrying a very large fortune on his back, made Vernon feel like scum. But he was young, and young people enjoy feeling like scum in fancy places, so he went in search of a seat.

It took four steps before his mind returned to his body, fresh and spry from its excursion during the walk. On the fifth step he noticed the situation.

From the vicinity of the doorway, the restaurant looked peaceful, but a few steps inside and Vernon could see that something wasn’t right. The tables were packed but no-one was eating, or talking, and they were barely moving. Everyone was staring in the same direction, jaws slack and forehead racked in what looked to be fear.

Tracking their gazes, Vernon spotted the cause: two men stood in a classic face-off, one holding a waitress by the throat and the other glaring from under his eyebrows.

The hostage-taker was tall and lean, and not in a good way. His skin looked too big for him, as if he had lost a lot of weight in a hurry, although his complexion suggested he might have done this through home surgery with a kitchen knife. He was cracked and blotchy, colourless, with milky white eyes and a brown tongue licking at his lips. It looked unnatural for someone who looked like that to be so close to the waitress, let alone touching her. Vernon expected her skin to smoke.

The milky white eyes shot in his direction. ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’

The man’s free hand whipped out of his greasy jeans, a rusted metal object grasped amongst the knobbly fingers. An old black powder weapon of some kind, and not one kept in particularly good nick. He brandished it at Vernon, and the young adult regressed back to a child. It was only natural, he told himself.

The man shook his weapon at Vernon, and his grip tightened on the waitress. She let out a choked yelp, but didn’t try to resist. Vernon wondered, briefly, if she were the sort of person used to being a damsel in distress. She was so good at it.

‘Thought you could sneak yourself in a little sidekick, did ya?’ the hostage-taker barked at the other man.

Vernon hadn’t really looked at the other man properly until that moment, his eyes having been drawn to the somewhat crazy and armed fellow choking the waitress. The other man was wearing leather, almost exclusively. It wasn’t the sort of leather you find on a man who wore it for fashion in the city, no sheen, but the dull brown of the self-tanned stuff. He put Vernon in mind of a cowboy, although the term seemed insufficient to describe him. If anything, this fellow was a cowman.

The Cowman slowly rubbed his palms together. ‘Hardly sneaky, is he?’

‘Kid’s a damn noisy little shit,’ the hostage-taker smirked. ‘Practically heard his boots on the road outside.’

‘He’s not one of mine.’

The hostage-taker’s eyes flicked back towards Vernon. ‘Maybe I’ll drill him then. Stop him from running.’

‘Yeah, he’s going like a dervish now,’ a hunter’s grin flashed onto the Cowman’s face. ‘He’s scared stiff. You think a kid sees a hand cannon everyday? Leave him out of it.’

Vernon was confused. And scared. The Cowman was right, he’d never seen a black powder weapon before, not outside of a magazine at any rate, and it wasn’t nearly as pleasant as he had imagined. He’d seen them as amazing feats of engineering, a tool of the modern age, something to be revered. Never once had he looked at it for what it truly was, a weapon. Now he was staring down the barrel, all the the immortality of youth was draining away. There were things out there designed to kill, and all the youthful vigour in the world couldn’t stop that.

The hostage-taker frowned. ‘Maybe I will, if I get what I want. Maybe I’ll let them all go if I get it.’

The Cowman’s right eye twitched, and he ran a hand over his stubbly chin. He had the look of someone who was considering a request, yet wanted everyone to know that it was a pretence. He stretched slowly, and Vernon heard worn bones click in the Cowman’s back. It made the boy grimace.

‘I don’t think there’s enough money in this building to get you what you want,’ the Cowman said. ‘It may look posh and wealthy, but underneath the finery its just wood and iron and rust. Hell, even that waitress you’ve got by the throat turns tricks on weekends just to get enough cash to live off.’

‘I thought you looked familiar,’ the hostage-taker leered at the waitress and, just for a moment, dropped into a memory.

The Cowman took a step forward. ‘No. Attention on me. I’m the one you’re dealing with, not some second-rate hooker in a cheap uniform.’

The girl’s eyes narrowed. Vernon was surprised that the girl could find the time, while being held hostage by an armed madman, to get offended. Women confused him, always had, and even during one of the more terrifying experiences of his short life, that remained a constant. Her defiance ended, however, as the hand tensed around her throat.

The Cowman risked another step at the sound of the girl’s startled choking, but the hostage-taker’s weapon was trained on him like a flash, the movement so fast that it left a trail of rust flakes floating behind it.

‘Ah ah ah,’ he said. ‘I want my money, then you get the girl. Heh, that’s a saying she’s probably used to, eh?’

He hugged the girl tight to his chest, hand still tight at her throat. The Cowman was considerably closer now, possibly ten feet away from the girl in fact, but Vernon doubted he was quick enough to disarm the man from there. Everything he had read about black powder weapons had told him that, while cool, they were notoriously inaccurate, unless you paid a considerable premium for one of the new ones with rifling. That said, it would be pretty hard to miss at that distance.

‘This place doesn’t have any money. Not enough for you, anyway,’ the Cowman responded. If he was nervous, he wasn’t showing it. He was as calm as a graveyard, which seemed oddly fitting somehow.

The hostage-taker was getting angry. He pulled the weapon up and pointed it at the girl’s head.

What the Cowman did could be called a movement in the same way a supernova could be described as an explosion. Technically it was a movement, but it was stunning and swift and so ultimately precise that the word seemed imprecise. When he was finished, he had a weapon of his own pointed at the hostage-taker, who hadn’t even realised that the man before him had even moved.

Vernon’s distance had made it hard to get a proper look at the hostage-taker’s weapon, only being able to deduce that it was poorly maintained and definitely black powder based. This was not an issue for the Cowman’s weapon, the sheer size of it helping to undo this issue.

Six barrels, strapped together in a revolving motion, drew Vernon’s eye. It was fashioned from some sort of silvery metal that reflected light very well, perhaps chrome but he wasn’t too sure, and manage to project the same aura of deadliness as the hostage-taker’s weapon while also dampening it with something else that Vernon couldn’t place.

There was a click, and the barrels rotated. A small cone of fire leapt from the front of the gun, and the hostage-taker’s face dropped as the back of his head spread itself across the wall some fifteen feet behind him. He fell, and the girl pulled herself free.

She took a moment to catch her breath and stare wide-eyed at the now dead hostage-taker. Slowly she turned red and her fists clenched, then she span around and stormed up to the Cowman, barely an inch from his face.

‘Why the hell didn’t you do that sooner?’ she screamed at him.

He tucked his weapon back inside his jacket and cracked his knuckles. ‘You weren’t in danger before that moment.’

‘I wasn’t in danger? He was choking me!’

‘To hold you still, not to kill you. While his cannon was pointed my way, you were perfectly safe.’

Her fists unclenched a little, but her face remained locked in a hideous frown. The Cowman gave her time to respond, perhaps thirty seconds, and when she failed he nodded slightly and walked away.

He past Vernon on the way out, slapped him on the shoulder. ‘He couldn’t have hit you at that distance. Not with that thing.’ he muttered.

Then he was gone.

It took a few moments before it registered with the other patrons. Silence reigned until, all at once, the crowd shrieked and began to panic.

Vernon didn’t understand, although he was now finding himself a little more used to not understanding. These people had been there for the whole thing, yet only now it was over they were scared? It didn’t make sense.

Perhaps he could go one day without lunch, he told himself, and left them to their chaos.