“Anyone can have a bad day” – a short story

It had been one of those days, you know, the sort where you hoped, when you woke up again, it would be a distant memory if not gone altogether. Everything had gone wrong, the handover from my shift to the next, longer than usual, I got home late to find the building’s security system malfunctioning, and after everything that could go wrong had, I was late getting to bed, which meant I was going to be tired and cranky even before my shift started.

But what topped it all off was that the alarm didn’t go off. It was not as if I hadn’t set it, I remembered doing it. There was something else in play.

I rolled over and instantly noticed how dark it was. It was never this dark. It was why I chose an apartment as high up as I could, there would always be light coming from the advertising sign on the roof of the building over the road at night, or direct sunlight not blotted out by surrounding buildings.

I also left the curtains open, deliberately. I liked the notion of being able to see out, sometimes looking at the stars, other times watching the rain, but mostly to see that I was not in a dark place.

Not like now.

I got out of bed and went over to the window. Yes, there were lights, but they were all the way down on the street level. Everywhere else, nothing. It had to be a power blackout. Our first in a long time. I should have noticed the air conditioning was not on, and it was almost silent inside the room.

The apartment had windows that opened, not very far, but enough to allow some airflow, and the room feeling stuffy, I opened one in the bedroom. Instantly, sounds drifted up from street level, and looking down I could see the flashing lights of police cars and fire trucks, as well as the sounds of sirens.

The cold air was refreshing.

It took a few minutes before I realized the elevators would not be working, and I remembered the only pitfall of having a high-up apartment, it was a long way down by the stairs, and even longer going back up.

In the distance, I could see other buildings, about ten blocks away, with their lights on. It had to be a localized blackout, or perhaps a brownout. We had been having problems across the city with power supply caused by an unexplained explosion at several power stations on the grid.

Some were saying it was a terrorist attack, others were saying the antiquated infrastructure had finally given out.

My attention was diverted from the activity below by the vibration of my cell phone on the bedside table. I looked over at the clock and saw it was 3:10 in the morning, not a time I usually got a phone call.

I crossed the room and looked at the screen, just as the vibrating stopped. Louis Bernard. Who was Louis Bernard? It was not a name I was familiar with, so I ignored it. It wasn’t the first wrong number to call me, though I was beginning to think I had been given a recycled phone number when I bought the phone. Perhaps the fact it was a burner may have had something to do with it.

About the go back to the window, the phone started ringing again. The same caller, Louis Bernard.

Curiosity got the better of me.

“Yes?” I wasn’t going to answer with my name.

“Get out of that room now.”

“Who….” It was as far as I got before the phone went dead.

The phone displayed the logo as it powered off, a sign the battery was depleted. I noticed then though I’d plugged the phone in to recharge, I’d forgotten to turn the power on.

Damn.

Get out of that room now? Who could possibly know firstly who I was, and where I was living, to the point they could know I was in any sort of danger?

It took another minute of internal debate before I threw on some clothes and headed for the door.

Just in case.

As I went to open the door, someone started pounding on it, and my heart almost stopped.

“Who is it?” I yelled out. First thought; don’t open it.

“Floor warden, you need to evacuate. There’s a small fire on one of the floors below.”

“OK. Give me a minute or so and I’ll be right out.”

“Don’t take too long. Take the rear stairs on the left.”

A few seconds later I heard him pounding on the door next to mine. I waited until he’d moved on, and went out into the passage.

It was almost dark, the security lighting just above floor level giving off a strange and eerie orange glow. I thought there was a hint of smoke in the air, but that might have been the power of suggestion taking over my mind.

There were two sets of stairs down, both at the rear, one on the left and one on the right, designed to aid quick evacuation in the event of a calamity like a fire. He had told me to take the left. I deliberately ignored that and went to the right side, passing several other tenants who were going towards where they’d been told. I didn’t recognize them, but, then, I didn’t try to find out who my fellow tenants were.

A quick look back up the passage, noting everyone heading to the left side stairs, I ducked into the right stairwell and stopped for a moment. Was that smoke I could smell. From above I could hear a door slam shut, and voices. Above me, people had entered the stairwell and were coming down.

I started heading down myself.

I was on the 39th floor, and it was going to be a long way down. In a recent fire drill, the building had been evacuated from the top floor down, and it proceeded in an orderly manner. The idea was that starting at the top, there would not be a logjam if the lower floors were spilling into the stairwell and creating a bottleneck. Were those above stragglers?

I descended ten floors and still hadn’t run into anyone, but the smell of smoke was stronger. I stopped for a moment and listened for those who had been above me. Nothing. Not a sound. Surely there had to be someone above me, coming down.

A door slammed, but I couldn’t tell if it was above or below.

Once again, I descended, one floor, two, three, five, all the way down to ten. The smoke was thicker here, and I could see a cloud on the other side of the door leading out of the stairwell into the passage. The door was slightly ajar, odd, I thought, for what was supposed to be a fire door. I could see smoke being sucked into the fire escape through the door opening.

Then I saw several firemen running past, axes in hand. Was the fire on the tenth floor?

Another door slammed shut, and then above me, I could hear voices. Or were they below? I couldn’t tell. My eyes were starting to tear up from the smoke, and it was getting thicker.

I headed down.

I reached the ground floor and tried to open the door leading out of the fire escape. It wouldn’t open. A dozen other people came down the stairs and stopped when they saw me.

One asked, “Can we get out here?”

I tried the door again with the same result. “No. It seems to be jammed.”

Several of the people rushed past me, going down further, yelling out, “there should be a fire door leading out into the underground garage.”

Then, after another door slamming shut, silence. Another person said, “they must have found a way out,” and started running down the stairs, the others following. For some odd reason I couldn’t explain, I didn’t follow, a mental note popping up in my head telling me that there was only an exit into the carport from the other stairs, on this side, the exit led out onto an alley at the back of the building.

If the door would open. It should push outwards, and there should also be a bar on it, so when pushed, it allowed the door to open.

The smoke was worse now, and I could barely see, or breathe, overcome with a coughing fit. I banged on the door, yelling out that I was stuck in the stairwell, but there was no reply, nor could I hear movement on the other side of the door.

Just as I started to lose consciousness, I thought I could hear a banging sound on the door, then a minute later what seemed like wood splintering. A few seconds after that I saw a large black object hovering over me, then nothing.

It was the culmination of a bad night, a bad day, and another bad night. Was it karma trying to tell me something?

When I woke, I was in a hospital, a room to myself which seemed strange since my insurance didn’t really cover such luxuries. I looked around the room and stopped when I reached the window and the person who was standing in front of it, looking out.

“Who are you?” I asked, and realized the moment the words came out, they made me sound angry.

“No one of particular importance. I came to see if you were alright. You were very lucky by the way. Had you not stayed by that door you would have died like all the rest.”

Good to know, but not so good for the others. Did he know that the fire door was jammed? I told him what happened.

“Someone suspected that might be the case which is why you were told to take the other stairs. Why did you not do as you were told?”

“Why did the others also ignore the advice.” It was not a question I would deign to answer.

They didn’t know any better, but you did, and it begs the question, why did you take those stairs.”

Persistent, and beginning to bother me. He sounded like someone else I once knew in another lifetime, one who never asked a question unless he knew the answer.

The man still hadn’t turned around to show me his face, and it was not likely I’d be getting out of bed very soon.

“You tell me?”

He turned slightly and I could see his reflection in the window. I thought, for a moment, that was a familiar face. But I couldn’t remember it from where.

“The simple truth, you suspected the fire was lit to flush you out of the building and you thought taking those stairs would keep you away from trouble. We both know you’ve been hiding here.”

Then he did turn. Hiding, yes. A spot of trouble a year or so before had made leaving Florida a necessity, and I’d only just begun to believe I was finally safe.

I was not.

They had found me.

And it only took a few seconds, to pull the silenced gun out of his coat pocket, point it directly at me, and pull the trigger.

Two stabbing pains in the chest, and for a moment it was as if nothing happened, and then, all of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe.

The last thing I saw and heard, several rounds from at least two guns, voices yelling out on the passage, and people running.

As I lay dying, my last thought was, it had been a good run, but no one can run forever.

The A to Z Challenge – M is for – “Murder at the mansion”

My great grandfather used to say the mark of a man was not how wealthy or wise he was, but by how much respect he garnered.

Well, my great grandfather was wealthy, wise, and also respected … by everyone but his children.

It was an interesting tale, oft-told by my father over the dinner table, when we, his children, would bemoan the fact that he was too hard on us.

Like my great grandfather, our father had also made something of himself, took every opportunity afforded him, and made it a success.

Yes, there were failures, like how our mother couldn’t handle the success and virtually abandoned us because of him, like our first stepmother, who hated children, and for a while, virtually turned him against us, setbacks that were eventually overcome.

To the outside world, we always said everything turned out all right, but the reality of it was completely the opposite. Appearances were just that, appearances.

My eldest brother, John, was out the door as soon as he could escape, and into the military, and from that moment we never really saw him.

Then there was me, Toby, with a name I hated, stuck at home to weather the endless storms, and to look after my youngest sister Ginny, who really didn’t have a care in the world.

I don’t think I ever got to have a childhood.

And lastly, my younger sister, Melanie, the tearaway tomboy troublemaker, a devil in disguise, that was responsible for ten nannies in twelve years.

We were as disparate and different as any group of siblings could get, and that was all because of how, in the end, our father finished up exactly like the man he often disparaged, our great grandfather.

Wealthy, yes, wise, the jury was still out in that one, and respected, yes, by everyone but his children.

And, now, I was looking at the body of the man I called my father, sprawled out on the floor, and it was quite plain to see he was dead.

There was no mistaking the bullet hole in his head, Or the puddle of blood emanating from the back of his head.

Someone, obviously, hated him more than we did.

…

I was surprisingly calm in the face of such a calamity, faring better than Ginny, who was the first to discover him.

She was once subject to bouts of hysteria, and that it had not happened in these circumstances was, in a sense disconcerting. She had reason to hate him more than the rest of us, the reasons for which I had only learned the night before.

She was sitting on the floor, not ten feet from the body, staring at what she had described as the devil incarnate. She had every reason to kill him, in fact, I had wanted to myself when she told me.

And when confronted him and demanded to know the truth, he had laughed at me, telling me that it was just a figment of her imagination.

I had to call the police, but before that, I needed to have a clear idea of where everyone was.

It was a weekend where, for the first time in twenty years, all four siblings were home. It was ostensibly for an announcement regarding the family, read how my father was going to bequeath his worldly possessions in the event of his death.

And I suspect, to tell us about the fact he was dying, the running battle he had with cancer finally getting a stranglehold in his body, and that he had about six weeks to three months left.

Not that he had said anything, I had received an anonymous email from his doctor telling me, that he didn’t believe we should not be kept in the dark. But it was not the news I’d shared with the others, hoping the man himself would.

That secret had died with him.

John and Melanie had both yet to put in an appearance. It had been a late night, and we had all ended up in John’s room, drinking shots of whiskey and talking about how different our lives had been, and how it had been too long apart.

I’d been very drunk at the end and barely made it back to my room before collapsing on the bed. I had no idea what happened to the others.

Ginny didn’t drink, or so she said, but the few drinks she had, had no effect on her. She had Bern in a dark mood and no wonder. She had left all of us in utter silence, devastated at the revelation our father was a monster, the reason why our mother left, unable to do anything to stop him.

She should have taken Ginny with her, but she didn’t, probably saving Melanie from a similar fate.

Threats against his life flew thick and fast, and the once made by John actuary sent a shiver down my spine. He was the only one experienced in killing, and I could totally believe he could kill in cold blood and not even blink.

Had he?

“Fuck!”

Great timing. John just walked into the room, still in his pajamas and looking disheveled, as if he had just fought off a pack of bears.

“This your doing?”

“What? No. Saying and doing are two different things, Toby.” He looked down at Ginny. “Ask her, she had more reason than any of us.”

I was going to, but she seemed in a catatonic state.

“No. I did not, and believe me, I’ve wanted to for many years.”

Ginny, obviously not in a catatonic state.

“Have you called the police,” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“Good. Let’s think about this first. Any sign of a breaking?”

I checked the French windows behind the desk and they were intact and locked. The room, other than the body on the floor was as it always was.

Not a book or paper out of place. The desk was clear. Usually, there was a computer and cell phone on it.

“His laptop is missing. A robbery gone bad?”

“Robbers don’t usually carry guns, let alone be able to shoot so accurately.” He was standing over the body making strange body movements, then, “whoever shot him was behind the desk. He must have heard something and came to investigate.”

If it was any time up to the fifty shots of whiskey, we would have heard a gun going off.

“Silencer?” I said.

“I’m a light sleeper, so I would have heard it. Others too. It screams premeditation. Robbers don’t bring guns with suppressors. If it was a case of being caught unawares, that shot could have gone anywhere. No, whoever was in her was looking for, maybe found, something, and may have made enough noise to get his attention with the intention of killing him.”

“Holy Mary mother of God!”

Melanie just arrived, riveted to the spot, just inside the door.

“I take it you didn’t do it?” John said to her.

“Me? You have to be joking. I wouldn’t know what end of the gun to use.”

Not true, I thought, Melanie was in the gun club at her exclusive school and won various awards for pistol shooting, and we’ll as an expert clay pigeon shooter to boot. But it was school days, a long time ago.

I looked at her pointedly, and I think she realized what my glare implied.

“I think it’s time we called the police,” I said.

“Can’t we just dig a hole and bring him out there somewhere and pretend he’s gone away?”

“A thought, but not practical, unless one of us did it and we need to hide the evidence. Anyone going to own up?”

No one spoke.

“Good. Just remember from this point on, if you have any deep dark secrets, they won’t be for much longer. We will be the prime suspects. Leaving isn’t an option.”

“Let the chips fall where they may. At least the bastard got what he deserved.

I pulled out my phone.

“Last chance.”

John was looking resolute. Melanie was in a state of shock. Ginnie went back to being almost catatonic. I don’t know what I felt, sad, maybe, but with all that had come before, perhaps a sense of relief.

I dialled the number.

“Daisy. No, I’m alright. We have a bit of a problem here. Someone has shot and killed my father. I think you’d better get here.”

“Right. Don’t touch anything and keep the scene clear. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

I disconnected the call and put the phone back in my pocket.

At that same moment, I had a great overwhelming feeling that one of them did it. I couldn’t see how anyone from the outside could or would.

As John said, let the child fall where they may.

“OK. Daisy wants us out of the room. Let’s go.” I said, helping Ginnie up from the floor

“Daisy? She that girl you were pining over back in elementary school?” John muttered.

“Married her too. Deputy sheriff now, so be a good boy. And don’t think our relationship will make this any easier.”

As I closed the door to the office and turned the key in the lock, I could hear the sirens in the distance.

The die, as the saying goes, was cast.

How could that possibly happen… – A short story

I had hoped by the time I was promoted to assistant manager it might mean something other than long hours and an increase in pay.

It didn’t.

But unlike others who had taken the job, and eventually become jaded and left, I stayed. Something I realized that others seemed to either ignore or just didn’t understand, this was a company that rewarded loyalty.

It was why there were quite a few who had served 30 years or more. They might not reach the top job, but they certainly well looked after.

I had a long way to go, having been there only 8 years, and according to some, on a fast track. I was not sure how I would describe this so-called ‘fast track’ other than being in the right place at the right time and making a judicial selection.

When it was my turn to be promoted, I had a choice of a plum department, or one most of my contemporaries had passed over. At the time, the words of my previous manager sprang to mind, that being a manager for the most sought after department or the least sought after, came with exactly the same privileges.

And, he was right. I took the least sought after, much to their disdain and disapproval. One year on, that disapproval had turned almost to envy; that was when the Assistant Managers were granted a new privilege, tea, and lunch in the executive dining room.

“So, what’s it like?” John asked, when our group met on a Friday night, this the first after the privilege was granted.

He had been one of the three, including me, who had the opportunity to take the role. Both he and Alistair had both declined, prepared to wait for a more prestigious department. It hadn’t happened to them yet.

“The same as the staff dining room, only smaller. Except, I guess, the waitstaff and butler. They come and serve you when you have to go to them in the staff room. They’re the same staff, by the way, except for the butler.”

I could see the awe, or was it envy, in their eyes. “but it’s not that great. The Assistant Managers all sit at one end of the table, and we’re not part of the main group, so no sharing of information I’m afraid. And the meals are the same, just served on fancier crockery.”

“Then nothing to write home about?” Will was one of those who they also thought to be on a ‘fast track’. I was still trying to see how my ‘fast track’ was actually that fast.

“Put it this way, the extra pay doesn’t offset the long hours because you get overtime, I don’t, so on a good week, you’d all be earning more than me. Without responsibility, if anything goes wrong. I think that’s why Assistant Managers were created, to take the blame when anything goes wrong.”

That had been the hardest pill to swallow. Until I got the role, I hadn’t realized what it really involved. Nor had the others, and it was not something we could whinge about. My first-day introductory speech from Tomkins, my Manager, was all about taking responsibility, and how I was there to make his life easier. It was a speech he made a few times because he’d been Manager for the last 16 years, much the same as the others, and promotion if ever, would come when they died.

And Manager’s rarely died, because of their Assistant Managers.

“How old is Tomkins now?” Bert, a relative newcomer to our group, asked. He was still in the ‘in awe’ phase.

“About the same as Father Time,” I said. “But the reality is, no one knows, except perhaps for the personnel manager.” O looked over at Wally, the Personnel Department’s Assistant Manager. “Any chance of you telling us?”

“No. You know I can’t.”

“But you know?” I asked.

“Of course, but you know the rules. That’s confidential information. Not like what you are the custodian of, information everyone needs.”

Which, of course, was true. Communication and Secretarial Services had no secrets, except for twice a year when the company Bord of Directors met, and we were responsible for all the documents used at their meetings. Then, and only then, was I privy to all the secrets, including promotions. And be asked ‘What’s happening?’.

“Just be content to know that he’s as old as the hills, as most of them. It seems to me that one of the pre-requisites for managership is that you have been employed here for 30 years.”

Not all, though, I’d noticed, but there wasn’t one under the age of fifty.

And so it would go, the Friday night lament, those ‘in’ the executive, and those who were not quite there yet.
It seemed prophetic, in a sense, that we had been talking about Mangers and their ages. By a quirk of fate, some weeks before, that I learned of Tomkins’s currents state of health via a call on his office phone. At the time he was out, where, he had not told me, but by his the I believed it was something serious, so serious he didn’t want me, or anyone else, to know about it.

That phone call was from his wife, Eleanor, whom I’d met on a number of occasions when she came to take him home from work. I liked her, and couldn’t help but notice she was his exact opposite, Tomkins, silent and at times morose, and Eleanor, the life of the party. I could imagine her being a handful in her younger days, and it was a stark reminder of that old saying ‘opposites attract’.

She was concerned and asked me if he had returned from the specialist. I simply said he had but was elsewhere, and promised to get him to call her when he returned. Then I made a quick call around to see where he was and found that he was in Personnel. I left an innocuous message on his desk, and then let my imagination run wild.

At least for a day or so, the time it took for me to realize that it was probably nothing, the lethargy he’d been showing, gone.

I’d put it out of my mind until my cell phone rang, and it was from the Personnel Manager. On a Sunday, no less. In the few seconds before I answered it, I’d made the assumption that Tomkins’s secretive visits to the specialist meant he needed time off for a routine operation.

Greetings over, O’Reilly, the Personnel Manager, cut straight to the chase, “For your personal information, and not to be repeated, Tomkins will be out of action for about two months, and as that is longer than the standard period, you will become Acting Manager. We’ll talk more about this Tuesday morning.” Monday was a holiday.

All Assistant Managers knew the rules. Any absence of a manager for longer than a month, promotion to Acting Manager. Anything less, you sat in the office, but no change in title. There was one more rule, that in the event of the death of a manager, the assistant manager was immediately promoted to Manager. This had only happened once before. 70 years ago. If a manager retired, then the position of Manager was thrown open to anyone in the organization.

It was an intriguing moment in time.

Tuesday came, and as usual, I went into the office, with only one thought in mind, let the staff in the department know what was happening, of course, the moment I was given the approval to do so by Personnel.

Not a minute after I sat down, the phone rang. I picked it up, gave my name and greeting. It was met with a rather excitable voice of the Assistant Manager, Personnel, “I just got word from on high, you’ve been promoted to manager. How could that possibly happen…”

Then a moment later, as realization set in, “Unless…”

—-

How could that possibly happen… – A short story

I had hoped by the time I was promoted to assistant manager it might mean something other than long hours and an increase in pay.

It didn’t.

It was why there were quite a few who had served 30 years or more. They might not reach the top job, but they certainly well looked after.

“So, what’s it like?” John asked, when our group met on a Friday night, this the first after the privilege was granted.

“Then nothing to write home about?” Will was one of those who they also thought to be on a ‘fast track’. I was still trying to see how my ‘fast track’ was actually that fast.

And Manager’s rarely died, because of their Assistant Managers.

“How old is Tomkins now?” Bert, a relative newcomer to our group, asked. He was still in the ‘in awe’ phase.

“No. You know I can’t.”

“But you know?” I asked.

“Of course, but you know the rules. That’s confidential information. Not like what you are the custodian of, information everyone needs.”

“Just be content to know that he’s as old as the hills, as most of them. It seems to me that one of the pre-requisites for managership is that you have been employed here for 30 years.”

Not all, though, I’d noticed, but there wasn’t one under the age of fifty.

At least for a day or so, the time it took for me to realize that it was probably nothing, the lethargy he’d been showing, gone.

It was an intriguing moment in time.

Then a moment later, as realization set in, “Unless…”

—-

The A to Z Challenge – D is for – “Did you hear that?”

It started with a phone call, a phone call that I never expected to get.

I was one of those people who went through life, almost invisible. It was not what I wanted, it just happened.

I was not the sociable sort, at school I tended to spend my time studying and then being labeled a nerd, I didn’t make friends, except for those who wanted help with their homework.

Few friends in elementary school, fewer in middle school, and none in college, that is no one that you could call a true friend. They were more acquaintances that were there for the help I could give them, but no one that would invite me to parties, or to just hang out.

That continues on into university. Except there were several new acquainted that were a little more than that, though not quite BFFs.

There was one, in particular, Anna, who was one of the study group, the one who needed the most help, someone who had been wavering on returning after the first year.

My trouble was that I liked her more than she liked me, my opinion of course, based on what I called the indifference factor, but perhaps I had more expectations than she did

She was doing uni because it was expected of her, not because she wanted to be there. She could take it or leave it, and the last time I spoke to her, she was going to leave.

And when she left to go back home, it was the last time I expected to see or hear from her.

Until that phone call.

“What are you doing this weekend?”

A dumb question, nothing of course, but I wouldn’t tell her that. I was still in shock that Anna would call me, for anything other than school, if at all.

“Not a lot.”

“Good. How would you like to housesit with me?”

House sit? Surely she had a dozen others who would do anything for her. She was that popular and well-liked. And would probably be far more amusing than I ever could be.

“If you like. I had no idea you did house minding.”

“I don’t, but an aunt is going away for the weekend, and she wants someone to look after the cat. I hope you like cats. And gardens. It has a nice garden.”

Cats I could take or leave. Gardens, it was probably a birdbath, two beds of roses, a large tree with a seat under it, and neighbors peering over the fence.

But it was a weekend somewhere else other than my little room, and Anna would be there. Maybe I could try to get past my shyness and actually talk to her.

“OK. I’m in. Do I need to bring anything?”

“No. I’ll send you the address and see you there at 5 pm. Friday.”

Why did I get the feeling I was being set up?

That feeling of impending doing followed me down the path from the front gate to the front door.

Far from the house being a small thatch cottage, based on the address she gave me, it turned out to be a three-story manor house with a large outhouse that looked to be once a stable and coach house

It seemed far too large to be a house for one person.

When I rang the doorbell, I expected a butler to answer the door, but it was Anna herself.

“Nice place,” I said.

“Too large and too hard to maintain. Were trying to convince her that she would be better off in something smaller. But you should see the back.”

Based on the front garden which could happily grace the front cover of any country living magazine, I couldn’t wait.

She let me pass and closed the door behind us. It sounded like the vault was closing and there would be no damage until the timer released the locks.

Inside, the whole place reeked of heritage and antiques, and the personality of its owner. The walls had paintings, table tops had old magazines, the seats worn leather, and worn carpet squares covered floorboards that creaked when you walked on them.

At the end of a long corridor was the kitchen at the end if the house, after passing several sitting and dining rooms. It was a very large house and raised a very important question.

She had not mentioned any family or relatives with anything like the wealth this house exuded. In fact, she had often implied that she was just an ordinary person.

This was anything but ordinary.

I caught up with her on the back patio, just off a large sunroom, to view what had to be an acre or more of manicured laws, garden beds, and trees. All it was missing was a maze.

“Do you actually have a secret life?”

“I was always told not to advertise our wealth.”

“Isn’t showing me this, a form of advertising? After all, I’m apparently from the wrong side of the tracks.”

“I trust you.”

“But you don’t know me, or anything about me.”

“Why do you think you’re here?”

If I wanted to make an educated guess, my first thought was to set me up for something, for the very reason she was aloof, and people like her, and those she kept company with, were not people like me associated with.

I was surprised not to see the two girls I’d once nicknamed ‘the dynamic duo’, Melissa and Winona, with her. Maybe they would turn up later.

My second thought, the most improbable reason, was that she wanted to get to know me, but, why choose a place like this? To make me feel small, grateful, impressed? Ten minutes in a Cafe was all she needed to find out what she needed to know about me.

An alarm bell went off when I asked her where I could get a drink of water, and she said, the kitchen, but didn’t really know where it was. I got an instant bad feeling.

That was followed by a bang that I thought came from the rear of the house.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“You hear all sorts of noises in places like these.”

If she wasn’t worried, neither was I.

Then the door chime rang.

“You expecting more visitors?” My internal fear factor was rising exponentially.

“No, but I’d better find out who it is, just in case.”

I shrugged and headed towards where she indicated the kitchen was, the rear of the house, what I would call an educated guess

After I found the kitchen, not technically at the rear, I returned to find my worst fears had come true. Not only the dynamic duo but also their boyfriends, Chad and Lester, two of the worst bullies from school days.

“Well, look who it is.” Chad was particularly menacing.

A glance to the side, it was hard to tell if Anna was looking pleased or neutral, but she wasn’t surprised. I glanced in Anna’s direction and all I got was a tilt of her head.

“Shouldn’t you be down the country club trying to prove you’re a new version of your drunken bully of a father?”

His smile turned into a very angry look. “Don’t go there, Scanlon.”

“Why are you here then?”

I expected to hear Anna had invited them. Instead, “we’re here to make sure Anna doesn’t make a mistake.”

“I don’t need your help or advice Chad. In fact, you should leave.”

None of the four looked like they had any intention of leaving. “Not until we’ve impressed upon both of you, the error of your ways. We thought you were smarter than this or did Scanlon force himself on you?”

She shook her head, not necessarily in anger, but more in despair. “I don’t know where you get your ideas from Chad, but you are very much mistaken. So, I will only say this once more, Chad,” she added quietly, “otherwise you will find yourself in a world of pain. Leave now while you still can.”

Chad, being Chad, was the master of ceremonies, puffed up as he had been in the schoolyard when he was about the unleash his gang on some poor misguided fool, usually me, or one of three others. But it was Melissa who spoke instead, “You go teach Scanlon a lesson outside by the pool while we have a talk to Anna.”

Lester took the cue, came over, and grabbed me by the shoulder. I thought about trying to shrug him off, but Chad was across the room before I could initiate anything. Best to leave calmly and sort it out outside.

I gave Anna a last look, but she was wearing her poker face. Had she set this up? It seemed as though she hadn’t, but then, it didn’t look like she was worried about the dynamic duo.

I shrugged.

Intentional or not, Chad and Lester were about to learn a very valuable lesson, and revenge, at least on them, was going to be sweet.

…

The A to Z Challenge – E is for – “Everyone has a secret”

How many people do you know have their front door smashed in at the crack of dawn, followed by a swat team, armed to the teeth, swarming through the house ready to put down any resistance?

Just the suddenness of the cacophony of noise, the shouting, and the sheer threat of death, left me firstly shattered, and secondly, in fear of being accidentally killed, especially when there were six guns trained on me.

When the all-clear came, when no one else was discovered in the house, one of the suited men came back and motioned the six to take a step back and raise their weapons.

“Get up.”

If I was expected a ‘please’, or an apology, both would be a long time coming.

“Where is she?”

I barely had time to catch my breath and try to stop shaking. Six guns were still pointing in my direction, and those holding them no less wanted to shoot me for any reason whatsoever.

“Who?” There were two girls in this house.

“Don’t be obtuse, Mr. Jacobs. Obstruction will get you nothing but a stretch in prison with some very unsavoury characters. Where is she?”

The notion that they could be looking for Liz was as preposterous as the day was long. I had known her for five years, since we both left the same company, unhappy with the pay and conditions, and moved to a new company, deciding to stay together, first as a team, and then I was hoping would be something more intimate.

It had to be someone else, like the odd woman who had ingratiated herself with the group I was with, and ostensibly left the bar with me, but only as far as the car park. Perhaps, if we were being observed, it might have been construed as something else.

“Can you give me a name, at least?”

“Elizabeth Morgan.”

Liz? She designed computer games, and I helped with the programming. Other than that, she went to church every Sunday and visited her folks in the next county every second Saturday. I’d met them on numerous occasions, and they were just ordinary people.

“Why on earth would you be looking for her?”

“That’s classified, Mr. Jacobs. All you need to do is tell me where she is.”

“I don’t know. The last time we spoke, she was heading off to the market to get groceries.”

“Which was?”

“About an hour ago.”

A woman put her head in the door, and said, “she’s nowhere on the property, sir.”

I recognized her immediately as the woman in the bar, and suddenly realized she had been subtly interrogating me about Liz, trying to find out where she was, and why she wasn’t there with me.

She glared at me, then disappeared.

“Who are you?” I asked. “FBI, CIA, NSA?”

“Why would you assume that I’m from any of those agencies?”

“Your friend who put her head in the door. I might not have realized who she was last night, but I do now. You think Liz has committed some sort of cybercrime, don’t you?”

“So, you do know what she’s been up to?”

“No. But you just told me. And I suspect a man by the name of Champion has been feeding you scurrilous lies, but you don’t need to say anything more. You’re right, I do know what this is about, but I know whatever he said to you to get here isn’t true, but, then, he has more money or more low friends in even lower places than we have, so do your worst.”

Liz wasn’t a criminal, nor was she guilty of anything except claiming the rights to her property. Champion, though, always maintained that anything she created while working for him was his. True enough, we all signed the contract. But what she created was after she resigned and we were working on a new project together. Now, to get around that, he was claiming her work would be a violation of national security. It would, if it was in his hands, and that was never going to happen.

“It would be good for everyone if she just surrendered and pleaded her case if what you say is true.”

An interesting change in tactics.

I looked him up and down. Just the sort of man who would sell out to the highest bidder. Champion was good only at one thing, knowing how much a person would sell out his principles for, even his mother if it came down to it. Everyone had a price. Unfortunately for us, it would seem, he didn’t know ours.

He shrugged. “Perhaps so time in a dark hole might loosen your tongue.”

Dark hold indeed.

To be honest, I thought he was joking, but he was not.

I was put in a small room with no furniture or anything to sit or lie on. There was just a cold, damp and hard concrete floor, designed to make you so uncomfortable, you’d sell your soul just to get away from it.

There would be some hard choices to be made here. Would I sell out Liz, would I do everything I could to stop Champion who was intent, now that he had what he wanted, in getting rid of anyone who might have a claim.

She had said this was what would happen, and I didn’t believe her. No surprise then she was gone and didn’t tell me.

But if they were to ask me, and I was in that frame of mind to tell them everything I knew, there wasn’t much I could tell them. I think that’s what she had once told me was plausible deniability.

She had been trying to keep me safe, but didn’t realize that my captors didn’t really care whether I knew anything or nothing, they wouldn’t believe me and were going to extract the information they wanted by any and all means available.

Something I definitely wasn’t looking forward to.

It was impossible to stay awake. I was trying to, just in case they came and took me away while I was unconscious.

Despite the hard, uncomfortable floor, I fell into a fitful sleep, and it was appropriate that I would dream of Elizabeth.

I remembered the first time I met her, being introduced as an assistant programmer, the look of contempt she gave me, and the messenger. I’d never seen anyone that focussed on their work.

It took a month before she would let me look at the code, and then only small sections at a time. It was complex, and way beyond anything I had been involved with, which surprised me how it was I got the job.

She said, one morning, and I agreed, that a more experienced programmer was required.

Until I told her five lines of code needed a slight change otherwise there would be a rather interesting result. I was not only a programmer, I had once worked with a scientist whose field was space and time, not exactly time travel, but he theorized that we could move from one place to another through what were essentially wormholes.

I thought he was working on a script for a television show.

My job was to create a data warehouse, and while doing so, did some reading on the side.

I had also seen the coding behind a prototype machine that was supposed to create the wormhole, but it was too complex for me to understand.

But the code Elizabeth had was almost identical but mixed up. When I told her, she said I was an idiot who wouldn’t know what day it was, and demanded I leave.

Two days later she came to my apartment, apologized, asked me to return, and on the way asked a thousand questions.

At that time, I learned the scientist I worked for was her mentor, and that he was dead, ostensibly from a heart attack. She didn’t believe it, and that’s where I got my introduction to the arch-villain Champion.

From there it evolved into something more special, but the constraints of work and her idea of romance seemed to make it more like a rollercoaster ride and I didn’t press.

So, I was, for the time being, content with my dreams, one of which was playing in my head now.

She had appeared, coming through a sort of haze or distortion, and was standing above me, smiling.

It couldn’t be true, and yet it seemed so lifelike.

She knelt down and took my hand in hers, and whispered. “Wake up, sleepyhead, it’s time to go.”

I could smell the aroma of her perfume enveloping me.

When I went to open my eyes I found they were already open. I gently squeezed her hand, and it was real.

“Elizabeth?”

“Yes. Now. We really have to go.”

“Where?”

“Stand up, and I’ll show you.”

I let her pull me to my feet and she gave me a hug, and whispered in my ear, “I love you,”

Now I knew it was a dream. She had never intimated such feelings before.

I’d play along. “It’s impossible to escape this cell.”

“Is it?” She took a step towards the distortion, “Come.”

I followed. Then, the next moment, I was in the dining room of her apartment”

“What just happened?”

Before she could answer, I lost consciousness. Last thought, it was too good to be true.

…

The A to Z Challenge – D is for – “Did you hear that?”