In this flash fiction piece I weave a tale of eventually paying the piper in currency inked with terror…

Beams of moonlight filtered in from the mostly cloaked windows and pierced her as she sat in the dark room, bound, gagged, and terrified. The wooden chair was cold against her thighs and the dirty cement floor uncomfortably raked her bare feet.

“I have been waiting for this dance for the five long years since you nearly took away my life.”  His wet, hissing voice against her ear startled her and tears began to flow as she choked a scream against the leather gag.

She heard a growl and felt his leather duster brush her arm and leg when he stood up and walked out in front of her. Her eyes, wide with terror, only saw a quiet, dark silhouette against an even darker room.

Suddenly, he leaned in just enough for the dusty yellow shards of light to stripe his face. The one eye she was able to see was ablaze with rage, and she could see his shape heave with each breath he took. Trails of sweat ran down, in and out of the visible slices of his face. Fear was gripping her tighter with each heartbeat.

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He held in a dirty fingerless glove clad hand, a 9mm Beretta. Suddenly he pointed it towards her and let loose several shots. A scream curdled in her throat as her eyes squeezed tight. Flinching as she felt every round pass her ear; heard every bullet hit the wall behind her. Urine started to pool in the chair, soaking her thin purple dress as the grit from the violently roiled air pressed against her face.

Quickly he was next to her, pressing the gun barrel’s end hard against her temple. As the intense, painful heat and sickening sweet smell of her own burning flesh seared her soul, she felt him lean in to snarl, “Bitch, it’s time you collect what you paid for five years ago.”

She nearly strangled on her on slobber as she felt the pressure of him slowly squeezing the trigger of the gun tightly pressed against the side of her head.

CLICK! And her bladder fully let loose.

No explosion, no more pain than the burn, or the terror that had her fully in its throes. She was sobbingly alive.

His beastly laughter as he stood erect in the moonbeams unnerved her even more as she pleaded with him through teary eyes. She was sure he was going to reload the gun and end it. In fact, somewhere deep inside of her quivering mind a scream came out, wanting him to stop the game and kill her.

He turned his head and exposed a perfectly round scar that he fingered when he said, “I have marked us both for your sin. Live with it as a reminder not to fuck with me or anyone else again.”

With that, he dropped the gun and walked past her. As his footfalls faded behind, she was left soaking in tears, sweat and urine, to be awash in the five years of guilt stemming from that night after the office party, the morning after embezzlement with his name wrongly all over it, and his suicide attempt. The guilt she was hiding from had finally snared her in its monstrous jaws.

In the end, she cried for him.

Tags: alex crabtree, ewn, Fiction, flash, flash fictions, short fiction

This entry was posted on January 7, 2011 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Flash Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.