All the Lonely People - Part 1

    With a grunt, the Hunter drew out the heavy leather satchel from the trunk of his car.
    Like him, the satchel was old, worn, and dirty but stronger for it. Built for another purpose, but molded to its new life with surprising capability. It was filled with hard things, pointy things, and enough destructive power to rain death with the force of a hurricane. Still, hope existed within its folds.
    Setting aside the stained bible that rested atop his instruments of death, the Hunter drew out a long and slender knife. It found its sheathe with a ring of the blade.
    Soon, another.
    And another.
    Knives, blades, flechettes, guns, ammo, explosives, trinkets of all shapes and size, and even a good old silver cross. Each one found its pocket, its holster, or its home. Each one was snug and secure, able to withstand a beating should the need arise, but ready to be drawn at a moment's notice.
    Many of his kind found the weight of the weapons cumbersome and restrictive. He didn't agree. If anything, if made him feel more centered then any other time. He felt bald and exposed otherwise. Cold.
    The satchel was back into his trunk. A moment later, a newspaper clipping fell to the street below. He quickly gathered it up and tucked it into his pocket before closing up.
    He didn't need to read what was in the clipping. The Hunter could probably recite the first lines from memory.

BRUTAL MURDERS CONTINUE!

After months of searching, police still have no leads for the terrible

serial killer that has terrorized Maple Brook county since early October.

While police assure residents that they are hot on the trail, one off duty

officer revealed that they have yet to find anything substantial. The victims,

three separate young women,all engaged, were each found with their faces 

removed  with surgical precision. While leaving the muscle and bone beneath...

    Staring up from his parking space on the abandoned road, the old church before him appeared empty. He knew better.

    Its windows were cracked and broken in many places. Several shutters hung loosely. Some local jokers had spray painted a number of foul words across one side. Chunks of wood had split here or there, giving him the impression that the building could collapse at any moment. Not far behind, the old graveyard sat as dead still as the corpses it housed.

    The Hunter's boots made loud thunks as he walked up the rotting steps. He didn't care. It knew he was coming anyway.

    He'd watched the thing for the last several weeks. It wasn't until the day before that he realized it had been watching him back.

    Disguised as a young girl in her early twenties, the Hunter had started watching her under the presumption that she was the thing's next target. While he didn't introduce himself, he also didn't make a point to hide either. Every now and again he'd see her sitting at the large bay windows of her apartment, watching the world go by. Or, as he discovered, watching him.

    It wasn't until the girl hadn't come home that he decided to look a bit closer.

    Breaking in was easy enough. Her apartment didn't even have a deadbolt.

    At first glance, it hadn't been anything out of the ordinary. He found everything he would have expected to. The kitchen was stocked but not overly. There was some dirty laundry but there was a basket of clean ones needed to be folded. Glasses on the night stand, TV in the bedroom...nothing strange. 

    It wasn't until he was on his way out that he noticed the small bookcase in the landing.

    There was no seam between the bookcase and the wall.

    The Hunter gingerly touched it and tried to move the bookcase forward slightly. No give. He tried harder, not overly worried if he knocked the whole thing over. Still, it didn't move. Now, glancing inside, he could see the notch in the back that indicated the false backing.

    Tearing away the books, the backing was removed easily. Behind it lay three jars.

    Even with years of monsters and mayhem under his belt, it was hard not to grimace at what was inside.

    Each jar was mostly empty. A clear fluid filled them but the Hunter was confident that it probably wasn't water. Floating inside the jar was a skinned human face. They would bunch up and stretch out as if flowing with some unseen current, but every now again they'd take shape.

    And that shape would be a silent, soundless scream of pain and horror.

    He'd kept the jars. 

    With them hidden in his trunk near the satchel, he pushed the thought of the tortured souls in order to steel himself for the monster to come.

    Drawing an old revolver, he lifted his foot and caved in the front door. What he found inside was far from expectation...

[Read more in Part 2! Coming Soon.]

Dean and Mort's Gym - DBTC

    Dean set down the crystal tumbler with a heavy sigh. It was empty, but his throat still burned with the scotch. His room was dark, as was the rest of the gym, except for the single neon sign that glew red and yellow in his office window.

    “Dean & Mort’s Gym” it read.

    Most days, he would chuckle when he read the sign. Not tonight though. Not with the man across the desk.

    Normally, if someone asked about the name, he might recant the tale of how he and his friend Mort were so desperate for a place to box, that they went out and opened a gym of their own. He’d tell them how people started to show up just to watch them train with each other. Family and friends at first, but soon they had to charge admission and were putting on little boxing matches of their own.

    Depending on who the person was, Dean might go into more detail for them. He’d tell them about how he was the heavier hitter but Mort was tougher. He could never stay on the mat no matter how many times Dean put him down. Every time he went down, Mort would jump right back up. Every time…except once.

    “That one time.” Dean would say. “That one time it was all my fault…” his voice would trail off quietly. Theatrically. “I saw the opening and I took the swing. I wasn’t really looking. Wasn’t thinking. I caught him square in the temple.”

    Most people stopped asking after that.

    A few brave souls might want to know more. They’d listen to his voice crack as he told them how he tried to get Mort back up. How he screamed for a doctor or an ambulance, but by the time the men in white had arrived, it was already too late. Then he’d go on about how he took off his gloves and hung them up that very night and how they still hang in his office today, soaked with the blood of his only true friend.

    No one ever wanted to know more after that.

    Not one except the man across the desk from Dean.

    “What would you tell them?” the man asked Dean. “Would you tell them the truth or more of the story that you’ve practiced so well?”

    “Would you tell them about the money on the fight? Or about the offer from the loan sharks? Would you tell them how you sold out your friend for the cost of a debt?”

    “No.” he said to the man. “I would tell them I made an awful mistake.”

    “Some would argue pre-meditation doesn’t allow mistakes, only regret.”

    Dean had no response.

    His eyes drifted to the sign in the window. The neon flicked and buzzed. A constant drone that Dean had long ignored but now sounded ten times louder than ever.

    “You’re right, of course. I thought it was the right thing to do.” Dean said. “The business wasn’t failing but it was built on a snake’s nest of bad investments and back alley deals. There was never enough money to pay back the sharks.”

    “It’s funny. When you think that you’re looking death in the eye, you do some crazy things.” Dean said with a hollow chuckle. There was no happiness in that sound. It was a low, deep thing that sounded more sinister and sad than truly amused.

    “Irony.” Dean said, shaking his head.

    “So tell me,” the man continued. “How would you make it right?”

    “The gym never belonged to me. Not me alone, anyway. That was my only real mistake. As you pointed out, plenty of regrets…but only one mistake. I should have been the one to take that punch.”

    Dean felt his guts twist into a knot as the man across the desk rose from his chair. He knew what was coming. He deserved it. He’d always had. Yet he didn’t have the stones to see it coming. Instead, he turned in his desk chair so that he could see his gloves hanging on the wall. They were ugly and old and still splotched with his friend’s blood.

    “Before you finish it.” Dean said quietly. “Just one more thing.”

    “And what’s that?”

    “Can you forgive me for what I did?”

    “No.”

    The police didn’t find Dean’s body until the next evening. A concerned regular had called in when he happened to look in the office window and saw Dean with his head caved in, slumped over in his chair. They cordoned off the area, checked for prints, and did what they could, but never found any evidence that pointed to the killer. After a few months of searching, they gave up.

    The building is still there though. The landlord has tried to sell it, but no one ever wants to buy. There always seems to be the smell of blood and the sound of blows landing whenever you’re in there late at night. No one dares stay another night.

    And so it sits. An empty old gym with a half burned-out red and yellow neon sign hanging in the window of a dumpy little office.

    “Mort’s Gym” it still reads today.

(Hello Lovelies. I hope you enjoyed today's little flash fiction. I was challenged by my friend to try out a writing prompt that she herself was working on. "Write a ghost story 1000 words or less that involves a neon sign." It was a fun little experiment for me. Personally, I think it might have come out a little too dark and broody, but I'd love to hear your opinions!)