I see for the briefest moment a man, face pressed against the window, looking like he’s shouting, and a split-second later something that gives the illusion of being large and winged. I’m tired. It’s dark.
The cat was back on the garage roof, and Pop was mad.
“Dirty animals, those cats,” he said, pressing a .308 round into the Winchester rifle.
In some stories, this would take on a sinister bent; perhaps the King of All Snails would ask for human sacrifice, or perhaps slowly, he would insidiously turn Rebecca into a snail, or perhaps he would infest the region with carnivorous gastropods. This is not one of those stories.
I kick him in the knee and the cap pops like rotten wood. The leg folds backward and he topples. I hit him in the head with the tire iron. It’s easier than squashing a pumpkin.
Using his front teeth like a rabbit, he bit the end off the candy bar. The taste of honey hit his tongue. Some kind of sweet syrup – not quite caramel, definitely not nougat – connected with the roof of his mouth and he had to lick it off.
Maybe, she hoped, maybe he was just some garden-variety dirty creep who picked up what he thought was a lonely hitchhiker. Maybe all he wanted was carnal, and all she’d have to do was navigate his fantasy romance routine…
Daniel didn’t notice when he fell. He doesn’t know when it happened, just that one day he realised that God began to give him no time, no help, no notice, and that his praises to the Almighty began to be rote, and parroted, and empty.
He fell. But he was still my angel, and he is my angel still, even now. He just carried on doing his job. He takes no joy in the work, but there is nothing else for him to do.
In his mailbox there is a hand holding a gun. It’s severed, this hand, just on the elbow side of the wrist, and it has oozed a bit of blood out into the box. The whole thing has gone sort of pale, which makes the revolver in its grip look blacker and shinier.
They were remixers — hot young things living off the pop cred of turning data into apps — and I worked for robots.