Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

And in the end, Brian Keene lay there in a pool of his own mucus and blood, wheezing through a machete-deviated septum and praying in vain that his life could end with the same sort of fade-to-black cliffhanger as THE RISING did.

The Rhinovirus Man shuffled closer. Brian tried to retreat but his back was in the corner,  his hands slippery with snot.

Rhinovirus Man’s baleful eyes blinked in the darkness as he pulled the machete from the wet center of Brian’s face like some kind of phlegmy Excalibur. It made a slurping sound when it came out, and the King of the Infected held the slick blade aloft, proclaiming his royalty.

The room began to spin around Brian. He knew for certain that this would be no cliffhanger ending.  Resolution flooded into him.  No wackjob with a headcold and a knife was going to keep him from screwing with the readers’ minds at the end of a story.  Not when there was still something he could do about it.

Brian leaned forward, eyes watering as one trembling finger pointed directly at the Rhinovirus Man.

“Rosebud,” he croaked out with his last breath. He wasn’t thinking of a sled, either.

___***___

*If you enjoyed this or any other killing of Mr. Keene on ‘Kill Brian Keene on Your Blog Day’ please consider throwing a couple of bucks the way of the Shirley Jackson Awards. Paypal donate button here.*

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m going to be busy getting married and going out of town on business and pleasure for a bit, but I planned ahead.  Through the magic of WordPress post scheduling, I’m offering up eight of my earliest dark flash fiction stories, all under the tag “Dark Treats“. Think of it as goodies for your mental Halloween bag.
Or creepy, apocalyptic, B-movie show and tell.  Whatever.

This is the last installment.  Hope you’ve enjoyed them!

Feeding the Hungry
(c) 2004 by Lon Prater
(Originally appeared in Camp Horror)

At the corner of Church and Vine in Minnagunka, Wisconsin, a group of itinerant Vegans ran the world’s loneliest soup kitchen.  A hand-drawn sign–black on yellow poster board glued to white painted bricks–proclaimed FREE FOOD.  But there were never any takers.

To passersby, the smell of potatoes simmering, squash grilling, even the vapors of an overzealously boiled bean stew were sometimes tempting.  (Not that the average passerby would ever stop to eat in a soup kitchen, mind you.)

The occasional bedraggled man, down on his luck and weary with the constant beatings of life and vagrancy would stop in, look about, and at the first happy smiles of volunteers worn out from the day’s unappreciated cooking, bolt for the door in an outrage.

The Vegans never quite understood this response.  They weren’t going to assault the homeless with religious tracts and sermons during the meal.  They had no intention of pawning off multi-level marketing schemes upon the indigent, or even of trying to coax them into returning to what society called normal living.

Yet every day, three meals a day–soy frittatas at breakfast, bean soup with granulated tofu curds at lunch, exquisite eggplant roasts at dinner–the Vegans cooked and cooked and no one came to eat.

On one particularly ashen October noon, one of the more impulsive volunteers gave chase to a greasy, bearded man in weathered jeans and an old Packers jersey.  The volunteer, a retired man named Phil, caught up to the homeless person–who, once out of the soup kitchen, didn’t appear to be in a particular hurry, and so wasn’t especially hard to catch–easily, diplomatically avoiding mention of the man’s apparent starvation, or the nose-assaulting rareness of his efforts at personal hygiene.

“Excuse me, sir,” Phil said, then repeated it when the man showed no response.

The man turned and stared at his young pursuer.

Phil fought the urge to stammer, saying instead: “Could you tell me why you won’t stay and eat the free food?”

The man wiggled his nose around on his face, then scratched the number 42 on his Packers jersey.  He smacked his lips together, allowing Phil a glance at his gums.  They were chronically malnourished and receding from the few remaining teeth like the parting of a periodontal Red Sea.

Finally, the old man spoke.  ”No meat,” he said simply, then turned to leave.

“Wait,” Phil implored.  ”What’s wrong with vegetables?”

“Nothing wrong with vegetables,” the man said.

“Then why won’t you eat at the Vegan free kitchen?  Why won’t any of you eat there?

“No meat.”

Phil puffed out an exasperated breath.  He grabbed and squeezed the man’s emaciated bicep. “Don’t you realize we’re doing it all for your benefit?  To feed the hungry?”

The man in the Packers jersey nodded.  ”That may be.  But there still ain’t no meat like they got over at the Baptist mission.  Now if you don’t mind. . . .”  The man pulled his arm free and shuffled off.

***

Eventually the Vegan soup kitchen on the corner of Church and Vine was replaced by one run solely by Phil, who in addition to being impulsive was a very determined sort when faced with a challenge.  He went to extraordinary measures (so he told himself) to make sure there was meat at every meal, even though he never ate any himself, still a steadfast Vegan.  The place served over fifty meals in the first two days.

Then word seemed to spread:  They got meat at Church and Vine, didja hear?  Delicious cuts of loin, and sausages at breakfast…. Over 800 meals had been served by the end of the first month.

As a dedicated Vegan, Phil still wholeheartedly accepted the old adage “Meat is Murder.”  But he was never one to let his own philosophical beliefs stand in the way of humanitarian causes like feeding the hungry.  No, the problem of hunger was being slowly eradicated in this city, and all thanks to Phil.

It helped that he didn’t have to pay for the meat he served.  It helped even more that with every meal, there was one less hungry mouth to feed in Minnagunka.

Phil felt really good about himself.  Within a year he had been recognized by the Lions, Elk, and Moose for “winning the war against hunger.”  Six months after that last award from the Moose Order, he was staring at an empty dining room again, just as he had been so many meals ago, on that day when the man in the Packers jersey had said “No meat.”

There were so few hungry in Minnagunka nowadays.

He was considering closing up the soup kitchen for good, when he got the idea to come back out of retirement and reopen the place as a specialty restaurant.  With no more hungry homeless, it seemed to make perfect sense.  He could already see the sign:

PHIL’S – Specializing in

Lion, Elk, Moose, and other exotic meats.

—***—

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m going to be busy getting married and going out of town on business and pleasure for a bit, but I planned ahead.  Through the magic of WordPress post scheduling, I’m offering up eight of my earliest dark flash fiction stories, all under the tag “Dark Treats“. Think of it as goodies for your mental Halloween bag.
Or creepy, apocalyptic, B-movie show and tell.  Whatever.
Hope you enjoy them!

Blood-spattered Notes from the Reverend’s Last Sermon

(c) 2005 by Lon Prater
(Originally appeared in Shadowed Realms)

For Sunday the 27th

VERSE:         “Let the LORD, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, who may go out before them and go in before them, who may lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the LORD may not be like sheep which have no shepherd.” Numbers 27:16-17

HOMILY:        God looked through the eyes of a man—yet another set of his own eyes—and saw himself tap air from the syringe into the old woman’s IV line.

Even as it happened, God watched from the woman’s tired, thankful eyes until God shared with God the sweet release and return of her passing.

And God was also the air that bubbled in her blood. And God was her veins and heart as well. And the spark of fear and hope that she felt. And God was also her grown children, and the flowers just blooming, which one of them would place upon her grave.

It is no small thing for the All to look upon itself. With something more infinite than patience and more lasting than love, God builds and waits and tears down and rebuilds and waits again; for all of the ever-present future and past, and at once, this has always been so.

And it has always been perfect.

And it has always been right.

God did this not to bring order to chaos, nor to bring chaos to order, because God encompasses the both of these. And neither did this happen that God might have subjects to love or someone to bow at the Godhead.

For God is All, and what God does is not so much loving and creating as it is gazing at some parts of Himself from the vantage of other parts of Himself, and then reflecting: it is. They are. I am. Minerals and metals, viruses and planets, animals and daffodils, suns and atoms, life and all that would ever be a part of it, or an object of it: all are, and at all times God is aware of them All, in every form and phase.

God has no intentions, no goals, no rules or standards. Good and evil and the shaded ladder of morality mean nothing, except as expressions of parts of the himself witnessing other parts of himself, vainly trying to see and comprehend and become the totality of the All.

God only builds, and tears down, and continues to be that which He is.

And God looked with the wolf’s eyes upon the sheep, and God bleated back at God in fear. And God was the wildflower bed nourished elsewhere in time by the offal of the wolf. And God was the stink of the offal and the pollen of the wildflowers.

And God was, even at that moment, the blood spattering a midwife as she brought into the world at long last, a babe nourished by flowers and excrement. God feeds upon God, and that can be neither right nor wrong; it simply is.

And God was also with the babe when grown, spilling the blood of you, his sheep, just days after placing wildflowers on the old woman’s grave.

This is how God is: forever building Himself up and tearing Himself down. This is what He does; gazing through uncountable eyes, seeing nothing. Oh, God loves us all, each and every one, but only as atoms love the organism and as one organism feeds on the others for which it hungers.

Know that every moment of the rest of your short life, even this instant, God sees with your eyes as he sees with mine. So long as you are, you are God. And so long as I am, I am God. Even as I slipped the needle into her vein, it was God’s Work.

VERSE:         For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Acts 20:29

Bow your heads now and pray, for the chapel doors are locked up tight, and I’ve Holy Work that must be done.

—***—

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m going to be busy getting married and going out of town on business and pleasure for a bit, but I planned ahead.  Through the magic of WordPress post scheduling, I’m offering up eight of my earliest dark flash fiction stories, all under the tag “Dark Treats“. Think of it as goodies for your mental Halloween bag.
Or creepy, apocalyptic, B-movie show and tell.  Whatever.
Hope you enjoy them!

Breath of Fresh Air
(c) 2004 by Lon Prater
(Originally appeared in Nocturnal Ooze)

Gavin and Estelle hid behind their taped up windows and doors, listening to the hum of a dozen air purifiers, wondering when the power would fail.  Outside: a pandemonium of shivering puking homicidal timebombs.

It hungered, though it knew not

what it was to hunger.

They alternated between hugging each other close and fights spawned as much by Estelle’s nicotine withdrawal as the stress of the world ending around them.  Sometimes they listened for the sound of scratching at the door, footsteps on the porch.  It had been just three days since Gavin had come home with sheets of plastic and begun sealing off all but one source of air into the house: a doggy-door eight years unused.  Now a contraption of ducting and three of the purifiers squatted in front of the door.  To Estelle, it looked like it was begging to be let out.

It reproduced,

over and over.

The news and radio were silent.  They ate sparingly from their larder, one watching the other for the first sign of fever.  Every cough was greeted with suspicion.  Every day brought new aches and new worries.  The noise in the streets lessened, then died out completely.  The walls of the house seemed to be closing in around them.

It waited,

though it had no concept of time.

Over the last of the eggs (scrambled with hot peppers and tomatoes, just the way he liked them) Estelle wrenched her finest cleaver from the back of Gavin’s head.  His head wobbled on the stump of his neck for a moment as if unsure of itself, then toppled over into his plate.

Eventually, it would find a way to

spread into every suitable host.

She told herself that Gavin had been acting strangely, was already infected.  That the little corner of the kitchen window’s plastic barrier (the one she had been blowing her late night cigarette smoke out of) was not what had let in the virus.  That it was better for him to go like this, happy after a good breakfast, while there was still food and electricity, thinking that he had saved them both from whatever was out there.

Sooner or later, all things become part of it,

or rather it became part of all things.

She left Gavin there, hot peppers in his open eyes, egg on his face, and sobbed great acid tears until she couldn’t help but smile. Her hands were shaking too hard to light the last cigarette.

The lights went off, but it was after daybreak so it didn’t matter.  The tuneless humming of the air purifiers slowed, then ended.  Estelle knew that with nothing drawing fresh air into the house, she would suffocate.  She knew that outside, she would become one of the sick and crazy ones, briefly.  Then she’d become one of the dead ones.

It would survive the way its ancestors always had:

find a weakness and exploit it.

Millions and millions and millions of times.

Estelle finally got the last damn cigarette lit, smoked it down to the filter, then stubbed it out in Gavin’s plate.  She hadn’t left his side since breakfast, but with that last cigarette gone, and the air inside already feeling close and moldy-stale, she knew it was only a matter of time.

She kissed her fingertips and pressed them to Gavin’s cheek before shoving the purifier contraption away from the door and ripping off the tape and plastic.

It had no conscience, no regret.

It wanted only to live.

Estelle walked the silent topsy-turvy streets.  Not looking at the bodies.  Not smelling the vomit and urine and blood.  She went to the end of her block and into the convenience store.  Things were tumbled all over the floor, and she had to step over an entire rack of snack cakes to get to the cigarettes.

She grabbed a carton and went to sit on the hood of a beat-up Audi that had come to a sudden stop at the intersection of brick and wall.  The lady inside didn’t seem to mind.  She was wearing a bib, like a little child, so her Donna Karan outfit wouldn’t get vomit on it.  It hadn’t worked.

Find a weakness.

Exploit it.

Fill every living thing with its own kind.

Estelle lit two cigarettes and put one in the mouth of the corpse behind the wheel.  She smoked the other one down as fast as she could.  The neighborhood was still, expectant.

The world is dead, she thought.  Gavin, too.  She put another cigarette in her mouth, lit it, sucked it down, and lit another.  All she’d wanted was a smoke.  Now the whole damn planet was going to get some fresh air.

It was about time.

—***—

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m going to be busy getting married and going out of town on business and pleasure for a bit, but I planned ahead.  Through the magic of WordPress post scheduling, I’m offering up eight of my earliest dark flash fiction stories, all under the tag “Dark Treats“. Think of it as goodies for your mental Halloween bag.
Or creepy, apocalyptic, B-movie show and tell.  Whatever.
Hope you enjoy them!

Putting the Business First
(c) 2005 by Lon Prater
(Originally appeared in SDO Detective.)

On the worst night of my life, I was on 23rd wearing a no witnesses charm and waiting for the next phase of my career to begin. After tonight’s job, I’d be making the big step up from worker to management. All I had to do was prove to the boss that he could trust me to put the business first, before anything else.

Rain had soaked completely through my jacket and into my bones by the time the tired old blind man with one glass eye and hunched shoulders came back out of the pawn shop. Empty handed. I fell into step behind him.

The noise of my footsteps was hidden under the low angry static of falling water and eastbound traffic. I pulled a slender length of wire from my pocket, taking one end in each hand.

“I knew he’d send you, Glamer,” the old man said in a gravelly three-stogies-a-day voice, stopping suddenly and turning around.

I nearly ran into him. He chuckled. The glass eye didn’t move at all; the other one wobbled around crazily in its socket.
“There ain’t enough rain and smog in the whole damn city to cover up that godawful cologne you wear,” he said.

I should have wrapped that wire around his throat right then and squeezed and squeezed until the little man stopped twitching. But I couldn’t.

Not once he knew who I was. At that point, I couldn’t pretend not to know who he was anymore, either.

“Pop, you’re in to the coven boss for fifty large! You haven’t made a payment in two months.” I shook my head. “You gotta know he’s gonna send someone to collect.”

Pop turned his face toward my voice. One eye jerked all over the place; the glass one was fixed on something over my shoulder. “I can’t pay, son. And I can’t stop playing.”

I felt the muscles in my jaw knotting up. I said, “What did you just hock? That shoulda went to the boss.”

“Your high school ring. Barely got enough for dinner out of it.”

I never finished high school. Nine Hells, I never even knew he’d bought a ring for me. I scowled. “You’re not going to eat with that money anyway, Pop. You’re going to go gamble it away.”

He nodded his head slowly. A look of hopeful revelation came across his face. “You take this money back and tell him I’m gonna start paying.”

Lightning crashed. He was holding his hand out like a beggar in reverse, offering me money. I took the wet bills from his shaking hand. “It ain’t enough, Pop. And you got no way of getting enough.”

He bowed his head. “I failed you in everything, son. And now I’m even getting in the way of how you make your living.” Tears started flowing from the wandering eye, as if the rain wasn’t doing a good enough job wetting down the dirty concrete.

“I failed you in everything,” he said again, sputtering over the words.

“That’s not true, Pop,” I said. But it was.

After a few more minutes of standing there soaking up the storm, he was crying harder. I had never seen him cry before. It twisted his face all up, made him look like a stranger. That helped me.

“I’m so sorry,” the old blind man with one glass eye whimpered, reaching his arms out as if he weren’t blind, and I wasn’t wearing a no witnesses charm, and he was just going to reach out and hug me in the rain like it was some kind of damn Broadway musical.

I didn’t answer him. I just looped that wire around his neck and took care of business, earned my promotion. Got my bonus.

***

It kept raining for days, and I stayed clear of 23rd till it finally stopped. Some other business took me that way so I stopped in at the pawn shop. After the guy showed me the ring the old blind fella had brought in, I gave him a twenty and a look at my hot stuff wand.

He wiped his sweaty forehead with a red bandanna and handed me the ring. It had a black stone that reminded me of rain on darkened concrete and a blind gambler losing his ass to a crooked house.

I slid it on and strolled back down 23rd. Somewhere up there, Pop had to be proud. I’d finally made something of myself.

—***—

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m going to be busy getting married and going out of town on business and pleasure for a bit, but I planned ahead.  Through the magic of WordPress post scheduling, I’m offering up eight of my earliest dark flash fiction stories, all under the tag “Dark Treats“. Think of it as goodies for your mental Halloween bag.
Or creepy, apocalyptic, B-movie show and tell.  Whatever.
Hope you enjoy them!

Range of Vision
(c) 2009 by Lon Prater
(Written and sold in 2005, but never actually published)

Macular Degeneration.  That’s what Doc Rogers calls it.  My wife calls it selective seeing to match my selective hearing.  I call it a year at most, till the black cloud on the bottom of my world swallows up everything leaving me totally blind.

But I’ve got little while yet.  So far the cells are only dying in the bottom of my eyes.  Or top.  Whichever.  The bottom line is, I’ve gotta point my chin at my chest to see your face.

Maybe that’s why I still walk here in these woods.  All the interesting things to see are above me:  the tangled handshakes of century-old trees, the gray wisps of cloud that herald the return of winter, the nests of gamboling squirrels and–

And none of those godawful stunted things that came pouring out of the ground at me that night–a frenzied wave of teeth, scales, and unholy intelligence.

My “back forty” only goes about three miles; then the land belongs to Old Man Semple.  No fence marks the line, no little yellow signs–but there is a way to tell when you’ve crossed over.

It’s the stink.  You can catch just a whiff of the little tanning shack he uses as you cross that invisible line.  It gets stronger the deeper in you go.  You can almost smell Death clinging to the hanging pelts, too stubborn to let go.

Just like I had been too stubborn that night, when what I saw put the first edge of blackness into my eyes.

Dora and I had been fussing, as young marrieds do more often than not, about something silly: me not picking up my dirty work clothes off the floor.  You act like you can’t even see them there on the floor. Ironic now, that she’d put it so.

I stormed out, thinking I’d carry a bottle over to Semple’s and get introduced proper.  Even when I knew I was getting lost, I kept going.  Stubborn, like my daddy before me.

The woods were quiet, only a hint of moon out.  My feet kept to the path easy enough, or so I thought.  About an hour into it, I was feeling the swig or three I’d taken, and wondering why I didn’t hear the little brook that runs by the old man’s place yet.

I remember hearing something a-scuttling behind me.  I stopped, thinking it was a coon maybe, or a fox.  An owl kicked up then and I shivered and marched on, wondering if maybe I should just turn back and drink on the porch till Dora went to bed.

If only I had.  I wouldn’t have seen that horde of somethings galloping low and frenzied through the brush at me before I blacked out.  Maybe my eyes wouldn’t be dying from the sight of them.

And maybe I wouldn’t be out here walking once more, enjoying the way the wind moves in the gray treetops and listening for the sound of them again: a skinless army of claws and teeth, bearing down on me from somewhere low.  Somewhere just below my range of vision.

—***—

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m going to be busy getting married and going out of town on business and pleasure for a bit, but I planned ahead.  Through the magic of WordPress post scheduling, I’m offering up eight of my earliest dark flash fiction stories, all under the tag “Dark Treats“. Think of it as goodies for your mental Halloween bag.
Or creepy, apocalyptic, B-movie show and tell.  Whatever.
Hope you enjoy them!

A Little Homegrown Hollywood Magic
(c) 2005 by Lon Prater
(Originally appeared in Shadow Box microstory anthology)

In the movies, the music is always right and the camera never gets sprayed. When the killer strikes, the strings squeal out and the spurting snare drums sound just like blood.

I’m not big-time, can’t afford to be.

All the music is pounding in my head and I make the Grade-B sounds with my mouth as the blade gleams and falls, gleams and falls, catching her by surprise. Tapping slick fingertips on the camera, humming along with her failing heart and zooming up close, I take care to capture every angle: the dimming light in her eyes, the last dove-soft breath, the pouty frown when she realizes. . .

There will be a sequel, but she won’t be in it.

—***—

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m going to be busy getting married and going out of town on business and pleasure for a bit, but I planned ahead.  Through the magic of WordPress post scheduling, I’m offering up eight of my earliest dark flash fiction stories, all under the tag “Dark Treats“. Think of it as goodies for your mental Halloween bag.
Or creepy, apocalyptic, B-movie show and tell.  Whatever.
Hope you enjoy them!

A Girl’s Best Friend

(c) 2005 by Lon Prater
(Originally appeared in Chick Flicks)

Through billowing smoke and the wreckage of city streets, Kyla trod on. She passed bodies too burnt to stink of anything but smoke, and glass and concrete so melted she couldn’t tell one from another. Through all of that destruction, and not a single living soul. No noise at all, save the smacking crackle of merry flames, the groans of dying buildings collapsing upon themselves.

Twelve years old and all out of hope. She pressed on through the day and night; she had to get clear of the city, like she’d promised her Mama she would.

***

Three days later, she was clear of the cinders and rubble of the bomb. Bits of hair were falling from her head; her skin was scaling and itchy. The more she scratched, the more raw and torn her flesh became. Am I the only one left? she thought, digging for edible roots and breaking another fingernail in the process.

A whir of patchy blond fur behind her–a Yellow Lab. The collar meant it had once been a pet. What was it now, other than hungry? Its hard eyes bore into her . It began to growl softly; a faraway motorcycle, like her father used to have, idling in its throat.

Was it edible? Hungry as she was, she couldn’t fathom butchering this creature. Odds were the dog had no such qualms.

She held out the dirty clump she had just pulled from the ground. The yellow Lab sniffed at it, lowering its head and tensing its legs as if about to pounce.

The root wasn’t worth being mauled. Kyla threw it as far as she could. The Lab sprang into motion, following it.

“You can have it,” she muttered, inching away. “I’ll find more.”

The dog snatched the root and shook it violently in its teeth; a shower of dirt. It stopped suddenly, seeming to sense that Kyla was retreating. It charged toward her, and Kyla would have run, had she any hope of escaping. She prayed a silent prayer that it would kill her quick, and begged God to let there be other people in Heaven.

The dog skidded to a stop in front of her. Kyla wiped a tear away; a little gasp escaped her. It had dropped the root at her feet; its tail wagging desperately.

She reached down slowly, ever so slowly, and picked the root up again. The dog tensed, its eyes glued to her hand.

For a moment, Kyla forgot her hunger, forgot her rash, forgot the places where her hair was falling out. She laughed. Kyla drew back her arm and heaved the root into the air again.

“Mind if I call you Harley?” she asked aloud. The dog gave no answer, just leapt frantically after the root. Kyla laughed again when the dog returned it to her feet.

For a time, they stayed there, tossing and fetching beneath the red-black clouds.  For a time, they were able to ignore the drops of burning rain that had already begun to fall.

—***—

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m going to be busy getting married and going out of town on business and pleasure for a bit, but I planned ahead.  Through the magic of WordPress post scheduling, I’m offering up eight of my earliest dark flash fiction stories, all under the tag “Dark Treats“. Think of it as goodies for your mental Halloween bag.
Or creepy, apocalyptic, B-movie show and tell.  Whatever.
Hope you enjoy them!

(What the Grownups) Left Behind
(c) 2009 by Lon Prater
(Written in 2004, not previously published)

Reggie scrambled into the abandoned church and ducked behind the altar, gripping his revolver.  Now that he was almost nine, it was getting easier to carry and fire with one hand. Three years ago he had been six-years-old, just like the two jerks chasing him.

He remembered how odd it had felt, the first time he held a gun in his undersized hands, and wondered how he ever managed not to shoot himself.  One of the six-year-olds on his tail had a sawed-off shotgun; the other, a cowboy style revolver like Reggie’s.  The holes in Reggie’s backpack seemed to indicate that they knew how to use their weapons.

Kids were just meaner these days, Reggie mused, reloading his pistol.  When he was growing up, it had still been a big deal to kill another kid.  Nowadays, if you hadn’t scratched at least one or two by the time you got to be Reggie’s age, you were likely to be labeled a no-guts chicken–if you lived long enough to be called anything.  Reggie’s pistol had eight notches on the handle, but only three of them were his.

Reggie crouched, listening.  Not a sound.  He finished filling all the revolver’s holes with bullets, then dashed for a closed wooden door.  Slammed up against it.  Locked.  He glanced behind him at the empty rows of pews, the broken stained glass panes.  Reggie pushed aside a red velvet curtain and ran down the hall, checking every door as he went.

He heard shouts echoing off the high rafters of the sanctuary.  They must have seen him enter the church.  One of the six-year-olds cursed and knocked something over.  Reggie rattled another doorknob, sighing relief when it opened.

He dove into a closet, hiding behind a curtain of smooth black choir gowns.  The gowns reminded him of his mother, and the way all the grownups had flown off into space when the Spaceship Rapture came for them.  All this chaos–kids killing kids and no adults left to grouch about the mess–it was the grownups’ fault for leaving.  If they had just stuck around, kept their feet on the ground, maybe things would be different now.

But the world was like this now.  A hard place, quick to teach a lethal lesson to the slow learner.  Reggie was nobody’s slow learner.

He waited, his breath ragged, heart thundering too fast to control, all of his attention on the door he had just shut behind him.  Reggie heard one soft step, then another, on the far side of the door.

What if it didn’t have to be like this?  He swallowed hard.  The doorknob was turning, ever so slowly.  Try explaining that to them.

Reggie tightened his grip on the revolver, tried not to think about that one kid’s sawed-off shotgun.  He ignored the wetness in his eyes and the sudden urge to pee.  The door was slivering open now.  He aimed, trigger finger tensing.  The barrel glinted against the blackness of the choir robes. It was shaking, but just a little.

A skinny snot-nosed face framed in brown tangles of hair crept into view.  It could have been his little brother Greg.  Reggie had been forced to cap the runt last spring after his brother ambushed him with a butcher knife.  Reggie took a deep breath, hoping the snot-nosed kid would just go away, knowing that he wouldn’t.

The boy never should have stared so long into Reggie’s hiding place, or given Reggie such a clear shot.  The kid was too green, too hungry for that first notch on his pistol butt to prove he was no chicken.  Reggie pulled the trigger, blaming the noise, the blood, the one short scream that followed, all of it, on the grownups who’d went off into space and abandoned them.

The bloody kid on the floor wasn’t moving.  He just lay there making little mewling sounds.  Reggie swiped his wet eyes with a dirty hand, waiting for the one with the shotgun to make his move.  Hoping that he’d live to notch the butt of his revolver.

The muscles tightened in his face.  He felt his mouth form a resigned line.  If he died today, that would be the grownups’ fault, too.  Reggie heard something clatter to the floor out in the hallway, followed by the sound of running feet.  So Shotgun Boy turned tail and ran like a no-guts chicken at the first sight of blood.  Kid wouldn’t last long if he kept that up.  Reggie stood, shrugged off the choir robes clinging to his back and stepped over the mess on the floor.

In the hallway, he tucked the revolver into his pants and picked up the shotgun, He took careful aim at a framed picture of a man in robes surrounded by children.  He was on his knees in the sand, holding as many of them in his open arms as would fit.  The children all wore colorful robes and sandals and cheek-straining smiles.

“Pow,” Reggie said, refusing to look back at the kid growing cold on the dressing room floor.  No grownups meant never having to clean up your mess. He crept down the hall, through the sanctuary and out beneath the ruined sky.  The adults had risen above all of this, and maybe when he was older enough the Spaceship Rapture would come for him.  But Reggie was only nine years old, and that seemed like an awful long time away.  He still had plenty of messes left to make.

—***—

Originally published at LonPrater.com. You can comment here or there.

Walked a sweaty hour today along U.S. 1, a stretch from the Marriott Dadeland to the Baptist hospital, with a few diversionary tangents to get water or shade.  Somewhere along the way, this poem popped up.  Not so much with the marketability, but I figured I’d share it here.

Una Poema for Miami

(c) 2009 by Lon Prater

You fight with the sun
for bragging rights
and burn the things
that are yours

so that they too blaze

There are no Pines on the
Pinecrest Parkway
but calling everything Palm
would be so tiresome

And the insistente horns
along hot chrome streets
sound more like your children
than the distant waves

Blaze on, Miami
and never let that jealous ball
outshine