I don’t know why they call them “crossroads”, they always seem like a mighty peaceful place to me. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, it’s safe to read on for this week’s supernatural flash fiction.
As soon as the sun disappeared over the horizon, the devil stepped out from the crossroads’ shadow, as if he’d been there all the time.
“Take a walk with me?” His slow accent reminded me of an old headmaster. We headed back to town — according to the signpost — but I didn’t recognise the way.
“People often call me when they need help with something, and I can see you’re one of those people. If I can help, I surely will,” said the Devil.
“I want to know why my wife is with you,” I said.
We walked a piece in silence, followed by shadows that stretched like elastic without the sun to give them shape, pecked at by birds without heads that hopped down from the dark branches around us.
“I don’t get asked that very often,” said the Devil. “Sometimes I’ve been asked to make sure a wife stays there, but…”
“She wasn’t always easy to live with, but she wasn’t bad.”
The Devil sucked in a lungful of air while he thought. If we had really been going back to town, we’d have been there by now, but there was nothing around us, except for the road we were on, and the trees passing us by. The same ones, again and again, like cheap background in a cartoon. The birds hurried us forwards by stabbing at our shadows with their sharp claws.
“I dare say you’d like her back,” said the Devil.
“I dare say I couldn’t afford the price, if I did.”
“So you’re just curious?”
“Human nature.” I stopped. I wouldn’t walk any further with a man — you know what I mean — only pretending to be my friend.
“Hannah Scott, née Cassidy, born ‘54? She’s there,” he said. “Didn’t respect her parents when she was little.”
So she was there, and for such a stupid reason. I sliced the Devil in the throat with a sweaty-handled knife.
He didn’t make the rules, but it wouldn’t kill him either.
He was done up like a man, so I guessed it was the kind of thing a man gets sent to Hell for.
If you’d like to listen to some horror, instead of having to do the work of, you know, moving your eyeballs, >groan<, why not try The Hotel on BBC Sounds?
Wie sagt man wenn es mit den Problemen nicht so klappt:da hat wieder mal der Teufel seine Hand im Spiel.Oder:
“zum Teufel nochmal”
Kurz und spannend.”Du nimmst den Leser mit”.
Schade-der Teufel wird in seinem Tun ausgeschaltet!Richtig oder nicht?
Man kann mitdenken-nicht nur lesen.Und-einen Heuschker mag man nicht neben sich!
Danke!