And we’re back from a short holiday hiatus, welcome to 2024!
For October this year, my spouse and I did a little prompt-a-day challenge, using a very simple 1-word prompt method: you take a list of ~200 words or so, and every day scroll through until you find one that sparks a thought. The output can be anything from a sentence or two, to 1,000 word flash fiction; whatever inspiration delivers.
I don’t typically write suspense or horror, but I suppose maybe the pull of the season as we approached All-Hallow’s Eve got the better of me. Here are four of my favorites from the month, for your consideration.
Thanks for reading,
KTL
Mercy
It’s a sign of weakness, they said.
A true knight ends life for as simple a reason as he can, or he wants to, they said.
Well, I never held their opinions in much esteem. And since I was the one who spent fifteen years in the tournament circuit without once being forced to yield, it’s not like I had anything to prove.
Yes, I’d taken lives. I fought in seven campaigns, it was unavoidable. But I was always more proud of the lives I spared than the ones I took. Some I spared gladly; others begrudgingly—the Lord knows my temper wished otherwise on many an occasion in the heat of pitched battle. But I stayed true to the code: mercy asked is mercy given.
It was not always the easy thing to do, but what it gained me was respect, and a reputation: the Merciful Knight. It also gained me friendships spanning decades and crossing borders. Several times, these friendships paved the inroads that led to the end of war with treaties and accords, rather than decimation.
My forty-third year saw my final campaign. I had seen more than enough of war in my life, but the new king was young, and not yet of the same opinion. Though sharp of mind and strong of will, my body had grown older. When my horse stumbled in the melee press, I was not fast enough to deflect a charging lance and was thrown from the saddle. Landing poorly, I felt my sword arm shatter beneath me. The knight who had felled me dismounted and approached. Though powerfully built, he was young of face, not yet out of his teen years.
“Sir Harbough, is it?” I said, recognizing the arms etched on his cuirass. “Twenty-odd years past, on my first campaign, I once spared your father’s life. You have bested me. I find myself at your mercy.” I extended my good hand to him from the ground.
He accepted my proffered hand in his, and laughing, drove his sword through my throat.
Across the veil, the Angel of Souls stood vigil, ushering soldiers and mercenaries by the dozens onto the many-forking path behind her. I tried to see where it led as I approached, but it was dizzying to look upon. The Angel fixed me with an appraising gaze, and I felt naked before her.
There are many paths you might walk behind me, she said. Her voice was the pounding of boots over dried leaves. But, the Lord has work for you before me, if you will accept it.
Through the infinite pools of her eyes, I saw the young Sir Harbough at revelry, recounting the look of shock on my face as he ended my life. I saw his father, in the years which I had gifted him, murdering his serfs and servants with cruel glee. A dozen more she showed me, knights and noble lords who had begged of my grace, striking down the helpless with pleas of mercy upon their lips.
My sight tinged with crimson fury, I nodded to the Angel of Souls. “I accept this task.”
The elder Lord Harbough I visited first. He begged mercy of me once again. As did his son, and their wives, and their children.
They all beg for mercy, when the end is upon them. But in death, my code has changed:
Mercy given is mercy received.
So conduct yourselves well and honorably sir knights, lest you invite my specter, the Angel of Mercy, upon your doorstep.
Doubt
The shadow skulked through the twilight, flitting among the tall weeds at the border between forest and roadway on Old Elmhurst Lane. A low growl heralded the approach of a car from around the bend, and the shadow stretched out low to the ground and danced around the back of a tree as the high-beams sliced across the night.
Eventually it came upon an unlit vehicle, parked in a turn-out where a break in the trees revealed the street-lit valley miles away and below. The shadow tucked itself in, curled up under the warmth of the muffler, and listened.
He says I’m real pretty, and I do sorta like him…
Anne Marie already did it last summer, she said it was fun—what’s the worst that could happen…
I don’t know, this is kinda happening fast—Do I really like him that much? Or do I just like how he calls me pretty…
Beneath the car, the shadow roused and stretched, then scampered away into the night as the engine roared to life.
The new moon clung to the sky like a dark omen, a void where something hopeful might have been. The shadow prowled down the 1800 block of C Street, miles from downtown, skirting the round pools of light pouring down from the humming metal-halide bulbs affixed to the telephone poles overhead.
It froze, focused on a window set in the cracked stucco of a duplex—1871(B). Bluish-white light flickered on the other side of the pane, punctuated with occasional flashes of garish color. The shadow hopped up into the messy boughs of a pepper tree in the front yard and leaned out toward the window, attentive.
Night school, huh? I mean, things would be tight for a while, but I think we could make it work…
Maybe I should apply tomorrow—God knows I don’t wanna keep cleaning up other people’s messes the rest of my damn life…
Oh, who am I kidding, it’s just a fucking scam likely as not, I’d just fail anyway, and then what’d I waste all that money on anyway. I need another beer…
The shadow mewled with satisfaction. It shimmied further out along the tree branch and then dropped down onto the roof of the duplex. From the peak of the roof it looked out over the neighborhood, honing in on its next prey.
Several blocks away in a dive at the far end of a run-down strip mall, a bartender announced the Last Call. Attention perked, the shadow flowed off the roof of the duplex and disappeared into the night.
Bail
I stoop and dip my pail into the water lapping around my ankles. I straighten and dump the water overboard.
Repeat. Redo. But never repair. I’ve jammed some cork and cloth into the actual hole – a perfect circle about a thumb’s width across – but my tired sloop is coming apart at the seams regardless. Salt water weeps from the wood and keeps my ankles cool.
I stoop and dip my pail again. My knees creak indignantly as I stand and dump the water overboard.
The horizon taunts me with the jagged line of the mountains that stand guard over my village. The ever-present beacon that guides my fellow fisherman home. I pause to rest my aching back, leaning for a spell against the stump of my mast. Then I sigh and get back to work.
I scoop up my next pail of water, and as I dump it overboard, I glance down over the bulwark at the shadow. It shifts, a long, sinuous form drawing a lazy spiral through the sea beneath me. The depths emit an eerie light as a cluster of glowing eyes wink open and stare back up at me, half-lidded. The very picture of calm and patience. They slip out of view to the other side of the boat. I mop the sweat off my brow with my soaked sleeve.
I stoop and dip my pail in the water lapping around my calves.
Cage
The black phone rang at 3:42 AM on a Saturday, and I was on a plane within the hour. My destination was Berlin—well, more precisely, several miles below the Atlantic Ocean, but in Berlin was the only route that could take me there.
Since the grand opening of the first cyclo-rail fifteen years ago, between New York and Los Angeles, my company—Cyclonotech Inc—had installed almost two dozen more railways. A few hundred billion dollars is a large price tag, to be sure… but guaranteed forty-seven minute travel time between two locations, regardless of their distance, was an unbeatable selling point for most governments.
Berlin-Chicago was our prototype transoceanic line. It was far enough away from the shoreline that the bore would be below the sea bed before it reached the water. So long as this project went according to plan, we were looking at contracts to last several lifetimes, turning Berlin into the central cyclo-hub of its hemisphere. Which is why, when the black phone rang, I was on my private jet as soon as my driver could get me to the airfield, still in my boxers and a bathrobe. I could change into a suit on the plane.
The operations director, a woman named Marie, met me on the tarmac in Germany.
“How much have you heard, sir?” were the first words out of her mouth.
“Not much, the briefing was vague. You hit some form of metallic ore? Was the drill damaged?”
“Not ore, sir. Metal.”
“Metal?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Underground?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of metal?”
Marie was quiet for a moment, avoiding my eyes. Finally, she said, “We don’t know, sir. The drill rig met substantial resistance at a depth of 11 kilometers. After 30 minutes of little progress it showed excess heat readings, so the foreman shut down operations to assess the situation.”
“Smart man, that drill is worth more than some countries.”
“We backed the drill off and sent a crew into the bore to investigate.”
We climbed into the backseat of a black Land Rover, and she handed me a file folder. I opened it as the driver sped off, and inspected the photo printouts inside.
“This is a bunch of rocks with some jagged shiny bits. Tell me what the fuck I’m looking at, Marie.”
“It appears to be a lattice of some kind. Metal spars, 1.4 meters in diameter, running across the bore-path on exactly 3.7 meter intervals. The drill managed to grind its way through two spars before the foreman stopped.”
“What did you mean by ‘we don’t know’ what kind of metal it is?”
She crossed her arms as though cold, despite the vents in the Land Rover pumping out heat. “We got a sample of it back up to the surface and ran it through some tests. Mass spec confirmed it has tungsten and titanium in it, but… there were other readings as well. Readings that don’t match any known materials.”
“I’m the best goddamn businessman of the century, Marie, not a scientist. Quit being cagey and spell it the fuck out for me.”
She looked like a rat with its tail caught in a trap—that, or a cat who’s just been cornered by a pack of dogs. “We believe the material is non-terrestrial in origin. Sir.”
I leaned back, feeling suddenly heavy. “Jesus Christ…”
“That’s not all, sir.”
“You think you have something crazier than alien steel in the earth’s crust to tell me about?”
“It’s not steel, sir. And yes. It happened while you were airborne, I’ve only just received the latest updates shortly before you landed. The inspection crew that took the photos and brought up the material samples—they’re all dead, sir.”
The chill of adrenaline hitting my veins made time feel slow, and I grew acutely aware of the sound of my pounding heartbeat. “How many? What the fuck happened, Marie—do you have any idea what this could do to us if the shareholders get wind of it before we can deploy damage control?”
“A crew of 3, sir. As for how… it appears to have been some form of murder-suicide.”
“Fuck—well that’s a lucky break. We’ll instigate stricter psych-evals for new hires for a couple years, shift some money around in the existing health plan to expand our mental health coverage… We can’t be held strictly liable for an employee’s psychotic episode.”
“I… You’re not grasping the severity of the problem here, sir.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. Few people have addressed me with that kind of tone in the past decade. Fewer still have remained employed with Cyclonotech afterward.
She met my eyes, and her expression shifted like a veneer being peeled off weather-worn plywood. “I’m told the first crewman went into convulsions, and then ripped open his carotid artery with his own hands. The second began to speak in tongues, and the third allowed her to claw his abdomen open while he watched. My security team says that she then hung herself, using his intestines as rope.”
I stared at her, mouth agape in horror. “What the fuck, Marie!”
“And as for the rest of it, I believe we are very, very much to blame. Do you know what a Faraday cage is?”
“Sure, it’s one of those tech things that guy Tesla never marketed, right? You sat under his coils in one, and didn’t get zapped?”
“No, it was Michael—oh, whatever.” She shook her head. “Yes, it absorbs electrical discharge. More importantly though, it can be used to block electromagnetic signals, like radio waves. That lattice we found underground is so precise, so purpose built… If it were to extend all the way around the world, I hypothesize it would create a kind of Faraday cage around the earth’s core.”
“That makes no sense. The core isn’t at risk of being struck by lightning, and no one is trying to send it a signal. Why would aliens protect it with a Faraday cage?”
“Faraday cages work in both directions, Stanley. I don’t think whoever made this wanted to protect the core of the earth. I think they wanted to protect us, or at least themselves. I think they wanted to block a signal coming from the core. From… something, inside.”
“And we just…”
She nodded. “And we just poked a hole through the cage.”
The Literary Diversions of K.T. Lazarus 
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