Thanks Be Given
A Competitive Flash Fiction for the Not Quite Write Podcast
Harper shouldered through the Hyde Park crowd, feigning disinterest as she glanced backward. The bloke in the brown coat was still following, a silver badge featuring a bird with outstretched wings pinned high on his chest.
Her lungs constricted. Goddess, help me!
Ahead, a young girl stood fiddling beside an alley. Harper broke for it, leaping over the instrument’s case like a long jumper and sprinting across the asphalt.
“Hey!” The detective shouted, “Stop!”
Right, Harper thought, dodging a rubbish bin, and sentence Mum to slow starvation.
She saw another alley on the right and cut toward it as the bloke’s footsteps pounded the ground in her wake, running full pelt. Too late, she realized she’d run into a blind alley and whirled, heart pounding.
The detective’s bulky frame blocked the way back.
“Hello, love,” he leered, slowing to a leisurely walk.
Harper’s frantic gaze swept the shadowed brick buildings on either side. All the shop exits were shut, and the units opposite them held only small windows, their curtains drawn. Taking a deep breath, she met the bastard’s cold, dark eyes.
“Leave me alone, you bent bugger!”
His grin deepened. “Can’t do that, love, you know that.” He opened his coat, revealing the pistol at his side. “Never killed a self-proclaimed witch before.”
“How much is the Reid Network paying you to off me?”
He shrugged. “Enough.”
“You can’t think you’ll get away with shooting me here,” Harper said, hands raised and backing away. “Not with the festival only 30 metres away. They’ll hear it.” But between the street musicians’ songs and the roar of the Hyde and Seek Festival, she had serious doubts about that.
“Don’t matter,” the detective sneered. He patted something bulging in his left coat pocket. “I attempted to arrest you, and you pulled a gun. I had no choice.”
“Arrest me?” Harper asked, incredulous. The back of her shoulders thumped against the alley’s wall. “For what?!”
“Section 40 of the SA Summary Offences Act—pretending to have powers to defraud another. Punishable by up to two years imprisonment.”
“You can’t prove that!”
“Mr. Reid will testify that you offered to plague his dear sister with nightmares about her fiancé. He paid you handsomely for this service, and yet, she is still married.”
“He came to me!” Harper knew she shouldn’t have taken the job, but Tarot and palm readings had slowed. She and Mum needed food and a place to live. “I didn’t promise she would listen!”
Smirking, the detective unholstered his pistol. “Tell it to the devil, bitch.”
Harper shrieked and clenched her trembling hands into fists.
Suddenly, the detective’s shadow twisted like a snake and leaped from the ground, coiling around his throat. His eyes bulged, his mouth opening wide as he dropped the gun, choking and clawing at his neck.
It was over in seconds. Once the bastard fell, Harper stepped carefully around him, turned up the alley, and tipped the fiddler before melting back into the crowd.
Thanks be given.
Author’s Note: This was a short story written for the Not Quite Write Prize for flash fiction in January. I had to include the word “draw” in any form, the act of chasing, and it had to feature some kind of law. How do you think I did? Let me know in the comments!
Nicely written.