There were no photos of Albie. He had checked.
On his Grandmother’s sideboard, on the mantelpiece and on the dresser, were quite possibly hundreds of photographs; some framed, some covered in dust, some in those flimsy cardboard frames they give you at school. All his cousins were represented there- Diane waved gaily from a fairground ride, Timothy in his cub scouts uniform, Helen dressed as one of the Three Kings in her school nativity play. Albie’s pudgy form did not make an appearance anywhere, not even in the big photo frame that hung on the wall, with lots of holes for different faces. Baby photos were just as virulent; a few old and yellowed, many fresh and pink, all featuring largely identical squashy faced babies in various states of undress and usually, a layer of drool. Albie, through shrewd detective work, had matched babies and clothes and locations and surmised that no, there wasn’t even a baby photo of him present.
He asked his Grandmother about it, but she just cooed at the boy and handed him a biscuit.
“Don’t be so daft, my little lamb.”

Albie loved his Grandmother very much, which was good because he lived with her. Many years ago, his parents had arrived on her doorstep with Albie in tow, his little hands clasped in theirs. Taking hold of him firmly they had passed him over, and with a few hurried goodbyes had disappeared back down the garden path. He had vague impressions of that day; the sunlight and the cheeriness of his parent’s voices. Mainly what he remembered was his Grandmother’s long cold hand taking his, and the lunch of cold meats she had already prepared for him. Pickles, mayonnaise, bread. Soft white meat in great slices, and a big glass of lemonade to wash it all down.
Many of Albie’s memories centered around food. It was, he thought, the best thing about living with Grandmother. She was a brilliant cook. She produced huge, steaming dinners from the perpetually busy kitchen, and followed them up with enormous, heaving puddings. Roast chicken with fragrant crispy skin, fat golden roast potatoes, lamb chops and pies with suet crusts, thick rashers of pink bacon and great wobbling piles of scrambled eggs. Treacle puddings, spotted dick, chocolate cakes with inch-thick icing, home made ice-cream, bread and rice pudding, and all with the option of custard.
Of course sometimes the family would come round and they would share the feast together, particularly Grandmother’s prized Christmas Dinner, the crowning achievement of her year. But mostly she cooked for Albie, plates upon plates upon plates, as much as he could stand to eat, and more besides. He never missed one of his three meals a day, and elevenses, supper and tea were also as strictly observed.

There were downsides to living with his Grandmother too, of course. The prodigious output of food meant that he out grew his clothes continually, and a man appeared at the house often to measure him for new outfits. Mr Wax was a tall man with a stern, grey face who peered at Albie with such interest that it made the boy quite uneasy. And his apron was always dirty. When, a few days later, the clothes would arrive neatly folded in a brown parcel, Albie would always hope that they would last somewhat longer this time.
Grandmother was also very strict about bathing. Every night after his supper, she would run him a good hot bath, and fill it with what she called her “herbal soaks”.
“It’ll look after your skin, Albie my poppet. And it makes you smell like a prince”
Albie hated bath time with a passion. For one thing, Grandmother always ran them very hot, so that it took him ages to settle into the blistering water, and his skin was a livid pink by the end. And the herbs and bath salts certainly smelt pleasant when she threw them in the water, but being shut in with the aromas in a steamy room meant that Albie was quite sick of their sweet aroma.

He was home schooled, which meant that each afternoon (shortly after lunch) Grandmother would heave down from the shelves her set of Encyclopedias and they would have a brief lesson about whichever chapter Grandmother chose that day. Mostly, Grandmother would become bored and distracted from these studies very quickly, and would suggest a snack instead.
“That’s enough of these dusty old books, Albie my lambkin. How about some raspberry fool?”
On his tenth birthday, Grandmother bought a special bottle of ten year old port. The taste of it filled Albie’s head and made his nose itch. He liked it very much. They drank large glasses of it and Albie ate slice after slice of his enormous birthday cake.
“It’s been aged for ten years Albie,” said his Grandmother. “Just like you!”
From that day on they often shared a glass of port in the evening. If it sometimes made him a little wobbly on his feet and somewhat tired, Albie did not really mind, and it certainly didn’t worry his Grandmother.

In early November Mr Wax made an unexpected visit, much to Albie’s displeasure. His clothes, although certainly snug, were not due to be replaced for some time. Regardless, Mr Wax brought out his tape measure and took particular care measuring Ablie’s wide stomach and thick ankles. The old man nodded to himself with apparent satisfaction and conferred for some time with Grandmother in the kitchen. Feeling self conscious and stupid in his large white underwear, Albie distracted himself by looking again at all the family photos; Stephen by the beach with a lilo under his arm, James and Gary down by the river bank, a bucket of maggots between them, and Sue in a wide brimmed summer hat and glasses . One of the larger photos showed almost all the family together around the long dinner table, party hats askew and the wreckage of crackers strewn between plates. In the middle of the table were the remains of dinner, bones picked clean.
When Mr Wax finally left, Grandmother took one look at Albie’s sulky face and squeezed his pudgy arm.
“Just measuring you up for some special festive clothes, my sweet. This year’s Christmas dinner is going to be the best ever!”

And certainly it was. Mr Wax hung Albie for ten whole days to ensure the tastiest cuts, and Grandmother had saved up her best goose fat, resulting in the sort of crackling that was both crunchy and chewy and full of juicy fluids. A triumph, the family said. A masterpiece.
By New Year’s Eve, when all the cold meat sandwiches were finally eaten, and all the bubble and squeak finished off, Grandmother added a new photo to her collection; the Christmas feast. Glimpsed upon the serving plates and grasped in the greasy fists of uncles and aunts and cousins, Albie finally found his place on the mantelpiece.

The Chicken Machine
By Jennifer Williams

The winter that the Chicken Machine told me what was what, we were visiting my cousin Michael. He was sick again.

They lived in a tiny seaside town and we normally went to visit them in the summer when the place was thrumming with holiday makers carting windbreaks down on to the sand, eating ice-creams and rattling buckets and spades. It was one of my favourite places, or at least the fun fair was. I spent most of those summer holidays hiding out in the amusements, or the slots as we called them, where I changed up all my pocket money into bags of smelly two and ten pence pieces. There were tuppeny pushdowns, with jerky outcrops of shiny plastic relentlessly pushing coins towards a gap they never quite reached; fruit machines lit up like Christmas trees; a teddy machine with a big silver claw that didn’t quite have the grip it promised; even the first video games like Space Invaders, Out Run and Wonderboy. And there was the Chicken Machine.

But December was very much out of season, and the fun fair and the slots were cold and dead when we arrived. I descended into a three day sulk in protest.

My cousin and I were both eight that year, but he looked half my age as he lay sunken into his bedclothes. His face was like a washcloth, crumpled and pale on his pillow. The room smelt of stale sweat and vomit, but my aunt chattered away like all was well. She was filled up with it; his symptoms, which doctor said what, the specialist they would see, the state of his bowels. There was a brittle cheerfulness to her that found no response in my mother, whose face was dark and full of worry when she looked at her tiny nephew.

“Lethargy, vomiting, diarrhoea,” my Aunt continued brightly. My uncle stood in the corner without speaking, like a piece of furniture. He didn’t look at any of us. Michael coughed weakly and my Aunt picked up a bowl of potpourri from the window sill. My Aunt was very keen on potpourri and made her own, so that the entire house was dotted with different sized bowls and small fabric pouches full of dried flowers. The scent of lavender and musk was everywhere in that place, but it did a poor job of covering up the smell of sick that clawed at the back of my throat.

“Think I’d better go freshen this up,” said my Aunt, smiling.

It was considered unhealthy for me to hang around the house so I was turned out to wander the sea front. It seems strange to say that now, but even in those days, which were not so long ago, we found it much easier to take our eyes off our children.

I walked down to the fun fair. The wind coming in off the winter sea was a terrible fierce thing, slicing right through my hat and anorak, but the sky had been polished clean. It was a silver day, a gun metal grey afternoon. The slots had their shutters down and the neon sign had been turned off, but someone had left the Chicken Machine outside. That was strange.

The Chicken Machine was one of my favourite things about the amusements. It consisted of a tall glass box with a wooden frame, an idyllic countryside scene of rolling hills and farmhouses painted on the glass. Behind it sat the chicken on a mountain of plastic eggs. The chicken itself was a moth eaten, mildly alarming looking puppet thing with orange and yellow feathers and big cartoony glass eyes. When you put twenty pence into the slot it would turn around slowly whilst a jaunty tune played. The chicken would cluck a few times and then one of the two-tone plastic eggs would drop down into the hole by the slot. Simply by giving your cash, you had won a prize!

The contents of the eggs didn’t vary all that much. Usually it would be a garish plastic ring that I could pretend had magical powers for the morning, or a toy soldier. Once it had contained a tiny rubber crocodile, the greatest of all prizes and the one I still hoped might turn up again one day. Even I had to admit it was mostly rubbish though, and it drove my Dad crazy that I continued to waste my money on it, but really it was the anticipation of what the prize might be that kept me coming back for more. After all, you always need more rubber crocodiles in your life.

As I approached the Chicken Machine, I noticed that had also been left on, glowing softly like a lamp against the blue shutters. I turned and looked around. The promenade was almost deserted. A man was walking his dog down on the beach and some older kids were passing a can back and forth further up the road, but there was no one around me, and no one in the fair ground to explain why the machine hadn’t been taken inside for the winter, along with the Postman Pat ride I was too big for now.

Seizing the opportunity I shoved my hands deep into my pockets and came up with three twenty pence pieces. Normally I would ration these out for the other games in the arcade, but now the Chicken Machine was my only entertainment there was no need to do that. I savoured the brief thrill of a reckless attitude towards money and pushed the first coin in. Immediately the chicken lurched into life. Without the background cacophony of the other slot machines the music was shockingly loud, and I could hear the low screech of the chicken turning on its rusty spike. I took a couple of steps backwards, suddenly unaccountably guilty, and certain someone would now be approaching to tell me off. You don’t get to play with Chicken Machines in the winter, everyone knows that.

But no one came. The kids on the corner had disappeared, and the man with the dog didn’t even look over. The music stopped at the same moment I let out a sigh of relief, and an egg rattled into the hole, followed swiftly by two more. The sudden influx of eggs overloaded the hatch and they scattered onto the floor by my feet.

The bloody thing must be broken, I thought, that’s why they left it out, but inside I was jubilant. Three prizes for twenty pee? Even my dad couldn’t complain about that.

I scooped the eggs up off the ground and when I was back on my feet I noticed that the Chicken Machine had turned itself off again, and now stood as cold and dark as the rest of the arcade.

“Totally broken,” I muttered, and sat on the concrete path looking out to sea, ready to open my bounty. The first egg was constructed of two rounded pieces of plastic, one pale green and the other pale yellow. I turned it over in my fingers, enjoying the moment of not knowing for a little longer. It didn’t rattle like they normally did. Eventually I took it between my thumb and forefinger and pinched hard, causing the two pieces to pop apart. A gritty white powder burst forth, covering my hands and gathering in the crotch of my jeans. It was so unexpected that I think I cried out a little.

I looked at my hands, and then inside the remains of the egg. The white substance, which felt a little like sand, was gathered up into little mounds inside. There was so much of it.

In an act of breathless eight year old stupidity, I touched the end of my tongue to the rough grains and grimaced.
“Salt?”
The machine really was broken then. In my confused mind, I imagined all the toys and trinkets inside the eggs growing so old they turned to dust and salt. It seemed to me with my child’s perception of time that it was quite possible for such a thing to happen, during the endless weeks between summer and winter.

I put the egg pieces on the ground and brushed the salt off my trousers. The second egg was pale pink on one end, and pale blue on the other, and this time it did rattle in a dry, bristly sort of way. My mind was briefly filled with images of dried spiders and earwigs but I popped it open anyway.

A handful of small dried brown things fell out, accompanied by a powerful waft of flowery scent that flew right up my nose and tickled it. Peering at the pieces a little closer I saw that they were made up of leaves and petals, even a tiny slice of hard orange, and a small pine cone. Potpourri, exactly like my Aunt made. It made me feel uneasy for some reason so I threw it down onto the ground and slapped my hands together, trying to get the whispery dead feel of it off my fingers.

I paused before opening the third egg. It felt heavier than the others, more solid even. One side of the plastic casing was white and the other was orange. The man on the beach was nearly out of sight by now, the tiny bounding shape of his dog close to the surf, and above the December sea there were darker clouds coming in. A winter storm, maybe. I should get back indoors soon.

Without another thought I snapped open the last egg, and immediately shot up in disgust, scraping my jacket against the wall behind me. My hands were wet with crimson fluid, shockingly bright in the middle of that grey day. I rubbed them fiercely against the bricks making a low, sick sound in the back of my throat. The blood was warm.

The empty shells by my feet were slick and red.

When I’d got my head together a bit I ran across the road and down to the sea, and washed my hands in the salty water. Waves came in and soaked my trainers and the bottoms of my jeans but I didn’t stop until my hands were clean and numb.

Back in the house I couldn’t stop thinking about the Chicken Machine. The salt, the leaves, the blood. They sat in my mind like flares, or flags, bright and impossible to ignore. Like a warning.

In the evening my mother and I went up to Michael’s room to sit with him while he had his dinner. My Aunt had made casserole for us, but my cousin had a special restricted diet. With a calm expression she spooned thin milky gruel into his slack mouth, while Michael made the occasional weak protest. We sat in uncomfortable wooden chairs next to his bed and my mother spoke to Michael in a low voice, talking of small things; what was on the telly, his favourite football team, the weather. And as I watched his lips turn down with each spoonful of food, I saw the eggs again. The salt, the blood and the lavender. And suddenly I knew.

Without announcing my intentions, I stood up and took the bowl from my Aunt, too quickly for her to stop me. I tipped it up to my lips and took a big gulp, ignoring the fact that it was a little too hot, and immediately spat it back out again.
“Salt,” I said.
“Ben, what on earth...?” My mother was on her feet, her face tight with embarrassment.
“Taste it, Mum.”
I passed her the bowl, and finally my Aunt reacted by taking a swipe at it but my Mother already had it in her hands. She must have seen something in my face because instead of telling me off, my Mother bent her head to the bowl and took a sip. Her face screwed up in distaste and confusion.

“Martha?” she said to my Aunt, who was now standing very still, the spoon still clutched in one fist. “There’s so much salt in this Martha, so much...”
“There’s more,” I said, and with the knowledge dropped chilly and intact straight into my brain, I knelt down on the floor and reached under the bed. The washing bowl was exactly where I had known it would be. Inside it was a number of syringes, mostly clean but a few still sticky in places. There were bloody tissues in there too.

My Mother pressed her fingers to her lips, her eyes as wide and white as eggs.
“Martha, what have you been doing?”

We never went back to Michael’s house, not on holiday anyway. There were questions and hospitals and police involved, and my Aunt didn’t see Michael for a very long time. His body, they said, had been badly damaged on the inside thanks to months of salt poisoning and he might not ever be completely better. My uncle took on care of him, once it was proven he’d had nothing to do with the salt, and moved far away from the seaside down with its slots and funfair.

I went back there to look for the Chicken Machine but it was gone, a small square of cleaner pavement where it had once stood. And perhaps that was for the best. I’d lost my fascination with rubber crocodiles anyway.

Scale
By Jennifer Williams

The first thing it changes is your sense of scale. Not that I think we’ve ever considered ourselves the biggest animals on the planet by any means; I’ve been to the Natural History Museum and stood under the Blue Whale like everyone else, after all.
And of course those old movies don’t seem so funny any more. I don’t know when we last had contact with the Japanese, but I bet they aren’t laughing.

I stood by the entrance to the hangar, just daring to poke my head out, watching the creature as it moved over the distant remains of the city. It was night time, and cold, and I could see my breath in the air.
It roared, and I winced, moving back again so I was slightly hidden by the hangar doors. You’d think I would be used to it by now, but the edges never get any blunter. They brought a terrible instinct with them, these things, one that I suspect Man hasn’t felt for hundreds, maybe thousands of years; we know ourselves to be prey, so we cower.
“It’s time.”
Halloran laid a hand on my shoulder and tipped his head back towards the shadowy recesses of the hanger.
“Already?”
“You sound apprehensive, Bill. This thing is your baby, aren’t you ready to see it do its job?”
I shrugged, and looked back at the dark shape moving on the horizon, impossibly big. The moon was bright and full, and the light picked out its huge fleshy flanks and dorsal spikes. If there’s one thing you can say for them, they definitely hold your attention.
“I just… There’s an awful lot riding on this, you know? And it’s not my baby, Hal, we’ve all had a hand in this.”
I was a little angry with his inference that this was all down to me. Perhaps I was annoyed on behalf of my team, who had labored nearly non-stop for the last few months, or perhaps I just didn’t want the responsibility if it went wrong.
“I know, Bill,” he said. “Come on, you want to be there when she wakes up.”
Tearing my eyes from the immense creature roaring in the distance, I walked back into the hangar towards the thick plastic sheet that took up half the floor. Something twitched sleepily beneath the folds.

In the confused months after the first wave of behemoths appeared we launched ourselves into research of all kinds, despite the restricted circumstances. We moved what we could underground and hurriedly threw everything we had at the problem; conventional weapons did nothing, nuclear warheads only made them bigger and more powerful, extremes of heat and cold had no effect.
As an expert in the field of entomology I believe I was brought in as a last resort. We went through all the rare toxins we could think of, one after the other, all the time aware of how difficult it was to get hold of the blood samples we were using, and how many men and women had died to bring them to us. When the breakthrough came it was so unlikely that I refused to believe it for some days, and had the team run the tests over and over.

On the surface of it, the moth isn’t an obvious choice. They are a nuisance, certainly, and people have been known to have severe allergic reactions to the bristly hairs of some caterpillars, but toxic?
To the behemoths, they certainly were.
But it wasn’t enough. Getting close to the creatures to deliver a dosage of the toxin proved near disastrous, with whole military units wiped out in gouts of radioactive fire, or crushed under the enormous claws. And when we finally succeeded, the toxin failed; for whatever reason, the refined material had no effect on the monsters.
So we were given access to the project that started this whole mess.

Outside under the starlight, she twitches faintly as we move down her thick body with the adrenalin shots. We are all working as fast as we can, all too aware of the dangers of being above ground and exposed. Halloran stands by her huge, swollen head, making sure the tech department’s equipment is properly attached. He stands away and gives me the thumbs up. When the last injection is completed, I motion at them all to stand away, and our creation flickers into life, crouched on her coarsely furred legs.
She is beautiful.
Her huge dusty wings, each a hundred feet long, blur into sudden flight, knocking us all back on her feet. She lets out a high pitched squeal and as one we cover our ears, and then she is off, up into the night air like a dream, a soft cloud of silky dust drifting down after her. Not toxic to us, luckily.
“Look at her go!” calls Halloran.
I nod, and risk a smile. The banks of computers whirr into sudden life and the tech team busy themselves at the controls. Far above, our moth spins and twirls as the lights on her helmet blink on, blue and green.
“It’s all good,” says a man by the controls, Jim, I think his name is. He tweaks a dial and the squeal comes back into range for us all. It is steady, attentive, everything it is supposed to be. “She should be moving into range now.”
We watch, barely daring to breath. Above us the giant moth flutters and jumps and twirls through the air. And by the crushed buildings, eyes that are a baleful green turn in our direction.
“It’s coming our way,” said Halloran. He doesn’t sound panicked, not yet.
“Give her a moment,” I say. “The impulses will need a few seconds to kick in.”
There are two sounds then, equally dreadful. The thunder of the approaching behemoth, and a screaming over the speakers.
“What’s that? What’s happening?”
Our moth, our last chance, spins away from the roaring lizard and up and up and up… Up towards the moon. She travels so far that even at her great size she begins to look tiny, and then she hovers there, back and forth, in front of that great white light, dipping and swerving crazily. She shows no interest in us, or the monster. Only the moon.
“Oh, shit,” says Halloran.

Stud
By Jennifer Williams

“And how much of the planet does your company own, Ms Myatt? Real estate here must be very expensive.”

Ms Myatt smiled at the question, and tapping her heels to her horse’s flank led them to the edge of the path. There was an especially spectacular view from that position. Expensive maybe, but worth every penny.

“Call me Lavinia, please. The Ranch owns this entire valley, right up to the hills you can see there.” She pointed with her free hand. The sky was a deep blue at the moment, but the sunset later would be violet and pink, which always struck Lavinia as particularly apt. Escapar really was the perfect planet. “There are ten separate complexes in this valley, all entirely self contained and remote enough that we can keep the illusion going as long as you need, Kia.”

The woman on the horse next to her stiffened slightly, obviously put out by the use of her first name, but Lavinia just smiled some more. Nobody kept to formalities very long when they planned to stay at the Ranch.

“Shall we go down and take a tour?” she continued. “It’s a beautiful day for it.”

Kia nodded, and the two of them took their horses down the final part of the path and into the soft grasses of the valley itself. In the near distance was the first complex, a simple fenced paddock and a robust but quaint looking little house. It had been designed very carefully to be as quaint as possible. The scent of the grasses greeted them like a friend from a dream, bringing half forgotten memories… Lavinia almost laughed at herself. This place even got to her, sometimes.

“And the men? They are all in on it, are they?”

“Of course.” Lavinia bit down her impatience. Kia was not like most of the other clients they had. It wasn’t unusual for them to want to have a look at the place before they signed over their credits, but they didn’t normally have so many questions. After all, most of the information was there on the adverts, and besides, most of the clients didn’t want to know too much about it. That would spoil the fun. “They all have a degree of acting training and are fully committed to the experience. Oh, here we are, look, Troy is a great example of what we offer.”

A tall, bronzed man had stepped out of the wooden house, a coil of rope slung over his naked shoulders. He had glossy black hair, a hint of stubble, and was ridiculously handsome. Lavinia waved at him, and he waved cheerfully back, flashing a perfect white grin.

“Troy used to be the villain in a long running TV show, The Chambers of Our Love Collide. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? He did that for a few years and then the character got killed off, so he works for us now.”

Troy walked to the paddock, where a chestnut mare waited to be brushed down. Lavinia was particularly proud of the horses, all of which were shipped in from Earth or bred from original Earth stock. They were beautiful animals, and a large part of the attraction of the Ranch. All ridiculously expensive, of course.

“And how does it all work, exactly?”

“We have a number of different scenarios.” They rode past Troy’s paddock and passed a wide strip of grassy land. Ahead there was an almost identical complex. The wooden house was a little larger and perhaps more recently painted, but there were horses in the paddock and Lavinia could already see a tall figure toiling outside, oiled muscles glistening in the sunlight. “Our clients often go with the more traditional storylines. A single woman, lost in inhospitable country. Perhaps her travelling party suffered a hit by raiders, or there was a terrible storm. She comes across a little ranch in the middle of nowhere, and asks a man there for help.” Lavinia grinned, warming to her subject. “Of course at first he will be a terrible brute, full of stormy rages, and a dark past is absolutely a given, but eventually through persistence and a good heart she will win him over. As well as his love for her, he will reveal himself to be a deeply kind man whose passions are as big as his rages. He probably looks after stray animals too.”

Lavinia caught the look on Kia’s face, and shrugged. “What can I say? Those are the classics. Sometimes our clients want to reverse the situation and our men are the ones who turn up on their doorsteps, but it all amounts to the same thing.”

They had drawn level with the house, and again Lavinia waved to the impossibly perfect man tending the horses. He had tousled blond hair and a tiny scar on his cheekbone. The women went crazy for that scar.

“Ray there is one of our most popular models.”

“And the men…” Kia shifted uncomfortably in her saddle. She was looking at Ray with keen interest. “They sleep with the women?”

Lavinia laughed.

“I’m not altogether sure exactly how much actual sleeping gets done, but believe me, all the women are very satisfied by the end of the week. And it’s never longer than a week. We don’t want anyone getting too attached.”

“And what about the men?” Kia had still not smiled, not once. “How do they feel about all this?”

Lavinia shrugged.

“They get all their food and bills paid for, generous holiday entitlement, full medical insurance. Free accommodation, obviously. And an unending parade of women to adore them. Everyone is checked out before they come, by the way. No one’s health is ever at risk.”

“But they are just puppets,” said Kia. “Objects for these women to lust over, to control.”

The horses had taken them past Ray’s paddock and on to the next. A man younger and slimmer than the previous two stood at his front gate. His soft brown hair was artfully combed to fall over his big blue eyes, and he had cheekbones to die for.

“These men find it empowering,” said Lavinia. She was beginning to tire of the questions. “None of them has ever complained about their treatment.”

“It’s prostitution!” said Kia hotly. “Slavery!”

“That’s ridiculous.”

The slim young man at the gate watched them approach with interest. Kia called out to him as they got closer.

“You, what’s your name?”

He looked briefly to Lavinia before answering.

“Carlos, ma’am,”

“Are you happy here, Carlos? Do you like being a pet?”

Carlos blushed slightly, and looked up at them through long eyelashes.

“In truth… it is a little degrading.”

“Oh, come on now.” Lavinia held up both hands. “We treat you well Carlos, and I don’t remember anyone giving you permission to talk.”

“I’ve had enough of this.” Kia tugged at the reins, turning the horse so that she faced Lavinia, and took a petite handgun from within the folds of her loose blouse. “I’m giving this boy his freedom. He’s coming with me!”

Without hesitation she shot Lavinia square in the chest, sending the older woman flying off the back of her horse and into the dirt. A dark red stain spread across her shirt and she did not move again. Giving Carlos her hand, Kia helped him up onto the horse to sit behind her.

Lavinia waited for the hoof beats to retreat a fair way before sitting up. The safety mat had broken her fall well enough but the thump from the blood squib would probably leave a bruise. She patted gingerly at her damp chest and clambered to her feet. Kia and Carlos were a dot in the distance, riding off together into their own story. An unusual request perhaps, but Kia was an unusually rich client. A bruise and a ruined shirt wouldn’t matter much one way or another.

The sunset, thought Lavinia as she clambered back onto her horse. A few hours later and the sunset would have been a treat.