The Sale was an unplanned, episodic story I wrote for my blog over a six-month period. Following is a complete list of every episode, so you can read in order from the beginning.
Enjoy!
Steve 😊
PS You may notice a varying tone between episodes; the story changed stylistically as I wrote each instalment, but I think it worked out well, overall.
The police lights twirled, casting brightly coloured fireflies against the mansion walls. Police wandered back and forth from the house. Everywhere you looked was yellow crime scene tape, cordoning off the building and grounds into their own little worlds where masked crime scene investigators in loose overalls prodded, bagged and played. The rain had stopped and the moon gaped full and garish from behind indifferent clouds.
The main police interviews were yet to come, but there was enough initial discussion when they arrived to realise this was a major case. The media hadn’t taken long to show up, and the street was full of television crews and reporters conversing with tripoded cameras.
Aisha sat beside my gurney after I was loaded into an ambulance. The EMS had triaged me and now joined the driver in the cab.
As the doors closed Aisha smiled and gripped my grimy hand. She’d managed to wash, although her hair was still stringy and matted with dried blood. A large bruise swelled on her left temple. A hefty woollen blanket enclosed her like a shawl.
“Hey,” I said. “You clean up pretty good.”
“As do you. If you like that beaten and bloody, ‘just stitched by the Doctor’ look,” she said, a tear forming at the edge of her eye. We both sniggered, but the act stimulated every cut, bruise and wound on our bodies, forcing us to stop. The suspended IV bag rocked gently back and forth as the ambulance picked up speed on its way to the hospital.
“We made it,” I said.
Aisha sighed. “But what now?”
“Lots of police interviews and stuff, I guess. I’m willing to bet money that Silas had more salespeople buried in his backyard. Could be the story of the year.”
“I meant about us. I don’t know about you, but my head’s screwed up pretty bad.”
I grimaced with the pain of my shoulder and jaw. “I guess we’ll just have to work through it.”
Aisha glanced away, wiping the tears from her eyes. She stared back at me. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Helping me get out of there, stupid.” She chuckled. Her tears recommenced their race down her cheeks.
“You saved me more times than I did. I’m just glad it’s over.”
Aisha leaned over and hugged me. I yelped from the pain, and she righted herself. “Oops. Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I said, grinning through the pain. “No sale for either of us, tonight.”
Aisha smiled and held my hand tighter.
* * *
The ambulance driver was a young woman, no older than late teens. Her shoulder-length red hair bobbed as she threw the vehicle into another bend. The blood-stained body of the EMS next to her shifted lazily on the seat, head lolling back and forth with each turn.
“My mother was killed by a vacuum cleaner salesman,” said the driver, emphasising every word through clenched teeth.
The ambulance forged onward. The rain started again, the swollen drops a volley fired at the dark and sullen road ahead.
What is The Sale?
The Sale was an unplanned, multi-part short story I created to challenge myself as a writer. My intention was to write an episode as often as possible, generally (but not always) ending with a cliff hanger, then work out how to solve the issue and continue the story.
Only you can tell me if it’s successful, or not. I hope you enjoyed my little experiment.
Cheers
Steve 🙂
The revolver was shaking in Silas’s hand as he pressed it against my skull. Water streamed down his face, mingling with his tears. I closed my eyes tightly. I could hear a rush of breath escape Aisha’s lips.
The hammer clicked. Again. And again. Nothing.
I opened my eyes. Silas was inspecting the weapon, his teeth gritted. He swept the useless pistol at my head, but I rolled away, avoiding the blow.
Aisha screamed, raised her knife and charged the huge fellow. Silas didn’t miss this time, clocking her above the temple and sending her stumbling and stunned to the grass. I tackled the big man’s legs and he gave way. As Silas hit the ground I started crawling my way up his body, but a well-placed shoe heel hit me directly in the mouth and knocked me off. I could taste salt and iron as sweat and blood mingled with saliva. I spat and rolled across the lawn away from him.
Silas climbed to his feet, the butt of the revolver in his hand, cursing and crying. Soaked with rain, he looked like a giant silhouetted scarecrow against the whitewashed house wall.
“Junifer,” he sobbed. “My Junifer…”
I kneeled next to Aisha, who groaned and held her temple. Her face was painted in blood, her hair hanging in strings down her back and chest. I grabbed the knife from the grass beside her.
“Give it up, Silas,” I said. “You can’t stop us now.” I rose up, bent over in pain, shaking from exhaustion and blood loss. “We’re going to the police. Your little house of horrors is done.” I smiled at the melodrama of it all.
“No,” he replied with a grimace. “It’s you who’s done.” He ran at me, flailing the pistol butt as he did. We connected. We both fell. Silas grunted.
“Nicely played,” he said, wheezing. The knife hilt extended from Silas’s chest—he gasped for breath as a murky blood stain grew beneath his shirt. Then he was silent.
Aisha clawed her way over to where I had fallen. “John,” she whispered, the drumbeat of rain punctuating her words. “Is it over?”
I lay my head back as she placed hers on my chest. “It better be,” I said. “I don’t think I can get up.” The rain continued its obsessive caterwauling on our shivering bodies. Aisha and I laughed; the manic laugh of insane asylum inmates, just prior to admission.
To be continued…
Missed earlier instalments? Click here to read more.
What is The Sale?
The Sale is an unplanned, multi-part short story I created to challenge myself as a writer. My intention is to write an episode as often as possible, generally (but not always) ending with a cliff hanger, then work out how to solve the issue and continue the story.
Only you can tell me if it’s successful, or not. I hope you enjoy my little experiment.
Cheers
Steve 🙂
Junifer Vasilikov limped closer. In the moonlight we could make out a ghastly, bloody smear covering her features. Her hands were empty. “My mother was killed by a vacuum cleaner,” she said, wearily.
Aisha leapt to her feet, knife at the ready. I stood up and we faced Crazy Junifer, together. I raised my hands in a conciliatory gesture.
“Junifer,” I said. “We don’t want any trouble. We just want to leave this place.”
The mad woman’s eyes were wide, her tears mingling with dewy raindrops. Every few moments she would quirkily brush her hand across her wet, stringy hair, as if something annoyed her there.
“My mother…” she said, the words almost a whisper. Junifer lowered her head. She stood trembling.
“Junifer,” said Aisha. “Please let us go.” She lowered the knife to her side and extended a shaky hand.
Junifer sobbed. The light rain was drizzling, now, and our clothes were wet through. Aisha looked at me sadly, indicating to go around the poor woman. I stepped to the right.
Crazy Junifer leapt forward, screaming like a banshee and clutching at Aisha. The two grappled, twisting around as I watched in abject horror. Then Aisha pushed Junifer away.
A trip. A scream. A nauseating crunch. Junifer had fallen down the open hatch next to the house.
Aisha stood in shock. “I didn’t mean to—is she?”
I knelt and glanced over the rim. At the bottom of the ladder, Junifer’s body was twisted, broken and deathly still. A pool of blood grew around her as I watched.
The rain’s intensity had increased, the sound of each drop a hammer beat on the mansion’s roof and walls.
“NO!” screamed Silas. I looked up; he was standing over me. He must have come around from the front of the house. His face was a contorted cacophony of pain and rage. Watery rivulets cascaded down his forehead and cheeks. His eyes were wide with fury.
“I’ll kill you,” Silas screamed.
To be continued…
Missed earlier instalments? Click here to read more.
What is The Sale?
The Sale is an unplanned, multi-part short story I created to challenge myself as a writer. My intention is to write an episode as often as possible, generally (but not always) ending with a cliff hanger, then work out how to solve the issue and continue the story.
Only you can tell me if it’s successful, or not. I hope you enjoy my little experiment.
Cheers
Steve 🙂
The climb down was a blur of motion and fear. The air was musty, mouldy and laced with the smell of our sweat-soaked and angst-ridden bodies. At the bottom of the ladder, we stood before the exit panel to the basement storeroom. Aisha gripped the knife tightly, ready to stab anyone who might be waiting on the other side. In the gleam of the flashlight, her bruised and bloodied face was contorted and twisted in a psychotic melange. My expression wasn’t much better. In our torn and dirty clothes, we resembled vagrants without a street corner.
The storeroom was bright. Both exit doors were open. We cautiously tiptoed to the lab entrance. On the floor were smeared blood and strands of sticky hair—the remnants of the fight with Junifer. Her body was nowhere to be found.
The lab was as it was before, less Silas and his omnipresent revolver: the steel tables with built in restraints angled at forty-five degrees; the sideboards filled with test tubes and equipment; an array of vicious looking implements obviously designed for torture; the ever-present smell of antiseptic. I searched the room while Aisha stood watch at the doorway. There were no guns, but in the rear, in a space behind an aluminium storage cupboard, a steel ladder to a trapdoor in the ceiling.
“Aisha,” I called. “I’ve found a way out.” I blinked back a tear, palpable relief in my voice.
She ran over. “Go,” she said. “I’ll be right behind you.” We hugged shakily; the pain of our wounds was sneaking back now the adrenaline was wearing off.
I climbed. At the top the hatch was locked with a simple sliding bolt. It worked it loose and pushed the trapdoor upwards.
Fresh air licked my face. A light rain dusted the grass as I stumbled over the rim into the dark night. I fell to the ground. The moon reflected off the whitewashed house wall behind me. Aisha collapsed next to me. “We’re finally out,” she said.
A twig cracked.
A dark figure stood several feet away, silhouetted against the moon, long hair flitting like Medusa’s snakes in the breeze. Each word it spoke was emphasised through clenched teeth. “My-mother-was-killed-by-a-vacuum-cleaner,” said Crazy Junifer.
To be continued…
Missed earlier instalments? Click here to read more.
What is The Sale?
The Sale is an unplanned, multi-part short story I created to challenge myself as a writer. My intention is to write an episode as often as possible, generally (but not always) ending with a cliff hanger, then work out how to solve the issue and continue the story.
Only you can tell me if it’s successful, or not. I hope you enjoy my little experiment.
Cheers
Steve 🙂
At the top of the stairs, another corridor: four sets of doors, two on each side. Aisha smiled grimly. “I know this part of the house. The bedroom I hid in is the last door on the left.”
“The secret passage,” I said. “We can take the ladder down to the pantry and double back around behind Silas. We’ll be closer to the entry.”
There was a crash as the door at the bottom of the stairs slammed open. “Come back here!” screamed the aging butler/mad scientist/serial killer. A bullet impaled the frame next to me. Aisha and I rushed through the door she indicated and shut it behind us. We grabbed the dresser and dragged it to block the doorway.
The room was much as we’d left it. The panel of the secret passage stood open across from the antique four poster bed Aisha had lain under for a day.
The entry door rattled against the dresser, Silas cursing as he pushed. We ran for the passage, closing the panel behind us.
“We have to move quickly,” said Aisha. “Or Silas will work out what we’re up to and be down in the pantry before we get there.” We moved hurriedly through the tight and musty passage, my flashlight beam reflecting off floating dust motes and stringy, hanging cobwebs.
“Then let’s go down to the basement. He won’t be expecting that,” I said.
“Are you crazy? Last time we did that, we almost got killed.”
“We might be able to find a weapon.”
“I seem to remember you saying something similar last time. And we have a knife, now.”
“I was thinking more like a gun.”
“I’m sure Silas leaves AK-47s lying around everywhere,” Aisha said, raising an eyebrow. “If we do find something, I hope your shooting isn’t as bad as your throwing.”
“Hey, it was a heavy flashlight.” I paused and grinned. “If we get a gun, maybe you should handle it.”
Aisha’s strained laugh died as we reached the top of the stainless-steel ladder. I went down first, shoulder pain searing with every movement, gripping the Maglite in my mouth.
“I don’t want to even think about how bad this could turn out,” Aisha said.
I mumbled unintelligibly and kept climbing down.
To be continued…
Missed earlier instalments? Click here to read more.
What is The Sale?
The Sale is an unplanned, multi-part short story I created to challenge myself as a writer. My intention is to write an episode as often as possible, generally (but not always) ending with a cliff hanger, then work out how to solve the issue and continue the story.
Only you can tell me if it’s successful, or not. I hope you enjoy my little experiment.
Cheers
Steve 🙂
Aisha and I swore simultaneously.
Silas gestured to his slavering doberman, straining at the chain he held. “This is Goering,” he said. “I think he would like to make your acquaintance.” He unleashed the beast and it catapulted down the hallway, chain flailing behind.
Aisha and I ran back through the doorway we had exited. Further down the corridor on the left was the entrance to the maze below, at the far end was the other door. We bolted as the dog barked and bounded after us.
Goering caught me about five feet from the end door, its weight knocking me to the floor, teeth finding their mark in my wounded shoulder. I screamed as it tore into the already-bloodied flesh. Aisha stabbed the dog, which yelped and turned to attack her. I have to hand it to the girl, she’s a psychotic when she wants to be. The knife was a flurry of movement as blood and canine yelps filled the air. The doberman dropped at the same time I rose to grab the doorknob.
A bullet cracked the wall next to my head. “How dare you kill my dog!” screamed Silas, running toward us, revolver raised.
Aisha and I leapt through the entry, slamming the wooden door behind us and ducking as bullet shots punctured the panels. I clicked the lock on the doorknob, and we glanced at the stairwell behind us. Stairs headed up to the second story we’d visited earlier in the night. Silas was swearing and straining at the handle on the other side of the door. It wouldn’t be long before he produced a key or shot the lock.
Aisha and I took the stairs, blood from my shoulder trailing behind me as we ran.
To be continued…
Missed earlier instalments? Click here to read more.
What is The Sale?
The Sale is an unplanned, multi-part short story I created to challenge myself as a writer. My intention is to write an episode as often as possible, generally (but not always) ending with a cliff hanger, then work out how to solve the issue and continue the story.
Only you can tell me if it’s successful, or not. I hope you enjoy my little experiment.
Cheers
Steve 🙂
My fingertips were worn from scraping constantly against the inner wall, tracing our way through the maze. The electric bulbs in the stone and earth ceiling flickered dimly and our shadows gently danced on the surrounding walls as we stumbled on.
My right shoulder lanced with pain every time I jarred it. Every thirty minutes or so Aisha would rip another piece of cloth from the bottom of her tie-dye dress, remove the old dressing and apply a new one to the wound where the bullet had passed through. Her face and arms were a mess of bruises and scratches from the fist fight with Crazy Junifer. Aisha held the knife she had taken from Junifer at the ready and I gripped my Maglite like a club; we were both a little twitchy. Occasionally, we would glance at how dirty, dishevelled and drained we were and laugh. What else could we do?
Finally we found another door. It was steel, much like the one on the lab/torture room, but unlike that one, had a regular handle and no lock. I leaned against the wall, breathing a sigh of relief.
“Ready?” I said. Aisha smiled grimly, nodded and took position beside me.
I pulled the door open. Beyond was a set of wooden stairs leading upwards. Aisha and I hugged and laughed. We took the stairs slowly, the slats creaking with each step. At the top was a conventional timber door with a standard doorknob.
Aisha opened it quietly and glanced into the hall beyond. “We’re back in the house,” she whispered. We exited into the unfamiliar hallway, lit by small glass chandeliers in the ceiling; the door we opened was in the middle of the corridor, with single doors at either end.
“Where to, now?” I said.
Aisha shrugged, gestured eeny-meeny-miny-moe, ending on the left door. I grinned. We tiptoed to the door, and Aisha opened it slowly.
It was the main hall that led to the lounge, kitchen and front reception, where all this had started.
And standing at the far end was Silas, still dressed in his lab coat, his snub-nosed revolver held at waist height. By his side, restrained with a chain Silas held firmly, was a huge, growling and salivating Doberman.
“We really have to stop meeting like this,” Silas said.
To be continued…
Missed earlier instalments? Click here to read more.
So, What Is The Sale?
The Sale is an unplanned, multi-part short story I created to challenge myself as a writer. My intention is to write an episode as often as possible, generally (but not always) ending with a cliffhanger, then work out how to solve the issue and continue the story.
Only you can tell me if it’s successful, or not. I hope you enjoy my little experiment.
Cheers
Steve 🙂
As Aisha and I ran down the underground corridor, squinting in the dim light, we heard a voice crackling from an old wooden speaker box on the wall. It was Silas.
“You can’t escape you know.”
We darted to the passage’s end. A blank wall. Backtracked to an intersection. Ran right.
“I had the tunnels built like a maze for just this reason.”
Another dead end. Aisha swore. “How do we get out of this insane asylum?” she cried. We backtracked to an earlier junction and took a left.
Silas continued, his voice echoing through the stone halls from various speakers. “I’ve been doing this for years, you know. And I haven’t lost a victim—that is, a subject—yet.”
“I guess we’re going to have to hear his monologue after all,” I said.
Silas talked as we ran down more corridors, hoping to find a way out. “I’m not happy about what you did to poor Junifer. She suffers from mental illness, you know. You took advantage of her condition.”
Aisha and I stopped at a cross junction. The tunnels went four ways. We gathered our breath. We hugged each other. Silas’s eerie ventriloquism continued. “Her mother suffered from the same condition, you know. I tried to help Junifer as best I could. But my experimental treatment was ineffective. So, I set her up as the mistress of this house. Only the best for my daughter.”
“She’s his daughter?” said Aisha. “That explains a lot.”
“Let’s go,” I said. I placed my hand on one wall and we jogged along, my fingertips always keeping contact. At the end, instead of retracing our footsteps, I kept my fingers on the wall and followed it around until I was next to the opposite wall. “This will take a long time, but eventually we’ll get out. As long as we follow the walls, rather than the floors.”
Aisha nodded and smiled. “So, what were you, John? A boy scout?”
“Just call me the ‘labyrinth lord’.”
Aisha rolled her eyes. We moved on.
To be continued…
Missed earlier instalments? Click here to read more.
