BLACK FRIDAY

Thanksgiving Night.

Meilori’s is a magnet for lost souls, predators, and victims waiting for the cobra’s strike.  

 It is a place where anything might happen and almost everything has.

I sit alone at my rune-carved table, supposedly where 12 knights and a very naïve King ruled a fantasy kingdom, 

doomed to end in betrayal and regret.

The Moonlight Sonata is playing softly overhead, 

but still I hear snatches of conversation at the tables around me.  I flick both eyes and ears to the nearest.

“A conquistador,” the woman with the trapped look to her eyes says.

“Very good, Sue,” answers the man.  

 “They arrived in the 16^th Century and took over.  That’s what I’m doing.”

Sue flinches, and he says, “Why do I frighten you, kitten?”

She takes long moments to answer, 

“When I was a little girl, I used to go with Dad to his plant.  There was this giant room with a huge machine that towered to the ceiling. I squeezed his hand tight whenever we walked into it.”

Sue shivers. 

 “It had this enormous hammer thing in it at the top and when it rammed down to the ground, you could feel the thud in your feet go up your spine.  It seemed relentless, unstoppable … unfeeling.”

She clears her throat, 

“I just knew that one day, it would smash me into nothing -- which was why I clung to Dad's hand so tightly.”

The man's hard eyes narrow, “Not too flattering, kitten.”

Sue whispers, 

“You don’t care about me as a person.  I’m pretty.  I wash up well.  But it’s my father’s company you want.”

His eyes become dead. 

“That’s exactly it.  And there isn’t a thing you can do about it.  Katrina took your father so there is no hand to hold.  Only me.”

Sue says very softly, “I hate you.”

“That’s a strong enough emotion, kitten.  It will do.”

I draw in a deep breath I don't need: Time to give myself an early Christmas present.

I get up slowly and make my way to the table.  The man looks up, irritation in his flat eyes.  

 “This is my table, Cowboy.”

I sit down, shaking my Stetsoned head.  

 “No, it’s mine.  All the tables in Meilori’s are mine.  I’m just letting you use this one.”

At the three closest tables, wide-shouldered men start to rise but freeze when three of my Grimms sit in front of them.

Usually they clean up the messes in my jazz club.  But sometimes they make them first.

The man's cold eyes are filled with scorn as he turns to Sue.  

 “You really believe that garbage about this place?  So that’s why you suggested me taking you here?”

He sneers at me and withdraws a hundred dollar bill from his wallet.  

 “Look whoever you really are, here’s a hundred bucks.  Now, strut back to your table like the hero you pretend to be.”

I nod.  “Let’s shake on that, shall we?”

I rip the glove from my right cursed hand and take his own.  

 He sucks in a wet gasp.  I stiffen as his life force, along with his memories surge into me.

Faces of his victims.

His own in the mirror as a child, crying at another of his father’s beatings.   

The burn of his first taste of whiskey.   

The thrill of victory as he forced his will, his body upon yet another woman.

Thud.

The man lays sprawled across the table, and Sue chokes out.  “Y-You are a monster like they say!”

I get up.  

 “Reckon so.  But now at least one of us has something to be thankful for tonight.”

As my Grimms approach to make their own Thanksgiving meal of a human turkey, I smile as it occurs to me that for them, Black Friday has come a day early.

Read how it all began in 1853:

RITES OF PASSAGE only $1.99

 http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XQVPYM/
{If you like this book,
 please review as Amazon has taken away most of its other reviews.}