Friday seems to be rolling around quicker and quicker these days. This week it’s accompanied by an all pervading sense of having gone slightly off the boil but here’s this weeks entry, for what it’s worth:
The Last
By Neil Beynon
It was hard to tell who was dying: the emaciated creature standing looking out of the old stone mansion window or the skeletal figure lying in the bed, an old acoustic guitar stretched across him. He picked at the strings idly whilst the one who stood talked.
“I did not keep anything from you,” said the Standing One. “I promised you twenty years.”
“You were curiously quiet on the whole dying part,” croaked the Prone One his purple tongue running over his large prominent teeth.
“Small print my friend,” said the Standing One. “Now, you ready?”
“They always told me you didn’t exist, my parents, they said I had dreamt it and I believed them.”
“I’m not evil I’m agnostic, you may not have believed up here,” said the Standing One, pointing at the Prone One’s head. “But you believed here, where it counts.” The Standing One’s hand was now over the man’s chest.
“You’re a demon and you’re agnostic?” asked the man.
“I was not always as you see me now,” said the demon.
“So I’ve read,” said the man.
The Demon took out his pipes and blew an idle tune that, or so it seemed to what was left of the man on the bed, was awfully familiar.
“It’s not like I enjoy this,” said the demon. “I really like your stuff but this is business…”
This has a lot of promise. I’d like to see it fleshed out into a longer piece, maybe?
Neil… you have to finish these stories… I keep getting all excited and then it ends!
Thanks Gareth, Thanks Abbi. Yes I suspect this one will germinate into a longer piece as will The Ghost in the Glass.
I concur on seeing this one expanded into a short story – there’s the germ of something here, but the character and concept detail is too sparse. Or to put it another way, it’s a skeletal figure in need of flesh… 😉
Thanks for the feedback Shaun.