BenPaddon.co.uk

With ficlets.com seemingly suffering technical woes, I’m unable to actually post what I’ve just written. It was largely inspired by this new story that Andrew shared via Google Reader. I found it difficult not to turn it into some kind of story.

Detective Merope stepped out of the rain into the smoke-filled bar lit by neon signs promoting various brands of beer. He’d never been much of a beer man. Scotch was more his drink. It’d be the death of him one day, if this job didn’t get him first.

Merope saw his man at the bar and hovered towards an empty seat at his side. Time was of the essence.

“Buzz on the street is you know who’s behind the Mallory Road killings,” said the Detective, keeping his gaze fixed on the bar in front. People, he’d found, were intimidated by this.

“Yeah?” said the gaunt man next to him, a beer in his hand and a drunken twinkle in his eye. “I don’t know nuffin.”

“You’re testing my patience and I’m running out of time,” rasped Merope. He pulled his coat back to revel his weapon. “I really don’t wanna have to use this in front of all these nice people.”

“Yer bluffin,” the man smiled. “You gots one shot with that. Two, tops. Then yer dead.”

“You willing to bet your life on that? Because the sweat on your brow says otherwise.”

I’ll post it on Ficlets once they get their act together. I’m considering cross-posting ficlets here from now on as well.

Interesting Sidenote: This is my 100th ficlet. Or it will be, once it appears on the site. In the words of Socrates, “Woo.”

Edit - ficlets.com is now up and running again, so I’ve posted the ficlet there as well.  I’ve had to make some minor tweaks - MSWord originally counted twelve less characters than I’d actually used.