MAN SLAUGHTER
A short story of 1400 words
© David Lowe, January 1993
The end did not begin with a bang, or an announcement on the television. It began in a high school classroom one sleepy summer afternoon.
Mr Wilkinson's chalk snapped. The teacher's voice, lecturing so confidently a moment before, faltered away to a croak.
Two or three students looked up from their maths textbooks to see the man with no first name staring out the window. At nothing.
While the students watched him watching, a tear sprang from the corner of the teacher's eye. Simultaneously, his mouth creased upwards into a rare smile.
'Julia?', he whispered, in a voice full of longing and hope.
And there she stood. Dress waving gently in the breeze. Young. Beautiful. Beckoning. His sister. Crushed to a pulp in a car crash thirty years ago.
Now the class was wide awake and exchanging grins.
Wilkinson saw only the vision outside the window.
Follow me, she was saying. Follow.
Wilkinson went to the window and tried to open it. It was stuck. With all his strength, the middle-aged man wrenched at the smeared glass. Sweat gathered on his forehead.
The young audience was confused now; some giggling, some worried, looking to each other for reassurance.
Without a word, Wilkinson pushed the nearest student from his seat and lifted the old steel framed chair, slamming it against the window. After three hits the glass yielded and shattered. Wilkinson was bleeding from above the eye. Climbing through the window, he cut himself again on both hands.
Grinning, the teacher began to walk across the green oval beyond the window. The walk became an awkward run. Wilkinson became smaller and smaller as he ran into the distance, trousers flapping against his legs.
The night club was packed.
At the bar, a short and lonely young man called Micky was trying to order a drink. The barman ignored him. Micky had been waiting for twenty minutes.
She came up the stairs like a three dimensional soft drink commercial.
Glowing black skin. Bright green eyes. Red fabric clinging to a body that pulsed with life.
Micky watched her, mouth agape. Incredibly, no one else so much as turned their heads.
She was walking towards him.
Without a word, the woman stretched out one graceful arm and pointed her long, gorgeously shaped forefinger. The nail was tipped with gold. Like a butterfly landing, she touched Micky's lips.
Spinning on her heel, the girl dragged Micky, by his eyes, towards the dance floor. The old song blasting through the speakers became an anthem with a glorious beat.
Frowning couples made a gap for the little man dancing by himself like a dervish. Soon he cleared the floor with his waving arms and legs. A circle of faces stared.
Micky danced on regardless, his face a blissful blank. When the DJ stopped the track, bouncers converged on Micky from two directions, but he was already walking towards the door, earnestly talking to no one, his arm raised as if around the waist of another. Laughing happily, Micky skipped down the stairs and out into the night.
On the other side of town, an old man stirred in his sleep. Suddenly he awoke. There was someone standing beside his bed. A stranger.
The old man lunged for the nurse's bell. A strong young hand caught his arm and held it.
'It's me Davey.'
At the sound of his name the old man stopped struggling.
The stranger turned his body into the light. A brown military uniform. Infantry. A young face with sparkling eyes.
Tom Serle.
They had fought together in North Africa. El Alamein. Tom had been his best mate, until they were separated one day in an artillery storm. Tom's body had never been found.
And now he was here.
There was no time to ask questions. Tom was already walking away, past the rows of beds, towards the door.
With difficulty, David Hibble placed his bare feet on the cold linoleum floor. The other old men in the dormitory snored on.
When he reached the front door, Tom was somehow already outside. The night nurse was asleep. How to get past the security code lock?
With a gentle smile, Tom gestured towards the pocket of the old man's dressing gown. Inside, Mr Hibble found a broken mirror.
Suddenly the nurse at the desk awoke.
'Mr Hibble!' she exclaimed, 'Get back to bed.'
The tall woman strode around the desk and stood over him. The old man instantly knew what to do. Like a blade, he held the shard of mirror to the woman's throat.
'Unlock the door,' he said.
The nurse did not argue. Eyes wide with fear and surprise, she typed in the digital code. The door swung open.
At 280 kilometres per hour, Willie Dean thought he saw something. On the next lap round, he was almost sure. On the third lap, there was no doubt. It took almost half a minute for him to stop completely. Other cars roared past, while his team manager and pit crew watched, mystified, from the other side of the course. The emergency crew were stopped in their tracks by a thumbs-up sign from the young champion.
Single-mindedly, Willie walked back to the spot on the track where he had first seen the object.
There it was!
The miniature red Ferrari glinted in the sun like a jewel. His favourite childhood toy. Lost when he was eight years old. He'd cried for weeks.
Overjoyed, the race for pole position forgotten, Willie Dean bent down to pick up the car.
The little Ferrari inched away from his grasp. Again Willie reached down for it. Small wheels whirred. Wille lunged for the car. It accelerated away from him.
From a distance, onlookers watched the champion driver chasing his shadow until he was out of sight.
Soon the 'demon visions' became daily events all over the country and the world.
Board members left their meetings without explanation, chasing daydreams. Unemployed men walked away from dole queues. Presidents and bodyguards alike departed their posts. Sea captains and space shuttle crews left the safety of their cabins to pursue personal phantoms.
Even male babies and young boys were tortured in their cots by the wraiths, escaping from the watchful gaze of their mothers as soon as they were old enough, and sometimes dying in the attempt.
The men disappeared into abandoned buildings and subterranean tunnels, deserts and forests.
None were ever seen again.
And so it went on, until past became present, and the men were all gone from the land.
On a mountain high above the quiet city, sits an old woman and her granddaughter, the last human child. Around them are the domes and dishes of telecopes old and new, glowing in the pink early evening light.
'But what happened to Dad and the other boys, Gran? They can't have just disappeared.'
The old woman sighs and stirs the dust with her feet. 'I suppose it is time you were told.'
The little girl listens expectantly.
'As you know, your father was the last man living in this city. I don't know about other places. The old ways of communicating were not working so well by then.'
'That summer had been cold, colder than usual. The sky seemed darker than it had once been, even in the middle of the day. Your father was worried. Worried about when his time would come. We hoped perhaps he was immune from the visions. He didn't believe it himself, but he refused to let us lock him in.'
'The telescopes had not been used since my husband - your grandfather - had gone. One morning your father was cleaning up around the place. I hadn't seen him all morning. I was worried. I finally found him in there.' The old lady points to the largest of the old optical telecopes.
'He said there was something I should have a look at. I looked through the telescope...'
The little girl waits patiently before asking, 'And what did you see Grandma?'
'There were dark clouds, like insects, orbiting the earth, darkening the sun,' says the old woman. 'The insects were dead men.'
The old woman turns away from the child.
In a whisper she finishes the story. 'When I looked up, your father, my son, was gone.'© David Lowe, January 1993