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Fiction Friday #163
This week’s Fiction Friday prompt:
In her right hand a woman holds a loaded gun, in her left, a coin that just came up ‘tails’…NOW WRITE…
Annie lowered her head in defeat. Yesterday she was the Vice President of a Fortune 500 company; three kids, several cars, a yacht, a house fit for a king (or a queen in her case), she even had her own airplane. Thirty-six hours ago she signed her name to a contract that would net Wilder Holdings close to a billion dollars by the end of the year. With that money they could expand into the Asian market, and with that expansion came an offshoot company – one which she would become President of. It was quickly becoming her dream to move to Tokyo and live the life of a financial mogul.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon when the man in the grey suit entered her office. He was a dapper man; grey suit (as I mentioned), top hat, cane, wing-tip shoes, and a handlebar mustache. Annie imagined herself as a child, swinging from that handlebar mustache and it brought a smile to her face.
But the man wasn’t there for pleasure; he had come for business. After a brief conversation, he produced a gold coin from his right pocket and a small .38 revolver from his left. Tears filled Annie’s eyes as she took them into her own.
She had one way out of her predicament: land on heads. She gently cradled the coin in her left hand and when the man in the grey suit instructed, she flipped it.
Tails
She broke down into a torrent of tears; her face turned red; her eyes stung; snot began leaking from her nose. She never could get used to this.
At the man’s behest, she picked up the revolver with her right hand and held it to her temple. She had never gone this far before; the coin had always landed on heads. But this time fate had different plans for our dear Annie. She said a prayer, closed her eyes, and pulled the trigger.
Click
The next minute drew itself out into an hour. The man gently took the .38 from her hand, removed the cartridge, and placed it on Annie’s desk. She could see in a brief instant the dent in the primer from the impact of the firing pin. He then took the coin and placed both it and the revolver back in his pockets.
“See you next year.” He grabbed his cane, turned, and left.
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Filed under: Fiction Friday
Wow, John, I really like this!
Jess Manifesto´s last [type] ..Pleasurists 86
very intense. i liked your angle on this story line.
Melissa´s last [type] ..Well always have Love is in the Heir
Oh I feel sorry for her! What a way to live life… I love the way you’ve written this, and we’re left knowing that one day her luck will run out. Nice!
Oh a dapper Devil…I like it. And I like the fact that she to pay for her success in such a way! Lovely use of the prompt.
Icy Sedgwick´s last [type] ..Chaos and Chance
I absolutely loved the dented primer. It expands so much on the what-if. I can see this story unfolding further and her having a changed outlook on life based on that instant that the round didn’t fire.
Very well done
Walt´s last [type] ..Memoirs of an Assassin 3 – Tough Choices
oh thank goodness I didn’t die…!!! sell my soul to the devil for all of that? humm let me think for a nano second… didn’t realise the offer was there…. see you next year!!
great storytelling style, tension was built and kept strung high.
I love how he keeps upping the ante, so to speak, each time.
Shelli´s last [type] ..Thugs Like Us
I admired the way you didn’t spell out the deal with the Devil nature of this. I actually think having her live for another year knowing she could flip a Tails and not be so ‘lucky’ again is delightfully stylish in the way only the Big D can be!
Jason Coggin´s last [type] ..Mary Kelly
Very ominous – “See you next year.” You certainly left me wanting to know/read more.
I like an open ending, where the reader can “fill in the blanks,” so to speak. It has, to me, a Faustian feel where she is called upon to satisfy her end of the deal. And the devil is such a snappy dresser.
Adam Byatt´s last [type] ..Heads or Tails 2
She didn’t die? Why would the man play with her head like that? And… now she knows the revolver is empty, right? So… why should she be so worried?
Very clever – I started reading the first paragraph jealous of the life she was leading – how quickly that changed. I do want to know a little more though, why? who? And what happens next year!?
NewToWritingGirl´s last [type] ..Fiction Friday – The Woman with the Gun
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