Mario tampered with Paulo’s brakes. But Paulo had sold the van.
Bogden skidded downhill, smashing into a restaurant, killing five.
The restaurateur, depressed, drifted into the abyss. He leapt from a motorway bridge, landing on the windscreen of a moving car.
Mario swerved, broke, and exploded onto the central reservation.
They called him ‘Albatross’ because he brought bad luck. “You’re a stately sea-bird,” they lied. He didn’t know any better. One weekend, traveling to a match, the team bus crashed into a ravine. Albatross was the only survivor. As they pulled him from the wreckage, nobody noticed his chilling smile.
Won it in a poker game. Told it was priceless. Outside, three heavies pounced; chased me through railway lines and alleys. Bastards caught me, so I swallowed it. Beaten ragged, they forced me onto a potty until the soiled key reappeared. It’s not knowing what I had that really hurts.
He awoke, relieved to realise it was just a dream. Blood, knife and tears in horrific clarity. He got up cautiously, still reeling from the experience. In the dream, the man had smashed through the kitchen window and escaped. But no, his wife’s lover’s head remained safely in the freezer.
Franklin strode into town like a hungry dog. His pistol finger red raw, his eyes blood-swept. He booked into the first whorehouse on Main and had himself a feast. Six beautiful women in six hours. Fat Sheriff Anderson arrived and shot Franklin stone cold dead.
Jealousy is a miserable thing.
The meteor was falling fast. The world’s population was informed yet strangely everyone took the news with a resigned calm and continued eating their breakfast, lunch or tea. There was no panic, no flinging farewells, and no tears. And then it struck me; no one believed anything they heard anymore.
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