A special thanks to everyone who entered last week’s writing challenge! We received a ton of wonderful and creative entries! As always, choosing a winner was incredibly difficult. However, two entries really stood out, although for slightly different reasons. So we thought that this week, we’d share both stories with you! It’s a two for one Friday!
In first place, we have a regular here at Literative, Tammy Mack! Congrats Tammy! Your story was both well-written and slightly disturbing. I don’t think I’ll be opening my door to any strangers for a while.
And in second place, we have Cleveland Gibson! Congrats Cleveland! You left us wanting to know more! What happened in that house? What did the note mean? And what was in that safe? Great cliffhangers!
Check out last week’s prompt and the winning stories below!
Prompt:
For all of his adult life, 37-year-old Blake Lasner has lived a lavish lifestyle. His knack for developing worldly technological wonders and his ability to inspire the masses to dream big has recently pushed him into the limelight. Not being one for keeping standard hours, Blake was up late working on his latest revolutionary idea when an unexpected knock at the door derailed his process. A woman of meager demeanor at the door claims to be his older sister, but Blake doesn’t have any siblings. Your challenge is to progress this scene to the point where somebody dies.
[x_line]
Lasner & Company
Tammy Mack
Blake opened the door. The woman standing before him was unfamiliar. She seemed harmless, and Blake couldn’t help but notice that the woman’s clothing was tattered and torn.
“Can I help you, Ma’am?” Blake asked, even if the woman did appear a few good years younger than his own thirty-seven.
“Don’t you recognize me, Blake?” She asked, batting her eyelashes in a sweet manner.
Something seemed off to Blake, but he knew that he had to help the lady before him, if he could.
“No, I’m sorry. What do you need? A phone? Perhaps a ride somewhere?”
The woman smiled sweetly. “I’m your sister, Blake. Marie. Don’t you remember me?”
Blake took a step back, his world spinning on an axis. He didn’t have any siblings. He had grown up an only child. “I’m an only child. I think you must be mistaken, Marie, is it?”
Marie nodded. “But I am your sister.” She huffed, and pushed passed Blake, and into his apartment. “How can you not remember me. I know that I haven’t been around a lot lately, but, for you to have forgotten me.” Marie paused, before looking at Blake. “Wait, I know what’s going on. It’s not that you’ve forgotten me, it’s that you don’t want to claim me. You’re embarrassed by me, is that it?”
“No! I don’t know who you are!”
Marie took a step forward and slapped Blake in the face. “How dare you! Lying to my face, Blake. That’s a little beneath you, don’t you think? I’m a big girl, I can take the truth you know.”
Blake raked his fingers through his hair, harshly. Frustration written on his features. “I told you the truth. I don’t know who in the hell you are. My name is Blake Lasner. I am the only child to Mark and Rebekah Lasner. I would know if I had a sister, believe me. You obviously have me confused with someone else.” Blake stared at Marie, thinking that the woman before him had to have had a psychotic break of some sort. That she had seen him on the news or something and dreamed up this entire scenario.
“That’s it.” The words were spat out through clenched teeth. Anger roared across Marie’s features, as she dug in her purse for a brief moment before retrieving a gun.
“Woah!” Blake put his hands up in the air. “There is no need for that gun.”
“Of course there is, brother. You think I’m some kind of whack job. That’s just not settling well.” She aimed the gun at Blake. “If you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine, but you have to pay.”
“Pay for what?”
“It’s bad enough that you don’t believe me. But you got the life that I ached for, Blake. You got the life that I always wanted, and that is all about to come to an end.”
Without a second thought, Marie pulled the trigger and watched as Blake fell in a heap to the floor below.
“It’s just too bad that you wouldn’t believe me.”
“This is Torrie Camden from channel 5 news. We have breaking news this morning. It turns out that Blake Lasner was murdered in his apartment late last night. The police have a suspect in connection to the murder. The suspect is Marie Sonner, and is claiming to be the victim’s sister. No news on whether her claims hold any reality, but it turns out that Marie Sonner escaped from a mental facility earlier in the week, and has been previously convicted of murdering her ex-boyfriend. More as the story develops.
[x_line]
Love this story? Check out Tammy’s new book on Amazon, The Killing Retreat. You can also connect with Tammy on Twitter at @tjmack1986.
[x_line]
Lasner & Company
By Cleveland Gibson
Neil Moffit never looked the part of a regular hitman employed by Special Branch. Instead, he walked with a limp but always listened well to ‘life and death’ orders.
“Kill Blake Lasner,” his Boss had said. “Our Positive Vetting check hints at him being Russian. His surname, and him coming from Chinnereth, worries the PM. It might be terrible if Blake turned out to be the psychopathic killer Boris Lanski. Another concern is Blake’s business contract with Buckingham Palace. Imagine his tracking devices and mobile phones all over the place.”
***
Hawk-eyed Neil spotted at once the open front door to Blake’s house in Saloman Court near Tilley Mews in London. What an invitation to be burgled!
Neil stepped into the hall to see a woman’s body lying at the bottom of the stairs. He stopped to study the scene. Dull red marks ran across her face and clothing to tell a familiar story of murder. A few inches from the body lay an automatic.
***
“That’s it. Something funny going on,” Neil informed his Boss on his mobile. “Send the team. I need help.” After the call, Neil ascended the stairs.
***
Twenty minutes two armed men from MI 2 arrived wearing dismal coats though it hadn’t rained lately. The three men started to search the rooms. What a clever man! In searching, Neil saw examples of electronic devices that had made Blake wealthy. The tiny drone pinned on a wall caught his attention.
A safe in the wall of one bedroom lay wide open. It contained money but no drawings or blueprints of Blake’s inventions.
In the large bathroom, the three men stared at a large hold-all that had a padlock around the handles. A plastic tie secured the zips. Neil watched with interest as the men opened the hold-all. Soon they showed him the grizzly contents.
“Naked and dead,” Neil updated his boss on the phone. “We need the CLEANER, and the uniformed police. “I think our 37- year- old Blake suffocated.”
***
While the three men waited for the police to arrive they continued searching through all the rooms. Their search became fruitful when one man discovered a switch that was linked to the television screen and CCTV cameras in the building.
“So how about that!” Neil exclaimed.
On the television screen, the men watched Blake run down the stairs to answer the doorbell at about two in the morning.
A woman with dark hair and dark eyes stared up at Blake from the pavement outside. Neil though she piled on too much makeup. The thick coat she wore remained buttoned up. He saw a pale yellow scarf around her neck. The woman looked tired and hungry, like a refugee.
“It’s late,” Blake said. “What do you want. I don’t think I know you.”
The woman laughed, the harshness revealing her as a heavy smoker and her speech suggested she had hit her late forties.
“Oh, my. You do know I’m your elder sister, Blake dear.”
“Look is this a joke? I’m tired and it’s late,” Blake replied abruptly.
The woman stepped closer to the front door.
“How can you forget me? I come from the same village as you. Remember Chinnereth? Remember the bakery of free rolls. Remember how we used to steal them.”
Blake let out a long sigh.
“Hey what is this all about? I’ve no sister, or brother for that matter. You need money. I can give you money for a taxi, if that’s what you want.”
The woman shook her head to rattle her imitation gold earrings.
“So kind but I haven’t finished what I wanted to say. I know you, Blake. This message might convince you.”
The woman showed Blake a sheet of paper. He read it in silence and then his face changed.
“Come in quickly, we need to talk,” Blake said. He watched a drunken man pause for a few seconds on the other side of the street.
The camera zoomed to the woman entering the house. It jumped to her drawing an automatic and aiming at Blake’s head.
“Upstairs, where the bedrooms are. Then we can talk.”
Blake climbed the stairs with the woman close behind. The camera then skipped to the couple entering the bathroom. The three men watched her order Blake to strip and get inside the sports-style holdall.
She snapped the lock into place and attended to the plastic ties. Then with a large carrier bag in her hand the woman started to collect some of Blake’s inventions. She filled the bag and went down the stairs making it to the front door. At that point the camera malfunctioned and cut out.
“Damn it!” Neil swore aloud. “There was somebody there we didn’t know about.. I mean the killer who shot the woman.”
One of the MI 2 men agreed.
“Maybe the killer also opened the safe to steal the blueprints Those sort of things might have been more valuable than the money we saw. I mean mega bucks or rubles.”
Neil pulled a face. He spoke to his Boss on his mobile. At the same time, he accepted the sheet of paper picked up off the floor.
“I think it is the end of the line,” he said. “Blake is dead, unidentified woman is dead, the safe opened, but we have some CCTV film of what happened plus some Arabic writing on a piece of paper. It says ‘AlF Mabrouk’ which means ‘1000 congratulations.’ How strange is that writing the same words all over the page? I’m feeling kind of lost.” He coughed into his fist.
***
Soon dawn broke.
Police cars swarmed outside Blake’s house, with blue lights flashing, and sirens bugled away.
The Cavalry had arrived…too late.
[x_line]
Cleveland W. Gibson is the author of digital shorts Silver Wolf and Only the Best, plus several others available through amazon.com. He was born in colonial India in an atmosphere of colour, mystery and intrigue. In the UK, he worked in the government, trained as a lifeguard and was a road race director(B.A.R.R.) for over ten years. Since taking up writing, he’s published over 200 short stories, poems, articles in more than eighty-five countries. His current project is a fantasy novel, House of the Skull Drum in Kindle format on Amazon. He has an audiobook and framed poetry on the web.
You can connect with Cleveland on Facebook or check out his website http://www.clevelandwgibson.co.uk/.
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