“Redemption is something I can never have, now that you truly know my name,” he says as he looks across the room at her, and tries to smile, but it comes across as more of a sneer than a smile.

“You take great delight in this, don’t you?” she says, as her lips pout proudly outward, and her eyes dig at him like daggers.

“No, no I don’t take any delight in this, I had hoped that you would’ve never figured out the truth.”

“You wanted to live a lie, to live a false life forever?”

He laughs softly, “Forever is an overused word, I was hoping for a decade or two, until you died for natural causes, and not by my hand.”

“Then you must be so disappointed that we have found our way here so early, at my point of death.”

He smiles nervously, as his bottom lip trembles and beads of sweat break out on his brow. “I-I-I, I never meant for this to be the way things ended between us, for you.”

“Liar! You just told me you wished for this charade to last until my day of death, and now you renege on that very same statement. How much of a fool do you take me for?”

“I-I-I, I don’t take you for a fool, and I said I never wanted it to be by my hand.”

“But you are still going to go through with it, aren’t you?”

“You know I have to,” he says as he swallows an uneasy mouthful of air.

“Why? Because I know who you really are, or more to the point, who you’re not.”

He smiles nervously once again and laughs. “You profess to know more than you actually do, for if you truly knew who I was you wouldn’t be so calm.”

“You’re going to kill me regardless of my reaction, so it doesn’t matter what I do, it doesn’t matter what I say, the end will be what it will be.”

“Such profoundness from someone so unpredictable, however did you manage to hide such a formidable side of yourself from me for so long?”

“You were too concerned with hiding your own lies, that you couldn’t see through everyone else’s. You see my jaded love, you aren’t the only one running from your past.”

He pouts his lips together, and places a finger against them, sucking in a breath, as he rubs his forehead with the barrel of the revolver. “What secrets have you got hidden against your bosom?”

She smiles, and leans forward, running her tongue across her teeth. “My lie is nowhere as big as yours, so you needn’t worry yourself about it. Just do what you have to do, to protect what you need to protect.” she says, her words laced with sarcasm.

“Don’t belittle me woman, you are only tempting fate!” he snarls as he lowers the revolver towards her. “The hand of god will strike you down, and you will face his final judgement!”

She laughs, “Honey, I face god’s judgement on a daily basis, this isn’t anything new to me.”

He squints as the sweat stings his eyes, and he lets out a stuttered breath of exhaustion, as his finger squeezes the trigger, only for the world to stop. He sits there in silence for many minutes, unable to move, as the world around him sits in a frozen state of motionlessness, that is everything except her.

***

Follow the below link to purchase A Twisted Halloween 2020 to read all 31 five minute short stories.

Before you lies a piece of a puzzle far grander than you could ever know or imagine. For scrawled in blood upon the pages hidden within the above tome is stories twisted thirty-one in all, soaked in the embers of my insanity. Five minutes to glimpse inside the eyes of someone new, five minutes to answer, five minutes to sin, five minutes to do almost anything. A god, a demon, a harlot, a whore. A fascist, a killer, a sinner, a door. Death and division, humanity askew. A belfry of bats, a sea of black cats, so many moments out there to see, so many things you could see with me. So take a seat beside me and call it voodoo, because now you ride with me too…

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