When the shadows first appeared, the press thought it was Banksy or some other street artist having his way with the city.

How clever, people said.

Shadows of people, of objects, of animals. You saw them on buildings and sidewalks, more and more of them as the  days passed.

All the while, people and things were going missing. Man goes out for coffee and never returns.

The postal box on the corner is gone, but its shadow is still there.

Just another of those pranks, they said.

Then somebody noticed the painted shadows weren’t painted at all. They were real.

Ma said when she was a girl the place had red carpets and a polar bear that stood by the front desk. She said her daddy would take her there on her birthday. They would dine in the fancy restaurant on Lobster Newberg and feel like a couple of swells.

No more. It was a ruin now. Broken gutters, black mold. Windblown garbage caught between the spikes of the rusty iron fence that surrounded the hulking ruin straddling the bluff, its armless marble angels on parapets staring down into the city with soot-streaked faces like the ghosts of murdered prostitutes.

 

Friday Fictioneers

The thought occurs to me that Christ died of asphyxiation from having his arms above his heart, the weight of his body sagging against his diaphragm. At least I’m not upside down, but there’s goddamned small chance anyone is going to find me here before I die. Not that they would let me down even if they did come across me. The wheel is on private property, and though his name isn’t on the deed everyone knows who owns it. They’d avert their eyes, pretend not to see me. They’d figure I deserved it.

And they’d be right, of course.

 

Friday Fictioneers

Venerable Colleague,

Though I am certain you have already seen the media stories, I felt compelled to alert you of our success. As you recall, our initial attempts to spread the infection through avian fauna was a failure. Songbirds were too susceptible to its effects, invariably dying before they were able to affect contagion, and the use of raptors or crows proved equally unacceptable. Only when we utilized an invasive species of insect, Poekilocerus Pictus, did we achieve the desired viral saturation in North America. 

I suggest that we allow the death toll to climb before we commence vaccine sales.

 

This story is part of the Friday Fictioneers weekly 100-word prompt.

I told the judge that the Almighty is responsible how I turned out. He made me this way. It ain’t my fault my purpose don’t fit with society. I am what I am.

As a boy I’d spend long hours of wishing, thinking how much better suited I’d been to Indian times when killings was common and the law scarce. I growed up knowing I’d kill people, that it was something I just had to do.

You see, death is the only thing I got in common with regular folks. By sharing their death, I can know what love feels like.

 

You hear about combat vets going all to pieces during thunderstorms. Grandpa didn’t mind them. With him, it was snow. Half inch of it and he was back in Bastogne, yelling about his buddy Stuart who got run over by a German tank and pushed into the permafrost. Grandpa would run outside in his pajamas screaming STUART! STUART! and digging at the ground with his bare hands until we pulled him back inside the house. We’d watch the forecasts real careful, and if there was a hint of snow we’d strap him in a chair faced away from the windows.

 

Honestly? That witch woman near scared hell out me, what with the smoke and the beads and all that hoodoo chanting.

They say you pay you money and you takes your choice, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about running out of that room right then and there.

D’Angelo said she’d need some of my blood to seal the deal, so I expected that part, but all the rest of it fair turned my stomach.

I swear, the only reason I went through with it was the fear she’d come after me if I backed out.

I tell you, never be a time like Katrina. That was the best. All them folks cowering in the Superdome meant one thing to us: New Orleans was unoccupied. It didn’t take much to get us a boat and a chainsaw. Bang, we was in business. East Jefferson, Algiers. All the streets took at least six foot of water or more. We’d drift up to a likely house, step onto the roof and cut our way in.  Mostly we took jewelry, it being portable, but Junior worked in a pawn shop and knew a valuable trumpet when he saw it.

 

The news shows like to depict Sudden Death Army members as nutjobs. There’s nothing insane about us. All of our operations are coordinated, with specific outcomes mapped out. Every detail of an assassination is planned. My last one, in Manhattan, took four months to set up. Once I had found the right apartment to shoot from, I got to know the girl who lived there well enough that she eventually gave me my own key.

On the day of the assassination, I told her she should go out of town.

Sloppy, I know, but she didn’t take the advice anyway.

 

Friday Fictioneers

 

Hans Möller was the chairman of Ostbayerische Motorenfabriken for sixty years, steering it through the years of war and Soviet occupation, through Glasnost and Perestroika. A paragon of frugality, a man of rigid habits known to dine on cold kraut and a single sausage for breakfast and dinner, lunch always omitted. It pained him to part with a penny, and his company set the standard for efficiency.

After his death it was discovered that he had the largest private collection of European automobiles in the world, each car a peerless example of perfection on which no expense had been spared.