♠ Psycho killer ♠

Dirk – even Dirk, who had grown up with the man, who had been through one nightmare after another at his side, who knew him like a brother – even Dirk sat back and shook his head. “Jesus, Mick…”

“Gotta respect her motivation. And Ah have no excuse. So what happened to the coke. Maybe Ah deserved that. Maybe Ah deserve worse. But not her. She didn’t deserve any of it.” He pointed into the car. “Ye leave her jacket on the wall, ye hear me? Where it belongs. For old times sake. Everybody deserves to be remembered.”

Dirk climbed out of the car himself now, lighting a Camel with his disposable Bic. “Alright. Before you go up, though, there’s something I’ve got to tell you. About why Janine didn’t come to see you. I should have told you a couple of days ago…”

Mick held up a hand. He was done talking. “It can wait. Whatever it is. This can’t wait. Ah have to talk to her now. Before it’s too late.”

Dirk looked hard into his eyes over the roof of the car. “Too late? What’s that mean?”

Mick shrugged, raised his eyes to the sky. A lonely cloud drifted slowly across the lower half of the brutal African sun. “It’s getting dark, brother. Ah can feel the Valkyries coming for me. Not long to go, now.”

Dirk slammed the car door. “For fuck’s sake…”

Mick stopped him with a glance. “Enough. Ah know what Ah’m doing. Just make sure ye’re here when Ah get back, or only one of us is going back to the club.”

Dirk stood quietly and watched him walk around the corner before he realized that Mick’s threat didn’t even make sense.

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Read Dancing in Valhalla in weekly installments on FaceBook or WordPress. Receive notifications via Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, GoodReads, or Amazon, where you’ll find the whole book – 13 decadent twisted tales of mystery, music, magick & mayhem.

Download FREE sampler previews of all my books – and some complete short stories – from PCloud. Including the new Burning Books sampler booklet (also available on Kindle Unlimited).

No charge. No obligation. No sign-in. Read for free. Share with your friends.

⛥⛥

If you have a book you’d like to publish, contact me to claim your 15 minutes of bestselling fame at #1 on Amazon. Find all my details at BurningBookLinks

Catch the Smashwords Summer/Winter sale from 1 July to 31 July. FREE and discounted books, from Burning Books Publishing and others.

This week’s photo was taken by Shannon Stringfellow Photography.

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Cheers.

♠ Problem child ♠

“She’ll be at her day job now, bra. She’s not even here.”

“Then Ah’ll leave a note.”

“You still got keys?”

Mick winked. “Ah don’t need keys.”

“You want me to come up with you? You might not make it all the way up there, china.”

Mick laughed. “Ah’m not dead yet, brother.” He opened the door and swung his feet out onto the kerb. He reached in his jacket pocket, thought for a moment, hand still inside, then he nodded. “This is something Ah have to do on mah own.”

Dirk had caught the movement. “Look, at least leave your gun here with me. Nobody has to get hurt.”

Mick knew better than to turn his head to respond. He kept looking out the car door. “It’s a gun, Dirk. That’s what it’s for. That’s what it does.” He thought for another moment before carrying on. “Ye wouldn’t deny a thing the right to do what it was made to do, would ye? Everything on God’s green earth has a purpose. A destiny, let’s call it. A story to leave behind.”

“Yeah, but boet… after what happened to Morag… and your boy in the club… we don’t need any more bodies, make out? And with your coke gone…”

Mick got out of the car. He turned around. He needed to make eye contact for this conversation. “Ah know why she did it. Something inside me broke a long time ago. Ah know that now. She saw it then. And she accepted me the way Ah was. But, Dirk, it broke again when Ah was inside. And it snapped completely, in that alley behind mah flat, when Ah saw her again yesterday. Ah lost it, man. Ah fucking lost it.”

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Read Dancing in Valhalla in weekly installments on FaceBook or WordPress. Receive notifications via Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, GoodReads, or Amazon, where you’ll find the whole book – 13 decadent twisted tales of mystery, music, magick & mayhem.

Download FREE sampler previews of all my books – and some complete short stories – from PCloud. Including the new Burning Books sampler booklet (also available on Kindle Unlimited).

No charge. No obligation. No sign-in. Read for free. Share with your friends.

⛥⛥

If you have a book you’d like to publish, contact me to claim your 15 minutes of bestselling fame at #1 on Amazon. Find all my details at BurningBookLinks

Or catch me at the New Authors Book Fair in Rivonia on 15 August.

⛥⛥

Cheers.

♠ Holy diver ♠

Noddy was on the roof, directly over the main entrance. He’d needed some air, a chance to get his bearings. And another beer, which he balanced on the edge of the low concrete wall encircling the rooftop.

A familiar shape swooped in to land on the bottle.

“Where have you been, cheeky bird?”

Spike responded with a series of squawks, explaining exactly where he’d been and what he’d been doing for the last few hours.

Or maybe it was hunger.

“Hang on a minute. Yip, here we go.” Noddy found a tiny scrap of his breakfast bacon wrapped in a torn piece of serviette and tucked away in his jacket pocket. His companion squawked and fluttered his wings, hopping off the bottle onto Noddy’s hand to accept the offering.

“We need to leave town, little buddy. You too. This place will kill us all.”

Spike tilted his head, considering the words. Then he cocked his head in a different direction and squawked. Not in hunger. Nor excitement.

“What’s up? What’s down there?”

Spike looked Noddy in the eyes and puffed himself up into fighting mode, an inflated ball of feathers with extended wings. He squawked one last time, angry and loud, before launching himself from the rooftop and diving towards the cracked concrete pavement far below.

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Read Dancing in Valhalla in weekly installments on FaceBook or WordPress. Receive notifications via Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, GoodReads, or Amazon, where you’ll find the whole book – 13 decadent twisted tales of mystery, music, magick & mayhem.

Download FREE sampler previews of all my books – and some complete short stories – from PCloud. Including the new Burning Books sampler booklet (also available on Kindle Unlimited).

No charge. No obligation. No sign-in. Read for free. Share with your friends.

⛥⛥

If you have a book you’d like to publish, contact me to claim your 15 minutes of bestselling fame at #1 on Amazon. Find all my details at BurningBookLinks

And you can now find Burning Books in Johannesburg’s newest bookstore, Profound Books. Check them out, on Corlett Drive. Or at https://web.facebook.com/Profoundbooks

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Cheers.

♠ Albatross ♠

“Kak, boet. I spoke to the doctors. That’s why they wanted to keep you in for observation, make out? They said you’d be in pain. You’d be disorientated. Maybe even delusional. But you’re going to be fine.”

Mick smiled his blackened smile. “Ye can’t trust doctors, man. They have to tell ye that, don’t they? But it’s alright. Ah’ve made mah peace with it. Just one or two things to sort out before Ah go.”

“Shit, Mick. What happened to you in there? You haven’t been the same since you came out of prison.”

Mick sat silent for a while, slumped in the passenger seat of Dirk’s Dodge, eyes tracking a bird that hopped and fluttered between the flattened bushes of the flowerbed.

“Ah grew up during the Troubles in Belfast. Did Ah ever tell ye that?” He didn’t wait for a response. His gaze never shifted from the scene outside the car. “Death was a daily companion. Death doesn’t scare me. Death is easy. It’s living that’s hard.

“Ah resigned mahself to dying years ago. But things can happen to a man when his freedom’s taken away. When he’s isolated. Cut off from his mates. Locked in a cage with other wild animals.”

Dirk found his eyes drawn to watch the bird hop and fly in the street, catching bugs without a care in the world. No fear. No limits to its movements.

Then it was gone, shooting straight up into the air with a graceful swoop of its wings.

“All that’s left, at the end of the day, are the stories told of a man’s life after he’s gone. How he’s remembered. If he’s remembered at all.”

This was too much for Dirk. “Look, let’s go back to the club. You need a drink. And after listening to you all morning, so do I.”

Mick sat up. “Nah, this is it. Mah legacy. Scores have to be settled before Ah can rest easy. So people have something to remember me by.”

⛥⛥

Read Dancing in Valhalla in weekly installments on FaceBook or WordPress. Receive notifications via Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, GoodReads, or Amazon, where you’ll find the whole book – 13 decadent twisted tales of mystery, music, magick & mayhem.

Download FREE sampler previews of all my books – and some complete short stories – from PCloud. Including the new Burning Books sampler booklet (also available on Kindle Unlimited).

No charge. No obligation. No sign-in. Read for free. Share with your friends.

⛥⛥

If you have a book you’d like to publish, contact me to claim your 15 minutes of bestselling fame at #1 on Amazon. Find all my details at www.amazon.com/author/burning

Look out for one of my stories in 666, tiny tales of horror from Black Hare Press. Coming soon on Amazon.

Another one of mine will be in Fenechty Publishing’s next Anthology of Short Stories.

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Cheers.