Night Stand

I needed a short break from editing this week, so I joined the Master Class with Stephanie Ayers. The rules are simple. Use the given line to prompt a flash story up to 1000 words and keep it relatively PG. This week’s prompt was this line from Dean Koontz’s Velocity:

When he picked up the gun from the nightstand, he remembered not only the recoil but what it felt like to kill a man.

We didn’t have to use the line as long as we used the inspiration. As you can see, I chose to use the line. Without further adieu, I give you:

Night Stand

When he picked up the gun from the nightstand, he remembered not only the recoil but what it felt like to kill a man. Granted, the man deserved it for what he’d done, but it didn’t make that first kill any easier. Since then, though? That was a different story.

He broke the gun down and sprayed cleaner over it. Even though the black matte finish hid blood well, he knew it as there. It always was. That’s why he had to be so careful. Attention to detail had kept him alive and out of prison for years now.

Well, that and the fact he only went after those who deserved it. Murderers. Pedophiles. Violent sociopaths. The truly evil scum of the Earth. But there were so many, and he was only one man. One man attempting to control the scourge of mankind, at least in the US.

When he judged the gun clean, he reassembled it and laid it back on the nightstand. Then, to the computer to find the next demon in disguise, for that’s what they were. Demons. Literally. Denizens from hell who treat the world as a macabre playground. Most of the world didn’t understand that, though. They thought these things were human beings. Twisted and rotten, yes, but human beings. Not what they truly were.

Within minutes he’d found a new target right there in the same city. He sighed. How was he ever going to win this war? Then he shook his head. It didn’t matter. He had to hunt the creature down, stop it from harming more people.

After reading as much as he could on what the demon had done, he switched the computer off and tucked the gun into the shoulder holster under his beat-up black leather jacket. He sighed and headed out into the night once again.