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The One That Got Away
The night was very very dark.
As they generally are.
And the moon cast one of those glows over the alley the way it does.
Funny how the moonlight makes more sounds.
Or not funny, really. The back of his eyeballs were sweating. Or so he thought, as the shadows being thrown and the things lying formerly innocuously against the walls on the way back to the garage had his eyeballs listing wildly back and forth.
And his footfalls on the tarmac didn't help much, either.
They were probably suitably menacing, suitably heavy, if he'd been stomping down the alley intending to whack a shovel or something off a person's head at the end of the way, or at least intending to frighten them into thinking that's what he might be in the mood to do, if, you know, the situation were something different than what it was and there was someone at the end of the alley deserving of a good whack or two with a shovel.
The moon lit the parts of the wall higher up, say ten, fifteen feet above his head, incredibly well. Down where he was walking, it lit only sporadically, and harshly.
Inside, earlier, the moon looked painting-like. Sort of van Gogh-ish. Maybe Turner-esque. Actually, it could have been someone entirely different. Unfortunately, his painting references were somewhat limited, and he tended to compare everything you might call picturesque van Gogh-ish or Turner-esque. He wasn't even entirely sure he'd ever seen a painting by Turner. He might have just read some critique of something else that had called certain skies 'Turner-esque'
He wouldn't have thought of it as such a harsh light. Almost fluorescent, like he was in a changing room, trying on a new pair of jeans. Which, come to think of it, never happened, as he usually just kept buying the same size jeans year after year, and saw no need for the changing room portion of a clothes shop visit. Jeans are jeans, after all, right?
And luckily that took his mind off the odd noises coming from the corners of the alley and in particular from ahead of him somewhere in the garage. The noises which, of course, he'd now registered again, and his eyeballs were back to sweating.
And somewhere in there, in the corner of the garage, to which side he sort of had forgotten, he had a ladder to fetch to hang some stupid drapes.
The night was way the hell too dark.
disclaimer:
As not a lot of people know (so far as I've gathered), Sane Magazine's offices have moved, this time out of Chelsea and into a place called Teddington, which is, well, not quite in London any longer, but out more away from London, 'town,' as the call it here.
I have to say, it's quite a bit quieter out here, and the throngs of people recognising the head editor and myself (well, the head editor, at any rate, decto-crime-fiction doesn't quite garner the fame and acclaim you might expect).
And it's damn dark out here.
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Yer Weekly Horoscopes.