SHORT HORROR STORIES

THE MAN IN THE ALLEYWAY

I can't go outside anymore.
A man waits for me in the alleyway. Hewears the same trench coat,collar upturned. He smokes the same brand of cigarettes, Marlboro Red.
Have I told you that?
He stands there everyday, an unwanted guardian. A prevalent shadow that towers over this hole that has consumed me.
He is an angel of death.
I see his dark wings in the bloody glow of the strip club lights next door. He stands in the rain, the snow, the heat...
He waits for me to leave. He knows that if he kills me, everyone will know I was telling the truth. He knows that if I leave, the computer goes with me.
And so do their secrets.
But I'm prepared. I escaped one year ago from a prison in Nigeria, where to stay fed and watered I hadto fight off animals and other men for the amusement of the guards. I have been hunted. I have seen the face of my colleague blown off in the car we were traveling in.
There is a man in a back room right now. He puts on a balaclava.
He's thinking my name.
But I'm still alive, whilst so many others are dead.
All of them sacrificed, to protect this computer.
To protect the truth. I can see the man in the alleyway, hiscigarette winks at me just above his trench coat collar.
The phone rings. There is only dead breath on the other side... and I know they are listening, and I know they are planning. I can hear them with their ears pressed on all four of my walls. I can see the lens of their camera in my ceiling, a black watchful eye.
They think they have me trapped.
I have dynamite hidden under my bed, arsenic in the salt shaker, three guns hidden on my body, loaded with three bullets each. Three, exactly.
My colleagues will come for me and the computer. I just have to keep posting encrypted images of shoes on the internet. I just have to stay in this hole. I have to let them think that I'm finished ... have to let them think that I'm the tool, not the sage.
It's only a matter of time now.
Only a matter of time...
I can't go outside anymore. A man waits for me in the alleyway.
Have I told you that?