A death in store

So I woke up at four this morning with the idea for a very short story in my head.  it didn't go away when I finally got up, so here it is.  Probably not very original, but fun to get down.


The spectre of Death drifted, unnoticed, down the High Street of a busy market town. It had visited a bungalow on the outskirts in the early hours of the morning but was now back to regular territory. For the third time this week the shadow wafted through the window display and staked out a corner behind a dusty display. Being present at every death since the dawn of time lent a certain familiarity to the proceedings, this was not an uncommon event after all, but somehow the shade was already feeling a sense of anticipation, even wondering if it would be here again tomorrow.


A few minutes after twelve, the assassin walked into the shop. He did not pay attention to the bright colours of the window display, the smiling assistant behind the till or the stacks of merchandise dotted on tables between the rows of shelves. Instead he headed with grim purpose towards the corner where Death lurked. He did not know that the ultimate darkness was waiting for him, merely that this was where he should find his victim. Scanning his immediate vicinity, the assassin chose his target swiftly and with the knowledge gained in his previous two visits. Secure in his nook, he reached out with one hand and silently grasped his intended. The other hand came in to play and with one swift movement the assassin cracked his victim's spine. There was the tiniest of snapping noises and for a moment the shop seemed to darken as Death, mission accomplished, fled through the ceiling and off to its next port of call.



Later, after the lunchtime rush had died down, the shop assistant took a few minutes to tidy up the inevitable mess the customers had left behind. She worked towards the back of the store, returning items to the rightful homes, rearranging the order of things on the shelves and straightening the piles on the tables. Then she saw the assassin's victim, lying splayed and broken on the last table. She regarded the limp and wilted tome for a few seconds then sighed, gathered it in her arms and turned to the shelves in the corner. From these she removed all the other copies of the book and brought them with her back to the front of the store. This one was going under the counter from now on – three damaged in one week was enough...

2012 books

2012 books, a photo by The original SimonB on Flickr.

Yup, it's that time of year again, a list of all the books I read last year. WIth a fancy word cloud from Tagxedo.  Audio books marked with *, but I've not gone so far as to distinguish between paper and Kindle books!

John Farndon - Do You Think You're Clever?
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol
Bill Bryson - At Home
Alistair Maclean - The Dark Crusader *
Rene Goscinny & Albert Uderzo - Asterix At The Olympic Games
Henning Mankell - The Dogs Of Riga
Terry Pratchett - A Hat Full Of Sky *
Ken Livingstone - You Can't Say That
Jules Verne - From The Earth To The Moon/Round The Moon
Michael Palin - Around The World In Eighty Days *
Hardeep Singh Kohli - Indian Takeaway
Arthur Ransome - Secret Water
Alan Moore & David Lloyd - V For Vendetta
Dan Brown - Angels And Demons *
Manjit Kumar - Quantum: Einstein, Bohr And The Great Debate About The Nature Of Reality
Paul Brickhill - The Great Escape *
Naomi Novik - Temeraire
Nicholas Crane - Great British Journeys
Peter Ackroyd - London Under
Mike Gayle - Mr Commitment
Terry Pratchett - Going Postal *
Brian Switek - Written In Stone
Daniel Defoe - The Fortunes And Misfortunes Of The Famous Moll Flanders
Diana Preston - Before The Fall-Out *
Mark Mason - Walk The Lines
Arthur Ransome - The Big Six
Carl Sagan - Life In The Universe *
Bill Bryson - I'm A Stranger Here Myself (Notes From A Big Country) *
Andrew Marr - The Diamond Queen
Michael Palin - Pole To Pole *
Rene Goscinny & Albert Uderzo - Asterix And The Cauldron
Joe Casey, Chris Burnham, Marc Letzmann & Rus Wooton - Officer Downe: Tough Shit
Tim Powers - On Stranger Tides
Julian May, Marion Bradley & Andre Norton - Black Trillium *
Dava Sobel - The Planets *
Simon Singh - The Code Book
Terry Pratchett - Thud! *
Henning Mankell - The White Lioness
Dave Mustaine with Joe Layden - A Life In Metal
Bill Bryson - A Walk In The Woods *
Arthur Ransome - Missee Lee
Dan Brown - The Da Vinci Code *
Simon Loxley - Type
Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot *
Jules Verne - Around The World In Eighty Days
Stephanie Pain (Ed) - Farmer Buckley's Exploding Trousers : And other odd events on the way to scientific discovery
Rene Goscinny & Albert Uderzo - Asterix In Spain
Julian May - Blood Trillium *
Arthur Ransome - The Picts And The Martyrs *
William Gibson - Spook Country
Emma Kennedy - How To Bring Up Your Parents
Naomi Novik - Throne Of Jade
Craig Taylor - Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now - As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It and Long for It
Mike Gayle - Dinner For Two
James Hamilton-Patterson - Empire Of The Clouds
Michael Palin - Full Circle *
Rene Goscinny & Albert Uderzo - Asterix And The Roman Agent
Julian May - Sky Trillium *
James May with Ian Harrison - James May's Toy Stories
Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist
Bill Bryson - Down Under *
Dan Brown - The Lost Symbol *
Nicholas Rankin - Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945
Arthur Ransome - Great Northern?
Gerry Davis - Doctor Who And The Cybermen *
Simon Pegg - Nerd Do Well
Michael Palin - Hemmingway's Chair (Abridged) *
Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith *
Sissel-Jo Gazan - The Dinosaur Feather
Ian Marchant - The Longest Crawl *
John Lloyd and John Mitchinson - 1,227 QI Facts To Blow Your Socks Off
Helen Dyrbye, Steve Harris & Thomas Golzen - The Xenophobe's Guide To The Danes
Jon Savage - England's Dreaming
James Robinson et al - Batman: Collected Legends Of The Dark Knight
Jen Campbell - Weird Things Customers Say In Bookshops

Oh, and yes I am doing it again this year. And because I am a total loon I am tracking all the music I listen to as well and doing a picture a day project on flickr...