Octopus

This 212-word story  was the precursor to my current project here at the blog, Danny Casolaro: 64 Stories.

We will fillet you and throw you to the sharks. Danny saw shifty eyes, hitman profiles in the hotel lounge. Now prey; the tentacles were squeezing him. Kennedy. Mafia. CIA. October Surprise. Iran/Iraq. Black-ops. US government. Illuminati. The movies but true. The flow charts all too real. A last look at his notes. He’d hide them but where. His contacts mentioned sharks, prey, tentacles. The same words. A book deal. But they’re closing in, he had hit too close. A cup of coffee then back to the room. More than once--are you protecting yourself? The late night telephone calls. One said, two men will approach your coffin, bury you with a medal. He stopped sleeping, losing cognitive abilities. He told Olga about the hotel. A mistake perhaps—they’d get her too. The papers, the papers, he was thinking on the elevator. He’ll FedEx them to Bill, his private dick friend. Bill said, you’re hitting too close, Dan. Don’t believe a suicide, Danny said. In his room the beasts were there in the dark. Clean coffee snag. Tentacles all over him. Stripping clothes, slicing deep. Shooting pain. My files, he thought, before his head hit the tub. The shadows scatter through the seas. The octopus writes the note in frantic black ink.