First Blood
Short Story by Keech Ballard
Keech Ballard’s "First Blood" pulls you into the twisted world of Michael, a governess with a deadly secret. Set in a gothic manor, the story unravels a web of intrigue, ambition, and chilling duality that will keep you hooked.
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Behind every good master, there is a better mistress.
My name is Michael. I work as a governess, but my true calling is that of a serial killer. Professional, not amateur.
One must build up one’s experiences first. There is no need to rush into things. Book learning can only take you so far in the killing fields of this or any other world.
The master’s children were pieces of work. James the Younger looked like his father, only smaller. Martha the Elder looked to be her mother’s twin, only better preserved.
The Lord of the Manor was the self-styled Marquis of Bucolic. Chateau Miranda served as headquarters and home base for the Most Honorable and Sanctified Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Prejudicial Disreputation, a noble appendage of His Lordship’s vast public domains and equably entailed estates.
I was summoned into the master’s dark and forbidding presence. His private cabinet was stuffed with the rich trappings of an ancient lineage and its archaic wealth.
“How are the children’s studies coming along?” The master frowned forthwith.
“As well as might be expected.” I dreaded the worst.
“You’re fired!” The master broke out in a temporary smile and laughed like a lunatic. “Just kidding. I have a special job for you. Something right up your nightmare alley, Boche.”
The master can never remember my name. He calls me Boche because of my accent, based on a mere defect of birth. My eyes gleamed with wary but hopeful anticipation.
The master gave me a small hug, followed by a hard shove.
“As you know, Boche, the poor things’ mother is dead. She succumbed to a long, lonely, and painful illness brought on by idleness, deceit, despair, and an unfortunate genetic predisposition. I only married her for her money. The title, Duchess of Lineage, falls extinct with her untimely demise.”
“Sad, but true.” I examined the master carefully out of the corner of one properly lowered subservient eye.
“Here is what I want you to do.”
The children and I took a cottage on the River Floss. We rented a small boat the next day and took it out on the water for a quick spin. I drugged the children with small doses of morphine and tied their bodies together with long thin strands of licorice. I decorated the bodies with sinkers and pushed them overboard just below the abandoned Dovecote mill.
I had several good books to read while I waited. The search began in the wrong location the next day, and the bodies rose to the surface two days after that.
The children were still clasped in each other’s arms, only slightly consumed by curious fish. The coroner’s report declared death by misadventure, although everyone knew it was a copycat suicide timed to perfection to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Maggie and Tom original.
The master was more than pleased. He was freed to marry the young and beautiful Countess of Lowndes Square, who insisted that only her biological offspring should be eligible to inherit everything.
She’s a very nice girl.
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Keech is a speculatory writer lost in the deep woods at an undisclosed location. His pellucid prose remains undetected at Fantasy Magazine, Utopia SF, Illumen, Scifaikuest, Hungur Chronicles, Dark Moments, Bag of Bones, and Angry Gables, inter alia.
