Cagliari Calling
The #31sentencecontest is run by @tristancarax. The challenge is to write a story in exactly 31 sentences, with a set word count for each sentence, inspired by the prompt. As tricky as it sounds, it was great fun, and gave me a great peek into my own process, check out round 3 for all the details on how to enter.
SourceCagliari Calling
"Mr Dalton's booked into the executive suite at the Villa Hotel, he's meeting his contact at St Benedetto Market, his penchant for casu marzu makes him careless, that’s your chance."
Fox worked from memory.
It was a necessity of the trade, entire dossiers existing only in his mind. He couldn't forget a single detail even if he wanted to, Fox, unlike his esteemed colleagues, didn't have to work for it. Information burnt into his mind - unforgettable.
Mr Dalton had checked into his usual hotel that morning. Never to return.
Fox didn’t asked who was hiring him, or why, he had an idea though; Mr Dalton had written six books naming members of government as leaders of the New World Order. He'd been laughed off at first but The Beast Behind The Curtains, his latest novel, was different.
It wasn't the usual ramblings of a conspiracy nut, peppered with UFO's and reptilian overlords; it was backed up with verifiable facts, photographs of meetings, receipts, tickets. Real evidence. It hadn't quite been enough to get the over-enthusiastic author taken seriously but he'd clearly rattled someone enough for Fox to get a call.
The client had been specific, Fox was to tail Mr Dalton back from St Benedetto Market.
The eccentric scholar's apparent wandering, expensive bottles of Chianti Classico Gran Selezione clunking in his shopping bag, was in fact a careful beeline to the corner cheese stall.
Mr Dalton slipped the vendor a well-padded white envelope. The cheese wheel, wrapped in brown wax paper, looked like any other as Mr Dalton tucked it under his arm.
Fox followed from a distance, he knew where the mark was staying, this seemed unnecessary. But the client had paid for it.
Mr Dalton was slightly intoxicated, he wobbled down the colourful narrow streets, lamp washing the walls in a warm terracotta glow. It was a slow meander back to the hotel, Fox pacing each step.
The clock started as Mr Dalton went inside.
He had to wait one hour, the instructions had been clear, Mr Dalton would be sound asleep by then, his blood alcohol levels teetering below poisoned. A single injection of vodka - coma, a second and he'd be dead.
Easy.
Fox was an expert at administering silence, he preferred the pop of a quiet pill - straight to the temple, but this made a nice change.
He lent over the man, sleeping heavily, clogged veins bulged in the pale neck as though inviting the sharp kiss of the inevitable. The needle pierced Dalton’s skin unnoticed, a gloved thumb slowly pressing down against the gentle resistance of the plunger.
Liquid death steadily decanted into his bloodstream, Dalton's shallow breathing dwindled as his skin took a blue sheen.
It was done, the dogged man who'd pursued the truth, who'd put something into print he never should, was dead, along with his book promotion and talk show appearances.
Fox made the call, confident his client would rest easy now.
Dalton's phone flashed Call Incoming.
Word count for each sentence 30, 4, 14, 22, 6, 10, 3, 31, 17, 27, 2, 24, 16, 28, 9, 20, 15, 7, 21, 13, 8, 26, 12, 1, 25, 23, 19, 18, 29, 11, 5
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A very entertaining story. Well done! You might like to change the word perchance in the second sentence to penchant.
Well spotted - thank you, problem with the reliance on spell check ;)
You're very welcome. Finding fault with other people is what I do best:0)
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This is rich. Very clever. A conspiracy within a conspiracy. Very nice verbal gymnastics. I admire your application. When I wrote my story, I found the exercise both stimulating and exhausting. In a good way.
I'm resteeming, to give this very successful exercise more exposure.
Ditto that. But I keep re-reading this to see how it could be that the client hired a man to kill...himself?
Where was a mistake made? This wasn't intended to be a suicide, right?
I've never had the brains for thrillers and whodunnits! But I do spot irony - whether or not I understand what just happened.
Clever, indeed, and well written!
Thank you @carolkean that is such a very useful comment, it's so so valuable to hear what made sense and what left people wondering.
Ahh you are better at whodunnits than you thought! Suicide by hit man was exactly what was going on. Plans himself a nice evening of too much expensive wine and illegal cheese, and checks out in a way that has the chance of catapulting his books into success. I had really really wanted to have more at the end about Fox with his immaculate memory, putting the parts together as to why Mr Dalton did this. But, thank you, I think working on this as an unconstrained story, I will put a bit more in about the evening Fox has been instructed to allow play out, the untraceable and hard to identify means of killing, along with Mr Dalton's desire to get the truth out there and to have it be believed - which I am hoping would help bring the puzzle pieces together. Although equally, I suspect titling the story Mr Dalton's Posthumous Best-seller probably would have done the job lol
Mr Dalton's Posthumous Best-seller - #loveit! - and can't believe I really did read it correctly: suicide by hired homicide. That's mind blowing. You have a gift, and I look forward to more on Mr. Dalton and the illustrious Fox!
@letalis-laetitia Thank you for that courteous and expansive response to my comment. I'll be sure to upvote and retweet your posts again.
Thank you very much, it was a very entertaining exercise, it was fun to do, but I lost a lot of what I wanted, which in itself was very insightful. I am so happy you called it successful, it ended up further away from the prompt than I'd wanted, but I really wanted to stay away from the sad side of memory, and in the end, I did really enjoy this idea.
How sad that the truth is often buried by those who keep molding skeletons in the closet.
The rest of this is creepy. It makes people want to be silent when they read these types of stories in everyday news. Few people will band together and go after the crooks.
I loved your word choices; and, I've got to say, your level of writing is far beyond my editting skills. haha
Thanks for this masterpiece. I truly enjoyed it.
I always figure some of the conspiracies must be right, like statistically a few have to be on to something, but it gets lost in the storm.
I feel like you actually understand the Dalton character really well. Aww thank you so much, this exercise forces a lot more word choice contemplation, and pfff you are far too kind, I have plenty ways to go but this is very useful :)
Yes, conspiracies are real. A conspiracy theory may or may not be real. It is tough to sift through all of the propaganda to get to the hard Truth of things.