Little Big Man (Five Sentence Fiction, July 2012)

Lillie McFerrin’s prompt for Five Sentence Fiction this week was the word ‘Composure’.

It wasn’t working out quite like he’d expected; his quarry seemed to know she was being followed, and far from scurrying ahead in fear, she strolled jauntily, occasionally glancing over her shoulder, as if she were more worried about losing him.

Tightening his grip around the knife in his jacket pocket, adrenalin pumping at the prospect of the struggle to come, he was taken aback when the woman in front suddenly spun round and waited for him, her lips compressed into a tight line like a newly-stitched operation scar.

“You haven’t changed a bit have you, Billy Palmer, still sneaking around, playing with knives, trying to scare people half to death with your creepy little habits.  Now you just put that knife away and get your pitiful little backside over here this minute.”

Billy gulped, his legs turning to jelly, guts churning just as they had done thirty years ago, as he reluctantly shambled forward to stand before the coolly imperious gaze of Miss Eleanor Mitchell from Green Valley Elementary School.