This post is part of StoryADay May (https://storyaday.org/) #StoryADay #StoryADayMay @storyadaymay #freeshortstory #ThursdayDoors

Crooked House

Steffie hadn’t intended to return to the little house in the woods. She seldom visited the same scene of an operation twice, but needs must.

The cleaning crew had removed all traces of her last visit, along with her last prejudicial termination. The makeshift crematorium was once again suitable for baking bread or whatnot. A slice of wood with the name COLMAN stenciled onto it hung over the door now, as if the house were owned by some jolly person proud of their residency, welcoming all comers.

And, in a sense, she was. Opponent agents had been actively hunting her again, their logic being that eliminating her outside of operational clashes would save time in the long run. It happened every so often, usually when a new crop of agents started feeling their oats enough to ignore the seasoned advice of their longer-serviced colleagues, the colleagues who had avoided that mistake and so had lived to serve longer.

So she had very quietly and very secretly returned to this spot where she had been known to be, ostensibly to take it easy. After all, she was getting along in years, and couldn’t keep up the pace of her youth.

Uh-huh.

Let’s see…. First, she would take a basket and hunt for mushrooms and fiddleheads.

It was difficult to sidestep all the tripwires and pressure traps and pits that had been set for her, but it helped that the newbies guarded their secrets jealously and so each triggered someone else’s. So there was half the problem co-eliminated, right there.

One stalker accidentally shot another, and one shot another totally on purpose to eliminate competition.

Steffie was getting bored, so she let one tracker get very close, then caught him as he came around a tree and bisected his throat. Red and green — looked like Christmas.

When she got back to the little house, she found one — there was always one — waiting for her at his ease. A derringer in her gathering basket taught him that he wasn’t as original as he had thought. Derringers don’t have a lot of power. Hard to kill instantly with a derringer at anything but close range, but eventually they do the job.

She was pleasantly surprised to find that some sneaky clever-clogs had slipped a Death Angel mushroom into her basket. She hoped he hadn’t been killed by one of the others — he would be someone to measure herself against in future.

But there are only so many heedless youngsters in any given year, and eventually she had nothing to do but go around disabling traps so the cleaners could come in and tidy the bodies out of — or under — the woods.

She said farewell to the little house in the woods, and wondered where next year would find her.

MY PROMPT FOR TODAY: This door picture.

MA