Hunter

rose bay

PHOTO PROMPT © Rowena Curtin

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

Rose Bay was one of those posh Sydney suburbs great for tourist shopping and loaded with outdoor activities. It had golf courses, tennis courts, and of course, the beach. Walking down the narrow alley splashed with color, Demetrius Lauer was not entertained. This was the way he went. Unless Dem could surprise his prey, it would get messy.

Despite Aus’ gun laws, he’d managed to buy a Colt 1911M from a “collector” he knew. Ethan Keating was a dangerous serial killer and fugitive wanted in five countries. The bounty on him was dead or alive. Dem didn’t care which.

One again, I’m participating in Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ 17 March 2023 edition of Friday Fictioneers. The idea is to use the image above as a prompt for crafting a short story or poem no more than 100 words long. My word count is 99.

It was fairly easy to Google the location so I didn’t have to make up someplace from scratch. In spite of a bright colors and festive nature of Rose Bay, I immediately imagined something sinister going on. I had to look up gun laws for Australia since I didn’t want my bounty hunter to be unarmed. Laws are made to be broken.

I gave him a distinctive name just for the fun of it, and styled him after the old “hard-boiled detectives” in pulp fiction. If I ever develop the character, I’ll have to make him more interesting.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit inlinkz.

To read some of my published works, try Ice, an adventure on the high seas in the far future where the fire goddess has banished all ice from the Earth. But there’s a hideous mystery waiting for Captain Ki-Moon and the crew of the Star of Jindo at the bottom of the world.

The Haunting of the Ginger’s Regret: In this novelette, space freighter pilot Kam Naji has acquired a replacement ship for his lost vessel from an unusual source. It’s a fine spacecraft but it comes with something extra…a ghost.

The fantasy anthology Fantastic Schools, Volume Six features my magical school short story “The Price.” 13-year-old Christopher Greenleaf wakes up in the dorms one morning to find the school almost totally deserted. Can he, 14-year-old Tamika Bendertwill, the school’s star student, and non-magic using cook Lisa Sakamoto solve the mystery before they too disappear?

37 thoughts on “Hunter”

    • This is a bounty hunter from another country. He couldn’t bring a gun in from the outside, so he had to find a contact in Aus. Fortunately, he’s connected all around the world. BTW, thanks. I’m considering an idea for him.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

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