A Good Education by Steven Sheil
from Betrayal: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series
His arm was broken from the fall.
He could feel the jagged tear in the bone pressing into the flesh of his upper arm from the inside and the sensation made him gag. He blocked it out, climbed to his feet, began to run.
He glanced back only once before he reached the car, to see Petey at the window, arms raised in surrender to the night guard – and where the fuck had he sprung from? – his face just a pale blob. Tough luck, son he thought to himself, but I’ve told you all often enough, if everything goes to shit, it’s every man for himself, no exceptions.
When he got to the end of the mansion’s long driveway where Tara and the car were supposed to be, there were just two tyre-tracks in the gravel leading out towards the gate. Desperation started to rise within him. Where the fuck had she gone?
She’d started driving when she’d heard the shouting, and was nearly a mile away from the big house now. She was calm, unruffled, prepared for this. She’d taken to heart every lesson her father had ever taught her. Surely he’d be proud of her for that?
This story appears as part of Betrayal, a PUNK NOIR Magazine series, originally published May 2024.
Bio
Steven Sheil is a writer and filmmaker from Nottingham, UK. His work has previously been published in Black Static and The Ghastling, online at Fudoki, Horla, Horrified and Pyre, and as part of the Black Library anthologies Invocations, the Harrowed Paths and The Accursed. He is also the writer and director of the feature film Mum & Dad (2008), and the co-director of Mayhem Film Festival.
PUNK NOIR, the online literary and arts magazine that looks at the world at its most askew, casting a bloodshot eye over the written word, film, music, television and more.
Subscribe for a regular dose of hard-boiled flash fiction, straight to your inbox.