#FridayFlash: UCF #8: Hangman’s Passage

Swazzle braced himself against the tunnel wall and gave the escape hatch a mighty kick. The old wood splintered outwards, replaced by a sudden blast of icy night air. Swazzle and Pogmorton scrambled quickly through the opening straight into a vision of Hades itself.

A flock of swirling fairies flew this way and that firing indiscriminately into targets on the ground while their ground troops massed to assault the Pixie positions. Pixie defenders returned fire with wands, but it seemed only a matter of time before their positions would be overwhelmed.

Creeping low along a trench, Swazzle and Pogmorton came upon a Goblin detachment that had jury-rigged a pneumatic nail gun to a sturdy video camera tripod and were sending a hail of iron nails into the inky darkness. Whether they were aiming at anything in particular, or merely attempting to get through as much ammunition as possible was not clear.

Keeping to their bellies, the Pixies crawled on past the Goblins to a small revetment. Beyond it, on a small area of flat ground, stood a huge wooden contraption over which a squad of Pixies swarmed, apparently readying it for firing. As Swazzle and Pogmorton looked on, the Pixie's commander called forward the first of another small group of Pixies which had been hiding in the shadows.

Stripped to the waist and quivering with wild-eyed excitement, the first Pixie climbed into the machine's bucket-shaped harness. A technician handed him up two wickedly sharp looking silver-bladed sickles before saluting and retreating to a safe distance. The Pixie in the bucket paused for a moment, returned the salute and, as the ground crew threw a large wooden lever to discharge the catapult, soared away into the night sky, his battle-cry hanging in the air as he sailed out of sight towards another incoming wave of fairies.

‘Mad buggers,’ muttered Pogmorton as he and Swazzle pelted across the open ground to take cover in a large patch of brambles.

After being forced back twice by the heavy fighting, Swazzle and Pogmorton finally made it to a Portal and dived through amid a hail of banshee rifle fire.

‘Where are we?’ Swazzle asked as they tumbled to a halt on rain-lashed cobbles, illuminated only by the angry orange glare of a sodium street lamp.

‘It looks like...,’ began Pogmorton, pausing to glance around, ‘It is! We’re in Hangman’s Passage.’

‘Where?’

‘Hangman’s Passage. You know, just round the corner from Gallows Close.’

Recognition dawned on Swazzle’s face. ‘Well, wherever we are, we need to hide. I'm not convinced our exit went unobserved. Any ideas?’

‘Those bins,’ Pogmorton pointed, ‘over there.’

Swazzle and Pogmorton were just getting comfortable among the food waste from the Leisure Centre’s cafeteria when sounds of a disturbance from Hangman's Passage reached their ears. Peering over the side of the bin, just in time to see a column of Pixie women and children streaming through the portal, urged on by a familiar voice.

‘Salkeld!’ muttered Pogmorton, ‘I’d recognise that nasal whine anywhere.’

They were on the point of leaving their sanctuary to assist the refugees when the column began to scream and scatter. Three fairies swooped through the portal, firing into the column as they wheeled above the terrified Pixies. Salkeld took one of the fairies down before he was hit with a burst of banshee rifle fire that left his body twitching in the gutter.

Swazzle pulled out the banshee rifle and, balancing the muzzle against the edge of the bin, took aim.

‘Do you have any idea how to work that thing?’ Pogmorton hissed in his ear.

‘Shush! You’ll put me off. Anyway, how hard can it be?’ Swazzle replied, ‘I’ve seen them used often enough lately. You point the sharp end that way, look through this bit on the top and squeeze that little lever down there.’

Pogmorton did not look convinced as Swazzle took aim once more, squeezed the trigger and loosed off a round. The rifle’s report and the recoil surprised them both, but not as much as it surprised the fairy whose wing the bullet punched a neat hole through, causing the wing to break and fold backwards like a streaming silk scarf as she spiralled face first into the cobbles.

Pogmorton, his ears ringing, peeped over the lip of the bin while Swazzle attempted to extricate himself from the pile of spaghetti the recoil had flung him into.

The remaining fairy hurtled towards the bin and, as Swazzle was to remark upon later, the sound of banshee rifle bullets whacking into the side of a steel bin, did concentrate the mind somewhat.

Swazzle fired, and missed. And missed again as the fairy jinked this way and that to avoid the incoming fire.

‘I’m not having this,’ muttered Pogmorton, taking aim with his wand.

The fairy’s wings stuttered and stopped in mid flap as Pogmorton’s Charm turned the normally agile aerial creature into a glider, through who's forehead Swazzle put his next shot. The fairy hit the side of the bin with an almighty clang and the night felt silent once more, apart from the muffled wailing of the Pixie refugees.

Pelting across to where the refugees sheltered in the shadows, Swazzle and Pogmorton managed eventually through a combination of encouragement and cajolement to get them moving in the direction of the churchyard opposite Goddess Rising, where there was plenty of undergrowth to hide in.

They had just returned for Salkeld when a rushing sound filled their ears and a huge gout of blue flame thundered through the Portal, singeing their eyebrows.

‘There was nothing we could do,' Salkeld whispered, 'It...it's all over. Flaarti had to release a Wyrm.’ He closed his eyes and lay still, blood pumping from a sucking chest wound.

Swazzle and Pogmorton exchanged panic-stricken glances.

‘A Wyrm,’ mumbled Swazzle, huge sadness in his voice, ‘We’re royally fucked now.’

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I hope you enjoyed this story. If you'd like to read this serial from the beginning, the first installment is here.

If you've the time, please also check out my flash fiction story Driftwood, which earned itself an Honourable Mention in Laurita Miller's recent contest.

Don't forget to check out all the other great #FridayFlash stories this week, they can be found here, and please search the #FridayFlash hashtag on Twitter.

#FridayFlash: UCF #8: Hangman’s Passage