The View from a Park Bench: A Ghost of Hong Kong Story

The View from a Park Bench

By Steve Miller

Victoria Park settled into its evening rhythm as the last golden light bled from the Hong Kong sky. Mae Ling Chen sat on a weathered bench beneath a banyan tree, watching the flow of normal life unfold around her. A street vendor packed up his cart of roasted chestnuts, calling out final prices to passing workers. Two young lovers shared earbuds on a nearby bench, their heads tilted together in unconscious synchronization. A father pushed his daughter on a swing, her delighted squeals cutting through the ambient noise of traffic and conversation like bells through fog.

What would that feel like? Mae Ling wondered, not for the first time. To live without counting exits. To touch someone without calculating their threat potential.

She had been the Ghost of Hong Kong for almost two decades. The name had started during a war between Triad factions that she'd been called upon to settle in a final manner. The intelligence community had adopted it with professional appreciation. Ghosts moved unseen. Ghosts left no evidence. Ghosts existed in the space between the living and the dead, belonging fully to neither world.

The park's evening population represented everything Mae Ling had left behind for her profession. Office workers loosening ties and shedding the day's stress. Elderly women practicing tai chi in fluid, meditative movements. Teenagers clustered around phones, their laughter genuine and unguarded. These people inhabited a world of mortgages and promotions, of weekend plans and family dinners. They worried about traffic and bills and whether their children would get into good schools.

She checked her watch: 7:15 PM. The office workers were beginning their exodus.

Across the street, the Starlight Building rose thirty stories into the darkening sky, its glass facade reflecting the park's trees in fractured geometric patterns. To the casual observer, it was simply another corporate tower in a city built from them—modern and unremarkable. The ground floor directory listed accounting firms, import-export companies, law offices, and a dental practice. The kind of businesses that generated paperwork and tax revenue and absolutely no interest from anyone.

The Starlight Theatre occupied the basement levels. It wasn't listed on any directory. Not advertised in any publication. Access required connections, wealth, and an appetite for atrocities that transcended normal human depravity.

Mae Ling had spent four months learning everything about the building. The security rotations. The delivery schedules. The maintenance access points. She had posed as an HVAC technician, a cleaning contractor, a fire safety inspector, and a delivery person. She had mapped every utility chase, every service corridor, and every structural vulnerability. Slowly, methodically, she had transformed the Starlight Building into a tomb waiting to be sealed.

The first limousine arrived at 7:32 PM.

Mae Ling's posture didn't change. She remained a woman in unremarkable clothing, enjoying the evening air, but her attention sharpened, her mind focusing on the arrivals at the Starlight Building.

The limousine was a Mercedes S-Class, black with tinted windows and diplomatic plates. The driver opened the rear door with practiced deference. Two men emerged, both wearing tailored suits that cost more than most Hong Kong families earned in a year. Mae Ling recognized the first: Chang Kei-Tan, a shipping magnate whose legitimate businesses moved container freight through Southeast Asia. His illegitimate businesses moved children.

The second man she didn't recognize, but his bearing suggested military background—the way he scanned the street before following Chen toward the building's side entrance. Private security or perhaps a fellow patron. It didn't matter. He was complicit by presence.

Two, Mae Ling counted silently.

More limousines arrived in steady succession. A Bentley deposited a Russian oligarch—Dmitri Stanislov, suspected of running trafficking networks from Moscow to Manila. His companion was a younger man with the elegance of a fashion model and the dead eyes of a sociopath.

Four.

A Rolls-Royce. A Maybach. Another Mercedes. The vehicles arrived with the precision of a military operation, each disgorging its cargo of wealth and depravity. Mae Ling recognized faces from her research: corporate executives, politicians, entertainment industry figures. Men whose public personas emphasized charity work and family values. Men who paid extraordinary sums to witness and participate in the systematic destruction of children.

Twelve. Eighteen. Twenty-five.

The sun had fully set now, and the park's lights flickered on in sequence. The normal people were thinning out—families heading home for dinner, workers catching trains, lovers seeking privacy. Mae Ling remained motionless, her counting automatic, her mind cataloging faces and calculating the scope of what she was about to accomplish.

The Starlight Theatre had operated for three years. Mae Ling's intelligence suggested it hosted performances twice monthly, with audiences ranging from eighty to one hundred and fifty patrons. Tonight was a special event—a "grand finale" according to the encrypted communications her Handler had intercepted. The network's leadership would be present. The most valuable clients. The highest bidders.

Forty-three. Fifty-six. Sixty-eight.

Mae Ling had seen the basement during her reconnaissance. The theatre itself was surprisingly elegant—velvet seats arranged in ascending rows, professional lighting, soundproofing that could contain screams. The cells were adjacent, accessible through a backstage corridor. Small rooms with reinforced doors and minimal furnishings. Fourteen children had been held there, ranging in age from seven to fifteen. Taken from villages in Cambodia and Vietnam, from slums in Manila, from refugee camps where no one would notice their absence.

The intelligence had been specific about what happened in the theatre. The performances. The participation. The disposal methods for children who became too damaged or too old to be profitable.

Mae Ling had eliminated many targets in her career. Arms dealers and warlords, corrupt officials and cartel enforcers. She had killed with poison and blade, with rifle and bare hands. She had never lost sleep over any of them.

But this operation was different. This wasn't assassination. This was extermination.

Eighty-one. Ninety-four. One hundred and seven.

The limousines kept arriving. Mae Ling recognized a Hong Kong legislator who had built his career on anti-corruption platforms. A tech CEO whose company had recently gone public, making him a billionaire. A film director whose movies won awards and critical acclaim.

Monsters wearing human faces, Mae Ling thought. Predators who believe wealth insulates them from consequences.

The Starlight Building had been a complex target. The theatre's security was sophisticated—biometric access, armed guards, surveillance systems that would make a casino envious. Mae Ling couldn't simply walk in and start shooting. Even if she could eliminate the guards and breach the theatre, the patrons would scatter. Some would escape. The network would survive, relocate, continue operating.

So she had spent months preparing a different solution.

The explosives had been installed during her various infiltrations. C-4 charges placed in structural supports throughout the basement levels. Additional charges in the electrical systems, the gas lines, the foundation itself. She had worked with the precision of a demolition engineer, calculating load-bearing points and collapse sequences. The building wouldn't simply explode. It would implode, folding in on itself, crushing the theatre and everyone inside it.

The children had been the complicating factor. Mae Ling couldn't destroy the building while they remained in the cells. So her Handler had coordinated a parallel operation—a team that would extract the children during tonight's performance, when the guards' attention would be focused on the theatre itself.

Mae Ling had never met the extraction team. She didn't know their names or faces. That was operational security. But she trusted her Handler's competence. The children would be removed, transported to a safe house, and eventually placed with organizations that specialized in trafficking survivors.

One hundred and fifteen. One hundred and eighteen. One hundred and twenty.

The final limousine departed. The side entrance closed. The Starlight Building stood silent and elegant against the night sky, its windows glowing with ordinary office lighting. No indication of what transpired in its depths.

Mae Ling checked her watch: 8:47 PM. The performance would begin at 9:00 PM. The children should be clear by now.

Her earpiece crackled with a brief burst of static, then her Handler's voice emerged, calm and professional: "Ghost, this is Control. Fourteen packages picked up and en route for delivery. You are authorized for final phase."

Mae Ling's jaw tightened. Fourteen packages. The clinical language was necessary—emotional distance maintained operational effectiveness. But Mae Ling allowed herself a moment to acknowledge what those words meant. Fourteen children who would not die tonight. Fourteen lives pulled back from the abyss.

"Confirmed," Mae Ling said quietly. "Proceeding with final phase."

She rose from the bench with the unhurried movements of someone finishing an evening walk. Around her, the park had nearly emptied. A few stragglers remained—a couple on a distant bench, a jogger completing a final lap. They would be far enough away. The blast radius had been carefully calculated.

Mae Ling walked toward the park's eastern edge, where a low stone wall provided an unobstructed view of the Starlight Building. She reached into her jacket and withdrew a small device—a modified smartphone with a single application installed. The screen showed a simple interface: a red button labeled "EXECUTE."

Her finger hovered over the screen. This was the moment where doubt could creep in, where the magnitude of what she was about to do could paralyze decision-making. One hundred and twenty people would die in the next sixty seconds. Not in combat. Not in self-defense. But in a premeditated act of mass execution.

Mae Ling thought about the children in the cells. About the performances they had endured. About the network that had operated for years, protected by wealth and connections and the willful blindness of systems that should have stopped it.

She thought about the legislator who had voted against human trafficking enforcement while attending these performances. About the CEO whose charitable foundation claimed to fight child exploitation. About the oligarch who had built an empire on human suffering.

Some crimes transcend law, Mae Ling thought. Some justice requires ghosts.

She pressed the button.

For a fraction of a second, nothing happened. Then the Starlight Building's basement level erupted in brilliant white light, visible through the ground-floor windows like a flashbulb detonating underground. The light was followed immediately by sound—a deep, resonant boom that Mae Ling felt in her chest cavity, a pressure wave that rattled the park's trees and sent birds exploding from their roosts in panicked flight.

The building shuddered. Its glass facade rippled like water, thousands of windows shattering simultaneously in a cascading wave of destruction that climbed from ground level to roof. The sound was immense—not a single explosion but a symphony of them, each charge detonating in precise sequence, each blast calculated to maximize structural failure.

The basement collapsed first, the theatre and its adjacent cells crushed as support columns failed and floors pancaked downward. The ground level followed, the elegant lobby and its marble floors dropping into the void. Then the upper floors began their descent, each level falling onto the one below in a controlled implosion that Mae Ling had spent months engineering.

The building folded inward, its exterior walls bowing and buckling, its steel skeleton twisting and failing. Dust clouds erupted from every opening, billowing outward in massive plumes that obscured the destruction even as it continued. The sound was continuous now—a grinding, tearing roar of concrete and steel and glass being pulverized, of a thirty-story building being reduced to rubble in less than thirty seconds.

Mae Ling watched with professional detachment. The collapse was proceeding exactly as planned. The debris field was limited mostly to the building's footprint. No adjacent structures were damaged. No civilians were in the immediate blast zone.

One hundred and twenty people had just ceased to exist. Crushed beneath thousands of tons of concrete and steel, buried in the ruins of their own depravity. Dmitri Volkov and his network leadership. Chen Wei-Tang and his shipping empire. The legislator, the CEO, the director. All of them erased in a single act of violence.

The dust cloud continued expanding, rolling across the street and into the park. Mae Ling turned away, walking calmly toward the park's northern exit. Behind her, the first sirens began wailing—police, fire, ambulance, all converging on what would appear to be a catastrophic structural failure or possible terrorist attack.

The investigation would take months. Engineers would analyze the collapse pattern. Forensic teams would sift through rubble, identifying bodies and searching for causes. Eventually, they would find evidence of explosives. But by then, Mae Ling would be gone, and the Starlight Theatre's true purpose would remain buried beneath tons of debris and official misdirection.

Her Handler would ensure certain information reached certain investigators. Anonymous tips about the theatre's real function. Evidence of the trafficking network. Financial records linking the victims to child exploitation. The truth would emerge slowly, carefully, in ways that couldn't be traced back to Mae Ling or her operation.

Mae Ling walked through the park's northern gate and merged with the evening pedestrian traffic on Causeway Road. Around her, people were stopping, turning, staring at the massive dust cloud rising above the buildings. Phones emerged, capturing video and photos. Voices rose in shock and speculation.

Structural failure, someone said. Terrorist attack, another voice suggested. Gas explosion, a third voice offered.

Mae Ling moved through them like a ghost, unremarkable and unnoticed. She was a woman in ordinary clothing, one face among millions in a city that never stopped moving. Her extraction route was predetermined—a series of turns and transitions that would take her through residential neighborhoods and commercial districts, always moving, never hurrying, blending seamlessly with Hong Kong's endless human flow.

In four hours, she would board a private boat at a marina in Aberdeen. The boat would take her to international waters, where a larger vessel waited. From there, she would disappear into the networks and safe houses that sustained people like her—the ghosts who operated in the spaces between law and justice, between civilization and necessary violence.

Her Handler would have already transferred payment to one of her accounts. Three million US dollars for four months of work. The money would be laundered through shell companies and cryptocurrency exchanges, eventually emerging clean and untraceable. Mae Ling would add it to the accounts she maintained in Singapore and Switzerland, the financial cushion that would eventually fund her retirement.

If retirement is even possible, she thought.

Mae Ling turned onto Nathan Road, moving south through the evening crowds. She passed a small restaurant where families sat at outdoor tables, eating noodles and dumplings, their conversation animated and ordinary. A mother wiped sauce from her son's chin. A father poured tea for his elderly parents. A young couple shared a plate, their chopsticks clicking in comfortable rhythm.

Normal life, Mae Ling thought, weaving between pedestrians. The thing I observe but never inhabit.

She had been watching normal people most of her life—studying them, mimicking them, disappearing among them. But she had not been one of them. Even now, walking through Hong Kong's residential neighborhoods, she was fundamentally separate. She counted exits. She assessed threat potential in every passing face. She moved with the tactical awareness of someone who had spent decades operating in hostile territory.

Could the Ghost of Hong Kong ever become simply Mae Ling Chen, retired professional, living quietly and anonymously in some city? The question had a certain appeal, like wondering what it might be like to breathe underwater or fly without wings—interesting to contemplate, impossible to achieve.

She crossed into a quieter street lined with apartment buildings. Lights glowed in windows above—families settling in for the evening, children doing homework, couples preparing dinner. The ordinary rituals of civilian existence, playing out in countless variations across the city. Mae Ling had protected that world tonight, in her own brutal way. She had removed predators who would have continued destroying innocent lives.

The moral calculation settled over her as she walked, unavoidable and stark: one hundred and twenty deaths versus fourteen rescued children. The mathematics was brutal and indefensible by any conventional framework. There was no ratio where mass murder became justice, no equation that balanced the ledger cleanly. The law would call her a terrorist. Philosophers would debate the ethics of her actions for years, if they ever learned the truth.

But Mae Ling had stopped believing in conventional morality somewhere between her third assignment and her thirtieth. She believed in outcomes. In results. In the cold calculus of harm reduction. The Starlight Theatre network had operated for three years, destroying dozens of children's lives. Tonight, that network ceased to exist. Fourteen children would grow up—some would heal, some would carry scars forever, but all would live. They would have birthdays and graduations, first loves and heartbreaks, careers and families. They would experience the ordinary miracles of existence that had been stolen from them and then, tonight, returned.

One hundred and twenty people had purchased tickets to witness children being abused. They had dressed in expensive clothes, arrived in limousines, settled into velvet seats with drinks in hand, preparing to consume suffering as entertainment. They had made their choice. Mae Ling had made hers.

She turned onto a side street, leaving the residential area behind. The sirens were louder now, emergency vehicles flooding the area around the collapsed building. The dust cloud was visible above the rooftops, illuminated by streetlights and the glow of the city. By morning, it would be international news. By next week, it would be a conspiracy theory. By next month, it would be a footnote in Hong Kong's endless cycle of tragedy and renewal.

Mae Ling would be gone, already working on the next assignment, the next target, the next operation that required someone willing to operate outside the boundaries of law and conscience. Perhaps that was her function—not to find redemption, but to deliver it to others. Ghosts weren't meant to inhabit the normal world. They existed in the spaces between, doing the work that civilization required but refused to acknowledge.

The Ghost of Hong Kong, she thought, moving deeper into the maze of streets. Forever separate. Forever necessary. Forever unrepentant.

She had asked herself once if she could ever transition to normalcy. Now, walking away from the ruins of the Starlight Building with fourteen children's futures secured, she understood the answer with perfect clarity: she didn't want to. This was who she was—not despite the violence, but because of what that violence accomplished. Some people built hospitals. Some people wrote laws. Mae Ling eliminated monsters that hospitals and laws couldn't touch.

The world needed ghosts. It needed people willing to make impossible choices and carry the weight of brutal mathematics. It needed someone to stand in the space between justice and murder and decide which side served the innocent.

She disappeared into the maze of Hong Kong's streets, one shadow among millions, as behind her the Starlight Building's ruins smoldered and the first investigators began the impossible task of understanding what had happened and why.

Mae Ling turned another corner, her route taking her through the Mid-Levels residential district where the streets narrowed and the emergency response sounds faded to distant echoes. She passed apartment buildings where families were settling in for the evening—televisions flickering behind curtains, the smell of cooking drifting from open windows, children's voices raised in laughter or argument.

This is what I protect, she thought. This ordinary, precious normalcy that most people take for granted.

She would never be part of it. That door had closed years ago, sealed by choices and actions that couldn't be undone. But she could guard it from the outside, could eliminate the predators who sought to destroy it. That was her function. Her purpose. The only redemption available to someone who had become what she was.

The extraction route continued through increasingly quiet streets. Mae Ling's internal clock tracked the minutes with precision—she had two hours and forty minutes before the boat departed from Aberdeen Marina. Plenty of time, but she never allowed herself to relax until she was clear of the operational zone.

Her phone buzzed once—a coded message from her Handler confirming the children's arrival at the safe house. All fourteen accounted for. Medical teams standing by. Trauma counselors prepared. The machinery of rescue and recovery was already in motion, funded by accounts that Mae Ling had seized from the network's financial infrastructure during her reconnaissance.

The predators' money would pay for their victims' healing. There was a certain poetic justice in that.

Mae Ling allowed herself a moment of satisfaction, then pushed it aside. Emotion was dangerous in her profession. It clouded judgment, created hesitation, introduced variables that could prove fatal. She had learned that lesson early and never forgotten it.

The streets opened onto a small plaza where a night market was bustling with business. Most people were looking in the direction of the massive dust cloud rising into the darkening sky. Mae Ling bought a bottle of water from an elderly woman, exchanging pleasantries in Cantonese, just another tired worker heading home after a long day.

The woman smiled at her, counting out change with arthritic fingers. "Safe travels," she said.

"Thank you, grandmother," Mae Ling replied and meant it.

She continued walking, the water bottle cool against her palm. Behind her, the Starlight Building was still burning, still collapsing, still dying. The emergency response would continue through the night. Investigators would arrive at dawn. The truth would emerge slowly, carefully managed by her Handler's network of contacts and carefully placed evidence.

But Mae Ling would already preparing for the next assignment. The Ghost of Hong Kong would fade back into legend and rumor, a story told in intelligence circles and criminal networks, never quite confirmed, never quite dismissed.

She thought about the children one last time—their faces she had never seen, their names she had never learned, their futures she had purchased with mass murder and professional violence. She hoped they would heal. She hoped they would forget. She hoped they would live the normal lives she had ensured for them.

The night deepened around her. The city continued its endless rhythm. And Mae Ling Chen, the Ghost of Hong Kong, walked on alone, carrying her questions and her ghosts, forever separate from the world she protected, forever wondering if the distance between justice and murder was as wide as she needed it to be.

--

If you enjoyed this story, you can find more tales of The Ghost of Hong in The Ghost of Hong Kong and The Ghost of Hong Kong: Targets

"The Spice Girl" -- a thriller from NUELOW

The Spice Girl

By Steve Miller

The sodium streetlights cast sickly orange pools along Riverside Avenue, but between them stretched gulfs of darkness so complete they seemed to swallow sound itself. May pressed herself deeper into the recessed doorway of the shuttered pawnshop, her breath coming in shallow gasps that fogged in the October air. Her fingers trembled as she pulled out her phone, the screen's glow painfully bright in the surrounding blackness.

She dialed the number she'd memorized but never thought she'd actually use.

One ring. Two rings. Pick up, pick up, pick up—

"May?" The voice on the other end was warm and alert despite the late hour. Familiar in a way that made May's chest tighten with something between relief and guilt.

"He's back," May whispered, her voice cracking. "He's back and he's following me. I saw him outside the restaurant when my shift ended. I tried to lose him on the subway but he—" Her words tumbled over each other, panic sharpening each syllable. "He was waiting at my stop. He knew. He somehow knew which train I'd take."

"Where are you now?" Her tone shifted, became focused, tactical. "Exact location."

"Riverside, just short of 23rd. I ducked into a doorway but I can see him. He's across the street, just... standing there. Watching. I think he's waiting for me to move." May's hand shook so badly she nearly dropped the phone. "It's been three months. Three months of emails, texts, showing up at my work, following me home. The restraining order didn't do anything. He doesn't care."

"Call the police. Right now. I'll stay on the line with you."

May let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "They won't get here in time. You know they won't. And even if they do, what then? They'll take a report. Maybe they'll talk to him. Maybe they'll even arrest him this time, though they didn't the last three times I called. And then what? He'll be out in hours, and he'll be even angrier."

That's when he moved until he was standing directly under a streetlight. Her breath caught in her throat—shallow, useless. She could see his face now, that face, the one that used to make her feel safe. The one that had learned to smile while his hands tightened around her wrist. Around her throat.

"He's coming," May breathed into the phone. Last time he grabbed me, he said—" Her voice fractured. "He said if he couldn't have me, he'd make sure no one could. I saw it in his eyes, Mira. He meant it."

"Listen to me carefully." The voice on the line cut through the panic like a blade through silk. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes." The answer came without hesitation.

"Then stay visible. Keep moving around corners. I'm on my way, and I'll handle the rest. But tell me what you're wearing--"

---

Derek Hutchins felt the familiar heat coursing through his veins—that intoxicating cocktail of rage and desire that had become his constant companion over the past three months. Ever since May had tried to leave him. As if she had that right. As if she could just walk away from what they had, from what he'd given her.

She thought she could hide from him. Thought a piece of paper from some judge would keep him away. Thought changing her phone number and blocking him on social media would erase him from her life. But she was his. She'd always been his, from the moment he'd first seen her laughing with her coworkers at that bar, her dark hair catching the light, her smile bright enough to stop his heart.

He'd made her his, and she would remember that tonight.

He watched her slip out of the doorway and start moving quickly down Riverside, her shoulders hunched, her pace just short of a run. The sight sent a thrill through him. She was afraid. Good. She should be afraid. Fear would teach her what kindness and patience hadn't—that she belonged to him, that she would always belong to him.

Derek followed, keeping to the shadows on his side of the street, matching her pace. He'd gotten good at this over the past months. Knew how to move quietly, how to anticipate her routes, how to read her body language. He knew when she was about to look over her shoulder (she did, twice, but he was ready, already melting into a doorway). He knew when she was about to break into a run (not yet, but soon—he could see the tension building in her frame).

At the corner of 23rd and Riverside, she turned right, moving faster now. Derek smiled and quickened his own pace. She was heading toward Riverside Park. Probably thought she could lose him in the maze of paths that wound through the trees and around the old fountain. Probably thought the darkness would hide her.

The joke would be on her.

He rounded the corner just in time to see her crossing the street toward the park entrance, nearly running now. Derek's smile widened. His hand slipped into his jacket pocket, fingers closing around the folding knife he'd bought specifically for tonight. He'd hoped it wouldn't come to this. Hoped she'd finally understand, finally submit, finally accept that they were meant to be together.

But if she wouldn't accept it willingly, he'd make her accept it. One way or another, tonight would end with May understanding exactly who she belonged to.

Derek jogged across the street and into the park. The old-growth trees blocked out most of the ambient light from the street, creating a darkness so complete he had to slow down, let his eyes adjust. He could hear footsteps ahead—quick, light, feminine. May, trying to escape.

Not this time.

He moved deeper into the park, following the sound. The path curved around a dense stand of oaks, and there—he caught a glimpse of her, maybe thirty yards ahead, moving toward the old fountain at the park's center. The fountain had been dry for years, surrounded by benches that the homeless used during the day and drug dealers used at night. At this hour, it would be deserted.

Perfect.

Derek closed the distance, his breathing steady despite the exertion. He'd been working out more these past months, building his strength, preparing for this moment. He was faster than her, stronger than her. She had to know she couldn't outrun him.

She reached the fountain and stopped, her back to him, her shoulders rising and falling with her rapid breathing. Derek slowed to a walk, pulling the knife from his pocket. The blade snicked open with a sound that seemed impossibly loud in the quiet park.

"May," he said, his voice carrying across the space between them. "Did you really think you could run from me?"

She didn't turn around. Didn't move at all.

"I've been patient," Derek continued, moving closer. "So patient. I've tried to make you understand. Tried to show you that we belong together. But you keep fighting it. Keep fighting me." He was ten feet away now. Five. "That ends tonight."

He reached out to grab her shoulder, to spin her around, to show her the knife and watch the fear bloom in those beautiful dark eyes—

She moved.

It happened so fast Derek's brain couldn't process it. One moment she was standing still, the next she'd pivoted on her left foot, her right leg sweeping up in an arc that connected with his wrist with devastating precision. The knife went flying, clattering across the concrete. Before he could react, she'd stepped inside his guard, her elbow driving into his solar plexus with enough force to empty his lungs.

Derek staggered back, gasping, trying to understand what was happening. May didn't know how to fight. She was a waitress, for God's sake, she—

A fist crashed into his jaw, snapping his head to the side. Then another blow, this one to his ribs, and he felt something crack. He tried to raise his hands to defend himself, but she was everywhere at once—striking with her fists, her elbows, her knees, each blow precise and devastating.

A kick to his knee sent him crashing to the ground. He tried to crawl away, tried to get up, but a foot planted itself in his chest, pinning him to the concrete. He looked up, vision blurring from pain and shock, and saw her standing over him.

But something was wrong.

Her face was May's face—the same dark eyes, the same high cheekbones. But the expression was all wrong. May's eyes had always been soft, kind, even when she was afraid. These eyes were hard. Cold.

"You should have paid attention to the emails," she said, her voice similar to May's but with a harder edge, a different cadence. "The ones warning you to leave my sister alone. The ones explaining exactly what would happen if you didn't."

Derek's vision swam. Sister? May didn't have a—

Movement in his peripheral vision. He turned his head, ignoring the spike of pain the motion caused, and saw another figure approaching. Walking calmly, unhurried, her silhouette backlit by the distant streetlights.

As she drew closer, Derek's mind finally caught up with what his eyes were seeing.

Two of her. No, there were two of them. Identical. Twins.

The second woman—the real May, he realized with a sickening lurch—stopped a few feet away. Her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, but there was something else there too. Something like relief. Like hope.

"Hello, Derek," May said quietly. "Hello, Mira."

The woman standing over him—the one who'd beaten him with the efficiency of a trained fighter—glanced at her sister. May's chin lifted slightly, a nod so small it was almost imperceptible. Permission. Confirmation. They were in this together.

Mira smiled. It was the smile of a predator who'd cornered its prey.

"May got all the sugar in the family." She reached into her purse. "I got all the spice."

She pulled out a pistol. Even in his dazed state, Derek recognized the cylindrical suppressor attached to the barrel.

"And in my line of work," the woman continued, her voice conversational, almost pleasant, "I rarely do anything nice."

"Please!" Derek's voice cracked, rising to a shriek. "Please, I'm sorry, I'll leave her alone, I swear, I'll never—"

The gun came up, steady as stone.

"You should have left her alone three months ago," Mira said. "You should have left her alone when she asked. When she begged. When she got the restraining order. When I sent you those emails explaining exactly what I do for a living and exactly what would happen if you continued to stalk my sister."

"I'll disappear!" Derek was sobbing now, all pretense of control gone. "I'll move away, I'll never contact her again, please, you don't have to—"

"You're right," Mira said. "I don't have to. I want to."

The gun barely made a sound—just a soft cough, like someone clearing their throat. But the acrid smell hit May instantly, sharp and chemical and wrong, burning the back of her throat like swallowed acid. Her ears rang with a high, piercing whine that seemed to swallow all other sound. Even though she wasn't holding the weapon, she felt the recoil in her chest—a phantom kick that made her stumble backward, her body responding to violence she wasn't committing.

Derek's body jerked. The dark stain spread across his shirt.

"You were warned," Mira said softly, and fired again. And again.

May's hands were shaking so badly she couldn't feel them anymore. Her vision tunneled, the edges of the world collapsing into a pinpoint, and then—just as suddenly—it sharpened with terrible, nauseating clarity. She could see everything. The exact moment the light left his eyes. The way his mouth opened and closed like a fish pulled from water. The small spray of blood that caught the streetlight.

Each muffled shot drove deeper into her skull, the ringing intensifying until her teeth ached and her legs felt hollow beneath her. She wanted to look away but couldn't. Wanted to scream but had no air.

Her stomach lurched, bile rising to mix with the chemical taste coating her tongue. Her skin prickled with cold sweat despite the summer heat. The world went white at the edges. Her breath came in gasps that tasted of copper and her own terror.

May stood frozen, staring at Derek's body, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The smell of the suppressor hung thick in the air around them, coating her tongue.

Mira returned the gun to her purse and pulled out her phone, typing rapidly.

"Cleanup crew will be here in twenty minutes," she said, her voice brisk and professional. "We need to be gone in ten."

May kept staring at Derek's body. "Is he—"

"Yes." She put a hand on her sister's shoulder, her touch gentle despite the violence she'd just committed. "It's over, May. He can't hurt you anymore."

May turned and buried her face in her sister's shoulder, her body shaking with sobs that were equal parts relief and horror. Mira held her, one hand stroking her hair, the other still holding the phone.

"I know this isn't how you wanted it to end," Mira said softly. "I know you wanted the system to work."

May nodded, wiping her eyes. "What happens now?"

"Now you go home. Take a shower. Get some sleep. Tomorrow, you go to work like normal. If anyone asks, you'll say you went straight home and was there the rest of the night, alone. I'll make sure of it. Your phone's GPS will show you never left your apartment."

"And Derek?"

She glanced at the body, her expression neutral. "Derek will disappear. Someone will file a missing person's report. The police will investigate. They'll find nothing. Eventually, he'll just be another statistic, another person who vanished without a trace." She squeezed May's hand. "And you'll be free."

They walked out of the park together, two identical women holding hands, moving through the shadows. Behind them, Derek Hutchins lay cooling on the concrete, his eyes staring sightlessly at the stars.

By the time the sun rose over Riverside Park, there would be no trace that he'd ever been there at all.

--

If you enjoyed that story, you can find more of the same in The Last Laugh and Other Stories! Currently available at a discout!

A Ghost of Hong Kong Story -- By Steve Miller

It was a rainy night when she appeared at my office door--a slender Chinese woman with her dark hair pulled back into a pony tail. She was wearing a long, black raincoat and carrying an e-reader. I recognized her immediately.

"Mae Ling," I said, fear forming in the pit of my stomach. "What brings you here?"

"Relax, Miller," she replied in English with an accent that was vaguely British but mostly the result of having been in many places and among speakers of many English dialects. "I've been reading the stories you've written about me. You make me look good."

"Thank you," I said.

"I'm here to give you a new story. You'll write it, I'll read it, and give you immediate feedback."

She then told me of a recent contract. 

I saved the piece I had been working on, opened a fresh document, and began typing...

FALSE MERCIES -- A GHOST OF HONG KONG TALE

The incense smoke rose like prayers made visible, curling and twisting in the amber light that filtered through the temple's latticed windows. Outside, the sea whispered its eternal secrets to the rocks of Shek O Village, and the wind carried the salt-taste of distant storms.

The woman who knelt before the altar wore grief like a second skin. Her hands trembled as they clutched the red envelope containing two hundred Hong Kong dollars. Her hair hung in dark curtains around her face, and when she looked up at the rotund priest who sat cross-legged before the statue of Tin Hau, her eyes were wells of desperate hope.

"Please," she whispered, and the word seemed to echo in the temple's hollow spaces, bouncing off the golden dragons that coiled around the pillars, sliding past the paper lanterns that swayed like captured moons. "Please, Tin Hau, tell me what has become of my husband. The sea took him three weeks ago, and I have heard nothing. Nothing but the sound of waves in my dreams."

The priest—his name was Wu, though he preferred to be called Master Wu—regarded her with the practiced sympathy of a man who had seen a thousand desperate souls kneel where she now knelt. His robes were silk, expensive silk, and his fingers were heavy with jade rings that caught the light like captured fireflies. He was a man who understood that faith and fear were currencies more valuable than gold, and he had grown wealthy in their exchange.

"The goddess hears all prayers," he intoned, his voice deep and resonant as a temple bell. "But the veil between this world and the next is thick, and sometimes... sometimes it requires great effort to pierce it."

He reached for the incense sticks that stood in their brass holder like a forest of fragrant trees. With deliberate slowness, he lit three of them, and the smoke began its serpentine dance toward the ceiling, where it would dissipate into nothing, into everything, into the spaces between breath and belief.

Master Wu closed his eyes. His breathing slowed, deepened, became the rhythm of waves upon shore. The woman watched him with the intensity of the drowning watching a distant boat, her hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles had gone white as bone.

Minutes passed. The incense burned. The smoke rose. The sea outside continued its ancient conversation with the land.

Then Master Wu's eyes opened, and in them was a light that might have been divine inspiration or might have been something far more calculated.

"I see," he breathed, and his voice had taken on a tremulous quality, as if he stood at the edge of some great precipice. "The goddess Tin Hau... she shows me an island. Small, rocky, surrounded by waters that foam white against black stone. And there... there is a man."

The woman leaned forward, her breath catching in her throat like a bird in a cage.

"He stands at the water's edge," Master Wu continued, his eyes now focused on some middle distance that existed only in his mind—or in his performance. "He is thin, weathered by sun and salt. And he is shouting. Shouting a name. Your name, I think. Yes, your name, carried away by the wind, lost in the cry of gulls."

A sound escaped the woman's lips, something between a sob and a gasp, and Master Wu allowed himself the smallest of smiles, hidden in the shadows of his jowls.

"But wait," he said, and his expression darkened like clouds crossing the sun. "The vision... it fragments. It breaks apart like a reflection in disturbed water. The goddess... she struggles to show me more. Something interferes. Something dark and malevolent."

"What?" the woman whispered. "What interferes?"

Master Wu's hands moved in complex patterns through the smoke, as if he were trying to grasp something that continually slipped through his fingers. "Her brothers," he said, and now his voice carried a note of genuine-seeming distress. "The demonic brothers of Tin Hau. They dwell in the underworld, in the spaces beneath the sea where drowned men's souls wander lost and cold. They feed on suffering, on separation, on the tears of widows and the cries of orphans. And they are here now, blocking the goddess's sight, preventing her from revealing the full truth of your husband's fate."

The woman's face had gone pale as paper, pale as the moon reflected in still water.

"But there is hope," Master Wu said quickly, leaning forward with an urgency that seemed almost genuine. "A show of devotion—a true show of devotion—can give the goddess the power she needs to drive her brothers back to the underworld where they belong. The demons are strong, but faith is stronger. Devotion is stronger. And with the proper... offerings... the goddess can prevail."

The woman's hands moved to the red envelope she had brought, the envelope containing her last two hundred dollars. She held it out with shaking fingers, and Master Wu took it with the reverence of a man accepting a sacred relic.

He opened it, counted the bills with practiced speed, and nodded slowly. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I believe this will be sufficient. The goddess is merciful. She understands the poverty of the faithful. Let me pray again, let me—"

He closed his eyes once more, his hands pressed together before his face. His lips moved in silent supplication, or what appeared to be supplication. The incense smoke continued its endless rise, and the temple seemed to hold its breath.

Then Master Wu jerked as if struck by an invisible hand. His eyes flew open, wide with what might have been fear or might have been theatrical surprise. He gasped, clutched at his chest, and when he spoke again, his voice was hoarse.

"The demons," he wheezed. "They are stronger than I anticipated. Much stronger. They feed off your distress, your desperation. They grow fat on your tears. The goddess... she needs more. More devotion. More faith. More—"

He didn't say the word "money," but it hung in the air between them like the incense smoke, visible and invisible at once.

The woman stood slowly, her movements careful, controlled. "I'll go to the bank," she said, her voice steady now, all the trembling gone from it like morning mist burned away by sun. "I can get more. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Master Wu nodded, relief washing over his features like water over stone. "Yes," he said. "Yes, hurry. The goddess's power wanes with each passing moment. The demons grow stronger. Your husband's soul hangs in the balance, suspended between this world and the next, and only your devotion can—"

The woman had turned to leave, her footsteps echoing on the temple's stone floor. But then she stopped. Turned back. And when she looked at Master Wu now, her eyes were different. They were no longer wells of desperate hope. They were something else entirely. Something cold and clear and utterly without mercy.

"You had a nice scam going here," she said, and her voice was conversational, almost friendly. "Really, quite elegant in its simplicity. Prey on the desperate, the grieving, the ones who have nowhere else to turn. Tell them just enough to give them hope, then squeeze them for everything they have. I've seen it before, in a dozen cities, in a hundred temples. It's an old game, Master Wu. Old as faith itself."

Master Wu's face had gone from relieved to confused to outraged in the space of three heartbeats. "How dare you," he sputtered, rising to his feet with surprising speed for a man of his bulk. "How dare you come into this sacred place and—"

"If only you hadn't gotten greedy with the wrong mark," the woman continued, as if he hadn't spoken at all. Her hand moved to her purse, and there was something in the casual way she did it that made Master Wu's words die in his throat like flowers touched by frost.

"What... what do you mean?" he asked, and now the fear in his voice was real, no longer performance, no longer theater.

"Leilie Hong," the woman said, and the name fell into the temple's silence like a stone into still water, sending ripples of implication in all directions. "Three weeks ago, she came to you. An old woman, desperate to know the fate of her son, who had gone missing. You told her the same story, didn't you? The same vision, the same demonic interference, the same need for greater and greater devotion. You took everything she had. Every last dollar. And when she had nothing left to give, you told her that her son was lost, that the demons had won, that her lack of faith had doomed him."

Master Wu's face had gone the color of old wax. His jade rings suddenly seemed too heavy, weighing down his hands like shackles.

"She went home that night," the woman continued, her voice still conversational, still almost friendly, which somehow made it more terrible than if she had been shouting. "She went home and she hanged herself from a beam in her kitchen. Because you had taken her money and her hope and left her with nothing but despair."

"I... I didn't know," Master Wu whispered. "I couldn't have known that she would—"

"Her son found her," the woman said. "Charlie Hong. Perhaps you've heard of him?"

The name hit Master Wu like a physical blow. Charlie Hong. Everyone in Hong Kong's underworld knew that name. Charlie Hong, who ran the illegal fight clubs in Kowloon, who had connections that reached from the Triads to the police to the very highest levels of the city's shadow government. Charlie Hong, who was known for his loyalty to his family, his ruthlessness toward his enemies, and his absolute unwillingness to forgive those who wronged the people he loved.

"Oh god," Master Wu breathed, and he stumbled backward, his bulk suddenly seeming less imposing, more vulnerable, like a balloon slowly deflating. "Oh god, I didn't... I never meant..."

The woman's hand emerged from her purse, and in it was a pistol. Small, black, with a suppressor attached to the barrel that made it look like some kind of mechanical insect, all angles and purpose. She held it with the casual competence of someone who had held such things many times before, who knew their weight and their function and their terrible finality.

"Please," Master Wu said, and now he was the one who sounded desperate, the one whose voice trembled with fear. "Please, I'll give the money back. I'll leave Hong Kong. I'll—"

"Charlie Hong called upon a ghost of vengeance," the woman said, and her voice was soft now, soft as the incense smoke, soft as the whisper of the sea outside. "He called upon someone who could walk into temples and speak the language of grief, who could play the role of the desperate widow, who could get close enough to deliver justice to those who prey upon the suffering of others."

She raised the pistol, and the movement was smooth, practiced, inevitable as the rising of the sun.

"And vengeance," she said, "will be delivered."

The shot was barely louder than a cough, muffled by the suppressor and swallowed by the temple's thick walls. Master Wu fell backward, his silk robes billowing around him like the wings of some great, dying bird. He hit the floor with a sound like a sack of rice dropping, and the jade rings on his fingers clattered against the stone.

The woman stood over him for a moment, watching as the light faded from his eyes, as the blood spread in a dark pool beneath his body, mixing with the ash from the incense that had fallen when he fell. Then she tucked the pistol back into her purse, straightened her hair, and walked toward the temple's entrance with the same careful, controlled movements she had used when she arrived.

But she paused at the altar, her hand reaching for the bundle of incense sticks that Master Wu would never light again. She took three—the proper number—and held them to the flame of a red candle, her hands steady as stone despite the body cooling behind her. The tips caught and glowed, and she watched the smoke begin its ascent, thin threads of gray rising toward the temple's dark rafters.

She bowed once, deeply, holding the incense before her face. The smoke curled between her fingers, and she breathed in its sandalwood sweetness mixed with the copper-salt smell of fresh blood.

"Forgive me, Tin Hau," she whispered, and her voice was different now—not the desperate widow's plea, not the cold pronouncement of vengeance, but something more honest. "I have stained your temple with blood. But you are the protector of the suffering, and he made his fortune from their pain."

She placed the incense in the brass holder before the goddess's statue, the three sticks standing straight and true. The painted eyes gazed down at her, and for a moment—just a moment—she thought she saw something in that ancient, unchanging face. Not forgiveness, perhaps. But understanding. The goddess had sailed through storms and witnessed drownings, had seen the sea take the innocent and spare the guilty, had learned that justice and mercy were not always the same thing. The woman bowed once more, then turned and walked toward the entrance, leaving the incense to burn, leaving her prayer to rise, leaving the goddess to judge whether vengeance could ever be holy.

The woman walked down the temple steps and disappeared into the narrow streets of Shek O Village, just another figure in the afternoon crowd, anonymous and unremarkable. Behind her, in the Temple of Tin Hau, Master Wu's blood spread dark across the stone floor while incense smoke rose in serpentine spirals toward the rafters. 

--

After I finished the story, I stood up and gestured at the chair for Mae Ling to have a seat. She did so with a nod and began to read. I watched her nervously--I wasn't used to advanced readers or critics who could kill you in who-knows-how-many different ways if they didn't like what they read.

I was bathed in a cold sweat by the time Mae Ling reached the end of "False Mercies". She turned to look up at me, her expression unreadable.

"It's just the first draft," I said, the terror building in my chest. "I'll fix whatever you--"

"Don't change a thing," Mae Ling said, rising to her feet, smiling. "I love it. And I really loved the whole prayer bit at the end. You're going to put it in the next Ghost of Hong Kong collection, right?"

"If I do one, of course I will."

"Excellent." With that, she turned and walked toward the door and out of my office. I heard her chuckling softly before saying, "Forgive me Tin Hau... priceless!"

Seconds later, I heard the front door open and close. The Ghost had melted back into the shadows where her next assignment waited.