Nick Black
propped his hip against the oversized mahogany desk and watched with
pride as the small red hole over Robert Faro’s heart grew into a bloody mess
across his white linen shirt. Only after glimpsing his reflection in the dark
window behind the dying man--a square face crowned with short wavy black
hair--did Nick loosen his knuckle-white grip on the pistol. He let out a
muffled sigh, his first breath since he had grabbed the gun from Oded Fatahi.
There were shouts coming from the door behind his back and Nick knew there
were only minutes left before all the thugs in the building busted into this
room. He pocketed the pistol in his jacket while shifting his gaze from the
body of his dead employer to the two other corpses lying at his feet on the
blue and gold patterned Persian rug.
Oded, Nick’s
accomplice over the last five years, lay on his back, a fresh bullet nestled
in his chest. Slumped face down across Oded’s legs was the man Nick knew only
as 'The Egyptian,' Faro’s personal assassin. Red life-blood spilled onto the
floor from both of the men, commingling in a sickening pool of
crimson.
A thief through
and through, Nick knelt down beside the bloody mess and helped himself to the
dead men’s wallets and jewelry, stowing the loot in the inside pocket of his
ragged black leather car coat. 'The Egyptian' wore the same tattoo on his left
wrist that he and Oded had received when they began working for Faro; a golden
scarab with blue wings. Faro had marked them all for life--physically and
mentally.
Glancing at the
watch in his hand, he saw that time was growing short. If Nick didn’t
want to find himself added to the fresh body count, he needed to get moving.
He snatched up the brown paper-wrapped box he and Oded had lost to Mexican
border police earlier that day. Clumsily stepping over the bodies, almost
falling as he made his way to the open liquor cabinet, Nick hoped the box
contained raw heroin or cocaine; something, anything that he could sell on the
streets.
"This is it,
Nicky boy," he said to himself. "The shit in this package is your chance to
break into the big time." What could be in the package which was so
important that Faro would kill two of his best men for losing it? Nick didn’t
have time to ponder the riddle as his survival instinct asserted itself in his
testicles.
Some people
were gifted with the power to see winning lottery numbers or to manipulate the
dice to roll a perfect seven every time. Nick Torres Black was born with an
uncanny ability to survive. Seconds before a potentially fatal incident, Nick
doubled over with immense pain that was much like receiving a kick in the
balls. Stan Lee called it a 'spidey sense,' but Nick called it his
'nut-sense.'
Born under a Hunter's Moon on Halloween and the seventh son of a seventh son, Samuel Hayne was destined for a life in horror. Reading at an early age such authors as Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood and Edgar Allen Poe laid a firm horror foundation, but it was the work of H.P. Lovecraft and his proteges that became the framework for the House of Hayne. Two stories have been previously published under the name Samuel Hayne, “The Hereafter Hours,” and “Morgansyr.”
"Faro's Ring" was just adapted into a script by Meisenheimer Production in Sacramento, California, and is currently being shopped to several independent film companies for filming. If you are a film maker and would like to see this adaptation, please don't hesitate to contact me at, Sam_hayne2006@yahoo.com
Faro’s Ring 
