The nighttime glow of the moon reached in through the net curtains and the skylight, illuminating the sparsely furnished room. A shadow stretched into the corner behind the open door, and it was there that Louis crouched, staring resolutely into the eerie stillness. His back pressed to the wall, he held a pair of oversized scissors in one hand and clutched the neck of a chipped wooden cricket bat with the other. There was no chance anyone would sneak up on him tonight.
As he waited, he thought bitterly about how the universe must hate him. Of all the times it could, why did his computer have to crash right after he clicked the forward button?
It hadn’t even had the decency to stay on long enough for him to see dancing monkeys flash across the screen – a feat he’d been promised for sending the prosperity angel email to the twenty required contacts, as well as ten more for extra riches.
And so now Louis was miserably slouched, awaiting the sinister email’s retribution, as he had been since the sun had squeezed its last drop of day from the horizon to make room for the night.
A black figure passing in front of the light from the window knocked Louis out of his daze. The moon’s glow had suddenly dimmed and the dark outline of a person was barely discernable from the surrounding shadows until a stray gleam of metal caught Louis’s eye. He was paralysed with a terrible fear when he realised what it was ...
A deadly ninja assassin had come to issue the email’s judgement and as Louis crouched, watching the killer, he realised the truth as he remembered the warning stories:
Tina had deleted the email right away, and that very night she had a fatal car accident. It must have been the ninja.
Jimmy had read it, but left it unsent in his inbox in favour of rushing to propose to his girlfriend. But after accepting his proposal, the young woman took a hiking holiday and was never seen again – the work of the ninja.
And Louis would never, ever forget Michael, who only forwarded the email to two contacts and the next day lost his job, never to be hired again, and was served by his wife for a divorce. The ninja!
The ninja in Louis’s room scratched his head and lifted a corner of the bedsheet to peek underneath. Louis had never been so scared in his life. All this personification of death himself had to do was turn and check the corner and his life would be over faster than he could blink. Everyone knew that ninjas could overpower anyone but a samurai, so Louis’s scissors and bat would do nothing but enrage the assassin and cause his death to be more drawn-out and torturous.
In a stealthy and swift movement, the ninja dropped to the floor, checking beneath the bed. He slid like a whisp of smoke back to his feet and looked to his left and right, but not behind. After pausing in thought a few seconds more, he shrugged and dissolved back into the darkness.
