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Excerpt

With her beloved husband, Mark, terminally ill and under the care of the hospice, Sally struggles to maintain a normal life for their three children. Her days are spent working long hours to keep the roof over their heads and protecting them from the awful truth of just how ill their father really is. Opportunities to visit Mark are few and far between, coming only when time and money allow, making every one a moment to be savored.

On her latest visit, Sally is alarmed to see just how much Mark has deteriorated and vows to make the most of the time they have left. But, when the doctors tell her of a new miracle drug that will slow the progression of his illness, her hope is rekindled. Can love be stronger than medicine? A short story from our Candlelight literary romance line.

Excerpt

Sally’s mood had been improving all week as she looked forward to their date. She’d booked Friday afternoon off work, ensuring she had as much time with Mark as possible. The childminder was picking the children up from school and giving them tea as well. Since she’d already used up all her annual leave, both arrangements were an additional strain on her finances, but very much worth it.

In her bedroom, she pulled out her new shoes, well, new for her; beige peep-toes, with kitten heels; a delightful, unexpected find in a local charity shop. Barely worn, she knew they’d be a perfect complement to so many of her outfits, and a snip at just £2.50. She hoped Mark would notice them, but it was unlikely; he didn’t seem to notice much these days.

In her wardrobe, her slender fingers tripped over the hangers as she looked for the perfect outfit, finally deciding on a powder pink skirt suit with cream blouse; smart and feminine.

The brush slid smoothly through her thick brown hair. With him in mind, she’d used a luxurious conditioner in her shower that morning, left over from the work’s Secret Santa gift, and it had given her curls an extra lustre. She smiled to herself, humming his favourite song while applying a little powder, but not too much, Mark preferred the natural look. She admired herself in the full-length mirror. Perfect.

* * *

On the drive over she thought about the last time she’d seen him. His radiant smile as she walked in the room. How, always a gentlemen, he’d made to stand as she went to sit down across the table from him.
The hours flew when she was with Mark, but then, time was always the enemy where he was concerned. Too much time passed between their meetings, because life and things like not having enough money always got in the way.

Her 9-5 job in a call centre, with three out of four obligatory Saturdays was mindless work, but there was so much going on in her life that the mundane routine was appealing. It didn’t exactly pay well and her wages were soon gobbled up with the cost of after-school childcare and the hobbies and interests of three active children. When Mark had been at home such problems were nonexistent. He’d had a good job, but now every coin was wrung from her purse and every hour of the day was milked dry.

Paris is often referred to as The City of Love. From the author of AN INCONSEQUENTIAL MURDER comes a story of a couple in present-day Paris trying to revisit their love from the past. What they soon discover is that much like the skyline of France's magnificent city, many things change with the passing of time. Sometimes,those changes are not always for the best. A short story from our Nibs literary line.

Excerpt

When she emerged from the Rue Monge Metro exit, I had felt my first pang of disappointment. She had cut her hair! I felt so annoyed that she had cut her hair! Hadn’t she told me once that she loved it so much that she spent an hour every morning brushing it? I had loved the thought of that, that image so much I had had dreams about it—very vivid dreams! Oh, why had she cut her hair?

And worse, as she walked toward me, I noticed that her smile did not have the radiance of old—her face was drawn and wasn’t as shiny and plump as it used to be. And, it was made to look even more unattractive by the short, scraggly lump of hair that surrounded it. And, too, her eyes, which had shone, large and dark like black moons floating midst white clouds, had now retreated into dark caverns of worry. What had she done these past twenty years that had worn her down so?

And then there was the way she was dressed: her lime-green coat made her skin seem even darker than I remembered. And she was wearing sandals! In the middle of winter and she was wearing sandals! God, she was so changed—much more than I had expected.

Of course, I was not unchanged either. I saw my reflection on the store window behind her. True, I was no longer the slim, long-haired youth who could wear an old sport coat over worn jeans and look, as she had once put it, as if my clothes had been cut in the smartest men’s shop in Seville Road. The brown golf jacket and freshly pressed chino pants I was wearing made me look like a retired executive from some fucking California Pleasant Meadows Retirement Community. All that was missing was the checked hat.

Nevertheless, when she crossed the street with outstretched arms, I had to admit that her smile was still lovely, bright, wide, and friendly; it was the same smile of twenty years ago, that smile of the Venus I had met in the Metro.

I used to hunger for that smile, like a dog waiting for a treat. She didn’t need to say, “I missed you,” her smile would say it, and it would also say “I want you, I need you.” And I would run to that smile and embrace her, and say it was unbearable to be away from her, and that we should always be together, close, touching all the time, smiling like that every time we saw each other.

But, even though the smile was still a lovely, white crescent surrounded by the darkness of her face, I couldn’t help noticing it was not quite as warm as before. This was the kind of smile one used to greet friends, acquaintances, people one has to be friendly with for business or professional reasons. This was a practiced smile—yes, that was it, a practiced smile!

And her walk—it was no longer the graceful glide of the dancer; it was matronly—the way a woman strides into an office or into a place where she has things to attend to, or people to see on serious matters. She used to rush, with the gait of a filly, into my arms, to run as soon as she saw me; now she had stridden—purposely, forcefully, like a person that wants to project an impression of determination and energy. This was a professional woman’s walk.

And, her voice! She had called to me not with the voice that had whispered my name on those hot, sultry nights, filled with the music drifting up, floating in through the window that opened on to the small street with the happy, jolly bar across the way, and the moonbeams shining, bouncing off her canella-colored skin, looking as if she were a goddess having come down from those marvelously carved caves in her native India. Where was that breathless whisper or the honeyed passion in her tone?

I realized, as she came closer, that she too had been expecting the young man she had made love to on the floor of that small hotel because the bed squeaked, or the one who drank himself into a stupor that night in Mexico City because he didn’t want to hear her making love to her husband. She might have been expecting the boy whose hand she had taken under the table and in whose ear she had whispered “I’m sorry; I know you’re hurting,” when her husband had turned to call a waiter. Instead of that boy, here was I, a paunchy, gray-haired, middle-aged I-failed-to-be-all-the-things-you-expected-me-to-be retiree.

No, I was not the young man that had raised so many expectations, and she was not that Venus who had emerged from the Metro—not midst waves of the sea but midst waves of people—elegant, radiant, her sari floating in the air that rushed out of the Metro entrance. And I certainly was not that young man who had cried when she told him she was pregnant but could not have his child. I wouldn’t cry about such things now.

As she came closer I saw in her eyes that she couldn’t remember why she had loved me. And, I wasn’t able to hide from her that I couldn’t remember why I had loved her. It was like trying to remember a face, trying to remember a name from long ago. I saw that she too was trying hard to remember why she had loved me. But, I saw she could not.

The sudden dullness that came into her eyes told me I would never again arouse in her the kind of desire she had shown that day in her apartment when we were surrounded by friends, but it was as if we were alone—she gave me things to eat from her hand and kissed me every time she got up to get something or answer the door. And later, in the movie theater she had said, “This is why saris are so useful,” and had taken my hand and put it under the sari, placed it between her legs where I could feel the hot, wet lips of her sex. I could see that now she would not want to do something like that. Her eyes had quieted into the eyes of someone meeting an old friend. There was nothing left in them of the lust, the craving, the ache to be in bed as soon as possible that had given them that spark, the undeniable shine of desire.

Now, as she greeted me, she had used words anyone would say to anyone else—nothing special, no intimacy between lovers, no words of endearment that anticipate the sweet surrender or confess the joy of being together. These were common words—as if they were things without value. Like old newspapers carried by the wind down a lonely street, they were lifeless, toneless, sounds bereft of all sentiment, as when a casual acquaintance asks “How are you?”—as impersonal as the conversation of strangers.

Nevertheless, I had smiled. I had smiled because that is what one does when one meets someone one knows, or used to know. Mine was not a forced smile, but rather an I-am-smiling-because-that-is-what-polite-people-do smile—a smile you would exchange with a stranger on the street.

Then, we’d stood, shaking hands, saying banal things. I really hadn’t expected her to say, “I have missed you these past twenty years and my heart has ached since that day when we kissed good-bye.” So, I said things I usually say to people I meet for lunch or for a drink to “talk business.” I couldn’t very well have said, “Hullo, love!” Or, “I’ve missed you, darling!”

Off we went—walking along the street, chatting like old friends, not like old lovers. My disappointment turned into the dread that I would have to spend a boring day with this woman, this person who was now so alien to me. More than disappointed, now I was annoyed.

But, that was a lie! It was! Because, who was I kidding? I was disappointed that she did not arouse passion in me. I had wanted that! I had wanted to feel again as I had felt back then! As I had felt when I ran to the telephone booth in Charles De Gaulle airport to say, “I’m here!” I did want to feel again the “beautiful ache” as I had when I counted the days until I could take the plane to Paris. I had wanted to feel the way I had felt when I wrote those long, woeful letters, telling her how much I missed her, how much I wanted her, how lonely I felt drinking my cappuccino in the café where we had once shared one. I longed for the beautiful, golden afternoons of Guadalajara’s autumn, which were made more golden by the sweet sorrow. That was the disappointment: I had a longing for longing and my heart broke when I realized she could no longer provide it. I had known it the moment her hands had touched mine--they were cold, rough, hard hands, not hands that would make me feel wanted and loved again.

As we walked, the talk about the weather and how our flights had been had petered out, yet, as if by common understanding, we had not asked each other what we had been doing these past twenty years. It was as if we did not care to know, as if knowing about each other’s lives was not important anymore. It would have been, of course, if we had still been in love. Jealousy and yearning make lovers want to know everything about the time they spend apart. Now I didn’t care if she had had other lovers; it meant nothing to me if she had missed me or not. Perhaps before we met, I might have expected her to ask if I had missed her, but now I was glad she did not. But of course, there was perhaps also another reason why we did not ask each other a question such as that: it was to be expected that we both had had lovers, several lovers, in the twenty years we’d been apart. And those successive lovers had eased and even removed the longing, like the waves that erase promises written in the sand.

When we got to the Rue Mouffetard, I told her that I had rented an apartment there in the 5th Arrondissement, and I asked if she would accompany me to pick up the key. I said this as I would say to a client whom I was meeting for lunch, “Would you mind if we stopped here briefly? It won’t take but a moment; I have to pick up some papers.” No, she did not mind. Why should she? She had come as a courtesy to old times, to something we had meant to each other once; all that was irrelevant, yes, but one can still be civil even in the most awkward of circumstances.

Readers were first introduced to Sara Elizabeth's engaging storytelling voice in the international bestselling short 4 STORIES DOWN, 4 STORIES UP.

Now, she returns with a completely new vision and tone in relating the complexities that arise when girl-meets-girl and a boy comes in between them. Original, poignant, painful and romantic, this is a tale of lesbian relationships told in a completely new style.

This unique story launches a brand-new short story line named The Lab, a home for the best in experimental and abstract short fiction.

Excerpt

Start with a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you are young, your therapist tells you that you go through fifty heartbreaks in your lifetime. She is merely trying to make you feel better about your parents’ bitter divorce that you secretly could care less about, but that line is one that is drilled into your brain. However, this isn’t a story about love, or the heartbreak; it’s a story of the appendages. The “I love you, but...” “But” is the appendage and is as unnecessary as an extra leg. It kicks you when you’re down.

It’s the story of your first crush. He’s the fifth grade hunk—perfect blond spikes, bright blue eyes. But you’re “one of the guys,” so you never get a chance. You secretly wish you weren’t so great at kickball. It’s a story that follows the same exact pattern for every guy you fall for. See also: sixth through ninth grade. See also: a momentary stint during your second year of college.

It’s the story of your best friend in middle school. You’re just children; you don’t realize what’s going on. Your friendship progresses, you think you fall in love, she moves away. She turns into a dirty tramp because what else would Las Vegas do to a girl? She loved you, but she also loved to love others, like, all the boys in her neighborhood. You never speak to her again after that conversation.

It’s the story of a sort of stranger. This one digs a little deeper. She’s the new girl at school. She’s younger than you are, which would normally mean more innocent. This is something you may think for a while until you get to know her on a more intimate level. After it happens, she tells you she loves you. You find this rather convenient and perfect because, well, you sort of really love her, too. Find out later through a third party that she does love you, but she also says she loves many others in the same way. Kick yourself with her extra leg and move on. Don’t date for the remainder of high school.

It’s the story of several arbitrary obsessions that are more or less, dead ends with no promise. They all have an odd pattern of having stripper names. Candi. Stormie. Libby. Jordan.

It all comes down to this...

The guardian angel Zagzagel has had a difficult time reconciling the requirements of his job with his personal feelings for his charges. Through his diary entries (FORSAKEN, DENIAL, DESPERATE, LOST and BROKEN) his frustration has grown until it forced a showdown with none other than Big Papa himself.

Now the fallout from that confrontation begins to settle, but nothing can prepare Zagzagel for the return of two faces from his past...and a complete surprise that will forever alter his future.

This is the final entry in The Zagzagel Diaries, Bryl R. Tyne's worldwide bestselling series.

Excerpt

For early evening, the park two blocks west thrummed with life... I think a more accurate way to describe the sounds and sights would be churned, like this unexplainable hollowness in my gut. Devoid. Much like something special had been taken from me.Thinking on it hurt. Literally, my head throbbed with pain the more I tried to remember Big Papa's face or His words, and I knew we had had them...at least, I thought we had. What I could not recall were the specifics of the outcome of our last confrontation. One minute I was on my knees before Him, the next, I found myself wandering this lonely stretch of road—

Men, the rugged and the whimsical, passed the entrance; I couldn’t help but take them in—their differences and their likes. Some families, picnic gear in tow, headed home. Three punk skateboarders vied for attention on the sloped corner near the stoplight. Not a one of the people I watched seemed truly happy. Of course, nothing new, not with you humans, but it bothered me deep down, and I didn’t understand why. Unlike when I’d found fascination or folly in my past, or, at the very least, something to pass my time, I now realized how much I truly disliked watching you in action.

As far back in my memories as I scrolled, I remember watching over you—some of you from the time you took your first breath, and I held some of your hands all the way to the grave. I was paid to watch, I admit, though, not in any way you might understand. Fulfilling my duties had earned me recognition at Big Papa’s feet. Performing my job well garnered His...well, to put it simply, I was paid in love.

Nothing thrilled me more than knowing I’d receive Papa’s blessing, and yet at the same time, each assignment He handed down made me despise being told what to do, how to do it, when and where, just a little bit more. From that revelation alongside my current actions, I should’ve noticed something was different, but I didn’t, and I continued, even when I found I wasn’t being paid to do so...

Fishnet, black and finely woven, stretched taut on a pair of snow-white legs that went on forever... Now, there was a sight worth emblazoning to memory. Not as if I’d never come across stockings or legs that fine. Something about this woman captivated me.
From the way she leaned half into the open car window to the way she backed away with a jerk and a snap, flipped both her purse and her hair over the same shoulder in the span of a breath, I was hooked. As she stalked my way, I continued to gawk, mouth agape...pleading with my brain and my eyes to turn away, mind my own business. Common sense failed: I couldn’t do it.

She crossed the first intersection...and she didn’t turn. I stepped back into the shadows of the darkened ma & pa breakfast joint and pressed against the wall. Oddly, I froze, arms straight, palms to the bricks on either side of me, as if holding my breath might help. I held the pose, a strange foreboding washing over me, yet with the sudden adrenaline, I’d never felt more alive. Tongue nervously playing with my bottom lip, I peered around the corner—she’d passed the second intersection...two buildings away—I groaned, smacking the back of my head against the wall in my hasty return. With her nearing footfalls, panic consumed me, a feeling I'd never known, and I felt excited and yet so utterly alone all at once. Whatever the reasons for my reactions, I didn't understand. My heart raced.

Short Story

The angel Zagzagel finds himself under direct orders from Big Papa himself to do his job and not interfere with fate's outcome for his charge Charley. Charley's had her own share of issues and loss in her life, and Zag's pretty sure she deserves a break this time. Unable to follow the orders from Above, Zagzagel begins to realize that he may not be able to fulfill his duties much longer. Can he help Charley find closure and peace in his own way, or is it time to give up his wings? This is Diary Entry #4 of 6.The End Is Near!

Tommy is taking Curt home to meet his parents for Thanksgiving. The only redeeming factor to sitting down to dinner with his family and their decade-old strained relationship is Tommy's love for his mother's cranberry sauce. What he's about to discover is that every great recipe, whether for relationships or cranberry sauce, has a secret ingredient that makes everything better. A short story from our Diversity line.

Excerpt

When Russell drove, he fixated on cars immediately in front of him. He kept a safe distance with adequate space for braking between him and the car ahead. Through faded brown irises overhung with drooping lids, his eyes seldom looked away from the car in front of him or the white-lined road. He did not see the varied stronghold of red barns set back from the road or the unison swarms of swallows in the sky at dusk. A parade of antique cars driving the other direction on the divided highway went by without a glance from Russell. Roadside signs advertising cheap smokes and fireworks at the next interchange were only a blur in his peripheral vision.

Janice saw it all from miles away. She peered through glasses that rode low on her chubby nose while she pointed out this and that. She averted any danger ahead with a series of direct questions, and she expected answers from Russell. Russell did not always have answers for her.

Russell’s hands gripped the steering wheel, always at ten and two o’clock. His right foot was tensed and on call at any moment to switch from the gas to the brake. When speeding cars came up and nosed his rear bumper, his eyes darted back and forth from the road to the rearview mirror. He worked to move the car a few inches to the right to give them more room to pass. He slowed as they swerved back into his lane with only inches to spare. He inched the gas pedal down and resumed the legal speed limit.

Russell’s driving gave their Sunday trips a dreamy speed up, slow down rhythmic quality. This ribbon of road was their Sunday pastime; Russell did not want to venture too far from home or use too much gas. Janice looked to the far edges of the fields, she turned her head to follow a side road’s traverse of the land; she looked to the boundaries of sight, as if, after being cooped up in her clerk’s cubicle all week, she needed more. She marveled at the change of seasonal flowers at the roadside and remarked when a car with an out-of-state license plate passed them. A heat-induced shimmering optical illusion in the roadway made her wonder if she would ever see a true oasis in the desert. The perspective of converging road lines miles ahead was a wonder to her. She saw it all and imagined more.

What she now spied appeared as a low, yellow-grey bank of cloud, darker than the few puffs in the sky, but not as ominous as saturated rain clouds. It had a roll to its front edge. It seemed to touch the distant roadway, and it stretched across all lanes and off into the trees to the left and the farmer’s fields to the right. “Russell. Russell, do you see that? What is that? Where did it come from? Is it clouds? Smoke? Is it fog?” Each of her questions was like a shotgun pellet fired into his daydreaming mind. She squinted and leaned forward against the pull of her seatbelt strap. “Is it moving?” “Are you pulling over? Pull over!”

He blinked twice and looked in the direction her finger wagged.
Russell did not say anything as he eased off the gas and studied the phantasmagoria headed their way. He sucked in air from between his parted lips and his knuckles turned white against the shiny black wheel.

“Do you think something is on fire? Is that dust from a farmer’s tractor? I think it is coming toward us!” Her voice was now in a counter alto’s range. Either they were going to drive through it or it was going to overwhelm them in less than half a minute.

Janice’s right hand clutched the vinyl door grip, her voice ascended to soprano status; it demanded, “Russell, is your window up? Roll up your window! Pull off the road for heaven’s sake! Russell, what is that? Stop the car!”

The car’s speed had dropped and Russell’s eyes had a hard time breaking free from the sight in front of him to scan the roadside. He heard and felt the bumpity-bump of the rumble strip under his right tires. The fog overtook them that quickly.

It had traveled fast and cut down the distance between them in a matter of seconds. Russell noticed the brake lights of the vehicle in front of him glare on as that driver attempted to stop and then they disappeared.

Russell sensed the tires move off the noisy strip. He waited for the driver side tires to start their rumble. He looked quickly into the rearview mirror once, but did not see a car behind them. There was nothing but gray. His foot was on the brake hard but he could not tell if they were stopped.

His mind raced. Am I still driving? Did I pull far enough off the road? Why didn’t I hear the left tires hit the strip? I should be off the road. If I drive any further I’ll put the car into the ditch. I’ve never seen anything like this before!

He realized the fog was inside the car despite the fact that he had rolled up his window. Did I have the back windows down too? He could not remember. The car filled with thick mist the color of old muslin and there was a white sound that upset his equilibrium. A soft hum, something a tenor would sing, but with a monotonous tone filled his ears. His head wobbled slightly trying to identify it. It was as though he could not find his balance, his place in space, there was no equity for him in nothingness.

Millie lies in a bed in a convalescent home, clutching what appears to be a simple ball of carpet fibers. In a nurse's attempt to part the patient from her unusual object, a story unfolds, making it clear that the bundle of fabric represents more than just something left behind, but also a personal tragedy Millie clings to just as tightly as her fluff. A short story from our Nibs literary line.

When Robert discovers a business card in a phone booth advertising astral projection lessons, he thinks he's stumbled upon a way to improve on his ordinary life. Unfortunately, the instructor has much more sinister plans for his student. A short story from the bestselling author of SEEKER and OFF FLESH.

Excerpt

He looked down at the card in his hand; the rather shaky card. No, that wasn’t true. Cards, being inanimate objects, didn’t shake by themselves. It was his hand that was shaking, the nerves threatening to get the better of him. Clasping his wrist, he attempted to steady the offending hand, and focussed once more on the address scribbled on the back of the card. He had to admit his handwriting was pretty shit, really, and hard to read at the best of times. And writing while nervous helped his script none. Still, he was familiar with his own writing enough to be able to decipher the address, and looked up from the card at the small house before him.

No doubt about it. The address was the same.

But did he really want to do this?

His legs started moving, one foot down, then the other, taking him towards the house. He stopped at the front door, and his knuckles rapped loudly on the cracked wood. He waited. And as he waited he thought. Why was he here, and why in the hell had he even bothered calling the number on the card?

It seemed public phone boxes were becoming a thing of the past, something only those unwilling to change with the times would use. Fossils. Like him. He was barely into his forties, but he refused point blank to buy a mobile phone, or have one of those, what did they call them, oh yeah, one of those compacts. They seemed to cost a lot of money to do things he didn’t understand. Besides which, he always reasoned, if people wished to contact him they could always ring him at home. House phones had served people well since the late nineteenth century, so why this bizarre need to have every part of their lives subject to the intrusions of others? Bad enough those random companies could contact him in the privacy of his own home; he didn’t want to be intruded upon when he was out and about on his strolls. All this notwithstanding, public phone boxes were still about, and as they had been since time immemorial, they were still littered with calling cards from those offering sex services and the like. Personally he had never picked up one of those cards before; indeed he barely looked at them, preferring to focus his attention on the world outside the phone box whenever the need to use one took him. But, barely an hour ago, something pulled him towards a particular card.

Discovering the Art of Astral Projection it said. For a moment, phone still to his ear, he had looked at the card, completely oblivious to what his mother was saying on the other end of the line. It was almost as if he were sinking under water. He was aware of his mother’s voice, but the words made no sense to him, the sounds simply reverberated around his ear. His attention was squarely on the card, which his hand tenderly pulled off the wall of the booth. He was careful not to damage the card, almost as if by doing so he would offend the person who had placed it there. He held it close to his eyes; the number at the bottom was in the smallest print he’d ever seen. Clearly the owner of the number wanted people to pay attention, not merely glance at the card like all those that offered the promise of sexual pleasuring of various parts of the body.

He couldn’t recall if he’d actually bothered saying goodbye to his mother (He hoped he had— his mother would not have been happy if he’d simply hung up on her!), but next thing he recalled he was dialling the number on the card. He punched the numbers in, carefully rechecking the card with each individual number, just to make sure he didn’t get it wrong.

The call was answered before the first ring had completed, as if whoever it was had been sitting, hand on the receiver, waiting. There was no hello, just the sound of steady breathing. He tried a hello himself, always believing politeness cost nothing, but he’d barely got “hell—” out before a very old voice issued out an address. Urgently he reached into his inner coat pocket and pulled out a pen. He scribbled the address down, and was about to double check the door number, having been caught off guard, when the line went dead.
For a few seconds he remained as he was; phone receiver in one hand, the card in the other. Then it occurred to him. The address given was only a twenty-minute walk away.

Now he waited for an answer, still no clearer on why he was doing this than he had been when he’d first peeled the card off the booth wall. He leaned in closer to the door, briefly wondering if perhaps the owner of that old voice had died in the twenty minutes since he’d given the address. After all, it had been a very old voice, and in his experience old people tended to die at the most inopportune times. But no, he could hear movement from beyond the door. He stepped back, not wanting to appear too eager.

The door creaked open. Actually creaked, like in the old horror films that his mother had forced him to watch when he was a child—a millennia ago it seemed. Like he didn’t sit there shitting his pants through every single minute of the films. Now he felt like soiling his underwear again, but he clenched himself, both literally and figuratively. At first, even with the light coming from the street behind him, he could not see a single thing beyond the opened door, as if some hitherto unknown depth of darkness lived inside the house. His eyes adjusted and he saw the old man standing there, regarding him with baleful eyes.

“Hello, Robert,” the old man said.

Short Story

Sometimes, what isn't said out loud between two people can be more important than what is.

Excerpt

He knew what it was to wake up next to an unfamiliar face. She lay there, dark hair drowning the pillow in her cool dark smell. The pastel flannel caress of sheets accent her soft, supple skin, exaggerating the lazy beauty of this other in his bed.

She rolls over, long dark hair weaving itself over her face. She is not interested in brushing it from her face. Climbing down the steps from the loft, wearing one of his large shirts as a nightgown, she eases herself onto the couch. She gazes intently out the window, drawing a long, thoughtful drag from her cigarette. Morning. The city is still asleep, and the lights from the love motel across the street have let themselves fade out knowing that they need no longer be artificially illuminated.

Pressing his chin on the rail of the loft, he gazes down at this woman. Yet unable to rouse himself from bed he sleepily surveys the scene, head held up by his chinrest. His first words require dedicated effort. His chin is unable to drop; rather his entire head must be lifted in order to force language from his mouth. “What are you thinking?”

She continues staring out the window at the bleak gray of morning, so enraptured that she must be wrestling with intense thought. “Nothing”

Her response sets thoughts churning, futile attempts at deciphering meaning from her evasive response.

Memories roll through the viewing portal of his mind as he searches for meaning in this language. Images of an intoxicated evening. He returned to his house with this woman. Mellow jazz wound its way out of speakers perched on a wooden desk. Cool white wine opened, poured into glasses. Gaping, empty, they are quickly filled with the potent liquid for fear that they might say something, might reveal some secret hiding in that half dark room.

Short Story

A high school boy finds out that in both love and algebra, solving for 'x' may not always get you the result you expect.

When I was born—in the depths of winter some nineteen years ago—I’m almost certain that I read the world in binary. The interesting thing about binary code is that it is comprised entirely of 1s and 0s. It is simple. If the trees were 1, the grass was 0. The sky might have been 11001. The entire world might be described in terms of those two figures. There were no 2s, no 8s, and certainly no variables. Looking back, I wonder what my sense of color was like. Did I understand the hues and intricacies that give life its own, strange brand of vivacity? Certainly I was a product of blending, of experimentation. All odd people are.

Cut and dried. I was good at rules. The warden of the fourth grade, one Ms. Elisabeth Tilden, sent off for a private tutor on the first day of school. “I won’t stand for boredom in this grade,” she told me. She seemed to think that this was a good thing. I didn’t quite understand. I wasn’t bored. I enjoyed understanding everything my teachers told me. I enjoyed knowing the game, and how to play it.

I hated the letter x.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, my tutor drove in from the local high school and sat with me at a small, trapezoidal table in an empty room while the rest of my grade learned multiplication and long division. I’d mastered them the year before by reading my sister’s textbook.

My tutor had his own textbook. It was smooth and gray and very thick. The illustrations were in black and white. The text was large and uniform. It was a very inviting book. And for the first few days of tutoring, it was just as I expected. I inhaled the properties of numbers and operations. I drank math with every meal. My tutor—I’ve forgotten his name by now—smiled down on me with large teeth and gleaming eyes. I imagine that, having only taught high schoolers, he’d never seen the promise of raw, untampered youth.

Short Story

What if doctors were able to transplant your mind into a new body after a terrible accident? What if, thanks to the process, you found you could no longer love the person you were with or live your old life? What would become your new 'normal?'

Excerpt

The first thing I remember is dying.

Then every one of my muscles spasms like my body is trying to pull itself apart. For a moment, I don’t know who or where I am, my limbs flail, and there’s a strange noise all around me, then I realize the noise is me, screaming.

Then there are arms and hands holding me down, easing me back into the bed while someone makes soothing noises in my ear. Slowly, by degrees, each muscle loosens its knots, though I still feel like a current has gone through me, leaving every nerve seared and burning in my—

—body. There’s a white sheet covering me, which I fling aside and look down at myself. This body, this pile of flesh and skin and hair—this me is an impossibility. Why am I alive?

The same hands that held me down pull the sheet back over me. I focus on the people attached to those hands, or try to. Their clothing is as white as the sheets, like the rest of the room. Everything here is white. Is this heaven?

“Honey, it’s me. I’m right here.”

It’s my mother speaking. No, this is not heaven.

I look up. She’s by my bedside, tears running down her smiling face as she leans over me and I breathe in her scent of powdered lavender.
“You’re going to be fine, Jess. We brought you back.”

* * *

One of the nurses—that’s who the people in white are, I now realize—gives me something she says will make me relax, and when that kicks in I don’t mind my aching muscles, my confusion, or my mother. The whiteness of the room goes gray and hazy, and I close my eyes.

When I open them again, time has passed, I’m not sure how much. My mother isn’t there. No one is there except me. The room looks golden now. I try to sit up, which takes marathon effort, like I never learned how to do it correctly. When I’m finally sitting up, I take a second to catch my breath.

The details come out in brief snippets from hospital staff over the next couple hours, then I get the whole story from someone I eventually find out is my counselor. It’s been six months since I died. Apparently, the paramedics got to me in time to keep my brain functions active long enough to download my consciousness. Growing the new body took a while, though. April 15, they tell me, is the day I woke up. My new birthday. The nurse tells me that in a few more days, I’ll be ready to start physical therapy.

Gary comes to visit me, and his face lights up when he walks in and sees I’m awake. He’s been by almost every day, Mom tells me, even when I was not awake, when they had no idea when I would wake up, or if I would wake up. That happens sometimes. People are transferred into their new bodies and just never wake up.

He’s brought a photo album with him. This is what they’ve said to do, to show me pictures from my life and reorient me to it before I’m released. He sets the photo album down and envelops me in a massive hug, and I inhale his scent.

I feel nothing.

Gary kisses me then. He’s crying, and his hands are cradling my face now as he kisses me everywhere on my face. I worry he’s going to become hysterical, which would be unlike him, but how often does your lover return from the dead? Well, actually, it happens all the time, but not to everyone every day.

He settles onto the bed and opens the photo album across our laps. Some of the snapshots are old, pictures of me in school and of my parents when they were young, before I was born. We skip over these and move to the digicaps of us at our first apartment, on vacation in Mexico, me falling off the water skis over and over in an endless loop. Our new house. Our anniversary. A kiss that repeats in eternal cycle.

I feel as though I’m looking at someone else’s photo album. It’s mildly interesting, but I feel no connection. Eventually, my attention wanders.

A young couple moves into what they think is going to be their dream cottage in the countryside. When the local wildlife starts to invade their land, the couple soon realizes that every Garden of Eden has at least one unsavory character. A work of short fiction from our Nibs literary line.

Will's aunt wants him to spend some time with his estranged son at Christmas. All Will wants is to knock off his girlfriend's husband and collect a share of the life insurance policy. Unfortunately, when you fail to take into account all the angles, the perfect crime can really ruin your holiday. A short story from our Fingerprints line.

Short Story

A displaced American and his British boyfriend, on a hiking trip into the mountains, find that the explorations of both wilderness and relationships have much in common with the works of Kipling. A short story from our Diversity line.

Excerpt:

Christmas is a holiday with family at the heart of the season. In this short story from the author of CONTINUUM, THE COLORADO COW AND OTHER STORIES and ANOTHER FINE CHRISTMAS, Frank discovers that sometimes discovering who you are is the best present, and that often the family you choose can be stronger than the family into which you were born.

Short Story

James is determined to provide a comfortable life for his family, but when his college degree fails to provide the goods he finds himself making deals he hadn't ever imagined.

Short Story

Angela, a society woman from Chicago, heads to San Francisco to confront her husband Cliff as to why he has quit working in her father's office. It seems Cliff has reevaluated much of his life, and Angela's about to find out the extent to which his views have changed. For Cliff, the move to San Francisco has affected more than just his career. A short story from our Diversity line.

Excerpt

“It isn’t much, I’m afraid.” Cliff held the door for Angela.

“I wonder that you live here, then,” she said with some asperity, going in before him. The short hallway went past the open door of a bedroom, past a small kitchen, and led into the living room. He took her coat from her and hung it on the back of a chair. She laid her purse on an end table, and looking around, wrinkled up her nose. There was a lingering smell of cooked food—onions, she thought. Cliff couldn’t boil water. Who on earth could have been cooking onions?

He shrugged. “It’s home.”

“Home,” she said, “is Chicago. And, speaking of which,” she added, turning to face him and lifting one eyebrow, “when are you coming home?”

He shrugged again and went past her, to the window overlooking the street. “It’s not much of a view, but you can just see the hills from here,” he said. “The lights are spectacular at night.”

“I did not come to San Francisco to enjoy the views,” she said.

He turned from the window, framed in the fading light. “But you should,” he said. “Enjoy the views, I mean. They’re here anyway, and so are you, and they’re lovely. It’s a lovely city.” He paused just a second or so too long before he added, “And you are lovely, too, Angela.”

She looked hard at him. He was still handsome, the handsomest man she had ever known. And they had only been apart a year—how much could anyone change in a year? He had, though, she could see that, even if she could not altogether put her finger on just what the changes were.

“Look at you, the way you’re dressed. I thought we were going to dinner?”

“We are.” He looked down at himself, spreading his hands. “What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?”

“For dinner? Jeans and a tee shirt? You would hardly have gone out the door without a jacket and tie, in Chicago.”

He smiled. She had a disconcerting feeling that he was amused—but by what? By her? As if she were overdressed, rather than the other way around.

“San Francisco is less formal, really. And the place we’re going, well, no one would be wearing a jacket and tie. Believe me, I’ll fit right in.”

“And maybe I won’t?”

He seemed to take that seriously. “You could leave the hat here, and the gloves. As a matter of fact, leave the jacket off your suit, and I’ll find you a sweater to put on.”

“I don’t think I need to change my costume. And you didn’t answer the question I asked you earlier. When are you coming back to Chicago?”

He sighed. “I don’t know, Angela. Truly, I don’t.”

“I went by the office.” She paused, waiting to see if he would offer an explanation. When he did not, she went on, “They told me you don’t work there anymore. They said you haven’t been there for six months or more.”

He smiled again. “It’s true. I was going to tell you about it at dinner.”

“But, that was the agreement. That was the plan. A year in Daddy’s office here, and then back to Chicago, and he would make you a division manager.”

“Yes. I decided actually that I found insurance boring.”

“What are you doing, then?” She did not ask the obvious: why he had not informed her that he had left her father’s company? Why, in fact, if he had decided he found the work boring, he had not come back to Chicago?

“I’m...I’m tending bar.”

“That’s ridiculous. What kind of money could you possibly make doing that? How could you think we could live on it?”

Excerpt

Following the traumatic events of LOST, the angel Zagzagel is more determined than ever to stand by his charges and do things his own way. Until now, Big Poppa has allowed Zag to follow his heart, but He's about to lay down the law with his renegade angel. The wrath of Heaven is about to crash down on Zag's head, setting the stage for the showdown to come. Only one Diary entry left before the international bestselling short story series concludes!

Excerpt

My previous assignment touched me in a way I still, after a week of Sundays, couldn’t figure. After all these weeks, I had not ascended the Heavens for home or for counsel with Big Papa. Why, you might ask. For no other reason than obligation had I been here for thousands, performed my duty when needed most, and watched graciously as many had passed. Yet I struggled to understand why after all these millennia and out of thousands of charges, the passing of Charlie had such an impact on me.

I searched for answers to my current insubordination, concluding only that maybe I was tired. The deeper I thought, the more obvious the truth became; there was no maybe to it. After all this time, I was tired. Tired of helping, but more apparent, tired of hurting.

I shouldn’t have let myself get this way, should’ve made sure I was better prepared, studied harder, prayed more diligently. Truth was, I was so deep in my pain and so determined in my longing, I could not have conceived the detrimental effects of my thinking. I did realize, however, that I would not seem to let it go, no matter how I tried. My emotions appeared to have gotten the better of me.

Because of this, I felt almost ashamed. Almost.

Charlie had been the first of my charges to convince me emotions were not a waste of time. Since losing Jagniel, I’d turned off, little by little, tuned out, did all but forget anything good existed in my realm or yours. Because of Charlie’s faith and tenacity, I felt accepted, loved... In truth, if not for Charlie, I may have never experienced love again, at all.

I had loved Charlie. Not in the romantic sense, but I loved her, nonetheless. Love I felt so sure and so strong that when she passed from this Earth, I succumbed to the opposite feeling just as fiercely. Dwelling on this was harmful to my well-being; I knew I was acting and reacting wrong in so many ways, and yet, thanks to Charlie’s love, I realized I could feel again, and I acknowledged that what I’d felt for the past couple of months and what I was going through right now was indeed, very real. So no, with that logic, any tinge of shame evaporated.

Damn it, it hurt like hell to aid others in finding peace while knowing mine would forever evade me—and not by my own doing. That was the true shame. I’d lost love—Jagniel—to circumstances, false teachings...power plays. Forever it seemed I had pushed back the bitterness; only since Charlie’s death, my denial of my own feelings ate at me like never before. “Losing love twice in one lifetime can do that to you,” Charlie would’ve told me, while patting my back softly, had she been here.

She wasn’t here to comfort me, though, and she never would be again. Yin’s opposite flared to life the longer I dwelled...and I breathed deep to dampen my rage. Here I was, expected to return and report to Big Papa, to do my job. Is that what you humans were to Him? Knowing Papa found amusement in watching my white-knuckled ride on this emotional rollercoaster further irked me. The longer I thought, the deeper I let my emotions take me, the more I was determined never to go back. Was that even possible?

Instead of returning, I’d wallowed away my time on Earth, taking in a few sights...people watching. Although, a good portion of the last two weeks, I’d spent my time with Chloe.

I’d come to Chloe not only to check in on one of my youngest charges, but also because above all others, she would understand the pain I harbored. Too much to put on a child? Not my Chloe. Let me explain.

Having the gift of knowing, she could feel someone at his or her core. A simple touch is often all it took, but with me, she had always gone to extremes. Chants and lapses of meditation were common. Not that I’d arrived for a reading of any kind, no. I came to Chloe because she knew what it’s like to be the black rose among the red ones, the oddball out... She knew what it was like to be different, but unlike me—who constantly sought Papa’s approval—she relished in being a misfit. I came to Chloe, seeking an understanding soul.

Having suffered a recent breakup with her girlfriend of two months, Chloe was in the pits. The pits of agony, despair? I didn’t know, but “pits” was the word for her current conundrum, she’d assured me while asking “why” for the twentieth time that morning as she made one weak attempt after another to distract herself from her pain. At fourteen, Chloe felt as if the end of any relationship was the end of her world, but I couldn’t quite see it her way.

Her boyfriend had stuck by her through the last three breakups, and Chloe’s mom was exceptionally understanding of her daughter’s sexuality—her bisexuality. Well, when her mother was home. I hadn’t seen the woman come or go in the last five days. Chloe had informed me that her mother was just off on another of her “little trips.”

Yeah.... I shrugged at that one, unable to find a proper response. Her mother’s trips consisted of parties, sex, drugs, sex, more partying, and more drugs—a perpetual cycle of wicked she couldn’t seem to break. The woman may’ve brought home enough to keep a roof over their heads with her prostitution, but a positive role model she was not. Left alone often, too often, Chloe was a tough one for it.

Excerpt

Excerpt

When an artist becomes obsessed with her married lover, she finds herself having to choose between the woman she loves and her artistic career. This is the first in Candlelight, a new series of literary romance short stories.

Excerpt

The sea has always been my enemy, and also my friend. This dichotomy is not something that I expect other people to understand. Why should they? It is for me a fact of life, a feeling, an attitude that is part of who I am. I know this is strange, especially bearing in mind the place where I live and my own former profession.

I am, or rather I was, an artist, a good one. Not a great one, although I spent years trying to be great, but still good enough for my name to have been known even in non-artistic circles for a time. Indeed, I may be familiar to you, an echo from the past, as some of my paintings have found their way into prints or cards sold to casual browsers on the coast. And what I painted back then, or at least what I was best known for, were my pictures of the sea.

If now you ask me how I painted it, I would have said I painted it in all its moods, for it is neither male nor female. No, it is faceless, a primeval force like anger or fear or love. Sometimes, on bright summer days, it is as translucent as glass, whilst in winter, it is wild and grey like the western moors. Or when the wind rises or there are storm clouds on the horizon, it breathes out swirls of foam and hurls them, spitting and snarling like wild dogs, onto the glistening rocks. But it is the nights when I love it best. Nights when the fading light touches the surface of the salt-water like a lover’s hand and I watch the colours shift from blue-grey to grey to purple-black. And then at last if the moon is full, the single streak of silver reflected over the sea is like a brushstroke from another world. A Rothko, a Mondrian.

So it is surprising that I should also hate that which fascinates me and from which I once earned my living. But I cannot stay away for long. Now as I speak to you, I am sitting on the deserted sands where I once lived. The rough stones against my back are pricking my skin, and now and then the wind lifts the faded blonde hair from my face. It is evening and the air is becoming colder.

She is late. I am waiting for a woman, a woman like the sea. I do not know yet whether she will come.

Rufus thinks he's received a desperate plea to rescue a pants inspector who is being held hostage in a garment factory. Upon discovery of the truth, it may be Rufus' own life that needs alterations. A new short story from the author of the international bestseller A SUMMER WEDDING.

Excerpt

The twenty-something receptionist reclined imperceptibly in her office chair, blonde curls cascading over her shoulders, dull blue-gray eyes oozing apathy. “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t allow visitors inside the factory. Company policy.”

Rufus McDonal resumed his pacing in the severely over-illuminated lobby of the Carson Canyon Jeans Company. Seething with desperation, he turned to face the gatekeeper seated at the highly stylized, art-deco monstrosity that served as a reception desk and pressed his hands firmly on the glass countertop.

He glanced at her slim, metallic nametag. “Listen, Carolina. This is a matter of the utmost importance. I need to speak with Inspector #5.” A strand of oily, jet-black hair tumbled across his eyes. He hurriedly brushed it away and tucked it behind his ear.

“Listen, Mr.—”

“McDonal.”

“Mr. McDonal. First of all, my name is pronounced Car-o-lee-na. And second, I don’t really know what this is about, but company policy clearly states that I am not allowed to let anyone back on the factory floor unless you’ve filed a visitor request, and you have someone to escort you.”

Frustration seized Rufus, hands fairly trembling at this display of utter defiance. “This isn’t a government lab or anything. Can’t you escort me back?”

“Sorry. Can’t leave the front desk.”

Rufus pursed his lips, shut his eyes tightly and inhaled deeply through his nose. “I just don’t understand. All I want to do is talk to Inspector #5 for two minutes. That’s it. Two minutes.”

Carolina pushed herself away from the computer keyboard, rose to her feet abruptly and glanced first left, then right. She rubbed her forehead then leaned a few inches towards Rufus.

“Okay, here’s the deal. If you pull around the back, you’ll see a guarded parking area. That’s the employee lot. We had to lay off the security guard a couple months back, so the gate stays open twenty-four-seven. The first shift ends in about fifteen minutes. All the factory workers will exit through a large double door that says ‘Authorized Personnel Only.’ If you park on the far east end, the security cameras won’t catch—”

A locked hallway door sprang open, and a company security guard sauntered through. Carolina stood rigid. “Sir, as I explained before, we do not allow unannounced visitors on the factory floor. You need to call and make an appointment if you would like a tour.” She nodded towards the front entryway.

Rufus, not a genius by any stretch of the imagination, but also not the dullest knife in the drawer, smiled and held up his hands. “So sorry. I will call and make an appointment tomorrow. Thank you for your help.” His attempt at subtlety as he winked at her failed miserably.

She rolled her eyes.

Short Story

Sometimes, it's the uninvited guests that make a dinner party more memorable...

Monica, an African-American mother dealing with difficult times, is determined to throw a birthday party for her son at a local Mouse Land. When guests start canceling and the store managers begin demanding payment in full, Monica finds herself caught up in a case of racial bias. Can the situation be defused before the happy occasion becomes a nightmare? A short story from our Diversity line.

Excerpt

Short Story

After discovering a photograph in a book of a little girl killed by her own mother, a woman becomes preoccupied wondering how anyone could kill their own child. One hot summer day the answer becomes all too violently clear. A short psychological thriller from our Fingerprints line.

Excerpt

She wished she had never picked up the book in the first place. Wished she had never gone into the bookstore and lifted it from its shelf. But there was the morbid curiosity thing: that stopping to look at accidents on the highway compulsion from which we all suffer.

The book was a collection of crime scene photographs, with notes from a New York homicide detective, who was now retired. These actual scenes of death had no glamorous patina that some thriller movie would give them. The blood was real; the suicide victims with their heads blown off real; the burned bodies real; the executions real...clinical in black and white; sad demises recorded without one whit of sentimentality or sympathy. It made her realize that death was just as mundane, and ugly, as eating a piece of cabbage or taking a shit.

And then she came to the little girl. Oh God, she wondered, hand trembling, match’s flame wavering as she brought it to the tip of her cigarette. Oh God, why did I have to turn the page? Why did I have to see that photograph?

It was just one of many. There among the murders, the decapitations, the lovers’ quarrels that had ended in a way that ensured no one would ever love again. All of these were shocking, she could give them that much, but they were so outrageous, with all the blood, the grim display of brain and other interior matter, that they managed to keep her at a distance. She couldn’t get emotionally involved.
But then she came to that page.

That one photograph had burned itself indelibly into the soft pink tissue of her brain. A kind of branding.... As much as she would try, she knew she could never forget it. Almost of its own will, the photograph would rise up in memory, painstakingly detailed, as if she were doomed to open the book again and again to that same page, reliving the nausea for the rest of her life.

The little girl had been seven years old. She lay on a concrete floor: a women’s restroom near Coney Island. Her hair, looking light brown in the stark black-and-white forensic photograph, lay in ringlets. Her pale limbs, straight, thin, with no womanly development, were as white as marble, contrasted with the grimy floor. Cigarette butts and Kotex wrappers lay nearby. She was just another piece of garbage.

And her little outfit! It never failed to bring tears to her eyes to remember those clothes. She remembered wearing outfits like that herself as a little girl, circa 1965. Her outfit, she thought, biting her lip to hold back the sob/hiccup she had produced when she was first assaulted by the image...her little outfit evoked tenderness. It inspired her imagination, causing her to wonder about the mother’s hands who had dressed the little girl in it that morning.

“There, don’t you look pretty? Turn around for me.”

Polka dots. A summer outfit, made from cotton. Who knew the color? Everything had melded into the unsympathetic gray of a crime scene photo. A tiny ruffled skirt and matching sleeveless midriff top. The skirt had white polka dots, while the top contrasted, with polka dots the color of the solid part of the skirt, on a white background.
She wore white patent leather shoes. Anklet socks, rimmed in lace.
And she had been strangled.

The homicide detective’s notes said that the little girl had been strangled by her mother.

She stared at the photograph for longer than she should have. Maybe if she had flipped to another page, horror and sorrow making her recoil, she would not be a prisoner of this image. But she had stood in the air-conditioned chill of the bookstore, unable to tear her gaze away from the little girl lying on concrete, lips parted and eyes staring at nothing forever.

Short Story

From the twisted mind of Wade J. McMahan (author of "Bite This! A Richard Dick Mystery") comes another hilarious short story. Larry the hairy-legged Fairy gets called up on the carpet by the Queen's representative, Rupert the Low. A meeting of the two minds at a local Bug Bar, however, is about to change the situation. You'll never look at stories about Fairies the same way again!

]]> bookstore@coffeetimeromance.com (Coffee Time Romance eBook Store) http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/flying-solo-p-3007 Sat, 09 Jul 2011 19:34:10 -0400 0.99 USD 3007 Untreed Reads 1 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/images/large/Flying%20Solo_SM_LRG.jpg http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/ugly-naked-people-p-3091 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/product_reviews/ugly-naked-people-p-3091 Short Story

Rave is concerned about her girlfriend Astrid's rapidly declining weight and health. As Astrid's eating disorder begins to take its toll on the couple's relationship, Rave hopes that a dramatic move on her part will save both Astrid and the future they could have together.
Excerpt

Cuddling in beside her on the subway, Rave wrapped a mischievous arm around Astrid’s shoulder. Action was a form of language. An arm around a shoulder said, “This girl is my girl, and I want the whole world to know it.” They had entire conversations without opening their mouths.

SHORT STORY!

It's time to take another horrifying trip through the streets of Amelia. In this outing, Jake and Emily are pressured by a bully and his friends to spend one hour in Amelia's abandoned theater. With the discovery of two unusual masks inside, Jake and Emily are about to show their abusers who the real victims are. This is Book 2 in the Roads Through Amelia short story series.

Excerpt:

Jake sprawled in the dirt when Tommy Worl pushed him in the chest. “Come on, Dobbs, whatcha gonna do, huh?” Tommy asked. He was a large boy for fourteen years of age, with sledge-like arms and the beginnings of the sort of gut drunken frat boys get around junior year.

“Fuck off, Tommy,” Jake replied. He scrabbled to his feet, a spindly boy of thirteen who was often called “Scarecrow” by the kids in his class. His straw-blond hair and gangly frame helped this along, but unlike Dorothy’s traveling companion, he had quite the brain.

And why were these two boys glaring at one another alongside the road bordered by a dirt shoulder and grassy fields to east and west? What was the focus of this David and Goliath showdown? Likely it was the eleven-year-old girl behind Tommy, being held by each arm by Tommy’s current lackeys. The girl had a soft, rounded face in stark contrast to Jake's narrow, angular one. Where Jake was short and too thin for his age, at eleven, the girl was already only half an inch shorter than he. Where he had shoulder-length blond locks, she had a short crop of raven black. They shared the same sleet gray eyes and oblong ears. They shared a certain bearing in their general behavior. They shared parents, too.

She was Emily Dobbs, Jake’s kid sister. The two of them had been at the Marsten Mall in the town of North Perry, just mooning around, really. They had time to kill during their spring break, and they both liked to window shop at the mall together and poke fun about how ridiculous some of their fellow consumers looked and behaved in public.

They weren’t the only kids who hung out at the mall during the break. Tommy Worl and his constant goons had been there too. When Jake began catching glimpses of the three lunkheads following him and Emily, he had suggested to her that they get to their bikes and make their way home. Tommy and company had followed after them once again.. They rode a bit behind Jake and Emily at first, hanging back along Town Road #1. Not long after passing the Saffron Street intersection, however, Tommy put on a burst of speed and shot out ahead of Jake. Jake slowed down, but his sister didn’t. Instead, she tried to maneuver around her brother, but she was too late in turning, and succeeded in nothing less than tangling them both up and spilling them to the concrete.

The moment that happened, Tommy’s goons scooped up little Emily and dragged her away from Jake, who had yet to recover from the collision and fall. When he did get up, he saw Tommy spitting in his sister’s face and screamed, charging heedlessly at the larger boy. That’s where we came in, friends and neighbors.

“Let Emmy go,” Jake barked. He still felt banged up from the crash and the shove, but his voice came out firm and true. His resolve wavered not a bit, despite the disadvantage of size and numbers. “Just let her ride home.”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Tommy, planting his hands on his wide hips. Tommy had a knack for finding what drove twerps like Dobbs up a wall, and the little sister obviously stood as a shining sore spot for the boy. Though he had no real intention of doing anything crude, he said, “I think we should play a round of ‘Tommy’s New Girlfriend’ first.”

“Let go of me you assholes,” Emily fairly shrieked. It wouldn’t do much good. On a Wednesday evening like this in North Perry, few folks would be traveling this stretch of Town Road #1. “Kenneth Bowler, I’ll tell your dad about this,” she threatened the boy holding her left arm. Bowler flinched, and when he did, she took the momentary opportunity to break free of them both and run toward Jake.

Tommy heard a grunt behind him, but was too cumbersome and slow of wit yet in his own large frame to do more than reach for Emily's hair as she streaked past him. She crouched guardedly behind Jake, who kept his eyes locked on Tommy’s face. Emily bunched her hands in the back of Jake’s light blue denim jacket. “Come on, Jake, let’s get out of here,” she said, her voice low and weak, a whimper.

“I know where you live, Dobbs,” Tommy warned. His face flushed red, and his forehead furrowed, as it would if one were deep in thought. “I’m not gonna chase you again, not tonight. I don’t even have to.” His hefty frame relaxed as he crossed his arms over his chest. His henchmen were in the process of picking up their bikes.

“What do you want?” Tommy stood patiently, grinning, his eyes playing across the sky as if in thought. Jake Dobbs, nobody’s idiot, knew already what the henchmen didn’t appear to have come to terms with yet. Tommy wasn’t going for the twelve-speed mountain bike he’d dumped off to the side of the road. He was just waiting, wearing a wolfish grin, and occasionally taking his eyes off of the sky and his mind off of his ruminations to consider the Dobbs children. The look he gave them sent shivers up Emily and Jake’s spines, but for Jake at least, it was little more than the shiver of expectation. “What do we have to do to send you and your goons away?” Jake grumbled.

“I’m thinking about that,” Tommy replied. Ken Bowler and the other boy with Tommy, Stanley Moore, had brought themselves forward to flank their fearless leader. Like Darth Vader’s red-cloak guards, Jake thought.

“Jake, let’s just go,” Emily pleaded. She tugged at him now, but her brother would not budge. “He’s just a toad,” she said loudly enough to be heard by Tommy and company. “A slimy, perverted toad!” Bowler and Moore snickered at the jibe until Tommy gave them each a withering stare.

“I got an idea,” Tommy said. “You two know the old play theater back up the road, over on Libra Street?”

“Darin’s Theater House?” Jake inquired, eyebrow raised. Emily let out a little gasp right behind him. Darin’s, unused and abandoned since the mid-70s, was said by many to be a haunted place. Then again, the entire Amelia City area and its suburbs seemed to have fostered a lot of such stories. “Yeah, what of it?”

“Here’s the deal,” Tommy said, planting his hands on his hips. “You two go in there, stay inside for like an hour or something, if you can. Grab something to bring back for me, too. Do that,” Tommy said, spreading his arms in a show of peace. “And we’ll leave you alone. No questions asked.”

Field Accountant Richard T’Ssuh has just one task: get his spacecraft docked so that everyone on-board can get paid. Thanks to his Captain taking time to fulfill her 'personal needs', there's no room to park and the crew is about to mutiny. Rich has got a clever solution to the problem. Too bad it just might end his career and, possibly, his life.

Told from the point of view of an elevator ride, Samantha explores the ups and downs of her relationship with another woman. Will Samantha get everything she's ever wanted on the 4th floor, or lose it all in The Lobby? A unique twist on the girl-meets-girl tale.

Short Story

On a long ocean voyage, there are few things worse than being trapped at sea with a person who bores you to tears. The captain of The Princess of the Andes thinks he may have a solution to his annoying and talkative passenger, but his plan is going to require some VERY unusual intervention by his crew if it's to succeed.

Short Story

A young lesbian walking home alone at night is rescued

Linda, who is becoming bored in her marriage, finds herself fixated on the new neighbor who has moved into the trailer next door. Might she be the change Linda's looking for?

Excerpt 

Short Story

Coming to terms with who you are can sometimes make you take desperate measures. The angel Zagzagel returns in this third entry to the series to help his charge choose love over murder.

Excerpt:

Nick yanked on the bolt, dropped in the cartridge, shoved the bolt forward, and somehow managed to drop it into place. His finger trembled beside the trigger.

The man had matured into quite an idiot, sorry to say. Though in reality, I didn’t feel as sorry as I probably should have. None of this was my fault, you see, and that’s what irked me. Had I the freedom I needed to perform my duties without interference, without adhering to Big Papa’s guidelines to the letter, I wouldn’t be here watching Nick toy with making the worst mistake of his life.

Sadly, Nick appeared beyond toying at this point. If only I could have been there for him—really been there, and not just as a watchful guardian but as a friend, someone he could talk to, fall back on when needed. I swear Big Papa thrived on making my job as difficult as possible. Game playing is what this boiled down to, and I abhorred playing games. You’re not to interfere, Papa forever reminded me. I’ll not warn you again, Zag. Allow the humans to make their own choices. Right, the one time I heed His advice and look where the grandiose plan landed my charge. I added Big Papa’s wonderful idea—instilling these beings with the power to choose—to my arguing points as I struggled to adjust to this too-natural locale.

Other than the occasional train, which ran along a set of railroad tracks to the east, and the noises from the campus, which sat easily a hundred-plus yards past the field, silence shrouded us but for a random birdsong, the buzz of bees, or the near undetectable flutter of a butterfly. Give me the hustle of an urban environment any day. I scoffed at my surroundings as I turned to view Nick’s target—his roommate, and possibly more if my charge wasn’t so uptight about his sexuality. Moving about the far end of the otherwise lonely practice field, Cody volleyed a black-and-white ball from one side to the other with ease . . . . Those tight white shorts of his are easy on the eyes too. With a resigned sigh, I forced my attention back to Nick.

]]> bookstore@coffeetimeromance.com (Coffee Time Romance eBook Store) http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/the-zagzagel-diaries-desperate-p-2986 Sat, 04 Jun 2011 23:01:18 -0400 0.99 USD 2986 Untreed Reads http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/images/large/Desperate_LARGE_LRG.jpg http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/at-the-diner-p-2977 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/product_reviews/at-the-diner-p-2977

Short Story

A young man attempts to reconnect with his estranged father over meals at a small-town diner. Can a love of food overcome the pain of a dad and son pulled apart?

We buried my mom in a cemetery just north of Albany, in a plot that looks out over the Hudson River. I liked that. I thought maybe she could look out from her grave sometimes, if there was anything left of her that could see, or feel, and the river would be there moving along on its way to the sea, and it would be good. It was a bitter cold day in February, and we stayed around just long enough to see the coffin begin to drop down into the earth.

My father didn't say anything to me the whole day, not at the house, the funeral home, in the limousine or at the cemetery. He had not spoken to me for about three weeks before she died, and it was another two months before he said anything at all.

"A regular coffee and a donut, please," he said finally, standing in front of me at the diner where I work in the mornings. "To go."

I was surprised. But I was cool. I gave him his coffee and a donut in a little white paper bag, with Sweet’N Low and extra cream, the way he likes it. I said, "A dollar eighty, please," and he gave me a five and left. I had to go in the back and sit down for a minute, I was shaking so bad.

You could pass the Shaker Square a dozen times and never notice it. It's just outside the city limits on Washington Avenue, and if you're doing the speed limit (or maybe a little more) it wouldn't look like much. It's just a standard roadside diner like a railroad car, with a long stainless steel counter, a row of stools and a couple of booths against the front window.

My regulars and I feel like a family in the mornings. We get a pretty good class of people in, guys that work out at the power plant, businessmen, suburban widows who love to have somebody else do the dishes, and a couple of doctors, too. I talk to everybody and they tell me their problems, sort of like a bartender.

I love to see how everybody likes to hang out together. I went to college once, for a semester, and going to meals was my favorite thing. Of course, that probably comes from my mom, who was a great cook. I used to hang out in the kitchen with her while she cooked dinner or baked cookies, watching and learning and talking to her. And even when she wasn’t cooking, we’d sit in the living room together after all my homework was done and read her food magazines, passing back and forth the recipes and the pictures. She could only make us the most basic things, because my dad was a real meat-and-potatoes guy, but we read those magazines anyway and imagined how those fancy recipes tasted.

My father and I never got along. I was a disappointment from day one, when I wouldn't go out and play ball with the other boys in the neighborhood. I dropped out of college, I hung around with the wrong kind of people, and I came to work here at the Shaker Square. He was worried his friends would see me behind the counter, in my grease-stained apron, with my hair tied into a ponytail and an earring in my ear. "Men don't wear earrings," he told me once, but I didn't tell him then just what kind of man I was.

Short Story

When Michal, daughter of Saul, first sees David, she falls in love at once. But her father's enmity and greed stand between her and the man she longs for. When David is forced to flee, her life changes forever - but what will happen when he returns to claim her?

Short Story

Detective Richard Dick is hired to look into mysterious

Short Story

When Henry wakes up one morning, he discovers that the trees in his garden are very different - how will he respond to the

Short Story

Welcome to Amelia, an area of land that's filled with

the creatures from your darkest nightmares. In this first visit, a

homeless man finds himself up against a creature determined to kill him

and his fellow street people. This release includes ROADMAP TO AMELIA, an introduction to the series by the author.

Excerpt

David Engle burst through the eastern doors of the abandoned high school

like a maelstrom. I can’t run from it forever, he thought. And if I

escape, it’ll kill the others.

A homeless vagabond for several years, David belonged to a pleasant

family-like cadre known as ‘The Forgotten Ones’ in Amelia City. His

attire was that of the standard American bum, which included a tattered

old pair of jeans, a worn chambray shirt, cast-off boots and, of course,

an Army surplus field jacket. His odor matched that of a cat lady’s

apartment. The loudest sounds in his ears were of his own pounding

heart, and the splash of his feet as he ran along a floor covered in

water dribbling through a damaged roof.

And what was he doing, this curious fellow? He was running for life and

limb from the Beast. No living thing David had ever encountered could

completely and effortlessly rip a human being’s head off. Twenty minutes

before in a seldom-used subway terminal, he had seen the creature do

just that to an unsuspecting civilian. David had noticed the rise in

disappearances of his kinsmen, as well as the discovery of some of their

bodies. Now he knew why.

David stumbled over a pile of old textbooks, discarded relics never

properly disposed of in the times when people still attended classes in

the school. He caught himself, his tattered boots scrambling for

purchase on the wet floor. The school’s roof hadn’t kept the rain out

for months now, and the stench of wood rot, mildew and other forms of

decay wafted into his nostrils. Gagging on the pungent mixture of

aromas, he vaulted forth.

Twenty yards in he heard its growl, a thundering cacophony that shook

the very foundations of the building and sent tremors rippling

throughout the city. These were its hunting grounds, these places of

darkness and abandonment. Through no fault of their own, in most cases,

the members of the Forgotten Ones had taken up camp in the various lairs

of a creature beyond comprehension or mercy.

David stumbled on, trying not to imagine the horror or pain he would

likely suffer should the Beast catch up to him. He reached his right

hand into one of his upper jacket pockets, withdrawing an old and

battered miniature flashlight of the type policemen were issued. He

still moved forward, his sweaty hand fumbling to turn the top of the

trinket so that he could find his way more readily.

Short Story

When Celia becomes obsessed with her grandmother's painting, she realises her life will never be the same again. How can she ever break free?

There was something about the picture that Celia didn’t like. It wasn’t the subject matter that disturbed her, nor even the way it was painted.

She could see nothing to irritate her eye in the simple country scene with corn meadows in the foreground giving way to rich green hills in the more distant perspective. In the middle of the painting stood two young people,: a boy and a girl, perhaps early twenties, both dressed in bright colours. Red and blue. They were walking towards the hills. The girl’s blonde hair streamed backwards in the breeze as her face turned sideways to the boy, and she was laughing. 

The way the girl laughed made Celia’s heart beat faster. It wasn’t an outright joyful expression; the side of her mouth that could be seen was twisted downwards and she seemed to be gently mocking her companion.

Whether in seriousness or jest was impossible to tell; she couldn’t see the boy’s face, so could not judge what his response was supposed to be. She wished more and more strongly that her grandmother hadn’t bequeathed the picture to her. When the package had arrived at her door a month ago, she’d been pleased at the gift, even though the painting herself had not been to her taste. She preferred her art to be more austere. But she remembered the kindness of the woman who in her final hours had thought of her and had not been able to bring herself to place it into storage.

So she’d hung it on the stairwell wall of her two-up two-down house; it was not, to her mind, a piece of art she could put in a room and live with.  

For a while nothing was different. Celia drove to work in the mornings, came home in the evenings, read a little and went to bed. But gradually she became aware of the space the painting occupied. 

She could be passing the item in question on the way downstairs or heading up towards her bedroom to retrieve a book when, without warning, some lure in the colours or the way the light fell on the corn would make her pause and gaze at the scene. She would peer at it as if searching for someone or something she might have missed – another person perhaps, or an animal. But she could never locate anything new.

Of course. The useless search and the knowledge that she seemed unable to find the will to stop made her feel unsettled. It came to the point when she began to plan her day so that she would not have to use the stairs if she could avoid it; she brought all her books and papers downstairs when she first got up so she wouldn’t have to fetch them in the evening. She even left a cardigan in the front room so it would be a matter only of slipping it on if she grew cold.

When she had no option but to pass by the picture, she tried to avert her eyes, but always the scene would call to her and she would have to spend a few moments searching. For what couldn’t possibly be there.  

It was at about that time that the girl in the frame began to move. 

Short Story

An unconventional guardian angel attempts to keep his gay charge from committing suicide, while wrestling with his own personal issues. This is the first in the Zagzagel Diaries series.

Just do it . . . .

How apropos.

Above the nineteenth floor, on the verge of his nineteenth birth date, he stepped up onto the ledge, steadied his balance. Perspiration and tears trickled evenly along his chiseled face. Eyes, once stunning blue, dulled with each spent teardrop.

Perched less than a shoulder's width away, I listened. His most private thoughts were not immune to me or my prying. Lord—meant with the utmost respect, of course—the man was a work of art. Absolutely beyond compare.

As was his pain, or so he thought.

I had endured far worse, though not mortal, than anything he was capable of imagining. Agony and confusion engulfed him, inflamed his need for relief. Forsaken—he privately professed.

Obviously, I'd failed at instilling my fine wrangling spirit.

Feathers ruffled. My shoulders tightened. Apparently, my guidance wasn't worth a flip these days. With a stretch and a snap, loose underlining flew in the air about me, fluttering, drifting on the breeze. Despite knowing the young man's agony, his naivety sickened me.

Try living the pain of ten thousand lifetimes, I desperately wished to tell him.

What I wouldn't give for an hour in his shoes, fifteen minutes inside that skin-tight material covering such perfectly honed thighs. He was so beautiful, so mortal, so intelligent—

"Just. One. Step." As his garbling knocked me from my reverie, his right foot slipped.

All right. I concede—he was a fucking moron.

Wings refolded neatly, I appeared beside his unsure legs and, with a stretch, settled, ass on the cool stone, feet dangling free over the edge. "It's a doozy."

His body trembled. With fear or anticipation, I wasn't sure which. For such a young pup, he had balls of steel. I'd give him that. He didn't as much as flinch at the sound of my voice nor turn to eye me as he asked, "What's it to you?"

What was it to me? More like, what was he to me, though I'd never confess. That revelation, I must do everything in my power to ensure never left my lips.

]]> bookstore@coffeetimeromance.com (Coffee Time Romance eBook Store) http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/the-zagzagel-diaries-forsaken-p-2961 Sat, 21 May 2011 21:29:34 -0400 0.99 USD 2961 Untreed Reads 1 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/images/large/FORSAKEN_SMALL_LRG.jpg http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/the-zagzagel-diaries-denial-p-2960 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/product_reviews/the-zagzagel-diaries-denial-p-2960

Short Story

The guardian angel Zagzagel returns to save another of his charges, this time a young woman selling herself on the streets instead of saving herself for love. This is Book 2 of The Zagzagel Diaries series.

Excerpt

Swear to God . . . .

I closed my eyes, certain, Deena had not meant the thought.

Though Big Papa frowned on reason, I made note to later offer the most valid one I would conjure on her behalf. One never knew with him. Maybe this time he would relish me with praise for my show of compassion. Then again, maybe not. My halo did hang a bit askew, according to the Big Cheese; that is, if I'd choose to don the ridiculous thing, which I never had and, if I continued to have my way, never would.

From my vantage point, perched atop the wrought iron fence a couple of yards outside her john's window, I was privy to Deena's thoughts—and her mood, which radiated as strongly as her john's stench from the situation, both consuming the lavishly furnished bedroom. I only hoped she took him for a pretty penny.

Panties on, she threw on her blouse, buttoning from the top down, while trading blow for verbal blow with the man stretched across the bed. Other than the coyness in his jibes, I was sure from his leisurely repose, he basked from one rather enjoyable evening—thus far.

"I don't care, Tom. I make the rules." After fastening the last button on her shirt, she wriggled some blood-red number up and over her hips. One yank on the zipper and the skirt, which appeared no more than a four-inch strip of leather, was secured in place.

In my entire existence, I'd never witnessed one of my charges adorn clothing this fast. A loin cloth covered more; of that I was certain. The party looked to be just warming up. . . . I settled back on my haunches, preening my feathers.

]]> bookstore@coffeetimeromance.com (Coffee Time Romance eBook Store) http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/the-zagzagel-diaries-denial-p-2960 Sat, 21 May 2011 21:29:19 -0400 0.99 USD 2960 Untreed Reads 1 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/images/large/DENIAL_SMALL_LRG.jpg http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/how-to-eat-fruit-p-2944 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/product_reviews/how-to-eat-fruit-p-2944

Short Story

When Jacob meets an unknown woman in a cafe, he begins

Short Story

In the Summer of Love, one young man discovers both love and heartbreak.

A young woman attempts to take care of her father who struggles with inner demons from his time at war. Can a daughter's love overcome the ferocity of a battle being waged in the mind? Flash Fiction from the Nibs literary short story line.

She brings in his tea at three o’clock, just like always, because the doctors say regularity will help his recovery. There should be nothing unexpected in his daily routine. And it’s worked, most of the time. Her last set of bruises are completely healed.

He sits, as always, in his favourite old chair; the one he’s had since forever, his soft grey curls just showing above the high back. He’s facing the TV, watching soaps; the only programmes considered safe viewing for him. He hates them, but still he watches, as if it’s an obligation. It’s his only link to the world outside, no matter how plastic and fake. For him, these days, even cartoon violence is to be avoided.

Dust motes swirl in a ray of golden sunlight that shines across the room; a room in which time has stood still. Not since he returned from the war has a picture been changed or an ornament moved. A lesson learned by her mother and now practiced by her. The strip of sunlight marks the point of no return. And it’s been long enough now that she doesn’t fear crossing that line. Even so, she’s careful to make sure her wary footsteps announce her presence, not too loud; but as loud as the ticking of the clock or the hum of traffic passing on the street. Sounds that are both familiar and comforting to him in their regularity.

She takes a deep breath before speaking.  “Dad, I’ve got your t...”

A car backfires in the street outside. Children playing in their gardens shriek and giggle at the violent sound. She jumps, and then worries her lip. Her eyes dart toward the chair and she sees his reaction as if in slow motion.

]]> bookstore@coffeetimeromance.com (Coffee Time Romance eBook Store) http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/a-daughter-s-love-p-3138 Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:26:43 -0400 0.99 USD 3138 Untreed Reads http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/images/large/ADL_SM_LRG.jpg http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/the-warehouse-p-3178 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/product_reviews/the-warehouse-p-3178

A young policeman, anxious to make Detective, goes undercover on a drug bust. Will he live long enough to reach his promotion? Flash fiction from our Fingerprints mystery/thriller short story line.

---

Excerpt

Beautiful is an understatement. This woman has a face that steals the love of every man she looks at, and probably some she doesn't. Huge curls of every shade of blonde shine with the gloss of a beauty magazine. She carries herself as though her world had once depended on that shine, and she'd been let down. A beauty pageant relic whose quick hands and keen eye guaranteed she would always have an income. I wonder if I'd ever passed her in the precinct. I wonder what she's even doing here.

“Hello? You retarded or something? What the fuck?” She speaks typical Jersey between the smacking of her gum.

“Sorry. Here.” I hand her the twenty as she snipes it out of my hand and peers over my shoulder down the lamplit street. It's going on midnight, and except for the occasional shadow, we're alone.

“What's this? It's twenty-five,” she says, still not looking directly at me.

“I was told twenty.”

“You were told wrong. Twenty-five. Twenty for the shit, five for me. Twenty-five. Quit fucking around.” A siren's wail can be heard in the distance. We both look, alarmed for completely different reasons.

“Fine, fine. Whatever.” I fish another five out of my wallet and hand it to her. Not having made detective yet, I'm irritated by having to dip into my own pocket. It's little things like this that piss me off, but I try to look at it as an investment.

“Real fucking smooth asshole. You always pull your wallet out on the street like that?” She finally looks at me with a slight smile and she's off. Occasionally lit by the orange glows from above, she disappears into the vices of the night. Her walk is full of distraction. Fishnets do that to me.

I shake it off and walk towards the Suburban. Sitting silent and ominous in the night, it's shrink-wrapped in shining black. I hate working the streets. I hate being a grunt. A cog relaying information back to the detectives, doing their dirty work. I'm too smart for this shit and everyone knows it. There's no glory in the possibility of having your face dismantled and left on the curb for the pigeons.

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In order to save its own skin, a devious pumpkin plays an evil mind game with the person who bought it. A short story from our Spectres horror line.