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Excerpt

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.

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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.

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“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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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By ten o’clock at night, as Dmitri Baranov was cleaning the floor of the painting studio at the Institute des Artistes in Paris, the building was deserted, the classrooms and studios dark. The cold winter air snuck in through the centuries-old walls, making Dmitri shiver as he scrubbed a stubborn spot of dried paint on the ancient marble floor.

Or perhaps he shivered because he realized this was the last studio he had to clean before ... well, better not to think about it. Just do it.

The institute was housed in a rambling four-story building with mansard roofs and tall windows, located just off the Place Pigalle in Paris, a few blocks from Sacré Coeur. Through one tall window he could see the glowing spire of the Eiffel Tower. The Institute was halfway up the hill of Montmartre and during the day offered commanding views of the grimy streets and leafless plane trees that surrounded it. He loved Paris with all his heart, and he felt at home there in a way he had never felt back in Odessa.

When the marble shone in the sharp overhead light, he stood up and stretched his back. He was only twenty-two, but hours hunched over an easel during the day, then the effort to clean studios used by dozens of messy art students, wore him down.

It did not help that he was short and slim, either. At barely five feet six, he had to work twice as hard as a taller man might to reach paint splattered on the walls, use twice as many strokes to mop the floor. But he was strong and determined.

He carried his bucket down to the second floor, careful not to slosh any dirty water on the grand staircase. He emptied the bucket in a bathroom sink, then carried it, his mops and brushes, to the janitorial cabinet on the first floor. On an ordinary night, he left the building as soon as he had everything put away.

But that night, instead of turning and walking out the tall front door with the glass fanlight, he removed a long cardboard tube from the closet, carried it back to the grand staircase and climbed back up to the third floor. The central atrium was gloomy in the darkness, the only light coming from the skylight above. It didn’t matter; Dmitri had walked these stairs and corridors so often he didn’t need light.

He had been a student at the Institute des Artistes for nearly two years, studying under a fellowship from the Russian government that barely covered his tuition. But his fellowship would run out in May, and when it did he would lose this job. Without it, he couldn’t afford to stay in Paris. And he needed to. He had entered one of his paintings, a nude study of his boyfriend Taylor, in the Grand Concours, a highly prestigious citywide art show. His painting professor was one of the judges, and he had assured Dmitri that his painting was one of the most assured debuts he had ever seen. He was confident that when judging was complete in a month, Dmitri would win one of the top prizes, which came with a gallery show.

That would shoot him from impoverished student to recognized painter. But once the show’s results were announced, in about a month, it would still take perhaps until the end of the summer to sign with a gallery that would advance him money against the future sale of his paintings. He had to find enough money to stay in Paris through the summer, and the fat Russian, Yegor, had given him the chance to earn what he needed.

At the third floor, Dmitri veered off to the right, traveling down a long corridor without bothering to turn on any lights. At the end of the hall, he turned right, then made a quick left to a stairway door that led to the annex building where the private studios were.

He did not know this area as well; he only cleaned there once a month, while he mopped and swept the classroom studios daily. He climbed the stairs, then hesitated in front of the fire door to the fourth floor.

This was it, he thought. His last chance to back out. Crossing this threshold was making a choice, a deliberate one, to do whatever he had to do to stay in Paris and keep painting.

He pushed the door open into a small foyer, with four doors that led to small rooftop studios. The locks were old and simple; he didn’t even use his keys when he cleaned up there. All it took was a jiggle of the handle, a little pressure against the door, a slight lift, and the lock slipped.

He thought it was foolish that there were so often fabulous works of art up here, being restored, with so little security. But the Institute had focused on protecting only the exterior of the building with an alarm and a wrought-iron fence. He had overheard the director of the institute speak disparagingly about insurance companies, and how money should be spent in support of artists rather than in protecting them.

As the door swung open, he saw floor to ceiling windows that faced the back courtyard and washed the room in moonlight. Along the left wall, he saw the painting he had come for, an oil called The Russian Boy. His heart jumped at the sight of this painting, one he had studied in class. He was moved by the boy’s beauty, but more by the subtle emotion the painter had expressed through his technique.

He smiled at the irony—a Russian boy himself, he was liberating one of his countrymen from a sort of imprisonment, allowing the handsome, naked boy in the painting to live freely in France, just as he wanted to do himself.

At least he assumed that the painting would stay in France. He had no idea where it would end up after he handed it off to the fat, sweaty Russian who had hired him to take it. He just knew that it wouldn’t be going back to New York, where it had been hung on a museum wall.

He slipped on a pair of the rubber gloves he used for cleaning, pulled his Swiss Army knife from his pocket, and walked up to the painting. His fingers trembling, he lifted it from its easel and placed it faced down on a work table. He took a deep breath, steadied himself, and began to take the frame apart.

It was as if time stopped for him as he worked. He worshipped art, and it would devastate him if he did anything to damage such a beautiful piece. When he had removed everything holding the frame together, he lifted the pieces away, leaving the canvas flat, resting against the tabletop.

He rolled the canvas carefully and slid it into the tube, turning the plastic cap to seal it. He slipped his arm through the shoulder strap, slung the tube over his arm, and left the restorer’s studio.

On his way out, he used the knife to gouge out the inside of the ancient lock. He hoped that might deflect suspicion from him.

The theft wouldn’t be noticed until Monday, at the earliest, if the elderly restorer even came in to work that morning. By then, Dmitri would have handed the painting over to Yegor, and received his payment. He would protest his innocence to anyone who asked, and there would be no evidence to connect him to the theft.

He went back down to the first floor, punched the alarm code in by the front door, and then stepped out the door, closing it gently behind him. He tightened his scarf around his neck and hurried around the corner of the building before the exterior light winked off.

He stayed inside the tall wrought-iron fence and circled to the rear of the building. A year before, he had accidentally discovered that a window in an unused storage closet was not connected to the alarm system. He leaned the cardboard tube against the stone wall and wrapped his hand in his scarf. Then he used the butt of the folding knife to smash the window.

He didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until the window shattered without triggering the alarm. He took a couple of deep breaths and then slung the tube over his shoulder. He went back to the front of the building and let himself out the iron gate, locking it behind him with a heavy skeleton key.

The streets were narrow and dark. He started when a pigeon fluttered past him, almost in his face, and looked around nervously when he heard the pulse of a police siren blocks away. He was relieved when he reached the door to the dank, winding staircase up to the tiny, fifth-floor studio he shared with Taylor, an American student a year behind him at the Institute.

Taylor was already in bed, reading a textbook on Impressionism. He was six feet tall, blond and broad-shouldered, with a long, slim dick that was easily aroused.

They had met a year before, when Taylor began his fellowship at the Institute as Dmitri was entering the second year of his. There was an immediate attraction between them, and they’d gone to bed together the night of their first date, screwing each other behind a curtain in the living room of a rundown flat where Taylor was staying.

Within a month they had found the studio and moved in together. It was tiny as a closet, barely large enough for their double bed and a rickety wardrobe they shared. Taylor thought it was romantic, living like that, but Dmitri had seen the way the wealthy lived and he longed for space and luxury.

“You’re late,” Taylor said in French, closing the book and setting it on the floor next to the bed. “Lot of mess to clean up?” Dmitri’s English was limited, and Taylor’s Russian non-existent, so they spoke to each other in the language they had in common.

“Yes, much work.” He considered himself lucky to have the job. Other students at the Institute waited tables, moved furniture, or worked outdoors in the cold Parisian winter, freezing their fingers sometimes so that they had trouble holding brushes in painting class.

His job was indoors, and there was no commuting time between class and work, no need to pay a Metro fare or waste time on buses or trains. He often rescued nearly-new brushes with a few bristles missing, and not-quite-empty tubes of paint, from the trash. On a good day, he found a discarded energy bar that had slipped under a table, or a half-empty bottle of Evian water, to supplement his meager food budget.

He placed the cardboard tube against the wall, and then began peeling his clothes off. The room was cold, and he wanted to huddle under the covers and warm up next to his boyfriend.

“What’s in the tube?” Taylor asked.

“Just canvas.” Taylor had been in the Café SiSi when Yegor approached Dmitri, and he’d been vehemently opposed to any contact with the fat Russian. But Taylor had the luxury of morality. If he needed money, he could call his mother in the US, while Dmitri wouldn’t waste the cost of a call on his alcoholic mother—if she was even still alive. He hadn’t spoken to her since he left Odessa two years before.

“What kind of canvas?” Taylor asked.

Dmitri could tell his boyfriend was suspicious. There was one way to short-circuit this conversation. He kicked off his shoes, then dropped his jeans and peeled off his briefs. “Forget about canvas. Let’s fuck.”

He pulled the covers back; Taylor was naked beneath them, and Dmitri hopped into the bed next to him, pressing his mouth to Taylor’s. With his lips open, he snaked his tongue into Taylor’s mouth, rubbing his nose against Taylor’s.

Beneath him, he felt Taylor’s body reacting to his own. Taylor kissed back, his own tongue dueling with Dmitri’s. His cock rose and pressed against Dmitri’s abdomen.

Taylor reached down and grabbed Dmitri’s erect cock, stroking it roughly up and down as they kissed. Because Dmitri was so much smaller, he was almost always on top, Taylor below him like a pile of Christmas presents just waiting to be enjoyed.

Dmitri grabbed Taylor’s cock just as roughly, squeezing it until Taylor shuddered and winced under him. They both enjoyed this kind of rough and tumble love, though sometimes Taylor complained that he wanted to take things slower. Dmitri didn’t care; to him, sex was a power struggle, the chance to vanquish a stronger man by appealing to his deepest needs.

He gnawed on Taylor’s lower lip, inhaling his lover’s breath, which tasted like stale wine. Taylor reached up and pinched Dmitri’s left nipple, and Dmitri squirmed at the roughness, but loved it. It made his dick even harder.

Each of them jerked the other as they kissed. It was a fast and furious kind of lovemaking, a way to release the sexual energy that accumulated in them both. Taylor began to whimper and squirm as his body tensed, then he ejaculated into Dmitri’s hand.

That was enough to send Dmitri over the top, too, and he came on Taylor’s hand and his belly. He wiped his hand on Taylor’s chest, then sunk down on top of him, their sweat and cum mingling together. “Clean up on aisle seven,” Taylor mumbled in English, one of those strange expressions Dmitri, with his limited command of the language, could never figure out.

Though he enjoyed sex with Taylor, Dmitri did not respect him. His American boyfriend was too commercial in his art—and Dmitri didn’t just think that because Taylor always sold more paintings, for more money, to the tourists. He, Dmitri, had the greater artistic soul. Taylor was a cute boy with a dick and an ass, and it worked out that they shared expenses and got along so well sexually. But it wasn’t love.

Both of them supplemented their income by drawing and painting outside Sacré Coeur, just a few blocks away through the steep, narrow streets of Montmartre, and selling their work to tourists.

People thought Dmitri cute and charming, and they liked the way his heavy Russian accent colored his French. He flirted with young women—and a few men, too, usually older ones. He made the middle-aged parents think of him as a son. With his mop of dark curls and cherubic face, he was a great contrast to Taylor, who worked next to him.

Taylor had an innocent American quality, and handled all transactions that needed English language skills. Dmitri could speak a little English—enough to negotiate a price, for example—but he preferred to leave the business to Taylor.

Next to him in bed, he heard Taylor drift into sleep, his slow, rhythmic breathing mixing with the creaks and groans as the old building settled around them. Dmitri himself was just dozing as the ring of the disposable cell phone that Yegor had given him startled both of them with its shrill tone.

“What the fuck?” Taylor groaned in English, as Dmitri scrambled out of bed and searched for the phone in his discarded pants.

“Allo?” Dmitri said, finding the phone.

“There has been a change of plan,” Yegor said in Russian. “I must leave Paris immediately. You will have to bring the painting to me in Nice.”

“Nice?”

“Yes. Write this down. The Bar Les Sables, 18 Rue du Vieux Fort. It’s in the old part of the city. Be there Sunday afternoon.”

Dmitri tried to argue, but the phone went dead in his hand.

“Who was that?” Taylor asked in French, sitting up in the bed, his blond hair and pale skin shimmering in the light from the dormer window.

“Nothing. Wrong number.”

“Don’t lie to me, Dmitri. You don’t even have a phone. Where did you get that one?”

“Don’t bother yourself.” Dmitri felt dirty and sticky, from the sex and his work and the theft. There wouldn’t be any hot water until morning, but maybe he could take a cold shower in the stall one floor down.

“It was that Russian guy, wasn’t it?” Taylor asked. “Yegor. The one who came up to you in Bar SiSi. The one who wanted you to steal the painting. The Russian Boy.”

“You don’t know my life,” Dmitri snapped. “I can’t go back to Odessa when fellowship runs out. I won’t.”

“I told you, we’ll find a way to work it out,” Taylor said. “All it takes is for one gallery to accept some paintings from either of us, and we’ll have our start.”

Taylor was a skilled mimic—he could paint in the Parisian streetscape style of Maurice Utrillo, or with the Impressionist flair of Claude Monet. He painted the church in the watery light of Frederick Constable and the dark shadows of Edward Hopper. The tourists ate it up, often buying several canvases in different styles.

Dmitri could only paint in his own manner, heavily influenced by the German expressionists like Edvard Munch and Kathe Kollwitz. His pictures were not as much in demand as Taylor’s, but both of them knew that Dmitri was the more talented. Not that Taylor was a hack; he had a perceptive eye and excellent technique. But he had yet to find his true artistic voice, which was why he painted in imitation of the masters.

“You go back to America when your fellowship finishes. You paint your boring commercial paintings and make pots of money. And I am in Odessa struggling to paint from my heart and shivering in lousy shithole like this one.”

“You did it, didn’t you?” Taylor nodded toward the cardboard tube. “You stole the painting for Yegor. And that was him on the phone.”

“Like I say, do not bother yourself.” It was as if the future had opened up for him in a flash of lightning, and he knew that his relationship with Taylor was over. He got down on his hands and knees and pulled his cheap suitcase out from under the bed. Then he began throwing clothes and art supplies into it.

“Where are you going in the middle of the night?” Taylor asked. “Nice? Is that what you were talking about on the phone?”

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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.

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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.

Years ago, Captain Jack Endicott's half-sister vanished after a carriage accident. He now sets out to honor his father's dying wish and find her. Jack plans to open a lavish gaming parlor and hire only beautiful ladies to deal cards, possibly finding his sister. All he needs is a little luck. Instead he finds prim schoolteacher Allie Silver, who needs a guardian for one of her most precocious pupils. With such an unlikely duo, all bets are off in a wild game of romance.

Excerpt

1815
The Honorable Jonathan Endicott, or Captain Jack as he was known, was finally home from the wars.

So what?

Six years of war had been hell, terrifying and tedious in turn. Peace was simply boring. The first peace, the false lull between the Corsican’s exile and his return, had been a pageant. Jack had thrown himself into the festivities with the same fervor he’d ridden into pitched battles, with his heart leading the way. Wine, women, and who cared what song they were playing if he could hold a sweet-smelling lady in his arms?

Jack’s older brother had even traveled to the Peace Congress with his bride to reunite their small family, making the celebrations more joyous yet. Everyone knew Ace had to take a wife, for he was Alexander Chalfont Endicott, Earl of Carde, with a succession to ensure, the poor blighter.

If Jack had thought about it, he would have guessed Ace would hide behind his spectacles, studying the field of possibilities, researching their pedigrees, examining each filly for temperament and soundness before making his choice of countess. He was that meticulous and logical about everything else and always had been. Who would have thought he’d fall arse over Adam’s apple for skinny little Nelly Sloane, their deceased stepmother’s young cousin? Why, Ace had helped Jack put frogs in Nelly’s bed, although he had drawn the line at snakes down her back.

Of course Nelly, who insisted upon Nell now that she was Lady Carde, was not little, skinny or merely someone’s poor relation. She was all grown up, gorgeous in looks and giving in nature, great of heart. In other words, Nelly was everything Jack would have wished for in a wife—for his brother. The best of brothers, Ace had been Jack’s anchor since they were orphaned as boys. He deserved nothing less than the perfect bride, his own true love.

The love Ace and Nell shared glistened more than all the jewels at all the balls in Vienna, and softened the hardest hearts, turned to stone by years of war. Some day Jack would find a woman like that—after he had waltzed and wined and wooed his way through the ranks of warm and willing womanhood.

Vienna had been as glowing and glorious as a springtime rainbow, but it had been as fleeting.

The current victory celebrations in London were a travesty, abhorrent to Jack. The country should have been in mourning for all the men they had lost, for all the blood shed at Waterloo. Instead they were holding fireworks and festivals in the streets of London, sparing no expense while the returning veterans were begging in the alleys.

Jack took part in as few of the events, public or private, as possible. He sold his commission as soon as he could, refused a position at the war office despite the promise of a knighthood, and burned his uniform. He locked his pistols away, vowing never to kill another man, and gave his sword as a belated christening gift to his brother and Nell’s first born son, Jason, named after the previous earl, Jack and Alex’s father.

Jack was six and twenty, home to stay, his life ahead of him. So what was he going to do with it?

“You are always welcome here,” Alex said when Jack traveled to Carde Hall in Northampshire. Nell was breeding again, and feeling too ill to travel to London. They had begged him to come to Cardington to visit. Or to stay, making his home with them. Jack thought he’d sooner rejoin the army than sit by while his brother and sister-in-law made sheep’s eyes at each other and cooed over their young son. How many times could even a doting uncle chuck a babe under the chin—under the four chins the little dumpling seemed to have—before going cross-eyed? And with another brat—baby—on the way, Jack would feel like a trespasser, a voyeur, if he did not go batty from boredom.

“You could take over some of the duties of the earldom,” Ace proposed, while Jack pondered how soon he could make his departure. “Act as overseer for me. I hate to leave Nell and the baby to travel to all the properties and holdings. Appearing in Parliament is duty enough.”

“I know nothing of crops and cows. And wish to know less.”

“Then you could handle some of the financial affairs.”

Jack used a word he should never have uttered in front of a gently bred female. “My apologies, Nell. I have been too long out of polite society.”

Nell nodded graciously, turning back to embroidering tiny roses on a tiny white gown for the daughter she hoped to have this time.

“But we both know I have no head for investments. I let you handle my own accounts, don’t I? By the way, thank you for making my inheritance grow, far more than I could have hoped. The only numbers I am good with is gambling odds.”

“You have the wit, just not the patience. As always.” Alex wiped his spectacles while he considered his sibling’s future. Jack was taller, broader, far more muscular than Alex was, but he was still his little brother. They shared the same dark hair, although Jack’s was curlier, and cut longer. They had the same brown eyes, but Jack’s vision needed no glasses. Unfortunately, they had the same nose. Lucky Jack had his broken, more than once, it seemed, so the Endicott eagle beak was not as prominent. Alex said a silent prayer skyward for his future daughter’s feminine features, then turned his attention back to Jack.

Alex wanted his restless brother here, safe, but he knew the decision was not his to make. “You do have that piece of farmland in Kent from our mother,” he reminded Jack.

“What, I should sit back and watch the turnips grow?”

Alex’s gaze traveled to his wife’s burgeoning belly. “There are worse things.”

Not for Jack, there were not.

“Then go back to London and take up the high life. Your bank account can stand the expense, and the estate can afford the rest.”

“What, I should live on my brother’s largesse? What do you take me for?”

“A hero, that’s what,” Alex promptly replied, and Jack felt his cheeks grow warm, knowing his brother believed it.

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

Lawyer H.L. Snodgrass has it all: a successful practice, a devoted wife and a passionate boyfriend. When he decides to sell off a family heirloom, his cozy life takes a drastic turn for the worst. Now, he and the ghost of his great-great-great grandfather have to get it back before a Gypsy curse destroys everything! Add in a furry junk dealer and a nun in jail and you've got trouble!

Time and Age. They make bottoms sag, legs shake, and arms wobble. Every time the old chair was moved it left a trail of little Hansel-and-Gretel tufts of ancient gray stuffing. In the world of furniture it had once been a duchess. Now it was a bag lady.

H.L. (Horatio Lamar) Snodgrass IV never gave the old chair another thought after he placed it in the storage room of his office to await the junk man. He was too busy sniffing and stroking its replacement, experiencing almost orgasmic pleasure in the smell and feel of the tall-backed chair made from the hides of Pamplona fighting bulls, a chair fit for a king. Or a damn good lawyer. He was the best. When he spoke judges melted. When he spoke Justice took off her blindfold, winked, and hiked her skirt to the thigh.

His clothes were custom made. One car was foreign and expensive. Another was American and expensive. His favorite was old, low-slung, and expensive. His wife, who was visiting the baccarat tables and roulette wheels in Las Vegas, was petite and expensive. Larry, his long-time boyfriend, was not petite in any way, and less expensive than his wife.

A series of bone-shattering blows against the door interrupted his thoughts. Normally he would have let his secretary answer the door, but since this was Saturday she was not there.

On his way to the door, H.L. had to pass the time-faded oil portrait of his Great-great-great Grandfather, Hawkins Forsythe Snodgrass, and he felt a brief twinge of conscience. After all, the old fellow had brought the chair from England generations ago. Hawkins had been a famous barrister in his homeland and he became more famous in his adopted country. Part of his fame was due to the eccentricity of never abandoning the English wig and robe even after becoming an American citizen. Hawkins was the founder of six generations of Snodgrass lawyers, each more successful and richer than the last.

“Perhaps,” H.L. thought, “I should keep the chair as a memento...but what the hell.”

The explosive knock came again. H.L. opened the door and came eye-to-Adam’s-apple with a hulking individual who sported a turned-about Chicago Cubs cap and a bushy beard. A fine gold chain led from the gold hoop in his left nostril to a large gold hoop in his left earlobe. His shirt was unbuttoned to the waist and a gold skull on a chain glinted upon a chest of black fur that a grizzly bear would have envied. Clamped between his teeth was a cigar that, judging from the smell, had been made from a mixture of rotten eggs and old rags.

]]> bookstore@coffeetimeromance.com (Coffee Time Romance eBook Store) http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/the-lawyer-the-ghost-and-the-cursed-chair-p-2959 Sat, 21 May 2011 21:30:26 -0400 0.99 USD 2959 Untreed Reads 1 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/images/large/TLTGATCC_LRG.jpg http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/the-girl-in-the-painting-p-2919 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/product_reviews/the-girl-in-the-painting-p-2919

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

The lives and schemes of frontier politicians, Northern Pacific Railroad executives, bonanza farmers, and homesteaders converge in the story of Frances Houghton Bingham, who marries the son of a Red River Valley bonanza farmer in order to remain near her new husband's sister. Emotionally complex, willful and resourceful, Frances is seduced by the myths of opportunity driving the settlement of Dakota Territory, and dares to dream of a new world in which to realize her unconventional desires. Providing a counterpoint to the dramatic risks taken by Frances is the generous voice of Kirsten Knudson, the daughter of Norwegian homesteaders. As Kirsten grows from a voluble girl to a formidable woman, her observations (equal parts absurdity and insight) reveal the heart of the novel.

If you thought standing in line at your local megastore was murder, then you haven't been to Megamart. These flash fiction tales of superstore madness and mayhem will make you think twice the next time you hear "clean up on aisle 13."

This anthology contains works by: Patricia Abbott, Sophie Littlefield, Kieran Shea, Chad Eagleton, Ed Gorman, Cormac Brown, Fleur Bradley, Alan Griffiths, Laura Benedict, Garnett Elliot, Eric Beetner, Jack Bates, Bill Crider, Loren Eaton, John DuMond, John McFetridge, Toni McGeeCausey, Jeff Vande Zande, James Reasoner, Kyle Minor, Randy Rohn, Todd Mason, Byron Quertermous, Sandra Scoppettone, Stephen D. Rogers, Steve Weddle, Evan Lewis, Daniel B. O'Shea, Sandra Seamans, Albert Tucher, Donna Moore, John Weagly, Keith Rawson, Gerald So, Dave Zeltserman, Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen, Jay Stringer, Anne Frasier, Kathleen A. Ryan, Eric Peterson, Chris Grabenstein and J.T. Ellison.

From Co-Editor Patricia Abbott:

In October 2009, my co-anthologist Steve Weddle suggested I use a website that I’ll call The People of Megamart as the inspiration for a flash fiction challenge.

Keeping a blog can be a solipsistic and silly venture, and to combat this tendency, I’ve promoted several communal activities over the years and I have maintained a website. The first was Friday’s Forgotten Books, in which, every Friday, crime and western fiction writers and readers write brief reviews of books they believe to be forgotten.

But since most readers of my blog are short story writers, I decided in February 2008, to issue a flash fiction challenge. (I was far from the first to do so.) This was not a contest but rather an inclusive invitation to write a story of about 800 words and post it on an assigned day. This first challenge was to write a story set on Valentine’s Day. For those without blogs, Aldo Calgano posted stories on his flash zine, Powder Burn Flash. Gerald So helped to advertise the challenge. It was a success and each of the succeeding four challenges drew more entries. Each challenge had its own topic—my favorite being one in which each participant wrote an opening paragraph that was passed on to someone else.

For our sixth challenge, Megamart: I Love You, writers were asked to contribute a story set, or partially set, in a Megamart or Megamart-type store. This topic generated more than thirty stories, all published simultaneously on various blogs on November 30, 2009. Those stories and a few more can be found here. I hope you enjoy them.

Professional greyhound trainer, Kat McKinley, is a soft touch.  When she's talked into having sex with a guy who's just not her type, a romp so pathetic it registers minus ten on a sex-to-die-for scale, she decides to end the relationship.  When Kat wakes the next morning to find Mr Wham-Bam sprawled beside her, a knife embedded in his left nipple, she wishes she'd ended the relationship sooner.After that wake-up call, Kat figures life can't nose-dive any lower.  But with a killer out to get her, the police suspecting her of murder, a misbehaving greyhound, a complicated love triangle and a vicious kidnapper who threatens to cut out a child's tongue if her dog, Big Mistake wins his next race, maybe it can...

Excerpt

Victor Delgado left the University’s computer center a few minutes past one in the morning. He started his car and pulled out of his private parking spot. As he turned into the main boulevard of the University campus, a car parked in a side street started its engine and slowly pulled out of its parking space a few seconds after Victor’s car went past it.

The traffic was light in the streets of Monterrey at that hour, yet Victor drove slowly, carefully, just as he did everything else in his life. Victor was a methodical young man, and his training as a computer engineer perfectly suited his conscientious, careful manner.

The three men in the car following Victor’s were careful and patient, too. The driver of the car made sure that Victor was unaware that he was being followed; he used whatever other cars came along as shields and as cover.

When Victor turned into Figueroa Avenue, the man sitting in the passenger’s seat of the car that was following Victor’s said, “This is it; cut him off.”

The car with the three men jumped forward in a burst of speed and the driver expertly maneuvered in front of Victor’s car and stopped. Victor tried to avoid hitting the car that had suddenly appeared in front of him, but even at the relatively slow speed at which he was driving, it was impossible: Victor’s car swerved, hit the left-rear side of the car in front of him and broke its back light.

Before he could get out of his car to inspect the damage, the three men jumped out of their car and ran toward Victor’s. Startled, Victor pushed a button to open his window and apologize, but before the glass was halfway down, one of the men opened Victor’s car door, grabbed his arm, and dragged the young man out of the car.

Victor hardly had time to make out the three dark silhouettes grabbing at him before a blow to the back of his head made him lose consciousness.

]]> bookstore@coffeetimeromance.com (Coffee Time Romance eBook Store) http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/an-inconsequential-murder-p-3073 Wed, 09 Mar 2011 10:04:18 -0500 4.99 USD 3073 Untreed Reads 1 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/images/large/AIMSM_LRG.jpg http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/after-the-auction-p-3390 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/product_reviews/after-the-auction-p-3390

 Lily Kovner cold not have dreamed that research for a magazine assignment would resurrect a searing memory from her childhood. A fleeting glimpse of a family treasure looted by the Nazis launches "Afikomen" - her quest for justice and restitution spanning three continents. Along the way threats, murder and the revelation of a diabolical secret deal thrust Lily onto an emotional rollercoaster further complicated by the thrill of new romance.

Excerpt

Part I
Chapter 1
Vienna, 1938

THE LITTLE GIRL clung to her mother as three men in black leather coats stormed from room to room opening cabinets, pulling out drawers, kicking furniture with their boots, shouting. Suddenly, the young, black-haired one the others called “Obersturmführer Bucholz” announced, “We’re done here.”

As they swept past, the little girl struggled to break free, flailing her arms, pushing against her mother’s grasp locked tightly around her middle. She screamed, ignoring her mother’s whispered pleas to shush.

“The Seder plate. You can’t take that. Papa, Papa, where are you going? No. No. Mama! Let me go. Look what they’re doing.”

New York City, March 1990

“No, No. That’s our Seder plate. You can’t do this.”

There was no one to shush me, and I was barely aware that I’d leapt to my feet screaming until I heard the uproar around me. My sixty-year-old self had morphed back to the impulsive eight-year-old I was that night in 1938. To the last time I’d seen the antique Italian Seder plate that had just appeared on a pedestal on stage. The last time I saw my father—ever.

There was buzzing in the audience of about one hundred collectors, curators, and wannabes at an auction of Jewish ritual items. The gilded faux Versailles hotel ballroom looked like a tennis match as heads swung back and forth from me to the stage and back again.
 
The auctioneer, Shira Reznik, the head of the New York office of the Mosaica auction firm based in Israel, ignored me at first. A compact woman with frizzy red hair wearing a black pants suit, she maintained a tight smile and waited for the audience to quiet down. Finally, she had no choice. She held up her hands to calm the crowd as she visibly inhaled and addressed me.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Reznik. “Is there a problem? Please take your seat so we can begin the bidding.”

“A problem? Yes, there’s a problem. That Seder plate belonged to my family. It was stolen by the Nazis. I saw them take it out of our apartment. You’re selling stolen property!”
I sat down, suddenly winded, my heart pounding. I’m not sure which shocked me more—seeing the Seder plate or making such a spectacle of myself.

On stage Reznik turned her mouth away from the microphone and conferred with the man next to her, Professor Shaul Rotan. Rotan, a tall, stooped Judaica expert from Israel’s Hebrew University, had made scholarly pronouncements all afternoon in his role as “permanent consultant to Mosaica.” His accented English, to my poly-lingual ears, sounded like German roots mixed with Israeli Hebrew, a likely mix for a man that looked seventy-something.

When they finished their conversation, Rotan shot me a withering gaze, hoisted the Seder plate off its pedestal, and darted backstage behind the navy velvet curtain.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Reznik said as the curtain fluttered behind her, “this piece has been withdrawn, and the auction is now concluded.” Gavel in hand, she immediately disappeared via the same route as the professor.

I shoved past the rows of seats toward the side entrance closest to the stage. Others in the audience glanced at me but avoided eye contact. There was only one exit out of the ballroom toward the elevator.

“What’s with this rude lady?” I heard someone muttering.
 
Silently, two groups parted to open a Red Sea passage toward the foyer. It was empty except for a few people who’d left during my outburst. In vain I rushed toward the elevator bank and the door to a stairway exit. No Reznik or Rotan.

I stood alone for a moment, catching my breath. I was barely conscious of the snippets of conversation around me:

“Who is that woman? Damn, I wanted to bid on that Seder plate.”

“Do you think she knows what she’s talking about?”

“Did you see that Seder plate? My God. The picture in the catalogue was gorgeous, but up close....”

The catalogue. I had picked one up on the way into the auction; it must have slipped off my lap when the Seder plate appeared. I slinked away from my rest stop and threaded my way against the flow of people treating me like an untouchable. I went back into the ballroom occupied only by hotel staff stacking chairs and lugging a vacuum cleaner.
 
The catalogue lay on the floor in front of my uncollected chair. I sat down again, no doubt to the annoyance of the crew, and flipped to the last page, the Seder plate’s picture and description. Though it couldn’t compare to the real thing, even a photograph showed how splendid this piece was.

Describing it as just a Seder plate failed to account for its grandeur. Certainly, it fulfilled its function as the bearer of Passover symbols to the Seder table. But its design and decoration made it unique—three tiers increasing in diameter from the top to the bottom, all crafted from the signature royal blue glass of the Venetian island of Murano. A sterling silver spine connected the tiers, which were edged in silver filigree encrusted with sapphires and pearls.
 
The smallest circle, on top, bore a groove to nestle a wine cup for the prophet, Elijah, mythically believed to visit every Seder. The second level held the three matzahs traditional to the ceremony. The six indentations in the large bottom tier displayed the foods that embody the Passover story—bitter herbs symbolizing the difficult life of slavery; salt water for slaves’ tears; the lamb shank bone for the paschal lamb sacrificed; the pasty charoses mixture of fruit, nuts, and wine depicting the mortar the Jewish slaves used to build pyramids; a green vegetable representing spring harvest; and an egg signifying life.
Minus the silver Hebrew letters labeling each indentation, the Seder plate could have been an epergne for finger sandwiches and scones at high tea in a grand English country home. In fact, the catalogue write-up mentioned that its creator, Abramo di Salamone, crafted more pieces for secular use than for ritual.

Di Salamone was described as a master artisan of the sixteenth century. Although he lived in the walled quarter of Venice thought by some scholars to be the original “ghetto,” his reputation filtered out of the Jewish community to the upper levels of Venetian society. Di Salamone creations found themselves in the palazzos of the ruling doges. This was interesting background information for the magazine assignment that had led me to the auction that day. But it wouldn’t help me get the Seder plate back.

I closed the booklet and stuffed it into the black leather tote bag at my feet. I just sat there, feeling powerless either to figure out what to do next or even to get up and leave. I dropped my head, wrapped my arms around myself, and doubled over as if in pain. But it wasn’t physical.
 
Suddenly, a slight smoker’s cough announced the arrival of a pair of gray flannel legs rising from Italian tasseled loafers. I looked up to a face that was familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to it. The face was craggy, not handsome, with a square protruding jaw line and dark complexion. Thinning black hair was slicked backward from the forehead to a length just above his collar, a style that aimed to make the most of what was left. Not more than five feet eight, build more solid than stocky, wearing the navy-blazer–blue-shirt-striped-rep-tie uniform, well-tailored and fine quality, but not dashing on this physique. He smiled down at me. And clapped his hands together in a slow rhythm.
 
“Bravo,” said a deep voice that could probably boom, but was deliberately softened. “What a performance. I wanted to meet the mystery lady who stopped the show.”

“This isn’t Broadway,” I said.
 
He stopped clapping and bent down, placing his right hand lightly on my shoulder.

“No, of course not. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be flip. Really. What you said was serious.”

“And I made quite a spectacle of myself in the process.”

I looked around, saw the hotel staff glaring at us, and stood up.

“I suppose we should get out of here.”

“Don’t forget your pocketbook.” He bent down to pick up my bag still on the floor next to the chair.

“Thanks. I’m so thrown—I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“It must have been quite a shock. And the Mosaica people took it seriously. Did you see the look of terror on Shira’s Reznik’s face? Even that snooty old professor looked scared. You got to them. Stopping the auction right away—that’s unheard of.”

“And not staying around to talk to me? That only makes me more suspicious.”

“Have you ever done business with them?”

“No. I only came because I’m writing an article on the Judaica market.”

“You’re a writer? Have I heard of you?”

“I don’t know. Professionally, I use the name Lily Weinberg, my maiden name. Otherwise, I’m Lily Kovner. And you?”

“Simon Rieger.”

Of course. The scion of Rieger & Co., a decades-old purveyor of jewelry rivaling Tiffany or Harry Winston. A business known among the cognoscenti for its chic lounge in the back of a Madison Avenue shop—a relaxed setting where regular clients could shop privately at custom prices. I’d read about a messy divorce—and endowed university chairs and other top-dollar philanthropy. His photograph appeared regularly in the Evenings feature of the Times Sunday Styles section, usually arm in arm with some stunning woman. Actually, different stunning women, all younger than he. What was he doing talking to me?

“Kovner. Kovner. Arthur Kovner?”

“Arthur was my husband.”

“A fine man. Brilliant. His economic consulting firm did a research project on my industry a few years ago. I heard about his death. How long ago?”

“Just a year.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. And, from what you said today, you must be a Holocaust victim,” he said, glancing at my left wrist.

There’s no number burned into my skin. It’s funny, but I don’t think of myself as a victim, or even as a Survivor. I was deported to Britain on the Kindertransport, a luxurious adventure on commercial railroad and ferry with other children and kind chaperones to a safe destination—in my case the loving open arms of an aunt and uncle. It couldn’t compare to the horrors of the boxcars. But the Seder plate’s fleeting reappearance had resurrected memories of life “before,” and the loss of it all.

“No, not a victim—I never use that term. Although I am the only survivor of my immediate family. I wasn’t in the camps, if that’s what you mean. My parents and grandparents were murdered, but I got out several months after Vienna fell.”

“You must have been quite young at the time. How can you remember the Nazis taking that Seder plate?”

“If you’d lived through a night like that, you’d understand. I was eight years old. We all loved that Seder plate. When the Nazis stormed in...carried it off...you just don’t forget. They took my father, too. It was....” I felt myself tearing up. “Believe me, you’d remember.”
Simon Rieger drew back and took a breath. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I apologize; that was stupid.”
 
“You don’t have to apologize. How would you know? Count yourself lucky not to know.”
He nodded.

“Listen, it’s been nice meeting you, but I’ve got to get out of here and try to catch up with the Mosaica people. Get to their office.”

“It’s four-thirty on Sunday afternoon. They won’t be there. But we can call to check.”

We were standing near a pay phone. He fished in his trousers pocket, pulled out a quarter, and handed it to me. The number was on the back of the catalogue.

He stood by while I dialed and listened to a recording that spelled out Mosaica’s normal business hours and announced the auction that had just concluded.

“You’re right. They’re closed until tomorrow morning.”

“Why don’t we go downstairs and have a drink?”

I shook my head. “I really appreciate the invitation, but I need to get home and figure out what I’m going to do about this. I wouldn’t be good company.”

Handing me his card, he said, “I might be able to help you. Perhaps we can get together another time.”

Sure, I thought, Simon Rieger is going to ask me out for a drink again. Most single women my age, knowing his preference for dates who appeared young enough to be our daughters—and his—would sacrifice their firstborn for this invitation. I told myself that it was a polite one-time gesture inspired by pity over my dilemma.

“That would be nice,” I murmured as I fished for my own card, which he actually read.

“You’ve written for New York and the New Yorker, haven’t you? And the Times?”

“All of the above, occasionally. I was a staff reporter at the old Herald Tribune and later at the Village Voice. Just freelancing now. Gives me the luxury of working when I want to on assignments that interest me or something I want to pitch to an editor.”

“Which is this?”

“An assignment. The Smithsonian Magazine. On Judaica collectors and sales, rising prices, old European pieces showing up on the market. If you’re here, it must mean you’re a collector. Should I interview you?”

“I am a collector, and, yes, you should interview me. If you had a drink with me, you could start now.”

I was tempted, but the heft of the Mosaica catalogue in my bag reminded me of the weight on my mind.

“Please give me a rain check. This just isn’t a good time.”

We shook hands goodbye. From the Waldorf lobby he headed toward the Lexington Avenue exit. I walked out onto Park Avenue and turned north, hoping that the brisk air of the March dusk would clarify the conflict raging in my head.
 
On the one hand, this was the story of a lifetime. On the other, emotional entanglement and upheaval could compromise my professionalism. I was no Hunter Thompson or Nellie Bly—I’d never inject myself into a story.

My professionalism? What was the matter with me? This was my life and my family’s property stolen by the Nazis. Story or no story, I had to act.

But did I need this in my life? Although widowhood was no picnic, watching Arthur suffer had made the inevitable end a blessing for him. Pancreatic cancer doesn’t give anyone a lot of time to reflect. You try to fight it as best you can, but the outcome is unequivocal from the beginning. Deprived of the “golden years” we’d anticipated, I carried on, resuming a routine revolving around family, friends, volunteer work, culture, and travel that we’d hoped to enjoy together and had planned to share for a long time.

After my hiatus as caregiver, I’d started to work again and had just published a piece in USA Today (of all places!) about managing a terminally ill loved one at home. The Smithsonian assignment was a clean break from the official year of mourning and saying Kaddish. I missed Arthur terribly and still sometimes anguished over how unfair and painful his illness was. But that level of grief had dwindled to waves lasting just hours or even moments. Self-reliance had resumed its place as my best friend.

Yet, I had doubts about whether to pursue the Seder plate. Was my sense of balance steady enough? Would this catapult me back into the bleakness I experienced right after Arthur died?
 
Did I have a choice?

The Seder plate symbolized my heritage, not as a valuable objet d’art but as a tangible remembrance of my childhood and of the parents who were squashed like mosquitoes by the Nazis. Cavalier as I was about the victim label, I couldn’t help but be staggered by the hatbox of memory, long shoved onto a high shelf, that suddenly toppled down on my head.

I had to get the Seder plate back.

The air felt good, and it would be a pleasant walk to my apartment on Central Park South. But I needed to go somewhere else—fast.

“Taxi,” I yelled, plucking the catalogue from my bag to give the driver Mosaica’s address.

Is your life in overdrive? Are the times when you feel a sense of satisfaction at the end of each day getting more rare? Are you simply running out of time? You can make simple changes to break the cycle of running frantically just to fall behind. The trick is to make a concerted effort to do less by simplifying and reducing the complexity in your life. A LIFE WORTH LIVING will show you how.

Excerpt 

Four sisters discover that they are born into a line of women with powers to control the Elements. Plucked from their normal college lives and thrust into a battle to save the Earth, can they defeat the evil Montatre? 

Excerpt

Gwynellian took a deep breath, blew it out and walked toward the cottage. She paused before the door and took another breath before raising her fisted hand to rap against the oak. A voice called from within before her knuckles touched the wood and the door swung slowly inward.

“Come in.”

Gwynellian stepped inside. Temporarily unable to see in the dim light of the cottage, she waited for her eyes to adjust, and pushed the door softly shut behind her. She looked around the single room. Sparsely furnished, the room had only the absolute necessities. Against the far wall stood a narrow bed, with a shuttered window above it. To Gwynellian’s left a fireplace made of river rock crackled warmly. Fitted between the fireplace and the adjoining wall the old woman stood at a wooden counter before shelves of jars filled with roots, herbs and colored candles. An old table with four wooden chairs filled the center of the room.

The domed ceiling gave extra headspace the old woman didn’t need but Gwynellian certainly did. Her father and brothers had all stood well over six feet tall and though her mother had been of average height, Gwynellian inherited her father’s height, and stood just an inch below six feet herself.

“Hello,” Gwynellian said with a nervous smile. She fidgeted as she looked around the room, glancing at the old woman now and then. “I-I’m Gwyn,” she stuttered nervously.

The old woman turned slightly and peered at her visitor with steely eyes. Age had lined and creased her face but Gwyn could tell she had been beautiful as a younger woman. Her drab brown dress was as shapeless as her body, her breasts hung nearly to her waist and her hips were no longer rounded. The hem of the dress she wore nearly touched her bare feet, and her toes were nearly as gnarled as the fingers that continued to pluck at various herbs on the worktable.

“I know who you be, girl,” the old woman said. She transferred dried roots to the mortar, used the pestle to quickly grind them into powder, tapped them into a jar and poured steaming water over them.
“I need your help,” the girl whispered.

The old woman glanced at Gwynellian for a moment, went back to the task before her. She knew what the girl had come for, had known she was coming before she’d arrived; however, the old woman only pursed her lips tightly together and continued working with her herbs. She wasn’t going to make it easy, nor would she help her in the way the girl wanted either, though Gwyn would find that out soon enough.

“I heard you could help me,” Gwyn continued. “I’m, um…” she faltered, took a deep breath, tried to calm herself and build up the courage needed to continue. “I, well, that is, I need a concoction to…” Gwynellian tried to keep the tears from falling. She took another deep breath and chewed her bottom lip for a few moments. She wanted to turn and run from the cottage as quickly as she could, but she had to get what she came for. A little voice in the back of her head told her to forget it, to turn and run, and face the consequences of her actions. Instead, she tightly fisted one hand around the fingers of her other hand and forced herself to speak.

“I’m in need of a concoction to rid myself of the child that grows within me,” she blurted out on a rush of air.

The old woman didn’t look at her, didn’t pause from her work. She continued chopping and mincing and macerating herbs, roots and leaves. After a few moments of silence she said, “I don’t provide concoctions for that purpose.” She heard Gwyn sob, and the scraping of chair legs on the packed dirt floor as the girl sat heavily at the kitchen table. The old woman turned to face the girl. “I am a healer, girl. I make rubs and potions for what might ail a body. A little of this for a cough, a little of that for a fever, something warm for a chill, but what you are asking for is something to kill. I won’t help you kill the child you’ve made.”

Gwyn looked up with tears streaming down her face. “If anyone finds out, I’ll be cast aside. I’m unmarried and betrothed to a man I have never known in the way a woman knows a man. My fiancé will come in the spring and I cannot be presented to him with a babe at my breast. But you have strong magic!”

The old woman smiled, the wrinkles and lines on her face deepened. “Aye, I have magic in what I do with my herbs, a gift for healing. I can manage a few parlor tricks still.” She pointed a finger at the candle in the middle of the table and the flame came to life. She waved her arm and a brisk wind swirled through the cottage and the flame went out. The old woman rose off the cottage floor and hovered momentarily before setting her feet back on the packed earth.

“Parlor tricks,” the old woman said dismissively. “But what you are asking of me I cannot give you. My gift has been handed down through the blood, generation after generation, and the greatest oath I, and all who came before me has kept is, ‘An harm none.’ I cannot harm, and especially not the innocent life of the child that grows within you.”

She took a breath, not enjoying the pain she could see in the girl’s eyes. “Where is your lover? What has he to say of all this?”

Gwyn looked away, her hands fidgeted with the material of her dress beneath the table. “He, uh, he has gone,” she finally stammered.

The old woman clucked her tongue and went back to working her herbs. “Without thought for you or his child, he has left you to fend for yourself alone, to explain to your betrothed. What kind of man is he that would dishonor you and himself?”

Gwyn shook her head sadly and said nothing.

“Were you thinking of the consequences of your actions, either of you, when you laid down together? Did either of you think to ask for the concoction that would have prevented the conception before it occurred? No. But now the deed is done and your lover’s seed has taken root in your womb. Only now do you consider the consequences of your actions. Only now do you consider your betrothed who expects a virgin bride in the spring, and expects to plant his own child within you.

“I cannot give you the help you seek, but I can offer you this. Stay here with me. I will deliver you of your child in the winter and you will nurse the babe till early spring. You may leave the child in my care and go to your betrothed.”

“No. I cannot give birth to a child. My betrothed will know I am not a virgin. He will know when he touches me there has been someone before him.”

“Do you think he will not know anyway? Do you think to begin your marriage with a lie?”

“I must. It will dishonor my family’s name if he refuses the marriage. There is a great deal depending on this marriage. You must give me the concoction.” Gwyn wailed and rose from the table. She paced nervously around the small room, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Please,” she begged pathetically.

The old woman looked at Gwynellian with rheumy eyes that seemed to peer straight through her. “I’m sorry, child,” the woman said softly. “That is all I can do for you and your child.”

Girl Scouts with guns. Maniacal mimes. Murder. Intrigue. Big floppy shoes. It's all in a day's work for Huey Dusk, clown and private dick. In his latest case, Dusk discovers there are plans afoot to rub him out. Can he locate his would-be killers before he ends up a puddle of greasepaint? Part noir, part humor and more fun than a three-ring circus, HUEY DUSK will change how you look at mysteries.

]]> bookstore@coffeetimeromance.com (Coffee Time Romance eBook Store) http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/huey-dusk-p-3185 Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:17:12 -0400 2.99 USD 3185 Untreed Reads http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/images/large/HDSM_LRG.jpg http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/pubs_product_book_info/a-summer-wedding-p-2948 http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookStore/product_reviews/a-summer-wedding-p-2948

Short Story

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

Short Story

While at a hotel for a convention and away from his husband, Mr. Jensen finds himself drawn to the youthful and energetic Mr. Wyndham. When Wyndham enters the hotel's lift and fails to reappear elsewhere, Jensen discovers that sometimes craving the company of someone other than your spouse can have very serious consequences.

Travel, they say, broadens the mind. It’s a truism if ever there was one. What they fail to tell you is that it can scare the living crap out of you, too. I travel a lot, visit a lot of places, stay at a lot of hotels. I’ve been to some crappy hotels, some really luxurious ones, too. But never been to one like The Cliff’s Edge in Torquay. It was a business meeting about selling outboard motors, pretty tedious stuff, really.

Things started going weird on the Saturday after we’d all arrived. The actual meetings weren’t to begin until Monday, which left us the whole weekend to pal around and get to know each other. You know, chill in the sauna the way half-naked men seem to like to do, play tennis in the convenient courts located beside the hotel, or just go for a stroll into the nearest little town.

After finishing breakfast, scrambled eggs on lightly buttered toast and a couple of glasses of milk, I came out of the dining room just in time to catch Mr. Wyndham entering the lobby. He was dressed in his tennis whites, so no prize for guessing where he’d been. Something of a fitness fanatic, really, which came as a bit of mystery to me seeing as he didn’t eat breakfast. Something told me that Mr. Wyndham, who had a few years on me, would not be around on this little world of ours for longer than I. Still, he seemed a nice enough chap. Like me he had arrived a few days early, so we had the chance to get to know each other a little bit more than the others. I still think of him as Mr. Wyndham, even though by Saturday morning we were already on first name terms. Mark of respect, I suppose. It’s “a thing,” as my niece would have said.

“Hey there, Sam,” I said to him.

“Alright, ----,” he said to me, with a wide smile, and after a failed attempt to juggle his tennis racket and bag gave up on the offering to shake my hand. I laughed and asked him if he fancied a meander into town later. We both shared an interest in antiques, and I’d noticed a little shop on the drive here. Mr. Wyndham said he’d be more than happy to accompany me once he’d had a shower. No problem, I could find something to occupy me while he was getting rid of all that manly sweat.

I watched him walk away, my eyes lingering on his pert ass beneath the white shorts, and only turned away when he entered the lift. I glanced around the lobby, hoping no one had noticed where my eyes had looked. Not that I’m in the closet or anything, it’s just there was something about him that I couldn’t resist. And yes, it’s true; I’m a married man. So sue me.

So, there I was, not much of anything to do except wait. Once I was certain no one was paying me any attention my eyes returned to the lift. Going up, of course. Mr. Wyndham was on the first floor, so I guessed he wouldn’t be too long. I turned away, intending to find something to occupy me, but before I could come up with anything even remotely interesting there was the ding of a bell and the sliding noise of metal on metal as the lift doors reopened. I turned around. Maybe Mr. Wyndham had left something in the courts.

It wasn’t him. A couple emerged from the lift, so caught up in their own world they were totally unaware of this casually dressed thirty-something man watching them. I suspect they were having an affair…only people in the midst of a clandestine affair would be so wrapped up in each other.

For a moment I was puzzled. Surely there had not been enough time for the lift to reach the first floor? I dismissed this. Not like I wasn’t in a world of my own for a while there. More time could certainly have passed than I realised.

Once again I turned away from the lift.

Short Story

Tormented as a young boy, a man decides to settle the score and devises an intricate plan to get back at the one person who truly wronged him.

Excerpt

Of course Mr. Newby had a first name. But it is immaterial, and by the time this story takes place there was no one in the world who knew what that name was except himself.

As an infant he had been found wrapped up in a blanket on the steps of St. Dinadan’s Orphanage for Boys, without even a note pinned to his diaper. Though he was officially given the name of a saint, the adults at the orphanage always referred to him in private as “Unfortunate.” As he moved from infant to toddler to school age, the other boys, both large and small, gave him other names, most of them unkind. “Ugly.” “Fatty.” “Stupid.” “Retard.” “Queer.” “Moron.” “Lard Ass.” “Four Eyes.” “Faggot.” They regularly put him headfirst into toilets and garbage bins.

Through it all, he smiled.

Pete Carson, two years older and much larger, was the worst of his tormentors. Once he yanked Mr. Newby's pants down in the schoolyard in full view of the giggling girls in St. Cecelia's Orphanage for Girls, next door. Mr. Newby’s round face turned red, tears filled his blue eyes. Even then, he smiled. No matter what his torment of the day, he always just picked himself up when it was over and soldiered on. Always smiling.

He had smiled from the day of his birth. It was fortunate that a newborn baby could not understand what was happening around him, because this is what transpired on that day almost a half century past.…

##

The young woman sat up in the hospital bed, held her new baby in her arms, and with trembling anticipation drew down the triangle of blanket that covered his face. She paled and shoved the infant in the direction of the nurse and the frowning doctor and the priest who stood beside the bed. “I don’t want him. Take him away.”

“He is your baby, Miss Newby,” the doctor said in an icy tone, stressing her unwed state. “You have to take him.”

“Why can't you keep him? Find him a home? I don’t have anywhere to take him. And he’s—he’s ugly.” She looked pleadingly at the priest. “Father? Take him to the orphanage. Let the sisters raise him.”

Father Erasmus peered down at the baby and shook his head. “I'm afraid not, Miss Newby,” said the priest gently. “It would be impossible.”

And so she took him home. For the next five weeks Mr. Newby's mother cried whenever she looked at her smiling infant son. “All I wanted,” she sobbed, “was a baby who looked like every other baby, not one that looks like a troll.”

A strange congenital stiffness in his facial muscles accounted for his gremlin smile that remained even when he was crying. She hated the way people stared at him when she took him out. When the baby was six months old she met a man who was willing to take her away from her troubles if she’d ditch “the freaky retard.”