Short Stories to Entertain

Eleven on Sunday morning and Ricky wa s not feeling too well. The truth wa s he wa s a disgrace. After pledging to be abstemious for a while, last night was Eddie’s stag night and of course things got out of hand. Eddie Bloomfield wa s a popular chap and his intended, the very lovely Janie Klonk , who by the way could not wait to gain the Bloomfield surname, was perfectly suited to someone as nice as Eddie. Being so popular the stag night venue was packed with every friend and family member you could name. The beer was free flowing and copious amounts had been funded by Eddie’s uncle who was single and bursting for the opportunity to indulge his only nephew. A combination that was impossible for Ricky to resist.  

He walked into The Ship, a dark gloomy pub with its small windows and dull decoration and dark low ceiling beams and had to stand at the short bar next to a smelly old man in a black grubby jacket to wait to get served. It was so depressingly gloomy in there the curtains might as well have been drawn.          The old man looked at him and smiled with brown teeth, then said, “ O ld Sid’s down the hole changing a barrel.” Then he turned back to chew his cheek while studying his empty glass sitting on a brightly coloured beer mat tapping out a rhythm with chewed down fingernails.           Robert Lucas thought some old men had a look that kind of made them seem sad and this old man seemed sad. Sad and pale. His hands shook a bit and the greying stubble on his chin was patchy like he only had a blunt blade that skipped a bit here and there. That stubble giving him a kind of whitish mouldy look. His eyes had that s...

     Maud was sitting on the huge squishy sofa leaning against the arm cushions with her legs spread out along its length. She was comfy . The cushions were plumped and her right foot, the one with the crepe bandage wrapped around the ankle, was raised on a large, dark orange cushion slightly damp from the aftereffects of the ice pack. Naturally, her right leg had no stocking and a slight discolouration, blue maybe, showed just above the bandage. The cream, silk negligee with the frilled banding was loosely covered with an equally silky pale blue dressing gown slightly ruffled around her waist. She had been in pain. Quite a lot of pain in fact but that had dulled thanks mainly to a copious supply of gin. The discomfort she was feeling in no way detracted from her natural beauty. In fact, the effects of the gin and her slightly revealing apparel make an incredibly sexy picture. The silk brocade curtains were thrown open as wide as possible, flooding the spacious sitti...

  The alarm blasted out its normal few bars of , “I’m a Believer , ” causing Ricky to fling back the duvet on his super-sized bed and enthusiastically leap out of bed, flicking off the music as he went. He is a morning person, in fact he is an every time of day person that also has no problem surfacing in the morning. Except maybe after a Stag Night or some other similar function that involved the loosening of willpower once the supposed two drink limit has been breached. The alarm song he considers apt for his  philosophy of , “ Every day is new day of fun and opportunity , ” that he believes helps him enjoy life to the full.

  As the noise levels increased and the tension mounted a small gasp penetrated the darkness, a sharp intake of breath drawn through pursed lips, the sort that momentarily makes your front teeth cold, higher pitched, a bit like the sudden, short blast as the fly spray can releases a fraction of its pressure with such deadly effect. She was frightened, that much was obvious, so he put his left arm around her and pulled her close and turned his head and whispered in her ear, “Don’t be scared.” A soothing voice o r so he thought. He hoped. She snuggled in close, so he kissed her cheek. A light kiss, his lips just fractionally brushing her skin. A fleeting but tender moment. Reassuring.  

  Monday evening at six and Rich Lister was in the kitchen, feeling like crap, with three days of plates in the sink and a wilting some sort of green plant in a red plastic pot and an empty cat bowl. Puss had gone missing. He was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book, an epic novel full of excessive words and way too many pages, drinking hot, black coffee having pushed the screwed-up copy of Racing Ahead to the other side. That is the copy with the black ink circles around five losing horses. He cut a piece of Victoria sponge cake that his grandpa had made to cheer him up, who was a master baker, that was so light and tasty he thought it could have been eaten in heaven by angels. His hand had been resting on the open book as he had cut the slice and as he raised his hand with the cake the book blew back several pages. Or they seemed to blow back but there was no draft. The page number was 46 wh ic h dId not have any significance for him so he Ignored It ...

  One of the hottest days for years and the air was oppressive. Inside the old workshop building, with its corrugated iron roof, the temperature was approaching forty degrees. Even though it was a cavernous space and the doors were open the static air was overpowering, alive with humidity and energy sapping. Dillon Walton slid out from beneath the twenty-five-year-old blue Ford rust bucket on an old battered red creeper with casters squealing and announced to the owner who stood sweating in a suit and tie. “Sorry mate, it's a total. Needs thousands of work and the old crate is only worth a monkey at best,” he said, wiping his face with a damp towel and unbuttoning his greasy overalls.

  It was the summer of 1924 and Captain Joshua Bartlett was in New York in the lobster restaurant, the one near Madison Square Garden, with the waiter saying, “ I s that one - pound or two-pound lobster sir?” Having a British appetite he replied . “ O ne pound please and hold the salad dressing.” Necessity had taught him the phrase - he had drowned in vinaigrette too many times that week. Staring out the window watching the pavement go by his gaze caught on a couple under the lamp post talking briskly and passionately as Italian New Yorkers do, gesticulating, dressed for the evening but going nowhere, probably disagreeing about nothing in particular before strolling off with his arm around her waist and his jacket hung over his shoulder.

  Bobby Beezer-Brown opened the front door in response to the deafening thumping of fist on woodwork and was confronted first by Little Micky, Big Micky’s personal spokes person , then Big Joe, who Little Micky dragged around, metaphorically that is, to extract monetary and other collections on Big Micky’s behalf. Big Joe stood an excellent six feet eight inches in stockinged feet and came complete with an abundance of muscles. Twenty stones of bulk crammed through the doorway. Bobby Beezer-Brown, having never seen them before, said ,” W hat the f...,” but was shoved aside before he could complete the expletive.  

  The mist was thick within the trees, swirling, almost vibrating with a kind of expectancy. The breeze shifting its white-grey mass with subtle movements breaking the density here and there. The sounds, the seductive tunes, beguiling, beckoning. The wind increasing with a rushing that lifted leaves into spirals of dancing colour . The fog rising to combine with the twisting whirlwinds. Approaching her, then hovering, but suddenly, with a moaning sigh, rushing back the way it had come. The boundary forming, th e line that was indelibly woven into the fabric of time, the exact point of transition, the change from night to day . A fleeting moment when the dead have to retreat and the living begin the slow process of transformation into wakefulness.