BestsellerBound Short Story Anthology

by Darcia Helle

  "Lainey, you stupid, brainless twit! How could you do this to us?"

  "Me? You were the one telling me to hurry up. You know how I get when you rush me."

  Mr. Numffis scuffled over the chalk markings and sniffed at Santa's boots. He lifted a leg. Santa scooped him up in one gloved hand.

  "I can't have that on my suit, not my good one." Santa looked at the girls. He wasn't even a teeny bit jolly now. "The pentagram is broken. I'm collecting your souls now. The boys are so looking forward to meeting you."

  "Elves. Ew." Mitzi shuddered.

  "Are you going to make me wear one of those green felt skirts with jingle bells?" Lainey glared and crossed her arms. "Because I refuse. Those are so not in style."

  "I had something else in mind." Santa eyed her sexy witch outfit.

  "Won't Mrs. Claus object?" Mitzi said.

  Santa laughed. "Mrs. Claus? She's a piece of fiction, dreamed up by a feminist group back in 1921. They couldn't stand the thought that Santa was a bachelor and very happy that way. There is no Mrs. Claus."

  "And no fur trim," Lainey said. "I don't wear real fur. It's not fair for the animals to have to go naked so I can be fashionable."

  "No fur," Santa agreed.

  "What are you going to make us do?" Lainey challenged him with her stare.

  Santa winked. "I have a few ideas. You can't believe how messy reindeer can be, cooped up in a stable half the year."

  "I am not shoveling reindeer poo. It would ruin my nails." Lainey spread her hands. The nails were the longest fake acrylic the salon had, painted bright scarlet.

  "How about cookies?" Santa asked.

  "Fattening," both girls said.

  Santa handed Mr. Numffis to Lainey. "We'll work something out. Time to go."

  He reached across the pentagram and took their hands. The mist swirled, like a giant candy cane cloud. The pentagram flared red and green, twinkling like a string of Christmas lights as it disappeared. All that remained was the lingering scent of peppermint.

  ***

  About the Author:

  Jaleta Clegg was born some time ago. She's spent the years since telling stories- in her head and to anyone who would listen. Once she obtained her first computer, a Commodore128 at a garage sale, technology set her free. Her writing has exploded into science fiction adventure novels and lots of silly horror short stories. Find more about her at https://www.jaletac.com. She recently adopted a shelter dog and cat to go with her ancient toothless cat and horde of children. The dog also amuses her husband so she can write without worrying about him becoming lonely.

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  Ice Cream Man

  by Neil Schiller

  Copyright © 2011

  It’s time, again.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for our house band, The Jason Jeffers Trad Jazz Trio.’

  A spattering of weak applause as the lights go up on Nick. He starts a big booming bass walk, his fingers stretched tight around the neck and fingerboard and a look of extreme concentration on his face. When Steve joins in on the piano you can hear they’re a semitone apart already. It sounds pretty fucking bad. I try to cover it with the beat and stare at Nick, willing him to look over so I can nudge his fingers up the strings a centimetre or so by sheer willpower. He doesn’t turn his head through the whole set. He’s lost in some grey dream of himself.

  When it happens, when the three of us click into place up here, it’s like an electrical current has just burst the banks of its circuit-board. It’s effortless, it sends you into a gorgeous black trance where you just go with what you’re doing and you’re vaguely aware of the other things happening around you. As soon as I saw the sweat dripping from Nick’s nose I knew we were never even getting close tonight. We haven’t for a while. The bassline stutters along mechanically enough and the piano tinkles earnestly over the top. I try and throw in a few licks but they threaten to rip the music apart so I give in and just tap away monotonously instead.

  The crowd don’t seem to mind. The crowd don’t seem to be listening. They’re here for the food and I don’t blame them. We’re a background noise, marginally better than the uncomfortable scrape of cutlery on dirty plates.

  We plod on through our usual set. Love Me or Leave Me, My Funny Valentine, Mac the Knife. We finish with a Tom Waits number. Usually it brings the house down.

  Tonight, nobody pays any attention. Steve isn’t putting the effort in. He usually elongates the words, plays with them in an exaggeration of the innuendo in the lyrics. One time he leaned out front and sang it into a crowd of mature women on a sophisticated hen night. He winked at them on the line about the cherry popsicle. I don’t know for certain but I’m pretty sure he scored that night.

  At the moment he’s going through one of his serious rhythm and blues phases. He’s much less fun this way. Tonight he’s sat on his stool with a practiced slouch. He has a fedora tilted too carefully on his head and a beard to shame the Amish. He thinks he’s fucking Dr. John. I can’t wait to get off this stage.

  Everyone assumes that being a musician is glamorous. It isn’t. I was in a big band once. Up under those house lights the white dinner jackets gleam and shimmer. The brass section reflect a spectrum of amber tones back at the audience. And the sound is so tight, so elegant, you imagine every player is a charming aesthete with a hundred witty anecdotes. In the green room, the lead trumpet lets out a fart that levels Hiroshima. The band leader is drunk and is screaming at the trombone to wipe some of the stains from his suit, they’re too dark, you’ll see them from the front row. The clarinet player can’t get his trousers fastened so hides it under a creased cumberbund. He stinks of stale sweat and cigarettes. He’s trying to come on to our female vocalist and she’s telling him in no uncertain terms to fuck off.

  ‘Well boys, that was shit.’

  The restaurant manager hands us our hundred quid anyway and we pack up and go home.

  The cold light of day next morning is polar. Winter is here. There are magpies nesting in a tree, in the city, in the rain. Croaking at the morning like the illiterate dead

  This December day is the first real day of the year, come at last when we’ve all tired of waiting. Damp, solid, frozen into nothing. The voices of people out Christmas shopping are crushed flat by the weight of the air. Their words fall to the ground from pallid lips and lie there in the gloom. Gone, dead, trampled away. This weather pushes you back down into the depths of yourself. I’m rippling with shivers and painfully conscious. Like a stock inventory I’m aware of my body: cold limbs cold face cold ears.

  After last night I need something to cheer me up. I check out the keyboards in Dawson’s. They have an antique Hammond in back which the manager lets me tinker around on. I’m not as good as Steve, my fingers don’t have the same loose dexterity, but I can hammer out a tune in my own way. I start with B flat and work around it carefully.

  ‘What’s that one? It’s not in your set.’

  It’s one I’ve written myself. I’ll teach it to Steve when he lightens up enough. I’m calling it The A-Train Rag. Or some such rubbish.

  ‘What about this one?’

  B flat again, but this one keeps coming back round to the same note over and over. It’s like a fucked up Glen Miller.

  ‘Hey, that’s alright. Did you write that?’

  I did. I don’t know where these have come from, but I just sat on my bed last week and before I realised I was doing it I had The A-Train Rag and Nobody Loved You worked out and memorised. It was a bit fucking weird actually because I’ve never written anything before. God knows how the other two are going to take it. But I think I might be onto something.

  From Dawson’s I’m out, across the road, and I take a sharp left down Button Street. There’s an entrance to some steep steps and I take it. An old guy specialises in bop records down here, hidden away from the property developers in a small dank basement. He’s gone digital because he’s had to, but he still sells a bit of vinyl. In a locked ca
se he has collectable ‘78s.

  When I enter he has Dave Clarke playing. He sees me and switches it off sheepishly.

  ‘It’s for the tourists.’

  He knows I’m a purist. I have a look around for something I haven’t come across before and I hear the crackle and hiss of a needle on one of his rarer items.

  ‘Shit.’

  The melody switches between piano and guitar, but there’s no mistaking it. It’s the A-Train Rag. Well, not quite. But it’s close enough. The worst part about it is it’s much better than my amateur version of the same chord sequence. It dips sharply where mine just goes routinely back around. There’s a key change and a dischord which gives it a real edge.

  ‘You like it? I just got this in. Some old guy popped and his son brought a load of his records down.’

  I must have heard it before somewhere. And for a moment there I thought I’d finally made some sort of breakthrough.

  ‘Who is this?’

  He’s a walking history of the jazz age this guy, so I’m surprised when he shakes his head at the scuffed sleeve.

  ‘Some New York quintet. Never heard of them before.’

  I snatch it off him and stare at it. He’s still talking in the background but I’m not listening. I’m transfixed by the faded black and blue photograph of a band now probably all dead. There’s a coffee stain in the bottom corner of the cover. There’s dust, and tobacco grains caught in the overlap on the back.

  I don’t know how long I take to read and reread the liner notes, but when I come back to myself it seems as though he’s served at least three or four people at the till.

  ‘So what do you think? You want to buy it?’

  I hand the sleeve back to him and walk out without a word.

  The day has turned gunmetal grey. There is hardly anyone about on the slick cobblestones, but I still manage to nearly knock an old woman over. I can hardly see in my distraction. I’m struggling to catch my breath in what seems like a sidewind that keeps hitting me as I walk into the gap between buildings.

  ‘Fucking hell.’

  Snatches of music explode in my brain like debris from a nail bomb. Every one of them is sung in Steve’s shitty, disinterested voice.

  ‘Prick.’

  Tomorrow, I’m back at work and my shirts need ironing.

  ***

  About the Author:

  Neil Schiller is an IT consultant and part time PhD student from Liverpool. Previously, he has published critical work on the authors Charles Bukowski and Richard Brautigan. His first work of fiction, Oblivious, a collection of twenty one short stories about life in Liverpool and the surrounding North West of England, was released in November 2010. The Haiku Diary – the result of a project where a diary was kept in Haiku form for each day of 2008 – followed in December.

  He currently lives about three miles outside the Liverpool city limits, across the river in Prenton, with his partner and four year old daughter, two hyperactive foxhounds, a warmongering hamster and eight rather introverted tropical fish. And he’s not related to Friedrich Schiller, or Goethe, or anyone else for that matter…

  You can learn more about Neil and his writing on his blog: https://neilschiller.wordpress.com

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  No Eyes But Mine Shall See

  by Sharon E. Cathcart

  Copyright © 2011

  Gilbert’s cravat hung loose, his shirt collar open. He dried the pen, closed the inkwell and sighed. His handsome face was tired and drawn in the lamp’s glow. Outside, the rain fell on dark London streets; it was late. He ran his fingers through cropped curls the color of old Roman coins and willed the tears to remain in his dark brown eyes as he reread the letter he would never send. He absently rubbed his leg with the other hand; the damp English weather made the old injury ache.

  “Dear Claire” ...

  So innocuous. How could such a simple salutation say so much and so little at once?

  He read on, the words flowing in his native French.

  *

  I watched your carriage drive away today, standing at the window until it was out of sight. There were so many things that I wanted to say to you, but you were gone.

  I wanted to say those things when you stood in front of me, saying your farewells. You looked so beautiful in your blue cloak, its silver fox-furred hood lighting your eyes. Did I ever tell you how much your eyes reminded me of the Camargois sky?

  No, I do not believe I ever did.

  Your glorious chestnut-colored hair was styled in an elaborate coil of braids: very fashionable. Yet my fingers recall its weight as I held those locks to brush them.

  And my lips recall the kiss I stole that night. Did you feel what I did?

  I wanted to speak so many times when I escorted you around London or Paris. Restaurants, museums, shops; we went so many places together. I wanted to be much more than your majordomo, but you never knew.

  You encouraged my drawing, but you never saw the dozens of sketches I made of you. Some were from memory, from the days in Paris. You riding your fine horse; I know how you have missed that black mare. Many of them were made while you lay ill; I feared for you, as did the entire household.

  I wanted to whisper to you then, but I said nothing. Instead, I brought a black velvet toy mare and gave her to you. Your quiet smile was thanks enough.

  I understand so much better now how a sadness of the heart sickens the body. The doctor called your illness hysteria, said you were mad. How wrong he was. You have ever been sane, even in the darkest times. Perhaps I could have done more to ease your burdens; I will never know. I did what I could.

  I wanted to speak when you befriended Joseph Merrick, and when you railed at Doctor Treves, my benefactor thanks to you, for the way he treated Joseph in death.

  I thought about speaking up when the English ladies decided not to receive you anymore. You tried so hard to make things right. I wished, many times, that we could all go back to France. Now you are going, and I am staying here.

  I wanted to say something the night you made sure, for the first time in years, that I was dressed and barbered properly. Your eyes were the first to look upon me as a woman looks upon a man whom she admires.

  I wanted to tell you whenever I watched your kindness to the people of the Opera Garnier. You never failed to smile and say a kind word, even though I knew your misery.

  Oh yes, I knew your misery. I watched your cousin Francois ... my brother-in-law ... take everything you had. He did the same to my sister; she died giving birth to his child. He lived in my home, but made it clear I was there at his sufferance. I became a servant in the home that should have been mine: your cousin’s valet. After all, how could a man with a twisted leg manage the affairs of a cattle ranch?

  I watched Francois beggar and ruin you, and I could say nothing. He sold your home, just as he did mine. Damn those laws that say a man must control a woman’s property. Those same laws gave my sister’s inheritance to Francois; he squandered it all.

  The closest I ever came to speaking my mind was the night I learned you were married, when Erik pressed his wedding ring into my hand and sent me to the little cottage where you awaited your newlywed husband’s return. Francois even tried to take him from you.

  That night, I said that I was your man. You presumed that I meant only to help you. The truth was, I meant that and more. I wanted to be a bold chevalier: a protector. Yet, you barely knew me; I was your cousin’s valet, after all. It would have been unseemly to say more than I did on that night.

  As it was, our lives were never the same.

  Claire, I said nothing because I am a coward.

  How could I say, “I am in love with you,” even as you were preparing to return to France with your dying husband? Erik was as good a friend to me as he could be, and you chose him.

  How could I say, “I have loved you from afar,” without looking like a madman?

  How could I consider casting myself
at your feet and begging you to stay in London? Yet, that very thought crossed my mind as I watched your coach disappear.

  How like you, in your compassion, to ensure that I would not be destitute in this strange land, since circumstances prevent me from going back to France with you.

  There were times when you thought me so brave, Claire, but I am not. Only a craven would fail to speak these simple truths.

  So, now I have done so, in a letter that no eyes but mine shall see. Perhaps one day, when I am in my dotage, I will tell my grandchildren about it. Perhaps, by then, I will be brave enough. I will live without you because I must, but your face will always live in my heart.

  I am, your humble servant,

  Gilbert Rochambeau

  *

  Gilbert blotted the ink and folded the paper carefully. He swiped a hand across his eyes, wiping away tears of regret, and tucked the letter into a desk drawer. He thought of glancing through the sketchbook there, but had felt his share of melancholy for the night.

  Using the blue-knobbed walking stick, a gift from Claire at Christmas, he rose to his feet. He tried to keep his halting footsteps quiet as he made his way to the bedroom where his wife slept, peacefully unaware.

  ***

  About the Author:

  Sharon E. Cathcart is the author of You Had to Be There: Three Years of Mayhem and Bad Decisions in the Portland Music Scene, Sui Generis, Les Pensees Dangereuses, 2010 Hindsight: A Year of Personal Growth, In Spite of Myself, and In The Eye of the Beholder: A Novel of the Phantom of the Opera. She is the co-author of Born of War ... Dedicated to Peace.

  Gilbert Rochambeau first appears in the pages of In The Eye of The Beholder. He also plays an important role in the upcoming sequel, In The Eye of The Storm.

  Sharon lives in the Silicon Valley, California, with her husband and an assortment of pets. You can learn more about her and her work at on her website: https://home.earthlink.net/~scathcart1964/sharonecathcart

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