GRIMM AND GRIMMER
VOLUME TWO
EDITED BY THERESA DERWIN
FOREWORD BY GAIE SEBOLD
INCLUDING STORIES BY
MATTHEW SYLVESTER
ED FORTUNE
JENNIFER LORING
NANCY BRASHEAR
STEWART HOTSTON
EDWARD AHERN
Praise for Grimm and Grimmer Volume One
Theresa Derwin has assembled some talented and award-winning authors to bring you Grimm and Grimmer: Volume One, a collection of short stories all based on fairy tales
On the whole, these tales contain death, murder, mutilation, zombies and witches and so, can rightly sit on the bookshelf of any horror fan.
John Milton www.andyerupts.com
Grimm and Grimmer is a really enjoyable read of warped tales; the writers are very clever by incorporating the dark side of such traditional stories whilst throwing in the perfect amount of humour too. This collection made me giggle, sometimes for the wrong reasons!
Andie Percival
All in all this is rather nifty and well put together anthology from a new publisher on the block. They are obviously not afraid to take risks and I would say if you enjoyed the tv series Grimm plus books from Alice in Wonderland to straight fantasy/horror then this volume is certainly worth a looksie.
Sean T Page Ministry of Zombies
First published 2013 by Fringeworks Ltd, Y Berllan, Maen Y Groes, Cei Newydd,
Ceredigion, SA45 9TR.
www.fringeworks.co.uk
Cover art by Martin Reimann
‘Foreword’ © Gaie Sebold 2013
‘Happily Ever After’ © Edward Ahern 2013
‘Paved with Gold’ © Ed Fortune 2013
‘Ready or Not’ © Nancy Brashear 2013
‘Rumpeltrollskin’ © Stewart Hotston 2013
‘One Hundred Lost Years’ © Jennifer Loring 2013
‘Death's Messengers’ © Matthew Sylvester 2013
The right of the authors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to us and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
CONTENTS
‘Foreword’ by Gaie Sebold
‘Happily Ever After’ Edward Ahern
‘Paved with Gold’ Ed Fortune
‘Ready or Not’ Nancy Brashear
‘Rumpeltrollskin’ Stewart Hotston
‘One Hundred Lost Years’ Jennifer Loring
‘Death's Messengers’ Matthew Sylvester
Martin Reimann – The Artist
Martin Reimann was born in Czech Republic, but soon moved to Belgium where he met some great people who helped him in choosing his path to becoming an artist. He is currently studying games art and design at the Norwich University of the Arts in the UK.
His love for drawing came from an early age and has been growing ever since. Martin is curious and has a passion for many things, especially history, cultures and anything unique and crazy. With his whole life still ahead of him he is constantly open to new things, absorbing information and exploring new places, undergoing adventures and visual experiences that inspire him and his art.
He says, “I try my best to make my art memorable and give it much personality and character which reflect myself and my multicultural roots. I try my best to grasp many styles and mix different techniques and approaches together, lately I have been working mostly digitally purely out of efficiency and convenience but still try and keep that natural and traditional feel.”
In his spare time he likes to play games, listen to trippy music, watch mind bending movies, discuss life and browse the interwebs in search of inspiration and all things awesome.
Theresa Derwin – The Editor
Theresa was born and bred in Birmingham and her career has been pretty varied; from Warehouse Packer, then bar work, to being a crap waitress then swiftly into retail, Admin, Professional Student and dosser until finally entering the Civil Service in 1999. She left the Service in 2012 to pursue a career as a writer.
Theresa writes humorous fiction including SF, Urban Fantasy & Horror. She has twelve anthology acceptances behind her. She also writes a number of book reviews and at her site www.terror-tree.co.uk. Her short story collection Monsters Anonymous was released from Anarchy Books Sept 2012. She also produces feminist genre fanzine Andromeda’s Offspring.
She has loved horror, fantasy and SF all her life, thanks to her father who raised her on 50s Sci-Fi Universal Monsters, tango and popcorn. Her love of the bizarre, (including her Dad) remains constant, to this day. She also owes a great debt to Rog Peyton from the BSFG who introduced her to alternative fiction at the tender the age of 14.
You can follow Theresa on Twitter @BarbarellaFem or find out more about her work at www.theresa-derwin.co.uk.
Foreword
By Gaie Sebold
As a child, I had a lot of those Andrew Lang books. The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, The Green Fairy Book…possibly there were Puce, Lilac and Taupe fairy books, too, I don’t remember.
But I do remember the power of those tales. The first books were mainly Northern European, following in the tradition of the Brothers Grimm. Later books collected stories from all over the world. Some of them I found strange, some of them I didn’t understand, but I read every single one. All of them, in their own way, were fascinating. All of them fed into that strange subconscious mulch that grows a writer.
With the benefit of hindsight (and smarter people who pointed it out first), I realised how many of those tales were simple lessons about behaviour and survival. Some were lessons I could still agree with: be kind to those who seem poor and dirty and powerless. Behave pleasantly to those around you. Keep your eyes open. Note what happens to others who have gone on this quest before you. Be brave. Be crafty.
Other lessons, not so much. Like…Women, be Beautiful and Sweet and Compliant. If you’re Ugly or want anything for yourself, you’re Evil and will come to a bad end. (As indeed you will if you’re Beautiful but using it for inappropriate purposes, like gaining power over your own life).
Then, years later, I read Robin McKinley’s Beauty. I loved the original Beauty and the Beast to bits – (except that I was always slightly disappointed about the beast turning into the Standard Handsome Prince – I liked him better as the beast. Take that how you will). I think I particularly liked the original because the Beast gave Beauty a library.
I loved McKinley’s Beauty because the heroine was normal-looking, independent, smart, and funny. And she too, if I remember rightly, felt a slight pang at the loss of the Beast, however nice the Prince turned out to be. There were lessons here, too; some of the original ones about kindness and self-sacrifice and redemption, but also ones about being stubborn about doing the right thing, and about being yourself instead of what was expected of you.
More recently I read Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels. A dark, beautiful, tra
gic, amazing book, which takes traditional fairy-tale tropes and uses them to talk about magic and abuse and delusion and motherhood and love and betrayal. One of the most powerful and moving books I have read in a long time. And one of its lessons was about the danger of believing in the delusory fairy tales we tell ourselves, whether they are dark or bright, instead of looking around and seeing what’s really happening.
Fairy tales and the lessons they teach have been around a long time. They’re not going away any time soon. They may be set in the forest or the future, in the castle or the bedsit, but fairy tales endure.
The lessons of the following tales are perhaps less stated than in some of those gathered by the Brothers Grimm, but they’re there. And not all the heroes of these stories are the youngest son who gets it right. Some of them are ones who ended up as warnings.
Let’s take a walk into that dark forest, shall we?
Edward Ahern
Edward Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales.
He has his original wife, but after 45 years they are both out of warranty. He dissipates his free time fly fishing, shooting and participating in Japanese, French and German language groups.
Here are his thoughts on fairy tales:
'Happily Ever After' is a subversive fairy tale written after he had written six conventional new fairy tales for inclusion in anthologies in the U.S. After all those uplifting stories he had to let his darker side out.
Happily Ever After
by Ed Ahern
He stared past the observant servants until he caught her eye, then winked. 'Blanche, let’s do something different today.'
'Like what, Fürstie? We thirst for nothing.'
He scratched his silk leggings. 'No really, this rut of ours, even our royal rutting, is excruciatingly pleasant but so predictable. Let’s do something different.' He waved at the satin draperies. 'Everything is sumptuous, but it’s like eating only desserts. Don’t you ever get an urge for a bologna sandwich?'
Blanche tossed her hair. It was perhaps even more golden than Fürst’s, and somewhat longer. 'No, first off, we have all our needs splendidly attended to, and then we have each other, all day, every day, forever.'
'Yes, well.' He stared at the coarse dressed castle stones, half draped in tapestries. 'I need to start having a Fürst night out. Think how much more I’ll appreciate you if I’m deprived of you for a day and a night.'
'Did you say knight or night?'
'A night, spent in reflection on our limitless blessings.'
Blanche heaved her ample, milky bosom. The trussing of her empire gown flaunted her twins, but made heaving a bit painful. 'Fürstie, you know I can deny you nothing. If this will add another sweet layer to our love cake, please go ahead. On a trial basis, of course. Who knows, while you’re out I may take up tres haute cuisine. Not to actually cook on a regular basis, of course, but to become more culinarily conversant.'
They kissed demurely, avoiding excessive affection in front of the courtiers, and sat back down at their ornate desks. Fürst had been signing his way through a tall pile of correspondence prepared by his social secretary, Alberecht.
Although a dour gnome who despised his job, Alberecht proficiently drafted ornately flowery replies and politely vague threats. On his days off he wrote anonymous hate mail. He thought he might eventually launch a career in greeting cards.
Fürst paused in his signing, took out a blank vellum sheet, and began to write to the queen mother who Blanche had supplanted as queen with the death of Blanche’s father.
'My deliciously wicked Lucinda,
We can finally stop meeting for moments in the castle passageways. I have an evening and a night free, and hope to dedicate my freedom to your arms. Blanche cannot know, of course, that I tryst with her almost equally young stepmother. I profoundly aspire to wrap myself in you this Friday following.
Pining
Your Fürst Bezaubernd'
He carefully folded the note, sealed it in three spots, and wrote on the outside:
Personal and Private for the Queen Mother Lucinda
He slipped the note into the correspondence pile. Fürst presumed that Alberecht opened and read his private correspondence before replacing the seals, but rightly presumed that the information Alberecht gleaned was of value to him only so long as it remained confidential.
Fürst finished signing the letters, and kissed Blanche with pulchritudian enthusiasm before furlonging off for a horse ride. At least that’s what he announced to Blanche. Actually he hunted, killing any animal, small or large, that crossed his path. He had been known to use peanuts to lure in chipmunks and butcher them. He told his huntsmen that the bloodletting provided balance for his synchronized swim in concentrated syrup with Blanche.
Blanche had never actually been in the woods, but adored wildlife, regarding these generally rank-smelling animals as cuddly. Fürst gave away the disemboweled game before returning to the castle. Blanche was secretly aware of his weakness for blood sports, but appreciated his lying protection of her sensibilities.
Meanwhile, once she’d acquired relative privacy, it was Blanche’s turn to write. On her monogrammed vellum she penned:
'My Bewitching Selena,
At last we will have the privacy to conduct those intimate goetic and herbal experiments that we’ve whispered about. Bezaubernd will be spending Friday evenings out. We will have the entire night for the ungarbed earth mother rituals we’ve discussed. I tremble to think of rubbing you all over with hellbane.
In Intimate Novitiate,
Blanche Neigé'
She sealed the letter and pulled the bell cord for Hecatia, her First Lady in Waiting.
'Yes Princess Neigé?'
'Take this immediately to Mistress Selena.'
Blanche was reasonably confident that Hecatia pried open only those sealed notes not addressed to Selena. She’d been a novice of Selena’s before being appointed to the royal court, and still cowered in the presence of the mannishly attractive but vindictive witch.
Neither note had very far to go. Lucinda, the seductive queen mother, was quartered in the royal turret. Alberecht and Selena had apartments in a turret diagonally across the inner courtyard, which housed senior castle staff. For those for whom such things are important, their titles were, respectively: 'Fürstal Scribe' and 'Herbologist and Leech to the Royal Family.'
Friday evening the Fürst’s steed rode off into the woods with another rider. Bezaubernd skulked about his own castle for awhile before softly rapping at the Queen Widow’s oak-planked door. She answered the knock herself, a breach of etiquette the Fürst found fetching.
'My Fürst.'
'Queenie!'
She winced at the term, but moved toward him for an embrace. 'Don’t touch the hair, dear.'
'No, of course not, Lucinda.'
Lucinda was one of those vaguely plain women for whom cosmetics are designed. By the time several score of ointments and powders had been applied only her underlying bones were recognizable. Eyes, mouth, skin hair- everything visible was artifice. Poor Bezaubernd seemed enamored of an ambulatory oil painting.
They undressed on their own sides of the bed. The room had been darkened to the point of fumbling, but Fürst launched into Braille caresses and praise for faintly seen body parts. Lucinda, with few unmodified attributes, was bemused to discern that Fürst was a natural blond. The assorted clichés, staged moans, and eventual panting are not repeated here.
Meanwhile, Blanche was having a turret tryst of her own. Selena greeted her at the oaken door without make up, wearing black leather leggings and a sheer silk blouse. Blanche blanched.
'Am I early? Do you wish to change while I wait?'
'No, your grace. In my own apartments I dress as I wish and not as court convention dictates.'
'Ah. Trousers. How peculiar. Isn’t it more difficult when you need to enter the water closet?'
Not wanting to unintentionally o
ffend a dangerous minion, Blanche segued. 'I’m so looking forward to the dark arts you’ve described. Do we really get to slather each other with ointment?'
'About that, dear Princess Blanche- may I call you just Blanche? I thought we would engage in knowing each other before we engage in dark knowledge.'
The seduction required two goblets of wine and a little less than thirty minutes. Selena was brusque but thorough, leading the bumbling princess through various alternatives. Selena, an older and dominating woman, made being led astray seem like a routine internal audit.
Affairs progressed. Both Blanche and Fürst misplaced most of their Saturdays, painfully reacting to the aftereffects of alcohol and drugs, and aching from contorted postures assumed in connubial interchanges. They were even a bit short with each other, but, of course, didn’t argue.
One Sunday, after Matins but before Vespers, as the help hovered, Fürst broke again with protocol.
'I was wondering, my love object…'
'Yes my prince?'
'We see your stepmother so infrequently. You surely can’t believe the rumors about the death of your father- she had nothing to gain from becoming queen mother.'
'Or the rumors about the prior death of my mother. I see Lucinda at state functions with a hundred courtiers. Isn’t that enough?'
'Rose lips, I’ve encountered her several times on the castle grounds, and she seems proper, grieving even, in a socially presentable way. Perhaps if we were to invite her to sup with us one Sunday evening? The servants have their one half-day off, and we would be alone, serving ourselves from the sideboard. It would be completely informal.'
Grimm and Grimmer Volume Two Page 1
