The Safety Dance

By Justin Cawthorne

The Safety Dance ... to some a forgotten pop hit from the 1980s ... to Crispin it signifies more: a whole lot more. In his quest to uncover the hidden secret of The Safety Dance he will encounter ridicule, despair, dwarves, and the psychotic denizens of an obscure English town. Read on if you dare...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Justin Cawthorne
• Release date: Jan 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465933393

Justin Cawthorne

Justin Cawthorne is an author of tales that explore new ways to draw terror from both the known and unknown. In partnership with the "Tales To Terrify" podcast, Justin Cawthorne was a recipient of the 2016 Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction Story: Small Cast (Short Form), awarded for the adaptation of his short story "Graves". He has a short story, "Colder Still" appearing in the anthology Shadows & Teeth Volume 2, published by Darkwater Syndicate.

Book preview

The Safety Dance

By Justin Cawthorne

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Justin Cawthorne

Discover other titles by Justin Cawthorne at Smashwords.com

for @charp – because this is all his fault, mostly

and with thanks to @superflange who was there for me

when I needed someone to do violence to a cassette tape

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Table of Contents

The Safety Dance

Author’s Note

Other stories by Justin Cawthorne

Connections

The Safety Dance

by Justin Cawthorne

What the fuck is this?!

Crispin looked up at Gloria in puzzlement. She was standing over him, holding the present he had just given her between the finger and thumb of one hand as if it was potentially contagious: her other hand rested indignantly upon her hip. Crispin thought it was quite obvious what she was holding in her hand and, in his experience, Gloria didn’t usually need a great deal of help with the obvious. This was the main source of his puzzlement. He supposed fleetingly that she could be referring to something else: perhaps something that she wasn’t holding directly in front of his face; or something that was taking place behind him; or maybe even something that was currently going on entirely inside her head. However, since Crispin wasn’t able to read her mind (although he had genuinely tried on many occasions) he had no real way of knowing if she was, in fact, talking about something else or not.

So, when Gloria asked him, in a tone usually reserved for dealing with the legal department: What the fuck is this? Crispin really only had one answer to give her:

It’s a cassette tape.

This time she rolled her eyes at him, which was still quite some distance from the reaction he had hoped to inspire when he’d recorded the mix tape for her. "I can see it’s a tape, Crisp, I can see that. It’s even written here on the side just in case I had any niggling doubts about it. But do you know what year this is? It’s 2011! It’s the year after we made contact. Who the hell plays tapes any more?"

... I do, replied Crispin, honestly perplexed. Did you want to borrow my Walkman...?

Gloria arched her eyebrows so high Crispin briefly wondered if she was going to be able to keep her eyeballs inside her face. "Your Walkman? You have a Walkman - a tape Walkman? Shit, did you miss the nineties completely?"

Crispin shook his head vigorously. No way. I had a MiniDisc player once. And I saw The Matrix.

She sighed and shook her head in bewilderment. Fine. Fine. Okay, let me borrow the Walkman. If it means I don’t have to listen to Miriam talking about her husband’s piles I’ll listen to anything.

He pulled the Walkman out of his rucksack and handed it over. Gloria stared at it for a second, still shaking her head, then walked off.