The Fabulous Fish Boy and other weird tales

By Vaughan Tucker

These tautly-written tales from a remarkable imagination provoke both horror and fascination in equal measures. They're disturbing, but they keep you reading until the shocking finish. In this macabre little collection everyday, mundane events walk hand in hand with the weird, the bizarre and the horrible.
There's the ordinary man who keeps giving birth to fish and the pensioner with a murderous way of saving money. A magician who can't cope with caring for a devil's offspring, and a sympathetic portrayal of perhaps the greatest traitor in history. Meet a cat lover who has to decide between what he most values and what he most needs.
And after reading this, you will never look at Christmas or Hallowe'en in the same way again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vaughan Tucker
• Release date: Apr 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476233772

Vaughan Tucker

Vaughan Tucker hails originally from New Zealand but has lived in England since 1985. He first lived in London until the traffic, dirt, noise and aggro drove him away and he now lives in an historic market town with a tranquil river where neighbours know each other and people say hello as they pass in the street. He caught the newspaper bug early and has worked in them all his life, first as a reporter and then as a sub-editor. He loved it. It gave him the opportunity to travel at his employers' expense and meet a very broad range of people. For more than six years Vaughan worked in the Press Gallery in Parliament in New Zealand. This caused the loathing he feels for politicians and planted the seed of what became Grubby the Eighth Dwarf. The book is darkly comic and, of course, pure fiction. However the underlying attitude of the politicians in the book is fairly true to type. They would all do almost anything to advance their careers and damn the consequences. Vaughan is still writing, messing about in boats and playing with bows and arrows. His ambition is to give up smoking. Apart from that Claudia Schiffer business . . .

Book preview

Chapter 1: The Fabulous Fish Boy

Chapter 2: Frostie's Fault

Chapter 3: Cheap Cuts

Chapter 4: Paved with Good Intentions

Chapter 5: The Devil's Kingdom

Chapter 6: Pit Bulls are for Wimps

Chapter 7: The Worth of a Cat

THE FABULOUS FISH BOY

HIS neck and shoulders ached so he asked his wife to look at them and she was fascinated by what she saw.

'Have you had a bad fall Stevie? Or has something hit you very hard?"

'No. Why, what is it?'

‘It’ was a roughly diamond-shaped dark patch on his back. The topmost point of the diamond was at his hairline. The other points were at his shoulders and halfway down his spine.

After a pause Melissa, his wife, said: 'It looks like a bruise, but I can’t imagine how you did it. Does it hurt?'

'Yes, it does. It feels like a bruise, funnily enough. Is it infected?'

'No, but,' Melissa sniffed, 'I can smell something fishy.'

'Fishy?'

'Yes, of fish. Why don’t you take a hot bath, it would take some of the ache out of it.'

Stevie poured himself a drink and got into the bath. It was the best bath he had ever had, he thought, sipping contemplatively. The bruise was still an ache, but it seemed somehow to be pulsing, almost massaging his back. The water supported him gently. He felt it caressing.

Melissa came into the bathroom after he’d finished and picked up the towel he had left on the floor. She held it to her nose, said 'Pooh!' and threw it into the laundry basket.

He became used to the ache; he wasn’t in great pain. They both watched the patch change position over the days. It had moved down Stevie’s back and was distorted.

The lowest point was now at his coccyx. Two of the other points were just above either hip. The fourth point had stretched into a line which lay up his spine. If it looked like a diamond before it now looked like a heavy-headed arrow.

Melissa one morning noticed the hard lumps, like sharp vertebrae, which had grown on his lower back.

'That’s awful Stevie,' she said. 'You look like a lizard. You must go to see the doctor.'

The doctor’s surgery was in an old part of town. Trucks packed with fish in ice ground their way up the steep narrow streets from the harbour below. The doctor, overweight, ruddy and wheezing, looked at Stevie’s patch. Stevie was sure he heard him mutter 'Jesus' under his breath before taking him for an x-ray.

The doctor wheezed back in with the results.

'You have a fish under the skin on your back,' he said.

'A fish?'

'Yes. A skate, I think, but I’m no fisherman. Parasites are of course common in the fish world, but they usually go for other marine life, not married men who smoke too much.'

'What should I do?'

'We should probably operate to remove it, although it doesn’t seem to be harming you. You’re reasonably healthy, apart from the smoking. I’ll see about getting an appointment for you.'

Stevie went home to find Melissa washing the sheets yet again. She was wearing a choking amount of perfume.

He knew why, of course, she wore so much perfume. He had always worried about BO but no matter what he did the smell seemed to get stronger. And he had a bath every day. He looked forward to having baths. They calmed and refreshed him. It almost seemed as though he belonged in the bath.

Melissa took the news quite well, considering what the news was. She now slept in the spare bedroom. He didn’t blame her. She still conscientiously washed his sheets every day.

Then came the event Stevie