Spare Parts

By Stuart Young

Spare Parts - a collection of six stories of love and death from British Fantasy Award Winning author Stuart Young.

Six tales of love and death. Emotions and desires running wild, overwhelming the lives of all they touch. Happiness drifts, forever out of reach, taunting these poor unfortunates, but still they keep grasping. One day they will attain the contentment they seek. Or die trying.

“Young serves up six stories on the theme of love and loss, and the quiet desperation of ordinary lives suddenly transformed by accidental magic.” – Simon Morden

“Stuart Young not only writes stories, he gives them life.” – Tim Lebbon

“Young’s writing is never less than rewarding, while at his best he is thought provoking and capable of genuinely moving the reader.” – Peter Tennant

“Stuart Young writes like Roald Dahl with a freshly sharpened butcher knife, effortlessly cutting straight to the heart.” – Mark McLaughlin

“A bitter-sweet collection which will bring both tears of sadness and cries of horror.” – Gary Greenwood

“Stuart Young excels in his portrayal of emotional pain.” – Matt Cardin

Featuring an Introduction by Tim Lebbon. Cover art by Bob Covington. Illustrations by David Bezzina.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stuart Hughes
• Release date: Sep 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301491094

Stuart Young

Stuart Young is a British Fantasy Award-winning author. His stories have appeared in various anthologies such as Catastrophia, Alt-Dead, Alt-Zombie, We Fade to Grey, Where the Heart Is, The Monster Book for Girls and The Mammoth Book of Future Cops. As well as Spare Parts he has published two other short story collections: Shards of Dreams and The Mask Behind the Face.

Book preview

Spare Parts

Stuart Young

Copyright Stuart Young 2012

Published by Stumar Press at Smashwords

www.stumarpress.co.uk

Copyright © 2012 by Stuart Young.

Introduction copyright © 2012 Tim Lebbon.

Cover art by Bob Covington.

Illustrations by David Bezzina.

eBook design by Tim C. Taylor.

The right of author to be identified as the author of this publication has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights belong to the original authors and artists for their contributed works.

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and incidents portrayed in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher, or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which this is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Published by Stumar Press 2012.

Boxes first published in Spare Parts (Rainfall Books) (2003).

Face At The Window first published in Oktobyr (1997).

Midnight In A Perfect World first published on Terror Tales online competition (2002).

Spare Parts first published on Masters of Terror online website (2001).

Spirits Of Darkness And Light first published in Xenos #48 (1998).

Swamp ‘Gator Blues first published in Oktobyr ‘98 (1998).

The collection Spare Parts first published by Rainfall Books in 2003.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Wishing Well by Tim Lebbon

Boxes

Face At The Window

Midnight In A Perfect World

Swamp ’Gator Blues

Spare Parts

Spirits Of Darkness And Light

Biography

Introduction: Wishing Well

by

Tim Lebbon

We all have our wishes, those aims and ambitions that steer us along one of the many roads of our lives, and we all make more a hundred times each day. Whether we know it or not — and I think most of us do, though Fate’s names are many and varied — our lives are ruled by them. It’s the nature of humanity to aspire to greater and better things, and it’s human nature for each of us to sow our wishes along the way. Most of them are blown away on the wind to die at the foot of some distant hill. This is the place where ambitions rot, a barren, grey, lifeless landscape haunted by missed opportunities and lost chances. Occasionally a few may take root and sprout, although often the resultant plant is not of the colour or variety we had imagined (indeed, sometimes it’s an ugly plant, barbed and cruel, poisonous, even deadly). We are usually comfortable in the knowledge that these wishes are not magical things, at least not in the fairytale sense. They’re simply the way things were always meant to be. Yet there’s a charm in all things, because each and every event in our lives – every smile, gasp, laugh, scream or cry – is original and unique. Mother Nature casts her spells continuously, and every second of every day is another wish come true. They’re not always necessarily the things you yearn for the most, but life is full of a million little miracles.

You could say that wishes are the fuel that drives us on.

Stuart Young is someone who knows about these miracles, and he writes about them like a dream come true. His stories do not deal with superficial wish-fulfilment but go much deeper, plumbing to the depths of what we desire, rooting around the fields of these fledgling dreams and finding the ones that perhaps mean most to us. He conveys these ideas with a casual confidence, giving his tales a pleasing depth.

And he’s not averse to showing us how good intent can sometimes turn very, very bad.

Take the story ‘Boxes’. Here we meet a young man mourning the loss of his girlfriend and craving her return. It’s a sort of useless, sad yearning, as it appears that she is happily ensconced with a new man, and yet he dwells on their failed relationship, making its fading memory so much a part of him that he lives and breathes it, tortured. When offered a memory enhancement drug it seems like a good idea … but our character does not anticipate the strength of his buried wishes. They are the strong underpinning of his pining life, waiting below the surface to spring out and bite him. Madness waits with them.

‘Face at the Window’ is a sad little tale, and yet curiously uplifting as well. Again it deals with the vagaries of memory and the things we wish for – friendship, an end to loneliness – and its ending is a mournful fading away. Just like a dream, perhaps, our life is a fleeting, ambiguous thing. This is another story where Young shows his impressive range of perception: although the ending is not a total surprise, the way he deals with it is perhaps not quite what we would have expected.

‘Midnight in a Perfect World’ reminds me of one of those wonderful old Twilight Zone episodes where all we wish for can come true, though usually, inevitably, at a terrible price. It’s a tale built around a simple conceit, and yet it has many layers: the power of time to heal or, if neglected, to inflict yet more damage; the selfishness of memory; the folly of wishing for impossible things. Folly not simply because those things can be dangerous — and in this story they so obviously are — but because sorrow can be the only result.

The title story ‘Spare Parts’ is on the surface a traditional love-triangle tale, with enough love, hate and craving for revenge to fill a novel. It’s a painful piece to read: Young expertly plays with our emotions and expectations until he delivers a shocking, stunningly original climax that leaves us reeling.

‘Spirits of Darkness and Light’ is a wonderful story, a First World War tale where once more wish fulfilment seems to be the driving force. And yet Young surprises us again with the route the story takes. When the ghost of a downed pilot returns to one of his comrades and asks him to bring some unfinished business to an end, we naturally assume that this is a tale of revenge from beyond the grave. The truth is simple and touching, and much more rewarding for the reader.

‘Swamp Gator Blues’ takes us deep into the bayou for a tale of Voodoo and love, friendship and death. It’s a brutal tale and not one you should read to your kids as a bedtime story, but it’s still surprising and filled with powerful imagery. There were easy ways out of this tale, but Young rarely takes the easy route. Rather, he turns his tales in directions that offer the greatest reward, giving the reader a satisfying conclusion every time.

Young’s tales are always surprising, and the reader will never feel short-changed. Upon reading this volume I suspect you’ll close the book, sit back and think about the tales herein, just for a while. And as these stories begin to haunt you, you’ll realise that this is the gift of a true storyteller. Stuart Young not only writes stories, he gives them life. As readers, that’s about as much as we can wish for.

Tim Lebbon

Goytre

April 2003

Boxes

I hold a boxful of bittersweet memories in my hands. The remnants of a relationship, two years of love, reduced to a collection of knickknacks encased in cardboard.

Except this only shows one half of the relationship. The box only contains Elaine’s things.

I should send them on to her. Instead I sit down and carefully examine each item, letting the emotion flood over me.

Her Black Crowes T-shirt from when we saw them play live; a bottle of her favourite perfume, the fragrance conjuring up memories of some of our most passionate embraces; her dog-eared Proust primer which she used to read in bed, keeping me awake with the glow of the bedside lamp and the rustling of turning pages.

I don’t know how long I sit here. Time fades away, respectfully distancing itself to allow me to wallow in my misery.

***

I shouldn’t be doing this. I need to study. The exam is tomorrow and none of my coursework has sunk in at all.

Pushing the box to one side I try to concentrate on my studying. It’s a doomed effort. In theory the handouts from the course tutor deliver all the necessary information in a clear, concise manner. But the handouts are too succinct, with too many gaps in the information. No doubt they’re an excellent memory jogger for people who are already IT experts but for a novice like myself they’re next to useless.

The books I got from the library suffer from the opposite problem. Huge volumes, thick as telephone directories, they contain so much information I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of techno-babble.

Rubbing my weary eyes I wonder if my boss will mind if I don’t gain my certificate. Stupid question — he’s forked out for this course so