A Winter's Tale

By Top Writers Block

Another collection of short stories by authors in Top Writers Block.
This collection was prompted by the season and the words, 'A Winter's Tale.'

Each author has come up with something quite different. Think what the words bring to your mind and then see just how imaginative Top Writers Block can be!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Top Writers Block
• Release date: Dec 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301534777

Top Writers Block

Top Writers Block is a diverse and eclectic group of talented writers who decided to write stories together - just for the fun of it! We are happy to announce that authors proceeds have always gone, and will continue to go, to Sea Shepherd.fr every time Smashwords has made a payment! Thank you to those who have supported the group, independent authors, and Sea Shepherd. Our collections are usually written with one theme or genre in mind. Each author contributes when they have the time, so some of the collections have as many as twelve authors participating. Every collection has something new, with stories and poems ranging from romance, drama, and adventure to mystery, fantasy, and horror. All the Top Writers Block's proceeds will go to Sea Shepherd, so by buying you are helping to keep our oceans alive! Thank You all so much!

Book preview

A Winter's Tale

by

Top Writers Block

© Dec. 2012

Suzy Stewart Dubot, David Keith, Elizabeth Rowan Keith,

Bill Rayburn, Melissa Szydlek, David Waine, Barnaby Wilde

Published by Top Writers Block at Smashwords

ISBN: 9781301534777

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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 Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Table of Contents

A Winter's Tale by David Waine

Cool Running by Barnaby Wilde

Hot Spiced Tea and Ginger Biscuits by Elizabeth Rowan Keith

Krampusnacht by Melissa Szydlek

The Road to Tucson by David H. Keith

Winter by Suzy Stewart Dubot

Winter in Montana by Bill Rayburn

A WINTER’S TALE

by

David Waine

David Waine is an Englishman of combined Welsh (from his grandmother), English (from his grandfather) and Irish (from his mother) descent. No Scottish at all. He likes to write fantasy, crime thrillers and comedy, not to mention a short story or two.

© 2012 David Waine

A WINTER’S TALE

There is scum on the water. The dying sun casts its final lingering beams diagonally across the surface as it sinks, exhausted, behind the gasworks. The fading light lends the dock an oily, greasy sheen, dimming at last to a forbidding blackness as gloom enshrouds the abandoned wharf and stabs its frozen fingers into my soul. Can fish swim in oil?

I used to play here as a boy. How ironic is that? My mother would have killed me had she ever found out. For the same reason, I never allowed my children anywhere near the place. Much too dangerous. You’ll fall in and drown, I told them. I don’t care that you can swim. You’ll freeze to death before you can get back to safety. It isn’t a swimming pool!

The breeze swells into a wet wind that cuts straight through my coat. It has sharpened its rough blade on endless ranges of northern slopes before cloaking my life in ice. I told them not to come here. Both of them. It’s for your own good… er… What was her name? And your brother… Thingy.

Maybe I should have let my mother find out. Give her the chance to kill me while she could. None of this would have happened. Whatsit and Thingy would never have been born. I would never have met… well, her.

All gone now. My life swept away. Four days of shambling through desolate streets, watching the sleet slice down and feeling my suit cling ever wetter about me. I will never be warm again.

They say empty cardboard boxes make good bedding if you can’t find anything better. Warm, at least. That’s if you can find a dry one. The skips behind the Retail Park are a battlefield after dark when the cast-offs of an uncaring consumer society emerge from their drains and shadows to fight over any scrap to keep the ice from spearing their hearts. Meals are what can be scavenged. You soon learn where the soup kitchens are. You place yourself where the kindly, or those with a guilty conscience, can find you. There is always the Spike. It’s down on Blenheim Street, apparently — a bowl of soup and a bed for the night — in theory. Until you see it. but I’m not ready for that yet. My nose still works properly. I can’t face my coat being ripped away from me just because it’s a coat. And cockroaches don’t care who they sleep with.

In this war of attrition, I am a raw recruit. I am bottom of a pecking order I had barely known existed. Down and outs were things you saw on the television: shambling, filthy semi-humans who lived on rubbish dumps, spied on