Special Editions & Other Stories

By J.L. Hohler III

Five stories touching on life, business, personal integrity, murder and the apocalypse:

The first, Sole Survivor At The End Of The World, explores one unforeseen consequence of good luck.

You Want Fries With That? takes a behind-the-scenes look at the first drive-thru funeral parlor in the Midwest.

Boston tells the tale of one girl’s determination to be what she wants to be.

The Piano looks at a marriage and divorce and a different, yet justified, kind of emotional catharsis.

Finally, in the namesake of the collection, Special Editions, a man learns too late what happens when you cross a woman with a specialized skill.

Entertaining, thought provoking, humorous and morbid, Special Editions is the perfect nugget for any lover of fiction.

Includes a preview chapter of the new novel by J.L. Hohler III, Peck: A Book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.L. Hohler III
• Release date: Apr 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301301157

J.L. Hohler III

Mr. Hohler is a writer, living in Michigan with his wife and two children. A devoted soccer fan, Mr. Hohler's favorite clubs are the Manchester United and L.A. Galaxy, though he'll watch just about any game he can. In his spare time, he practices family law. You can read his blog at www.TheLastBlogNameOnEarth.com.

Book preview

Special Editions

And Other Stories

By J.L. Hohler III

The Piano, Special Editions, You Want Fries With That and Sole Survivor at the End of the World ©2012 by J.L. Hohler III

Boston © 20113 by J.L. Hohler III

Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed here are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Contents

Sole Survivor at the End of the World

You Want Friest With That?

Boston

The Piano

Special Editions

Peck: A Book Preview

Also by the Author

Sole Survivor at The End of The World

Nick considered himself lucky. As a boy there was no trouble he wouldn’t get into, chances he wouldn’t take, the kinds of things that might have maimed or killed regular children, but which luck always saved him from.

At seven, he’d jumped off the garage roof onto a trampoline on a dare, but instead of shooting into the air like Superman, he flipped off the edge like a ragdoll and hit the ground with a wet thud. Fearing him dead and the trouble that would come with it, the assembled children – the darers – ran for the hills to save their hides, taking off so quickly they missed the triumphant moment when Nick hauled himself up from the ground, brushed the dirt off his knees and wondered, Where’d everybody go?

At eight he somehow got it into his head he was impervious to electricity and so stuck a fork in an electrical socket, just walked up and jammed it in and held on for dear life. Other children might have been fried to a crisp over that stunt, but not Nick, saved from the moment death by a squirrel crossing two wires on the pole outside the house, shorting the transformer and plunging the neighborhood into darkness. To be sure, Nick suffered a hell of a shock, and the power didn’t stay on long enough for the floral pattern on the handle of the fork to be permanently burned into his right palm, but it certainly could have been worse.

"He should be dead, his mother said, when she realized the fluke that saved him. I swear, that boy’s got the luck of the Irish, Roy."

We aren’t Irish, Sloane, his father said, a suspicious man and therefore harder to impress. "And Irish luck isn’t good – it’s bad. You heard about the potato famine, right?"

Yes, she said. "I read."

"Well, then you know the Irish got a historical case of the bad luck, his father said. No, what the kid’s got is dumb luck. Don’t you remember when he fell in the well? Sixty feet down on his head and not a scratch on him. Not a scratch. Dumb luck. And I emphasize the dumb."

Luck wasn’t confined to just saving Nick from certain death – it was good for other things, too. He always had a knack for stumbling across dollar bills whenever he wanted candy, or winning games he had no understanding of, and he could always be counted on to find car keys whenever his mother lost them and didn’t want to admit the truth to his father.

When other kids got sick, Nick remained healthy. Colds. The flu. Chicken pox. The runs. It didn’t matter. No matter how many coughs and sneezes landed right in his face, whatever the plague du jour was, it always passed Nick by. Of course, the downside of all this good luck was he never had a sick day from school like other kids did, and never got the thrilling admiration that comes with bruises or broken bones. But on the other hand, whenever Nick failed to finish homework or other projects, or just needed a day off, he could always rely on a record snowfall, a water main break, or a family of skunks getting loose in the school to help him out.

You’re one lucky bastard, his college roommate groused, when Nick alone was left unaffected by a campus wide outbreak of mononucleosis and benefited from a week of class cancellations to finish a project he’d put off for months.

And I’m not even Irish, Nick shrugged.

But even when his luck seemed spotty, it still worked out positively. On spring break, while others suffered broken arms and legs and whiplash when the courtesy van they were riding in hit a telephone pole and rolled over, Nick crawled out of the wreck with little more than a scrape on his head, which healed in a week.

It didn’t matter what he tried his hand at – luck always guided the way. Always. In the summer before his junior year at college he got it into his head to go to law school – he wasn’t interested in being a lawyer, but he was interested in delaying entry into the real world by three years – and so he’d taken the LSAT. Without a lick of studying, or showing any real aptitude in the law, or any skill with standardized tests, he scored a 177 and was happy to take a full ride to Michigan State.

"For god’s sake, why are you going to a cow college for law school? his father asked, when Nick gave him the good news. You could have gone anywhere. Why there?"

I don’t know, he said. Cows need lawyers, too, I guess.

Of course, practicing law went right out the window when, on a lark, Nick bought a lottery ticket at a filing station one morning instead of putting out for a breakfast burrito. The drawing that evening was for some astronomical jackpot, biggest in the history of the western world, and though he’d never played before – the odds made lotteries a hopeless endeavor – when he saw the numbers on the news and realized he alone held them, he decided the time was right for retirement.

* * * * *

Later, when people started dying, dropping dead in droves – most keeling over right where they stood, some taking their time wasting away – nobody could explain why. The government couldn’t explain it. Academics couldn’t explain it. Doctors couldn’t explain it. Even Avi the butcher couldn’t explain it. There was never a shortage of opinions, answers her much harder to come by.

It started in the northeast, in New York, and was across the Great Lakes and sweeping the Great Plains before anybody knew what hit them. At the Pacific coast it rebounded back on itself, picking up speed and running roughshod over those it missed the first time, wiping out entire cities in a matter of days.

After that, it was in Central America, then South America, where Brazil took an extra-strong dose of whatever was out there and Rio was gone in a matter of days. Then it did the same in Europe and Asia. The only seeming immunity was in the Middle East and Africa – it was thought to be something about the desert air, but nobody could say for sure.

Death on such a scale hadn’t happened in centuries and all the death and uncertainty bred hysteria, a feeling that stretched all the way to the top. The president, one of the few in the government to survive both waves, had nothing but his own hate and suspicions to keep him company and finally he did the only thing that he had left to do.