A Golden Dream: A Jukebox Story

By Dean Wesley Smith

Sometimes very special friends, even friends you can’t remember, give you a chance to change your past by following the memory of a special song. Should you take the special Christmas gift, take the trip, and change your own history? Or maybe take a look at tomorrow and change that instead.

Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and well over 100 published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom.

He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.

Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.

Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books.

Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.

If you enjoyed this Dean Wesley Smith short story, you might also try these short story collections:

The Women of the Felt (Poker Boy Adventures)
Five From the Jukebox
Love With the Proper Fantasy
Five From the Aliens
When Ghosts Have Stories
Five Weird Crimes
Five From the End of the World

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jul 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452329369

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.

Book preview

A Golden Dream

A Jukebox Story

Dean Wesley Smith

A Golden Dream

Copyright © 2012 by Dean Wesley Smith

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover Design copyright © 2012 WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Philcold/Dreamstime

"A Golden Dream" was first published under the title "The Song of a Gift Horse"

in Black Cats and Broken Mirrors anthology

edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers.

Smashwords Edition

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

A Golden Dream

Chapter One

She came through the heavy front door of the old hotel with a face as young as yesterday. And for just a moment the stale piss-smell of the thick air, the stained and faded linoleum floors, the peeling paint on the smoke-yellowed walls were forgotten by the three of us in the front foyer.

For just a moment we forgot our long, dull days of old men’s boredom, moving like zombies from our rooms, to the sitting room with the television, to the front stoop, back to the sitting room, then back to our rooms, punctuated only by a silent lunch and an even more silent dinner in the small kitchen.

Mitchel, Hank and me. When she came through that door we forgot we were three corpses too damn old to just lie down and be done with it. We forgot we were the last residents of The Golden Dream Hotel for men.

We even forgot it was Christmas Eve.

A year ago crusty Jamison bought the old hotel from a development agency. We all had an understanding that the four of us would be able to live in the hotel until we all died. Jamison died the next month at the age of sixty-eight,