Selected Short Stories Featuring Cockfight

By Nicolas Wilson

Conflict: A woman becomes possessed by the ancestors of those murdered to obtain the diamond for her wedding ring.
Marvin's Dead: A woman mourns the man she loves.
Jahannam: A young man pays a ransom for his kidnapped father, and waits at the morgue for news.
Font of Youth: A man discovers immortality, alone.
Four Degrees Above Freezing: A detective questions a man who found a chilled corpse.
Falstaff: Sir John is the King's man.
Check Out: A former killer-for-hire hides out after being unable to fulfill a contract.
Fainting Game: A man becomes obsessed tracking the deaths of several young boys.
Murder on Holiday: While on holiday, a serial-killer's activities lead to the birth of Jack The Ripper's myth.
A Life In Porn: A man records and relives little moments with the women in his life.
Betty Page Is Dead: A young GI falls in love with a pinup picture.
DID Have: Four personalities in the same body reflect on the death of the fifth.
Spirit: A NASA probe finds love. And note I didn't go for the obvious 'willing' joke.
PWI: An astronaut fights with his ship's computer about his habit of getting drunk while piloting.
Baby Back: A pregnancy re-kindles a failing relationship.
Cockfight: A rooster, irresistible to hens and humans alike, upsets the pecking order.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicolas Wilson
• Release date: Sep 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497758070

Nicolas Wilson

Nicolas Wilson is a published journalist, graphic novelist, and novelist. He lives in the rainy wastes of Portland, Oregon with his wife, four cats and a dog. Nic's work spans a variety of genres, from political thriller to science fiction and urban fantasy. He has several novels currently available, and many more due for release in the next year. Nic's stories are characterized by his eye for the absurd, the off-color, and the bombastic. For information on Nic's books, and behind-the-scenes looks at his writing, visit nicolaswilson.com.

Book preview

Foreword

Hi. I’m Nic. This is a short story collection of mine. Other stories and information about upcoming work can be found on my website: www.nicolaswilson.com. Interspersed with these short stories, you’ll find snippets of novels I’m working on. I’m calling them entertisements, because the word amuses me. Keep going to reach the fiction, or you can view the Table of Contents (including synopses of the stories in this collection).

Conflict

My wife is going to kill me. I haven’t unearthed clandestine documents or a dark co-conspirator. But it’s coming.

Emily and I are newly-weds, married only 9 months. By most accounts, the honeymoon shouldn’t be over yet. But the ardent love of our foibles and failings is nonexistent. She doesn’t even watch the shows we used to watch together anymore.

The other night, her ring brushed against my cheek, and I stirred. The diamond was red-brown. I tried to ignore it, but it got to me, and I tossed for twenty minutes. I tried to pull it from her finger. I got soap, and a little bit of that massage oil she used to love, but it wouldn’t budge. And I couldn’t sleep next to her, with that red diamond shimmering at me in the moonlight.

She woke me the next morning on the couch. She seemed hurt that I’d left her all alone. I asked her about her ring, and she broke down.

The day before, a co-worker, Martha Groom, from accounting, had confronted her. Emily’d been shaving money off the top of her budget, and placing it into a war chest, a discretionary account she planned to use to get her team the new project. Martha, a woman in her fifties who looked like a woman in her sixties, demanded ten percent off the top of the account, or she was going to report her.

And my wife punched her in the eye. Her diamond cut a slice off the old woman's eyelid as she fell over, and she hadn’t noticed the blood. Emily scrubbed it away, but underneath, the stone had taken on a pink hue. I wanted to tell her, but I hadn’t slept well on the couch, and didn’t have the energy for another fight.

Martha never told on her, and Emily used the money to put together a catered presentation that won her the project. I don’t know if they’d come to an understanding, or if women bond after a physical confrontation like men do, but she invited Martha onto the project, as well. Meanwhile, things at home became even more tense. She spent most of her days at work, and I started to wonder if she was having an affair.

She bought a machete. I know I haven’t taken excellent care of our back yard, and it has taken on a jungle life of its own. But she didn’t put the machete in the garage, with the mower and the trimmer, the spades and hoes and shovels. She keeps it in her nightstand, beneath a copy of a Greg Campbell book.

By now her ring has taken on a red ochre. I mentioned during a dinner I cooked that perhaps she’d spilled wine on it, and she stabbed me with her salad fork. I’m glad I didn’t tell her while we were eating steak, which she now demands rare.

And all the while, my discomfort, and my anger remained focused on her ring. I don’t understand how I knew, but I knew. I checked on the statistics. Less than 1% of diamonds come from conflict regions, their purchase largely benefiting rebel and insurgent militants.

Through a series of long distance communications and bribes, I tracked her diamond to a remote location in Darfur. The village had been decimated by the Janjaweed militants, and the villagers' bodies dumped in mass graves. The local people had believed in the power of their ancestors in their lives, to aid them if revered, or curse them if slighted.

That’s why I’ve decided to cut off her finger. I love my wife. I love her enough to mutilate her. For a week she’s been whispering in her sleep, about violence, and murder, and every now and then, me. She only drinks Cabernet Sauvignon now, and I poured her an entire bottle before bed. But I’ll have to move quickly— she keeps her machete razor-sharp, and her hand on her night stand.

Table of Contents

Marvin’s Dead

I’ve been married for 32 years- I mean, I had been. Marvin and I met in school, a junior college as it was known then. He was a funny little man, and I paid him little attention. I might never have spoken more than a few words to him, but one day going to class I spilled coffee all over him. He insisted on buying me another cup (as I said, he was a funny little man), and we talked as I drank it. We missed our class; we missed all our classes that day. We might have stayed and missed the rest of our lives, but the coffee place was closing, and they shooed us away. I wanted to go home with him, or to dinner- to prolong that moment together. He smiled, and said coolly, I’ll see you tomorrow. And in class the next day he sat behind me, as he always did, and when class was over he slipped his hand in mine and I was his from that moment.

We went through the usual stages, lust, puppy love, then a real love, a decade of being soul mates, to a point where we were simply the deepest of friends- which may not sound like progress, but if you manage not to divorce or die long enough, it will make sense to you. Between those markers, we moved in together and married, bought a house, and tried half-heartedly to have children. And now that man I shared my life with is dead.

I brought another man to his funeral. I suppose Marvin wouldn’t mind- doesn’t mind, I guess. This man is so like Marvin, in his smile, his blue eyes, the sound of his voice, and even the way he holds my hand. My eyes tear up, and I look from this other man to my husband’s empty casket.

Marvin had a severe stroke; it damaged his ability to feel. The funeral was his doctor’s idea; I was skeptical at first, but within a week I understood what he meant when he told me, the man you loved is gone. He remembers most things; sometimes he even remembers to say that he loves me, though we both can tell he wouldn’t know how anymore. The cruelty is that he knows what he’s lost, and even in the rare moments he smiles, he doesn’t know he’s happy.

Table of Contents

Jahannam

I walk several blocks out of my way to pass down the street where my father was kidnapped at gunpoint. I sold the car we were riding in to pay his ransom, which is just as well; being on foot brings a safety born of anonymity.

For a few blocks, I find myself traveling against a stream of people, excited and scared, but orderly; it’s not the first time most of them have evacuated a city street. I come upon the bombed-out corpse of a city bus, and try not to tread upon the remnants of its passengers.

I open my phone and hit redial. It rings, and sends me straight to my father’s voicemail. I stopped leaving new messages a week ago. I pass the trash bin I left his ransom in, and peek discreetly inside, not knowing what I hope to find.

In the side street I see an officer gunned down; he fires a pistol against two rifles, and falls. I don’t know if he is American or Iraqi, but no one comes out of hiding to help as his murderers drive away. I watch them until their dust-trail disappears, and I check my phone, to see if I’ve missed a call.

It’s before ten, but there are already thirty coffins lining the street outside the Al-Tub