BloodtideZine Issue 1, Volume 1: BloodtideZine, #1

By Peter Dawes, Karyn Mitchell, Carl Barker and 2 more

Issue #1, Volume #1 of a [new] up-and-coming ezine of dark-fantasy / paranormal / horror stories.

This issue is 43,000 words in length.

On-going Serials:
Secrets by Moonlight
A Maker and His Child
The Immortal Gift

Flash-Fiction:
An Affair with Ivory
To Sir, With Love
Sun, Snow, and Broken Things

Short Stories:
Hunting on Halloween
Forget Me Not
When Wishes Are Horses

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crimson Melodies Publishing
• Release date: Feb 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497795419

Peter Dawes

USA Today Bestselling Author. Writer of the Vampire Flynn Series and Deathspell books, published by the micro-press Crimson Melodies. While primarily a novelist, he has also contributed to the story cycle Red Phone Box, and the short story anthology, Nocturnal Embers. Always working on something new, Peter leaves it up to the reader to decide if it's by sunlight or candlelight.

Book preview

Other Publications by Crimson Melodies

The Vampire Flynn Series

Eyes of the Seer

Rebirth of the Seer

Fate of the Seer - 2013

A Vampire’s Game

Bloodtide, an ezine - 2013

http://bloodtidezine.com

This collection is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Crimson Melodies Publishing

http://crimsonmelodies.com

[e-mail]

D2D 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 blooodtiezine.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author(s).

Table of Contents

FLASH

An Affair with Ivory by Victor Mason

Sun, Snow and Broken Things by Jessica Fortunato

To Sir, With Love by Karyn Mitchell

SHORT STORIES

Hunting on Halloween by Peter Dawes

Forget Me Not by Victor Mason

SERIALS

Secrets By Moonlight by Karyn Mitchell

Das Ewige Geschenk by Victor Mason

A Maker and His Child by Peter Dawes

EXCLUSIVE SHORT STORY TO ISSUE #1

When Wishes Are Horses by Carl Barker

Connect with our Contributors

An Affair with Ivory

Victor Mason

I could have had a love affair with her hands alone. Delicate in appearance but strong as only an accomplished pianist can have. Slender, deft, precise, her fingers danced across the ivory with skill of a master. When she played, it was as though angels sang from beneath the keys. Flawless.

As was she. Beautiful and demure, as all well bred women were expected to be. She was also quiet and excessively modest, traits that would have turned me away from temptation, but the first time I laid eyes on her had been from a seat in the audience. She came alive as music poured out of her soul into the notes of a song. It was only in watching her later when she wasn’t performing, curious about the nature of the woman that could express herself so beautifully on the keyboard, that I discovered she kept herself within a cocoon while not at the musician’s bench.

This was the time of Bach, Mozart and a young Beethoven, the original masters.  To find a woman allowed not only perform on but excelling at such an instrument was an incredible thing. Which is of course how I found my way to her audience. Music has always been my one great love. It speaks to me in a way that nothing else ever has or probably ever will. A woman being touted as an enchanting performer was something I had to witness if only because it combined my two favorite pursuits into one sitting.

And witness I did. I watched, listened, and applauded with the rest of the crowd. But they had not seen all that I did, heard all that I heard. They’d sat and observed, viewing only the mask of a modest lady entertaining them with a beautiful piece of art. She was very careful about what she showed on her face, but I heard the testimony of her heartbeat as the music rushed through her. Before three stanzas were complete it beat in time with the tempo. By the time she reached the finale it was thundering in barely controlled excitement. Her cheeks were delicately flushed, her lips had grown fuller as though she had spent minutes kissing an ardent lover, and she glistened with the slightest feminine sheen of perspiration - all that went entirely unnoticed by the humans in the dim light.

But I knew. I saw. I heard.

And I wanted.

# Table of Contents #

Sun, Snow and Broken Things

Jessica Fortunato (find Jessica elsewhere)

I'm restless again. It happens like clockwork this time of year. The leaves change to the jewel tones of autumn and I turn azure. I try to drown out the noise in my brain with anything available. A cartoon blares on the television, Kansas blasts through my headphones. Carry on my wayward son. Suddenly I can’t remember if listening to your music too loud can really damage your hearing or if that is a myth.

I visit cemeteries this time of year, although there is no headstone here with his name on it. I wander along the epitaphs, etched towers that take a whole life and boil it down to 140 characters or less. Tombstones, the original twitter, and I laugh in that sick desperate way that worries people. Well, if anyone were listening I mean.

I sit down under the tree, the one struck by lightning two years ago. Damn thing is practically split in half and yet the groundskeepers leave it be. I like that. It’s gnarled and ugly, broken in two never to be pieced back together again. The old tree and I understand one another. I feel like I belong here.

The ghosts echo mournful pleas. I swear sometimes when I slow my walking and listen hard their words float like wisps from the cracks in the soil.

They say dozens of different things, thousands even. Mostly they want to go back. They want to go back to that one moment that split them in two, like my tree. They want to fix it, to shield themselves from the lightning. Even death did not change their sorrows. I can hear every single voice, and I know how they feel.

I never believed people could change. Of course, sometimes people could pretend to be who you wanted them to be. Yet, they could never maintain the façade for very long. I am an atheist of change.

Maybe people can’t make the conscious effort to change like that. I think, if anything, life is what changes you. You don’t change due to ultimatums, fear of punishment, loneliness. You change on a random Tuesday afternoon at 4:13 when you weren’t paying any attention. You change when you lose everything, when you become split into who you were and who you are now.

Instead of saying Anyone can change we should say Anyone can adapt Once your heart is frozen in that state of grief, there is no going back. Perhaps all we can do is become accustomed to the cold. Allow it to numb every inch of us. It can’t be changed, so we have to allow it to settle in our bones.

I dance with the cold now. We feel nothing, know nothing, and have faith in nothing. Does the cold makes us free, or chain us to our mourning forever?

This I don’t know. I am only the girl who likes broken things, who was cut in half one sunny November day, who dances with the frost.

I am only the Snow Queen.

And so we waltz.

1,2,3, 1,2,3 1,2,3,

Stop.

# Table of Contents #

To Sir, With Love

Karyn Mitchell

I met him on the first day I arrived at training camp, me a young man of nineteen years and still naive to the ways of the world. Back then, you signed up for the service because it was your civic duty. The War was on in Europe and Uncle Sam called for brave men to fight the noble cause against the Nazis. I felt that swell of national pride sincere enough to sign my name on the papers. I never thought, though, that my greatest challenge wouldn’t be holding a gun these hands.

Well, most times, anyway. We shot our rifles as many hours as it took to become proficient and listened to our instructors as, day by day, we marched for miles and participated in skirmishes. I memorized every word they told me to, singing Yankee Doodle Dandy under my breath while picturing the bull’s-eye I shot wore a German uniform. It wasn’t until the first time he touched my shoulder that I began to think of something else.

His hands were strong, yet gentle. They squeezed the wiry frame beneath my Army greens while his voice distracted me from target practice with the question, How are you coming along, Matty?

I looked up at him and said, Just fine, sir. Our eyes met. I saw something in the young sergeant’s gaze that suggested a softness within the polished exterior and when he smiled, butterflies took flight inside my stomach. My eyes left him as quickly as possible; I didn’t like the fact that another man inspired such a reaction. I didn’t run away from it, however. Especially as the touches escalated.

He would brush his hand across my back when no one was looking and once, he patted my head. I almost swear I felt his fingers tangle in my hair for a second before his arm settled by his side. I think he sensed the way I tensed and then relaxed into his advances. After a while, I started to touch him back and from there, it was only a matter of time.

We shared our first kiss behind the bunkhouses. We made love for the first time in the woods a few nights later. While other men hung pin-ups of Bettie Page, he and I found secret moments to come together in the dark. Afterward, we smoked cigarettes and held each other. He told me that he loved me before we shipped off. I told him that I loved him, too.

We made it through a few weeks in Britain without getting caught. I began to think of what we’d do after the war and asked him more than once if there was a place people like us could go for refuge, knowing we’d never find acceptance stateside. His responses became cryptic. Won’t have to worry about that, Matty. Not going to make it home anyway.

That’s nonsense, I told him. Stop talking like that. The look on his face seemed to be getting more haunted with each day which passed.

One night, at a company social, he looked at me and said, Dance with me, Matty. Let’s give the other guys a heart attack before we deploy to Europe. A mischief-laden chuckle spilled from his lips. Who cares what they might do to us? Hell, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll kick us out.

We can’t do that. I glanced around the room and swallowed hard. My God, they’ll drag us out and shoot us. When I looked back at him, I raised an eyebrow at the way he continued to regard me. Still playful, but with a sadness inside his crystal blue eyes. I shook my head. No, we can’t. I’m not ready for that yet.

He never forced me, although I knew I let him down. A few nights later, while we slept in the woods by the edge of France, I heard him whisper, I would have liked that dance, Matty. A dying man’s wish, you know.

I really wish you’d stop talking like that. I didn’t want to admit it, but after being thrown into battle, the thought of us dancing at the social had been running through my brain. I shook it off and continued. You and I are going to survive this war and then find some place people like us can be safe. Hell, we’ll run off to an island somewhere if we have to.

Not going to make it that long, he said. Then he looked at me and touched my face. I love you, Matty. Remember me, please.

I’ve never ascribed to things like clairvoyance, but I felt his certainty that time and wondered if the end was really coming. Memories of the social lingered so much, they were still on my mind the day the Germans attacked us and took out half our company. I remember staring at him, shocked from the sudden onslaught, not hearing the gunfire any longer. I looked at him and heard the music. Just as he took a bullet to his chest.

He collapsed. I ran for him and cradled him in my arms, suddenly not caring what anybody thought as his clear blue eyes closed in death. I cried like a baby in the middle of that battlefield and clutched his body against me, silently hoping another sniper would take me out as well. I lived, though, and quit the Army after my time in there was through.

To this day, I still think about him.

I see us dancing, arms wrapped tight around each other and the rest of the world falling away while we lose ourselves in the moment. Our cheeks touching, our bodies close enough for me to smell his scent and feel his chest pressed against mine. In my mind, he whispers, Remember me, Matty, and I nod with tears running down my face.

Of course, I’ll remember you, I whisper. I’ve never forgotten you, Will.

# Table of Contents #

Hunting on Halloween

Peter Dawes

The reasons why I enjoy this time of year could be counted on both hands, with sentiments both inspiring and bittersweet behind each tale. I have lived