Daymares

By Joe Renter

Daymares is a collection of short horror/fantasy stories.  The situations portrayed could happen to anyone, even you.  

Stories include:

Mistaken Identity - the story of a wrongly accused man. 

Defensive Driving - how would you handle more than one car accident in a single day?

Cliffhanger - things that are beyond our control can have a tremendous impact on us.

Slippery When Wet - this is exactly why you should keep a winter driving kit in your car.

Bad Timing - simply put, the wrong place at the wrong time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joe Renter
• Release date: Oct 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502218100

Joe Renter

Joe Renter was born in Omaha, NE and moved to the Denver, CO area at the end of the 20th Century.  He writes both fiction and non-fiction, but much prefers writing fiction.  His most recent published work is Dragon Dreams, a collection of nightmares that includes two that have disturbed his own sleep.  His interests include hiking, biking, investing, reading and writing, and working on his house and yard.

Book preview

Introduction

We’ve all had nightmares.  But as scary as a nightmare can be they are nothing compared to a daymare.

What’s a daymare?  A daymare is something that is so horribly, scary rotten that if it happened while you slept, people would sympathize and say you’ve had a bad nightmare.  When it happens while you’re wide awake, though, all anyone can say is: Wow.  Maybe you should just go back home!  You’ve have an awful day!  Nightmares typically wake you up, and you know that it’s over.  A daymare doesn’t end until you go to sleep and even then it can trigger nightmares.

Daymares happen.  Perhaps your first traffic accident was a daymare.  Maybe you had a really bad day at work, spilling coffee on yourself, then toner, dropping a stack of papers and having to re-sort them, then being chastised for being late on an assignment before almost running into the company president on your way to the restroom.  Or, your child ducked around a corner and put a fright into you.  And just possible, both of those things have happened in one day.  That makes for a really bad day.

Of course, you could be really unlucky, as the people in these stories.

Mistaken Identity

Jeff Fisher climbed into the white van and started it up.  Today was going to be an awesome day.  He had three more errands to run and then he was going to take off early to get started on moving.  He had just purchased a house, and his boss had loaned him a company van to make the move easier.  Jeff didn’t have much to move from his little apartment anyway, but it would be a piece of cake with the van.  His little Impreza wouldn’t carry much, and he’d have to make far too many trips.

He turned on the radio and cranked the music up.  He was tapping his feet and his thumbs to the beat.  He passed a police car, but didn’t notice it make a U-turn behind him, and fall in line.  The office radioed in the license plate, and waited for a response.

Four hours earlier, the front license plate on the van had been stolen.  It had been placed on an identical white van, which had been used to abduct someone. A witness had reported it, and the police alerted.  Now, Jeff’s day was about to be turned upside down and there wasn’t a think he could do to change this.

A second police car merged into the traffic several vehicles behind the first.  That one had fallen back a few vehicles, but stayed behind Jeff.  He didn’t even realize they were behind him as he kept driving.  Getting hungry, he pulled into the drive thru of McDonald’s.  The police cars maneuvered into blocking positions near the entrances, and called for additional backup. 

Jeff collected his food and his change, and started to leave the drive thru when the police blocked him in.  Before he could react, there were cops at both side windows, weapons drawn shouting at him.  He still had his window down, and one cop reached in and grabbed his arm.  The next thing he realized, he was face down on the pavement, gravel digging into his face, and a knee in his back.  He was cuffed and shoved into a police car quickly, and roughly. 

He was left to sit in the police car, alone, while he watched them going through the van.  Jeff was in shock.  What was going on?  He tried knocking on the window with his head, just to get the attention of the officer standing by the car.  The officer turned, opened the door,