Collection Short Stories 1

By Colin Reed

All the ten e-stories included in the collection have previously been published individually in the last two years. For a lower, collective price, they are, more conveniently, all in one place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colin Reed
• Release date: Mar 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311542403

Colin Reed

From Blackpool Uk. Am beyond 65yrs old now. Not had a career, but have had plenty of different jobs at different social levels. I enjoyed being an archaeologist and my self-employment in building work, as well as a short spell as a toymaker. Educated at state school, private religious boarding school and also on the streets of Europe. Married to Barbara, we have two sons, and three grandchildren.

Book preview

Collection Short Stories 1

by

Colin Reed

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Published by Colin Reed 2014 at Smashwords

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Copyright 2014 Colin Reed

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Smashwords edition license notice

Thank you for downloading this e-book. It remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at any good e-book distribution site. Thank you for your support.

All stories have been previously published individually 2013, and have been available in all good e-book stores.

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Table of Contents

Masterpiece

3990 words. Love is expected to last but, when relationships break down, each person has their own way of hurting, and their own way of redressing the balance, sometimes through reparation, and sometimes through reprisal.

Identikit

2960 words. Putting all your energy into daily, physical survival can leave some important aspects of self, like the sharp and painful fragments of a broken relationship, left unconsidered, and ignoring these can have extreme consequences.

The Four Ringtones of the Apocalypse

1170 words. A light-hearted angle on irony. Music might feed the soul - but often only according to the listener's own diet plan.

Last Orders at Waterloo

3210 words. After arriving back from a drinking contest in the pub one night, Dave is surprised to find that his long-time partner, Belinda is seductively waiting in the bedroom, but then finds out that it is not really him for whom she is waiting.

The Lion and the Cheesegrater

5140 words. From the depths of a stuttering marriage, Hayley’s husband suddenly and inexplicably began to shower her with gifts. Hayley and her Svengali friend Ottilia could only guess what it was that he wanted off her. With reference to Aristophanes.

The Man O' the Woods

3690 words. To most people, the Man o' the Woods is a mythical creature that has never existed, and never could. It was Bram and Bradley Trimps' ambition to prove everybody wrong by bringing back, along with their own fame, incontrovertible evidence that the scientific world could not deny.

The Queue for the Bog

1760 words. Nathan didn't like queues and when he arrived at the museum he found just that. But the girl he had come to see, made him think about himself, and the queue could be very valuable to him if he were to join it.

Yer Main Ingerland Man

4450 words. When it comes to personal survival, the human being is faced with the moral decisions of self-sacrifice or self-preservation. Heroes and saints usually opt for self-sacrifice, but not always.

'L' for Louisa

2410 words. Fortune favours no-one in particular. It has no morality. Sometimes it favours the righteous, sometimes the clever, sometimes the foolish and sometimes the unworthy.

Coming Clean

5200 words. Opportunity can be teasingly presented by either a guiding angel or a devil, and it is the choice or the impulsion of the individual to accept or reject the invitation.

About the Author

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Masterpiece

To Barbara and Mary Lanes

Acknowledgements

Original book cover by Alex Reed.

It wasn't usual for Ercolina to be full of her own importance but, when the music that she had just finished composing had stopped, and the last stitch had been sewn into the high-tech trousers that she was modifying for her husband's industrial award ceremony, she congratulated herself with all the self-praise that she could wrap herself in.

She lay back upon the sofa, and stretched out her legs as far as they would go in front of her. As she shuffled into a comfortable position, her blue jeans clung to the mild objections of the minor expansion of a body which had been subject to the production of three children. She placed her bronzed hands behind her head, entwining her fingers in the dark curls of her shoulder length hair and, as she did so, let out an audible and lasting sigh of self-satisfaction. Her husband Nigel had erred on the wrong side of loyalty recently, and she desperately needed to get him back. This special music, and these special trousers, with their electrically conductive mesh would, she hoped, provide the means to regain his attentions.

'Nice,' she thought to herself, 'nice!' Her confidence flourished, and spread throughout all the thirty five years of her body.

Ercolina was multi-talented, and the many natural or acquired, practical skills of the housewife and mother of fifteen years, had kept a host of unnecessary tradesman away from her door. But musical composition was her first love. She had left all her other potential talents in her wake, to pursue this, her most ardent desire of expression. In her job as music teacher at the local secondary school, she attempted to avoid the popular music of the masses, which streamed into the children's heads via permanently attached earphones. Instead, in an attempt to be a little upmarket, she tried to present the arousing power of the classical composers. Like a day-ride train ticket to anywhere, their works would take her on a rich inward journey, to wonderful places within her imagination, and she had always attempted to pass that experience on to those who she considered to be spiritually challenged.

Her success in creating her own music however, had been limited to audiences that had always been essentially small and parochial, consisting of parents and members of the school, or the residents of old folks' homes. But this composition, which she had just completed, was very different. Its audience would have a whole new and extensive content. She had marketed it that way. Successfully she believed. It was to make her husband take notice of her once more, and to appreciate the values of a loyal wife.

‘Nice,’ she told herself yet again, with uncharacteristic conceit. This music was her masterpiece, and it was going to surpass her husband Nigel's runaway success. He had asked her to do it to reflect his talent, not hers, but she had obliged more than willingly. Nigel had progressed from his job as a science teacher to become a freelance industrial designer, concerned with more complex security detail. The suit which Nigel had asked Ercolina to prepare, had been developed from an original patent and, when worn, possessed medically remedial uses. A host of human conditions could be induced by an electronic therapy, which could dictate the mood of the person wearing it. It had been successfully tested and pre-orders had flooded in. His success had moved them from an average comfortable three bed house in a suburban street, into a spacious, five bed mansion in its own grounds, two cars in the garage and the children at boarding school. Though she could enjoy her own company, it was possible to have too much of it and, if there had been a price to pay for the luxuries she enjoyed, it was the loneliness and the emotional neglect that she had had to endure during the long evenings and weekends.

Nigel was away for extended periods, either at his office, or on one of his many business trips, some of which could take him to the other side of the world. Ercolina used this time at home to immerse herself in her musical compositions, and her ever-searching creative instincts. Today, this completed opus had been an unexpected opportunity given to her by her husband, and she had taken it with open arms. It would be a watershed in her career, and a turning point in her life. She really needed Nigel to pay attention to her once more. Once this music sounded and these trousers walked, he would be able to consider her again. Forever, she believed.

After she had finished indulging herself in self-praise, she rolled over to reach the polished beech wood top of the occasional table in order to pick up the tall, crystal glass containing the celebratory drink she had prepared for herself. The time was now right to reward herself with the long, cool indulgence of fresh orange, into which she had popped a touch of triumphant gin, and she looked up at the clock. It wasn't a clock that was fitted with eye recognition, so it didn't offer the time out loud in one of seven different languages of choice, nor was it a calendar clock that recited the day's diary at stipulated times. The conventional analogue clock, without a sophisticated programme of her husband’s surprises, showed that it was nearly half past seven, and Nigel would be home soon. But today, she sipped the cool orange slowly, challenging the hands of the clock to move faster if they dared.

When she decided it was time to see to his needs, she got up and skipped lightly across the large, deep red, floral design of the luxurious Axminster, which carpeted the floor of the spacious reception room. Entering the large kitchen, the stainless steel units shone bright all around her, and her contorted reflection within them mocked her progress. Throwing open the tall fridge door, first noticing a greasy finger mark on the handle, which she subconsciously removed with a virtual cloth, she was halted in her tracks for a moment as an age-old reality, in the form of a recorded voice, immediately spoke out from a hidden speaker.

'Are you sure you want to eat just now? Do you want to be a big fat cow?' She groaned, but it was not a groan of despair, more one of the indignity of having her triumphant dreams so rudely interrupted. It was one of her husband Nigel's earlier experiments. She, and the house, had always had to be the guinea pigs, and the home was riddled with crude and less crude devices. Annoying though they could be however, they were the source of his success, and she had always put up with them, without voicing a complaint. After all,