The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones

By Rami Ungar

In his publishing debut, Rami Ungar brings us five terrifying stories of darkness in magic. You can experience the strange visions of a man battling sex addiction in “Addict”. Or feel the wrath of an enraged dybbuk in “Samson Weiss’s Curse”. Face your fears in Gene Adkin’s Murder House in “I’m Going To Be The Next James Bond” and then journey with a young autistic “In The Lady Ogre’s Den”. But most of all, prepare to play the most insidious game of all: The Quiet Game.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rami Ungar
• Release date: Jul 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310666506

Rami Ungar

Rami Ungar is a horror and dark fiction novelist who resides in Columbus, Ohio. He has self-published two books (The Quiet Game: Five Tales to Chill Your Bones and Snake), as well as traditionally published two novels (Rose and The Pure World Comes). In addition, he has had several short stories and novelettes published, including "Blood & Paper Skin" in The Dark Sire and "Cressida" in the anthology Into the Deep. Rami is an Affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and the Coordinator for the Ohio HWA. To learn more: bscpublishinggroup.com/rami-ungar/

Book preview

The Quiet Game

By

Rami Ungar

To the two men who gave me such a scare when I was young,

They unknowingly set me on the path that led me to become the writer I am.

Copyright © 2013 by Ephraim Ungar

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any forms or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please do. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Addict

I’m Going To Be The Next James Bond

In The Lady Ogre’s Den

The Quiet Game

Samson Weiss’s Curse

From The Author

Dear Reader,

If you’ve decided to download this collection onto your e-reader, then thank you so very much! It really means a lot to me when people show any sort of interest in my work, and I mean sincere interest, enough that they download an e-book onto their e-reader even if it’s not for free. I hope I am up to the task of pleasing your literary tastes, whether they be in how scary a story is, how a story is told, or just on the subject matter of each individual story.

I first started this collection by gathering several ideas for short stories I’d developed over Fall Semester 2012 at Ohio State University and writing them down over winter break. Although In The Lady Ogre’s Den had to be rewritten once or twice until I was satisfied that it would be an enjoyable story, I managed to get all my writing done over the course of four or five weeks, the results of which are in this collection.

Since then, The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones has sort of taken on a life of its own, coming together through the help of various beta-readers and others who have helped me to bring this collection into being. I was able to do a reading at my dorm while I was waiting for the last beta reader to email me their thoughts and critiques on Samson Weiss’s Curse thanks to the dorm’s activity board and I created a book trailer and posted it on YouTube thanks to my school’s Digital Union, the go-to people on campus for computer help and advice for programs such as iMovie and Photoshop.

And now you’re holding The Quiet Game in your hands, after a fashion. And it’s been a long process, but I’m happy that it’s now in your hands and that you can read it and possibly love it or hate it, whatever’s good with me. Just as long as you’re reading it and telling others what you think of it, that’s fine with me.

So my dear reader, please begin your journey into The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones. I hope you have a pleasantly spooky trip while you read, and that you don’t get too scared to stop reading!

Hoping you are well,

Rami Ungar

March 3, 2013

Addict

You walk out of the bathroom, your loins feeling warm and relaxed. You’re embarrassed that you had to do it at a baseball game, but it’s better than that feeling of need and tightness that accompanies you before you got into the bathroom. You join your friend Barry back at your seats. How was the line? he asks you.

You shrug. Short, I guess. You watch as a player from your team pops one up, up, up into the air, and the stadium goes wild as players run bases and players run for the ball. You really don’t want to talk with Barry about the bathroom, because you know what it’ll lead to. Nevertheless, Barry talks.

You know, you wouldn’t have had to miss the most awesome play of the game if you didn’t have to use the bathroom. Barry is trying to be nice, trying to be helpful, but you don’t want to listen.

Barry, I get it. You watch as the ball is thrown from centerfield to the second basemen, who misses by an inch as the runner slides into second and into safety. But I don’t want to go through with that. Yes, I have— You look around to make sure nobody’s listening in before you say, I know I have a sex addiction. But I get through the day. I function. That’s good enough, right?

Barry sighs. He’s been off smoking and chewing tobacco for a year, but the only reason he stopped was because his doctor made him, and because he wanted to have kids someday. Yet ever since you told Barry about your own problems, he’s been trying to get you on his bandwagon too. Who was he to preach to you? Still you two are friends and you like each other, so you both let it pass and go on watching the game.

After the game you and Barry walk through the parking lot and to your car. You’re thinking about heading home and booting up your laptop to see if there are any new erotic movies from your favorite website or if perhaps Gretchen on 12th street is available for a night, but then you see someone stumbling towards you. You turn and catch the person as they literally fall into your arms and you see that it’s a young woman, early thirties, and she looks sick as hell.

You ask her what’s wrong, wondering if you have a drunk girl in your arms and looking her over to see if she’s hot. Instead you see someone that, although very petty, you don’t want to fuck her. That’s strange, because you’d fuck the fattest, ugliest chick around if you were desperate, but this woman you don’t want to fuck.

Before you can wonder why though, she says to you, Please get me away from here. Before I lose control!

Not knowing what to do, you and Barry take the girl to your car and you give the girl a soda out of the back of your car while she calms down. The woman introduces herself as Jas, and she says she used to be a heroin addict. While going out of the stadium to make a phone call, she saw someone shooting up and she almost couldn’t handle it. Seeing it brought back all her memories of heroin and what it was like to be on it. Jas says she had to get out of there, or she’d be sick or start using again, she wasn’t sure which.

You find yourself admiring Jas, for her determination and her honesty about her past and how it’s affected her present. You don’t look at her sexually, but see her as a woman trying to fight something so powerful. For the first time, you wish you had that sort of courage to face your demons.

You and Barry end up giving Jas a ride home to her apartment. She thanks you and you all exchange numbers. Jas promises you and Barry she’ll pay you back for your kindness when she can get the chance before she walks into her building and disappears. After she leaves you find yourself wondering about Jas, and what it’s like to fight to stay sober.

Then you look at Barry and ask him about his detoxing. Barry is surprised, but he spends the rest of the car ride telling you about it.

You’ve thought about it long and hard these past couple of days and you decided you’ve had enough of it. You don’t want to sit in front of the computer and just masturbate for hours on end. You want to have a real life, to go out and do stuff with friends. You want to have normal relationships, especially normal relationships with women, women like Jas, a woman you admire and almost want to emulate for her courage and tenacity. If Jas can live without heroin, why can’t you live without sex? You can’t have a relationship with Jas while you’re stuck on the computer though, and you’re on the computer looking at porn several hours a day as it is.

So you’re quitting. No more dirty videos or erotic art, no more chat rooms or rendezvous with strange women you meet on the internet, no more catalogs or magazines in your mailbox. You’re done with