Bedtime Stories

By John Rhall

A collection of short stories that veer to the dark side. From a young man who harbors psychotic thoughts in story one to a frightening experience with one of Darwin's species in story two. Story three explores a call from beyond the grave while story four deals with a more satisfying revenge that may leave a smile on the reader's face, and finally, story five describes an impossible romance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Rhall
• Release date: May 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311428806

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Bedtime Stories

by

John Rhall

Smashwords Edition Copyright 2016

Published by John Rhall at Smashwords

Copyright 2016 John Rhall

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

Thank you for downloading this ebook. Please note that this book remains the property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial purposes. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book with another, 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 purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Chapter One

Flatulence

Hubert Bentwhistle sat silently before his typewriter. His face portrayed all the animation of an Easter Island statue. It wasn’t, as far as Bentwhistle was concerned, that he had a problem with the writing as such. The problem for Bentwhistle was more about what he was going to write. It was a conundrum that held him in his trance while the world outside went on its way without him.

Precious time was going by. The paper stayed annoyingly blank, as though mocking him. His chubby fingers hovered menacingly over helpless typewriter keys. They were like vultures hovering over fallen prey, plucking up the courage to land and dismember. He thought of things like that, about his fingers that is, he knew it wasn’t very clever, but it was all he had at the time. A distant rumble, not unlike far away thunder, came from within Bentwhistle’s trousers to break the silence. His nose wrinkled, as the odour of one of his more flatulent moments drifted up to meet his nostrils.

Bentwhistle knew full well that he was renowned for his farting. He was painfully aware that he had recently emptied a number 43 bus of all its passengers, as well as the driver, in the space of a minute and a half last Tuesday. He blamed his mother for this. He believed his mother’s cooking had caused the problem in the first place. He reasoned that if his mother could be persuaded to change her way of cooking to something that produced less gaseous food in the first place, then his disagreeable odour making may be lessened to the point of tolerance. Or at least to the point of allowing him to finish a bus trip.

Eventually, he gave up staring at the annoyingly blank piece of paper before him. He shifted his gaze to the window instead. It was raining. Raining cats and dogs was an apt expression as far as he was concerned, he meant to write that down sometime. He listened instead to the sounds of the house. All was quiet, except for the muted sound the rain made as it struck the windows, and the steady tick of an old mantle clock; it didn’t seem to have a tock at all, just an annoying tick. However, Bentwhistle wasn’t listening for the rain as such, or the clock. He was mostly listening for noises from his mother.

After a short time he stopped listening and smiled a sly sort of smile; feeling a little silly about listening for his mother, because he knew he wouldn’t hear her. His mother wouldn’t be making a sound that anyone could hear now, because she was dead. Smothered with her own pillow only an hour ago. The old cow hadn’t even struggled. Her ragged, but muffled snore had simply stopped as he held the pillow over her face for the required length of time. Bentwhistle had looked it up on the internet in a section devoted to the many and various ways of committing the perfect murder. He had great respect