Possibly Nefarious Purposes and Other Stories

By Michelle Ann King

Come for Christmas dinner at the house of a little girl with very particular interests; let the residents of an old folks’ home show you how to save the world with self-hypnosis; celebrate (or mourn) the death of a supervillain; consult with Clarity, who can tell you why things happen as they do (if you really want to know); and learn how to score points for decapitation in a never-ending game of life and death.

Featuring all of the above plus protective aliens, bickering ghosts, gangster vampires, robot ninjas, and floods of man-eating hamsters, the second collection of stories from the wicked imagination of Michelle Ann King will horrify, amuse, and chill you in turn.

“Don’t get upset. You know that’s a bad idea. It only leads to severed limbs and evisceration.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michelle Ann King
• Release date: May 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463620960

Michelle Ann King

Michelle Ann King writes science fiction, fantasy, and horror from her kitchen table in Essex, England. Her stories have appeared/are forthcoming in over seventy different venues, including Strange Horizons, Interzone, and Daily Science Fiction.She loves zombies, Las Vegas, and good Scotch whisky — not necessarily in that order — and her favourite author is Stephen King (sadly, no relation). She's been a mortgage underwriter, supermarket cashier, makeup artist, tarot reader, and insurance claims handler before having the good fortune to be able to write full-time.Her first short story collection Transient Tales is available as an ebook and paperback now, and she is currently working on her second. See www.transientcactus.co.uk for full details and links.

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POSSIBLY NEFARIOUS PURPOSES AND OTHER STORIES

24 stories of fantasy, science fiction, and horror

by

Michelle Ann King

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Published by Transient Cactus Publications at Smashwords

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 reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

www.transientcactus.co.uk

Copyright © Michelle Ann King 2018

TABLE OF CONTENTS

POSSIBLY NEFARIOUS PURPOSES

AND IN THE END, THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER

JUMP, AND I’LL CATCH YOU

ALWAYS ROOM FOR MORE

LIGHT WINDS WITH A CHANCE OF VELOCIRAPTORS

SOMETIMES YOU’RE THE WINDSCREEN, SOMETIMES YOU’RE THE FLY

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR GUESTS OF A PHILOSOPHICALLY UNCERTAIN DISPOSITION

FAST AS LIGHTNING, STILL AS STONE

GOD STATE

THE FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF

THE KIND HEARTS OF CHILDREN AND THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON

SEND IN THE NINJAS

15 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BEFORE YOU SAY YES

BORN UNDER A LUCKY STAR

SMASH AND GRAB

ORGANIC MATERIALS

RESPONSIBLE EMPLOYERS TAKE CARE OF THEIR PEOPLE

GOOD, FINE, NO

PLEASE ENTER THROUGH THE MEDITATION ROOM, THE SNACK BAR’S ON YOUR LEFT

MY SISTER, THE FAIRY PRINCESS

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER

WHERE THERE’S MAGIC

TOMORROW, WE’LL GO YAK HERDING

WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE

ALSO AVAILABLE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PUBLICATION HISTORY

POSSIBLY NEFARIOUS PURPOSES

I’ve tried quite a few times to write a nice, sweet romance where everyone ends up living happily ever after. But since ‘nice’ doesn’t seem to be my strong point, this isn’t that story. (And nor, despite the title, is the next one…)

WHEN SHE GOT back from Las Vegas, Dayna found a padded envelope on her doormat containing a set of keys, a glossy brochure for a health spa called Rejuvenation, and a sheaf of paperwork that said she owned it.

She didn’t know anything about health and beauty, but she did know that when the aliens dropped that kind of hint, they expected her to take it. So she took a course in nail art, and hired some therapists — strangely, all called Sarah — who understood how to do all the other things on the spa’s exquisitely printed menu of treatments.

Amy, of course, thought it was a bad idea. But she did at least come out of her basement for an hour so that Dayna could practise airbrushing scarlet palm trees on her nails.

‘Vegas was a wonderful adventure, by the way,’ Dayna said. ‘I flew over the Strip in a helicopter, ate oysters for breakfast, drank neon-coloured cocktails from glasses the size of fishbowls, had sex with a Malaysian Elvis impersonator, and shot paper targets at a gun range while screaming, Do you feel lucky, punk? as loud as I could.’

Amy shook her head. ‘Do I have to tell you how disappointed that makes me?’

‘No, you don’t. If you’re breathing, then you’re disappointed in me. It’s a given.’ Amy strongly disapproved of adventures, especially the alien-sponsored kind.

‘You have very dry cuticles,’ Dayna said. ‘You should massage them with almond oil.’

Dayna and Amy had shared a house for the last five years, ever since they’d met at a UFO enthusiast’s convention. ‘This is all complete nonsense,’ Amy had said, gloomily contemplating an eyewitness sketch of something that looked like a cross between ET and a Pomeranian. ‘You can’t see aliens.’

‘I know,’ Dayna had said, just as gloomily, and a friendship was born.

Dayna had her apartment on the ground floor of the house, and Amy lived in the basement — which was in fact upstairs on the first floor, as the building didn’t actually have a sub-ground level. But since she’d boarded up all the windows and painted every room black, it seemed to embody the spirit of a basement, if not the physical location.

Amy glanced around the spa while Dayna put the finishing touches to her artwork. ‘I liked it better when you had a garage,’ she said. ‘That was a lot more useful.’

Dayna refrained from pointing out that Amy had never once been to the garage, and didn’t drive. She’d only get a lecture. Amy thought driving was a bad idea because it was too dangerous — for other people, of course, not for them. ‘The aliens would make people drive off a cliff before they’d let them so much as cut us up,’ she said. Dayna had tried pointing out there weren’t many cliffs in North London, but Amy had stubbornly refused to see her point.

‘There,’ Dayna said, putting down her brush. ‘What do you think?’

Amy frowned at her nails. ‘Unless it’s meant to be King Kong climbing the Empire State Building, I wouldn’t give up the day job.’

‘It’s a palm tree. And this is my day job.’

Amy gave her a dark look. ‘Only because they say so.’

Dayna tried to ignore the disappointment radiating outwards like a mushroom cloud, and applied a clear layer of varnish over Amy’s nails. ‘I’m not like you, Amy. I can’t just… retire from the world. I still want to work, and drive, and travel, and meet people. I still want to live.’

‘Even as the tool of powerful and manipulative extra-terrestrial creatures who are using you as a test subject in a study of humanity being undertaken for unknown but possibly nefarious purposes?’

‘Nefarious,’ Dayna said. ‘That’s a great word. If they ever want me to open a nightclub, I’m going to call it Nefarious.’

Amy just shook her head, then left without letting her nails dry. But she did at least buy a bottle of almond oil on her way out.

*

Amy held the Feathered Peacock pose while Dayna timed her with a kitchen clock in the shape of a cheeseburger. Amy had no idea where that had come from, which meant she’d have to throw it out afterwards. She had a strict policy about not accepting the aliens’ gifts, even when they were useful. Especially when they were useful.

She caught Dayna’s gaze. ‘You’re seeing someone, aren’t you?’

‘Seriously?’ Dayna said. ‘How do you know these things? Do the aliens tell you? Do they spill everyone’s secrets because they’re trying to bring drama to you, since you refuse to go out and create any of your own?’

The cheeseburger belched, signifying thirty seconds. Amy shifted into Downward Facing Dog.

‘They do give me clues sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘But they didn’t need to about this. It’s obvious, because you haven’t stopped smiling for four days. So, tell me about him. What’s his name?’

‘Nathan. He’s a pharmacist. He came in to book a non-surgical facelift as a birthday present for his sister. I persuaded him to change it to a massage, partly because I’m terrified of that machine and partly because I thought she’d probably kill him if she got a facelift for her birthday, and he’s far too pretty to die.’ Dayna reset the timer. ‘You’re disappointed, aren’t you?’

‘I’m not disappointed, I’m disapproving. There’s a difference.’

Dayna raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘It might not even have anything to do with them, you know. Things do still happen by chance.’

‘Now I’m disappointed,’ Amy said. ‘You know better than that.’

‘Okay. Maybe. Probably. But I still like him.’ Dayna sank down on her own bright pink yoga mat, which practically glowed in the bare, black room. It was giving Amy a headache. ‘I want a boyfriend. A relationship. Is that so wrong?’

‘It’s not necessarily wrong to want it, but it’s a bad idea to pursue it. It won’t end well, that’s what I’m saying.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Yes, I do. Do you think I never tried?’

Dayna’s eyes went wide. ‘You had a boyfriend? When? Who? What happened?’

Amy sat opposite her in the lotus position. ‘When I was about your age, I went through a denial phase. Decided it was all nothing more than an over-active imagination and hallucinations brought on by ingesting pesticides and genetically modified bacon. So I became a vegan and started dating a lecturer in mathematics at Trinity College. Rupert. Very steady, very down-to-earth. Didn’t believe in anything that couldn’t be proven with a series of quadratic equations. I was hoping it would rub off.’

‘Did it?’

‘I can still recite pi to a hundred decimal places, which can be useful. Better than counting sheep. But other than that, no.’

Amy opened a bottle of vitamin-enriched water and took a long swallow. ‘But it did teach me that relationships are a bad idea. You said it yourself: the aliens want drama. Excitement. So you start out intending to have a quiet night in, but that’s not interesting enough for them, so they interfere. And before you know it, instead of spending the evening on the sofa with a nice cup of tea and a Bruce Willis film, you’re spending it cleaning intestines off the ceiling.’

Dayna hugged her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them. There was a faraway-looking smile playing at the edge of her lips. ‘Nathan loves Bruce Willis,’ she said.

Amy pinched the bridge of her nose. It didn’t help her headache. ‘Everyone loves Bruce Willis. He’s probably got aliens too. That really wasn’t the point of the story.’

Dayna blinked and shook herself a little. ‘No, I suppose not. Sorry.’

‘Officially, Rupert’s death is still an open investigation, but nobody’s looking into it. Nobody ever really did. They said it was clearly the work of a marauding, opportunistic psychopath. Or possibly a bear. Although what a bear would have been doing wandering the streets of Cambridge, nobody ever wanted to discuss.’

‘I wish we could discuss things with them,’ Dayna said. ‘I’d like to know who they are. Are they scientists? Security guards? Zookeepers? Spies? TV producers? I wish we had a proper way to communicate, not just that weird possession-of-random-objects thing they do. That’s unnerving. And unfairly one-sided.’

‘Actually, I’ve been working on that,’ Amy said. ‘Watch this.’ She rolled her towel up and draped it around the water bottle, then moved her bag of pumpkin seeds three inches to the right.

Dayna stared. ‘Did you just talk to them?’

‘Yes. I told them to fuck off out of my house. Or possibly, given that the nuances of the language are very subtle, that there’s no such thing as Bigfoot.’

Dayna nibbled on a pumpkin seed. ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I think I saw him doing a lounge act in Vegas.’

‘I’m sure they’ll bear that in mind,’ Amy said.

*

Since the spa was having an afternoon lull, Dayna slipped into the storage room and lay down on the concrete floor.

Maybe Amy was right. Maybe disengaging, refusing to play the game, was the right thing to do.

She stared at the unpainted ceiling and thought empty, bare thoughts. She envisaged herself as a barren, blank void. Unexciting. Safe. Move along, nothing to see here. She lay still. She breathed. She contemplated nothingness. Then she said, ‘Fuck me, this is boring,’ and went out to get a pedicure.

‘I ever tell you about the time I accidentally ate someone’s toenail?’ Baltimore Sarah said, as she stroked purple polish over Dayna’s toenails. ‘I was doing this old woman and her nails were, like, this thick.’ She held her fingers about an inch apart. ‘So I’ve got the clippers in both hands, like this…’ she mimed squeezing, ‘and I finally work that beast free, and it whooshes right up in the air, and I’m watching it fly, like this…’ she threw her head back and stared upwards, her mouth wide open. ‘And it comes straight back down, and then, well, I guess you can work out how the story ends.’ She snapped her mouth shut and mimed swallowing.

‘That is truly disgusting,’ Dayna said, in awe.

Baltimore Sarah shrugged. ‘Life comes with hazards attached. What are you gonna do?’

Dayna nodded slowly. ‘That’s a good point.’

The office phone rang, and Sci Fi Sarah picked it up. ‘Hold on,’ she said, and covered the mouthpiece. ‘Dayna? It’s Nathan. He wants to know if you’re free tonight.’

Dayna shot a swift and slightly guilty look back at the closed door of the storage room, then nodded. ‘Tell him yes,’ she said.

*

Nathan arrived ten minutes early, so Amy went downstairs while Dayna was still getting ready.

‘Boo,’ she said, when she answered the door. He jumped hard, which made her frown. A low tolerance for surprises didn’t bode well.

He visibly collected himself. ‘Er. Hello. You must be Amy. Dayna’s friend.’

‘Dayna has a lot of friends,’ Amy said. ‘Strange but very protective friends, who’ve watched over her for a very long time. They like to keep an eye on her. To do things for her. It means they’re around a lot, and they see everything. Which means they’ll be watching you, too.’

Nathan blinked hard. ‘Right,’ he said, then rallied and gave her a wide smile that only wavered a little. ‘So is this the point where you warn me that if I break her heart you’ll hunt me down and kill me?’

‘Not me,’ Amy said. ‘But someone will, yes. Or something, rather. So you should know that breaking her heart would be a very bad idea indeed.’

Nathan’s skin turned a shade paler, and the smile wavered even more.

Amy held the door open. ‘Anyway, Dayna won’t be long, so you can come in and wait. You’ll probably have a sense of being watched, and you might have a feeling that things are moving around when you’re not looking straight at them. Or possibly that they’re trying to tell you something. The toaster in particular can be a bit threatening, but if it comes on too strong just throw a tea towel over it. That usually shuts it up. If anything really strange happens, shout for me. I’ll be upstairs in the basement.’

She paused at the foot of the stairs and looked back. ‘Unless it’s the television turning on by itself. That’s just because the remote’s broken.’

Nathan made a small, slightly strangled noise that, although Amy waited politely, didn’t turn into actual words. Eventually she decided it probably signified agreement and left. People could be as hard to communicate with as the aliens, sometimes.

*

On the drive back from the cinema, Dayna couldn’t help noticing that Nathan was quieter than usual. When he eventually said, ‘I met Amy, when I came to pick you up,’ she relaxed. It explained a lot.

‘Amy is a bit—’ she began, then her mobile rang.

‘Hold on,’ she said, and put it on speaker. Minimising distractions was just good motoring etiquette, even without alien backseat drivers.

‘Hi Dayna, it’s Night Shift Sarah. Just wanted to let you know the police came round tonight. I think advertising my Midnight Massage Special might not have been such a good idea. They seem to think it’s a euphemism for something unseemly.’

‘Okay, don’t worry,’ Dayna said. ‘I’ll sort it out tomorrow. The police are usually very understanding once I talk to them.’

She hung up, and noticed Nathan looking at her with an expression she couldn’t read.

‘You have some strange friends,’ he said.

Dayna shrugged. She couldn’t exactly argue with that.

*

Amy spent most of the next day meditating in the spa’s storage room. She quite liked it in there. It was smaller than her basement.

Dayna popped in regularly, to bring her water and talk about Nathan.

‘I told him you were just joking,’ she said. ‘And that you mean well, but you’re not highly socialised.’

‘You say that as if it’s a flaw,’ Amy said. She opened her eyes. ‘You know it’s a bad idea to have secrets in a relationship, don’t you?’

Dayna looked down. ‘So there are some things we can’t talk about. That’s normal. No couple shares everything.’

‘But we’re not just talking about being a Barry Manilow fan, or having to shave your toes. This is big. This is a major part of your life — and if you’re in a relationship with him, then it’s a major part of his life, too.’

‘Then I’ll tell him the truth.’

‘That’s an even worse idea.’

‘Why? He won’t hold it against me. He’ll understand.’

‘No, he won’t. He won’t get a chance to. Come on, you should know how it works by now. Or do I have to remind you?’

Amy got up and poked her head out the door. ‘Sarah,’ she called, ‘could you come and help us with something? Any Sarah, it doesn’t matter. In fact, all of you would be good. Take it in turns.’

Sci Fi Sarah came out of the waxing room. She scrunched up the plastic apron she’d been wearing and