Cat and Mouse

By Eddie C Dollgener, Jr

"Cat and Mouse" is a dark comedy short story. 3 malcontents who bully and extort their way through their miserable lives to make others lives even more miserable, come across a mysterious shopkeeper. When he fails to produce money to pay for protection, they torture his cat until he gives in and gives them something even more enjoyable than money. The drugs he gives them produce a most exquisite high and they have the party of their lives. However, everything comes with a price, and they soon get their comeuppance for their sordid activities.

The story includes an excerpt from "Unholy Cult of the Blood Rose".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eddie C Dollgener, Jr
• Release date: May 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463626979

Eddie C Dollgener, Jr

I currently live in East Texas. In July, 2014, I suffered a stroke that threatened to circumvent my desires for a meaningful life. Thanks to a wonderful rehab team out of Tyler, I was able to recover most of my functions for daily living, though I still get exhausted on some days. I am a Christian, a father to one daughter and a mentor to countless youth over the past 20 plus years in ministry. I have taught a Sunday school class and a weekly program to children about missionaries through a program called Royal Ambassadors. I am currently a youth director at my church, as well as a community healthcare advocate and a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused children) volunteer. Although my ultimate goal in life is to write full-time and be able to go on medical mission trips or disaster relief teams, the reality is that most writers have to work extra jobs to support their dreams. I advocate for keeping families together through life coaching and volunteer work. Only recently have I been able to take up the habit of writing again, so expect to see some more works in the near future. My interest in becoming a writer actually started around my twelfth birthday. My mother gave me a book, “Little Men,” by Louisa May Alcott, that became my first inclination that I would want to live adventures through written words. I began writing short stories and poems in high school and then started writing novels in the late 1980’s. My first efforts at creative writing were poems created between classes in high school. I actually had a decent collection of about fifty, but sadly, they were lost over time from various moves in my younger years. My first publication was a poem entitled “Throw Away Child,” that was published in a national anthology. About 1987 I first began to write full-length novels. At the time, I was a big Stephen King fan and thought that writing horror novels was the way to get into mainstream publishing. I started a novel that eventually split into two novels. “Circle of the Rose” began life as “A Rose for Tommy,” and now is titled “Unholy Cult of the Blood Rose.” The original story was about a boy who suffered from horrific abuse and travelled to a dream world in his sleep to escape his tormentors. After writing it out, which is what I try to do with anything I create, the plots just sounded too cheesy to work for me. I extracted the “real” life work from the “imaginary” one and found that I actually had two viable novels from one. “Unholy Cult of the Blood Rose” is a horror novel that I wrote to address the issue of child abuse. In a way, it was a therapeutic work of art helping me to deal with the demons in my past childhood. I do not wish to delve any further at the moment, but if you take the time to read the introduction to that novel, you may have a better understanding of what message I was trying, and may still be trying, to convey. The second novel that split from the original became “Unbinder.” That work of literature is still in progress. It will actually become three separate books as a series and is a fantasy set in another world with young lovers, old dragons, battling sorcerers and an evil overlord. My latest foray into modern literature is a drama written out as serialized fiction. “Kevin’s Homecoming” represents the latest genre that I am working in and has become the most rewarding for me, both in its creation, and in the publishing aspect. May God bless you richly in the coming days, Eddie C Dollgener Jr

Book preview

CAT AND MOUSE

By

Eddie C Dollgener Jr

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

Copyright © 2012 by Eddie C Dollgener Jr

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Quitman McDonald Publishing

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CAT AND MOUSE

Louie the Leech stood on the corner of Fifth and Jackson near the Winslow’s Hardware, pulling a long drag out of the Marlboro he had just borrowed from Spike. You couldn’t actually call it borrowing because Louie never paid you back for anything. I should know because he still owes me thirty-seven bucks and the two switchblades that he used to scare some little punks with a couple of times.

Louie was watching this hot girl walk by him wearing one of them skirts that barely covers the cheeks. Wow! She was smokin’ hot! Louie made some kind of remark to Spike that set that fat tub of lard into shaking fits of laughter. I once thought that when Spike died, the oil prices in America would tank big time. I wish I could’ve heard that crude joke Louie said.

I could tell really quickly why Louie and Spike took that side of the street, ‘cause hardly anybody walked my side that time of day. It was some kind of hot. I swear the rubber from the Nikes I lifted from Harry’s Sporting Goods was becoming one with the concrete sidewalk. I cursed Louie and Spike for taking the side shaded by the buildings. The sun was shining down on me and I was dumb enough not to wear a hat. To make matters worse, every time the cars would drive by, it was like standing in front of a big frickin’ hair drier set on high.

We were looking for Joe Kratzenberger, a local businessman who wasn’t keeping up with his debts. Two weeks had passed by and he was not making his payment for business protection to Louie.

What’s that?

Well, you know. Uh, it was protection from the little crackheads. You know how they like to go through and trash the businesses. Louie was offering him protection from those little thugs. A businessman needs to be able to run his business without some loser coming in there and taking all his profits. Louie had a contract, a non-negotiable contract, with a lot of the business owners in that neighborhood.

Anyway, Louie was getting a little nervous that Kratzenberger – boy that is some weird name – Louie was concerned Kratzenberger was talking to you guys. Not that you guys are not good at protecting people. I respect the boys in blue. So, what do they call you? Sarge? Oh, sorry man. I’ll get back to the story.

I’d known Louie for a long time, long before he got the nickname ‘Leech’. When I was twelve, I used to be his delivery boy, running his packages to his different customers. Huh? No! I never did any of that. His business was straight up, I swear. I had to keep exact count of everything he sold so that he would know when someone double-crossed him. Louie loved his money. Had it running out of every orifice the body can have.

I learned that you should never double-cross Louie. You might end up like my friend Butch. Butch was a fifteen-year-old street rat who looked like he was thirty. He introduced me to Louie and helped me get the job. For a long time, Louie knew that Butch had been stealing from him.

One day, they were arguing about it and Louie caught him in a lie. Louie wanted to teach me a vital life lesson, so he made me watch. There was a weird look in Louie’s eyes, almost as if he was getting his rocks off, while he slowly cut Butch to pieces. I ain’t never heard a guy scream the way Butch did.