Beating Hearts

By Jay Mountney

Three short stories and two flashfics, all with magical or supernatural elements and all with a focus on mm romance. Explore the universe with alien abductors, see our world through the eyes of a genie, or attend dance classes with someone whose tattoos live and writhe. Is heaven what we thought it might be or have aliens got a better grasp on the reality? And might ghosts have our best interests at heart? Find out in this collection of shorts and settle down for a sometimes spooky read but always expect a happy ending.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Mountney
• Release date: Oct 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463380970

Jay Mountney

Jay is a writer who enjoys exploring themes including m/m romance, culture clash and coming of age, often through fantasy. She reads voraciously and her website/blog contains regular reviews. She lives in the north west of England in a seventeenth century cottage with erratic access to phone signals and internet.

Book preview

Beating Hearts.

A collection of short mm fiction

By Jay Mountney

Cover and text copyright by Jay Mountney 2019

Smashwords Edition

Thank you to the Yahoo writing group who inspired and encouraged me. This collection is dedicated to all of you.

Introduction

Three short stories, and two flashfics, all on the theme of two hearts beating together. These are mm stories, though some of the characters are aliens with alien thoughts and cultures. None of the tales takes place completely in the mundane world as we know it; there is an element of magic or alternative reality in all of them. The three stories are 3000 words plus and the two flashfics are round about 1000 words. All are based on ideas I developed in response to prompts from a writing group I used to belong to. They have undergone extensive editing and in some cases expansion. So if anyone recognises them, yes, they did start life on Yahoo, but have since moved on.

Whatever happened to Darryl? We follow Malcom to another planet to find love.

Afterlife. A flashfic exploring the idea of more than one heaven.

Dance Fever. Mark meets someone very special through a dance class.

Vision. Another flashfic, in which we find that spirits can have our best interests in mind.

Through a glass, darkly. A myth is retold from the point of view of a mythical character.

Whatever happened to Darryl?

Chapter 1: He went thataway.

You see, there was this alien.

Nah, scratch that. I’ll begin at the beginning. There was this spaceship.

OK. So you don’t believe me. Well, at first I thought I’d been dreaming. You would, wouldn’t you? And that Darryl had maybe taken the opportunity of me falling asleep at the wheel to walk out on me. He’d been threatening. But the thing is, we were in this wood, miles from anywhere, in the middle of Wales on a Sunday. Yeah. Darryl would have waited for civilisation.

And anyway, I got this letter. Apparently they had a fight. I know all about Darryl’s fights. He usually wins. He must have done this time because they landed long enough for him to post me a letter. Maybe he thought he owed it to me - though a lot of it was about who was to have his Porsche (baby bro) and his collection of Queen vynil (his cousin Cynthia, would you believe?) - but at least he explained.

He didn’t need to really. I saw him too, in the dream that wasn’t a dream. Kyrian’n-av-syun, that is. No idea how you pronounce it, by the way.

And it had to be for real if he was giving his stuff away. I suppose I got lucky - I got the flat, and an enclosed letter to the solicitor to make it all legal. Not sure I wouldn’t rather have had the car.

The spaceship landed just in front of our car - my car, that is. We were in the Rover, on the way back from a family wedding I’d dragged him to. Probably would have got in the papers anyhow - Malcolm B... drags gay boyfriend to party on Anglesey. As it was, the headlines were even better. Malcolm B...’s gay boyfriend disappears in spaceship incident somewhere in the Brecons. Police do not suspect foul play. Well, they did at first, but there was no evidence, no body and I believe he wrote them a letter too. Thorough, Darryl, once he’s made a decision.

The letters were on some weird kind of slippery stuff, like the robes Kyrian Whatnot was wearing when he stopped us. Seems he’d been using technology to spy on us, on earth, to find a boyfriend. He found my boyfriend. Kidnapped him. Though as Darryl went willingly I suppose it wasn’t so much kidnapping as just walking or rather flying off with.