The Hen Thief (and other stories)

By Vera Loy

In Vera Loy's third collection of speculative fiction; dreams are sold by corporations; a starship encounters a strange anomaly; zombies take over London; and a hen is stolen. Twelve short stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vera Loy
• Release date: Jan 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463881491

Vera Loy

I have brown eyes and red hair, some weeks redder than others! The rest is subject to change without notice. I live in Australia with my family and two cats, the cats rule. After thirty years of working with the unemployed, coping with threats, tears and broken lives (and these were only from fellow staff), I decided it was time to make my escape. And what better place to go than the world of regency romance? I started writing this story years ago, but put it aside due to work and family commitments. A few years ago, I dusted off the foolscap pages stored under my bed, finished the story and turned it into a book, Regency Masquerade. Since then I have published three collections of short stories. Beach Apples, all with an Australian theme, and two books of science fiction, Star Clash and Splinters of Glass. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Book preview

The Hen Thief

And Other Stories

By

Vera Loy

All rights reserved by the author, Vera Loy, any unauthorized distribution or selling of this book constitutes an infringement of copyright.

Copyright © 2018 Vera Loy

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Acknowledgements

Thank you also to Aarathi Prakasen, Atlas-Skye, and Jenny Summerfield for your help with editing.

Any mistakes are, of course, my own.

Contents

My Lucky Day

Baguette

Marianne

The Lost World

Starfinder

The Warrior and the Magician

Last Chance

DreamFunk, Inc

Hen Thief

Blue and the Zombies

Lost

Mama Yosepha Alomang

My Lucky Day

I hurried through the crowded train station, dodging elderly pensioners and mothers with small children. One minute left. Naturally enough, my train was at the farthest platform away from the gates. Jogging awkwardly, shopping bags banging against my legs, I flung myself inside the door. Every seat was taken. Resigned, I reached for a strap and hung on, only ten stops to go. The girls were easy to buy for but I never knew what to buy my husband Joe. The latest Scandinavian crime series DVD would have to do. I swore that next year I was going to do all my Christmas shopping in June.

But it was my lucky day. Two stops in, a young woman stood up and gestured to her seat. I’m getting out here, she said, looking at me with a fixed expression. If you’d like a seat.

Thank you, I said gratefully, easing in, and finding spots for my shopping. The train pulled out of the station and my hand brushed against something caught between the seat and the side of the carriage. A notebook of some sort. I looked up but the young woman had gone. Damn!

I pulled out the notebook and opened it. Maybe she had written her name in the front.

"Nathan promised he’ll tell her tonight, about us." Omigod, this was a diary, someone’s personal secrets. I looked around but no-one was watching. I knew I should close the book, or turn to the opening page to check if there was an address, but...

"He says they are separated, they have separate rooms. He’s only staying because of the children. But they are 15 and 17, surely old enough..." Silly girl, I thought, wryly. What a cliché. This isn’t going to end well. I flicked through a few pages until...

"Wonderful news. Nathan has finally told her! But it’s not sorted yet. She’s Catholic. She says she won’t give him a divorce, but surely she’ll have to eventually, when she realises their marriage is really over..."

"I’m getting desperate. It’s been weeks! Why won’t the cow just accept reality and let Nathan go? I’m going to confront her myself. I know Nathan won’t be pleased, but I can’t bear this any longer. When she sees me face to face, she’ll have to change her mind."

Hastily, I turned over the next page, but the pages were blank. Damn. I wanted to know what happened. Luckily, her name and address were in the front of the diary.

I knocked on the door, suddenly uneasy, wishing I had just posted the book back. The same young woman I’d seen on the train opened the door.

I held out the diary but she spoke first, face flushed with determination. I’m pregnant. You have to let him go!

I went hot then cold with shock. Scarlet blotches stained my cheeks.

A small voice inside my head was reminding me Joe had never liked using his first name, even as I blurted out, But I’m not Catholic.

We stared at each other.

Baguette

Ban the Baguette! chanted the unruly crowd as they surged down Oxford Street.

England for the English! bellowed a man holding a megaphone from the front of the march. Several hundred people waving banners and shouting slogans jostled noisily along the road, bringing traffic to a standstill. Many of them carried national flags, white with a red cross in the centre. Police lined the route, hard faces showing no expression.

Two people watched silently from the shelter of a coffee shop, tight-lipped, their coffee growing cold on the table. It’s getting worse, this is the second one this month, said the dark-haired young woman.

Some people—it’s as if they can’t bear to live in peace, they have to fight something.

Now that the war with Bohemia is officially over, they’re looking for a new target. And we’re it. We’re always it—second class citizens. You’d think after all these years they’d have learned to accept us. The young man unconsciously fingered the small scarf which was around his neck. It was dark blue, patterned with three golden fleur-de-lys. He smiled with dark satisfaction. Well they won’t have it all their own way much longer, not if we have anything to say about it!

The woman glanced at him, then frowned as she saw the scarf. You’re crazy to wear that, today of all days! Tuck it out of sight or, better yet, get rid of it!

"There’s a bloody coffee shop! yelled a voice from the crowd outside. Why don’t they serve honest English tea? Not good enough for them, is it?"

A rock sailed through the air, putting a large crack in the shop’s glass window. As if it were a signal, all hell broke loose and suddenly the police had a riot on their hands.

The couple scrambled to their feet. Let’s go! said the woman. We don’t want to be trapped in here. They strode to the rear of the shop, where a sturdy middle-aged woman held the door ajar, ready.

This way. Quickly! she murmured, looking back over her shoulder at the cracked window and the crowd beyond.

The couple slipped outside then stopped to face the owner, who hadn’t followed.

You should come too, Celeste. They’re so angry! It’s not safe here.

I can’t leave my shop. Anyway, they’ll be past in a minute, she added, optimistically. Allez. The door shut behind them. Not soon enough to block the sounds of smashing glass.

Unthinkingly, the man twisted the door handle, trying to get back in to help, but his companion grabbed his arm. Her expression was anguished but determined as she tried to break his grip on the handle and pull him away.

We have to leave her. We can’t risk getting caught, our mission is too important. You know that.

He shut his eyes for a second, indecision battling on his face, then gasped and let go. Grim now, he grabbed her hand and they raced down the alley, soon disappearing into the narrow warren of streets that marked the Norman quarter.

Two men in white lab coats huddled around a black rimmed monitor, watching as a third man shook their hands on the screen then stepped into the Temporal Modification Device. He gave a jaunty wave then disappeared from sight as the door closed. A siren blasted briefly, flashing a red light above the machine. Then silence. Dr Chaucer watched himself go over to the TMD and open the door. It was empty. Still on the screen, he turned to the man next to him and they high-fived, beaming grins on their faces. Yes!

The two men tore their eyes away from the monitor and looked at each other blankly. So who the fuck was that?

Ron Murdoch strode along the passage. Chaucer had news for him. At last! The culmination of years of study and investment. Chaucer had finally come up with a time machine that worked. Sure, he might give it a fancy name, but that’s what it was—a time machine. It had taken millions of pounds—rather more millions than he liked to think about, but what the heck? They were his pounds. All for one single purpose. To go back twenty years and stop his daughter from leaving the house that morning. The morning she had been hit by a car and died in his arms.

I’m afraid that’s definite, declared Dr William Chaucer. We have to dismantle the machine. It’s simply too dangerous.

What do you mean? queried the large, grey haired man at his side. He was frowning, unconvinced that the opportunity he’d dreamed of for so long, was about to be withheld from his grasp.

Going back alters the past, Mr Murdoch. Even a tiny jump. Our first experiment— he paused, suddenly struck by a nasty thought, "at least we think it was our first experiment, disappeared from this timeline completely. The only way we knew he’d ever existed was that we’d taken the forethought to film the event and upload it simultaneously to the computer. Apparently the images remain, even though we can’t find a trace of the actual film we used."

But you had success with those earlier experiments. I remember, I was here, Murdoch protested.

True enough, but they weren’t human. An empty box appearing in the middle of our storeroom, a dog in the middle of the Salisbury plains... Chaucer sighed. It had all looked so promising.

"Where—I mean, when—did you send him?"