Beautiful Odd

By BL Rehage

A fairy who can sell dreams, a girl with far too much imagination for her own good, a witch with impulse control issues, and more in this collection of short stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BL Rehage
• Release date: May 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463386378

Book preview

Beautiful Odd

By BL Rehage

Copyright 2020 Bonnie Rehage

Cover photograph Copyright 2020 by Bonnie Rehage

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental or used with permission. 

Table of Contents

Arcane Jane’s Fairy Emporium

Grandmother

Too Much Imagination

Quarantine

A Bear for Kylie

A Hole in the Sidewalk

Impulse Control

Afterlife, Inc.

Al-Akazam

Preface

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Afterword

About the Author

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Preface

I love short stories. One of the best things about them is their length—when you get a really good one, it’s like a little gem that stays with you. Even if you get a bad one, at least it will be over with quickly. My favorites are the stories that are just a little odd, the ones that take reality and twist it just a little off kilter. Those are the sort I like to write, too. There’s something beautiful about building a world where all the odd things that are not supposed to exist have a home alongside the ordinary, even if it’s only on paper. Beautiful Odd is a collection of my short stories that I think do just that. I enjoyed writing them and I hope you enjoy reading them.

Dream strange things and make them look like truth.

--Nathaniel Hawthorne

Acknowledgments

I have belonged to several writing groups over the years, both formal and informal, and every one of them has taught me something about the art of storytelling. I thank them all for the ongoing education. I especially thank Jon Paul for his techno-wizardry in bringing this collection out into the world and Daryl, friend and grammar maven, for her feedback and generosity in looking out for my mistakes. Any errors that remain are mine alone.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Tom, for more reasons than I can say, and to all those people who kept saying, in one form or another You really need to publish a book. Here it is. Please stop nagging me now.

In Arcane Jane’s Fairy Emporium three visitors to a Renaissance fair discover a very unusual vendor at the fringe of the fairgrounds. What she has to sell is far from ordinary and her prices are steep. You can ask Jane anything, at a cost.

Arcane Jane’s Fairy Emporium

The mead in my plastic commemorative cup is cloudy and the taste reminds me of fruit and oak. My friends Pru and Dhava are drinking beer because it’s what they always drink. I usually do, too, but this is my first time at a Renaissance fair and the mead booth has thick glass jugs full of amber liquid that a man in doublet and stockings says he brewed himself. How could I not try it while I have the chance? It’s something different, like the fair itself.

The normal stuff that goes on at the municipal fairgrounds is usually a lot tamer. Little League games, community band concerts, 4-H shows. The fair is something different. It’s a massive event, and the grounds are packed with tents and pens and booths and wandering vendors in period dress and pushcarts and acrobats. Tonight it will all be over. Everything will be packed up and moved to the next location, but this afternoon the place is heaving with visitors desperate to wring as much fun as they can out of the experience before it’s done. The grass near the busiest attractions has been churned into mud and dotted with torn papers, bright plastic bits, and popcorn.

My friends and I have been here for hours and seen everything on offer at least twice. We’re lounging at the food court, nursing our drinks and debating whether it’s worth making one more lap around the attractions. We decide it isn’t. The kitchens stopped cooking hours ago and a few of the booths are already closing up. There’s another consideration, too.

I’m broke, Pru shouts over the noise of the crowd and the music blasting from rows of speakers mounted on tall poles. Let’s go home. The speakers are lined up on opposite sides of the fairgrounds, facing each other across the distance. During ball games or animal shows, they’re used to announce scores, events, blue ribbon winners. Today, they blast out music with the volume cranked up to ear-shredding levels. It’s loudest in the middle of the fair, but even here away from most of the action it’s giving me a headache. Leaving sounds like an excellent idea.

The combined entrance and exit gate is on the other side of the grounds from us. Getting to it will require navigating through a good three quarters of the fair and past all those tired, cranky kids and their tired, cranky parents. We’re just a little drunk and not keen on the idea. I know another way.

We can go through the trees. I gesture with my cup in the direction of the massive parking lot beyond the screen of pines that border the grounds. My car is in section M. I take a wild guess where that might be and we start walking. We’ll have to cut through the trees and climb down the sharp incline to the parking lot, but at least we won’t be in the middle of a bunch of people all heading for the exit gates at the same time.

It’s a little quieter once we get behind the speakers. We walk as close as we can to the edge of the woods and by the time we reach the ragged line of empty vans and campers that house the crew the noise is barely noticeable. Each vehicle is connected to a droning generator. We walk past them in the gasoline scented air, keeping our heads down to watch for the thick black and orange cables half-hidden like snakes in the grass.

A small, round canvas tent is pitched right up tight between two skinny pines, about fifteen yards beyond the last camper, right at the very limit of the grounds. It has a peaked top supported by a central