Tales to Disturb Your Sleep: A Collection of Short Stories

By Siobhan Searle

Are you looking for a sweet bedtime story? Then, you better find a different book. This collection of short stories, which includes the winning entry of the CadmusUK contest, Three Meals a Day, 365 Days a Year and excerpts from Tempest Of Dreams, will ignite the hidden horrors of your imagination and taint your dreams. Written by paranormal mystery author Siobhan Searle, these stories will not disappoint those looking to be disturbed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Siobhan Searle
• Release date: Mar 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005097318

Siobhan Searle

Author and freelance writer, Siobhan Searle, loves to captivate her readers with thrills, chills, and laughs. Inspired by everyday life, Siobhan writes a wide range of material from blogs, health & wellness articles, essays, children’s literature, and the occasional poem. Her true forte though comes in the form of supernatural and paranormal mysteries. With her pen on the paper, she devises murderous plots, families shrouded in secrets, houses too haunted for the living, and other horrors you can only find in a writer’s mind.Born in Richmond Hill, Ontario, but later moving to the country, Siobhan developed a love for nature and all the creatures in it. This led her to study veterinary technology and work at various veterinarian clinics, as well as the Kingston SPCA before she turned her attention towards health care. It wasn’t until she was home on maternity leave a few years later that Siobhan decided to give in to her true calling and life-long dream of becoming a fiction writer.Inspired by everything she encounters and never at a loss for ideas, Siobhan strives to connect with her readers through the emotions, life experiences, thoughts, and general realism of her characters. Now with her freelance writing projects on the side, Siobhan continues to weave twisted webs for her characters to be caught in and to stump her readers.

Book preview

Tales to Disturb Your Sleep

A Collection of Short Stories

By

Siobhan Searle

Smashwords Edition

Copyright©2021 Siobhan Searle

All Rights Reserved. No part of any of the stories contained in this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage, without written permission from the author.

These are works of fiction. All names, characters, locations, events and incidents are products of the author's imagination or have been used in a purely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

Edited by Elizabeth Killam.

Front cover design by Siobhan Searle.

Tempest of Dreams excerpts originally published in the Tempest of Dreams eBook form in 2015 by Smashwords.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this eBook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

This eBook is a collection of short stories written by author Siobhan Searle, which includes the winning entry of the CadmusUK contest, Three Meals a Day, 365 Days a Year and excerpts from her novel, Tempest of Dreams.

Table of Contents

Three Meals a Day, 365 Days a Year

The Murderer at Home

The Well

Tempest of Dreams excerpts:

The Awakening

The Puppet Master Comes Calling

Other Titles by Siobhan Searle

About Siobhan Searle

Three Meals a Day, 365 Days a Year

Cook and clean, cook and clean; was all Emily’s life consisted of. Each day the consecutive culinary demands rolled in. Mom, I’m hungry. Hun, what is for diner? Is it lunchtime yet? Day after day, Emily toiled in the kitchen. She’d clear one sink full of dishes just to fill it with another. Pots, pans, plates, bowls, cups, silverware were in never-ending motion.

Emily never saw herself as a mother, a wife, a domestic. Her path had been clear, decisive. But fate threw a bend in the road and Emily helplessly watched her dreams dissipate to be replaced with childish wails, daily chaos, and wifely duties. Her innocent beauty fractured by stress lines, baby weight, and premature grey hair. Her once sharp academic mind, wasted on shopping lists, homework, and recipes.

Nothing but a silent shadow in the background, Emily existed to do other’s bidding. Never thanked, never aided, and hardly acknowledged. Eighteen years of servitude, endless hours of unappreciated, unnoticed labour, until one day it stopped.

The kitchen gleamed. The dishes neatly placed in their cabinets. Sink empty. The stove cold, no erupting pots on its surface. No scent of cooking in the air. The only noise was that of the kettle’s whistle, signalling it was time for tea.

With tranquility and grace, Emily entered the once dreaded kitchen and prepared a sumptuous cup of Earl Grey with a squeeze of lemon and a lump of sugar. Breathing in its savoury vapours, she grabbed a biscuit and took the perfect brew out to the porch to bathe in the morning’s light.

It was a beautiful day. Warm but not too hot, with a fleeting breeze. Birds sang in the trees and fluttered between the feeders, while squirrels scampered on the lawn. Emily relished in the natural glory, which enveloped her, never having a chance to truly appreciate it before. Absent of human interruption, the simplicity of life quieted Emily’s mind and made her heart light and exuberant.

The chains of domestication gone, lifted off as her veil had been the day she said, I do. Now Emily was free, no longer a slave, but her own person.