Unexpected Critters

By Annie Reed

From a mouse with a compulsion to paint the monster who lives in his house to a very special cat ready to battle to the death to protect her person…

From a grieving young woman who discovers magic thanks to the rabbits who hide beneath the bushes in a suburban backyard to an artist whose animal friends help her answer the most important question of all…

These are some of the unexpected critters you'll meet in the seven contemporary fantasy stories in this collection by multi-genre writer Annie Reed, a master of short fiction that packs an emotional punch.

 

Unexpected Critters contains the following stories:

Queen of the Mouse Riders

Chance of Bunnies and Occasional Toad

The Night Mischief Became a Real Cat

After

Creatures of Shade and Shadow

First Steps

Paintings of Cats by Mice

 

"One of the best writers I've come across in years." Kristine Kathryn Rusch

"Annie Reed writes powerful stories about strong women." Dean Wesley Smith, editor of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thunder Valley Ink
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201564834

Annie Reed

Award-winning author and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch calls Annie Reed “one of the best writers I’ve come across in years.”Annie’s won recognition for her stellar writing across multiple genres. Her story “The Color of Guilt” originally published in Fiction River: Hidden in Crime, was selected as one of The Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016. Her story “One Sun, No Waiting” was one of the first science fiction stories honored with a literary fellowship award by the Nevada Arts Foundation, and her novel PRETTY LITTLE HORSES was among the finalists in the Best First Private Eye Novel sponsored by St. Martin’s Press and the Private Eye Writers of America.A frequent contributor to the Fiction River anthologies and Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, Annie’s recent work includes the superhero origin novel FASTER, the near-future science fiction short novel IN DREAMS, and UNBROKEN FAMILIAR, a gritty urban fantasy mystery short novel. Annie’s also one of the founding members of the innovative Uncollected Anthology, a quarterly series of themed urban fantasy stories written by some of the best writers working today.Annie’s mystery novels include the Abby Maxon private investigator novels PRETTY LITTLE HORSES and PAPER BULLETS, the Jill Jordan mystery A DEATH IN CUMBERLAND, and the suspense novel SHADOW LIFE, written under the name Kris Sparks, as well as numerous other projects she can’t wait to get to. For more information about Annie, including news about upcoming bundles and publications, go to www.annie-reed.com.

Book preview

From a mouse with a compulsion to paint the monster who lives in his house to a very special cat ready to battle to the death to protect her person…

From a grieving young woman who discovers magic thanks to the rabbits who hide beneath the bushes in a suburban backyard to an artist whose animal friends help her answer the most important question of all…

These are some of the unexpected critters you’ll meet in the seven contemporary fantasy stories in this collection by multi-genre writer Annie Reed, a master of short fiction that packs an emotional punch.

One of the best writers I’ve come across in years.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Annie Reed writes powerful stories about strong women.

Dean Wesley Smith, editor of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine

Introduction

Queen of the Mouse Riders

Chance of Bunnies, with Occasional Toad

The Night Mischief Became a Real Cat

After

Creatures of Shade and Shadow

First Steps

Paintings of Cats by Mice

The Unexpected Series

Copyright Information

About the Author

Introduction

When I was a kid, the one and only mall in town had a Woolworth’s department store, otherwise known as the five-and-dime. That store was my very favorite place to go, and not because of the toys.

Woolworth’s was the center anchor store in the mall, with Sears at one end and Macy’s, I believe, at the other. (I’m a little foggy on that detail. Macy’s wasn’t a store my parents frequented. The other anchor store could have been Weinstock’s. My parents didn’t shop there either.)

The point is that when my parents parked in the back lot at the mall, we had to walk through Woolworth’s to get to any of the inside stores. I looked forward to those trips because the path through Woolworth’s took us right by the pet department.

In those days Woolworth’s had actual pets—parakeets and hamsters, gerbils and fresh-water tropical fish. Grown-up me knows now that the cages and tanks holding those pets weren’t the most humane things in the world, but little kid me was simply fascinated with the colorful, chattering birds and the hamsters and gerbils that looked like soft little balls of fluff. And I loved how the lights on top of the fish tanks reflected off the colorful scales of the neon tetras and angelfish.

At the time, my parents had a dog. I loved our dog, but I really wanted a cat. My dad always said no. I actually wanted every pet I saw or read about, and I read about a lot of different pets. See, the other thing Woolworth’s had was a spinning rack full of little how-to books on taking care of every sort of pet imaginable, from de-scented skunks to rabbits and raccoons and ferrets, from snakes and tortoises to parakeets and finches and a zillion different breeds of dogs. And kittens. Fluffy little blue-eyed kittens were my siren song.

Perhaps as a way to appease me, my dad used to buy me one of those books on a regular basis. I had quite a collection of them by the time I got old enough that my parents figured I could actually take care of a parakeet.

I think my love of critters is hard-wired into my DNA. I’ve mostly turned into a cat person as an adult, maybe because my dad was always so adamant that I couldn’t have one, but I enjoy a majority of the critters I encounter. Where we live now, lizards watch us while we do yard work or come out to see what’s what when I sit on the deck to read or work on a project. Bunnies from the field next door will come munch on the grass in our front yard, and on one memorable occasion a very large snake curled up inside a kitchen cabinet over the stove. (We’ve since duct-taped the hell out of the hole in the wall around a pipe where we figure the snake got in since rattlesnakes [critters I have a healthy respect for] live in the hills beyond our house.) In the spring, frogs serenade us from beneath the ivy in the side yard. Western scrub jays squawk at me if I’m late putting out cat food for strays in the neighborhood. And ground squirrels leave peanut shells in interesting places around our property. (One of our neighbors feeds peanuts to the squirrels.)

My life-long love of all sorts of critters inspired the stories in this collection. After reading this introduction, you might recognize some of that inspiration in Chance of Bunnies, with Occasional Toad. Other stories, like After and Paintings of Cats by Mice, were inspired by places I’ve visited and other artists I’ve admired.

Each of the stories in this collection has a touch of the fantastic because that’s the way my brain works. When I look in a critter’s eyes, I don’t just see an animal. I see a soul with a rich interior life, and these stories are my take on that interior life.

The stories you’re about to read are some of my favorites. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

—Annie Reed

August, 2021

Queen of the Mouse Riders

Gurgling yowls echoed off the tiled floor in Sarah’s bathroom. Bounced off the ceiling, gaining strength, and intruded on what was turning out to be a very, very nice dream featuring the star of a movie she’d watched just before bed.

In the dream, the star turned his incredibly expressive eyes in Sarah’s direction, smiled his best enigmatic smile, and said, Pardon me, darling, but is that your cat?

(In the dream he’d turned British. She happened to know he’d been born and raised in the Bronx. Dreams were just plain weird sometimes.)

Yes, she said. She’s apparently caught a mouse.

Starlight the Cat had a battle cry like a two-note yodeler gargling mouthwash. She reserved that particular cry for whenever she caught a mouse. Or something that looked like a mouse. Or a mouse-shaped stuffed toy.

Most of the time she’d only caught one of her toys. Thank goodness. But on at least one memorable occasion she’d interrupted a visit from Sarah’s mother by presenting a live mouse as the third course for their lunch date.

Sarah’s mother was deathly afraid of mice.

So where did Starlight drop the mouse? Right at her mother’s feet, of course.

Sarah’s mother had screamed. Starlight had looked suitably insulted at having her contribution to the meal rejected. And the mouse? It had attempted a quick getaway, but Sarah had thrown a kitchen towel over the poor thing, taken it for an elevator ride—where she’d gotten a few odd looks from her neighbors—and released it into the wild in the bushes outside her apartment building.

She’d laid out traps after that, but no more mice appeared, living or dead.

The dream, complete with the suddenly British Bronx-born movie star, dissolved completely as Sarah sat up in bed. She groped for her cell, thumbed it on to read the time—two thirty-eight!—and squinted in the general direction of her bathroom.

The next to last thing in the world she wanted to do was get out of bed, but the very last thing she wanted to do was discover mouse guts in her bed anytime soon. Or feel a live mouse running over her face. Yuck!

The nightlight next to the bathroom sink threw a faint ghostly glow into Sarah’s bedroom. She slid out of bed and shivered as her feet hit the cold hardwood of her bedroom floor.

It’s a good thing I love you, kitty cat.

She tucked her feet inside her fuzzy pink slippers and pulled on the zippered hoodie she’d left on the other side of her bed.

She really needed to buy herself a robe one of these days. For late-night mouse rescuing, if nothing else. And there hadn’t been anything else in longer than she cared to remember, hence the promising dream.

Starlight did her gargle-yowl again, louder this time.

Coming, mousie, Sarah said. And don’t you dare eat it, baby girl, you hear me?

A second sound echoed off the bathroom tiles. Not a squeak—Sarah would have expected that—but an angry shout. A very high-pitched, tiny shout.

Sarah stopped short, blinked, and then pinched herself on the arm to make sure she was awake.

Ouch!

Yup. Definitely awake, and probably bruised to boot.

So what in the world was going on in her bathroom?

She crept to the bathroom door, turned the light on, and poked her head inside.

Starlight was crouched in her hunter-kitty pose. She held something in her mouth that was vaguely mouse-shaped with brownish-gray fur and a long, thin tail. Only the tail had a fuzzy puff of fur at its twitching tip.

Mice didn’t have fuzzy tails, did they?

And they certainly didn’t have something that looked like a tiny saddle on their backs or little bits of colorful string on their heads that looked like a bridle.

Sarah took all that in at a glance. What really caught her attention was the tiny figure standing right in front of Starlight shouting at her cat.

The figure was shaped like a man, but that’s where the resemblance ended. No more than three inches tall, it was covered in grayish fur—at least the parts that Sarah could see since it was wearing tiny little pants—and had a sharp snout where a person’s nose would be. It had big, mouse-like ears on the sides of its head, a raised row of darker fur that ran from the top of its head down the back of its spine, and held something long and sharp-looking in a hand that really looked like a rodent’s paw, only with an opposable thumb. It was shouting at Starlight in a language Sarah couldn’t understand.

She’d never seen anything like it. She wasn’t even sure anything like this could really exist in the world.

She pinched her wrist this time, which convinced her—yet again—that she really was