Short Stories to Delight: Kissed by a Hummingbird, Saved by Hot Coffee

By Douglas Abraham

Saved by Hot Coffee

Tujaque, Chimichango, Plow Boy, and Juan Hung anxiously await Tim Buck IIs return from his honeymoon. When he returns, they are shocked to learn the marriage has not yet been consummated. The four hear of Tim Buck IIs harem-scarem trip from Yazoo through Vicksburg and on to Biloxi. The tales of lost love and frustrations and a surprise marriage in the court after an annulment make short story a truly delightful one.

Kissed by a Hummingbird

A love story. Poignant, beautiful, and tragic. It is filled with mystery and emotion, with a powerful love that is almost enough to overcome an enormous emotional crisis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504913331

Douglas Abraham

Doug attended Ole Miss, where he was president of the student body and a member of ODK and Hall of Fame. After law school, he practiced law and ventured into numerous businesses involving communications and recycling in over forty states and worldwide. As a member of Kappa Alpha Social Fraternity, he learned the meaning of a Mississippi guy “raising cane,” and he is presently doing so with his wife, son, and friends in La Jolla, California. He was chosen as the Outstanding Young Man of Mississippi and served twelve years in the Mississippi legislature.

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© 2015 Douglas Abraham. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/20/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-1332-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-1333-1 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Kissed By a Hummingbird

Saved By Hot Coffee

Episode 2

To John Martin, our best and favorite friend in La Jolla and beyond

Kissed By a Hummingbird

If I had followed my intuition none of this would have happened. When I first heard her frantic message I should have followed my first inclination, to ignore her call, to act as though I had never received it. Her anguished pleading, an urgent cry for help, left me little choice. I knew she was an actress, among the best, cast in the mixture of unreal, surreal and real dramas of life where we are all held prisoners. She had that inexplicable power to excite people into action, to do her every biding. So when she called me out of the blue after a six month hiatus I waited to return her calls, all urgent pleas to respond. It was a knawing eternity. What did she want? I could not wait to hear. All else stood still except my heart which quickened with each replay of her recorded voice. I saved her message and played it over and over again as I waited the eternally long six hours I had imposed before I called her. It was a knawing eternity. Was it because I missed her or was it that I was bored and tired of living alone in my chosen dreary and dull backwoods Southern town? Was it that I missed New Orleans that I finally dialed the number I had dialed so many times before? It was my number or the number that was once mine. Could it now be someone else’s? I knew that if I spoke to her she would once again have me in her grasps, in her firm, unyielding, clutches. Oh, and what clutches: surreptitiously in the beginning but when she had me fully possessed like a spider does prey entangled in its web, then softly, enveloping, caressing and consuming. What brought me to this unalternateable existence? Was it my interminable weakness—my willingness to forego all and everything, even with those dear and near to avoid the thing most hated—controversy.

It was hard not to miss New Orleans and harder not being back in the center of the wonderful things it offers. It is the only city I know with a soul. The two ferocious storms of last year had all but demolished the city and deeply fractured that soul. The best part of New Orleans, the Vieux Carre’, my very own French Quarter, was remarkably left almost unharmed by the turbid, tumescent waters. All that encircled the ‘Old City’ was virtually gone, gutted, stripped away. All that was good was taken away, leaving in its wake a metal jungle of abandoned cars, refrigerators, air conditioners, and ruined furniture thrown out and in some cases neatly stacked and ranked on the cobblestone streets and alleyways.

Upon returning I would learn quickly, sadly after my mad dash to rescue her that much of my city’s old soul had been tarnished, fractured. New Orleans not the same, but I was to quickly learn neither was Julia. It had been six months since the winds and rains had battered and drenched us, as we huddled together in the upstairs of our centuries old building ‘ridding it out’—just another of the things she had convinced me to do. I now questioned if I possessed lucid judgment. Was it all for the neurotic sake of thrills?

I was reluctant to see her, knowing she still had an interminable hold on me. I was like one doomed to follow, who does not wish to be subservient—one who cannot help himself because of that all-consuming power—love. There is no simple way to explain our fractured relationship. I was bedazzled to such an extent I was blinded by her glow. She was all there was. There had been nothing more for me: there did not need to be. From the first moment I saw her she instantly became everything wonderful in my life. I could not have been happier; I had my soul mate, my first and final love.

Why would I now go back to her? She had dismissed me by disappearing and staying gone, without a return message from my urgent calls and pleadings for over six months. I was the vanquished one. Had she found someone else to take my place? Was someone of her choice ready to take up the sword, to do battle, to fight for her attention and affections? I had fought those battles. I was haunted by the thought there now was