Something Unusual: Michael’S Collection of Short Stories

By Michael Montero

This is it, years had passed when I started writing these stories. Never had I imagined these could still be produced into a book. It has been forgotten for years and was kept inside a folder in my office. With your support, I am now able to fulfill everything which I thought I could no longer do, Thank you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546293965

Michael Montero

Michael Montero was born in Madrid, Spain on the 4th of June. A true Gemini thrives in the inspiration given as a precious gift by the Gemini Sign. Writing comes effortlessly. By nature Michael lives in a planet without boundaries. His first book MANOLO A CHILD IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR is now republished with the title WAR NIGHTMARES which can be bought all over the world. There are some two hundred short stories and performance pieces yet to be published. Michael studied at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid before entering University. Came to live in England on an autumnal October day and made London his home. Authors other books: Maddison War Nightmares Pesadillas De La Guerra

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© 2018 Michael Montero. 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 06/14/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9397-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-9396-5 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Dedication

2. A Bad Dream

3. A Chubby Erotic Flame

4. A Completely Uneventful Lunch

5. A Hot July Sunday

6. Bad Dreams Torture Our Senses When We Are Asleep

7. Blanco Y Negro

8. Conflict

9. Confusion Can Be Catchy

10. Emily

11. Enters Amie

12. Halloween

13. Home

14. Honesty Does Not Pay

15. I Do Not Want To Be A Film Critic

16. In Defence Of The Love Girls Or Sex And The Man

17. Labyrinth

18. Last Night At ST. James

19. Last Sunday In St. Anselm

20. Memories

21. The Vat Inspector

22. Money

23. My Garden

24. New Year In The New World

25. Nikkie’s Birthday Present

26. Owl On My Hedge

27. Poppy

28. Sunday At The Tythe Barn

29. Television Cupid

30. The Black Crow

31. The Bonding Party

DEDICATION

A man needs a woman that supports, that cares and that loves him fully without asking something in return. I am just so lucky I have someone like you, to Maria Cristina Antunes, this will never be materialize if it’s not because of you. Thank you for coming into my life when I needed someone to look after me. Thank you for staying by my side despite the several agony and thank you for the hard work and the dedication. This is it, years had passed when I started writing these stories. Never had I imagined these could still be produced into a book. It has been forgotten for years and was kept inside a folder in my office. With your support, I am now able to fulfill everything which I thought I could no longer do, Thank you.

A BAD DREAM

Through the front window of my lounge I have observe a black bird. It hops about the grass and stops. Seems to ponder for a fraction of a second and then suddenly jives at the ground with its beak and brings out a large worm, wettish, shining in the morning sun.

The worm is carefully laid on the ground before its attacker pecks at it several times as if to tenderize it. I expected the black bird to swallow its prey whole like a pelican devouring a fish. But no, there is a certain sophistication in the way the black-bird treats its food. With elegance, I watch mesmerized while the wriggling food dangles in the bird’s beak until it disappear down its tiny throat. How ephemeral life is! But my thoughts are elsewhere. On something else.

My wife Veronica had a dream yesterday at siesta time. A bad dream. A nightmare, not a dream. Our next door neighbors had poisoned themselves in a suicide pact. Our next door neighbors Zoe and Tim. A happy couple. Very close friends. Not just neighbors.

Zoe and time are as successful as they are glamorous. The two of them. So the chances of a suicide pact are simply a non starter. Veronica knows that. I do not have to know it. That is something that it just would never enter my head.

Living in the other half of the semi as we do, we are familiar with the sounds of life coming from their side of the driving wall. But somehow the familiar sounds of opening and closing doors, the murmur of their television, their laughter, at times, did not come into our lounge as we sat there spending the lasy hours of the evening before going to bed.

Veronica did not mentioned her nightmare of early afternoon again, but I could sense that she was worried. Unduly worried.

‘They are most probably away for the night. They frequently are’, I tried to reassure her.

‘Of course. How silly of me.’ There was no conviction in her words. Veronica was not only worried. She was also a little frightened. We sat silently for a few moments, then she stood up and stretching her hand to me and said:

‘Let’s go and ring their bell. I’m sure something terrible has happened.’

I did not try to dissuade her and submissively followed. Lights were on in the dining room and in the main bedroom upstairs. We knew that was no indication as to whether or not our friends were in, since the lights are on an automatically controlled switch as a security measure.

Veronica nervously pressed the doorbell. A few seconds passed with the infinite slowness.

‘I think we ought to call the police…or an ambulance…there may still be time to help them.’ Veronica’s voice conveyed the agony that a catastrophe had taken place. And that agony hit me hard. She is not a person given to melodrama. So I agreed that the emergency services should be called.

We quickly walked the few yards of the length of their drive to return home when a taxi stopped returning Zoe and Tim from an evening out.

A wonderful surprise. A weight off our minds.

We conversed for a few minutes with no mention or our fears, then the four of us returned to our respective abodes.

I was relieved and happy that it all had been a bad dream. But I could still read worry in Veronica’s mind.

About a month after this episode, Veronica came into my study at the rear of the house. She was shaking. Her face ashen. Her voice trembling. She took my hand and led me to the front lounge window. Right outside our fields house there was a police car. And an ambulance.

Veronica’s dream had not been just a dream.

A CHUBBY EROTIC FLAME

Alexander woke up late the morning after the party. Through the misty window he could see the rain and hear it hitting the glass. He liked the rain. It made him feel romantic. With some effort he got out of bed and looked at the street three floors below. Deserted as usual but for a few cars driving lazily past behind the faint glow of dimmed head lights.

His love life seemed to have taken an upward turn in Cupid’s scale. Only a few weeks ago he had met Carla, beautiful, slim, Italian and dangerously jealous. Danger expressed in no uncertain terms:

‘No bitch is going to have you other than me’

A comical expression that made him wonder if she really meant it. Carla, nevertheless, delivered this statement with the determination of a wild animal marking its territory.

Alexander laughed enveloped by the pleasant feeling of being wanted. As far as he was concerned Carla’s company was nice. Nice until destiny delivered the girl of his dreams. She knew lots of people, most of them Italian like herself, had her own flat, gave great parties, housekeeper or rather factotum to an influential Mayfair magnate, she was able to provide the finest food and wine from his very exclusive pantry at no cost.

It had been quite a party and Carla had provided more than just fine food and wine, destiny unwittingly forced her hand: she brought Genevive to the party. And because the devil himself must have engineered this encounter a heavy penalty would, according to the oracle, have to be paid.

‘Genevive.’

Alexander spoke her name in a whisper with the reverence to which only a deity is entitled to. The strange chemistry of attraction had reacted swiftly making their feelings run head on into each other disregarding the danger signs emanating from Carla’s eyes every time they looked at each other, every time they spoke to each other, every time they danced.

Alexander had been sailing in the choppy seas of desire knowing that a blatant approach to Genevive could prove disastrous. So he played his cards cautiously, at first, dividing his attentions between his two flames: the one to be extinguished and the one to be fanned in the hope that it would burn with raging intensity in the not too distant future. For a while he succeeded in playing a double game, but the warm looks he dispensed when he gazed down Genevive’s cleavage and below did not escape Carla’s notice.

Warm looks developed into a succession of sorties into the kitchen and other out of the way hidden corners offering sanctuary to their rampant desire for intimacy.

Carla was incandescent, and when the party came to an end dismissed Alexander not with the customary kiss, but by grinding his toes with the tip of her shoe at the same time as her eyes screamed:

‘You’ll pay for this!’

The new lovers descended into the street hunting for a taxi. The ride home to deliver Genevive to her destination was hot and passionate leaving no room for Alexander to note her address, somewhere in Regents Park.

That happened the previous night. Now mid morning, looking through the misty window, Alexander reminisced the events of the party where by a quirk of sheer luck he had met Genevive.

Genevive had a much more generous body than Carla, deliciously chubby she radiated the kind of warmth that compelled him to undress her, in his reverie, lovingly, with the ritualistic slowness that made his lips kiss her neck, her shoulders, the deep valley between her breasts, to cuff her buttocks with sensual musicality, and gently deliver prolonged little bites to the folds of their contours.

‘A lovely sound’, he heard himself