Contes Cruels

By Nick Rowan

Fifteen nightmares to discomfit your sleep, including one based on a real event.
Contes cruels is French for cruel stories, and some of these are. Whether a broken-hearted man fighting his memories, a clairvoyant trucker, a lover’s pledge, a haunted house actor protecting friends in a crisis or a promise made to a small child, these tales take you inside the darkness within everyone. The small pinpricks of light in the darkness are optional.

Contains: Violence, M/M, Erotic themes
Note: This is not a translation of a any public domain work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purple Sword Publications
• Release date: Jan 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781005190644

Book preview

CONTES CRUELS

Nick Rowan

Published By Purple Sword Publications, LLC

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

Copyright © 2023 NICK ROWAN

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Version

Edited by Traci Markou

Cover Art Copyright Traci Markou and Purple Sword Publications LLC

Images Copyright: Ratchapoln Sittichoke and Christopher King, Dreamstime.com

ISBN: 9781005190644

Contes cruels is French for cruel stories, and some of these are. Whether a broken-hearted man fighting his memories, a clairvoyant trucker, a lover’s pledge, a haunted house actor protecting friends in a crisis or a promise made to a small child, these tales take you inside the darkness within everyone. The small pinpricks of light in the darkness are optional.

Dedication:

For the ever faithful Patrons of my Patreon (patreon.com/NickRowan): Mandi Lynch, Staci Blevins, Candice Couch, Harley Hefner, Jen, Aerafel McClure, Lucianus Solaerus, Lisi Chance, Kiwi Carlisle, Drew Wallace, Sara Harvey, Cindy Potts, Laura Wenham, Frankie Nunley, Damit Senanyake, and Elizabeth Donald.

Contents

Bus Driving In the Plague

Neighbors

A Fool’s Taj Mahal

Looking Down the Road

Night Run

Not Like Other Girls

FirstFruits

Between Despair and Ecstasy

Show Your Faces

Prey

Five Time Loser

Promises

Miskatonic Mistletoe

Ghouls

Blood Red Roses

Night Terror

About the Author

Bus Driving in the Plague

Cleo

Rescued as a kitten during a thunderstorm

Remained afraid of the thunder all her life.

Even as a dowager queen,

At the first rumble,

She would race to the closet

Where she had borne her last

Litter of kittens.

They were long grown

And gone to forever homes

But until the end of her life

She checked on her babies.

I listen for the faint far rumble

As I open the doors

At places where children

Are supposed to be.

Neighbors

A hippie, a witch or a kindergarten teacher, Julie Collins opined over the back fence as she and Deanna Hunter hung out the laundry. They’d been hanging wash and keeping an eye on the neighborhood for almost fifty years, since the day their mothers sent them out with laundry baskets almost as heavy as they were.

The woman in the batik sundress, her frizzy red hair caught off her neck in a leather barrette shaped like a butterfly, certainly looked the part. She picked up a cat carrier from the front seat of her hybrid. It was still packed to the roof, even though she had taken in a load already, mostly cat tools, but also a large handbag. The protests of the unhappy kitty reached Julie and Deanna as it was carried into the two-story house.

I don’t remember Teresa looking like that, Deanna said. She was a bit of a chubby mouse when she went to college.

The color is Miss Clairol number 107. Julie pinned out the last of her sheets. Shame about her folks, both gone and her only thirty.

We’re going to miss Reverend Stein. Deanna looked sad. You get used to preachers giving everyone else’s funerals. You never think about who is going to preach theirs. I thought that nice Pastor Dennison from the Lutheran church did just fine.

I thought it was weird that there wasn’t a casket or urn or anything, just a photo of him on the communion table.

You remember; it was like with Miss Anne. She hadn’t been cremated when the service was held, so no urn was available.

Humph. Julie had never approved of cremation, calling it primitive and barbaric. We’ll see what happens with our new neighborhood witch.

Deanna took off her clothespin apron and dropped it in the empty basket with a rattle. Do you think she is? How exciting.

Let’s see what she does with all those crosses. Kids either don’t fall far from the tree or are a complete 180.

The big house had a decorative cross on each outer wall and one hanging inside each window. The Reverend had hung them not long after his wife’s death. The neighborhood—or at least Julie and Deanna—agreed it was a bit excessive, and kind of tacky, but no one had the heart to tell the widower he couldn’t have the comforts of his profession.

But outwardly nothing changed. No U-Haul came. Teresa had apparently moved with only the contents of her car. She attended the neighborhood meetings and the block parties, a bohemian presence in suburbia, but a polite and friendly one. She made excellent cakes, enormous salads and her own bread and butter, seldom taking much home in the way of leftovers.

She left each morning, work they assumed, and came home each evening, just as everyone else did. Her black cat sunned itself on window sills for hours at a time while she was gone, moving only to follow the sunbeams.

Life continued in its cycle of seasons and before anyone realized it, Teresa had been living in the house for a year. No one had been inside since she had moved in. She never had people over, and while she came home late some days, always carrying shopping bags, she didn’t go out after she was in for the evening. On weekends, she sat on the porch if the weather was nice, and did handwork. Julie had sat and visited with her many evenings. She made leather macramé bracelets that she sold online.

Somehow, the simple regularity of her life made her intriguing. The crosses stayed up and only a brass sun wind-chime and a rainbow spinning star joined them in dangling from the porch ceiling.

One night, Julie couldn’t sleep. The full moon came in through her window curtains and shone in her eyes, no matter which way she turned. After the third time she rolled over, her husband complained drowsily. She got up so as to not disturb him further.

She sat in the darkened front room, reading on the back-lit e-reader the grandkids had gotten her for her birthday. She didn’t use it much, but it was nice for times like this. A car purred along the street, odd for three in the morning in this neighborhood. She peeked out.

Theresa parked her hybrid in front of the house as always. Julie watched as a man in tattered clothes got out of the other side. He followed her into the house, shutting the door behind them. Julie smiled to herself. Apparently, Little Miss Regular had her irregularities. And now Julie had something interesting to tell Deanna.

She went to bed and didn’t see the man leave. The next morning, Deanna agreed they should start watching for more late-night visitors and make sure Theresa got rid of them properly.

After all, if she’s bringing strangers into the neighborhood, especially homeless ones, we should be sure she’s taking them out again and not leaving them to wander on their own. Goodness, what if one of them took a notion to burgle some houses on the way out?

After two weeks of watching every night into the wee hours and sleeping late, they finally saw her bring someone home on the night of the new moon. But the car never left the rest of the night. They were asleep in their chairs when Theresa left for work the next morning.

Full moon and new moon. I’ll just bet there’s some ritual sex magic happening, Julie said as they hung out the wash.

What if he’s still there? Deanna asked. What if he’s watching us from some window, right now?

They glanced at the Reverend’s house, but all the shades were still pulled and the crosses marked every window. One of the upstairs shades rippled.

It’s just Panther, Julie said. Probably looking for a piece of sunshine to nap in.

The cats in the kitchen window, Deanna corrected, pointing to where Panther had already found his snooze spot. He always sleeps in the kitchen window until he moves to the dining room one.

They finished hanging laundry, and hurried inside, discomfited and thinking troubled thoughts.

That afternoon, after a nap, everything seemed much clearer. We’ll just have to go check things out, Julie said.

She never lets anyone in.

The moon won’t rise tonight either. We can slip over in the dark and peek in the windows.

Julie Collins, you are too old for that nonsense. And so am I. Your hip will go out and you’ll get stuck in the hydrangeas and won’t that be a fine howdy-do?

I’m going tonight and you’re coming with me. Wear something dark colored.

Julie ate dinner, not really tasting it. She went to bed early, so she could be rested for the adventure. It felt as if she was fourteen again, sneaking out to smoke cigarettes and slip bourbon into her coke with the older girls. She firmly reminded her excitement that she was on a mission of neighborhood security and that people’s property, if not their lives, could be at stake. She got up when her husband came to bed, and read for a while.

They met at midnight on Deanna’s porch, right across from Theresa’s house. Deanna had worn her black turtleneck and Julie had a midnight blue one. They sat on the porch swing and waited, watching the house and sipping diet Coke. Theresa’s activity was easy enough to predict. A quick check of the kitchen, possibly feeding the cat, where the light was on only a couple minutes. A light in the frosted bathroom window that lasted a good while. Light in the parlor.

That was odd. It should have been the bedroom with Theresa all ready for bed. They knew where they would be looking.

They stole across the dark lawn, keeping low. No cars cruised the streets at this hour. They hid behind Theresa’s Prius, gathering the nerve to go forward.

Julie led the way as they tiptoed to the window. They crouched in the boxwood under the window and slowly peeped up above the sill.

Julie dropped to sit with her back against the house as she stifled a scream. Deanna clamped one hand over her own mouth and the other over Julie’s. They locked eyes and breathed together until they had enough control for silence. Deanna took her hands away. They made a break for it, running faster than they had since their twenties, leaping the low hedge border like high school hurdlers, and not stopping until they were locked inside Julie’s living room.

Julie didn’t scream. She gasped for air and then started to laugh. Once the first one bubbled past her lips, she couldn’t stop. Because it really was very funny when she thought about it.

The plaque, she gasped and Deanna laughed too.

They were still laughing when Julie’s husband found them at dawn. They hadn’t stopped by supper time. They didn’t stop until the nice nurses gave them something for the laughs in their mouths and the screams in their eyes.

The parlor had been Anne Stein’s pride and joy. The furniture was white brocade, the first she had ever bought new. The clear plastic slip covers had been duly changed every decade as they yellowed, but the furniture stayed pristine. The plastic on the lamp shades had kept them in similar condition. No one was allowed to wear shoes on the beige carpet. But now the blue damask wallpaper was covered in plastic, as was the carpet. In a parody of slip-covering, even the coffee table and ceiling were covered.

A good thing, too, because the half-eaten body of Theresa’s companion lay on the coffee table, spread out like a banquet. It was bad enough the damnable cat had helped himself to a nibble as they watched. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

On the couch, the Reverend and Miss Anne, him in his blue suit, her in her favorite blue floral dress, sat, decaying arms around each other. Miss Anne looked rather the worse for wear having been dead longer. As they had watched, the Reverend had fed Miss Anne a particularly choice bit from the dead man.

But what made Julie laugh, and laugh until the sound was more like screaming, was the plaque, or rather the set of them above the couch. Miss Anne had needlepointed them decades before, as a new bride.

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.

His banner over me is love.

Take, eat, this is my body.

A Fool’s Taj Mahal

Construction of the Taj Mahal took 20 years, from 1632 to 1653.

Nobody but a fool would live like this, Mike grumbled as he always did, unlocking the door of his apartment. The dingy little cubicle wasn’t much and it wasn’t even home. It was where he slept between work shifts. Home was still the little crackerbox house with Trisha. The one where they had moved in right after they got married. Right after they had said forever.

Home was where he didn’t belong anymore. Trisha had made him leave. He’d driven by from time to time, but she never seemed to be around. Her car was in the drive but the lights were always off. Maybe she was out with friends. Or maybe the hospital had changed her shift and she was sleeping strange hours. He’d quit driving by. No sense in it.

He sighed and got a TV dinner out of the freezer. While it microwaved, he checked his shirt. Yes, he could go another day with it, and tomorrow was Friday. He took it off and hung it up. He could do laundry this weekend. He ate, not tasting the over-salted processed stuff that passed for food.

Just shy of their fifteenth anniversary, Trisha had called it quits. She was done with him and his dead-end job, his beer and his lower middle-class aspirations. She had better prospects and wanted to pursue them while she was still relatively young.

When a man like me says forever, he means it, Mike had insisted. But she seemed to have forgotten what forever meant.

Mike had walked through the next few months in a daze. Three years of dating, a year and a half of living together, and about six months to dissolve all of it, washing it down the drain. He watched the soap suds from his plate swirl down, like his marriage, like his life.

The Taj Mahal took 22,000 laborers to build. 3 million people a year visit it.

He wiped up the kitchen. He was getting nowhere, moping his life away. Maybe tomorrow he’d go out. He wasn’t sure he could afford it. Trisha’s alimony ate his paycheck to nothing. He was trying to support himself on $22,000 a year, and her on not much more. There hadn’t been kids. Too many years and too many toxins at his work, and she had blocked fallopian tubes, scarred from endometriosis. They’d looked into surgery or adoption, but that was for rich people. So no kids, thank goodness now.

There was nothing on TV. His own dad had used to complain there were a hundred channels and nothing to watch. He’d given up cable, and