Epic Unlimited: Volume One

By Sean Q Lee

Epic Unlimited is chock full of fast paced short stories focusing on action, adventure and travel. Featuring writers from Australia and around the world, these are the stories that you want to read! In this, our first edition, you can read of strange road-trips, unusual night-time encounters, revenge, murder, coming-of-age adventures, mythical beasts, book reviews, epic opinion and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean Q Lee
• Release date: Jul 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215816066

Sean Q Lee

Sean Lee is the editor of Short Stories Unlimited, a webpage dedicated to encouraging creative writing through short story and poetry competitions.He has spent many years writing about Australian Rules football and pro-cycling, providing colour pieces and expert opinion to various websites and publications including Conquista cycling magazine and Australian sports website ‘The Roar’.In 2011 he won the Stringybark Australian History Short Story Award for his depiction of the indigenous Australian game of Marngrook.

Book preview

Epic Unlimited

- volume one -

Edited by Sean Q Lee

Published by Short Stories Unlimited

http://www.shortstoriesunlimited.com

Smashwords Edition

Copyright: This collection, Sean Q Lee 2023

Copyright of individual stories and articles remains with the authors

Cover design by Sean Q Lee incorporating an AI rendered image based on the short story Entry into the Wood by Peter Lingard

Smashword Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

Proudly compiled on the lands of the Wadawurrung people

TABLE OF CONTENTS

In 200 words or less...(Editor's note)

Jazz Notes by Shannon Anima

Entry into the Wood by Peter Lingard

Of Salt and Shadow by Matty Chard

Death on the River by Joseph Conrad

Zoo Dark Thirty by Jonny B

Criminal Intent by Ginny Swart

Not All Are Wasted by Barbara Fraser

Shipwrecked in the Air by Jules Verne

Ten Thousand Hours of Love by Robert Kibble

Promise the Dying by Jan Mosler

Thunder Down Under by Michael Farlow

A Disastrous Flight by C.W.A. Scott

Machetes and Coconuts by Sean Q Lee

Wealth and Hellness by Corinne Beinke

Benny Russell's book reviews

About us

In 200 words or less...

(or The Editor's Note)

The dictionary definition of adventure goes something like this; an unusual and exciting or daring experience. I’d argue that a more accurate definition is as follows; an event or experience causing undue pain, stress and suffering that, in retrospect, doesn’t seem as terrifying or as miserable as it did at the time.

It is funny how the passage of time can smooth the rough edges of an unpleasant experience. The constant retelling of a sticky situation to friends and family – usually accompanied by howls of laughter – gradually wears away the negative emotion, until you look back, shake your head, and think, wow, what an adventure! A shit time morphs into a favourite story, one to get mileage from at the bar, around the campfire, or over dinner.

While this magazine is not entirely devoted to adventure stories, we hope they will become the backbone of our publication. It will be a magazine of fast paced short stories with a focus on (but not restricted to) adventure, travel, exploration, history, action, science and wonder. We will be looking for page turning stories that capture the imagination. Fact or fiction, it doesn’t matter, we just want to be entertained.

Over to you…..

Sean Q Lee (editor)

Jazz Notes

by Shannon Anima

When I was thirteen, we travelled across Canada one summer in a Volkswagen van with a faulty starter. It had to be parked on a hill, nose pointing down, not easy in the flatlands of the infinite prairies. Aunty drove, I pushed, then ran to catch up with the putting van as she double-clutched in bare feet. We slept in the van along country roadsides and in cities. At night, we’d have crackers and Kraft cheese spread and a bottle or two of white wine between us. The prairies seemed long to me, at thirteen, probably longer for her with no one to share the driving. Still, I was excited to see the world outside my small town, more small towns flashing by in dusty succession.

With miles of boredom, broken by nights of drinking, we had gotten along well until Montreal. The pavement was sizzling. It was the Montreal Jazz Fest and music poured from every cobbled street along with swaying people. When we arrived, we stayed the night in the van in the park at the top of Mont Royal. Rising up, excited about a city adventure at last, I’d used the stinking chemical toilet hidden under the benchseat and was brushing my teeth and spitting into the bushes while Aunty had her turn. Usually, we stopped at gas stations, roadside rest stops and the occasional café to use their toilets to avoid the nauseous smell and having to empty the tank. Toothbrush in hand, I ventured along one of the many winding paths under the leafy July canopy of maple trees, the day already overheated and humid, even under the fragmented shade of tall trees. After spitting a splatter of white over the verdant greenery, I turned to go back, but my way was blocked by a man in a sand-coloured trenchcoat with absolutely nothing beneath. He was young, with curly dark hair, a stubbled chin, and a limp cock in a black nest. He said nothing and I didn’t either. I was aware of the minty-fresh taste of toothpaste in my mouth. I thought I probably had white dribbles on my mouth and chin and felt slightly self-conscious and ashamed to be caught spitting in this nice park in the posh part of Montreal. I stood still. I was uncertain what to do. He grinned, his teeth were bright white, and he smiled broadly as if delighted with his morning, then strolled off along a branching path, disappearing like a lie into the thick woods.

It was taboo to interrupt Aunty on the toilet. She suffered from constipation and the toilet was often a serious lengthy business involving a number of menthol cigarettes, a spy thriller, and sound effects. Strangely, she was quite the opposite with bladder control and I’d held the wheel while she performed a complex manoeuvre involving our cast iron frying pan beneath her bottom when we were stuck in Calgary behind slow crawling Stampede traffic. Aunty never wore underwear under her long skirts which made the exercise slightly easier. I was glad I didn’t like fried eggs.

Should I risk the wrath of Aunty or linger outside the van, hoping the strange man with his flaccid cock did not return. I opted to wait. Wrong answer. You should have told me right away, Lauren. This must be reported. What do you mean you don’t know what he looks like? Have you never seen an effin dick before? Jesus H. Christ.

I gave the van a running push, glancing back over my shoulder in case the trenchcoated stranger might be offering another glimpse. I had seen cocks, of course, too many, but that one, in the silent woods, it had been a shock of the bad clown variety. I felt complicit somehow in the intimacy of that moment and aware of the big strange woods of every Grimm tale - the lush undergrowth of wild salmon berry and ox eye daisies would hide my thin bones from sight. We circled down the hill and into the bright sounds of the city. I was navigator in those days of fold-out maps, and the tensions of driving in this unfamiliar city heaving with hot traffic, one-way streets, and marching jazz bands had brought Aunty to a roiling simmer. By the time Billie, the jazz van, was parked with two wheels on the sidewalk, I was sullen and silent, and Aunty was boiling. You’re a thankless little bitch. Don’t pull that shit on me. I’m not your fuckin mother, missy. She handed me a twenty dollar bill and told me to meet her back at the locked van at midnight.

Suddenly, Montreal was mine. I felt like Mary Tyler Moore in the opening credits where she twirls with arms outstretched. I was already in love with this city I’d glimpsed from our windows, grand old European architecture, great leafy trees in the city centre, and people in a surging array of colour and style. I was thirteen, I had cash and hours on my own. I’m not sure every thirteen-year-old would have felt this way, but I think a fair few cooped up for that many hours with flat prairies rolling by their windows, inhaling enough menthol smoke to qualify for early lung cancer; I think some would be as thrilled as I was.

Initially, I hung at the edges, watching and listening, that drummer spinning his sticks and winking at this gawking girl, a Caribbean street party full of samba ruffles and glitter green eye shadow, glamazons in bikinis and fan feathered bottoms. A man with swivelling shoes in a striped suit and lavender shirt, grabbed my wrist and pulled my awkward sneakers into a stumbling mirror of his fancy footwork. The joy was infectious, and I gave way to it, the happy-sad cacophonous music pumping through my bloodstream. Shopkeepers sprayed hoses high in the air, soaking the grateful crowd gyrating on the rising heat of sidewalks. I spent my cash on lemonade, sucking the ice to make it all last longer as I sat in the shade of an umbrella in a sidewalk café. I was overheated in my ragged fringed jeans and sunburnt on every bit of skin not covered by my short-sleeved blouse, orange tie-dye that I’d made with boiling dye and elastic bands to bunch and ring the fabric as I stewed it in the enormous enamel canning pot, along with pillowcases and long john underwear, so that my world for a decade