Other Worldly Holidays

By Connie Suttle

Other Worldly Holidays is a collection of three short stories; GSW, Or How I Met My Mother, Queen's Holiday and Rose of the Peaks. These stories have many of your favorite characters and provide some wonderful background into their lives-all centered around the holidays.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Connie Suttle
• Release date: Nov 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781939759986

Connie Suttle

Reinvention/Reincarnation. Those words describe Connie best. She has worked as a janitor, a waitress, a mower of lawns and house cleaner, a clerk, secretary, teacher, bookseller and (finally) an author. The last occupation is the best one, because she sees it as a labor of love and therefore no labor at all.Connie has lived in Oklahoma all her life, with brief forays into other states for visits. She and her husband have been married for more years than she prefers to tell and together they have one son.After earning an MFA in Film Production and Animation from the University of Oklahoma, Connie taught courses in those subjects for a few years before taking a job as a manager for Borders. When she left the company in 2007, she fully intended to find a desk job somewhere. She found the job. And the desk. At home, writing.

Book preview

Other Worldly Holidays

Other Worldly Holidays

Anthology Two

Connie Suttle

SubtleDemon Publishing, LLC

Copyright © 2018, by Connie Suttle

All Rights Reserved

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Print ISBN: 1-63478-082-5

Print ISBN-13: 978-163478-082-7

2nd Edition eBook ISBN: 1-63478-081-7

2nd Edition eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-63478-081-0

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents portrayed within its pages are purely fictitious and a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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This book, whole or in part, MAY NOT be copied or reproduced by electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying or the implementation of any type of storage or retrieval system) without the express written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

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Published by:

SubtleDemon Publishing, LLC

PO Box 95696

Oklahoma City, OK 73143

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Cover art by Renee Barratt @ The Cover Counts

To Walter, Joe, Larry, Lee, Dianne, Sarah and Mark.

Thank you.

Acknowledgments

As always, this book is the result of collaboration. If it weren't for the support of my editor, my cover artist and my beta readers, it would be less than it is. All mistakes, as usual, are mine and no other's.

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About the Author:

Connie Suttle lives in Oklahoma with her husband and a conglomerate of cats. They have finally banded together to make their demands, which has proven disconcerting to all humans involved.

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You may find Connie in the following ways:

Facebook: Connie Suttle Author

Twitter: @subtledemon

Website and Blog: subtledemon.com

Also by Connie Suttle

Blood Destiny Series¹

Blood Wager

Blood Passage

Blood Sense

Blood Domination

Blood Royal

Blood Queen

Blood Rebellion

Blood War

Blood Redemption

Blood Reunion

Blood Recall

Blood Alliance

Legend of the Ir'Indicti Series¹

Bumble

Shadowed

Target

Vendetta

Destroyer

High Demon Series¹

Demon Lost

Demon Revealed

Demon's King

Demon's Quest

Demon's Revenge

Demon's Dream

God Wars Series¹

Blood Double

Blood Trouble

Blood Revolution

Blood Love

Blood Finale

Saa Thalarr Series

Hope and Vengeance

Wyvern and Company

Observe and Protect²

First Ordinance Series¹

Finder

Keeper

BlackWing

SpellBreaker

WhiteWing

R-D Series¹

Cloud Dust

Cloud Invasion

Cloud Rebel

Latter Day Demons Series¹

Hot Demon in the City

A Demon's Work is Never Done

A Demon's Due

Seattle Elementals Series

Your Money's Worth

Worth Your While²

BlackWing Pirates Series

MindSighted

MindMage

MindRogue

MindMaster²

Black Rose Sorceress Series¹

The Rose Mark

Rose and Thorn

Black Rose Queen

Queen of Thorns and Roses

Future Wars Series

Buffer Zone

Black Zone²

Anthologies

Other Worldly Ways

Other Worldly Holidays

Other Titles from SubtleDemon Publishing:

Ren Gifford Mysteries

Malefactor

Transgressor

Underhanded²

by Joe Scholes

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¹Indicates this series is available as a Boxed Set in e-book format.

²Forthcoming

Contents

GSW, or How I Met My Mother

Chapter 1

Queen's Holiday

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Rose of the Peaks

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

GSW, or How I Met My Mother

If I hadn't shot myself in the foot (in the physical sense) with my dumb-ass husband's gun the day before New Year's Eve, I wouldn't have been sitting on an examination table in the hospital emergency room, talking to the suicide who'd died five minutes before I arrived.

He was seventeen and too talkative for a suicide, I decided, when he tried to show me the exit wound in his head. Spirits don't have exit wounds, or any other wounds showing after they die but I didn't want to point out the obvious to him. He saw me as a kindred spirit, albeit a live one, since I'd also shot myself.

Mine was an accident, I told him for the third time. I glanced behind him, through the door to my cubicle. A nurse walked past, shaking her head as her soft-soled shoes squeaked on tiles smelling of disinfectant. The nurse thought I was talking to myself, since she couldn't see or hear spirits. Just what I needed, somebody thinking I had a bigger dose of crazy than I already did. My left foot throbbed where I'd shot it; I'd wrapped it in a kitchen towel and could only find duct tape to secure it to my foot before driving myself to the hospital. I'd called my best friend and next-door neighbor Shane Taylor, but he'd been in a meeting. He served on the committee that planned a charity ball every year for aids patient.

Why did you have a gun, then, if you didn't intend to—you know? Suicide attempted to get my attention again.

People handle guns all the time without intending to off themselves, I said absently, glancing at the Williams and Sonoma kitchen towel that wrapped my foot. Red seeped around edges of hastily wrapped duct tape, and I figured I'd have to buy another towel.

In my case, I continued, My idiot husband was cleaning his .22 pistol last night, until a client called and he never put it back in the safe where it usually stays. I picked it up to put it away this morning when something startled me. I dropped the gun and shot my foot.

The docs aren't gonna believe that story, Suicide offered a lopsided grin. He hadn't been awful looking when he was alive, even if he did have ears that belonged on a larger head. I might have asked him what his story was if I had more time and wasn't bleeding into a kitchen towel, all while medical personnel listened in to see if I didn't need a psych consult in addition to emergency wound care.

Look, I said to Suicide Boy, If you can't find your way over, I can take you later. Right now, I have my own fish to fry.

I've lived in Atlanta all my life, and I'm proud of my roots. If I have a bit of a drawl, along with plenty of southern euphemisms, I come by them honestly.

Suicide was searching for an appropriate comment when Shane rushed in, an emergency room intern right behind him. Conner, darlin', what the hell happened? Shane demanded.

Steven forgot to put his gun away last night. He was cleaning it and left it on the coffee table in the den when he got up to answer the phone, so I picked it up to put it away this morning. That damn cat that's roaming the neighborhood managed to get in the house and scared the hell out of me. I dropped the gun and shot myself in the foot.

I'd said this in a rush, so Suicide wouldn't jump in on the conversation and distract me. Shane gave my towel and duct tape covered foot a critical and disapproving stare. So did the intern. In fact, Intern had an eyebrow lifted so high I figured he might need therapy to talk it down again. He stuck his head out the door and yelled for a nurse and a suture tray.

Shane, I mumbled, we have a visitor. I jerked my head toward Suicide Boy.

Well, what do you expect? This is a hospital, Shane put his hands on his hips and stated the obvious at the same time. Shane can't see spirits, but he and my son Steve Jr. are the only people who truly believe I can see them. Oh, and perhaps the dozens of people I've been compelled to deliver messages to over the years. Sometimes they believe me. Sometimes.

A nurse walked in with a mound of wrapped medical supplies shoved into a pink plastic tub. She hauled a tray table over, plopped the tub on it and proceeded to lay things out. Intern grabbed the scissors and then examined my foot, first this way and then that, trying, I'm sure, to figure out the best way to cut into my towel and duct tape. A cat, huh? Intern asked as he made the first cut.

A more devious and felonious feline you might never hope to meet, I nodded, wincing as he jerked on my towel while snipping. I'm thinking about pressing charges.

Conner, I told you to call animal control, but of course you ignored me, Shane wore his finest, longest-suffering, I'm your best friend but only because I'm a saint expression.

They'd kill it, I muttered. He's not the best lookin' cat I've ever seen. People don't adopt animals like that.

Conner Louella Francis, have you been feeding that stray behind my back? Shane's elbows went up a notch, and indignation wasn't far behind them.

He likes leftover tuna, I mumbled, attempting to defend myself.

Conner, you're a vegetarian and Steven hates tuna. Shane wanted to swear, I could tell, but his southern upbringing came into play and he didn't. Not in front of strangers, anyway. You've been buying tuna to feed that cat, he gets in the house and now you have a hole in your foot.

Mrs. Francis, you know we had to call the police since this is a gunshot wound, Intern said as he removed the towel from my foot. He dumped my sixteen-dollar kitchen towel into a wastebasket, (I wasn't worried about the loss of the duct tape—that was Steven's) and examined the hole in my foot with glove-covered efficiency. It still seeped blood and Suicide leaned in to examine it. Shane moved closer at the same time and he and Suicide occupied the same space for a brief moment.