Epic Unlimited: Volume Two

By Sean Q Lee

Epic Unlimited is chock full of fast paced short stories focusing on action and adventure. Featuring writers from Australia and around the world, these are the stories that you want to read. In this, our second edition, you can find stories about an unusual smuggler, the bombing of an English village during WWII, a battle with an ex-partner, a bizarre battle in a fish and chip shop, mental battles, sporting events, strange life journeys and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sean Q Lee
• Release date: Feb 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224898329

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 two -

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 The Angolan Refugee by Ginny Swart

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

Contents

In 200 words or less (The Editor's Note)

The Angolan Refugee by Ginny Swart

Life Lesson by Connery Brown

Forgetting by Zara Kathryn Lawrence

The Bucking Biplane by L. Frank Baum (as Edith Van Dyne)

In for a Penny, In for a Pound by Deryn Pittar

Killing Gorge by Jan Mosler

Reykjavik by Connery Brown

The Fugitives by R. M. Ballantyne

The Sword by Margo Daly

The Battle of Vinegar Splash by Alan Bryant

Perfect by Peter Lingard

The Chase by Herman Melville

A Day at Wimbledon by Leonie Jarrett

When the Big Men Fly by Sean Q Lee

About Short Stories Unlimited

In 200 words or less...

(or The Editor's Note)

Adventure stories from the past are fun - there are some wonderful, rollicking tales - but often they can be grating to the modern reader because of dated stereotypes. These stories still have their place though, and we shouldn't avoid them just because they might offend us. They are actually a fascinating look into a world that no longer exists, a time capsule of the attitudes of bygone eras. The past is a real thing and if we boycott its literature we deny that such a past existed. A far better option would be to learn from it.

We have three such stories included as extracts in this edition of Epic Unlimited. Each was written well over 100 years ago, and they were written to entertain, not offend. They can still be enjoyed today, but have to be viewed through the lens of the author's time. Instead of being shocked and outraged by the blatantly racist or sexist stereotypes depicted within, we should sit back and view how far we have actually come, and hope that we, as humans, can progress at least as far again in the next 100 years.

The Angolan Refugee

by Ginny Swart

One night, when I was ten, my father came home from work carrying a tortoise under his arm. With difficulty. It was the biggest tortoise I’d ever seen.

He placed it on the kitchen table and the seven of us watched as it slowly pushed out its ancient head and surveyed its surroundings. Then, faster than we expected, it extended its legs and tried to walk away, slipping and scrabbling on the plastic surface. My sister Ansie leaned forward and stroked its shell. A stream of yellow liquid trickled out from the rear end and she leapt back.

Get that thing out of this house and into the yard where it belongs, said my mother sharply. Yirra, Jannie, where’d you find a such a big tortoise?

My father looked a bit sheepish.

This guy from Angola got stopped coming through today. His whole family, seven kids, dogs, chickens, the lot. Course he didn’t have any papers so they’ve all ended up at the Camp to get sorted out. The dogs had to go into the kennels and the chickens are in a cage there too. Then when I was parking his truck out of the way I found this big rock here sitting in a corner at the back. So I thought, shame man, he’ll probably die. They could be living in that refugee camp for months.

Why didn’t you just let it go in the veldt?

Ag, I thought the kids might like it. He’s a big bugger, eh?

My father was a policeman, at that time seconded to Namibian Immigration and posted to the border post at Oshikango. His previous posting had been on the border of Mozambique in an even smaller town, where the families tried to come over at night, making chirruping noises like crickets to fool the customs officials.

They didn’t fool my father however, he could spot a moving shadow in the bush without his binoculars and soon got a reputation for being a good man to have on a border crossing.

But it had been a depressing post. So many of the people came over on one leg, the other a bloodied stump wrapped in filthy bandages, and my father who was a big softie at heart used to get the whole family loaded onto lorries and taken off to hospital from where, he knew, many of them would melt away into the relative safety of the South African bush.

This secondment was meant to be a promotion of sorts, an acknowledgement of his ability to spot the unwanted shadows. My mother didn’t think much of it however. She found it difficult to make friends amongst the wives of the customs officials, who she thought were a rough lot. She disapproved of their drinking alongside their husbands of a Friday night and kept herself aloof from their raucous joking and coarse language. In the four years we’d lived there, she had never been invited for morning coffee and in turn, she had never invited anyone herself. She said we five kids kept her more than busy enough, thank you.

Our house which stood alone near the general dealers, was a standard government box with a red corrugated-iron roof and an outside long-drop, hot in summer and cold in winter and too small for five children. There was no place for pets in our house: my three brothers were allergic to cats and according to my mother all dogs were potentially vicious fighters, or at the very least flea-carriers and hair-shedders. Probably, we just couldn’t afford to feed a dog.

A Portuguese tortoise! I was enchanted. Let’s call him da Silva.

Mr de Silva owned the fruit and veg shop opposite the general dealer. He was the only Portuguese person we knew. The others who came across the border were in a hurry to reach Johannesburg or Cape Town, but for some reason Mr de Silva had stayed put, selling wilted turnips and soft, dusty oranges from their cartons. He made most of his money from the pinball machine that stood on the verandah outside his shop.

He’s an illegal immigrant, said my mother. You’re not allowed to bring him home, Jannie, you know that. He’s livestock. We could get into trouble.

We knew about illegal immigrants. Every day Angolans in heavily-laden old trucks and rusty sedans tried to cross the border to escape the civil war not far behind them. They were stopped at the Customs post, their papers studied. The lucky ones were allowed through, to a life full of more peaceful possibilities in the Republic. Many others were rejected, my father was called from his office and they were driven away to an internment camp close by to await their fate.

Ag… Pa smiled. Nobody will mind if we just let it run in our garden. I couldn’t just leave it there in that filthy truck. He was hungry.

Hungry, my foot, said my mother, but she went into the kitchen and cut some slices of fresh cabbage. Take this out to him and see if he likes it.

He did. Da Silva settled down in our back yard, the perfect pet. Days would go by when we forgot about him, then we’d see him heaving his ponderous shell out from under a bush and greet him like a long-lost friend. There was no emotional response from da Silva but he accepted cabbage, fruit or whatever else could be spared from the kitchen, and if we forgot about him, he foraged for himself. In winter, he disappeared underground, only digging himself out when he could feel the warmth once again.

The year I started high school, my father joined the Railway police and we moved down to De Aar in the middle of the Karroo. Da Silva came too, travelling in the boot of our green Valiant, completely filling a Sunlight Soap carton with holes punched in the lid.

The move meant a bigger and better house on the outskirts of a proper town, with a supermarket, which pleased my mother. But at the same time it was decided that Ansie and I would go to a Cape Town boarding school, and we were worried that in our absence da Silva would be forgotten completely. We appointed our youngest brother Frikkie to make sure he couldn’t escape from the new