Unusual Stories: Volume I

Unusual Stories: Volume 1

  7 stories from 7 authors

  Edited by Terry Persun

  copyright 2013 by Terry Persun

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Unusual Stories

  7 stories from 7 authors

  Edited by Terry Persun

  Cover Design by Daniel Ramer

  Foreword

  Exploring New Writers

  I’ve collected these short stories to introduce a few authors who have come onto the scene with some powerful novels, some powerful writing skills, and some powerful momentum. As is the case with most readers, I read across genres, from literary and mainstream to horror and romance. Once I’ve found an author’s work that I like, I look them up and proceed to read more of their work. I search out other authors they recommend, and I tell all my friends about the writers I discover.

  This is why this project became important to me: I want other people to read authors I’ve been impressed with. That means that through this little free booklet, my hope is that you’ll find your next “best” author (or more than one) who you will tell your friends about, and who will delight you with great stories for a long time to come.

  We all read for different reasons and find different types of works enjoyable. You might like science-based fiction or you might like fantasy where world building is the most important element. You might like to be scared or informed; you might enjoy the style of writing or the depth of emotion expressed. Or, you may be drawn to several different types of writing altogether, from the experimental to the literary. And what’s great about novels is that often you can find everything you want, all in the same novel.

  Each of the seven authors in this collection have published at least one book by Booktrope Editions, a new standard publishing house located in the Pacific Northwest. Booktrope prides itself in producing well-designed, and well-edited novels across all genres. The company is proud to present its authors to the world, and has produced several bestselling authors to date.

  Happy reading,

  -Terry Persun, February 2013

  Table of Contents

  Field of Yellow Poppies…Nicole J. Persun

  The Loneliness of Left Field…alex kimmell

  Taking Care of Things…Susan Wingate

  As Yet Undecided…Steven Luna

  Pandora…Elise Stephens

  The Return of the King…Christopher Turkel

  Jeremy’s World…Terry Persun

  Nicole J. Persun

  I fell in love with stories as a very young child, when my father and I would make up bedtime stories instead of reading them. When I started seriously writing, completing my first novel at the age of fifteen, I quickly fell in love with writing’s ability to encompass all subjects. Being eclectic in my interests, and having a father to guide me on my authorial adventures, I found myself diving headfirst into the world of writing as an art as well as a business. The story I wrote for this book is a contemporary science fiction that plays with the idea of some new discoveries in cellular biology. Rather than being outlandish, it provides merely a small scientific push in a direction I find fascinating and wholly possible.

  Field of Yellow Poppies

  by Nicole J. Persun

  I have had my new lung for three days. I feel stale in my hospital bed and I keep dreaming about a little girl in a yellow sundress running from me in a field of yellow poppies. I miss my apartment in the city and my gray tabby named Smoky. My folks say that tall buildings, thick traffic, and the stench of alleys is depressing. I say that cancer centers are depressing.

  They found it late and it did not take long for my doctor to sit me down and break the news. It took one minute, three tops. “You have cancer, Jared.” That was it.

  “Am I going to die?” The lump in my throat turned into a melon and my wheezy breathing became impossible. I would not accept death from a man with a stethoscope, and who dressed in a white coat.

  He took so long to answer that I had to ask again. When his bifocals lifted off his clipboard, I swear my heart stopped. “We need to remove a portion of your left lung as soon as possible.”

  My mouth went dry. He spoke my name, but I could not answer. The room felt suddenly hot and I looked at the soft sunlight streaming in through the window. After a brief explanation from my doctor, without words, I got up and left.

  Under the anesthesia, I could not replace the image of blood in the sink. I’d been brushing my teeth. I spit out the toothpaste and rinsed with extra-white whitening mouthwash. I started coughing violently. I’d been having shortness of breath and chest pain for a few weeks. Spitting out the taste of metal, I rinsed the red out of the sink. Hands on the cold porcelain edge, I took a deep breath. The man staring back at me in the mirror with wet hair and stubble was a stranger, in that moment.

  From the other room, I heard Smoky jump off the counter. Through the open window came the sound of sirens. Someone hailed a taxi. Too afraid to eat or drink, I called the doctor for the first time in six years.

  I lived with less than two lungs for a while, before they called me in again. “A routine chest scan,” the doctor said. Routine.

  Later, they started looking for a lung donor.

  Three days. Breathing hurts, but I already feel a certain clarity to it that I have not felt in years. I had to quit my job at the factory and I stopped thinking about cigarettes. Beside my blackened right, I imagine my new lung a porous structure of unmarked peachy flesh. I stare up at the florescent lights, out the window, at the nurses and interns, blue blurs past my open door. I doze. I think about life. I get restless and I doze again, only to dream about the little girl in the yellow sundress in the field of yellow poppies.

  I can taste the air, the sweet and earthy scent of pollen and dirt and fresh grass. The little girl, Molly, is laughing. She twirls out of my grasp, her blonde curls bouncing with her bare-foot steps.

  “I’m going to tickle you,” I call to her. In the dream, she is my daughter.

  In the city, I live alone with my gray tabby.

  My sister Joyce, who lives close to the cancer hospital, visits often. She comes alone, since her husband sleeps through lunch because of his graveyard shifts and her sons have school. She holds my hand and tells me it’s a sign that the dream came to me after the surgery. “Have you ever had reoccurring dreams before?”

  “No,” I tell her. “Only this one.”

  My folks can afford to fly out, but instead they visit via Skype. My father was never sentimental or sympathetic and my mother listens to everything he says. I don’t mind that they don’t come, because it would be more stressful than comforting anyway. The glare off my father’s glasses in the Skype camera makes it so that I can’t see his eyes, but I know they’re blue and it doesn’t bother me. My mother’s hair is brown and streaked with blonde. She colors it every few weeks and to change the subject off of me, I comment on how young she looks. She is afraid of aging. She has aged beautifully.

  They ask about my breathing and my smoking and again request that I move back home, away from the city where they have golf courses and tennis courts and fancy outdoor pools. I tell them that I like the bustle and have a social life I could not leave behind. I don’t bother to mention that my girlfriend Rosie dumped me for a coworker, nor do I tell them that she still sleeps with me on occasion and has been feeding Smoky while I’m in recovery.

  The food in the hospital is terrible and I don’t eat much
. I’m losing weight not from the cancer (which I am assured is completely gone now), but from my lack of appetite toward cardboard bread and soup that tastes like dishwater. Weight loss will gain me sympathy, when I return home. I hate myself for finding pleasure in the idea.

  The more I sleep, the more I dream about the little girl named Molly. I walk with her along an old wooden fence, and out in a pasture of grass is a big brown horse that trots toward us when we call to it. The horse’s nose gets Molly’s yellow dress dirty but she giggles all the while, standing on the third rung of the fence to reach the white star on his long face.

  “His whiskers tickle,” Molly says, allowing the horse to nuzzle her neck. Her brown eyes are alight with joy and I feel a sort-of ease being beside her.

  In the dream, Molly looks like her mother, who died in a car accident when Molly was two. In the dream, I recall the crash, the rain, a truck swerving into sight. I recall visiting a grave and placing a bouquet of yellow poppies at its base. I recall Molly’s conception, out in the field of yellow poppies. In the dream, their scent fills my nostrils. And when I lift Molly from the fence, I smell the pollen on her perfect skin.

  “The cells reside in other organs of the body, not just in the brain and heart. In this new line of study, scientists are finding that the body is more interconnected than what was previously thought.” Joyce closes the magazine and looks up at me. “Fascinating, isn’t it?”

  I shift in my hospital bed. “Why did you bring that in?”

  “Those dreams you’ve been having, about the little girl. What if those aren’t dreams?”

  “Then what are they?”

  “That new lung came with new cells, Jared. Fragments of someone else’s heart and brain.”

  “And?”

  She brushes a strand of long brown hair from her face. “What if those dreams are memories?”

  I laugh, not nearly the outlandish believer as my sister. “That’s absurd.”

  She waves the magazine at me. “Were you not listening to the article?”

  “Were you? Nowhere in that did it say anything about receiving memories from organ donors, Joyce. You’re being ridiculous.”

  I lay awake at night, thinking about the idea. Molly has a familiarity about her that is unlike any dream I’ve had before. The field of yellow poppies is vivid and feels like home, yet so does the thought of my apartment in the city with my cat. In the dream my love for Molly never fades. It is something I have never known, a healthy obsession that draws my shoulders down to her in protection. In reality, I am still in love with Rosie. I yearn for the nights she comes to my door and I dread the mornings when her boyfriend calls and she leaves early.

  I take a deep breath from my new lung, imagining a honeycomb of pink expanding with oxygen, filling my blood with life. The lung feels as my own as Molly does. Odd and familiar and necessary.

  I close my eyes, the scent of yellow poppies a whisper to my nose.

  Nicole’s latest novel is: “A Kingdom’s Possession”

  Find more information about Nicole at: https://www.NicoleJPersun.com

  alex kimmell

  Baseball. America’s game. The smell of freshly cut grass and bubble gum. Eating hot dogs and cracker jacks in the bleachers. A way of life for generation after generation of American families. A right of passage for so many of us who played the game growing up.

  Now I’m on the other side sitting in the bleachers watching my son play. Now I watch the skills learned and be discovered as that little white ball rolls off the pitcher’s fingertips, rings that unmistakable song against the aluminum bat and darts across the dirt. Sometimes the play is made and it actually looks like real baseball. But more often than not, the ball squibs away sending an outfielder chasing after it while the coach destroys his larynx and most likely his sanity.

  I sit in the stands watching my son and my heart melts. It brings me infinite joy to watch these kids growing and working together. They learn about a game, yes. But they’re also learning about life.

  Looking out past the outfield fence to the thick forest growing wild behind, my mind drifts and wonders… What if baseball turned out to be not so wholesome? What if in some mysterious way, the game opened a crack in our everything leaving us broken and afraid?

  In my dreams, I view the world from odd perspectives. Everyday items, events, places or animals might very well be exactly as we see them on the surface. On the other hand, there just may be a darker, hidden substance impatiently waiting for the right time to surface. The precise moment, when on arrival it can shatter our illusion of the expected that should be real giving birth to nightmares relentlessly coveting dread.

  Take baseball for instance. Everyone in America knows the game, if only on a peripheral basis. Now take that familiar, comfortable and safe Saturday morning at the local little league fields. Turn it inside out and what might you find? No blood or gore. That’s far too easy for our modern sensibilities.

  Loss.

  Panic.

  Incomprehension.

  Mix gently with a pinch of Love and a Dash of Vindictiveness.

  These are the ingredients of this dark, modern ghost story.

  The Loneliness of Left Field

  by alex kimmell

  Rip saw a movement in the trees. Yes the wind was blowing and the leaves were swaying, but there was a stirring deep back in the empty black spaces. He scrunched his face to see clearer through the glare because the brim of his Red Sox cap didn’t want to do its job protecting him from the sun.

  “Heads up out there!” Coach Leatherman shouted. Rip covered his head until the ball thudded the grass a couple of yards away. “Pay attention pal. You should have had that one!”

  “Sorry coach.” He trotted over to the loose ball and threw it in the direction of second base. The errant throw bounced way off left and Denny stumbled over himself trying to get it. In a scramble of uncoordinated flailing limbs, Tom finally scooped it up finally lobbing it back to the frustrated coach.

  “We need good throws from you guys in the outfield. Good throws! This is why we’ve got to back each other up infielders.” Coach waved his arms in frustration and continued to shout instructions in ever more explosive tones. Rip’s mind was already elsewhere. He didn’t like playing left, especially here at Whippett Field. If only coach let him pitch today. The left field fence was much too close to the trees. His house was surrounded by trees that he grew up climbing, swinging from, and playing Knights in Shining Armor in. He loved the woods. But not these trees, these trees were just bad. There was something wrong with this place

  “Alright Sox!” Coach waved around. “Bring it in!”

  Rip jogged back in for the start of the game. When he turned over his shoulder he thought something dark slid between the branches past the fence. He stopped at the infield’s edge and strained his eyes to see better.

  “Watcha’ lookin’ at Rip?” Carter stopped next to him on his way in from right field.

  “Nothin’.” Little clouds of brick dust puffed up behind each foot shuffling their way to the dugout. As the visiting team they surrendered the field to their opponents the North Camden Astros. Rip usually liked playing in the travel league. Getting to play against kids from different towns and schools was pretty cool. Sometimes the other teams weren’t very good and the Pastor Red Sox won easily. These Astros were hitters though. Plus, they looked mean.

  “Hey guys, watch the pitcher warm up yeah?” Coach Bill leaned his broad shoulder on the fence in front of the dugout. Bill Darden owned the hardware store in town. Even though he was a year younger, his son Tom and Rip were best friends. It was cool having him assistant coach this season. He always brought a case of Gatorade in his hand painted Red Sox cooler for the guys.

  --

  Bill walked slowly backwards. Tapping Joe on the shoulder he leaned in close so none of the kids could hear him whisper, “Look at the leaves”.

  “Wha
t?” Joe turned his head making a quick motion as if to brush a buzzing fly away from his face.

  “Look at the leaves.” He didn’t want to point and draw any attention.

  “Man, I’m trying to call signs here.”

  “Joe. Look at the God damned leaves!”

  “Okay. Okay Bill. Jesus. Calm the fuck dow…” The toothpick fell from Joe’s bottom lip. His eyes couldn’t decide if they wanted to squint or stretch open even wider.

  There were hundreds of trees. Possibly even thousands sprouting countless numbers of leaves. Leaves that provided shade on hot summer days. Leaves that on any average day breathed in carbon dioxide and exhaled oxygen. Leaves that would eventually fade to the beautiful bright yellows, oranges and reds of Fall.

  Now every single tree stood stark naked and bare. Empty deep brown branches scratched like sharpened fingernails against the blue sky. The deep green sea of leaves hovered in a thick, motionless straight line four feet above the ground.

  One Cardinal hopped its way out from beneath the shadow of leaves up to the left field fence. It’s beak reached up and grabbed on to the metal wire pulling itself up. Claws took hold lifting the body higher and climbed up. Rolling over top the bird dropped back down to the ground making no attempt to fly.

  A handful of red breasted birds mimicked his ascent over the chain links. Then another emerged from the shadows. Then another. And another. The fence grew loud with clicking and rattling sounds of birds clamoring over falling silently to the grass. Hundreds of bright crimson breasts hopped in silence together toward the infield.

  Rip stood in ready position. Knees bent punching right fist into glove anticipating anything hit his way. The first bird hopped a few feet to the left. He saw a hint of red in the corner of his eye. The next bounced down the left field foul line heading toward third base. He tried not to let them distract his focus. Not after coach chewed him out during warm-ups.

  He felt something soft brush against his leg. He looked down at the bird walking between his legs. One of its little claws slid across the inside of his cleat. Heart clenched, his young ribcage on the verge of exploding. He jumped away for fear of getting pecked knocking it to the ground. The bird calmly whipped its wings twice, stood up and continued walking forward black eyes peering unfocused into the distance.