Short story collection (horror, humor, & historical)
Date Published: 7/23/2017
Publisher: JME Books
Have you ever noticed that reading a book on the toilet takes forever? Wouldn’t it be nice to have stories suited to your specific potty needs? This collection of short stories ranges from 50 words to more than 50 pages, separated in categories labeled to fit your bathroom needs: NUMBER ONE, NUMBER TWO, and FARFROMPOOPIN. The idea is to give you, the reader, a great deal of material to read, tailored and categorized to the needs of your intestines and bladder. So go ahead, get comfortable, pull out your Squatty Potty® and enjoy some fantasy, science fiction, horror, adventure, and humor from the comfort of your own throne…the john…the latrine…your office…the bathroom, whatever you want to call it. Just be sure to wash your hands once you’re done.
Excerpt:
The
Priest
1.
The saloon doors
swung open with a creak as heavy winds wailed outside. The man stumbled in, and
the bartender never would have thought twice about him or given him a second
glance, if it hadn’t been for the squirrelly look in his eyes.
“Sarah,” Jedediah
whispered to the young girl standing beside him behind the bar. “Go on in the
back and get a message out.”
“To whom?” She stared
up with her mother’s green eyes. Dark hair tumbled across her shoulders. Sarah
regarded the sweat-covered man as he crept across the saloon floor mumbling
beneath his breath. A thin comb-over raked by the wind stood upright as a
scarecrow on top of his head.
“Okay, papa.” Sarah
turned on her heels and scurried away.
“Hello there,
stranger,” Jedediah’s voice boomed. “Can I fetch you a drink?”
The man teetered
toward the bar, much in the way most men left it. His darting eyes finally
found their way to Jedediah’s face.
“There you go,”
Jedediah said, coaxing a baby. “Come on, now. Take a seat.”
Slowly, the muttering
man slid – he was barefoot, Jedediah now noticed – across the sawdust laden
floor and into an empty barstool. Jedediah set a glass of whiskey before him.
“Looks like you need one.”
The man wasted no
time slamming the drink back. Jedediah minded the dirt beneath his very long
fingernails. “What’s your name, fellow?”
The man set down the
glass and Jedediah refilled it on instinct. “It’s Frances Deveaux.” He sipped
the whiskey with shaking hands. The wind wailed louder.
“What brings you to
these parts, Mr. Deveaux?” Jedediah asked, on account of the man’s northern
accent.
“Business.”
The doors flew into
the hardwood walls by a heavy gust and Mr. Deveaux nearly jumped out of his
skin.
Jedediah motioned for
Bobby Ray, a dark-haired kid who worked for him from time to time, to close the
doors. “A bit on edge tonight?”
Frances Deveaux
turned around to face the bar top. His hands had stopped shaking. The fog
shrouding his mind seemed to have lifted. He trained his now clear eyes upon
Jedediah’s. “Guess I am.”
He had a good face,
as far as Jedediah was concerned, rounded with a long nose and thick brows. A
five o’clock shadow covered his cheeks and chin.
“What’s got you so
scared?” Jedediah fidgeted with an already clean tumbler, taking a towel to it
inside and out. Sweat beaded on his closely shaven head. His handlebar
moustache tickled his upper lip.
Frances Deveaux’s
hands started rattling again, as if whatever had possessed him earlier had
returned. “She…tried to…kill me!” His bulging blue eyes locked on Jedediah’s
steel grays. “I had to do it…”
A train horn blared
through the air from the nearby station. Wind banged the shutters. The doors
flapped with a heavy bang. Frances Deveaux shook his head, maybe trying to
remember, most likely trying to forget.
Bobby Ray inched to
within an arm’s reach of the man, his Winchester
Jedediah reached for
the Colt Peacemaker he carried in his holster. “Why’s there dirt beneath your
nails, sir? What’d you do to her?”
Frances Deveaux’s
smile lurched across his face, demented as the Devil himself. His teeth hung in
pointy rows like a weatherworn picket fence. “I gave her what she wanted.”
“What was that, Mr.
Deveaux?”
His eyes floated
lifeless in his head and his neck bent unnaturally to the side. A new voice
rolled off his tongue, and said, “Yooouuuu!”
The thing inside of
Frances Deveaux lunged across the bar, swiping long fingernails at Jedediah the
way a honey badger swipes its claws. Jedediah leapt. Frances Deveaux’s body
slammed into the bottle display that crashed to the ground alongside him. Glass
splinters stuck to his face glinted in the light of the kerosene lamps.
He growled spraying
blood stained spittle through the air. Jedediah got off a shot. The bullet sunk
into Frances Deveaux’s shoulder, knocked his frame off-kilter, but the man
didn’t flinch. He just kept coming.
“Good, God,” Jedediah
muttered, as Frances Deveaux inched closer. “Sarah!” Jedediah pumped a few rounds
into the undead’s chest. “You send that message yet?”
“He’s coming, Papa!”
“Don’t you come out
here.” Jedediah pulled the trigger to an empty chamber. With no time to reload,
he grabbed a chair and flung it. The wood crunched with Frances Deveaux’s nose
and broke them both. Jedediah side-glanced the bar. It had emptied.
Except for Bobby Ray.
He was a skinny kid
with brown eyes set close together. But he was fearless. He stood in a wide
fighting stance with one hand gripping his knife, the other his gun. He
smirked. “Looks like you’re needing some help.”
“What the hell you
gonna do with that knife?” Jedediah spat. “You don’t even know how to use it.”
He dodged out of the way of Frances Deveaux’s body, which smacked into a table
before hitting the floor.
Bobby Ray staggered
closer to the brawl, swinging his knife at the creature in long strides.
Frances Deveaux snarled, swatting the knife out of Bobby Ray’s hand as if it
was a playing card. The knife landed with a clink on the floor. Panicked, Bobby
Ray aimed his gun, shooting off six rounds into everything but Frances Deveaux.
“Damn it all, Bobby
Ray. What the hell are you doing?”
“Helping.” He eyed
the walls where his rounds had wedged.
The wind howled. The
shutters slammed. Frances Deveaux screeched inhuman sounds. Jedediah had no
more ammo, and wasn’t about to risk Sarah’s life by having her bring him more.
He turned to Bobby Ray. “Lay a line of salt in front of the door. This may not
be the only one.”
Bobby Ray pulled a
satchel from his hip and marked the beginnings of a crooked salt line across
the threshold. The saloon doors blew open whacking Bobby Ray in the head and
sending him to the floor unconscious.
Jedediah turned,
hopeful.
It was just the wind.
In the split second when his attention faltered, Frances Deveaux barreled into
Jedediah. The air left his lungs as his back cracked against the floor. His
whole body screamed in silent pain. The sound on life itself had been shut off.
But the serrated teeth grinding into his shoulder kept him grounded in reality.
His eyes rolled back. Jedediah prayed.
He could see in
flickers, the way lightning bolts light up the trees and things in the darkness
when the heart of the storm passes overhead. In an instant, Frances Deveaux was
ripped off Jedediah and flung across the room. He gulped air into his burning
lungs. Jedediah’s hearing returned as a ping that evolved into muted voices.
The man who had set
Jedediah free wore a charcoal gray trench coat and cowboy hat. He carried a
flaming scythe in one hand, a glowing rifle strapped tight across his back. In
an ancient tongue, brandishing the scythe high above his head, he swung through
the air in a wide arc. The flame sliced through the body of Frances Deveaux
with a supernatural crack. Frances Deveaux fell dead to the floor. The blade
didn’t cut into his flesh.
It fractured his
soul.
Sarah ran over to
Jedediah. Bobby Ray had come to and was staggering over to help.
“Get him to his
feet,” Sarah ordered.
“Watch my shoulder,”
Jedediah said. “Hurts like a son of a bitch.”
Sarah slipped beneath
his wounded arm while Bobby Ray slipped under the other one. They led Jedediah
to a seat that hadn’t been overturned during the fight.
The cowboy knelt
before him, pulling back Jedediah’s shirt to scrutinize the wound. His face
remained hidden by the wide brim of his hat. He wore hide boots whose origin
Jedediah could only speculate and his skin smelled like fire.
“It’s not too deep,”
the cowboy said. “Won’t take me a minute.” He pressed his large flat palm
against the wound.
Jedediah bit the
inside of his cheek to keep from screaming. His mouth pooled with the
iron-taste of his own blood.
The cowboy lifted his
hand.
Jedediah stared as
the gaping holes in his flesh were completely healed; the tear in his blood soaked
shirt was all that remained. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Be careful,
bartender. You don’t meant it.” He leaned over the body of what had once been
Frances Deveaux and whatever had tried to eat Jedediah. “This one’s dead.”
“Course he is,” Bobby
Ray said. “You killed him.”
“No. This man’s been dead.” The cowboy rolled the body
on to its stomach with the steel-tipped toe of his boot. “Was before he walked
through those doors.”
“The living dead?”
Bobby Ray whispered.
“Of all the unholy
things,” said Sarah.
Beneath Frances
Deveaux’s shoulder blade lay an empty cavity where his liver should have been.
“Detestable.” Sarah
covered her mouth and swept to an empty seat near the bar.
“Did he say why he
was here?” the cowboy asked, staring at the body.
“Not precisely. Just
said some woman tried to kill him, so he gave her what she wanted.”
“And what was that?”
Jedediah gulped hard.
“Me.”
The man looked up,
his face in shadows. “You?”
“That’s right.”
“Did she say what
for?”
“Never got to that
part.”
The man didn’t say a
word as he stared at Jedediah. Finally, he spoke. “Something’s after you, Jed.
I’m gonna stay in town a while to figure out what.” He looked up. “You okay
with that?”
His eyes shone in a
radiant shade of violet. Dirty-blond hair fell ragged from beneath his hat.
“Yes, Simeon. I’m
okay with it,” Jedediah said. “I think I’m gonna need some help on this one.”
“First thing to
figure out is where this man’s liver went. Hopefully, it will lead to this
woman you mentioned.” Simeon stood, walked back to the entrance, and turned in
the doorway. “You all better get your feet shod,” he said with a smirk, tipping
his hat, “because it’s about to get ugly.”
About the Author
Jaimie Engle was once sucked into a storybook, where she decided she would become an author. She has modeled, managed a hip-hop band, and run a body shop. She loves coffee, trivia, cosplay, and podcasting on ORIGINS, where myth and science meet (podcastORIGINS.com). Basically, if it's slanted toward the supernatural or nerdy, she's into it! She lives in Florida with her awesome husband, hilarious children, and the world's best dog. She also happens to have the world’s best literary agent, Saritza Hernandez. Become a fan at theWRITEengle.com. Follow on social media @theWRITEengle and pick up books at jmebooks.com.
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