Menage_a_20_-_Tales_with_a_Hook

by Twenty Goodreads Authors

“Don’t be so damned nosey, Fiona.” Jonathan smiled and leaned closer to Fiona. “Between you and me, his promotion came through and I’d like to hand him the official letter and congratulate him personally. Remember, this goes no further, as nobody else is meant to know until it’s released officially.”

  “As it’s off the record, Jonathan.”

  Fiona deliberately brushed her ample breasts against Jonathan’s arm and looked up into his eyes.

  “How on Earth does someone like him get promotion? He

  has zero personality and doesn’t get on with any staff. He’s not

  what we call a team player; he doesn’t join in with everyone else.

  He’s an arse and everyone, except management, hates him.” “Better watch what you’re saying, Fiona. You never know

  who’s listening. Anyway, what makes you think that

  management like him? He knows what to say and do to the

  right person, at the right time, that’s all. Simple really.” Fiona’s eyebrows raised in surprise as she stood back from

  Jonathan.

  “Anyway, Fiona. I think you should be getting back to work

  and I’ll just leave this on his desk.”

  Fiona looked at Jonathan from top to bottom, admiring his

  dress sense and physique, determining if he was hot enough to

  pursue a beneficial relationship. She thought how simple the

  equation was: Jon would get Fiona, she would get a new work

  position, more pay and maybe end up in management.

  Everyone would win and besides; it was only business. When Fiona’s eyes reached his shoes she noticed the little

  white bugs crawling on the floor toward them, their disgusting

  little feelers probing the air for warm clothes to cling to. “Yuk, there’s bugs on the floor.”

  Fiona forced her body against Jonathan and grasped his

  arms tightly.

  “I hope this promotion stops George kissing so much ass

  from now on.”

  “Yeah, well… he feels it’s the only way to get on. It’s not

  against the law to kiss ass. It should be, but it’s not.”

  George’s mind faded with the satisfying thought that he finally got what he deserved.

  GWENDOLYN MCINTYRE

  Gwendolyn McIntyre was born in the United Kingdom but has lived most of her life either in the USA or traveling the globe, trying to do good works.

  Gwen is a writer, editor, educator and business woman who lives with her partner Melissa, their ninety-five pound Staffordshire Bull Terrier ‘other child’, and a host of other animals and creatures... both real and imaginary.

  A ROOM WITH A VIEW In a tale of confusion, Moren Glick awakes to find himself somewhere he neither knows nor understands, yet strives to survive and master not just the place, but himself.

  A SONG TO REMEMBER A young musician and her aunt struggle to understand more than simply the notes on a musical score. Will they find their way?

  http://britishimport.livejournal.com http://medicinewoman.wordpress.com http://www.goodreads.com/drgwen

  A Room with a View

  Gwendolyn McIntyre

  Copyright © Gwendolyn McIntyre 2009 O NE

  A loud metallic clang awoke him. Moren tried to stand and nearly fell as he found himself sprawled at the bottom of a large metallic sphere. As his boots came down on the curved surface, he heard another clang, and realized the noise that awoke him must have been of his own making.

  Looking around to take stock of the situation, he saw light coming from the top, but could hear nothing save the beat of his own heart.

  “Hello,” he yelled out, and was immediately sorry. Covering his ears as his voice rang within the sphere, he squatted and waited for what seemed an interminable amount of time, but when he removed his hands the echo was a memory.

  Thank the gods.

  Remaining where he was, Moren took stock of his possessions. He still had his clothing, water bottle, boots, rations pack, the emergency medical kit and oddly, his survival knife. Gone was his sidearm, locator beacon and other survival gear, his flight jacket and... and the last letter from Adeline. Removing it from his shirt pocket, he opened it. Enclosed was a picture of their eight-year-old twins, Stacy and John. Both had blonde hair and blue-green eyes, and looked more like their mother, although their daughter’s manners and actions seemed more like his.

  Adel had written about the children taking part in their school pageant the previous month. The picture showed John dressed as a toy soldier and Stacey as a ballerina. He read the letter again and smiled. The Nutcracker. They’d both been so excited about it the last time he’d spoken with them, and then...

  Moren stopped and drew a blank. What had happened after that? He fingered his flight suit. He must have gone on yet another mission, but what had happened? How and why had he wound up in this strange place?

  He stood and tried to walk, but there was nothing to get a grip on and all his effort accomplished was that he slipped down to the bottom of the sphere and his abrupt landing produced a clanging sound so loud he was forced to once again cover his ears.

  On the bottom of his prison, he sat upright and opened his canteen to discover that the water inside was fresh and cool. The first sip made him realize he was hungry, so he sorted through the contents of his rations pack for a survival bar.

  Sipping sparingly and nibbling, he looked up toward the lights and wondered what was next and how he was going to get himself out of this place and home to his family. If only he could remember what had happened prior to winding up in here.

  Had they dropped him in here, or was it more likely that there was a hidden hatch somewhere? As he looked about, he saw that each of the ‘corners’ of the sphere was a flat disc, so perhaps one or more of them opened to the outside. Perhaps even the one he was sitting on?

  Moren pulled the survival knife from its sheath and poked around the edges of the disk with no results. He replaced the knife and sat back wondering what to do next, but a sudden and severe headache stopped him. Fumbling with the emergency kit, he managed to find a bottle of pain medication. He took two with a sip of water, laid back and closed his eyes.

  T EN

  How many days he’d been in here Moren couldn’t tell. All attempts to mark anything, even on his clothing or skin, with the knife had failed.

  One morning he awoke to discover the knife gone. A bright light shone into his eyes. Even keeping them closed didn’t help, so he rolled over and rested his face against the curved wall. The sound of his labored breathing echoed louder within the sphere, but the light neither went out nor dimmed. Finally he rolled onto his side and curled up in a fetal position, his eyes closed and his head on his chest.

  When he awoke again he looked about and noted changes. He was still dressed the same, still had his equipment, and the walls had not changed, but he felt a slight rocking motion. He stood up slowly, took a step and was rewarded by a movement of the sphere.

  Moren stepped to the place where the top of the sphere had been, but the source of light had retreated. Muttering to himself, he tried to make sense of this strange form of captivity. Then he froze. Hamster ball?

  The sudden realization sent a weakness to his legs, He moved until one of the circular ends of the sphere was underfoot and sat, drew a deep breath and tried to calm his mind.

  I will not let them treat me like a pet rodent, he decided, and reached into his rations pack. With the sudden urge to eat he almost missed that he still had a full compliment of rations, emergency supplies and drinking water. He paused to peer at a loose wrapper at the bottom of the pack. How many days have I been eating from this pack and yet my supplies are intact?

  The thought triggered another painful headache. He’d transferred the pill bottle to his flight suit the day before, so he reached for it but the pocket was empty.

  In the emergency kit, he found it stowed where it belonged. It too contained a full c
ount of pills, but the pain was becoming so intense that he filed the problem aside and tried to focus on opening the bottle. His hand slipped and the container flew, the small yellow and white discs bouncing everywhere, to slide back down around him.

  Moren picked up two of the tablets and swallowed them with a gulp of water from his canteen, then he collected the remainder of the small discs into the bottle and returned it to the medical kit. After stowing the medical bag away, he laid back, closed his eyes, and waited for the pain to subside so that he could think clearly.

  A few mornings later, or at least it seemed to him to be morning because it was when the light flooded strongly into his cell, Moren pondered the events of the past week.

  Had it been a week?

  He’d discovered a suture kit in the bottom pouch of the medical bag. He had sewn a small knot into the sleeve of his suit and snipped the thread, intending to sew one knot for each day of captivity.

  The problem was, when he awoke the following morning there was no knot, and the suture kit looked as if it had never been opened. He’d tried it again and again, but each day it seemed as if the day before had not happened.

  He came to the conclusion that what was happening was not possible. He was either losing his mind or... or what?

  If I were home I’d be exercising and training each day. Why stop here and give them the satisfaction?

  Having decided, Moren stood, drew a breath and began to walk, at first slowly, but gradually picking up speed until he broke into a run. After a while he felt exhaustion creeping up on him and slowed down, but even as he settled to a walk he felt better for having done it. His mind felt clearer than it had since he’d been trapped in here, and the haze hanging over him seemed to be lifting. He stopped, squatted, then sat and reached for his ration pack. He took out one of the food bars and chewed his way slowly to the end.

  O NE-HUNDRED

  Moren Glick awoke feeling as if his bed were made of air; so soft and yet firm enough to support his weight. Then the light flooded in and his eyes sprang open.

  He was still within a sphere, but this one was decidedly different from the one he’d been in. The walls seemed soft and padded, yet when he stood the surface felt firm. Soft light bled in all around him, illuminating the interior of the room.

  What passed through his conscious thoughts he did not know, but as he stood surveying this new place he smiled. So now we try the comfy chair. Then he laughed.

  This time there was no echo; this time it seemed as if the walls sucked up his laughter. It vanished barely before he could hear it. He tried belching, then forced flatulence, but neither could be heard longer than a blink of the eye.

  The exercise brought up another interesting question. Assuming he had been eating and drinking, what happened to his wastewater and food byproducts? He unzipped his suit and tried to urinate but nothing happened. He tried to squat and defecate, but again to no avail.

  Re-clothing himself, he paused to drink some water, and then began to walk. As before, the sphere seemed to rotate, but as this one had no obvious ‘corners’, he was hard pressed to know if he was moving in a circle or if he was altering the arc of his passage.

  He slowed to a stop and tried to make an impression in the soft white surface, but nothing would deform it. He poured water on it, but the wall absorbed it and left no moisture in its surface. Why? He didn’t know, but Moren decided to bathe.

  Stripping off his clothing, he wet himself with one of his water packs and used the small bar of soap in the medical kit to lather himself. He rinsed off the suds with another water pack.

  Because he had no towel, he lay on the pliant white surface and rolled around. As he stood and redressed he felt better, but didn’t know why.

  Moren sat, took a ration bar and ate. When he was done with it, he sipped some water and lay back, closed his eyes and tried to remember.

  O NE-THOUSAND

  How many days passed he could not say, but one morning as the light flooded in around him, Moren Glick opened his eyes and he was laying on a bed in the middle of a square room. His boots were on the floor next to the bed and his kit and clothing hung neatly from a brass post at the end of it.

  He sat up and reached for his clothing even as he examined the room; no doors and no windows, yet the air seemed to move more freely in this room than it had in the spheres.

  He walked the perimeter of the room, seeking the source of the airflow, but again this space confounded him.

  As an experiment he said, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  This time there was neither an echo nor did the sound seem abruptly cut off. He leaned against the walls, pressing with as much force as he could, but nothing gave way, and yet it seemed as if the walls were made of different matter than the sphere.

  Walking over to where his kit hung from the end of the bed, Moren took out a food bar. Not sure why he was doing it, he peeled off the wrapper and stepped over to one of the walls.

  With the food bar, he drew pictures of windows and an old fashioned door, the kind with a doorknob on it. The images remained, even as he ate the remainder of the bar.

  He returned to the bed, donned his boots, gathered his kit, stood and walked to the wall where he’d drawn the door. Smiling, he reached for the knob.

  O NE-THOUSAND AND ONE

  “Command, this is Recovery Ship Micas. We’ve rescued the escape capsule in time to prevent it crashing into the star. They’ve depressurized the unit and extracted the survivor. The medical officers expect the Colonel to live, but...”

  The voice and image of the fleet medical doctor interrupted the commander. “One hundred and six days in orbit around a failing star in an escape capsule with a faulty stasis unit? I think your optimism is showing, Stacey.”

  “Speak for yourself, brother dear.”

  A Song to Remember

  Gwendolyn McIntyre

  Copyright © Gwendolyn McIntyre 2009 The bow, coursing against the strings of the battered, ancient violin produced the most unpleasant of tones that, save possibly the noise made by fingernails on a chalkboard, were only slightly more harmonious than a barrel full of angry, wet cats.

  The fumbling refrain halted; replaced by a voice raised in outrage. “Horrid, horrid, horrid!”

  The anger in the voice caught Tracy’s attention. She rose from her desk, scattering what had been a neat stack of scored manuscript paper and hurried down the hallway to the door of the music room. “Something wrong with the music,” she snarled at the child; pausing in startled alarm at her own reaction.

  It was unfair to consider her niece a child, for Nora was already fourteen. Although not a beauty like her mother, her agile mind and fingers usually made the old instrument sound, while not like a Stradivarius, a close approximation.

  Nora looked up at her aunt, her fingers tightening on the neck of the violin. “I cannot get the fingering right. My clumsy fat hands won’t move fast enough.”

  Violin and bow alike shook as if at any moment they would devolve into fragments.

  After a few gentle words from her aunt, Nora relaxed her hold on the instrument and laid it into its case.

  Tracy was thankful that the girl had the sense not to destroy a five century-old instrument, not when her talented hands could make it sing like a choir of angels.

  That Nora was angry was evident in the way she spat out, “It’s not supposed to sound like that.”

  “It won’t; if you keep practicing.”

  “How can you know that?”

  There were many different ways she could have answered, but the one she wanted to give she could not. Instead, she offered, “Because I helped score this piece.”

  She walked over and sat next to Nora. “Your fingers are neither fat nor clumsy. Show me where you’re having a problem.”

  Nora picked up her instrument. Although she’d stopped only moments earlier, the girl took time to check, listen to and feel the tuning of the violin before nodding her readiness.

  S
lowing down the tempo helped, but one measure repeating in each of the following fourteen bars required a level of dexterity that it seemed Nora might never attain. These scores were Elaine’s works. But Nora had never before struggled to play one of them.

  Tracy’s memories took her back to the time after her sister and daughter first came from the old country to live with her. Nora would often be sound asleep in a blanket-covered basket as she and Elaine worked out the orchestrations.

  Tracy was still, after all the years since her sister was lost to them, working on completing the orchestrations. The collection consisted of over one hundred pieces.

  This particular one, when played as her sister had, produced in the listener a sense of near euphoria. She eyed the score, sat down at the piano and played the chord.

  The dissonance was electrifying, and Tracy almost jammed the pedal stop to make it end.

  What it produced, she realized, was anger.

  No wonder Nora was upset. Tracy peered at the score, trying to remember its sound when Elaine had played it. Starring at the penciled score, she noticed something odd about the notes. They were written in a hand other than her sister’s.

  Someone had tampered with the piece. Why? “Have you loaned this to anyone?” She turned to look at the girl.

  Her niece shook her head. “I’ve never taken it from the house. Only my tutor has seen it.”

  Would he, Tracy wondered.

  Ezra, a virtuoso artist now retired, only took on special students that had been referred to him. Nora soon became his pride and joy. The old man had even arranged for her audition at the London Conservatory. This was to have been her audition piece, but now it was useless, unless... A memory flashed through her mind. The room. How and why could she have possibly forgotten it?

  With only a quick word for her niece, Tracy hurried back up the hall to her office, closing and locking the door before stepping over to the bookshelf in the corner. She closed her eyes and willed herself to remember.

  It had been years since she stood in this exact spot, her eyes on a specific object.