Grimm and Grimmer: Volume One

by William Meikle

  GRIMM AND GRIMMER

  VOLUME ONE

  EDITED BY THERESA DERWIN

  FOREWORD BY ADRIAN MIDDLETON

  INCLUDING STORIES BY

  WILLIAM MEIKLE

  JAN EDWARDS

  LYNDA COLLINS

  COLIN FISHER

  HANNAH LACKOFF

  THERESA DERWIN

  First published 2013 by Fringeworks Ltd, Y Berllan, Maen Y Groes, Cei Newydd,

  Ceredigion, SA45 9TR.

  www.fringeworks.co.uk

  Cover art by Martin Reimann

  ‘Foreword’ © Adrian Middleton 2013

  ‘Building the Dream’ © Lynda Collins 2013

  ‘Beast’ © Hannah Lackoff 2013

  ‘Gretel's Way’ © Colin Fisher 2013

  ‘Princess Born’ © Jan Edwards 2013

  ‘A Taste of Honey’ © Theresa Derwin 2013

  ‘Pork, Hammy and Chop’ © William Meikle 2013

  The right of the authors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  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 us and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  CONTENTS

  ‘Foreword’ by Adrian Middleton

  ‘Building the Dream’ by Lynda Collins

  ‘Beast’ by Hannah Lackoff

  ‘Gretel's Way’ by Colin Fisher

  ‘Princess Born’ by Jan Edwards

  ‘A Taste of Honey’ by Theresa Derwin

  ‘Pork, Hammy and Chop’ by William Meikle

  Martin Reimann – The Artist

  Martin Reimann was born in Czech Republic, but soon moved to Belgium where he met some great people who helped him in choosing his path to becoming an artist. He is currently studying games art and design at the Norwich University of the Arts in the UK.

  His love for drawing came from an early age and has been growing ever since. Martin is curious and has a passion for many things, especially history, cultures and anything unique and crazy. With his whole life still ahead of him he is constantly open to new things, absorbing information and exploring new places, undergoing adventures and visual experiences that inspire him and his art.

  He says, “I try my best to make my art memorable and give it much personality and character which reflect myself and my multicultural roots. I try my best to grasp many styles and mix different techniques and approaches together, lately I have been working mostly digitally purely out of efficiency and convenience but still try and keep that natural and traditional feel.”

  In his spare time he likes to play games, listen to trippy music, watch mind bending movies, discuss life and browse the interwebs in search of inspiration and all things awesome.

  Theresa Derwin – The Editor

  Theresa was born and bred in Birmingham and her career has been pretty varied; from Warehouse Packer, then bar work, to being a crap waitress then swiftly into retail, Admin, Professional Student and dosser until finally entering the Civil Service in 1999. She left the Service in 2012 to pursue a career as a writer.

  Theresa writes humorous fiction including SF, Urban Fantasy & Horror. She has twelve anthology acceptances behind her. She also writes a number of book reviews and at her site www.terror-tree.co.uk. Her short story collection Monsters Anonymous was released from Anarchy Books Sept 2012. She also produces feminist genre fanzine Andromeda’s Offspring.

  She has loved horror, fantasy and SF all her life, thanks to her father who raised her on 50s Sci-Fi Universal Monsters, tango and popcorn. Her love of the bizarre, (including her Dad) remains constant, to this day. She also owes a great debt to Rog Peyton from the BSFG who introduced her to alternative fiction at the tender the age of 14.

  You can follow Theresa on Twitter @BarbarellaFem or find out more about her work at www.theresa-derwin.co.uk.

  Foreword

  By Adrian Middleton

  'I feckin' hate fairies.'

  Well, that's what I say. I've always been slightly uneasy by the way they were cutified during the nineteenth century, and whether that's down to the transition from oral folk tales into prose, or to the emergence of the twee fairy paintings that started with Pre-Rapahelites like John Everett Millais and reached its zenith with Arthur Rackham and the Cottingley con remains open to debate.

  Oddly, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm may themselves have started this trend of toning down fairy stories in consideration of the children. Yes, their 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales was filled with a degree of sex and violence not seen in fairy stories until at least the very late twentieth century, but they were still sanitized. Those that followed took this even further until, when Disney's adaptations came along, all trace of their dark origins had faded into little more than a memory.

  Fortunately the fairy story did get cool again. Their renaissance in comics happened alongside darker revisitations within the horror genre. Graham Joyce, author of The Tooth Fairy, speaks of them in hushed tones as the extremely dangerous fairy folk. Progressively darker adaptations have followed until, perhaps, we've come full circle. Now the dark and more-than-mischievous creatures from beyond the veil are in full flight, and you can't turn a corner without tripping over another new book, or kindle, filled with close encounters of the fae kind.

  For me, fairy stories still aren't dark enough. Yes, Red Riding Hood might wield an axe or a sword, and the Evil Queen might get naked before she looks into the mirror, but there is still a sense that fairy tales are for children, when they're clearly not. The fairy tale is, at heart, a tale of caution, of lessons learned or lessons that need to be learned. They are the first step towards understanding that the world outside isn't safe, and that there are folk out there who will gladly cheat, and steal, and lie and gut you with a knife. Perhaps the original tales were about real people and not fairies, and perhaps they were some kind of social censorship put in place to protect the not-so-innocent, but they were dark, twisted, and bloody.

  That was the inspiration for this anthology, and for its title. For, of all the dark tales ever told, it was the work of the Brothers Grimm that told the darkest, and for that reason we didn't just want out fairy tales to be grim, we wanted them to be grimmer.

  Lynda Collins

  Lynda Collins was born in 1986. She has been writing since the tender age of five and even has the school reports to prove it, though she would like to hope that she has improved a little since then.

  In 2012 she decided that her writing wasn’t too terrible and starting submitting some short stories to various publishers. Since then, as well as a few published on the internet, she has a story published in ‘Undead Tales 2,’ an anthology of zombie stories. Lynda has also contributed to and edited an anthology of supernatural stories with the Belfast Writers Group, called ‘The Ghosts in the Glass’ to raise money for the charity, Action Cancer. Recently, her story ‘Alice and the Ace of Spades’ has been accepted for the anthology ‘Down the Rabbit hole.’

  Whilst she had until recently
focused on writing short stories, she has now decided to knuckle down and write something longer. She is currently working on the first of a series of four fantasy books, each inspired by one of the four classical elements; Earth, Water, Air and Fire.

  You can contact her at her website: (www.lyndacollinsblog.wordpress.com), which she really needs to start using properly.

  Lynda's retold fairy tale is called 'Building the Dream'. I asked her what inspired this fairy tale.

  As for what inspired me:

  When I was younger I had a big book of proper fairytales; ones where two out of three little pigs were eaten, and ugly step sisters cut off their toes to try to fit in Cinderella’s shoes. They were dark, but brilliant, and they stuck with me far better than the fluffy, child-friendly versions ever would have. When I came to write my own fairytale story, I wanted to show my appreciation to some of the scores of fairytales which had inspired me over the years. Leafing through my book of fairytales looking for inspiration, I came across an image of Rapunzel’s tower: big, bizarre and isolated. That got me thinking, ‘who on earth would have built that?’ and from there, I started thinking about all of the unusual buildings in fairytales and nursery rhymes and who would have designed them. After that, it was an easy step to create Frank Ory, the fairytale architect.

  Building the Dream

  by Lynda Collins

  A car shuddered and rumbled to a stop just outside of the offices of Jack and Ory Ltd. The car was entirely black, with darkened windows and black wheel trims; in fact, there was so much black it was almost as though a motorised shadow had come growling down the road. As the car stopped it backfired, sending a blue cloud of smoke full of sparks into the air. The sparks landed on a nearby dandelion, turning it into a large Venus flytrap.

  In an office on the top floor of the building Frank Ory sighed and crumpled up the page in front of him. It was a note from his secretary telling him that he was being sued by the Small Bad Wolf, son of the famous Big Bad one. Small claimed that his father had died of a heart attack whilst trying to blow down the high-density Scandinavian straw-bale house that Frank had designed for one of the Three Little Pigs. Not only were the straw bales eco-friendly, they were as firm as … well, bricks.

  Frank shook his head; there was no way that the wolf would be successful in suing him. There had been a lot of changes in the law since the case of Gingerbread Man. V. Fox. The courts had ruled that killing an animate object or self-aware creature constituted murder, so the wolf had no excuse for trying to blow down the house. Besides, Big Bad had had a restraining order against him, he wasn’t supposed to come within huffing or puffing distant of any pig domicile.

  Frank Ory turned in his chair and parted the blinds in his office to peer out of the window at the new arrival. The car door opened, and a black shoe emerged from the darkness inside it. The toe of the shoe was curled like a shepherd’s crook, and the stocking that followed it was red and white, striped like a candy cane. Inside his office Frank’s eyes widened, and a slow grin spread across his face, it had been a while since he had last seen that particular uniform. The driver of the car pulled out her keys, pointed the plipper at the car and pressed the button. The car chirped, and then transformed into a pumpkin. The driver lifted it, tucked it under her arm and carried it inside.

  Frank quickly smoothed his thinning hair with a comb in his top drawer and straightened his soup-stained tie. Standing up quickly, he hurried about his office tidying things up, putting away pencils, tidying sheaves of pages. Then finally, he put some fresh flyers out on the desk showing a woman in her fifties surrounded by a small horde of children. They were all beaming up at a huge house with seven storeys, twenty windows, a large conservatory, and a rooftop garden. The most stunning thing about the house though, was that it was built in the shape of an enormous shoe - a large Converse high-top. ‘Jack and Ory Architectural Services,’ a caption read, ‘Building houses with sole since 1812.’

  He got back to his chair just as the intercom buzzed. 'Mistress Gothel to see you,' said his secretary.

  'Send her in Cindy.' Frank rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

  The secretary’s voice became a hissing whisper. 'She has a frog with her. It’s the size of a cat.'

  Frank paused, shuddered, and then said, 'send them both in,' as brightly as he could. 'And see if you can find us some refreshments please.'

  He didn’t have to wait long. After about a minute, his door was flung open and the visitor swept into his office; quite literally, she was carrying her broom. Witches, of course, never knock.

  He stood up and held out his hand to her, and then immediately wished that he hadn’t. Her handshake would have been crushing if he hadn’t managed to pull his hand away. 'Please have a seat,' he told her, surreptitiously trying to coax some life back into his injured fingers.

  The Witch put down her broom and then lifted the frog onto the desk in front of them. The secretary hadn’t been exaggerating; the frog was about the size of a large cat, and wore a black studded collar around its neck. It looked at Frank with large yellow doleful eyes, reminding him for all the world of a basset hound. 'What can I do for you?' he asked the witch.

  The witch lent forward in her chair with an intense look on her face. 'You did some work for my sister a few years ago,' she said. 'You built a gingerbread cottage for her.'

  Franked nodded sagely. Although he’d put on about a stone whilst working on the gingerbread project, he’d loved every minute of it. It was just such a shame what had happened. 'Ah yes. Terrible business that. I’m so sorry for your loss. Your sister was a lovely woman, who would have known that those children could have done that?'

  She shook her head sadly. 'I warned my sister against opening a day care centre in the middle of the Black Forest, but she just loved children so much. Sadly it was the death of her. Kids today, eh?'

  Frank nodded. 'True, true. Whatever happened to those two children, do you know?'

  The witch put her hand on the frog’s head. 'I have no idea.'

  'Is there anything I can do for you though?' asked Frank. He was slightly worried that there was another lawsuit coming his way somehow. Thank goodness he’d taken out hex insurance this year.

  'Well, you did such a good job on my sister’s house that I’d like to commission you myself.'

  Frank smiled with both relief and pleasure. 'Of course, what exactly did you have in mind?'

  Just then the door to the office opened and Frank’s secretary Cindy came in precariously balancing a tray. She had a cup of steaming coffee for Frank, a tall glass of pond water - complete with tadpoles - for Mistress Gothel, some gingerbread men, and a small bowl for the frog.

  'I’m sorry, she said apologetically, placing the bowl on the table in front of the doleful amphibian. 'I couldn’t find any flies, so I brought it some raisins. I hope that’s ok.'

  The witch smiled blithely, assuring her that it was fine. Cindy bobbed a curtsey and scurried from the room. 'She’s left a shoe behind,' remarked the witch, glancing down at the floor.

  Frank took a sip of his coffee, and poked one of the gingerbread men to make sure that it wasn’t capable of talking back. 'Yeah, she does that sometimes, she’s sort of famous for it.'

  Surprise registered on the witch’s face. 'Was that Cinderella? The one who’s marrying the prince?'

  'Well, eventually. It turns out that there are more women with size 8 feet than the prince thought - a few men as well - and they’re all clamouring to marry in to the royal family. They should have everything sorted in a few years.' He shrugged. 'Anyway, where were we?'

  She pulled a leaflet from her bag. 'I’m interested in one of your topless towers.'

  'You mean our in Topple-Less™ towers. They’re 100% fire proof, damp proof and dragon-proof.'

  'I want one about a hundred feet or so tall.'

  Frank did a quick calculation. A hundred feet was about 10 storeys. 'No problem. That will be easy to do.'

  'But it can�
��t have any doors, just one little window, high up near the very top.'

  He frowned. It wasn’t the strangest request that he’d ever got, not since he had designed a house exclusively for bears. 'Ok, so I’ll build some sort of external lift or something then?'

  'No, I’ve made my own arrangements. I’m going to climb up Rapunzel’s hair.'

  Frank paused in confusion. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Finally he managed to get a word out. 'What?'

  The witch repeated herself like it was perfectly normal, 'I said I’m going to climb up her hair.'

  'Not that I’m correcting you or anything,' said Frank, 'but is this enchanted hair?'

  'No. Why?'

  'Mistress Gothel, I think one hundred feet is probably a little too tall then.' He leaned back in his chair. 'Frankly, I’m pretty sure that the record for the world’s longest hair is about a fifth of that. Her hair wouldn’t reach from the window to the ground. Perhaps we could make the building smaller?'

  The witch shook her head. 'You’re suggesting we put her in a detached two-storey house? That’s not exactly dramatic.'

  'Granted there’s not as much cachet with that,' said Frank. He had a note pad in front of him on which he jotted down a few ideas, 'but I could always spice it up a bit. Build a password controlled moat; add a dragon, that sort of thing, we have a standing arrangement with a company called Scales’R’us. Or perhaps you would consider giving her a rope ladder? Then we could make the tower much taller.'

  'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your rope ladder,' muttered the witch. She paused, as though deciding how it sounded. Finally she shook her head. 'No. It has to be hair for the sake of the story. I’ll organise a rapid hair-growing spell. I think I saw a copy of the Grimoire L’orielium in the library.'