Help Our Heroes: A Military Charity Anthology

by T. L. Wainwright

  “You ready to stop being lazy?” I ask breaking the tension and he snorts.

  I carefully wrap my hands back around his ankle, his skin warm beneath my touch and stretch out his leg once again, only this time it’s easier. It looks like someone has finally realised I’m not going anywhere. I quickly scribble some notes down. The damage is bad, but with a proper exercise plan in place his mobility could be greatly improved. The way his finger twitches involuntarily as I hold his wrist also has me hopeful that some of the nerves have begun to repair. Nerve problems are always the hardest because there are no hard or fast rules, the nerves might be rehabilitated but on the other hand they may be irrevocably damaged. It was just a waiting game and maximising the chances for recovery through therapy. I’m not a fool, I know that he won’t be magically fixed under my care but I can definitely help him if only he’d let me.

  “Why did you come back? Am I going to be the pride of your portfolio? Think you can cure the cripple?” He asks as he raises his arm with my help.

  “Look at me,” I crouch down in front of him so we’re eye level, “You are not a cripple. I have worked with cripples. What you are, is a defeatist, but I’m going to change that Corporal Rees so you better get on board and quit whining.”

  “Bossy cunt,” I hear him mumble under his breath and I grin because he didn’t argue back, challenge me or tell me to ‘fuck off’. I’d call that progress.

  James

  Fuckkkkk everything burns. Everything. Up my thighs are the worst, I feel like she’s been peeling my tendons apart with jagged claws before trying to rip off my ballbag. I’m not even joking. It goes all the way up my side and back down my arms. It’s like I’ve been on one of those medieval racks and I’m seriously resisting the urge to bite off her nose as she moves in front of me and lifts my arms above my head. Truth be told, it’s the only part of her I could reach with minimal movement right now. God, my thoughts are messed up. I groan in pain, I can’t help it, it leaves my mouth before I even realise and she eases my arms back down and steps away.

  “I’d say we’re done for today,” she sounds a little out of breath and that’s when I understand it isn’t just me being pulled like Stretch Armstrong, she’s right there alongside me.

  Nodding my eyes never leave her as she does a few stretches of her own. Her back must be killing her. I hope her boyfriend rubs it when she gets home, it must be shit working a job like this every day, helping others move but then finishing as stiff as a board. I used to rub Tiffany’s feet after a long day at the office and I feel angry that I’ll never be able to do that again. Anger is an emotion I’ve become very familiar with these days, it’s my constant companion. It’s like a rotten seed in my chest, pushing poisonous vines out from my centre through every limb and there’s nothing I can do.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow, the same time. I recommend a bath this evening because you’re going to be a little tender,” she says as she pulls her jacket on and zips it up.

  I scoff, “Tender my arse.”

  Grinning she picks up her bag and slings it over her shoulder, “Good, I take it that means you’re already feeling it.”

  I say nothing but I scowl, I can’t help it. Admittedly I am feeling something besides the pain, I notice that I’m a little less stiff. It’s like when you get up early and have that first stretch, that one where it feels like all your joints are popping out of the sockets before slotting back in again. I want to feel hopeful, like she clearly does but I know that there is no fixing what I’ve become. I’m trapped in this fleshy prison and she doesn’t have the key, despite what she may think.

  ***

  “I was talking to the venue today; they said they’d be willing to push back the wedding until the end of the year.”

  I say nothing, just keep staring out the window of my ground floor prison. Yesterday’s burning agony is now just a throbbing ache.

  “They said because you’re a veteran they won’t even charge us for changing the date, we just need to sign the new contract this week,” she says excitedly and I finally look at her.

  Her platinum blonde hair is swept up into an elegant bun but her normally immaculate face looks tired. Sometimes I wonder if she wants this wedding more than me. Does she realise what being married to a cripple looks like? I’m not magically going to stand and walk back up the aisle with her, there will be no first dance, no carrying her over the threshold of our house. I haven’t been back there since before my accident. They decided it wasn’t suited to someone with my ‘complex needs’ while I worked on my recovery. I snort, recovery? Yeah, right.

  “What?” Tiffany demands, her blue eyes watching my carefully, “Why did you make that noise?”

  “Look, Tiff…” I place my good hand over hers.

  “Don’t. You’re going to tell me that I’m being silly, but I need this.” She exhales slowly, as if she is calming some inner turmoil and my heart breaks for the woman I had planned to spend the rest of my life with.

  “You need to plan a wedding that will never happen?” I quirk an eyebrow at her, it’s all she ever talks about when we’re together. It’s like there’s nothing else between us now.

  “Why can’t you just try? You have that new physio coming again today and―”

  A sudden flash of anger fills me, why do they all assume that I don’t want to get better? Just because I’m being realistic, I’m the bad guy.

  “You think I’m not? You think I want to be like this?”

  Now it’s her turn to sit in silence as a tear rolls down her cheek and plops on to her blouse. We’re done here.

  “I think it’s best if you leave Tiffany.”

  My mother fusses around me after Tiffany storms from the house, door slamming behind her.

  “She loves you James, she’s just struggling―we all are,” she says gently as she makes my bed.

  “Mum, she loved me when I was her big strong soldier. I was away for six months at a time and when I was on leave I spoiled her. I took her dancing, out for fancy dinners and planned an extravagant wedding. I can’t go back to that. She doesn’t accept me as I am now― how is that love?” I turn my chair to the window and watch as she climbs into her Audi and speeds out of the drive.

  She sighs, “It’s complicated…”

  “I know.”

  ***

  The tension in the house since Tiffany left is palpable; you could cut it with a spoon never mind a knife. My parents have been hiding in the kitchen waiting for Beatrice to show and even I find myself feeling some sort of weird anticipation. Yesterday was hard, brutal and all we’d done was stretch but I slept like the dead after, dreamless and in darkness. It was my own special kind of bliss.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she babbles as she bursts in through my door. She quickly dumps down her sports bag and moves my chair to face her.

  “I have something for you,” she says with a wicked smile. Slowly she unzips her jacket, was my physio about to flash me? Admittedly, she was cute but she was also a no-go.

  Finally she shrugs off the bulky hoodie and I laugh. Actually laugh for the first time in months. She’s wearing a tight white t-shirt that clings to every curve and dip of her body but emblazoned across her perky tits it reads ‘Bossy Cunt’ in bold red writing.

  “See, I knew you weren’t a grumpy arse all of the time,” she grins.

  Sitting on the bed before me, she pulls out her notes. I knew this was coming after yesterday's torture. It was my care plan.

  “Okay, down to business. I think we have to be realistic with your goals here, after all I’m only here for a month.”

  Something tightens in my chest, only a month? That’s not enough time.

  “So today we’re going to work on some muscle massage, I can show your mum how to help with that. But my aim by the end of the month is to have you standing, maybe even a step or two.”

  “Right. I always said you were fucking crazy.”

  Beatrice sighs, “Corporal Rees, you have the
potential to walk again with a lot of work but that’s not going to happen if you keep being a miserable bastard.”

  “But being miserable looks so good on me,” I say with a grumble.

  She shrugs, “Actually, I preferred you when you laughed. Hell, even when you were being stubborn yesterday you looked more attractive than you do now.”

  “You think I’m attractive? Don’t you see my scars?” She was definitely crazy. I was a mangled mess of fleshy lumps and bumps.

  “Of course I do. But you’re an idiot if you think they define you.”

  The sass I could deal with, but the blunt honesty she shows time and time again knocks me for six. It’s like she’s deflated the angry, self-loathing air in my sails. I look at her through narrowed eyes, there’s this positivity that seems to emanate from her no matter how hard I push. I mean, just look at that t-shirt. I insult her and she wears it like a badge of fucking honour. I think my respect for her has just grown by several notches.

  “Okay, so now we’re going to get you on the floor and work on an all over body massage to loosen you up from yesterday.”

  I’m lowered out of my chair on down onto the carpet with help from her and the bars around my room. With a cushion under my head I watch carefully as she stretches across my chest to reach my bad arm, breasts brushing against me, her arse in the air.

  The thought of those hands all over my broken body, touching me in ways I haven’t been touched in months spark something in my brain and dirty thoughts flood in about the innocent, cheery physio in the tight t-shirt. Fuck, I think I just almost died. Again.

  About the Author

  Alice La Roux is a dirty minded, foul mouthed Welsh author who dabbles in erotica and fantasy. She’s a bookworm who drinks too much prosecco (is there such a thing?), loves her dog and is addicted to social media. Feel free to add her on Facebook, she doesn’t bite…much.

  ]You can find her page here:

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asmadasAlice/

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/AliLaRoux

  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicelaroux/

  Riding Out The Storm

  by

  Lucy Felthouse

  Blurb:

  Cecelia is on a week-long artist’s retreat in the North Yorkshire Moors. She’s eager to capture the beauty of the local landscape on paper and is looking forward to the inspiration the area will provide. But a howler of a storm is due to hit the area, so she’s stuck indoors until it passes by. She’s not too concerned, until an unexpected visitor arrives. Clark, a sexy soldier, is helping to evacuate residents from at risk properties in the area. Only, when it comes to helping Cecelia, things aren’t straightforward, and the pair end up stranded. They have no choice but to ride out the storm together.

  Riding Out the Storm

  When Cecelia had first seen the weather outlook for her week-long retreat in the North Yorkshire Moors, she’d been devastated. The idea had been to get into the great outdoors with her painting materials and capture the beauty and majesty of the countryside. To commit to paper the play of light, of clouds, upon trees, grass, moors, sheep.

  At first, she’d thrown a childish tantrum and ranted about cancelling. But since the trip was only days away, she’d have lost all the money she’d paid, so when her initial anger and disappointment had drained away, she’d decided to go anyway. With any luck, the storm would blow itself out quickly and she could spend the remainder of her week painting outside, as she’d planned. Who knew, the devastation the weather left behind might even provide some inspirational subject matter. Broken tree branches and fences, mud-slides, puddles… yes, she was definitely going to make the best of a crappy situation.

  But she hadn’t expected inspiration to strike during the storm.

  The rain lashed ferociously and relentlessly against the windows, but Cecelia didn’t care. Let it rain, she thought; let the wind howl around the building, causing alarming creaking sounds and forcing cold draughts in through the tiniest of crevices. She didn’t care. She’d come here to paint, and that’s precisely what she was doing.

  Granted, the thick cloud cover meant that the natural light flowing into her studio was poor—abysmal, in fact—so she was working by electric light, but she didn’t care about that, either. It seemed to lend an air of mystery, of obscurity, to her work—as though she could see it, but not truly see it until the horrendous weather front finally passed over and the sun was allowed to shine once more. But that wouldn’t be for a while yet.

  She’d arrived at her rental property before the nasty weather hit and unloaded her car, before going grocery shopping, then settling in to wait out the storm. She’d brought books, magazines, her Kindle, tablet, and some DVDs along for her downtime—she wouldn’t be painting twenty-four seven, after all—so she wasn’t worried about being bored. But when the storm had arrived, fairly mild at first, then rapidly growing in intensity, some invisible force had drawn her upstairs, to the lovely room that had made her choose the property as her retreat in the first place. As soon as she’d walked in and checked out the view from the window—grey and ominous looking as it was—she’d hurried back down to the hallway to retrieve her painting materials.

  That had been several hours ago, and she’d barely moved from her stool since—only for the necessary food, drink, and bathroom breaks, when she couldn’t ignore her body’s pleas any longer.

  Now, she was well and truly in the zone, so when she heard what she thought was a knock on the door, she paused for a second, then shook her head. Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody was crazy enough to be out in this weather, and nobody around here knew her anyway, so she dismissed it. Maybe there was a loose fence panel rattling around in the garden or something.

  She carried on painting, carefully capturing in watercolour the majesty of what she was seeing through the large window she’d positioned herself in front of. It faced out across the moors, and so far her image was about two-thirds done. She’d worked her way from the ground up, and was now putting down on paper the last of the treetops in her view. Next, she would move on to the sky which, considering the way the fierce wind was dragging clouds across it, making its appearance change constantly, was going to be quite the challenge. And then there was the rain—that was a whole other ball game.

  The knocking sound came again; louder this time. Cecelia sighed and, after a moment, put down her paintbrush. Maybe she should go and investigate. If she could secure whatever it was that was making the noise, she probably ought to. It wasn’t her property, but it was the decent thing to do. She wouldn’t like it if the roles were reversed and somebody else ignored it, after all.

  Getting reluctantly to her feet—there was no way she wanted to go out in this hideous weather—she made her way down the stairs. Just as she reached the bottom, the thumping came yet again.

  But this time it was accompanied by something else, something she’d never have believed had she not been right on the other side of the door. A voice. A man’s voice, if she wasn’t mistaken. “Hello? Hello? Are you in there? If you’re there, please answer the door! I’m here to help you!” Yes, it was definitely a man’s voice. Deep, and growing increasingly frustrated.

  Help me? Unless you’re going to cook me some dinner and bring me cups of tea while I get on with my painting, how can you possibly help me?

  She crossed to the door. It didn’t have a peephole, so she couldn’t surreptitiously check out her mysterious visitor. It did have a security chain, however, so she slipped it on before opening the door a crack. The wind gusted through the tiny gap, making Cecelia gasp at its ferocity and chill. Her instinct was to take the chain off and fling the door open to let the man in out of the cold and the wet, but the sensible part of her stood firm, reminding her that just because he said he was here to help, didn’t mean he was telling the truth. He could be a psychotic serial killer for all she knew, stalking the moors, seeking out people in remote places and—

  Her wild imaginings were
cut off when the man said, “Thank God! I was beginning to think you’d actually gone out in this, and that we were going to have to send out mountain rescue to find you.”

  Her visitor was covered from head to foot in heavy duty waterproof gear. All she could make out was part of his face, which was barely visible inside the hood he had pulled tightly around it. He shifted from foot to foot, and she saw the flash of teeth as he smiled. “Can I come in, please? It’ll be a lot easier to help you if I can explain without shouting over this wind and rain.”

  Cecelia frowned. “I’m sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong house. I don’t need any help—I’m perfectly all right, thank you.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, you’re not. Or you won’t be, anyway. The area is starting to flood, and the rain is showing no sign of abating any time soon. This house is a huge flood risk. You need to get your belongings upstairs, and… where’s your car?”

  “Flood? Car?” Now it was her turn to shake her head. What the hell was he talking about?

  “Please, let me in. I realise I’m some random stranger at your door, but I’m not here to hurt you—I’m here to help. And time is of the essence. Look,” he loosened the ties of his hood and shoved it down, “why don’t you take my photograph on your phone and post it online somewhere? Or send it to a friend? There’s no phone signal out here, but you’re logged into the WiFi, right? Just for your peace of mind.”

  He seemed to be well informed about the area. But that didn’t mean he was genuine. He could just be a serial killer who had done his research. Would a serial killer be encouraging her to take his photograph and post it online, though? Highly unlikely.