Wonderful Short Stories

by Stan Mason

  ‘You’re lying!’ he snapped. ‘Open the drawer underneath the cash-register! I’m sure you have more in there.’

  She stared at him, the whites of her eyes becoming apparent as her gaze continued to focus on the gun. ‘Okay, I’ll get it,’ she muttered, her hands trembling as she reached down below. Shortly, she brought up six wads of cash and passed them across the counter. ‘There you are,’ she told him, her legs still shaking. ‘That’s all there is.’

  He seemed satisfied that he had the best part of fifty thousand dollars and turned to leave the building. However, the security guard had recovered by this time and he stood unsteadily by the door with a revolver in his hand.

  ‘Drop the gun!’ he commanded in an urgent tone. ‘Drop it or I’ll fire.’

  Christopher had two options. He could either obey the command in which case he would go to jail for attempting to rob the bank. Alternatively, he could ignore the order, raise his gun, and attempt shoot the security officer before he fired at him. He decided that the only way was to adopt the second option and he turned quickly pointing the gun at the officer. However, the security guard was too quick for him and he fired first hitting the bandit in the shoulder.

  Then, without warning, the mist cleared before his eyes as quickly as it came across and he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder which made him cause the vehicle to swerve.

  ‘Hell!’ he screamed. ‘I’ve been hit in the shoulder which means I’ve been captured by the police!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ She stared at him with a serious expression on her face. It appeared that he had lost his mind completely. How could he have been hit? There were no other cars on the road either in front or behind! And where did the police come into it? There was no one else around!

  ‘You’ll be pleased to know I’m going to take your advice,’ he told her slowly. ‘I won’t rob the bank. You’re right. I’ve decided not to rob it.’ He moved his shoulder forwards and backwards to try to ease the pain.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ she enquired with concern, ‘You’re acting irrationally and it’s getting on my nerves.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s happening,’ he replied vacantly. ‘I seem to get a mist coming over my eyes and... ’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t be driving,’ she cautioned him. ‘Stop the car and Let me have a look at them.’

  ‘It’s not so much that as the guy sitting in the back,’ he went on. ‘He’s driving me nuts!’

  She turned to look at the back seat but, as far as she was concerned, there was no one there. ‘What does he look like?’

  Christopher examined the reflection in his internal mirror to identify the man. ‘He’s about sixty years old, wearing an old black suit and a trilby hat. His face is white, he’s got grey hair, a neat moustache, and dark brown eyes.’

  ‘And you can see him quite clearly.’

  ‘He’s sitting there now. Looking at me. Why do you say you can’t see him?’

  ‘Because there’s no one there! It’s all in your mind. As I said, the problem of the shares has made you flip.’

  ‘Well I know what I have to do now,’ he told her eventually. ‘I’m going to the office of my stockbroker this evening and steal the money from his safe. If I could delete the transaction of the shares from his computer I’d do it but I know he has back-up tapes of the transaction so I wouldn’t get away with it. I know he keeps a substantial amount of money in his safe. Enough to let me off the hook.’

  ‘And how are you going to gain entry to the building where he works?’ she asked in a dull tone. There seemed to be no limit to her boyfriend’s imagination.

  ‘That’s easy,’ he replied swiftly. ‘When I made the deal, he gave me the codes of the security device so that I could meet him in his office. After all, I was a new client willing to invest fifty thousand dollars. Don’t you worry, honey, I know exactly how to get into the building.’

  Before he could say anything more about the plan, a mist came over his eyes and he found himself inside one of the elevators in the building soaring up to the fifteenth floor. It was night time and everyone else, except the security officers, had gone home. When he reached the desired level, he alighted and walked down the dimly-lit corridor to one of the offices. He tapped in the security code known to him and there was a loud click as the door opened. Inside, with the help of a torch, he found the safe in a corner of the room. He had no idea of the combination but in his younger days he had befriended a man who was a peterman... a safe-cracker. He was well aware of the rudiments of safe-cracking. He played with the dials for almost ten minutes, listening to the gentle clicks that were made as the wards fell into place. Then, suddenly, the safe door opened. He switched on the light to determine the contents. There were many documents and some money but it clearly fell far short of the fifty thousand dollars he required. He began to panic at that point and started to jemmy open the drawers in the main desk in the office. However, to his dismay, there was no money in any of them. Then he heard voices and footsteps along the corridor. It was too late to turn out the light so he hid behind a screen. But it wasn’t enough. Two security guards appeared in the doorway, attracted by the light and they searched the office for an intruder pointing their guns in his direction. When they found him a few seconds later, he began jabbering about stocks and shares and money. They were completely disinterested in his excuses. They had discovered an intruder in the building in an office where he had opened a safe. Money and documents lay haphazardly on the floor and the culprit had been apprehended.

  ‘When you opened that safe, it triggered an alarm downstairs on our monitor and at the police precinct,’ explained one of the security guards. ‘You didn’t have a chance.’

  The police arrived shortly and handcuffed him before taking him back to the precinct. He was soon charged with burglary, theft, and a number of other offences, and it was patently obvious he would be sent to prison for a considerable amount of time. He rued the fact that he had ever thought of the idea but hindsight was a marvellous gift not afforded in advance to human-beings. As he entered a damp dark cell, the mist cleared and he found himself driving along the highway again towards Carmel.

  ‘Wow! That was some experience,’ he told Jodie with relief. ‘I thought I was done for. They caught me fair and square.’

  ‘Who did?’ she asked, becoming tired of the game he was playing. It was becoming too much for her to handle.

  ‘The security guards, of course,’ he replied smartly. ‘Well that’s another plan out of the window. I shan’t be robbing my stockbroker’s safe. It has an alarm attached to the security system and the police precinct.’

  ‘Where is all this coming from?’ she demanded, although she knew she wouldn’t receive a satisfactory reply.

  ‘It must have something to do with the guy back there,’ he ventured thoughtfully. ‘Ever since he came into this automobile strange things have been happening. It’s as though every time I think of something criminal to do, I’m projected forward in time to see the outcome. And it’s never good. I think he must be some kind of angel sent here to stop me from getting myself into trouble. You see, I was going to kill my uncle if he didn’t give me the money. But he’d remarried and there were two of my cousins at his house. I killed them all but the police came and arrested me. Then I robbed the bank but the security guard shot me in the shoulder and I was arrested by the police. And just now, I got into my stockbroker’s office and opened the safe but there wasn’t much money in there. Anyway, the alarm system was triggered and I was caught and arrested again. You see, it’s as though I’m able to see the future and I’m being protected from it.’ He looked in his mirror towards the rear seats and his face screwed up in a perplexed expression. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘He’s gone! He’s not there any more!’

  ‘Thank heavens for small mercies,’ uttered Jodie under her breath. ‘At
last you’ve found yourself again.’ He switched on the radio and tuned into a news broadcast. ‘What are you doing?’ she went on. ‘You never listen to the radio when you’re driving. Never.’

  ‘Something tells me I’ve got to do it,’ he told her bluntly.

  ‘... while the union denies the allegations,’ stated the newscaster. ‘Now for the financial news. The Dow Jones index on Wall Street was up forty two points at nine thirty this morning. News has just come in that Salfrafa Internet Technology have received a take-over bid from the Farscaper Corporation. The offer is twenty- five dollars a share which has been accepted by the Salfrafa board. In the aftermath of yesterday’s fall out, telecommunications... ’

  ‘Yahoo!’ screamed Christopher excitedly at the news, switching off the radio. ‘They’ve been taken over!’ He paused to work out the calculation. ‘Did you hear that? My shares have been taken over! At twenty-five dollars a share. That means not only will I be able to pay back the fifty thousand but we’ll also have about fifteen thousand dollars in hand. Wow!’ He turned the car round so that it faced the other direction. ‘We’re going back home,’ he said delightedly. ‘We’re going back home.’ He glanced in his mirror to look at the back seat. ‘And thanks, mister, whoever you are. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.’

  Jodie stared at him in despair. She still thought he had lost his mind. A man in the back seat! An invisible man! Huh

  The Landlord

  What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? The answer is that they create an impasse... a form of deadlock! It would appear at first sight that there is no means by which either side can make any progress. However, this premise may be in doubt when the involvement is between a man and a woman. Be that as it may, when Gerald Waterford came face-to-face with Felicity Halstead there was no clash of personalities... no irresistible forces or immovable objects. Yet circumstances prevailed between them which led them to become involved with each other in a form where resistance and immovability were in action all the time. After all, what else can happen when a man is a miser and the woman has a distinct motive in mind of which he has no idea? It had nothing to do with spending his money so what did she intend to do? The only matter which caused suspicion on his part was the fact that he was ugly and she was an attractive woman some thirty years younger than him. Yet, as a respectable man, one who had been totally celibate all his life, he had little option but to enjoy the situation and live in hope!

  Barnbridge was an ordinary town which had developed through the sudden and rapid influx of tin miners in the middle of the nineteenth century. In time, however, the price of tin plummeted and the mines closed down one by one. Sadly, in order to extract the metal from the ground, the owners had allowed the miners they employed to dig indiscriminately all over the town. Consequently, the result was a confusion of hundreds of underlying shafts which stretched like rabbit warrens below the surface everywhere. Local builders had taken the opportunity to buy the land cheaply because it was relatively worthless. What could anyone do with ground which was cursed with mine shafts located below? However, they negligently ignored the consequences, erecting cottages and houses, uncaring what the end result would be in years to come when serious subsidence would occur, causing the properties to crack and tilt as the earth settled. Indeed, the town was quite small. It boasted a town hall, a cinema, two banks, two building societies, about forty-five shops of all kinds, and a community centre. However, it was blessed with a very high hill at the southern end and there was also a town square with evidence of a gibbet, although no one had been hung there during the last century. The residential district had been developed into two distinct areas. One for the rich and one for the poor. The West End consisted of the finest houses built in late Victorian times which had been modernised and were well looked after. They had large gardens, fountains on the lawns, trellis-work which supported a plethora of ivy and colourful flowers all the year round, a multitude of modern facilities in the kitchen and in the other rooms, while the external walls were painted white regularly every two years. The people who lived there were reasonably affluent... the doctors, the bankers, the lawyers, the shop owners, and the reasonably wealthy retired. In contrast, the East End was quite the opposite. Except where new buildings had sprung up in the most incongrous of places, practically all the dwellings had been built almost two hundred years ago. In the main, they were impoverished cottages built for the tin miners who had once worked in the district but were now long gone. They were a disgrace because the bricks on the outside walls had turned black and were badly pitted, the unkempt gardens were extremely tiny, each property contained only the most meagre Spartan facilities, the small rooms attracted dampness which was evidenced by the green mould spreading across the walls, and it is only fair to say that no money had been spent on them in many years except to shore up walls when serious problems occurred.

  Gerald Waterford was a local man, born and bred in Barnbridge. His father had run a large farm which his son had sold after his death. The Waterfords could trace their family tree back some six centuries. Gerald was a dapper man, fairly short, with hair that was so thin one could practically call him bald, and he had a weasel face passed down to him through generations of ugly ancestors which made him unattractive to women. Consequently, he never married. In fact he had never even courted anyone of the opposite sex and had experienced a pretty solitary celibate life. Throughout the last thirty years, he had purchased many run-down properties as they came onto the market at the most ridiculously low prices. Without caring to spend any of his money on repairs or decoration, he let them out to people on assured shorthold tenancies at moderate-to-high rents. The miserable unfortunates who needed a home had no option but to pay quite handsomely in order to live in derelict properties where conditions were bad and the facilities were exceedingly poor. Yet, despite the fact that the cottages were infiltrated with dampness, that they consistently retained a foul musty smell, that mould often appeared on walls, that the pressure of water from the taps was weak because the metal pipes had clogged up over the years, that every home was in danger of catching fire because they all needed to be rewired, he was inundated with requests from desperate people who contacted him regularly in the hope of finding one of the cottages available for rent.

  Waterford was extremely cautious with his finances. He trusted no one but himself and he collected the rents personally the whole year round. Although he now owned exactly forty cottages, and the income from rents far outweighed his expenses, he was always apprehensive about some of his tenants. Most of them were pleasant and reasonable paying their rent on the due date with a happy word and a smile, but there were others, conniving devious people who continually tried to avoid paying him anything whatsoever. Even though they knew it was important for them to have a roof over their head, it seemed to be inherent in their nature to do everything in their power not to pay their rent. Over the years, they adopted different measures and various excuses to achieve their ends, some of which were outrageous while others were quite original. More often than not, such cheats pretended to be continually absent from their homes when he called for the collection. They usually did this by hiding in one of the bedrooms, refusing to open the front door until he went away. If they happened to be seen when he called, they would face him making up all kinds of excuses giving false reasons why they had no means by which to pay him. Inevitably, he would witness them on the following morning spending their money in supermarkets, in cigarette machines, and in the shops. However, the odds were always in his favour because after two months in arrears he would issue them with a notice to quit and apply to the Court for a summons. The legal process took about six months after which they would be ejected from their homes by a bailiff. Unfortunately, during that period, it was their usual custom not to pay any rent, albeit, in the end, they would find themselves out of house and home. However, such people were in the mino
rity and Waterford earned himself quite a good living from the mass of rents he collected each week.

  He was normally extremely careful when interviewing new applicants, checking their references and any other information he managed to obtain from them. Nonetheless, on one occasion, he let one of the properties to a young woman by the name of Felicity Halstead against his better judgement. She was about twenty-two years of age, unmarried, and she was very attractive. Her black hair hung down to her shoulders, she had high cheekbones giving her a slightly oriental expression, her nose was retrousse, her skin was pale and, strangely enough, she had blue eyes. When she first came to Waterford asking for a tenancy he looked at her closely scanning her face and body. Most of the tenants were married or had families. He didn’t normally allow single people to rent any of his properties but, in her case for reasons he could not define, he decided to relent. He was so enchanted by the woman that he even failed to ask whether she was working, or if she had a boyfriend, or even if she intended to move on after a short period of time. He merely asked her to sign the assured shorthold tenancy forms, took the deposit from her, and handed her the key to the front door. Needless to say all his fears came true with regard to payment of the rent. When he called at the end of the first week, her face puckered up and tears poured down her cheeks as she related her sad story.

  ‘I haven’t any money,’ she cried bitterly. ‘I’m unable to pay you.’ He asked the reason and she told him that she couldn’t find anyone to employ her. ‘I’ve never learned any skills,’ she explained unhappily, ‘so there’s nothing I can really do. I’m useless at computers and that’s all they seem to want these days. People who can work with computers.’

  The landlord found himself in a dilemma. ‘What are we going to do?’ he asked. ‘You can’t go on like this... not paying your rent. I mean, it’s not right, is it?’