More Short Stories to Read on a Bus, a Car, a Train, a Plane (or aВ comfy chair anywhere)

Colin Palmer

Twenty-three stories to blow your mind, covering almost everything from romance to horror, and a combination of both! Friends, lovers, cats and dogs, ghosts and killers, aliens, they’re all here waiting for you, so put your feet up, get comfortable, and let’s go…

More Short Stories to Read on a Bus, a Car, a Train, a Plane (or aВ comfy chair anywhere)

Colin Palmer

© Colin Palmer, 2018

ISBNВ 978-83-8126-666-6

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

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Short Stories toВ Read on aВ Bus, aВ Car, aВ Train, aВ Plane, (or aВ comfy chair anywhere)

FOREWORD

One of the groups I write for is called Authors’ Tale, a Facebook Group open to all and sundry who write or aspire to be writers. It is not a big group, not a small group, just about right, but what it does have is a core of people who care about each other, who offer encouragement and critique when asked and who support each other in their endeavour to become an artist of the pen (or pencil, or keyboard).

All the stories in this book have resulted from weekly writing prompts delivered through one of Authors’ Tale’s weekly events. Within a relatively short period of time, I found myself anticipating these prompts and doing my damndest to write for whatever the topic was that particular week. They are raw stories, as published via Authors’ Tale, without the gloss and glamour that time and editing provides and are a reflection of the impromptu response to a sudden trigger, the trigger, of course, being the actual prompt.

The stories contained herein have received a little polish, they needed it! But without Authors’ Tale, probably none of them would have surfaced, even in my over-imaginative mind. I have prefaced each story with the actual writing prompt so that you, the reader, can see where the story originates. You can also be the judge of where I’ve taken it. I make no apology for where my mind takes a story, for that is something beyond my control, creative or otherwise. I enjoy the surprise as much as anybody else, except I get the luxury of seeing it first. Yes, this is the process of how I write – an idea festers and takes hold, then kaboom, story!

Thank you Authors’ Tale, you’re an amazing group of people. Thank you too, for anybody reading this, for it means you must have bought this book. If you have any aspirations to put pen to paper, get onto Facebook, search for Authors’ Tale, and tell them Colin sent you. That way they’ll know who to blame! And you never know, the inspiration you receive from being a member might just lead you along the path to discovering your own latent talent. Good luck, and happy reading.

W152 – He thought there was no such thing as true love, until that moment their eyes met

FOUR

Four! Life wasn’t meant to be this way. Four! It was supposed to be better than this, it should be better.

The first one he understood, and should have learnt from the experience, thought he had – he was young back then, heck, they were both young – childhood sweethearts through high school that everybody said were the perfect couple. Both parents were resigned to and accepting of the fact that the two were inseparable, bound together for life. It seemed the natural thing to do but he knew they’d only done what everybody had expected of them. He’d never mentioned marriage. She hadn’t either, well not directly but there had been a few occasions where she’d hinted, like one of the many times they wandered along the main street, hand-in-hand, she pointing out a ring in the window of the local jewellers, you know, nothing obvious to the manboy he was then! He knew better now.

So why did he do it? Expectation, peer pressure, parental pressure – all of those, after all, it was what everybody else wanted. Oh, and of course there was the sex. It had been the first for both; messy and awkward to begin with then settling into a seemi