As I prep my short story collection Guitars Vs. Rayguns!! Short Stories And Other White Lies for its tentative May publication, I'm working on a few more stories I may want to include in that book. Here are the openings to some of my current works in progress:
THE TRAITOR'S GUIDE TO HELL
The ghost of Quisling knocked back a drink. The liquor had no effect on him. Souls damned to spend eternity in Hell felt no buzz from alcohol, no fulfillment from food, no relief from any resource, no matter how much they consumed. Quisling drank anyway, out of habit. He downed another shot before rising to greet the tourists that had entered his dismal office.
"Vidkun Quisling at your service," he purred, his cheery facade unconvincing to anyone who bothered to pay attention. The indifference of his guests rendered the point moot. "I shall be your tour guide on your visit to Hell."
The guests murmured in vague acknowledgement. "Follow," the host bid them, and the group obeyed, trailing Quisling's ghost as he descended into the brimstone realm they'd come to see...
...The question made the ghost pause. He resisted the unfamiliar urge to gaze toward Hell's opposite, toward the eternal realm reserved solely for the kind and the just. "No," Quisling replied. "There is no music in Hell, no music of any kind." A sadness tinged his voice. A memory of a waltz he'd loved in life almost--almost--crept into his head, but the memory was denied access. Hell's rules are Hell's rules. "The devil has no music to call his own. Music belongs...elsewhere."
With a dismissive shrug, the ghost of Quisling consigned the tourist to the pits. To Quisling's ears, the hapless sinner's screams served as the best available substitute for music. The others in the tour group remained unconcerned. Nothing had happened to them....
THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MAGIC, CHAPTER 13
Darren was 13 years old, and his parents had just divorced. His mother no longer loved his father. His father never loved her to begin with, and they only married because it was the right thing to do: You get a girl pregnant, you do the right thing. The right thing doesn't come with an asterisk or an escape clause; it's the right thing, and you do it.
But the Mom and the Dad did love Darren. They had stayed together for Darren's sake, for as long as they were able, trying to love each other, trying to keep on doing that damned elusive right thing. As their arguments worsened, as money got tighter and tempers shorter, as temptations grew more irresistible and frustrations more palpable, the Mom and the Dad agreed on one thing only: Ending the marriage would hurt Darren, but prolonging its loud and unpleasant facade would hurt him even more.The magic was gone. Really, the magic had never been there to begin with.
Darren understood. He did. He tried to put on a brave face, like the mighty comic book superheroes he adored. He hid his mild-mannered self behind adolescent bravado. He only cried when he knew that no one could see him.
The bravado proved to be a problem. His smart mouth drew the ire of bigger boys in school. Darren was neither faster than a speeding bullet nor more powerful than a locomotive, and he got his ass kicked with depressing regularity.
Darren's parents grew up in an era when the notion of counseling was an admission of flaws, an admission of defeat. But they loved Darren. They swallowed their pride, and sought help on Darren's behalf....
THE FIRST RIDE OF FREEDOM'S WHIP
Hattie would obey no longer.
It was 1861. Hattie was fourteen years old, and she had been born into slavery. Her mother had been abducted from Africa, shipped to America, sold to a fat white devil who believed in his right to own people. He didn't regard them as people. They were his property, and that was all they were. He could do with his property as he saw fit....
THE COPPERHEAD KID'S NEW YORK ADVENTURE
He wasn't really used to big cities. But being in a teeming metropolis didn't bother him. The twenty years he'd spent on the run from the law taught him to adapt, to find his place in whatever place he found himself. Places were temporary. As a fugitive, he usually wouldn't stick around long enough to care all that much about where he was.
He'd settled down since then. Decades ago, he'd been a young gunslinger called the Copperhead Kid. He wasn't young anymore, and he wasn't a gunslinger anymore. He'd faked his death, put down his guns, and left the West behind. Go East, old man. Thirty-five years later, twenty years into this new 20th century, the former Copperhead Kid had a new life with a new name, a wife, a family. His younger sister's cheap tin brooch was the only thing he'd held onto from his past, and he kept that out of sight. There was no need for anyone to remember the Copperhead Kid.
But someone did remember.
The Kid was pushing 70 by now. Old enough to have one foot--hell, both feet--in the grave, but that had been true of the Kid for many years. Old enough to be a grandfather, but he'd started normal life late in life. He had a son, Hart, aged 29, who now lived in Harlem, and a 13-year-old daughter, Hedda, who lived with the Kid and his wife upstate.
How do I know all of this? I'm Hedda. I was there, for the Copperhead Kid's New York adventure. Daddy just didn't know that I was there. Not yet.
I trailed Daddy to an office building in Manhattan. From my vantage point out of his line of sight, I saw him stop at a newsstand. He appeared to be angry about something he saw there. As he disappeared into the building, I ran up and could immediately understand what had drawn his ire: a row of 10-cent story magazines--I guess they were called "pulps"--with a garish logo proclaiming The Copperhead Kid. We'd seen similar Copperhead Kid magazines--pulps--at a five-and-dime back home.
Daddy was not pleased. That's why he came to New York: To put a stop to it.
Permanently....
Time will tell if I complete any or all of these stories for inclusion in the book. I also want to write at least one more story in my foul-mouthed rock 'n' roll science fiction comedy series Guitars Vs. Rayguns to complete this short story anthology bearing the GvR! name. I'm still targeting mid-May for publication. Stay tuned as the tweak goes on.
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