Lovers' Lane E-Book

Cora Buhlert

• Herausgeber: Cora Buhlert
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

1956. After a sock hop at the local high school gym, teenagers Betty and Cody drive out to Lovers' Lane together. Betty knows only too well that good girls don't go to Lovers' Lane with boys. But Cody is her one true love and besides, he swore that he'd love her forever or may he be struck down where he stands. But then, an alien invasion shows Betty just what Cody's word is truly worth…

This is a short story of 6200 words or approx. 20 pages in the The Day the Saucers Came… series, but may be read as a standalone.

Leseprobe

Lovers’ Lane

by Cora Buhlert

Bremen, Germany

Copyright © 2016 by Cora Buhlert

All rights reserved.

Cover image © by Phil Cold via Dreamstime

Cover design by Cora Buhlert

Pegasus Pulp Publications

Mittelstraße 12

28816 Stuhr

Germany

www.pegasus-pulp.com

June 9th, 1956, known all over the world as “the day the saucers came”. Now, for the first time in print, read these sensational eyewitness accounts from people who were there and lived to tell the tale. Prepare to be shocked and horrified, as you read what it was truly like — on the day the saucers came…

A series of first person accounts narrated from the POV of the survivors of a 1950s B-movie type alien invasion.

Lovers’ Lane

June 9th, 1956. It was the night I drove out to Lovers’ Lane, the night my life changed forever.

Looking back, I really should have known better than to drive out to Lovers’ Lane with Cody Barrett. After all, everybody knew what happened at Lovers’ Lane, what the boys and the girls who went there did.

Not that I really knew what went on at Lovers’ Lane — no, I was far too naïve and innocent. But I knew that what the boys and girls did there was bad and sinful. Good girls like me, girls who wanted to go to college and marry a good husband one day, didn’t go to Lovers’ Lane and they didn’t do that sort of thing. Only sluts and hussies did. Not that I really knew what sluts and hussies were either. But like every good girl, I knew a slut when I saw one.

But I was young, barely sixteen years old, and so very much in love with Cody Barrett. Cody and me, that was true love — the kind that lasts forever. Or so I thought.

That night, Cody and I had gone to the sock hop in the gym of Herbert Hoover High School. I was wearing my very best dress — white polka dot organdy with a petticoat and a wide belt of shiny red vinyl. I wore bobby socks and saddle shoes polished to a high gloss, my hair was in a ponytail and I looked pretty, as pretty as I’d never looked either before or since in my life.

I danced with Cody all night long. During a break, we sneaked outside to catch some air and Cody used that opportunity to give me his high school ring. I was sporting it on my finger, wrapped with a rubber band to make it fit, and showed it to everybody who wanted to see it and many who didn’t. For this ring, this ugly thing of gilded pot metal and rhinestone that didn’t even fit properly, was the symbol of our love, the sign that made it official. Cody and I were going steady. We were in love. And come graduation, we’d get engaged and eventually married.

And so, when Cody asked me if I wanted to drive out with him to Lovers’ Lane that night, I said, “Yes, I do.”

For even though the girls who drove out to Lovers’ Lane with their boyfriends were all sluts and hussies, that didn’t apply to me. After all, Cody and I were in love. We were as good as engaged and one day, we would get married. And if you were engaged or as good as, then there was nothing wrong with driving out to Lovers’ Lane. Nothing at all.

Cody had an old powder blue Chevrolet. We both got in, he in his baby blue tuxedo with matching cummerbund and me in my best polka dot dress. The skirt was so wide that it got caught in the door of Cody’s Chevy, soiling the delicate fabric with grease. I was really angry about that, too. Because back then, I still thought that soiling my best dress on the door of Cody Barrett’s Chevrolet was the absolutely worst thing that could happen to me that night.

“Don’t worry yourself,” Cody said after examining the soiled hem of my best polka dot dress, “The grease will wash out. After all, your folks have got one of them new washing machines, don’t they?”

I nodded, because my Mom did have a washing machine, a true miracle of technology that was supposed to clean even the worst stains.

And then we drove out to Lovers’ Lane. All the way, Cody had the radio on. There was a baseball game on and — more importantly — music. That sweet hot rock ‘n roll music that my parents wouldn’t let me listen to, let alone dance to, because good girls didn’t do that sort of thing. But then, good girls didn’t drive out to Lovers’ Lane with Cody Barrett either. And if I was about to do the one, then I could do the other just as well.

I don’t know what I had expected Lovers’ Lane to be like. I mean, I knew where it was. Everybody in town knew. I’d driven past that spot often enough, sitting in the backseat of my Dad’s Studebaker, while Mom lectured me from the front seat about how Lovers’ Lane was this horribly evil den of sin where only the bad girls went, only the hussies and the sluts.

Still, in my mind I had painted the place as this perfect wonderland of romance. The reality was… underwhelming. For in truth, Lovers’ Lane was merely a place known as Sighing Pine Ridge, a plateau which overlooked our town. By night, it was a lonely place and also almost completely deserted, except for the cars of the couples who came here to do whatever sinful thing it was that couples did at Lovers’ Lane.

Cody drove his Chevrolet right up to the edge of the plateau and stopped. He turned off the ignition, but left the dashboard lights and the radio on. There was a live broadcast of a baseball match, the Yankees versus the Dodgers. I remember it like it was yesterday, remember the announcer breathlessly calling out strikes and home runs, remember the names of the players, Mickey Mantle, Don Larsen, Don Newcombe, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Joe Black. I never much cared for baseball — though Cody did, which is why I suspect he left the radio on that night — but I can still recite the names of those players, like a prayer, a reminder of the last normal night on planet Earth.

Still, for the time being, it all seemed normal enough. We just sat there in Cody’s car, parked right at the edge of the ridge at Lovers’ Lane, watching the stars and listening to baseball on the radio. For the sky was clear that night, as clear as it could ever be, and the stars were shimmering like so many diamonds on midnight blue velvet. It was peaceful and beautiful and there was absolutely no sign that anything was amiss, anything at all.

Cody draped his arm around my shoulder, but otherwise we just sat there next to each other, staid and polite, while Cody’s breath quickened, as Mickey Mantle scored another home run. And for a moment I thought, “This is all?” All that talk about the sinful things happening at Lovers’ Lane, and yet we just sat there next to each other, his arm round my shoulder, with the gearshift as a safety barrier between us.