Short Stories Part 1 E-Book

Z.J. Galos

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: Short stories
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 229

Beschreibung

These short stories have been conceived during the course of a series of writers' workshops, which inspired me through participants and facilitators alike. The stories have been evolving naturally, as to why we write and what we write about. From the realities for writing about colleagues and friends, the themes shifted to the inner workings of the writer and later to the magical and fantastic. Exhibitions of surrealist painters were a great facilitating experience for me and any writer. The cosmopolitan ambiance of participating poets and writers has been a fruitful experience for creativity. Movies about erotic themes, a beautiful woman participant, the tools that one uses to get going with a story, but also editing lessons, and spiritual experiences, have aided me to write them. A busy life of reading, visiting lecturers and digging from experiences enhanced the fantasy of free mental flight.

Leseprobe

Contents

Book I

Fire into My Heart

High Speed Sex

Julia and Her Spirits

My Writing Tools

The Editing Lesson

The Guardian Angel

The Lecture

Book II

Actress and Artist

Alta’s Abduction

Astra

Big Apple Flight

Bluebeard

Poinciana

The Chafing

The Electrical Rainbow Slide

The Spirit of the Flame Tree

BOOK I

MY WRITING TOOLS

Fire into my Heart

The morning stirred with one sharp warble of a hopeful tit. I woke and nursed my erection. Then I proceeded to slide out between the sheets to walk to the bathroom. Two steps down behind the red-flowered linen curtains I touched my penis. It felt still strong and virile. I thought of washing my face, but that would wake me, I gathered, and walked back through the thick bi-parted curtains, went straight back to bed and tucked below the warmth of the covers, and I carried on with my dream. In the warmth of a sun-filled beach I stretched upon the well-heated soft sand. The sun warmed, but did not burn me, seducing my skin to pleasurable delights and I desired this image: Myrto. She appeared out of the blue. A young Venus, born from the crest of the sea. She approached me.

“I am Myrto,” placing herself close-by to where I lay.

“Nice meeting you,” I said, “I like your name.”

“Thank you,” she replied and smiled, promises sparkling from her eyes.

“Your name reminds me of a myrtle reef placed upon a winning poet’s head,” I said.

“Are you a poet?” She exclaimed. Her eyes opened wide.

“I am to be. At times I feel I am, at other times I do not feel at all that I am one.” I replied.

“But then we all are not sure about who we are,” she said walking to the beach close by and embracing the mist of the sea that dissipated into her sheer cotton clothes. The sun rose on the horizon, burning the dissipating mist and her clothes disappeared against her youthful glare. I saw her feet’s parted stance with the sensual curves of her svelte body I gazed at.

“You are dreaming?” She queried, “…about me?”

“Yes,” I said, “I saw you being born from the crest of the gentle morning waves, floating to this forlorn beach and inverted lagoon, your cotton clothes fired to ashes by the sun.”

“I can take them off for you,” she said.

“You excite me, Myrto, like the penetrating warmth of the rising sun…” She peeled her top off and then her skirt, wound on her bums in layers.

“Hold on to this end,” she gasped and turned like a spindle uncoiling from the wound-on layers of sheer cotton. Like a mummy, I thought, coming unwound to be alive. With every one of her turns my heartbeat increased. I felt my chest rise and fall faster, still I tried holding my breath.

“What happened to you Zane?” A voice said. I opened my eyes and looked into Melanie’s face. “Myrto…?” I murmured. She had brown eyes like Myrto. I followed her high cheek bones to her beautifully sculpted lips, and down her slender neck, close to me, as she bent down.

“No,” she said, “I’m Tiff, your facilitator.” She smiled with a strange expression examining me like a medical doctor, concerned about my state of health. She was glad I showed vital signs of life.

“You must have dreamed, as you talked aloud,” she quipped. I felt ashamed.

“I always dream Mela… – Tiff,” I replied faster showing her my attention level to be intact.

“All I’ve asked from you, was to write a scene about a holiday experience,” she said.

“Yes, “ I said, “I woke up this morning and the air felt fresh, the pallid skies reminded me of the sea and the mist of her dress that turned transparent against the sun…”

“That sounds beautiful,” she exclaimed, “a well described scene, but now find the needle in the haystack!” She smiled.

“AH!” I cried out, “I sat on one already.” Tiff laughed and I joined her. I just worked away the rules of editing, she had installed in me in these hours of editing closeness.

She leaned back, her auburn hair fell to her shoulders and she closed her eyes. Her high cheek-boned face reminded me of Myrto, yet the paleness of her skin gave her away as Tiff, against Myrto’s olive taint. She sat in her workshop’s chair concentrating on her soldering work as silver smith, while Tiff taught us to become successful word smiths. We sat at her feet admiring her as a goddess of words, while Myrto’s girlfriend sat wide-legged on a stool at her feet, absorbing her like a spider, spinning around her a cocoon to soften her up for a luscious meal.

I started to sweat. The blond German amazon was about to lance her like a vulnerable deer. She had shot her arrows towards me, but the Goddess of Love had made them to miss me. In the first round of battle I was lucky and safe. I disliked the amazon, but good education demanded me to control my antipathies. Instead I called upon Apollo to provide me with an advantage in the war of words, in an ensuing discussion that turned into a dispute about the Holocaust.

Myrto, the artist, silversmith and sensual woman had turned into a facilitator to smooth over historical matters of a great tragedy that her blond amazon-friend had misinterpreted, showing a racist attitude. I won the argument morally, with Myrto standing next to me, and her nearness turned me tender towards her. It was after all her life, and I was her customer. I had no right barging into it.

But I also knew that this day belonged to them and the amazon was greedy for her, without any intention to include me into their love games at all.

I left with a sweet taste of acceptance by Myrto, into which a bitter after taste of her amazon friend’s refusal blended into. Myrto called after me to come and see her tomorrow again. I did not turn around, hurt and misunderstood; I had still enough love to give, yet not waste energy on senseless talk. Stupid cows, what have they thought of doing with their intentions? Imagine, making love to such a fire and ice mixture. Perhaps the amazon woman plays rough in bed too? Yet, who would think of a blond woman behaving like that?

“Your writing has improved,” Amara said and I felt a surge of pride, forwarding a message about it to Anna. She was the friend who wanted me to visit a writing class, all the time we talked about literature and writing. She reminded me to learn proper sentence structures and only once I knew the rules I may change them, not before.

I used to laugh at her, an artist falling in love with her at such an ease, pulling her leg, making fun, painting the town’s Acropolis red. But slowly her words sunk into the garden of my conscious mind and grew, like seeds she once planted into its fertile imaginary ground.

“You have to visit one of the grammar courses,” Amara said, “if you want to become a professional writer.” Again the seeds of Anna reared their heads and the green shoots started growing.

“I recall your quotations of Gertrude Stein on Hemingway, changing from a journalist to a Nobel Laureate writer.” I said and nodded and booked immediately a course. I thought of Anna and Myrto. Now, as I stood in front of Myrto, like once before Anna, my heart my heart spoke immediately to her. Feelings poured from me forth. I sensed the vibrations in her slim body responding to my longing to touch her intimately.

Amazon-Grete drove not only a wedge between our intimate and delicate bond, I offered to Myrto, but she intercepted the palms of Myrto’s hands holding my heart, where it had melted into a ball of silver she closed her fingers around, and Myrto just tucked it in time into one of her drawers. She would work on it later, alone, recall the warm glow she had extended to me, and shape it back into a heart again. She wanted me to fetch it and share her wondrous creation with her alone. But Grete’s attack foiled the attempt and it fell to the stone floor and broke into two pieces. The torch of Myrto’s sensual being cut into my flesh and I cried out. The pain of being torched with the scent of burning flesh is as abhorrent as Grete’s endeavour to turn me to ashes. But she failed to cut me off from Myrto’s feminine side, as Myrto tried fitting together the pieces. Like Isis, she descended to the underworld to summon the help of Toth. Finally, she claimed joyfully to have finished and the Gods gave me back my life. It was all there and even Grete wished to destroy my penis, it was still stuck onto my body, all right. Cast aside by this unexpected turn of fate, I made an enemy only defending myself.

I collapsed on the beach outside. I felt Myrto’s kisses that the gentle sea lapped at my feet. I could not take the sea and my swim that afternoon. The weight of my emotions became lead of a fishing tackle that sank to the bottom of ‘The Blue’, in an attempt to drown and end the pain of longing, want, and sorrow. I knew I wanted Myrto and it would take time to enjoy her in peace and in love. The day of choice had to be right. Right in colour upon hues in the shrubs around, the olive trees, the buildings, and the beach. The colour of the sky and the sea with the correct amount of clouds that formed a harmony, if one is to become sensitive to sounds, light, and the scents of her island. The right type of clothes, in the right colours, we need to wait for the magic moment, when the sun burns our clothes and our skin will heat by the touches of our bodies to become one with the land, the sea, the clouds as the gift of god’s universe, means the gift of love.

“Daydreaming again Zano?” She said and looked at me with enquiring eyes that still showed at times traces of her myopic state, she carried along like a burden on her back. She was in pain.

“I have finished my scene,” I said and handed Melanie…-sorry, Tiff, the paper.

“I will comment on it this afternoon,” she said. “I’ll send you E-mail.” She concluded.

“Thank you,” I replied and then woke up in bed. It was already late morning and all the time I did recall that I wrote some poems for Myrto this morning. It came to me like a flash of lightning out of the blue, striking the elongated island of olives, sending its fire into my heart.

*

High Speed Sex.

Helen felt tricked by her mind. Pictures of Susan and her appeared on the huge Plasma screen in the Disco dancing hall. She gazed upon her lover’s slim body sliding like a lizard upon hers. She never felt uneasy about gender sex, but this time a deep inner embarrassment started from her belly growing into a monster.

When the monster’s vile tentacles strangled her throat, she rose, apologized to the group of dancers, and tried to collect herself. Her feet steadied. She put this attack down to her tiredness of city life, overwork, and the stress of late nights with Susan, ‘The Lizard’.

“Are you all right Helen?” Susan spoke to her, but she perceived her voice as if from a distance.

“Yes. I’m fine. I just remembered that I have to be at a book-signing event later…” She replied without looking back at the table of celebrating literati.

Maurice rose. ”I’ll take you to your car.” His dark looks emphasized through his black eyes.

“Thanks,” she stammered at this unexpected courtesy, but forewarned by her sixth sense. His dark eyes – impossible to read – he never gave away his feelings, Helen thought. But this couldn’t be Maurice, the man with a limp, as she remembered him. At the Paris dance studio, he gave lessons in Latin American dancing styles. Since then matters had changed. The break-up had been traumatic…Maurice touched her arm and her body reacted. It cannot be, she thought, I never loved him but his trained body.

Her mind seemed muddled. Pictures of their lovemaking mixed with Susan’s way of loving her. She blamed that on the champagne. Impossible. The light-headedness came and left like a lapping of waves.

“Take my car, Helen, I know you are a good driver,” he said and stopped at his new silver-blue sports Merc 500.

“Your new car?” She gasped.

“I had it delivered two days ago, for the start of my forthcoming dancing tour.”

“It’s impressive!” She stroked the soft, light-grey leather seat and Maurice handed her the keys. She hesitated at first, but then she couldn’t resist driving the sleek mechanical messenger of the Gizmo-gods.

“It’s a great toy, isn’t it?” She heard a voice far away and it wasn’t related to Maurice. She had not even noticed that he had joined her.

“Wow,” she gasped, as the sleek Merc pulled from the curb like a rocket launch. She had fallen for the gleaming, seductive toy, and the instant acceleration aroused her. She wondered what on earth had happened to her in the last few hours. Her light-headedness had worsened, but she felt to be still in control. Her mind raced to Susan, who, she thought, sat next to her. How wonderful. She would give her a scare, and frightened, she would cuddle up in her lap.

“Woooeee – “She cried out and floored the accelerator. “Not so fast, Helen!” Susan’s voice trembled and she enjoyed this instant power over her girlfriend.

“I will break the speed record along this motorway for tipsy women,” she laughed huskily. The top button of her taught dress opened up as she yanked the fifth gear into position. Maurice slipped his hand on her. “You have warm fingers, Susan,” Helen cried out as he opened the buttons on her dress. Helen’s half-cups enticed Maurice to touch her hardened nipples. She sighed as he opened the front and her breasts popped free. “Uhhgg,” she gasped. “Uhhgg! You want to make love to me at high speed?” Her nipples hardened to his touches. “I hardly know you Susan, but are you up to it?”

Maurice kept still as he slid his hand down her body. All buttons opened, he placed his lips on her and sucked her nipple, while his fingers played on her vulva. “Uhhgg!” She cried out, hit by an electric current. She swerved the car as he opened up her legs. “Oh Susan…not so fast…but I like it!” The moment he stroked her clit, an electric wire raced through her body…with a flash she came to her senses. “NO!” She shouted, “YOU ARE MAURICE! GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!” He fell over her like lichen and his vile fingers dug into her pussy. “GET OFF NOW YOU BASTARD!” She yelled, pushing his hand with her one hand aside. Her leg jerked up hitting his forehead. He fell to the side as the Merc reeled over to the oncoming traffic lane. Helen pulled the car back and it skidded along the barrier rail and it skinned the car’s side. Then, in her rage, she lost control – “you have the face of a devil,” she cried out as the Merc bolted through a gap in the rails and skidded down an embankment, and then jumped like a mountain goat. It rolled three times on undulated soft ground and pushed along green fields, crashing into a low natural boundary wall, stones flying in all directions.

Helen turned instantly sober and she took Maurice’s knife from its halter underneath his tee-shirt and cut the blocked seatbelts. It smelled of petrol and heat. She wrestled herself loose and wanted to get up, but her left leg gave in and she collapsed. As she tried to get up again, she hopped to the other side of the car to help Maurice, but he had disappeared.

She took a broken twig she found nearby and supported her leg, she could not step on. She searched for her handbag and found it near the car. She took Maurice’s knife and hopped from the smelling debris toward the motorway. She needed distance from it as she feared it’ll soon catch fire. By the time she had reached the motorway the car had caught fire and she sat down at the embankment to dial Susan’s number on her mobile phone. At that moment the car exploded with a bang. She moved up the embankment and leaned against the barrier rail. A fire engine’s whining sounded as Susan answered her call. “It’s me, Helen…we had an accident…please come!” Susan would be able to trace her, as she left the connection open. “Damned Maurice,” she thought “I bet the car is not registered in his name. That’s why he disappeared in such a flash.” She found a storm water manhole near the adjacent flyover bridge and threw the knife into it.

Susan appeared with her maroon Vauxhall. The car suited her auburn looks. “Helen! Thanks god you are alive!” She hugged her and they kissed. “Susan, get me to M’s private clinic fast.” Susan got Helen seated in the back of her old-timer Vauxhall and Helen could stretch her leg comfortably on the leather seat. It hurt her as she adjusted it and she knew it was broken. Susan handed her a pill box and a water bottle. “Painkillers,” she said and handed her a water bottle from the mini-bar, her ‘Vauxhi’ had installed.

“Thanks darling,” Helen cooed. “I love you.”

“I love you too, Helen,” Sue replied and added “no more adventures with guys like that!” Helen mumbled agreement, but she started dozing off, as the strong painkillers had a tranquilizing effect on her.”…I thought I was driving …with you…next to me…” she murmured.

“Oh did you feel threatened?” Susan said.

“Yes…when he…touched me…and I realized it was …not you.” Susan smiled, the emergency lane of M’s private clinic appeared. “Stay with me…Susan”. Helen whispered, as she was placed on a stretcher. “Yes, I will love.” She replied and Helen blew her a kiss. She responded pressing her hand. Helen disappeared into the examination bay.

*

Julia and her Spirit

I had signed-up for a course in writing. It took me one year from having hatched the idea, having read an advertisement, to get finally through to the registration office.

“What are you here for?” The luxuriant woman asked and I felt as if she would undress me in front of many women bystanders. “I am here to know more about writing in the romantic genre.” I said. Was she to eat me or spank me? I wasn’t sure. Her facial expression did hardly change and she was not moving differently to her steady daily routine.

“Have some coffee,” she said, “it’s next door.” I went through the door of an annexed room and to the right, two steps up to a higher, but smaller area, there was a kitchen sink and some cupboards. At two high tables snacks were laid out. At one table some cookies, at the other one creamy marmalade scones. I passed both.

I took to the brown liquid in the Pyrex bottle that sat on a hot plate. The coffee smelled good, but I couldn’t handle the round and generous mouth of the bottle pouring coffee into a tiny cup. Short, I made a mess of it. The coffee swapped past the pouring lips onto my saucer and passed it. I felt ashamed. There was only one young woman seated on a high stool in the corner, and she did not observe me. Another woman entered and talked to the seated person with her back towards me. I thought of cleaning the stone floor, but there was no kitchen paper handy. So I assured myself that the spot of spilled coffee will soon evaporate from the dark stone surface, besides it wasn’t blatantly visible.

As soon as the wide-hipped woman passed me to have coffee, I stepped over to talk to the young woman and asked her about her writing. As she talked I observed the wide-hipped woman pouring coffee, and she had the same problem as I had, spilling some on the stone floor. She was making a noise about it and I had to laugh inside.

The young woman told me that she was a poet. What type, I wanted to know. More women rushed suddenly in to have a cuppa, and there was no reasonable conversation possible any longer with her. Now what?

Then she stood suddenly in the middle of the room, laughing and conversing with the poetess I had talked to. Her face reminded me of an actress I had fancied in one of the romantic movies. As she looked into my direction I asked her a question about coming here. “We came four years ago,” she said. “Obviously difficult to make friends, we have started a family.” She carried on with the poetess and talked about her likings. I sipped my coffee and listened. She had turned to creative writing as her domain, yet she was seeking a social club of writers, who met at occasions like this, have an exchange of ideas, review books, and start writing a book once the inspiration had captured her fancy, and she had chosen a genre she liked.

For me it was all new, electrified by the atmosphere of many writers in one spot, I had immediately an idea what to write. I wanted to write something about my life, something gripping from reality. “Wrong,” the facilitator said. “Don’t write about your life. This is romantic fiction writing,” she hammered on. “What about inner dialogues?”

“No, we don’t have that here,” she answered. And now overwhelmed by the talkative woman, who had arrived four years ago, I watched her dusky eyes glow as she talked. While she expressed her thoughts in immaculate English, her smile showed her joy with a tinge of sorrow and pain, all writers are subjected to in their solitary art. I had an interest to know more about her, but the luxuriant lady at reception came to announce the start of the course at the inner sanctum of a conference room, along a table that seated twelve persons.

“I am Nat,” the course facilitator announced. Everybody introduced themselves with their name and the reason to be here. I was the only man, and immediately Apollo came to mind, who was surrounded at least by nine, or perhaps even ten Muses. Here we had perhaps ten Muses, besides the two extreme feminist women, who were disfigured by overeating; besides, I never fancied their writing they read to us. So, down to ten. – Fine with me. Apollo remained indifferent. This is not intended to be a countdown at a beauty contest. This is a personal selection with a quick test for personalities and their angle of view on romance, I thought, cutting loose the blond flirtatious woman, well – nine.

The petite woman next to me fades away and I cannot, for the best of my abilities, give her more than four out of ten. I’m sorry dear – eight.

How do I know I fare among the crowd of women exhibitionists? There would be no more than two or three who’d talk to me, expressing their curious interest in the only man, or even in his romantic scenes he writes.

“Do you like Coetzee?” I ask the young, sturdy woman with big boobs next to me on the right.

“I prefer Brink,” she said, busying herself with her text. She is rather distinct with her voice. I think of her not as a Muse for myself. Ouch – seven are left. I look at the next writer, reading her story. Well, rather dull – six.

There she is, pale as bone china, without a blemish on her skin. The luminous face evaporated from the book she writes, stirring the fire in my belly. I feel that way as I read my own scene, her eyes on me; an inner force drives me into euphoric excitement. She’s watching me, I thought. My God! My fingers on her thigh, as if I sat next to her, I swear. She smiled and commented on my thought of bringing some roses, and the way she’d close the door, if I would come and see her.

And now it’s her turn to tell me what she’ll do. And I hear her talking to meet me, causing another stir in my belly, and I wish I could be with her somewhere more private than in a round table session with all these aspirant novelists. However, soon I do not see anybody else but her, and I’m rather tactful avoiding to stare at her. I look at her with stolen glances, long enough, to study her Patrician nose. AyAy floats in front of my mind’s eyes. I compare their profiles and they match. In my innerness a joyful pain, a stab. I want to cry. The voice tells me: It’s me, AyAy. No! It cannot be, I never believed in reincarnation. But, who knows? In love it may count.

Whatever, hocus-pocus or not, I am bewitched by the thought and the start of a basic comparison, as this fiery Phoenix takes a flight – AyAy rising from the ashes and turning suddenly into Julia.

At last, I think, I do not have to seek my Muse in future. Then, as all sudden revelation succumbs like a climax and the storm of emotion settles into the next recommended action, I sense the tempest: Fools rush in.

This is it; she says inside me, you are smitten. Don’t you feel well and are fond of me looking at Julia? You are in love, aren’t you? I do not answer directly, walk towards the bookshelf and take a book on offer for a review. The worst I could choose, just due to Julia standing next to me. I swim like a lark in the presence of her eyes that wash away the pain in my heart.

I am too shy to ask her for a meeting, an E-mail address, or he mobile phone number, or a space she could suggest where I could meet her. It would be heaven, or it could be hell. It could be both. My mind runs the track of a circle and I run forward, too scared to face the endearment offered by the God of writing, who is partnered ny the Goddess of love.

And even if I run away from my feelings, there is no way all will evaporate into Gauteng’s oily air. I cannot forget her face, the way she talks and carries her smile, reminding me of an avenging angel. Dark and southern, she lobs my heart high into the poet’s air and then she catches it like a tightly dressed acrobat.