Today my publisher (God that sounds good) is having a Kindle Free Day book promotion. There are two anthologies on offer, and I have a story in one of them. So beat a hasty path to Amazon an nab these puppies up for free while you can.

KINDLE LINKS

The Red Book

The Yin and Yang Book

WHAT MAKES CHINESE WHISPERINGS ANTHOLOGIES UNIQUE

Each anthology is a collection of interwoven short stories by emerging writers handpicked from across the English-speaking world. Unlike other anthologies, Chinese Whisperings is created in a sequential fashion and each story stands on its own merits while contributing to a larger, connected narrative.

The Red Book, the first of the anthologies has each successive writer taking a minor character from the preceding story and telling their story as the major character in the next story. Each writer also references events from the preceding story to tie the ten stories together. The anthology can be re forward, or backward, or begun in any place because of its circular nature.

The Yin and Yang Book (the one I’m in) takes the concept a step further, with the anthology played across parallel airport universes stemming from a decision to retrieve a stolen painting or to leave without it. It’s a sliding doors/spider web hybrid. Readers will see common characters slipping across the two universes, some of them behaving in slightly different ways. The parallel universes are anchored between a common prologue and epilogue.

The Red Book

In a small North American university town ten lives are intersecting…

Miranda reaps what she has sown.
Mitchell understands there is no resisting fate.
Clint dreams of forging a violent destiny.
Elizabeth is about to make a discovery.
Robin hides a terrible secret.
Simon hasn’t slept in ten days.
Sam is pursued by nightmares.
Susie has lost everything.
David has just been found.
Jake atones for past evils.

Ten ordinary people struggling to keep their sanity in an insane world.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Mercurial Jodi Cleghorn (Ed)
Something Mean in the Dream Scene Jason Coggins
Kraepelin’s Child Annie Evett
Discovery Paul Servini
Innocence Tina Hunter
Not Myself Dale Challener Roe
Not My Name Jasmine Gallant
Out Of The Darkness Rob Diaz II
Heartache Emma Newman
One in the Chamber Paul Anderson (Ed)

The Yin and Yang Book

7.30AM. THE INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL OF A MAJOR EUROPEAN AIRPORT IS POISED ON THE BRINK OF CHAOS.

7.35AM. PANGAEAN AIRLINES, EUROPE’S PREMIER CARRIER, IS PLACED INTO RECEIVERSHIP, CANCELLING ALL FLIGHTS AND IMPOUNDING THOUSANDS OF ITEMS OF LUGGAGE.

The Yin and Yang Book follows the complicated web of events stemming from a suitcase, a stolen van Gogh painting, one woman on the run from her employers and the consequences of her decision to stay or go.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue Jodi Cleghorn (ed)
Three Monkeys Paul Servini
Three Rings Chris Chartrand
Dogs of War Tony Noland
This Be the Verse Dan Powell
Providence Dale Challener Roe
No Passengers Allowed J.M. Strother
Thirteen Feathers Rob Diaz II
One Behind the Eye Richard Jay Parker
Chase the Day Jason Coggins
Somewhere to Pray (Kurush) Benjamin Solah
The Guilty One Emma Newman
Excess Baggage Carrie Clevenger
Where the Heart Is Tina Hunter
The Other Side of Limbo Claudia Osmond
Freedom Laura Eno
Cobalt Blue Jasmine Gallant
The Strangest Comfort Icy Sedgwick
Lost and Found Jen Brubacher
Kanyasulkam Annie Evett
Double Talk Lily Mulholland
Epilogue Paul Anderson (Ed)

You can use the Twitter hashtag #chinesewhisperings to help spread the word.

Happy reading.

~jon

“Well now, looks like we’ve found a place where we can take a load off,” Ladif said.

They spurred their horses forward, turned from the road, and ambled through the gate. The men bore no livery, their tack was old and worn, their clothing all but rags. Three desperate men, in very desperate times.

They came to a halt once in the yard and Ladif, the tallest of the three, called out for anyone in the house. The horse beneath him shied nervously. Ladif responded with a harsh yank on the reigns.

“You keep treating your horse like that, Ladif, and she’ll be done with you some day, mark my words,” Ceb scolded as he dismounted his own dapple gray. He patted her flanks and took a moment to inspect her right hoof. She seemed to be favoring it of late.

Ladif responded with a series of curses aimed both at his horse and Ceb.

“Wallup, see if anyone’s home,” Ladif told the third man.

Wallup rode right to the door and pounded on it with the sole of his well worn boot. “Oy! Anyone there? Come on, now, show some hospitality to three wandering knights.” Getting no response he leaned down and tried the latch. It did not move. “Locked,” he snarled and backed the horse away. He dismounted, approached the door again, and began to heave his shoulder to it.

“Leave it be,” Ceb called from over by the well. “I’ve found this…” He held up a piece of parchment. “’Twas in the bucket.” His horse was now slaking her thirst.

“What?” Wallup scoffed.

“Says, ‘Leave in peace and peace shall follow you.’ It’s got hex marks on it,” Ceb warned.

“Pfhat! Witchcraft. Load of crap I tell you.” The man returned to abusing the door. After three good tries it heaved to. He fell in as it gave way.

Ladif laughed when Wallup went sprawling, dismounted, and followed him in.

“Naught worth having,” Ladif complained when he reappeared a few minutes later. Despite his words he held a loosely tied bundle in his left hand.

“Too bad, too,” said Wallup following right behind, twirling a woman’s blousey tunic, squeezing the empty bosoms with a grin. “Could of had some fun, eh?”

Once the horses were watered they remounted and continued on to the east.

Ceb returned two days later, leading two riderless horses. He reigned in at the gate, dismounted his dapple gray, and tied the other two steeds to the fence. He laid a bundle, loosely tied within a tunic, just inside the gate. Then he backed to his horse, made a warding sign, remounted, and galloped away.
~

© 2012 by J.M. Strother

Image a painting by Paul Cézanne circa 1865-1867 via WikiMedia Commons

Raindrops
Cling

Plants
Grow

Gargoyle
Watches
Waits

Anticipates

-

My garden as of May 7th. I don’t know about the gargoyle, but I am certainly anticipating.
~jon

Now we sat around a table in the dimly lit McNeal’s Bar and Grill. The place was crowded, loud, and smokey – no place I had ever been and no place I would have ever picked. But then, they never asked me. Pete still smoked like a chimney so they chose someplace where he could indulge his habit.

Jack signaled the bar girl, sticking up four fingers to order another round. He still liked to play the central roll, mister big shot, though now I knew I made more than twice his annual income. Who says high school reunions are worthless? Fine by me, let him pay.

“So what ever happened to Brenda Small?” Darren asked as he worked the shells off a handful of peanuts. Jack flinched. Pete took a quick drink of his beer.

Brenda and I had been an item in my Junior year. Beautiful girl, lovely personality, sharp as hell. Never did put out for me, but that made me like her even more.

“She died,” I said.

Darren’s smile drooped into a slight frown.

“Oh man, sorry to hear that. I didn’t know…” He tossed the shelled peanuts into his mouth and started chewing. “How’d that happen?”

“Her husband killed her.”

“No shit.” He shook his head. “Too bad you two didn’t get married.”

Wasn’t it though.

Jack abruptly stood to go to the bathroom just as the new rounds arrived. Pete followed shortly. Darren and I sat in awkward silence until he distracted himself by scanning the bar for likely pickups. No matter he had a wife and three kids waiting for him at home.

It was no secret the Three Musketeers were the ones who spread the rumors about me during our last summer of school. One of Jack’s football team buddies, Mark Ritter, had taken a shine to Brenda. Since we were going steady he needed something to break her away. I found out later that Jack came up with the idea.

Rumors started circulating that I poisoned a dog and tortured cats. None of it was true, but people started repeating it. A lot of my classmates started looking at me differently. I told Brenda it wasn’t true but when she asked around well, there were three of my closest friends all saying some version of, “Uh huh.” She dropped me like a hot rock.

Brenda went on to marry Mark Ritter. Then last year, two days before their seventeenth anniversary Mark came home drunk and beat her for the last time.

Now, a night after our twentieth high school reunion the four of us spent the evening catching up on where we were in life as if nothing had happened. I sipped my beer and bided my time. When the three of them were good and gone I suggested they’d had enough and should head home to sleep it off.

“I think Jack can still drive,” I advised as I led the way to Jack’s car.

Timing was important. I had to get them into the car before the roofies rendered them completely unmanageable. Jack climbed into the driver’s seat and fumbled to get the keys into the ignition. I helped Pete into the front seat and then barely managed to get Darren into the back. Once safely tucked away I put on a pair of gloves and turned the key. Jack’s Taurus fired right up.

The unsigned suicide note I placed between Jack and Pete read, “We made a pact in high school to go out together. All for one, and one for all. It’s time. The drugs and booze should ease the way. We are sorry.”

I ran the garden hose I’d stolen from Jack’s yard last night from the exhaust into the back window, closed the door, and quietly walked away.
~

© 2012 by J. M. Strother, all rights reserved.

Photo by HeadCRasher via Flickr Creative Commons – attribution, noncommercial, and share alike.

This is the twenty-sixth in a year and a day of weekly short stories set in The Split Worlds. It’s also the second part of ‘The Necessary Witness’ which you can find here if you need to read that first.

If you would like me to read part two to you instead, you can listen here. You can find links to all the other stories, and the new ones as they are released here.

The Necessary Witness – Part Two

Martin regretted the decision to chase the runaway shadow two minutes after they’d left the house. His chest burned and his feet hurt; he’d picked the leather brogues for a day of sitting at a computer, not impromptu heroics.

Paul was starting to leave him behind, but then it was his shadow, he was more motivated. That and the fact he played football twice a week let Martin forgive himself for wheezing so much. He worked long hours. He earned more too.

They had no choice; they could hardly hail a taxi and ask it to follow a rogue shadow. As the twilight deepened it was getting harder to keep it in sight, on a couple of occasions Martin thought they’d lost it, only for Paul to shout, point and take off again. When he stopped outside a terraced Georgian house in Pimlico Martin nearly cheered.

“It went down there,” Paul said, pointing down the steps leading down to the lower ground floor, presumably once a servant’s entrance.

Martin just nodded, propping himself up on his knees as his traumatised thigh muscles twitched. “What do we do now?” he panted.

Paul looked down the steps. “We sneak in down there.”

“That’s breaking in.”

“You want to knock on the door and ask them if we can look for my shadow in their basement?”

“Good point.”

They looked up and down the street, just like people who were about to do something illegal, then tiptoed down the stone steps. Paul tried the door, it was locked, unsurprisingly. Martin felt a surge of relief as Paul moved away from it. The urge to understand what was going on had been dampened by the fear of being caught.

Paul peered through the window then tried to lift the sash which only moved half a centimetre.

“Let’s go,” Martin said, ducking down as a car drove past.

“Hang on, there’s just the old catch, I can open it.”

He was getting a credit card out, Martin kept watch, feeling like he was ten years old again, stealing penny sweets whilst his best friend distracted the shopkeeper.

The window opened behind him. “C’mon,” Paul whispered and climbed in. Martin swore and followed him, not moving from the window until Paul had located a light switch and flicked it on.

The basement room was undecorated, cold but not damp, and filled with rows of bench tables like a school science lab. Shelves of bottles and small boxes filled one wall, there were test-tubes and beakers and round-bottomed flasks held in clamps on the tables, containing all manner of coloured liquids.

“It’s like that Hammer horror film,” Paul whispered.

“Which one?”

“I dunno, the one with the mad scientist in it.”

“Look,” Martin pointed over at a large glass bowl at the end of one of the tables. The foot of Paul’s shadow was draped over the edge, looking like a lone sock hanging out of a bowl of darkness. “It looks like it climbed in there.”

The rest of the shadow’s form was indistinguishable. “What the hell is going on here?” Paul said, staring at it.

Martin went to the shelves, reading the labels on the bottles. ‘Self-loathing’ described the contents of an elegant blue glass bottle with a wax seal over its cork. ‘Bitter regret’, ‘infatuation’, ‘sigh of broken-hearted’ – all the bottles seemed to have emotional descriptions. He picked up one of the packets and read ‘powdered iris-reticulata petals’ before putting it back. He noticed a box full of small purple perfume atomisers and a piece of paper resting on the top. “Fifty bottles of “Love’s First Bloom” – 5000 of the Queen’s pounds” was written in the same fluid script as the label on the packet. “I think this is a lab for making some weird-assed perfume,” he whispered, then heard voices coming from the other side of the door leading out of the room.

“Dr Tate,” a man said. “You’re teasing me.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” a woman replied. “I’m too professional. Let’s just say I work very hard to get the quality of product you expect.”

“Someone’s coming!” he hissed at Paul and hurried to the window. “Come on!”

Paul wasn’t moving. “I’m going to ask them what the f-”

“Come on!” Martin already had one leg out of the window, the high heels clipping down stairs making him sweat again. But Paul wasn’t moving, instead he was trying to grasp the sock-like shadow, his hand passing through it again and again. “Twat,” Martin spat and tumbled out of the window onto the flagstones outside. It was dark and getting cold and his brother-in-law was going to be arrested with the worst excuse in the world for breaking and entry.

Martin crouched below the window-sill. He heard the creak of a door and a pause that seemed to last a year. “Not you again,” the man sighed.

“Again?” Paul said. “Who are you? Why is my shadow here? Why do I even have to ask that question?”

“This is the third time this has happened,” the man sounded bored.

“Really? How tiresome,” the woman replied. “You do realise only the deluxe fool’s charm works with a shadow severance subject, don’t you?”

“Well that explains it.”

“Excuse me!” Paul yelled. “Will one of you please-”

His words were cut off somehow. “I have an alternative solution,” the woman said and then after a few moments; “Go home little mundane, and sleep it all off.”

Martin heard footsteps approaching the window and slid sideways, pressing himself as flat against the wall as he could. Paul climbed out and headed straight for the steps. The window was slammed shut and locked, Martin waited as long as he could bear to then darted up the steps back to the street.

“Paul!” he called and hurried to catch up with him.

“Martin?” Paul smiled at him, all surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“We were looking for your shadow, don’t you…” Martin trailed off, Paul looked like he was stoned.

“Come back to my place for a beer, the football’s on tonight,” Paul said and started walking again.

Martin watched, his guts churning. He turned his collar up and followed, watching his brother-in-law’s shadow restore itself with every street lamp they passed. He didn’t know what he was going to do, or even understand what had happened, but he knew he wasn’t going to forget about it.

—

Thanks for hosting Jon!

I hope you enjoyed the story. If you would like to find out more about the Split Worlds project, it’s all here: www.splitworlds.com – you can also sign up to get an extra story and get each new story delivered to your inbox every week. If you would like to host a story over the coming year, either let me know in the comments or contact me through the Split Worlds site. Em x

www.enewman.co.uk – Twitter – Facebook

Here is the description he has posted regarding Ghost Betweens:

The spooky farm in the middle of suburban Citrus Valley has long been rumored to be haunted. After taking pictures in the abandoned fields, Josh Hart and his buddy, Zach, find the stories to be true. They want to learn more, and are joined in their quest by Zach’s girlfriend, Kendra, and the new girl in school, Whisper Douglas. Josh and Whisper find they’re not only drawn to each other, but they also have superpowers when it comes to the supernatural. Their history teacher proves to have an unusual knowledge of their powers, and guides them to better utilize their newfound talents. And they need all the help they can get when Zach and Kendra are possessed by a powerful demon at the farm, who plans to use the teens to escape her prison and take over the world. Now Josh and Whisper, the newest Ghost Betweens, not only need to save their friends, but the entire planet, as well.

Sounds pretty exciting, doesn’t it?

You don’t have to go into this blind. Eric has posted several sample chapters on his website. If you are undecided go give them a read. You can also read some of his latest flash fiction while you’re there. You won’t be disappointed.

~jon

We put the tree in ten to twelve years ago. We did quite a bit of landscaping at the time – stone retaining walls, patio, new shrubs – that sort of thing. Our yard is loaded with mature trees, so there is very little sunny area left for a garden. There was one little spot, just off the walkway to the neighbor’s house, that I thought we should preserve for a vegetable patch. But my wife, Cyndi, had her heart set on a weeping cherry tree, and that spot was just about the only available one left to us. So I gave up on my vegetable plot and we bought a weeping cherry to put there instead.

We looked at a local nursery and were shocked at the price. So we went to a national chain big box store (of the hardware persuasion) and were pleased to find one about half that price in their garden area. We brought it home and our landscaping contractor planted it for us.

It soon became apparent that there was something not quite right about this particular weeping cherry. In the springtime it did present lots of lovely pink flowers on gracefully cascading boughs, at least on the lower half. On the upper half of the tree, however, the branches went straight up and the flowers were white. The old adage “you get what you pay for” quickly came to mind. Our cut rate weeping cherry was the victim of a bad graft.

I spent years cutting out what I could of the top, but I simply could not keep up with it. All that cutting must have opened the tree up to insects and disease, for it was not long before cankers began to from on the trunk and it became an annual smorgasbord for bag worms.

After fighting it for more than ten years we finally had enough of it. My wife agreed, it was time for Mr. Cherry to go.

It took me several days, and a couple of loads of Yard Waste to eliminate the tree, but it is finally gone. And in it’s place is a nice little sunny spot in the yard. I can finally have my vegetable plot.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini.

See. Good things do come to those who wait.
~jon

© 2012 by J. M. Strother, all rights reserved. Photos by J. M. Strother.

I’ve been seeing Doc Head (as I call him) for about three years now. I have dreams, very vivid dreams. They are prescient in nature, and often very disturbing. The one I just had left me shaken. I fumbled for my cell phone. The lighted numbers looked bleary in my half-awake state, but I could dial his number by touch, I’d called it so often. I glanced at the clock – 2:05am. My pulse rate was already dropping as the panic subsided. As the panic subsided the dream quickly began to fade. His phone rang. Once. Twice. On the third ring his voice mail picked up.

“Hello. This is Doctor Monroe Heady. You have reached me after hours. If this is a true medical emergency please hang up and call 911 immediately. If this is important, but not a true medical emergency please call the service at…” I clapped my phone shut. I should have known better.

He used to take calls after hours. He’s a shrink. Some of the folks he sees have suicidal tendencies. But after treating me for just over a year he switched to a service. He couldn’t take my constant night calls. I felt bad about that, the thought that someone might actually go over the edge and would not be able to get ahold of Doc Head because of me. So far no one had. At least I did not have that hanging over me as well.

Doc Head says I suffer from a severe case of survivor guilt, probably brought on by the collision. I don’t buy it. I feel bad that Randy died, but he was driving, not me. He’s the one who tried to beat the train.

It took six months for Doc to dig the collision out of me. He said the fact that I had buried it so deeply indicates just how much it disturbed me. Bull. I had not buried it. I simply dismissed it as irrelevant. I’ve never felt guilty about that wreck. Hell, I begged Randy to stop.

He says I am not prescient, that I have disturbing dreams about accidents because I was in one, and that when one of the dreams “seems” to play out on the news I latch onto it as an event I had predicted. It’s called selection bias, where you remember the hits and forget the misses.

But I don’t have misses.

But I have plenty of guilt. I see these things coming, then when I wake up they immediately start to fade. I’m left with a nagging sense of doom. Then when they do show up on TV I curse myself for not having remembered enough of the details to warn the people.

He had me start a dream diary. He told me that if I wrote down my dreams as soon as I woke up then I’d remember them better, and then I’d have an objective record of what I got right and what I got wrong. Said that in no time I’d see that I was no better than random chance.

He was right. And wrong.

I do remember them better if I write them down right away, though details are often still fuzzy. However, he was dead wrong about selection bias. Every single one of them comes to pass. That stumped the old fart.

But I still can’t do anything about them. I’ve tried warning people, but they think I’m nuts. Some even call the cops. I have three restraining orders on my kitchen table – those were recurring nightmares. I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut.

We’re doing hypnosis now. It seems to help. He is often able to drag out details I failed to capture in my diary. Plus he’s got me wired for a trigger phrase that helps turn down the panic and let’s me get back to sleep. It’s, “Go back to sleep.” No kidding. Can’t say Doc Head doesn’t have a sense of humor.

I flipped open my phone and pressed the Voice Memo button.

“Had another one. This one was about Doc Head.” I sat for a moment in silence. I had waited too long. The dream had faded to naught but a sense of dread. “I think he died.”

I flipped the phone shut and laid back down. “Go back to sleep,” I said, and immediately drifted off again.

I woke again at 4:17. I groped for my phone. This time I did not bother to call, I just pressed the Voice Memo and started talking.

“Doc Head, this is really important. You need to cancel your newspaper subscription or something. You get hit by a car out on your lawn when you’re stooping to pick it up. I’m not sure of the date, I couldn’t make that out, but it was so vivid. I think it will be soon. Your tulips are blooming. The idiot never even applied the brakes. Probably a drunk, like when the Fredricks girl got hit. I think it was a red Lexus…” I paused. I drive a red Lexus. I pressed the button again to stop recording. What the… My stomach did flip-flops.

No sense going back to sleep. I stumbled into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. Then I went out to pick up the paper.

I flipped through the pages as I ate my toast and jam. Doc Head would not be taking any calls until 9:30, which was way too late if this was the fateful day. I considered driving over to his house to warn him, but restrained myself. No way I was putting a red Lexus anywhere near Doc Heady’s house. I just wasn’t going to take the chance.

Then I saw his picture on page 2B. “Local Psychiatrist Hits It Big,” read the headline. “Saw it coming,” read the sub-head. He stood there smiling as the state lottery officials handed him a huge cardboard check made out for $270,000,000 and 00 cents!!! Exclamations included. The beginning of the second paragraph leapt out at me.

“When asked how he picked his numbers, Doctor Heady replied, ‘They sort of came to me in a dream.’”

I reached for my keys.

~
© 2012 by J. M. Strother, all rights reserved.

No One I Know

My friend, Susan, sent me a little email that said simply, “just for fun.” It had a link to a little sketching program called Harmony. It runs in the web browser and just sort of makes you smile as you use it. Harmony seems the perfect name for it to me.

It is so intuitive you can be sketching in seconds, almost as easily as if you picked up a pencil sans the writer’s cramp. True to her word, drawing with Harmony is fun. It is simplicity itself for sketching and feels quite organic, or as organic as a sketching program can feel armed only with a mouse.

I threw this little sketch out in something like two minutes. Picasso I’m not, but I enjoyed myself and just wanted to share the link.

~jon

Helping Hand

He felt a hand grab the back of his coat and pull. His body jerked backwards. Spared from certain death, he quickly looked around in hopes of spotting his savior. A bright flash of color was all he caught. Was the individual with the orange scarf the one? He ran after the person as fast as he dared in the ice. In retrospect, he decided, it must have made it look like he was fleeing the scene.

He had barely had time to catch his breath when he was told to “Freeze.” He froze. A pair of policemen glared at him. How was this possible? He had not intended to commit a crime. He had only slipped. He frantically looked for the person who pulled him back, but the person with the orange scarf evaded his sight. If he could just find his rescuer there would be no problem.

“Are you aware that it is a crime to receive services without payment?” asked one of the policemen after he had been read his rights. “To take without giving something in return is theft.”

“Please, I don’t even know who to pay,” he protested. He thought back to the incident, trying to remember everything he could. He saw himself slipping on the ice, remembered the screech of breaks as the car skidded to a stop. It would have been too late, except for the stranger who reached out to pull him back onto the sidewalk. But no memory of the stranger’s face came to mind, just the color orange. He was no longer even sure whether the color had been on a scarf or gloves.

“Do you see yourself as entitled? Your life was spared by the hand of another, and you don’t even have the decency to acknowledge his kindness by pretending you don’t know who he is.”

“But it’s true. I never got a good look at him. I’m not even sure it was a him,” he pleaded. “Whoever it was left the scene before I could offer my thanks.”

“What a cheapskate,” said one cop to the other, “I have half a mind to push him back into the street to see if anyone would be willing to pull him back a second time, knowing that they’ll get nothing for their troubles.”

He felt the color leave his cheeks. He was about to protest again when the other officer interrupted.

“No need to threaten the man, Mike. We just need to figure out who he owes and get their statement.”

“But I’m telling you, whoever it was left. They saved my life and left without asking for anything in return.”

“Why on earth would someone do something like that?” asked Mike. His partner thought for a moment.

“Maybe he’s on the run himself, and didn’t want to hang around waiting for this guy to give him his due?”

“Only thing that makes sense, if this guy’s not making the whole thing up,” agreed Mike. He turned to the bewildered man. “You wouldn’t be lying, now would you?”

He swallowed hard before responding, “Of course not. If I knew who saved me I’d gladly pay. But all I remember is the color orange. Some orange clothing.” He fumbled with his wallet, producing a credit card to demonstrate that he would have been able and willing to pay had his rescuer stuck around.

“Please. Isn’t it possible that whoever it was just reacted out of instinct to spare me? No one likes seeing someone’s guts splashed across the pavement. Maybe they just didn’t know I needed to repay them and took off because they thought not seeing the gore was enough?” The officers considered this for a moment. To the man’s relief, they did not reject this explanation.

“Sadly you can’t prove that. How about this? We’ll take you down to the station to get your statement and keep an eye out for the rescue-and-run guy. We’ll contact the media to let them know you want to pay. If someone comes forward, we’ll question them about why they fled the scene. If we like their excuse or find that they dashed because they’re already on the run, we’ll let you off the hook.”

“Really?” He could hardly believe this. He started calculating how much this kindness would likely amount to.

“What d’ ya say, Mike, does that sound fair?”

“As long as he actually pays the guy, I don’t think there’ll be a problem. We’ll just have to deal with the one who pulled a rescue-and-run, in that case. Honestly, those guys are almost worse than the cheapskates, making it hard for us to tell when we have a thief and when they honestly couldn’t pay back a service.”

“I’m sure I’d recognize them if I saw them again,” said the relieved man. “I’ll make sure to help you get the right guy, too. The trouble he put me through.”

© 2012 by Emelie E. Strother, all rights reserved.