Strange Worlds: Surreal Stories and Tainted Tales

By Victoria Pearson

Slip into fifteen dark tales that show the world through a strange new perspective. Take your imagination on a journey that begins before birth and continues long after death, stopping off to marvel, tremble and wonder at the strange worlds in between. Meet zombies, vampires, leprechauns, even a genie, as you have never seen them before. Ponder what the world feels like for a child as yet unborn, spend a sleepless night with a would-be murderer, and see what becomes of the angel who trades places with one of the most vulnerable in our society. Find out what life feels like when you can no longer rely on your senses, when you have no-one left to trust, not even yourself... If you like your short fiction shrouded in darkness and sprinkled with the strange, then this is the collection for you. Leap into the unknown, and see the world through someone else’s mind...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Victoria Pearson
• Release date: Jul 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301432332

Victoria Pearson

Victoria Pearson lives behind a keyboard somewhere in rural Bedfordshire, with her husband, her four children and her dog. She writes very strange stories.

Book preview

Strange Worlds

Surreal Stories and Tainted Tales

By Victoria Pearson

Copyright © Victoria Pearson 2013

The moral right of Victoria Pearson to be identified as the

author of this work is asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in

any form or by any means electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the copyright owner.

All characters and circumstances in these stories are fictitious

and not intended to represent real people, places or events.

Cover image by Laura Brown, courtesy of

Amanda Cooke of Cooke-Arts.

http://www.cooke-arts.com

Paperback typeset in Open Baskerville and Eadui

by Nicolas Williams.

http://www.tiredpixel.com

smashwords edition

I wrote these stories to trap them on the page; a cage of

prose to keep the ideas contained. If you read them, do so

with the knowledge that ideas are contagious, and spread

swiftly from mind to mind.

Acknowledgements

I would never have been able to write these tales without the support of my husband Gary and our three children. They put up with an awful lot when stories are in development, and I thank them for it. If you enjoyed these tales, you should too.

With extra special thanks to: Nicolas Williams, for doing an amazing job typesetting this and making it the beautiful book it deserved to be; Amanda Cooke, for knowing the perfect artist to create the cover image; and Laura Brown, for being that perfect artist and producing exactly what I was looking for, despite a very vague and garbled brief.

This book would not be what it is without my team of tireless first readers who read everything thoroughly and gently pick it to pieces for me, and then re-read it all again when I think I have fixed it. I can never thank them enough for all they do just for the joy of it.

And a final and heartfelt thank-you to my dear friends and family, who simply shrug their shoulders and accept it when they have spent half an hour talking, only for me to say something like, Sorry, did you say something? I was just wondering where a merman hides his penis.

You guys are amazing; I don’t deserve you.

Thank you

x

Victoria Pearson, May 2013

Contents

Song of the Unborn

No New Page

Chasing Rainbows

Be Careful What You Wish For

Alienated

Freedom

Elect TV

The Encounter

Clock Watching

The Mind Pit

Empty

Night Driving

Screaming Rockets

The Angel

After the End

Song of the Unborn

Suspended in darkness like nothingness,

awareness is born.

Red light streams through,

lights up all, and then fades.

Warmth is felt in swift, caressing touches.

Behind all the ever-present rhythm

—whoosh whoosh whoosh—

never changing with the light.

Intermittent gurgling comes and goes,

bringing new tastes and renewed energy.

Other sounds are heard:

a quick and high soprano nonsense, ever-present,

a deep and resonating, reassuring bass

that comes and goes.

A world of music and darkness and streaming red light;

all is perfect.

But it is getting a little cramped in here…

No New Page

They say a new life is a blank page.

No new page, you.

You knew who you were

the moment you fought your way into the world,

took your first furious breath.

You dropped onto my chest, lifted your head

and looked me straight in the eye.

You knew who you were.

No new page, you.

Your personality wrote large in your every movement

from your first day.

Placid when you had what you knew you wanted,

filled with quiet determination. A full person.

And now I see, as you stand tall before me,

my almost-man,

that the core I saw was the canvas.

No new page you are now, but new page you were.

Now you are shaded by my teachings,

coloured by my lore.

Not just I that marked your new page,

but all of the world.

So many graphite lines I’ve shielded you from,

but so many I couldn’t stop.

I look at you now; my artwork, but not only mine.

No eraser have I to remove the marks that I regret,

no tippex to cover the stains the world left.

I can only colour you with more love for as long as I can,

cross-hatch you with happy memories.

Even if I had an eraser I wouldn’t use it.

To take away a single stroke

would be to change the whole picture.

The bad times sit with the good in you,

make you who you are.

You were a new page, bundled up small in my arms.

Now you stand tall, and look me straight in the eye.

No new page, you.

You are a masterpiece.

Chasing Rainbows

When I was a kid, I always wanted to search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. My parents never let me of course; they were sensible, grown-up and busy. They didn’t have time for leprechauns’ riddles and chasing rainbows.

I promised myself that when I grew up, I would chase the rainbows with my child, that my child would get to search for treasure or princesses in towers or spot mermaids and I would never huff and puff and sigh and pour adult scorn on my child’s dreams.

Of course, I know better now. I know now that a rainbow is just an optical and meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection of light in water droplets in the earth’s atmosphere, resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky, with no bottom, let alone a leprechaun.

Nevertheless, a promise is a promise.

I am out walking the dog with my four-year-old daughter, when the sky cracks and empties itself onto us, soaking us to the skin instantly. I watch her laugh and splash in puddles, squealing with delight, and I feel like my heart is so full I could burst.

I lift my eyes to the heavens and I see the double rainbow. It is like the rest of the world disappears, and all I want is to let my little girl behold the wonder of it, to stand here forever or for a moment, until the colours fade away.

Mummy, can we find the treasure? she asks, eyes shining, and I remember my promise.

Lead the way, I tell her, and she laughs and wriggles out of my arms, charging ahead, a blur of yellow anorak and red wellies.

A promise is a promise, whenever it was made.

Obviously, I don’t expect her to find the end of the rainbow. She runs ahead of