A FEW SHORT STORIES OMNIBUS VOLUME 2
Short Stories by C.D. Reimer
Copyright 2011 C.D. Reimer
Smashwords Edition / November 2011
“Salt of The Air,” “Swine of The Earth,” “Honey of The Fire,” and “Rice of The Water” were first published in the Elements of Horror anthology (Elements of Horror Press, April 2010), with special thanks to Clive Martyn for his editorial suggestions.
“Silent Observer” was first published in Inhuman: Absolute XPress Flash Fiction Challenge #4 anthology (Absolute XPress / August 2010).
“A Leap of Faith” first appeared in The Storyteller (July/August/September 2010).
“Dead Enders” first appeared in Fem-Fangs anthology (Pill Hill Press / September 2010).
“Saved By The Bell” first appeared in Ink Beans ezine (28 May 2011).
“The Hungry Red Devil” first appeared in Fiction365 (4 July 2011).
"A Wild Fish Tale" and "Golem Got The Blues" were first published in Flash Fiction 2011: 365 Days of Flash Fiction anthology (Pill Hill Press / October 2010).
"Hog Wild Under The Moon" and "How Not to Stake A Vampire" were first published in Daily Bites of Flesh 2011: 365 Days of Flash Fiction anthology (Pill Hill Press / November 2010).
"An Unanswered Question" was first published in A Cup of Joe: Coffee House Flash Fiction anthology (Wicked East Press / April 2011). Special thanks to editor Jessica A. Weiss for allowing early reprint publication.
These titles were previously published as individual short story ebooks or as part of a flash collection ebook.
The cover art image is licensed from http://www.istockphoto.com.
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About The Author:
C.D. Reimer lives and works in Silicon Valley. His interests are ceramics, painting, tropical fish, and web programming. These keep him out of trouble when he’s not fixing broken users and consoling hurt computers.
After serving two tours through The Twilight Zone as a child and a young adult Christian, he writes about everyday reality that he often finds weird, twisted and absurd for being so normal.
He’s currently working on various short stories and his first
novel, and blogs about writing
and everything
else when he's not busy playing video games
writing fiction.
Connect With Me Online:
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/cdreimer
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/cdreimer
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cdreimer
Website: http://www.cdreimer.com
CONTENTS
SALT OF THE AIR
“That waiter no longer works at The Giggling Mongoose,” Charles Goodwin said, opening the door to his curing room and leading the police detective inside from the narrow basement corridor. Rows of hams, swine heads and meat rolls hung from floor-to-ceiling racks. “I fired him when I caught him in here, smoking a cigarette and being sodomized by a waitress.”
“That was two months ago,” the detective said, looking at the dimly lit room. “You caught them in the act, there was a confrontation, and you fired the waiter for having sex—”
“Not for sex, cigarette smoke.”
“Cigarette smoke, sir?”
“I cure my meats by preparing them in salt and spices, and letting them dry out in the air to age over time. Fresh air is drawn from the outside through a filter that removes any impurities that could be absorbed by the drying meat, circulates through the room at a constant temperature, and sent outside again. I require the freshest ingredients—salt, spices, meat, air—to maximize the traditional flavors of my cured meats. Cigarette smoke could've ruined everything.”
“You don't smoke your meat with second hand smoke?”
Goodwin raised an eyebrow. “Should I call the police chief to ask him if that was funny?”
“Sorry, sir,” the detective said, coughing. “Sex didn't have anything to do with the waiter being fired?”
“No. For all I care, the entire wait staff can air out their privates on the public square. That would be your problem, not mine.”
The detective grunted. “Rumors say that people go missing after working at your restaurant.”
“I'm a hard man to work for. I demand absolute perfection. Wait staff comes and goes all the time, often like little spiders throwing out a web to sail the air. People who failed me should disappear. They're very unlikely to get another job at a fine restaurant in the area.”
“Was the waitress fired as well?”
“For what, sucking air?” Goodwin laughed at his own joke. “No. She apologized for what she did, and I kept her on. Said the waiter made her do it. Seemed to me she was enjoying herself too much to complain. If you don't have any more questions, detective, I have a restaurant to run.”
After Goodwin escorted the detective out of the restaurant with a promise to call police if he had any more information about the missing waiter, he returned to the curing room. Walking past the racks to the back corner, he turned on a light and don a pair of latex gloves.
“You're not quite ready yet,” Goodwin said, feeling the salt-encrusted, naked body of the portly waiter bound in rope and hanging upside down from a meat hook. “When I make the birthday dinner for your favorite waitress next month, I'm sure she'll enjoy eating your manly meat again. Except this time braised in white gravy.”
SWINE OF THE EARTH
“Now that you're my head chef of The Giggling Mongoose,” Charles Goodwin said, holding up his fork with a tender slice of meat, “you will learn how to make my signature dish of swine of the earth. I demand absolute perfection with this recipe.”
“That’s expected, Mr. Goodwin,” replied the new head chef, swallowing his bite. “The texture of the meat is exquisite, and the flavor is quite distinctive.”
“What you taste is a domesticated pig. When you cook a full-sized wild swine in the pit outside that can feed fifty people, there's no comparison between the two.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I expect the freshest ingredients from the earth. First and foremost, the swine must be a wild animal that had wallowed in the earth from birth. I don’t want a domesticated swine raised in a godless factory, confined to a pen inside an air-conditioned building with no sunlight. Even the milk for the butter must come fresh from a cow that had stomped, chewed and pooped on the earth. The herbs, spices, banana leaves—everything must be freshly cut from the earth. People pay good money for my swine. We don't skimp on the ingredients.”
The chef smiled. “I’m familiar with organic cooking.”
“So was the last chef,” Mr. Goodwin said, shaking his head. “He tried to save a few bucks by failing with the most essential ingredient for my recipe.”
“Which was what, Mr. Goodwin?”
“The earth.”
“Sir?”
“The earth for the pit must be fresh, aromatic, and a deep dark brown. The kind of earth that makes a swine rut around in ecstasy, a gardener inhales like a good joint, or a beautiful woman rips her clothing off to take a mud bath in.” Mr. Goodwin held up his fork with a slice of meat before popping into his mouth. “Can't you taste the deep, earthly flavor among the butter, herbs, spices and juices of the meat?”
The chef ate a slice of meat, slowly savoring the flavors. “Very subtle.”
“The flavor is stronger in a wild swine. Your predecessor used dried out top soil rather than ordering fresh earth dug deeply from the ground. I noticed the taste immediately when he presented the dish to me before we started service, and I shut down the entire restaurant for the night rather than serve that tasteless shoe leather to my customers.”
“Shameful, sir.”
Mr. Goodwin snorted, looking at the remaining slices of meat on his plate. “I demonstrated to him how to make perfect swine of the earth, and he still fails me today.”
“I understand that the police are searching for the old chef,” the chef said, speaking up. “What did happen to him?”
“I demanded absolute perfection.” Mr. Goodwin removed the large tray cover on the cart next to the table, revealing the cooked head of the old chef with an apple in his mouth. The new chef retched in horror. “I don’t tolerate failure.”
HONEY OF THE FIRE
“I closed The Giggling Mongoose and sent the staff home early with pay as you requested, dear,” Charles Goodwin said, standing before the rolling flames of the grilling station in the kitchen. His slim wife with her braided red hair watched him through the serving window from the wait staff side. “I'm cooking a fiery flambé surprise for you.”
Rebecca Goodwin smiled. “You haven't made one of those since our honeymoon.”
“Haven’t been that long, dear.” Goodwin used the tongs to turn over the two pieces of meat he was searing. “A special dish requires special ingredients. I didn't lay my hands on these two fine specimens until today.”
“The special ingredients are fresh then?”
“Very fresh.”
“How long until it's done, Charles?”
“Another five minutes.” Goodwin smiled when he looked over his shoulder to find her pouting at him. “I made a change in the wait staff.”
“Who did you fire this time?”
“Your pretty bar maid.”
“What—” Rebecca smacked her hand against the stainless counter of the serving window. “Everyone liked her!”
“That's the problem.” Goodwin turned the meats over again. “Especially during the Oktoberfest last month when she paraded around in a low-cut dress that exposed her melon-sized tits, sloshed beer all over the floor, and fondled by men—and some women—who should know better.”
Rebecca laughed. “You're jealous!”
“I'm not jealous. When I opened the women restroom that one night because I thought a couple were banging away on the commode, I wasn't expecting to find the bar maid over your knees with you spanking her bare fat ass until it caught on fire. That was the same night that a prominent food critic was having dinner at a nearby table. You think I enjoyed seeing that honey of a scandal in the food section of a national newspaper?”
“Would you enjoy seeing me spank a fresh-faced brunette instead?”
Goodwin frowned when he looked over his shoulder and saw her smirk. He put down the tongs, pulled over the white platter and picked up a metal spatula. After he transferred the two pieces of meat to platter, he ladled a generous amount of sauce from a bowl.
“What's for dinner, Charles?”
“Seared breasts in flambé honey sauce.”
“Seared breasts of what?”
“Not what, of whom.” Goodwin put the platter before her in the serving window. “Surprise!”
A scream died in Rebecca’s throat.
Two melon-sized breasts of a woman sat tits up, with the dark pink areola and nipple of each protruding through the blackened crust. The smell of honey and liquor was strong from the flambé sauce. When Goodwin lit the sauce with a match, blue flames licked up the delicious mounds and over the tasty nipples before burning out for the night.
“I don't demand absolute perfection with you like I do with the restaurant.” He handed her a fork. “But I must insist on absolute loyalty in our marriage. Happy anniversary, dear.”
RICE OF THE WATER
“Your shipment of organic rice to The Giggling Mongoose this week was pathetic,” Charles Goodwin said, holding a bowl of chilled meat pieces and standing on a stepladder in front of the huge aquarium in the foyer. A dozen large fishes near the surface of the water were eager to be fed. “Your rice couldn't absorb the water, turned a sickly gray, and specks of dirt and gravel was found. Please tell me you're not re-labeling bags of old rice as organic rice and gorging me a hefty premium?”
“Absolutely not,” the rice distributor said from the two chairs he occupied in a white flannel suit. He chucked a piece of seaweed-wrapped rice and raw pink meat sushi into his mouth from a white platter on the chair next to him. “That shipment was an aberration.”
“More like an abomination.” Goodwin dropped a meat piece into the water, watching the fishes jostled to grab the bite and snapped jaws of sharp teeth at each other. “I find your quality control to be abysmal.”
“The problems were fixed.”
“I hope so, for your sake.”
“Are you threatening me, Mr. Goodwin?”
“Well, you know my reputation,” Goodwin said, smiling. “I demand absolute perfection. The freshest ingredients that is available. And, above all, I don't tolerate failure.”
“What you and every wannabe celebrity chef say to the weak and gullible in this tourist forsaken town.” The distributor ignored Goodwin's dangerous frown by popping another sushi into his mouth. “Damn these are good!”
“Sushi isn't something I serve in the restaurant; it's something I make personally for myself. However, I do have dishes that require the freshest organic rice.” Goodwin tossed another meat piece into the tank. One fish leapt out of the water to catch the bite in mid-air, splashing him. “See how fluffy, pristine white, and clean the rice is? That's inferior store bought rice because your superior organic rice was crap.”
The distributor harrumphed and popped another sushi into his mouth. A moment later, he coughed up a whole fingernail. “Oh, how gross!”
“Precisely,” Goodwin said, smiling at the distributor's disgust. “That's how I felt about your so called organic rice.”
“What the—” The distributor stood up, his face flushed with indignation. He tossed the fingernail on to the platter, ignoring the last piece of sushi. “Is there anything else, Mr. Goodwin?”
“Your truck driver flipped me off when I told him to take the shipment back. When the mafia used to own the restaurant trade, they would kill such a rude man and feed him to the fishes.” Goodwin held up a meat piece that appeared to be a human thumb from the bowl. The distributor's eyes widen. Goodwin tossed that and the remaining pieces from the bowl into the tank. The water surface roiled like a school of piranhas feeding on a cow in the Amazon River. “Remember that when you send me another shipment of your organic rice.”
SILENT OBSERVERS
A young woman approached a table in the food court at the shopping mall. Without saying anything to the older couple that were each eating from a large takeout container of Chinese food, she laid down a green business card and a thick white pen with a multicolored tassel on the end. The couple stared at the items like alien objects that materialized from nowhere. They noticed she was gone and read the card.
I’m a deaf person who needs a
donation. Any amount will do.
Please accept this pen in return.
When she came back a few moments later, the card was alone without the pen or a donation. She picked up the card and went back to the other tables to pick up her cards and pens. Sitting down with her three friends at a table near the center of the food court, she dropped her items into her bag and pulled out her netbook computer. Anyone passing by would assume that these four young people were too deep in browsing the Internet to interact with the real world.
How was your walk around? Paul asked telepathically, not bothering to look up from his netbook screen.
Three tables didn’t respond, Kathy replied. The fourth table took the pen without leaving a donation.
You seem agitated by their response.
Stealing a pen from a deaf person asking for a donation is a criminal act.
She felt laughter coming over the telepathic link that they shared and glanced up at them. They were still staring at their netbook computers.
You’re becoming to judgmental—or should I dare say, sentimental—towards the humans, Paul said, in his soothing instructor voice. Becoming a xenobiologist requires studying a primitive society in their most natural environment, objectively and without bias.
A concentration camp for eating large portions of unhealthy foods that are high in saturated fat and sodium, Kathy said, shaking her head. Don’t they realize that they’re killing themselves by eating here?
Some do, most don’t. They consider the food surplus they’re surrounded by as perfectly normal, conditioned by years of media advertisements that they want more.
They’re too stupid to know better.
That’s the nature of this species. You shouldn’t be angry that they took the sensor pen. When an opportunity present itself and the consequences are low, they will take that opportunity even at the expense of their weakest member. This works to our advantage in collecting biological data on their eating habits. We’re not here to make money.
A snort came over the telepathic link.
Speak for yourself, Jacques replied. If you want to study this species in their most natural environment, the stock market is the place to be.
You would rather have speculative data than hard data about this species? Nicki asked. Your unauthorized attempt to crash the stock market with our limited funds is the reason why we’re begging for donations.
The odds were in my favor.
Fool’s odds. That’s more symptomatic to this species than our own. We can’t continue to interfere just because we’re bored silly from collecting data.
Whatever, Kathy said, using a popular slang term among the teenaged humans.
Smiles passed over the telepathic link to ease the tension between them.
I got two human subjects who are both in their late seventies, Kathy said, looking at the incoming data. The male appears to be relatively healthy and will probably live another ten years. The female appears to have the sensor pen in her purse.
You’re being judgmental again, Paul said, teasing her. What are her vital signs?
Dying from a cardiac arrest. Kathy looked behind her to see the old woman slumping face down into her Chinese food. We need to help her.
We can’t interfere, Nicki said. Continue gathering data.
Kathy closed her eyes and reached out telepathically. The others looked up to watch the drama unfolding behind them. Two security guards strolling through the food court made a sudden U-turn to offer medical assistant. After they laid the old woman on the floor, one tried CPR while the other talked on his radio.
You have interfered, Nicki thundered over the telepathic link. That data is now corrupt.
Kathy opened her eyes. I did what was necessary.
An unbearable silence descended over the whole food court as every human stopped eating to watch the paramedics arrive with gurney and a medical kit.
The telepathic push on the security guards didn’t corrupt the data, Paul said, asserting his instructor role. The old woman’s death was unavoidable. The paramedics will spend the next 45 minutes trying to revive her without success.
You’re not condoning Kathy’s behavior? Nicki demanded.
A telepathic push is allowed in an emergency situation as long as it doesn’t expose our mission among the humans. The data collection wasn’t corrupted. In fact, it was enhanced. We have never had a subject die under observation. The old man now has his wife’s purse with sensor pen. His physiological reaction to his wife’s death is fascinating.
“You people make me sick,” Kathy said, referring to her friends in perfect English.
The others stared at her in shock. They had assumed the persona of a deaf person since speaking a human language was difficult to master without sounding like a foreigner—or an alien. Kathy got up to go to the women’s restroom. Nicki sighed and followed her a moment later. The two men looked after them in confusion.
What’s up with them? Jacques asked.
They’re compromised by our interactions with this species, Paul replied, sighing. We have been in the field too long to be impartial data collectors.
The paramedics wheeled the dead woman out on the gurney. A murmuring rose from humans talking behind their hands, some with food still in their mouth. The two security guards assisted the old man out to the waiting ambulance. He still clutched his wife’s purse with the sensor pen that continued to relay data to the silent observers.
A LEAP OF FAITH
“So why are you leaping?"
The question startled the young man who stood on the yellow warning stripe of the southbound platform, watching the approaching headlight of a baby bullet train that will soon barrel through the station without stopping. He turned back to look at the old man who posed the question to him: a short fellow with salt-and-pepper hair greased back and enough winkles to make a pug dog jealous, wearing a 1950s bus driver uniform with a crisp white shirt and black tie. He blanked at him several times, not quite believing the old fossil he saw. Then he noticed that the people standing on the platform and at the hot dog stand were fading from view, the train slowing to a halt on the track, and everything suddenly became silent. He was no longer sure if he was on the same plane of existence as before.
“Who are you?” the young man asked, bewildered.