Strange Perceptions
STRANGE PERCEPTIONS
14 Fantastical Stories
by
Chuck Heintzelman
Credits
Cover image © 2012 Emily C. Ramsey,
Take Cover Designs
Freshly Ghost
© 2011 Chuck Heintzelman
Memory Fades
© 2011 Chuck Heintzelman
Image for
Memory Fades
© 2003 Wolverine Enterprises
Wizard Lottery
© 2011 Chuck Heintzelman
Image for
Wizard Lottery
©
Algol
Voice Mail
© 2010 Chuck Heintzelman
Fantastic Goulash in the Streets
© 2010 Chuck Heintzelman
The Death Gerbil
© 2011 Chuck Heintzelman
The Train Bandits
© 2010 Chuck Heintzelman
In the Closet
© 2010 Chuck Heintzelman
Babysitter
© 2011 Chuck Heintzelman
Image for
Babysitter
©
Lucian Coman
The Sinister Smile
© 2010 Chuck Heintzelman
Pact of the Banshee
© 2011 Chuck Heintzelman
Mad Goldilocks
© 2009 Chuck Heintzelman
Trunk of Caramel
© 2011 Chuck Heintzelman
Three Wishes and a Bath
© 2011 Chuck Heintzelman
Image for
Three Wishes and a Bath
©
Dana Rothstein
About these Stories
Most of these stories were created during 2011. I struggled to categorize these tales. Some stories creep up to the edge of
Weird Fiction
and one even has a western flavor. Overall, I’m classifying the stories as
Fantasy
. They are not the type of fantasy filled with elves and dwarfs. No. Here you will read about the ordinary fantasy that occurs when an normal person encounters the extraordinary.
Here’s a short blurb about each story.
Freshly Ghost
-
Being dead was unlike anything Chance Phillips had expected. For one thing, his name changed to Reo. For another, he discovered ghosts could move through time. But when he learns a friend, a live friend, is in danger will he and his ghost friend Jeremy be able to save her in time?
Memory Fades
-
This is a short story about an elderly woman that sees something which causes her to doubt her senses.
Wizard Lottery
-
Every 100 years the kingdom has a lottery to determine who will be the new wizard. When a simple farm boy wins the lottery and becomes the kingdom’s new wizard, he tries to fix deceptions perpetrated by the previous wizard. But will he succeed when the previous, dark wizard is in his head, controlling all of his actions?
Voice Mail
-
A fun little story told entirely though voice mail.
Fantastic Goulash in the Streets
-
Favel only wanted to be left alone. She was content to push her shopping cart around, ignore the other homeless, and stay out of the way of the City’s upper class. But when her friend gets involved in a revolution against the City, she’s thrust into a conflict she wants no part of. Can she protect her friend, and herself, from the City, it’s Sentinels and atom blasters, or will she disappear as so many of the lower class do?
The Death Gerbil
-
When Dean Weathers uses his antique Brownie camera to take photographs he discovers something strange. A small black gerbil mysteriously appears in snapshots of animals about to die. But seeing the gerbil in his latest photo is both unexpected and unnerving.
The Train Bandits
-
This story takes place roughly in the time of Huckleberry Finn. It is a boyhood adventure with bank robbers and dynamite. It explores sacrifices true friends will make for each other.
In The Closet
-
A short story about a different type of “monster” in the closet.
Babysitter
-
When Emily Stillman babysits for a new family she discovers a horrific secret that causes her to doubt her sanity.
The Sinister Smile
-
A little snippet showing a man making a deal with a devil.
Pact of the Banshee
-
When the Banshee returns to the village woods and terrifies the villagers with its nightly screams, the cycle of murders start again. Young Sean Collins sets out to find and destroy the menace, but will he succeed when his friends and family turn against him?
Mad Goldilocks
-
A girl spins a wild tale to her psychologist about the time she spent camping in the woods with her family and became lost. She claims she’s the real Goldilocks … but is she?
Trunk of Caramel
-
Jeremy works as the night manager at a motel. An ideal job for a college student. But one evening when a creepy guest with strange trunk checks in, Jeremy’s life is changed forever.
Three Wishes and a Bath
-
Ellie Goldstein’s Sunday evenings usually consisted of dinner with the parents and ducking her mother’s attempts to play matchmaker. But last Sunday her mother gave her a present that would turn her life upside down, a strange little doll that forces her to make a wish. If she could have anything in the world, what would she wish for?
Freshly Ghost
A Ghost Boy Reo Story
Death ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
For one thing, death’s harder. When alive you don’t have to think about what you’re doing every moment. Sure, life has struggles, and they seem so important at the time, but those struggles lose significance when you die. When dead you have to concentrate, focusing on the world around you, or you’ll drift along your life.
Death is weird that way.
My name’s Reo and I’m a baby ghost. No, I’m not an infant, crawling around with a poopy diaper, looking for my binky. I look the same as I did when alive, a seventeen year old, gangly boy. I hate to say that, but being dead gives you a better perspective and, yeah, I was a gawky, dorky looking dude. I’m a baby ghost because I’ve been dead for a short time. Three days dead to be precise.
Reo’s my ghost name. In life my name was Chance Pertwith Phillips. Yeah, Pertwith is horrible. It was Dad’s middle name, too. He said he was starting a family tradition. Guess the tradition died with me.
Don’t ask me why you get a new name when you die. Seems a bit pointless to me. I don’t have the foggiest who picks the names.
First thing I remember after dying was being in a white space. Like in the clouds. No walls, no ceiling, but there was a floor. I couldn’t distinguish anything around me. This short, heavy man with a grizzled, gray-stubbled face floated over to me. He had bare feet and wore dingy, denim overalls, with no shirt underneath and one strap undone. He reminded me of one of those black and white photos of poor kids back in the depression. You almost expected to see a wheat stalk between his teeth. Instead, he chewed on a cigar.
He stuck out his hand to me. “Heya, I’m Marty.” He clenched the cigar stub in his teeth as he spoke.
I stuck out my hand to shake and my hand passed right through his, our hands occupying the same space. It took a half a second for me to realized what happened and I jumped backward, falling, then scrambling back several feet. “Ugghh,” I said, involuntarily.
Marty bent over laughing, loud guffaws sounding like some asthmatic donkey. He stood there, hands on knees, wheezing.
I got to my feet, watching this character, ready to bolt if needed.
He slapped a knee with one hand before straightening back up. “Ho boy. Works every time. I tell you. It’s the little things that make death so fun.”
I stared at him, not amused. He had said “death” and I recognized the truth. I was dead.
“Ah lighten up kid.” He produced a clipboard, brown with a large silver snap stretched tight over an inch of paper. Don’t ask me where the clipboard came from—maybe from down the front of his overalls? He flipped through the clipped pages. “Let’s see. Here you are. Chance Phillips?” He raised an eyebrow to me.
I nodded, still ready to run.
“Okay. Chance was your life name. Your name is now … Reo.” He paused dramatically before saying my new name with great flourish. “I’m your counselor. Your
transition liaison
.” He made air quotes. “Here to help you adjust to death. Now, can I get you to sign here?”
He held his clipboard out and offered me a pen. A small silver chain snaked from pen to clipboard.
I reached for the pen. My hand went right through it.
Marty exploded with laughter again. He laughed so hard he spat out his cigar. It landed near my feet. “Oh God, kid. It never gets old. Only half you newbies fall for it twice in a row.”
What a jerk. Me just realizing I had died and this douche kept pranking me.
He cleared his throat. “Now, better stop fooling around and get to business. Can you hand me my stogie?”
I folded my arms over my chest. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; fool me three times and I’d have to wear a tee-shirt saying “I’m with Stupid” and a giant arrow pointing up.
He nodded. “Good kid. So you do learn.” He reached down, grabbed the cigar, stuck it back between his teeth.
I had so many questions. What happened next? What do I do? Is there a God? Was this all there was, standing around in a cloudy room?