Tales from a fictional Irish Village – 18 years and upwards.
https://www.amazon.com/Other-Side-Fictional-tales-Village-ebook/dp/B0BW7QH4DX
This Collection of Short Stories covers romance and drama, all sprinkled with bits of Irish humour. The tales were spun over a few years and kept in a file. Over time, as the stories emerged, they created a community set in an Irish fictional village. The tales are coloured with Irish thinking and sprinkled with humour. None are to be taken seriously. I hope you enjoy the sample below.
Harry, The Princess Fairy And Me.
Christmas Eve, twenty minutes to closing time. Road traffic is heavy, and people are filling every space on the footpath. Need I say more?
I am a woman on a mission. Being a godmother is something I take seriously, considering my older sister is someone whom Superman would never mess with. And Milly, my goddaughter, is so heartbreakingly cute that I do not want to disappoint her. Besides, I missed her birthday, and this is my chance to make up for that mistake. So here I am, chasing up and down the aisles, looking for this doll, Princess Fairy Gumdrop, a doll that will save my universe. I am frantic. I spot it. I lunge and meet a large, warm hand.
Glancing up, my blue eyes meet the sexiest pair of brown ones a woman could ever dream about. I blink. Focus, I tell myself. Remember, Gillian, you are a woman on a mission.
“Hands off the Princess fairy,” I growl at him.
“Don’t call me a fairy.” His voice is suave, smooth and sexy.
I blink and ignore the obvious. I am a woman with a mission, I silently chant. Aloud I say, “Don’t change the subject, hands off, she’s mine.”
Brown eyes do not waver, but he breaks out this sunshine of a smile. Gritting my teeth, I remind myself this is a life-or-death situation.
“What is it? You don’t like men.” He softly purrs.
I am not immune or stupid. “‘Course I do, but not at this moment when you are throttling the life out of my goddaughter’s present.”
“I would not know how to, ” he begins. Then it happens.
The world implodes. The earth moved, as in physically moved, not because of this hunk rattling my hormones. The floor shook, and the shelves began to shake and shiver. I did not let go, and neither did he.
“‘This way,” he yelled, tugging me and the canny princess along as if we had any choice in the matter.
“Let go,” I shout, grabbing a wobbling shelf.
“No. Are you mad? You let go.” He stopped and stared hard over my shoulder. His voice changed and wavered as he said, “Move now, or you will get hurt.”
I turned to look behind me. I moved. A domino effect was coming our way. Even the boxed dolls looked scared as they danced off the shelves toward the floor and us.
We ran. All around us, there were screams and sounds of people being hit by dislodged toys. “‘Can this get any worse?’ I muttered. Trust me to open my big mouth. It did.
A hiss followed a loud bang.
“Gas.” A voice bellowed, rising to a scream, “Gas, I smell gas. Run.”
“It’s not gas,” he panted.
“What? Are you an expert?”
He smiled in a very Paul Newman manner. I ignored him as he said, “You could say I am an expert in life. Besides, if it was gas, we would be dead.”
He stopped. I tumbled very neatly into his broad, solid frame. “What are you, a wall?” I moaned as I rubbed my shoulder.
“Close, rugby player.”
“Typical, I can’t meet a nice puny guy who would step aside and say; go ahead, please, be my guest and take the last doll. No. I meet a hulking great hunk who decides chivalry got left behind on Noah’s ark.”
He turned and looked at me closely. “Ah, so you think I am a hunk. How high do I score? Ten, eleven, twelve?”
I scowled. “Minus twenty-two.”
“Your brain score, I take it.”
“No. I’m just stating a fact: I need this doll.”
“Ditto.” He lowered his face to mine. He was inches away; I could smell his peppermint breath and could not look away from those brown eyes. The world stopped for one tiny second. Neither of us could tear our eyes off the other. Then, all hell resumed once again as we heard what sounded like gunfire.
“Ah, for feck’s sake. What is happening now?” I asked as I ducked down.
“Got someplace better to be?” His voice was husky.
Sexy eyes, and a husky voice, a woman would have to be mad not to want to follow him. I stopped thinking, as I saw a man wearing a balaclava walking down the aisle towards us. The gun he was carrying did not appear to belong to one of the toy soldiers now lying in disarray on the floor.
“Over there join the others” he barked.
“Might as well do as the nice man with the gun suggests,” brown eyes said.
“Why?” I, stubborn to the last, had had enough.
“Because if you do not, I will shoot your head off.” The rifle fired. Ceiling plaster descended on us. We moved. Like sheep herded into a corner, we joined three others.
“Cosy this, isn’t it?” Brown eyes cooed at me.
“Cosy as hell.” I retorted.
“Got someplace better to be?”
“I’m getting tired of you asking that. It implies that you just came here to pick up any woman you could get your hands on.”
“Don’t think I’m that desperate yet that I’d resort to this, Honey.”
“I’m not your Honey.”
“Ok, then tell me your name, or Honey, it will be.”
“Gillian.”
“Gillian, honey, would you mind letting go of my hand? Or if you like you can hold my left hand? I am getting pins and needles in my right hand.”
“No. You let go first.”
“You are sexy when you are mad. Perhaps we should count this as our first date?”
“Not if you were the last man on earth.” The air was frizzling about us when a cool, light voice interrupted.
“Ah, I’ll take him if you don’t want him. “This was from the young man in white on my left.
“You are welcome. As soon as I pay for this doll and he lets go, you can haul him away.”
Brown eyes were lowered to meet mine. The twinkle in them was dazzling me.
“No offence intended, mate, but I prefer women. Petite women who know when to let go.”
I hate to admit it but I was turned on, right there and then in the middle of this exploding, gun-toting toy store. However, I would not admit it to him if it were the last thing I ever do. So I banished the butterflies from my stomach and reminded myself why I was here in the first place.
“I think you two are kind of cute together.” The young man beside me purred.
“Like fire and water.” I agreed with a nod.
“No, like coffee and cream,” he suggested. The look I threw his way should have frozen his brain.
“Sorry.” He muttered.
“She loves me really,” brown eyes told him.
I stood on his foot. “Ouch, you’ve got huge feet for a woman.”
“Something else about me for you to dislike then.”
“I don’t dislike you; it’s just this doll thing. Can we agree on flipping a coin, best of three?”
“Whose coin?”
The sound of a siren interrupted us. There was banging on the front door and then gunfire, more gunfire. Having bullets whistling by your head does not precisely encourage or promote tossing coins.
We were now lying flat on the floor. He opened his mouth, “My name is Harry by the way. I always like to be on at least first name basis before I get my woman horizontal.”
“I’m nobody’s woman.”
“Ah, that’s sad, particularly at your age.” The young man had found his voice. “You should take Harry up on any offer he makes.”
“Yes, you should, I agree with,” Harry said.
“Sam, how do you do.” He shoved his hand between us and Harry almost, almost let go of the doll.
“I’m doing ok.” Harry drawled. “Beautiful woman in my arms, doll between us, it’s a real gem, three-in-a-bed situation. Gillian Honey.”
“I’ll Gillian Honey you if you make any more smutty insinuations about us.”
“And what sort would you make?”
“Absolutely nothing.” I was lying, of course. I was way ahead of him on that one. It involved a huge fire, a nice king-size bed and nature taking its course.
“Just my type of woman, wearing nothing, insinuating nothing and letting things progress at their own pace.”
“Look buddy,” I prodded him in his chest and stopped. It was hard. “Is there anything at all soft about you?”
“Absolutely nothing” He grinned and winked.
“Typical smutty man.”
“If you say so, but please say my name, I don’t find buddy very appealing.”
“Good, great. Now give me the damn doll. It looks as though the police are about to break in here, we can say goodbye, happy Christmas and never meet again.”
“Fine if you do as you say. Give me the doll.”
Events stopped us in our tracks. A gloved hand reached down and yanked me by my recently cut brown hair onto my feet. I still had a hold of the doll.
“Right doll, it is you and me.” He said pulling with all his might.
We were not moving. It is funny, how odd bits of knowledge spring to mind at the oddest moments, like for every action there is an immediate reaction.
Suddenly Harry let go of the doll. Like an elastic band being released I was careering across the very nicely polished floor on my ass with a large man in a balaclava, tumbling with me, shouting abuse and struggling to find his gun.
We stopped moving.
Harry jumped nimbly over me and landed squarely on the gunman’s stomach.
The small crowd of onlookers, all gave an ‘Ouch’ or ‘ooooh’ in sympathy. I lay there mesmerised as Harry began to get familiar with Mr Balaclava’s face.
Ten minutes later, we were rescued, including the battered gunman. There was a line of policemen behind Harry all vying for his autograph. I was still a little dazed. Never had anyone come to my defence in such a Hollywood swashbuckling manner.
I told Sam so. He smiled at Harry, saying, “If this was Hollywood, you would pick her up and carry her off into the sunset.”
“Great suggestion, Sam, ” Harry said, swooping me up in his arms as he turned for the door.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I asked linking my hands around his neck.
“Sorry,” he muttered and lowered his lips onto mine. Minutes or it could have been days later I opened my eyes to see Sam sneaking out with the Princess.
“Thief, he’s stealing my Princess, stop him,” I yelled.
Sam fearing a tackle from Harry, came towards me saying, “I was just dusting her off.” He held her out to me. I grabbed her and scowled at him.
Clutching her to my chest I said, “She’s Harry’s.”
Smiling at me he said, “No, I’ve got my princess, Joanna can make do with all the other stuff I bought her.”
I hesitated to check.
“My niece.” He told me with a grin. “You can meet her later.”
“Later?”
“After we make sure everything is in working order.” He told me as he carried me out.