lomax61 - Stories

A short story in five pieces about love, loss and redemption.

One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy.

Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.

I am sure many of you, like me, learned this children's nursery rhyme about magpies. According to an old superstition, the number of magpies seen predicts whether you will have good or bad luck. Something I came across subsequently, was the existence of many variations on this rhyme, some more sinister than the children’s version.

One of those is incorporated into this short story about boyhood abuse.

Short coming-of-age story about 19 year old Carey, experiencing his first sexual encounter while on holiday with his mother on the south coast of England.

Anthology Pot Luck Theme: Turn Back Time

British born Chinese gay man Stanley Cheung wakes with somebody else's hangover.

Not only that, but he is laid out on someone’s couch in a grungy student digs where a strange woman is telling him he smells like a brewery. The thing is Stanley rarely drinks.

When the woman finally leaves, he finds out that not only has he woken as six-foot-three, ripped, blond-haired, straight Caucasian Don Bradley, but today is not Friday.

It’s Thursday.

Again.

He is reliving the same day but this time as somebody else.

Ben and Colin are comfortably in each other's lives, but the path of true love is never an easy one, and a mistake throws Ben's loyalties to the wind. Not only that, but the mystery behind the deaths of Denny and the rent boys remains unsolved. Carter only had a list of hits. Were Colin a different person he might leave things well alone. But the thing about sleeping dogs is that some people can never let them lie.

Fellow students of Brathay Stonearm consider him pleasant and harmless. Nobody guesses at his single-minded determination to become the best buildings expert of his generation.

Until Counsellor Brokerman offers him a challenge he feels compelled to accept.

Lord Leonmarkh, youngest of the DuMankin siblings, has a reputation as something of a spoiled wastrel and has been shipped off to Black Ice Bay to assume the role of Watchman of the North. Brathay is tasked with assessing the ancient keep and advising Leonmarkh on how to survive the long winter months.

If only the man would grant him an audience.

Book Two of The Last Statue follows on from Heart of Black Ice Bay and traces the lives of five new characters across roughly similar timelines.

• Marica is almost duped by a night caller accelerating her future plan to escape the palace;
• Jasmar's instincts tells him to accompany Marica’s siblings on their escape to Loq;
• Tad, a menial in Aulderly, stumbles upon the missing Lore of Invocation;
• Brokerman has to help deal with an emerald explosion that rips through the grounds of the Aulderly;
• Duke Ervine holds together a fragmented empire while a new ruler is being agreed upon.

"May You Never Be Too Old to Search the Skies on Christmas Eve" - Anonymous

A Further Twelve Gays of Christmas Short Story

Rudy and Trevor return to Loch Arkaig for Christmas with new friends; two men who got together on a gay cruise; a celebrity chef who found love with his late best friend's husband; a baker and his tree-hugging partner; two older men who have been together forever; and finally, a doctor working for charity and his lawyer husband. All about to meet together on Christmas Eve, some for the first time.

But, of course, my dear readers already know them well.

The sleepy village of Crumbington is about to get a wake-up call.

When the new chairperson of the Summer Fête Committee pushes to create a naked calendar of the Crumbington football team, mouths drop open. Her further pronouncement at having snagged a celebrity host for the fête—rising television and movie star Clifton O’Keefe, and ex-resident of Crumbington—is met with indifference.

Not by Nathan Fresher, though, local baker and captain of the football team. He had been Clifton’s boyfriend in high school, until Clifton and his family disappeared into the night over ten years ago.