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    Beautiful Lies
    Beautiful Lies
    Beautiful Lies
    Ebook49 pages31 minutes

    Beautiful Lies

    By GJ Hughes

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Beautiful Lies is a collection of 5 short stories of the fantastic and bizarre. In 'Jump', Sascha must confront the edge of the world. In 'Texas', Kate meets her worst nightmare. In 'Tick Tick Tick', Grant has kept a secret for far too long. In 'Headjob', Nathan T Codman finds out the future is not what he had hoped. Finally, in 'The Sentinel', Akemi finds that the quantum is all around us.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublishermadhouseMEDIA
    Release dateAug 26, 2013
    ISBN9781301894581
    Beautiful Lies
    Author

    GJ Hughes

    GJ Hughes is a SF writer who loves in Port Macquarie, Australia. He has published an anthology of short stories and is currently working on something much longer...He enjoys a gin and tonic, the great outdoors and his Triumph motorcycle (not at the same time)...He also writes as Geoff Hughes - where he is the founder of Madhouse Media Publishing and the host of the podcast EBR | The Writer's Show.

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      Book preview

      Beautiful Lies - GJ Hughes

      cover-image, Beautiful Lies - 2020 relaunch

      Beautiful Lies

      GJ Hughes

      Published by Madhouse Media Publishing

      Copyright 2020 GJ Hughes

      ISBN: 9781301894581

      Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

      This is an updated edition.

      Contents

      JUMP

      TEXAS

      TICK TICK TICK

      HEADJOB

      THE SENTINEL

      FINDING JESUS

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      To Jayne, who taught me that lies best belong in fiction.

      I always tell the truth. Even when I lie

      ―Al Pacino

      one

      

      image.png

      Jump

      S

      ascha stares hard at the eccentric melee of wire metal and grease that the Trabants East-German engineers have optimistically called a motor. An erratic mist of oily smelling steam shrouds its communist secrets. Sascha is no mechanic, but inspecting an engine that is caked in solidified, rust-streaked oil doesn't make her optimistic. She watches the steam from the fractured radiator disappear into the darkening sky and sighs. Trabants are a car not renown for their reliability.

      What's wrong with it?

      Aden stares distractedly down the Highway waiting for the inevitable confrontation. Sascha feels sick to her stomach. It's been a long drive North.

      I don’t know. Let me think.

      She stares hard at the motor, willing a solution to materialise. Any solution.

      Think of something quick, bitch.

      Aden uses the handgun like an extra finger, handling the weapon with a cold familiarity. Sascha watches this display of small arms prowess with dread. The distant sound of sirens is punctuated with the screech of cockatoos. All around her the silhouettes of giant Boxwood trees reach out to the nightmare of stars above. The sirens are getting louder.

      Time to go.

      Aden's voice is dry and beaten. It sounds more an observation than a command. Sascha looks into those soulless eyes for some sign of kinmanship. All she sees is fear. Hers and his.

      Up there.

      He gestures to a boulder above and behind them. A large bald stone in a wild, fertile outgrowth of life. A magpie circles above. Black and white against the ever-darkening sky. The sound of mosquitoes and butcherbirds fill Sacha's ears with a funereal hum.

      The unexpected suddenness of the view makes her vertiginous. It looks like half the world has suddenly dropped away in some violent escape. To the north and the south the sheer cliff face arcs away to

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