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    Vicious Tales from Men's Magazines
    Vicious Tales from Men's Magazines
    Vicious Tales from Men's Magazines
    Ebook103 pages1 hour

    Vicious Tales from Men's Magazines

    By Clinton Smith

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    About this ebook

    Shock, crime, horror! Nine tough, thrilling, chilling tales - most published in leading men's magazines. Stories from 'Man', 'Man Junior', 'Pocket Man', 'Squire' and other male mags.

    In 'Night Flight to Amsterdam', a millionaire's life depends on stealing another man's coat.
    In 'The Round Metal Tomb' a con escapes jail by being welded into a 44-gal drum. It seems the perfect ploy - until he discovers where the drum will be stored!
    In 'So Very Lifelike' the wife of a wealthy taxidermist takes a lover. And learns what it means to stuff things up.
    In 'Kidney Punch', a Mafia boss on dialysis makes the mistake of monstering a nurse.
    In the SF epic, 'The Justice Wire' there's a diabolical switcheroo you'll never see coming.
    In 'Come Down Killer' a gung-ho reporter ends up with a killer on top of an industrial chimney.
    In 'Melting Point' a truck driver with a leaking sump discovers a new substitute for oil.
    Then there's 'Hot Shot' where who's-up-who becomes a matter of life and death.
    And 'Split' where we meet a man who is equal to anything - from break-ins to nuclear war! (23,000 words)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBuzzword Books
    Release dateDec 9, 2014
    ISBN9781310581366
    Vicious Tales from Men's Magazines
    Author

    Clinton Smith

    Clinton Smith has extensive experience in radio, film, television (copywriting, producing and directing) and is the author of two previous novels, The Fourth Eye and The Godgame, both of which have been optioned for film. He lives in Cammeray, NSW.

    Read more from Clinton Smith

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      Book preview

      Vicious Tales from Men's Magazines - Clinton Smith

      Copyright 2014 Clinton Smith

      The author asserts his moral rights in the work.

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

      If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

      Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

      This edition published by Buzzword Books at Smashwords 2014

      First published by Buzzword Books 2014

      P.O. Box 7, Cammeray 2062

      Australia

      buzzwordbooks.com

      VICIOUS TALES FROM MEN'S MAGAZINES

      by

      Clinton Smith

      Other titles in this series by Clinton Smith:

      ROMANTIC STORIES FROM WOMEN'S MAGAZINES

      Contents:

      About this collection

      Night Flight from Amsterdam

      So Very Lifelike

      The Justice Wire

      Melting Point

      The Round Metal Tomb

      Kidney Punch

      Come Down Killer

      Hot Shot

      Split

      ABOUT THIS COLLECTION

      These stories are mostly 'commercial'—written to sell and to entertain. The majority have been published in magazines and anthologies and one even won an award.

      As the young Smith wrote stories in two genres—male interest and romance. I've anthologised them in two books. VICIOUS TALES FROM MEN'S MAGAZINES and ROMANTIC STORIES FROM WOMEN'S MAGAZINES.

      It was strange to troll through tales I'd written over forty years ago. I had no idea what many of them were, let alone how they ended. The only copies surviving, apart from a few tired photocopies, were in the magazines that ran them—magazines I'd stored way back then in a tin trunk in the shed.

      In the trunk, I found most of the mags I'd sold to but not all. So all I have of some stories is a notebook listing titles and publications. The magazines I managed to keep are collectors' items now. For instance, The Women's Weekly was then tabloid sized. Woman's Day was larger, too. And the men's, mags published by an Australian outfit called K.G. Murray, are long defunct. As for Argosy, England's finest short story mag of the time, which had the format of a small paperback, even it died the death, probably a victim of TV.

      As I wrote on a typewriter back then, the old Smith had to retype the young one's yarns laboriously from each magazine into the computer. Time doesn't destroy good yarns but it makes references and speech patterns outmoded.

      So I edited and updated the tales as I went to help contemporary readers enjoy them. I doubt the young wordsmith would mind, as the old one, now author of several published books, knows far more about writing than he did. Still, it's been interesting to revisit his first successful tries at fiction and has even inspired me to write several more stories to round out the collections, which appear here for the first time.

      The stories in these collections aren’t the only Smith stories to appear. His more serious or 'literary' stories are in the anthology, TALES OF A COUNTRY TOWN. (As most stories in TALES have won literary awards, perhaps the 'literary' tag can stand.) TALES is published by buzzwordbooks.com.

      PUBLICATION CREDITS

      As explained, one or two of the earlier stories did not find a home and I have written several more for this project. For the record, published stories I retrieved from the trunk appeared in the following magazines and anthologies:

      COME DOWN KILLER — POCKET MAN, March 1960.

      THE ROUND METAL TOMB — MAN, Dec 1964.

      KIDNEY PUNCH (Published as: THE NURSE WHO HATED) — MAN, July 1966.

      SO VERY LIFELIKE — MAN, October 1966.

      NIGHT FLIGHT TO AMSTERDAM — MAN, July 1970.

      THE MAN WHO MADE WHISTLES — ARGOSY (UK), December 1970.

      BRASS TEETH — ABC Lennie Lower Anthology of Humorous Stories, 1989.

      SEA SERPENT FOR CELIA — WOMEN'S WEEKLY, December 1965.

      THE SNAG — WOMAN'S DAY, January 1971.

      THE SAND MAN — WOMEN'S WEEKLY, December 1971. (Winner Women's Weekly inaugural Mary Drake award for fiction.)

      SPINSTER — WOMEN'S WEEKLY, November 1973.

      THE JUDGE AND THE BABY — CLEO, February 1983.

      NIGHT FLIGHT TO AMSTERDAM

      She was the kind of woman he'd never been to bed with—tall and with a body that had long, heart-stopping curves and hollows.

      He first noticed her walking ahead of him to the bus at the Cromwell Road terminal. The smooth flanks of a model—fluid under the well-fitting skirt. She looked around once and he saw she was beautiful—aristocratic face, dark eyes. She looked frightened.

      She sat on the top deck of the bus. He sat downstairs, grinning. All the way to Heathrow, he grinned. He grinned as he checked through immigration. He grinned as he walked to the departure gate. Because now he could afford a woman like that. He could afford any tall, beautiful, haunted-looking woman in Europe.

      Because he, John Hutton, had pulled it off! At 35, he'd made ten million dollars.

      The flight was announced. He joined the boarding queue. The hop to Amsterdam was as familiar to him as his nose.

      He settled into his window seat. Floodlights from the terminal highlighted the moisture-streaked frost on the wing. He thought of the next deal. A flat $500,000 for a three-letter name.

      He wasn’t aware that the woman had sat beside him until her perfume made him turn. The same woman he'd noticed. Amazing!

      Even seated, her head was higher than his. He cursed himself for being only five foot eight.

      He thought of Margot, his ex-wife with her flat, thin, childlike body. He thought of other women—a succession of ages and shapes. A rogue's gallery of breasts, flanks, arses, positions and reactions.

      This one had good breasts—heavy but well-formed. As she leaned forward to find the ends of her seat-belt he saw how much of her there was.

      She tried to adjust the air vent, hand shaking, then, as if embarrassed, glanced at her watch. Her handbag dropped to the floor.

      He retrieved it for her. 'You all right?'

      'Thank you, yes.' A faint accent. Not Dutch, he decided. German.

      'Flying makes you nervous, huh?'

      A slight smile. 'No, I am just a nervous person, I think.'

      They were moving. She shut her eyes. She didn't open them again until they were at 30,000 feet and levelling.

      He said, 'Stopping over in Amsterdam?'

      'The night only.'

      'Suppose you're lucky and booked a rest cabin at the airport. They had none left when I tried.'

      'No? Can one do that?' She seemed intensely interested. He had the impression that she wanted to sleep as close to the plane as possible. He told her about the benefits of Schiphol—how, for years, it was the most modern airport in the world. He told her that the terminal floated on a flexible base 13 feet below sea level.

      'You know it

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