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    Children of the Fray
    Children of the Fray
    Children of the Fray
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    Children of the Fray

    By Rhea Rose

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    About this ebook

    In the Second Keyboard Books collection, Children Of The Fray, an imprint of RainWood Press, you'll find four short tales of domesticity gone magically wild; from the garden to the woods, from a suburban living room to a dilapidated, inner-city building. Menacing and bloodthirsty family lullabies echo throughout Children Of The Fray. Keyboard Books are dedicated to stories set in other realms and that speculate beyond the ordinary. Between these pages, you’ll find a super mom once bitten twice shy of revealing her new talents and desires; a family vacation that goes mythical, an only child finds strange siblings in bubble gum packs and a little girl has picture books read to her by a vampire.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRhea Rose
    Release dateDec 24, 2014
    ISBN9781310970139
    Children of the Fray
    Author

    Rhea Rose

    Rhea is a Vancouver, BC writer known best for her short stories and many of those are posted here at Smashwords. I'm mainly a short story writer and a writer of poetry although lately, I've made a foray into novel writing. I've been nominated 3 times for the Canadian Aurora award, twice for short stories, once for poetry, also nominated for a Rhysling award for poetry. I've made the preliminary nominations for a Nebula award (did I mention I like to write "Science Fiction?") I've also made Ellen Datlow's honourable mention list 3 times for horror. Here at Smashwords, you'll find my shorts that have been traditionally published but those rights have now come back to me and I republish the stories here. As well, you'll find short stories that are published here for the very first time. These stories are ones that editors loved, held for tons of time, shortlisted, longlisted and then decided the piece couldn't fit the theme or some other aspect of their needs. Those are very frustrating times for a writer, but the beauty of Indie publishing is that you can publish them at some point and get them out to your readers. When posting my work at Smashwords I try to show diversity in writing and select stories that I think are relevant, and might surprise the reader; a good story will usually be relevant until the end of time. The work I post here has been worked on quite a bit so hopefully, it satisfies the reader. My wish: I'd love to have more reviews from readers and stars. Those are so important to writers. That's how we know that there's anyone out there...

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      Book preview

      Children of the Fray - Rhea Rose

      INTRODUCTION

      Welcome to horror and fantasy from this Keyboard Books collection of short stories, an imprint of RainWood Press. In this collection Keyboard Books offers four short tales of domesticity gone feral; from the garden to the were-woods, from the horrors of spider webs in a suburban living room to a dilapidated, boarded up, inner city building with a menacing story time. Bloodthirsty lullabies echo throughout Children Of The Fray.

      Keyboard Books are dedicated to stories set in other realms and that speculate beyond the ordinary. Between these pages you’ll find a super mom once bitten twice shy of revealing her new talents and desires, a family vacation that goes mythically native, an only child who finds strange siblings in magical bubble gum packs, and a little girl who has picture books read to her by a vampire. Thank you for roaming the story telling forest of Keyboard Books.

      Press Enter

      Author: Rhea Rose

      Table of Contents

      1. Summer Silk

      2. Bigfoot Boarder

      3. Sibling Seed

      4. Alia’s Angel

      5. Author Biography

      6. Excerpt from Jack Sprott Continuum Cop

      Children of the Fray

      a.ka.

      ‘Feral Fantasy’

      From Keyboard Books, an imprint of RainWood Press

      Copyright © 2017 by Rhea Rose.

      All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction, in whole or in part in any form. This book is a work of fiction.

      Cover design RainWood Press.

      Images from Shutterstock.com, Creative Commons, Pixabay.com).

      Interior images designed by RainWood Press; Alia’s Angel, image by Littlegett©,

      Cover and interior designs by Rainwood Press, © 2017.

      Summer Silk

      That’s a wolf spider, not a tarantula! Milo, my ten-year-old son explained, as I ran around the kitchen with the broom and tried to bat the huge beast out of the corner and down the heating vent. The terrified arachnid collapsed, crinkled its hairy legs and became as light as dust.

      Milo bent to retrieve the carcass. Don’t touch it, I shouted, jumping backwards. Milo poked at the brown, inert pile; they always reminded me of a ball of discarded thread when they played dead.

      Toss it in the toilet now, before it wakes up, I ordered.

      I want to collect it, he pleaded; I caved. Thanks, Mom, he said with such glee you’d think I’d bought him a video game. He ran off from the kitchen to a corner of the barn to find a jar to store the critter in.

      Make sure it has a tight lid, I hollered. No response. He hears everything, but never lets you know until one day he’s repeated word for word all your gossip overheard during a phone conversation. Sometimes I could just kill that sweet kid.

      As the weeks went by the webs around the kitchen window and doors thickened even though I worked hard to clean them away. The porch lights became killing fields. The bug blood from the midsummer slaughter stained the house’s vinyl siding. The marks faded if I used bleach.

      This morning I stepped onto the porch to catch a glimpse of the late summer sunrise over our fields of large, green and orange mottled pumpkins, I walked into a gigantic web. It stuck to my neck; it stuck to the gloss recently applied to my lips and snagged in my eyelashes; I imagined my reflection as it grimaced back at me eight glistening times as the spider scurried to take shelter somewhere in my long blonde hair. From the corner of my eye I reluctantly observed the spider’s miniature butt swing round in mid scuttle and disappear. I squeaked in stifled horror when I thought I felt the eight-legged weaver’s tiny tickle as it made its way down the canals of my inner ear. Several small smacks to the side of my head didn’t seem to dislodge anything but my sunglasses. A frantic visit to the washroom mirror revealed nothing. Like some great ape, I checked for fleas, brushed and parted, combed and flipped my hair around. No spider. I picked the remains of its web from my brow and felt the silk still on my arms, still invisible except for its insistent tickling presence.

      Days later, the incident forgotten, I cleaned webs off the windows around the house. The outdoor lights, thick with layers and layers of soft white silk and bits of tangled insect debris, took on the look of large glass eggs in cocoons.

      Ted, do something, I said to my husband, then stepped in front of the T.V screen. He didn’t flinch. A commercial for the latest Spider-man movie flashed.

      ’Bout what? He twitched his index finger, signaling me to move aside. I noticed something odd about Ted, odder then the usual odd things Ted had going for him. A web. A spider’s web hung between the lobe of his ear and his shoulder--small, delicate and still in progress, the creature, no larger than the head of a pin, still spinning.

      It’s that time of the year, I said, and gave him my best you-know-what-I-mean look. He continued to stare through my torso as if he had x-ray vision. He shifted in his recliner.

      Time of the month? Already?

      I hit him with the tea towel.

      Spider season is a family affair for us. I hate the spiders. Ted hates my project, and the kids hate both of us this time of the year because no one is permitted to rest until every breathing arachnid is gone.

      At first, my plan of attack for this season seemed to take on its own natural momentum. Ted faithfully sprayed the owner of every web within reach. Then he used his new feather duster to twist and noodle

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