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    Under the Full Moon and Other Stories
    Under the Full Moon and Other Stories
    Under the Full Moon and Other Stories
    Ebook71 pages54 minutes

    Under the Full Moon and Other Stories

    By Charles Schilling

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    About this ebook

    A collection of short stories that roams through several genres from comedy, drama, fantasy and suspense. There are a couple of whimsical looks at murder, a tragic game of hide and seek, a lesson on when not to make a slip of the tongue and a look at what happens when you break 113 out of 206 bones. There are seven entertaining stories in all and one of the stories in the collection, "Accidents Will Happen", was an Honorable Mention in the 2001 Writer's Digest Competition.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCharles Schilling
    Release dateJan 4, 2015
    ISBN9781311470164
    Under the Full Moon and Other Stories
    Author

    Charles Schilling

    Writer, actor, artist and IT Professional are all active roles for Charles Schilling. He's been writing for the past 42 years, acting in community theatre since 1974, pursuing painting, sketching and woodworking since 2004 and has been a professional in Information Technology since 1980. He attended California State University at Sacramento in the early 70's as a Theatre Arts major and a minor in English. Reading, acting and directing have given him a powerful perspective on story-telling and crafting a story. His passion is story-telling whether on stage, in prose or in a painting.

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      Book preview

      Under the Full Moon and Other Stories - Charles Schilling

      Table of Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Under the Full Moon

      You Can’t Find Me

      Tourist Trap

      Accidents Will Happen

      To Thine Own Self Be True

      The Harder They Fall

      In Silence Sealed

      Under the Full Moon and Other Stories

      Copyright © 2014 Charles Schilling

      Smashwords Edition

      This is for Katja

      Acknowledgments

      True story: I found a lesson that led to the publishing of these particular words.

      A friend of mine was looking for an actor to play Vladimir in Waiting for Godot. It’s a hard role, you understand—learning nearly 700 lines for a play in which nothing really happens. On purpose.

      And that was the easy part.

      It took me a few days to screw my courage to the sticking point and agree to do it. I have a job in the real world, I’m over 60 and supposed to be in my declining years—you know, great excuses for doing nothing. 

      Then I heard myself say, Okay, I’ll do it.

      Now, I’m not crazy, I’ve been acting since 1974, with about 28 years off for good behavior. I’m not Alec Guinness either, but I know the score and can hum a few bars. But this is like singing opera instead of Happy Birthday. It scared the bejesus out of me.

      So I did it anyway. And here’s the lesson: always do that. Always.

      Face what scares you and spit in its eye. The sense of accomplishment is huge. And there is a big barrel of confidence that goes with it. Turns out confidence is currency. Magic coins, no less—the more you spend, the more you have.

      Publishing these stories was the next thing that scared me. But I did not know that.

      I had the good sense a few months ago to engage a professional life coach. I’m condensing this for space, but basically she asked me what I wanted to do.

      I said write.

      She said go do that.

      I said I can’t.

      She asked why not.

      I said a lot of things.

      She said one word: Bullshit.

      That’s when I realized she was right and I was facing something else that scared me. So, I spit in its eye. You hold the result in your hands.

      I’m beholden to Clinton Vidal, old friend, and director extraordinaire and to life coach Kathyrn Kleypas—someone who has a way with words.

      One more thing. If the thing that scares you has big claws and teeth and/or can move faster than you can run, uh ... uckfay the ittingspay.

      Figure that one out, censor bots.

      Lunatic…13th cent., Middle English: from Old French

      lunatique, from late Latin lunaticus, from Latin luna 'moon'

      (from the belief that changes of the moon caused intermittent insanity).

      —The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology

      Under the Full Moon

      My wife wasn't a large woman, but she was a bit overweight. I had quite a time getting her on the coverlet that I had planned to wrap her in. I finally hit on the right method and managed to roll her awkwardly into the center of it.

      She'd been quite fond of that thing on our bed, but I hated it. It was a nasty shade of puce with black and white orchids rampant. I was happy to get rid of it.

      I folded it over her loosely and went to get the mop. There was quite a bit of blood.

      I mopped the kitchen floor, wiped down the cupboards, and put the cleaver in the dishwasher. I made a cup of tea, and sat down at the kitchen table to smoke my pipe and think.

      I deeply regretted my haste in anger because I wasn't prepared for the situation I found myself in. My next most logical step was to call the police, I suppose, but—how shall I put it? That seemed distasteful to me. The thought of perfect strangers rummaging through my home and making personal and impertinent inquiries was simply out of the question.

      And I could well imagine the official reaction when I told them I'd killed her to stop her incessant, cheerful jabbering. How could I explain my not wanting to listen to her breathless gossip about our neighbors' constant fights? Or listening once again to a recap of the day’s soap operas. Or how about a dramatic account of the endless battle of cleanser vs. soap scum. Would they understand fifteen years of longing for silence? Fifteen years of marriage spent praying for a case of laryngitis or

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