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    The Kitchen Imps and Other Dark Tales: A Fire-Side Tales Collection
    The Kitchen Imps and Other Dark Tales: A Fire-Side Tales Collection
    The Kitchen Imps and Other Dark Tales: A Fire-Side Tales Collection
    Ebook42 pages58 minutes

    The Kitchen Imps and Other Dark Tales: A Fire-Side Tales Collection

    By A L Butcher

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Six short tales of mayhem and mischief.
    Naughty imps, missing socks, cunning thieves and baffled gods feature in this collection of short fantasy fiction.

    Winner in the 2018 NN Light Book Awards for Fantasy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA L Butcher
    Release dateJan 21, 2018
    ISBN9781386616177
    The Kitchen Imps and Other Dark Tales: A Fire-Side Tales Collection
    Author

    A L Butcher

    British-born Alexandra Butcher (a/k/a  A. L. Butcher) is an avid reader and creator of worlds, a poet, and a dreamer, a lover of science, natural history, history, and monkeys. Her prose has been described as ‘dark and gritty’ and her poetry as evocative.  She writes with a sure and sometimes erotic sensibility of things that might have been, never were, but could be.

    Read more from A L Butcher

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      Book preview

      The Kitchen Imps and Other Dark Tales - A L Butcher

      The Kitchen Imps and Other Dark Tales

      A Fire-Side Tales Collection of Short Dark Fiction

      By A. L. Butcher

      COPYRIGHT © A. L. BUTCHER 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019

      All rights reserved.

      Second Edition .1

      The right of A. L. Butcher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All characters herein are the intellectual property of the author.

      Some of these tales appear elsewhere including Wyrd Worlds, Wyrd Worlds II, and Indie Collaboration anthologies. Featured here as one collection, revised and expanded for your enjoyment.

      Cover image Fluenta@Fotolia.com

      With thanks to JB and DW – you know who you are.

      Contents

      The Kitchen Imps and Other Dark Tales

      Contents

      The Kitchen Imps

      The Joy of Socks

      Monday Imps

      The Secret Kitchen

      Free Will

      The House of Treasure

      About the Author/Other Works

      The Kitchen Imps

      The kitchen was dark . Just a faint sliver of moonlight shone through the big glass windows, which during daylight looked out over a rather mundane patio and a nondescript garden in an equally nondescript street. It was not a large room, this being a particularly cramped dwelling, at least for the human occupant, but he was not the only creature who lived here. Although, in the manner of humans, he thought he was the most important, he was wrong. The human believed he ran this dwelling, and in that he was also wrong.

      For a while the other creatures which dwelled in the house listened and pointed, with their hairy ears alert to any sounds, and their red bulging eyes watching in the darkness. It was silent, save for the drip-drip of the leaky tap and the soft squeak-squeak of one of the kitchen’s mousy occupants. Ikthik, the boldest of the small creatures, pushed past the salt cellar, haphazardly shoving it onto a shelf; it was a good deal taller than the creature, and for good measure he kicked it hard. The salt cellar moved, teetering over the edge of the wooden shelf above the sink. The imp grinned, his sharp, brown teeth revealed in a round but rather squashed face; a cap fashioned from the washing rags, which kept mysteriously vanishing, according to

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