Free Book Excerpts

A collection of 17 short stories by different authors, to make you laugh or cry. Great Summer read. Includes traditional stories, but some that put the unusual in the usual…

Excerpt
The Red Queen

“It takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.”
Alice through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carol

My name reads like an obituary. Letters branded on a door:  Dr. M. Chase, BSc. MSc. PhD. Wildlife Protection Officer. I glance along the corridor, where closed doors are edged with thin lips of light. I’m not sure how long I stand there, pressing my thoughts against the silence, as if I can hold back the day, stop it from seeping in. I draw in a deep breath; whisper a silent prayer and push the door open.
The office smells of stale coffee and sneaky cigarettes. The light is cut into strips, the blind rattling in an aircon breeze. I wait, reluctant to part with my shadow. I imagine I am twenty-nine. It’s my first day and my job is to save the planet. I never cared for comic book heroes, but suddenly I wish I could spin time backwards.
I open the blind and let the light soften the edges. I stare at the green filing cabinets, the metallic sentinels that line the far wall, the legacy of my predecessor.  They proffer their morning salutes but today they feel like condolences. I think about all of them. The files designated NLVs- No Longer Viables. I think about the ones we almost saved and I resign to the power of a single word.
The Aardvark, the Cheetah, the European Ground Squirrel, the Humpback Whale, the Smooth-coated Otter, the Lion, the Snow Leopard, the Panda, the Polar Bear, the Tasmanian Devil.
They all become ghosts in the end.

I stand at the window, my eyes coasting the mountain crests, tinted by the pink blush of the glass. When I look away, I see Joanna, framed in pine on the desk. The light hangs an orb over her and I blink it away. The photograph was taken in Costa Rica, on the first day of our honeymoon.
I let her name perch on my lips; linger there like the first sip of wine.
“I’m not giving up, Jo,” I tell her. “You taught me that.”

I switch the button on my PC, hear it click as it gathers its thoughts. I cast my eyes over the list of phone numbers; a catalogue of last chances. I lean back against the cold hardness of the day and close my eyes. The photograph of Jo with two ocelot cubs, also taken in Costa Rica, floats across the blackness like a screensaver. I imagine I’m her, pressing my face to theirs, the tickle of whiskers against my cheeks, the smell of warm fur. I imagine it so hard I clench my teeth, drowning in the ache.
When the Ocelot Project landed on my desk, it came as a blessing and a curse; a perverse twist of fate.
I hear Jo in my head: “It’s not about winning or losing.”  I see her face, strands of hair falling out on a pillow. “It’s about making every second count,” she says.
I hold onto the thought, squash it into a jar and snap the lid shut.  Even when I open my eyes I still see her. Now I hear Don Randolph in my head, the evolutionary biologist who has the office across the hallway. “You can’t save everything,” he says. I lean my head against my hands, elbows pressed into the desk. “But this one’s different,” I say. “This one’s for her.”
I say it out loud like an affirmation in case the angels are listening. I figure they owe me.
I look at the first name on the list, James Liddell, a geneticist in Sydney, did all the prelim population viability studies. Someone said his father just won the lottery. I wonder what time it is in Sydney. Jo always used to say, “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”  I grip onto the belief with both hands, even when it burns my fingers.
I look towards the window and watch the dust, tiny fragments of yesterday caught in the sunlight. I wonder what I would tell myself if I could go back.

Copyright 2008 Bridge House Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.