Jamieson Wolf
Number-one bestselling author
The Mortal Border- A Flash Fiction Story
“Do you have it?” Gale asked. He held out a small vial.
She gave him an insulted look. “Of course, I do. What do you take me for? One of your regular fucking idiots?” She held out a ghostly white finger and he watched as some of he essence filled the vial like smoke.
He almost laughed and would have, if not for the look upon her face. “No, of course not.”
“Good.” Charlotte said. “I’m not here to play around.” She made a motion with her hand that looked as if she were cutting the air. A man stepped out of the shadows. He loomed tall and looked down upon him with an unsmiling face.
“This is my associate Teddy. He will give you everything you need.” She made that motion again, as if the air around her could be cut to shreds.
A bag of money landed on the table with a solid thunk! that made him jump.
She let out a shrill cackle that scratched at his skin like a hand of nails. “Are the living always so jumpy? Or is it just you?” She said.
She made that cutting motion one final time and was gone as if she had never been there.
Teddy said nothing. Gale sighed, took the bag of money and left while he still had all his limbs intact.
*
“We’re running out of time.” Jax said.
Gale’s voice was tense when he replied. “I know.”
“You probably shouldn’t have taken her money.”
“I know, but when have you ever known me to turn down a client?”
Jax stroked his left cheek. “You never do. But this time, you should have.”
“You know the rules. They come to me to live again. They pay me and I find them a body. Simple as that.”
Jax gave him a hard look, narrowing his green eyes and looking even more beautiful to Gale. “You know it’s not that simple.”
“Fine, do you want the advert text? Live beyond the mortal border of skin!”
Jax gave him an even harder look reducing his eyes to slits. “You know it’s not that simple, Gale! Why’d you take her fucking money? You have to find a body that is willing to take a soul across the border of its skin. We’ve been over this before.”
Gale took Jax’s face in his hands. “Why are you so upset?”
“You didn’t know her when she was alive, Gale. She’s not called the black widow for nothing. She cut the necks of nine husbands. Your week is almost up. What are you going to do if you don’t find a body?”
Gale shivered. “I don’t know. I’ve looked in all the normal places. Morgue’s, funeral parlors, you know. But I can’t find any shell willing to take her beyond the barrier of its skin.” He frowned in worry.
“How much time do you have left?”
Gale swallowed thickly. “I have one day.”
*
He tried not to pace. He tried but wasn’t doing a very good job. He knew that he would not be able to find a body for the Black Widow. He had communicated with every cadaver that he could find, male or female, and no one wanted to even consider it.
People didn’t know that the skin also held its own magic within its barriers. Only spirits that were welcome could cross. Gale had carried the tiny vial and tried to see if any bodies would take her spirit, if the skin would let her live again. He hadn’t found any takers.
“I don’t know what to do.” Gale whispered urgently.
Jax had a thoughtful look on his face. “What kind of body does it have to be?”
Turning, Gale gave him a look of confusion. “What do you mean? A body is a body, any body will do.”
“Yes, but does it have to be…human? She just wants to live again, right? If you say that any body will do…”
“…I just need to find one.”
Jax narrowed his eyes and looked into the dark corners of their bedsit. “You say that she was called the Black Widow?”
“Yes, she was.”
“Then this will do nicely.” Jax said, grabbing a tea cup and reaching into the dark with it. He brought his hands back into the light and Gale saw a black spider quivering inside the cup. “You say that there is a magic inside the skin, the mortal barrier, but what if the creature isn’t mortal? There would be no such resistance, would there?”
A look of dawning comprehension came over Gale’s face. “I really do love how your brain works. But there is one concern.”
“What is that?”
“I’ve only ever used human spirits and human bodies. There is no telling what will happen if I try to put a human spirit inside that of an insect.”
“What is the alternative?”
“Teddy returns with Charlotte’s spirit and he kills me.”
“Well, we can’t have that, now can we?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Gale reached into his jacket and took out the vial containing the fingerprint of Charlotte’s spirit. Gently, he undid the stopper and poured the contents over the spider.
The spider began to glow, the black softening to grey as if it were made of shadows. The glowing intensified and Gale knew that the spirit was taking over that of the spiders. When it stopped, they both looked down into the cup.
Charlotte blinked her eyes. “Well, I must say, I feel marvellous. Wait, why are there eight of you, Gale?”
“Well, you said you wanted another body. I found you one.”
Charlotte made a cutting motion with one of her legs. “What body did you find for me Gale?” She contorted herself and looked. “You absolute bastard! We had a deal!”
“The deal was to find you a body. I have done so.”
Gale went to the window and threw the spider into the air. Where it landed, he never knew.
Of Echoes Born by ‘Nathan Burgoine – A Book Review
There is colour all around us.
Reds can mean many things, such as the outpouring of emotion. Yellows can mean contentment and browns can represent the growth of something within us. Colour can symbolize many things, but sometimes that colour is just an echo, a faded brush stroke on a canvass, much like the emotion that conjured it. That colour becomes a spirit, a moment caught in time, a wish never fulfilled…
Colours run all throughout Of Echoes Born, the new short story collection by ‘Nathan Burgoine. I am always apprehensive when I approach a collection of short stories. Often, there are usually only two or three really good stories, a smattering of just okay stories and the rest are filler. However, every story contained in Of Echoes Born is a knockout and every one of them left me emotionally moved.
Weaving together all the stories are ruminations on colours, on what different colours mean when people see them. In the stories, we are shown the lives of people that are so real, so lifelike that it is almost as if we could reach into the pages and touch them.
The stories also feature magical realism at its finest and most beautiful. All of the stories left me breathless at the end. Burgoine has a deft hand with a pen and has crafted twelve perfect jewels, twelve perfect tales that will thrill, entrance and move you.
I was surprised by how moved I was by these stories. Each of them packed a punch but what struck me about most of them was how they could have been written about me. Quite often, the stories featured stories about the oddball, the gork or deek (geek and dork, dork and geek), the odd man out; I was and am that man.
I’ve often felt uncomfortable in my own skin. This is probably why I connected so closely to these stories. There is something for everyone within this collection including mysteries, magic and mysticism.
I won’t give you a rundown of each of the stories or tell you which story is my favourite; I loved the entire collection. Besides, I don’t want to ruin any of it for you. I want you to do what I did: open the book to page one and read. You will be amazed, you will be enthralled, you will be enchanted. It’s taken me quite a while to write a review for this book, mostly because I didn’t think I could find the right words to say how much I loved it.
I finished the book a changed person. That is the power contained within these stories. I can only hope you feel the same way.
A Patchwork of Time – A Poem
As I approach
my fortieth year,
I have been
studying my body
for signs of change.
I have been wondering:
Have I lived enough?
Have I strived on with courage?
Have I embraced my life?
I look down at everything
that makes up my body,
that has marked a moment
in my life, a memory
preserved upon my skin.
On my right wrist,
there is a marking
shaped like a scar
to remind me
that we can overcome
what scars us.
There is a marking
on my left wrist
which reminds me
that some deaths are not physical
and those too can be overcome.
It carries within it
one of my happiest memories,
so close to actual magic that
it still thrills me,
that moment when
I became a real wizard
and learned to fly.
There is a spot near my left nostril
that carries the sharp scent
of the pink lemonade
that my grandmother used to make for me.
There is a scar on my right knee
from when I went zip lining
in the congo of Costa Rica
and I can still hear the rush of wind
when I run my finger along it.
Along the curve of my lips,
there is the memory
of saying ‘I do’ to my husband;
along the edge of my right ear
is the sound of him saying the same.
Words cover my skin,
quotes from books that have stayed with me
throughout the years, written in
a cursive script, as if they were written
on the moment that I read them:
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live…”
“Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”
“If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”
“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think?”
“Evil, however powerful it seemed, could be undone by its own appetite.”
I find each quote
at its beginning and
trace my fingers
over the words to their end.
I hold all of this within in my skin,
a patchwork of time passed
and time yet to come.
Looking down at my body
and everything it contains,
I know that I’ve lived,
that I am courageous and have strength
and that I have embraced life and everything
that it has to offer
to the fullest.
As I approach
my fortieth year,
I look at
my body and
wonder what else
life has in store…
Family Is Everything – A Flash Fiction Story
“Tell me the story again, papa.” Chloe pointed to the trinkets that he kept on the shelf behind the cash register. “The one about the earring.”
They were seated in his tobacco shop and the last customer had left. The bell still rang every now and again, but her papa said that this place was haunted. She breathed deeply, and the mingled scents of the tobacco was like perfume to her.
“You want to hear that again? I’ve told you that tale over a hundred times. There are lots of other trinkets there.” He said, giving her a smile and gesturing to the other treasures: a little toy car with only one passenger, a woman’s compact mirror that was made of pearl; a necklace that was made of the brightest jade.
“No, papa, the story about the earring. Please? It’s the loveliest.”
Looking into her bright blue eyes, he knew that it was the only tale that would soothe her. “All right love, but another story tomorrow night, okay?”
“Okay, papa.”
“Well, there was once a woman that ran this very shop with her husband. Lacey was very beautiful and very sad. She had hair as red as fire and eyes as bright as emeralds. Lacey was sad because her husband and her daughter were lost at sea. She was always clutching an earring. She had given the other one to her husband so that, if they were lost, it would call them home to her.”
“That’s sad, papa. Did it work?” Chloe asked.
“Well, when Lacey was not working the store, she wandered at the edge of the water for days and weeks, hoping against hope that they would come back to her. She heard many tales from the other villagers of what had happened to their ship: a group of pirates had taken the boat, it had been led astray by a group of sirens, it had entered into a fog, never to be seen again.”
“What did happen, papa?”
“Lacey continued to wait. She pined for her husband and was a mix of hope and sadness both at the same time. She had waited for so long and the anguish had wasted her away. Lacey was no longer the young woman she had been. Still, she waited for her husband and child.”
“That’s sad, papa. I don’t like this part.” Chloe said softly.
“It’s all right poppet, it’s almost over. Lacey was very old now, so old that her bones creaked like the sea when she moved. One day, she felt her life seeping out of her. She sat here, behind the counter where you and I are now. As her last breath left her, she saw two spirits come through the door of her shop. At long last, it was her husband and daughter and they came to her side. She was overjoyed to see them, even though she could not touch them. Her hand moved right through them. Lacey let her last breath leave her and left her body, finally able to join the man and child that she had lost so long ago.”
Chloe gave her father a bright smile. “That’s lovely, papa.”
They heard the tinkling of the bell again and turned to see who it might be…
* * *
Anna opened the shop door, Stephen close behind her.
They both saw the earring floating through the air and the outlines of two people, a man and a girl upon his lap, before they faded away like smoke.
Turning to Stephen, Anna said “See? Didn’t I tell you that this place was haunted?”
Stephen walked into the centre of the tobacco shop and picked up the ear ring that had fallen to the floor with a soft click. He held it in the palm of his left hand. “It’s so cold.” He said. He handed it to Anna who put it back on the shelf with the other trinkets: a little toy car, a woman’s compact and a necklace.
“Why do you keep those things? Why don’t you just get rid of them?”
Anna shrugged. “The store belonged to my great grandmother.” She held the other earing in her palm, almost entranced by its bright blue stone. “It’s funny, but I feel so connected to her, especially with these earrings.” She made a face. “I know, I’m being silly.”
“No, not silly.” Stephen said. “Family is everything.”
* * *
Anna woke later that night.
The wind was loud tonight. It whistled outside of the apartment window. She lived over the shop. It was a fair-sized place and she owned the building. Sometimes, she could hear the laughter of a child within the walls of this place, the sound of a soft lullaby being sung to a child.
Unable to sleep, she walked downstairs to the tobacco shop. She went right to the trinkets and the earrings that lay there. Even in the darkness, they seemed to glow. Entranced, she held them for a moment and then put them on.
She rummaged around in one of the drawers and found an old hand mirror. Turning the mirror face up, Anna went to look at herself and let out a small sound of shock. There was another face looking back at her in the mirror.
Anna moved her mouth and so did the other woman in the mirror. She was frightened now. She touched her face but did not see a hand in the mirror.
“I’m so sorry.” The woman in the mirror said. “Family is everything.”
Anna knew a moment of pure bliss and then she was gone.
* * *
Wearing the skin of another, Lacey called out to the shadows. “Hector? Chloe?” She said. “You can come out now. Mama’s home.”
The spirits came at her call and she held out her arms wide.
Family is everything.
Hallowed: The Elementals Book One – OUT NOW!
Oh, happy day! I have a new book out!
Here’s a little bit about Hallowed: The Elementals Book One
The world has moved on. A virus wiped out most of the Earth’s population and only a handful of people survived. Percy is one of those survivors. After getting a fever, he survived with only a red mark on his arm. When another man knocks on his door with the same mark on his arm, Percy has no idea how crazy his world is about to become…
You can get your copy here:
http://www.cobblestone-press.com/catalog/books/hallowed.htm
This is the first of five books in The Elementals Series. The books follow the stories of survivors of the plague…and what they can do to bring life back to the planet. Each of the books focuses on a different couple from that group of survivors. This is Percy and Colin’s story.
A little bit of a side note: originally, the mark that Percy has on his arm was supposed to be the Deathly Hallows. I’ve worked all kinds of book references into this novel and the next four books as well. All the names are from Harry Potter characters, or variations of those names.
I thought it would be kind of cool to have only the book loving geeks survive an apocalypse. The Geeks will inherit the Earth, after all. That was the original idea, however, during edits, I had to change what was tattooed on Percy’s arm, which in turn changed the series slightly, thankfully for the better.
If you read Hallowed: The Elementals Book One, I truly hope you enjoy it. You can get your copies here:
http://www.cobblestone-press.com/catalog/books/hallowed.htm
Stay tuned for more news!
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Jamieson Wolf has written a compelling story about navigating multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. His story will touch your heart, make you cry, then laugh, and inspire you. A touching memoir with a bit of magic…and tarot! ~ Theresa Reed, author of The Tarot Coloring Book
Jamieson Wolf 