Storyteller, Colin & Anne Brookfield [best fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

and yes, she could be a bit of a tiger at times, which is not surprising considering the rough neighbourhood.

Tiger was a tomboy, and the outrage of ‘toffee-nosed’ people. She had dyed her bushy hair bright red and dressed like a boy, but it was well known that she had a good heart and an equally good voice. She just never stopped singing; any street corner would do, and it was apparent that the people loved it, from the amount of coins that seemed to collect at her feet.

Tiger did have one major problem in her life though. It was a local council official called Miss Gallsop, a harridan referred to behind her back, as Huffy Knickers. The woman kept the police dogging Tiger’s footsteps wherever she went, and eventually was responsible for Tiger being brought before the local magistrate.

On the day of her appearance, something totally unexpected happened; people had started collecting outside the courthouse and their numbers were increasing alarmingly. Then the crowd began chanting ‘HANDS OFF OUR TIGER!’ When the police tried to arrest a few people in the hope of scaring off the rest, the crowd immediately blocked the attempt.

Eventually, Miss Gallsop was forced to address the hostile crowd but they shouted her down. Several minutes later, Tiger’s musical voice was heard and the crowd went quiet.

“THEY’VE DROPPED THE CASE! she shouted, “I’m free and they’ve offered me the bandstand in the park as my own place to sing whenever I want to. Justice has been done, and it was you good people that made it happen.”

A few months after the court case, Councillor Gallsop was at it again. She was such a control freak, and so furious that her actions had been countermanded by the courts, that the woman had started bullying poor Tiger again. Then with unexpected suddenness, it was heard that Miss Gallsop had resigned from the Council due to a very embarrassing episode.

It transpired that during a council debate, Miss Gallsop had entered the adjacent ladies toilet, but on emerging some five minutes later, she paddled the few short steps across to the lectern to deliver her wisdoms to the ‘underlings’, and might have continued, had it not been for the distinctive snap of something elastic. Then all eyes fell upon her unmentionables that had just descended around her ankles. She would have kept going were it not for the storm of uncontrolled laughter, which further magnified her embarrassing predicament. She left at high speed with her passion-killers in hand, which made it impossible for serious work in the council chambers to continue, so it was cancelled for the day.

Tiger Prawn seemed to have a new spring in her step and a finer ring to her voice after that.

Is there Anybody Out There?

It was long past working hours when Paddy Murphy slipped quietly back into the shipyard. He was feeling very cold without his duffle coat, which had been carelessly left aboard the de-commissioned passenger ship ‘SS Corfu’. Although only eighteen thousand tons, she had enough passageways below deck to lose the unwary, especially at night armed only with a torch. He was puffing like a steam engine by the time he reached the ship’s lower decks. The passageway carpets had been removed, so his feet clanked noisily upon the steel floor, whilst the open doors of empty cabins, seemed to stare spookily out at him like empty eye-sockets. Finally, his hands undid the heavy lever-handles on a steel door marked ‘No Entry’ and he was soon clambering down the lower companionway.

Paddy stopped in front of another steel door with a large red cross painted on it; the paint pot and brush were still where he left them, for it had been his last job before going home. Suddenly he heard a sound nearby.

“Is there anybody out there?” he shouted. There was no reply.

“Probably a rat,” he mumbled nervously as he opened the door. The torch lit up the empty store room, revealing his duffle coat on the floor. He had scarcely bent to pick it up when he heard a noise behind him, and in the torchlight, saw the figure of a man clearly silhouetted in the doorway. Paddy rushed towards the figure and they both fell to the floor; a fist hit him hard on the jaw which made him dizzy. Then the door crashed shut and was locked. There was silence for a few moments, followed by guttural laughter and an angry voice.

“We don’t like bloody spies, so we lock ‘em up.”

Another voice said “You can’t leave him there John.”

“Yes I bloody can.”

“Please let me out,” Paddy shouted.

“I like your Irish accent,” came the laughing reply. The sounds gradually diminished, until there was silence. He was almost hysterical with fear.

Nobody came after that, and the endless time passed in a near madness of despair, thirst and hunger. Almost two weeks had elapsed before at last, some loud gruff words penetrated the thick steel door and entered Paddy’s ears; he heard them, but by now, nothing registered in his brain and he couldn’t move.

“What’s the bloody rush guv?” said the voice. “I didn’t sign on for ten years to do rubbish work on an old rust bucket. Why the heck did the Navy buy it?”

“Gun practice for our ships dozy,” the other voice bellowed, “the Corfu is ready to be towed out to sea immediately. Now open that marked door; the scuttling charges have to be in place within the hour, and we need to make good and certain that we don’t leave a shell-riddled hulk hazarding the sea-ways. It’s happened in the past.”

“GUV!” the other seaman shouted, as he opened the door, “there’s a body in ‘ere!” He rushed over to check for any signs of life. “Blimey! I think he’s still alive.”

Paddy spent quite some time in hospital before he was strong enough to be questioned.

“Hello John can you hear me?” were the words that awakened Paddy, and his eyes opened.

“My name’s Patrick, not John,” he whispered. “They call me Paddy.”

“Sorry John,” said the police inspector not hearing him. “I know you’ve been through hell,” and he held up a leather wallet. “We found this on the floor of the room you were in. Your name is John Phillips, but there was no address, and we need to know it.”

Paddy had a further three days in hospital, and by then, the police had become aware of everything that had happened to him, and that John Philips must have dropped his wallet during the struggle.

“It seems the old ship had been used for storage by a drug syndicate,” said the police officer, “and we’re grateful Patrick, that you were able to identify John Phillips from the criminal mug-shots. I had a hard time convincing my boss about your part in a plan we’ve now put together, that is, until he knew what that moron had done to you.”

The plan was to be enacted on the following Saturday evening at ‘Egidio’s Tratoria’, just off Piccadilly Circus, where the John Phillips in question had made a single table booking.

On Saturday evening, practically every table at Egidio’s was occupied. The plain clothed police were already in position and out of sight, and by 8pm, John Phillips was being shown to his table by the proprietor.

The police moved in quickly from all quarters.

“Do not move any of you,” commanded the police loudly.

Then the police began clearing each table until John Phillips, and a solitary seated figure with his back towards him were the only ones left.

The silence was eerie. The police stood and did nothing. John Phillips stared about him and he knew he was in some serious trouble. It was the anonymous figure that all eyes were trained upon that took his attention, especially when the figure slowly raised an arm high in the air with a leather wallet in his hand. John Phillips immediately recognised it as his.

“Lovely leather John.”

His blood then ran cold as the figure uttered the words that he had heard once before.

“Is there anybody out there? Please let me out!”

Jake & Jemma

Life was tough in 1905 where Jake Wilson was born in the forest region of Molalla, Oregon. He had begun his working life at fourteen years old as a hard working lumberjack for the Oregon mills. During the hunting season, he went with other men, and shot innocent wildlife as his hobby. Rarely did anything survive that came into his rifle sights. There was no thought behind these acts or that those they killed, just might have young depending on them. To these men, it was just fun.

The First World War had come and gone, but in 1939, war was beginning to rage in Europe again. It did not involve the United States, so Jake continued with his life in the usual way.

Early one morning, he raised his rifle, took aim, and fired. A beautiful cougar knew life no more. Mercifully, she did not suffer, for his aim had been true. As he walked over to inspect his ‘kill’, he heard a plaintive sound coming from the undergrowth. He had killed a mother with a young cub.

As he looked down at the helpless cub, he suddenly realised what a thoughtless, evil act had been committed and was overwhelmed with guilt – an emotion previously unknown to him.

Jake sat down on a rocky section under the trees and put the cub in his lap; she could not be left there, as she would die of hunger. He carried her to his cab and removed a spade from his truck to dig a grave for her mother, then drove home to his house in the forest.

The cub had to be bottle fed, which was a task Jake thoroughly enjoyed; it developed a bond between them.

He called her ‘Jemma’, but knew that one day she would have to go back to the wild. His dog Nero, absolutely adored her and they played together in his back yard; he was always ready to protect her if necessary.

Knowing that the day would come when she would have to be released, Jake taught her gradually to hunt for herself.

One year later almost to the day, he realised the time had arrived to part with her. With Nero at his side, he drove to Mount Hood and set her free. Whilst she climbed a tree, Nero and Jake walked back to the truck without looking back. He returned to Molalla with