Short Story Anthology Volume Three: What I’d Say To Agatha Christie If I Met Her In The Knitting Circle

Foreword
I have often been asked how I weave such bizarre ideas and unexpected twists into my writing.
To be honest, many of my best plot lines have arisen from what I like doing best, talking to
people, and I have found that indeed truth is stranger than fiction. After listening to these strange
tales my imagination takes over and I weave and embellish the tale I’ve just heard by asking
“what if?”. Like the curious tale gleaned from the concierge at Victoria’s Empress Hotel. Some
guests had checked out only one day into their stay. Apparently, when unpacking after exploring
the hotel, the wife found all of her husband’s clothes gone and what she described as “ghost
clothes” in their place. Upon hearing this, the “what if” took over, and Francis Rattenbury made
an entrance into The Mystery of Ms Teak, the “what if” prompting the thought that perhaps the
ghost had materialised into our time and needed to change out of his conspicuous garb. Of
course, like most writers, many of my storylines have also been based on my own life and
experiences. I believe you will find many examples of both that and “what if” within these pages.
For those of you who may be interested, I have written a few short lines on how each of
these stories found life.
Night Muses Stalking was written in tribute to my son Rory after he passed away. My
way of saying I’ll meet him in Valhalla one day and we’ll shoot the shit around a campfire.
By Life’s Seaside. This came about from attending several self-discovery courses run by
a group called Context. If they are still around perhaps check them out. You will unravel your
truths and beliefs and begin making realizations on how to improve and change your life. It did
wonders for me and many others I knew.
Wes’ Echo Harp was written a long time ago during these courses, about meeting a
fellow and wondering why he kept such odd trinkets and why they meant so much to him.
Were-Lovers of the Ethereal was a rather off-beat tale about meeting a wolf, only it
turns out not to be merely a wolf, but so much more. This garnered second place in The Spooky
Tales Contest: New Canadian Magazine.
The Eyes Don’t Lie. As a teenager my two buddies and I would hang out in a twenty
four hour truck stop, sipping free coffee, read books, and just hang out until the wee hours of the
morning. The waitresses didn’t mind as it kept them company and feeling safe, especially with
some of the strange men that came in.
Don’t Cry Jack, Daddy Will Save You was based on some studies of multiple
personalities. For those interested read When Rabbit Howls. It is amazing what the human mind
can do and perform when needed to protect itself. Why send several people to Mars if you can
send only one who had the minds of several?
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The Doctor to the Rescue! My dentist, who I knew very well and who loved my
writings, once asked me how come dentists are never featured in any books or television shows. I
told him that’s because you’re all dweebs! He agreed and said give me a story. So that afternoon
I thought what if? and wove a story about a strange patient that shows up in his office. The
original is called The Myzsterious Mr. Jones and is in Volume Two, What I’d Say To Einstein
If I Met Him On The Dance Floor (a teaser for you, now you’ll have to buy that novel as
well!). I later wove this into a contest regarding putting myself into a certain popular television
series.
Havens of the Heart. I don’t normally attempt poetic pieces but wrote this after
attending a place called The Haven by the Sea. A course on improving your life and getting what
you want out of it inspired me to write this piece and I left a framed print of it hanging on their
wall.
Windsong’s Calling was pulled from my novel Raven’s Lament (the first in the
Stillwaters Runs Deep series) for a novella contest and contains incredible scenes which many
readers have told me is reminiscent of a being’s next step of evolution and travelling through the
earth via trees.
A Scratch in Time Saves Nine was written for a contest involving furry creatures.
A-Hunting We Will Go was pulled from my science fiction/spiritual series, Seeds Of
Ascension for another contest.
Sylvia’s Sun-Catchers. Voted number one by the readers in an anthology of over three
hundred entries. Most don’t guess the ending. It is set in the Sylvia beach hotel in Oregon with
each room dedicated to an author and decorated in such a style. There was even a knitting bag in
the Agatha Christie room and I’m sure Miss Marple would have been amused by the many
visitors who added a row or two. Unfortunately the original, beautiful, bewitching hotel is no
more, and I can no longer relax on the plush sofa in the softly lit upstairs lounge drinking mulled
wine whilst staring at the tumbling ocean and letting my muse take over. New owners have
removed the heart and soul of this wonderful oasis of calm and serenity. The themed rooms are
no more; all the same minimalist modern furniture and dull “greige” décor. They have kept the
rooms names, but all that is left of each author is a generic sign on the door. Sometimes evolution
is not a good thing.
I have also tried my hand at creative non-fiction in a series of articles that were published in RV
World Magazine, plus a short story entitled Trust Me, I Didn’t Make This S**t Up which is the
basis for my first upcoming non-fiction novel.
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And if I left you hanging and still wondering “What Would I’d say to Agatha Christie If I Met
Her At the Knitting Circle” I’d ask her if she really didn’t remember what happened when she
disappeared…
(The story below as it appeared on Facebook and in other journals)
In 1926, Britain was shaken by a mystery straight out of a detective novel: a car was found
abandoned on a country road—with a woman’s fur coat left behind. The car belonged to none
other than the world’s most famous crime writer, Agatha Christie.
And she was missing.
Scotland Yard launched a nationwide search. Suspicions quickly turned to her husband, Archibald
Christie, who had recently asked for a divorce and was spending that very night with his lover in
the countryside. The public was furious. Newspapers called for his arrest. His mistress vanished.
He was publicly shamed and disgraced.
Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle got involved, allegedly consulting a medium in an attempt to find
her.
Then, eleven days later… the case took a wild turn.
Agatha was found staying under a false name—Theresa Neele—at the luxurious Swan
Hydropathic Hotel. Which by the way was the name of his lover. She had been relaxing, dancing,
enjoying spa treatments, playing piano, and drinking fine wine.
When questioned, she claimed amnesia brought on by grief. But psychologists weren’t convinced.
Her behavior seemed far too composed for a woman in mental distress.
Many believe it wasn’t a breakdown.
It was a masterfully executed act of revenge.
She humiliated her cheating husband, derailed his plans to remarry, and gave his mistress a front
row seat to scandal and disgrace. And instead of poison (which any mystery writer could’ve used),
she served cold, calculated silence.
Later, Agatha would divorce Archibald and marry a charming archaeologist—15 years her junior.
When asked about the age gap, she replied:
“It’s so lovely to be married to an archaeologist. The older you get, the more he values you.”
Agatha Christie didn’t just write mysteries.
She lived one.
The post link below for credits.
https://www.facebook.com/WeeSurvived/posts/pfbid02cptzMmVx3TbRQtAtorwhBWTmLtxto9
KGsEr6r6syFvBG7LNWMyx1zEhHz2d7txbXl
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Night Muses Stalking
Downtown streets of Victoria come alive in the dark where muses stalk the concrete and, in the
absence of light, darkness reigns. Only not all darkness is bad, nor is all light good. Drug dealers
cruise dressed nonchalantly recognizably in expensive leather shoes looking for those who need
a fix, and artists of all genders and afflictions seeking inspiration or other carnal rewards of a
shoddy ilk seek the inspiration to set their own brushstrokes to murals in their minds. Or them,
the unknown, the muses that avoid sunlight like a plague swelling in the darkness, waiting for
another meal.
If muses walk the night, do birds sing at midnight? Rory thought as he breathed deeply,
once again inhaling the heady hypnotic fumes purchased from the dealers of the suede shoes
sundering him from his realm and joined her, his mused affliction, in hers, and got into his
gaming avatar’s head, Xephos.
She would lead him again into the blood-crazed domain of a warrior born with the other
members of his most famous guild. Where he was hers and he hated that, yet something
compelling made her irresistible. Maligning good with bad, hungering on the taste of nectar’s
sweet blood licked from her own fingers. How he never tired of that craving, to suck from those
hands.
Armor clinks into place. Faces tensioned for the battle. Knowing theirs might be one of
the ones called to the halls of Valhalla. Each stare at their souls and at each other. Eyes reflect
the terror about to come and the knowing that they would give their life for the others.
Xephos stared at his companions. This battle, as many others, challenged soul, mind,
heart, stamina and courage. But above all else, courage. None of these were questioned, he and
his battle-hardened companions were meld of the same hardened steel stamina. Still, a trickle of
fear, of knowing. Instinctively does a warrior know when Death’s scythe, stilled for so long,
whistled, calling from its razor’s edge.
The hunger of the muse would dominate. Her calling, her needs, paramount. He knew her
vengeful price must be met one day.
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His eyes glared at the others. She knew his hunger all too well and fed it. Time and again.
“Xephos?” the others questioned their leader.
He gritted his teeth. There was only one way to go down. As a warrior born. Fighting.
He clapped them on the back. “We will win! Victory will be ours!”
A tear streamed down his face. They stared in utter shock. “The cost will be high, as it
always is.”
He planted his sword in the ground before him. “I will not waver!”
“I will not surrender!” The others thumped their chests in response.
Xephos cried to himself, to this demon inside. Sweat poured from his body as he mounted
his stallion.
Against insurmountable odds. The guild of the famous strode into the forefront of the
assembled horde. Skrillex and Funker lost in their own haze of blood, and lust led the others as
they charged into the battleground behind their leader.
Xephos, somewhere ahead, they lost in a haze of battle drums pounding, horses
screaming, and men raging in fearlessness before he was gone, swept by a wave of incoming
warriors.
The two, blood streaking their bodies, stood at the hilltop looking for him as the
vanquished before them ran away in defeat. Life below sang to the call of the scythe as it cut life
like wheat before it.
The rest of the guild raged after them, taking down the weak, the chaff.
The two looked around expecting to hear the familiar laughter of Xephos and his kind
voice. Only they stared in shock, for before them on the hill his horse nudged a still body. “NO!”
The one they would have named King.
Skrillex leaped from his horse as he thundered down the hill. Funker did the same. “He
died alone.”
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Around him, a dozen he’d slain lay in a dismembered heap in homage to his berserker’s
stifled rage.
They lifted his body limp, already going cold, eyes closed. Overhead the wind gurgled
like a muse beside herself with amusement, with a new one to entertain her for eternity. “We
should have been beside you. The Guild always stick together,” Skrillex said as he clapped his
hand to his chest in homage, as did Funker.
The two knew now the fear he had cringed earlier was his own. They screamed their
panic and heartbreak to the unhearing heavens as Ohealno came riding up. She fell out of her
horse, tears streaking her armor. Knowing she’d never feel his heat against her, nor hear that soft
laugh or witness his sly smile when the two were alone together ever again.
Xephos opens his eyes as a breath wafts its cooling warmth into the darkness.
I turn to answer the call from inside.
A cry rents stillness. It is not possible.
The pad of feet issues no reassurance that I shall leave here alive.
If, in only one piece.
If not all.
Coming here, not wise.
Chill surges upward, mists snake through the trees like a river of calling.
Asking for those that will speak to it.
Denying touch, sound, and taste.
Numbness remains its only way of being.
Leaves tremble, falling.
Moistness, dew drips. I take another step.
The calling begins.
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To her, as she has done my whole life.
The curse, the thrill, the temptation that paled everything else into disbelief.
This muse that would always stalk my soul.
Xephos smiles as she caresses him. His knife springs free. Blood splatters them both as he
slashes her lovely throat. “I’m yours, but I don’t go down without a fight. Never have, never
will.”
Somewhere in Valhalla angels sing and the devil snorts back a fat rolled one as she
splutters her last words. “You, silly boy.”
The muse gasped on her final breath, knowing she would be back and wherever he went,
she’d find him once again.