Off The Record Read online

  OFF THE RECORD

  A COLLECTION OF 38 SHORT STORIES

  A CHARITY ANTHOLOGY

  Published By Guilty Conscience Publishing

  Off The Record – A Charity Anthology

  Copyright 2011 – Luca Veste

  All stories are individually copyrighted to respective authors 2011.

  Cover Designed By Steven Miscandlon

  Edited By Luca Veste

  THE CHARITIES

  Off The Record is for the benefit of two charities who deal exclusively with Children’s Literacy. All proceeds from sales will go directly to them.

  They are…

  In the UK, National Literacy Trust. More information available at their website...

  http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/

  In the US, Children's Literacy Initiative. More Information available at their website...

  http://www.cliontheweb.org/

  Two very worthy charities, who help children read every day. Please visit and help in any way you can.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword – Matt Hilton and Anthony Neil Smith

  1.Neil White - Stairway To Heaven

  2.Col Bury – Respect

  3.Steve Mosby – God Moving Over The Face Of Waters

  4.Les Edgerton - Small Change

  5.Heath Lowrance - I Wanna Be Your Dog

  6.AJ Hayes - Light My Fire

  7.Sean Patrick Reardon - Redemption Song

  8.Ian Ayris - Down In The Tube Station At Midnight

  9.Nick Triplow - A New England

  10.Charlie Wade - Sheila Take A Bow

  11.Iain Rowan - Purple Haze

  12.Thomas Pluck - Free Bird

  13.Matthew C. Funk - Venus In Furs

  14.R Thomas Brown - Dock Of The Bay

  15.Chris Rhatigan – Shadowboxer

  16.Patti Abbott - Roll Me Away

  17.Chad Rhorbacher - I Wanna Be Sedated

  18.Court Merrigan - Back In Black

  19.Paul D. Brazill - Life On Mars?

  20.Nick Boldock – Superstition

  21.Vic Watson - Bye Bye Baby

  22.Benoit Lelievre - Blood On The Dancefloor

  23.Ron Earl Phillips - American Pie

  24.Chris La Tray – Detroit Rock City

  25.Nigel Bird - Super Trouper

  26.Pete Sortwell – So Low, So High

  27.Julie Morrigan - Behind Blue Eyes

  28.David Barber – Paranoid

  29.McDroll - Nights In White Satin

  30.Cath Bore - Be My Baby

  31.Eric Beetner - California Dreamin'

  32.Steve Weddle - A Day In The Life

  33.Darren Sant - Karma Police

  34.Simon Logan - Smells Like Teen Spirit

  35.Luca Veste - Comfortably Numb

  36.Nick Quantrill - Death Or Glory

  37.Helen FitzGerald - Two Little Boys

  38.Ray Banks - God Only Knows

  Editor’s Acknowledgements – Luca Veste

  FOREWORD

  Matt Hilton

  When asked by the editor, Luca Veste, to write a foreword to ‘Off The Record’, my immediate answer was yes. I didn’t stop to think, just went with my first instinct and blurted out the affirmative. My reasons for doing so were simple. Children need books. They need to learn to read and write. They need the enrichment that the magic of words can bring them. Who better to help children everywhere with this than the authors who actually put words down on paper? An anthology of collected short stories, all based upon classic song titles is an amazing idea, more so when all the proceeds from the book will be split evenly between two children’s literacy charities in the UK and USA.

  When I was a child, I grew up in a home full of love, but low in disposable cash. My parents were hardworking, but poorly paid, and it was a struggle for them to make ends meet when raising five young boys with appetites that matched their endless energy. There was a history of illiteracy in my family, many of the previous generations barely capable of signing their names, but I was lucky to have parents who were determined to see their children educated. What little spare cash they had wasn’t squandered on pointless gifts that would break within minutes of play, it was spent on the basics like pencils and paper, and they encouraged us all to draw and compose our own stories. My father was a consummate storyteller, and fired the imaginations of his brood with ghost stories and tales of derring-do. It made us into kids who appreciated the power of words to transport us into lives we could only dream of. Of those five rough-and-ready children from a sink estate in the north of England, two have become authors, one a musician and songwriter, one a tattoo designer, and the other a businessman. Without that early introduction to the joy of reading and writing, I dread to think where any of us would have ended up. It’s my dream that all children receive the same gift of literacy, so that they too can enrich their lives.

  Here in front of you is the perfect way to make that dream come true.

  Don’t simply read this book because it contains stories from thirty-eight of some of the best authors writing today. Read Off The Record in the knowledge that you are making it possible for underprivileged children to do exactly what you are doing now. Reading. Who knows, given all our support, perhaps in another ten or fifteen years time those same previously illiterate children will be compiling a book of their own.

  Matt Hilton – author of the Joe Hunter thriller series. www.matthiltonbooks.com

  FOREWORD

  Anthony Neil Smith

  Why, for the love of fuck's sake, would anyone write a story for charity?

  I mean, people do a lot for charity--they walk, they run, they sell cookies and shit. They participate in marathons. They donate cool stuff to auctions. They, um...what's the word...volunteer. Yeah.

  But why would writers give up so much of their time and imagination to write stories for charity? I mean, it's easier to open their wallets, right? This is their blood sweat and tears! How they make the bread! The what in "What do you do?"

  Not only that, but they're then given the added challenge--write a story custom-molded to a classic song title. So they can't even toss off a piece-of-shit failure hidden in the files. It's got to be fresh. Living and breathing. So there's another hurdle. Why, oh, why?

  I mean, Les Edgerton? The guy knows a bit about "time" already, so why donate so much of it to his story "Small Change"? Heath Lawrence, he of The Bastard Hand, spins up this wild world of "I Wanna Be Your Dog", and ain't getting a dime of it? Patti Abbott, whose stories are full of intricate details and intense depth, just handing over "Roll Me Away" without a fight? Helen Fitzgerald is a true rising star who could fart on paper and turn it into a payday (I'm sure her farts are very enjoyable reading), and here she is wasting "Two Little Boys" on, on, on what? Some sort of bell-ringing beggars?

  What's that you say? Children?

  Oh, well....I see. It's all for the children. Luca Veste has collected 38 original stories from some of today's hottest underground crime fiction writers--a list that will make you drool--all in order to launch Guilty Conscience Publishing and help out some UK and US children's charities. What a generous, ingenious, crafty son of a bitch.

  Stupid, though. I mean, by the time he prints this thing up and finds distribution and pays for bookstore shelf placement, what's going to be left for those kids? Pennies, I bet. Pennies. Just not the best fundraising strategy, if you ask me.

  What's that you say again? Ebooks?

  Aw, shit. This motherfucker is brilliant. Low, low cost, nearly instant worldwide distribution, and ebooks are hot hot hot right now. He's got this collection coming out during the Christmas shopping season, guessing millions and millions of people will be receiving new ereaders as presents, and they'll want some fast, cheap, high-quality books
to fill up those fuckers. And when you add charity to the picture--make em feel good. You don't feel good plunking down fifteen bucks for the latest Lee Child when you know most of the moolah will be going to pay for yet another three hour lunch some editor has with Snooki's agent about her literary career. No, that's not what they get when they buy Off The Record. You get powerhouses rocking the joint, tapping your head with the nostalgia you feel when you hear the song titles, like your very own mental classic radio station. And some hard-hitting fiction to boot.

  Banks, the mad heathen himself! Quantrill! Hayes! Brown! Just a shit-ton of good shit. All for the good of society. And all digital!

  You've really lucked out buying this, haven't you? If I didn't already have it myself, I'd envy you.

  The children thank you. The writers had a ball putting it together. And for the money, all you fine readers won't find a better anthology made up of stories based on song titles this year.

  Kudos, Luca. I wish you and Guilty Conscience the very best.

  Anthony Neil Smith – Author of Choke On Your Lies, Yellow Medicine, All The Young Warriors, and more.

  http://anthonyneilsmith.typepad.com

  STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN

  By

  Neil White

  Nights were the hard part.

  The days were just a series of routines. That was how prison worked. Doors unlocked. Breakfast. Work. Association. More meals. The day was split into periods, like a school timetable, and so it passed with the tick of the clock and the constant fear of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.

  The nights were different though, because that’s when he heard it.

  It was like an echo to the lock of the door. The key turned, the crunch of the footsteps faded, and then it came at him: the sound of laughter.

  He’d thought the sound was coming from another cell the first time he’d heard it, even though it seemed too high-pitched, too gleeful for the inside of a prison, where laughter was usually just a release, a moment away from the grind of the clock. This was different. It was uninhibited, joyful. Free laughter, he called it, like it had just drifted in through the bars of the cell window to taunt him, a taste of what it was like on the outside, a world that was visible as just passing clouds, sometimes stars.

  The first few days he had listened carefully, just to work out where it was coming from. Then he had walked the cell, gone to each wall and pressed his ear against the cold painted bricks, but it had just been the same. Evasive, drifting, as if it was all around him and not fixed in one place.

  Then he heard it properly for the first time.

  It had been when he was against the wall under the window, one ear pressed against it. It was a sharp laugh, louder than before. He had whirled round, certain someone was behind him. He felt the brush of hair, the gentle kiss of warm breath. His cell had been empty though. Just the plain white walls, painted brickwork, broken by photographs of her. Claire.

  They were dog-eared prints of how she used to be. Not like, well, how she ended up. Smiling, pretty, with that milky complexion and wispy blonde hair, like she should be running through meadows or making daisy chains, flowing dresses in summertime.

  He had closed his eyes, hoped it was just an illusion, something brought on by the walls, but still it came at him, and he recognised it as her, as Claire. It was less lilting now, more taunting.

  That had been her thing, you see, her laugh, and he knew why it had come. It was some kind of revenge, or perhaps his mind playing with the guilt, because that had been the sound that had put him in prison.

  Claire had been special. Innocent and fun at first, but as he’d got closer, he had seen a Claire not many others saw. Wild and sexual, sometimes angry, often cruel, so that her captivating laugh took on a different sound. Less fun, more goading, like she was willing him onto her, so that she could hate him if he hit her. Except that he wouldn’t do that. When he had stayed away, just sat on his hands and squeezed his eyes tightly, so that she had to get closer to him to make it really hurt, she had looked for attention elsewhere.

  The reminder was like someone pulling on his gut. Claire, just like the rest of them. The mother who drank too much, his father who left when he was young, the teachers who marked him down just because they didn’t fucking like him.

  He gripped the edge of the bed, his teeth gritted. Who’s laughing now?

  Yeah, she fucking played around, because she knew what she was doing, making him look small, pathetic, just so she could be admired, like she had some kind of compulsion, to be adored, worshipped almost. She had taken all his devotion and wrung it dry, tried to say that they had ended, that they were no longer a couple. But it wasn’t as easy as that. You couldn’t turn away, just like that, as if they had meant nothing.

  He raised his eyes to the window, twelve feet above the floor. There was glass there, to keep in the heat, but the bars were on the inside, just to remind him.

  Claire had gone out, headed for the trails of bright lights, drinking and laughing as he watched her from the shadows. He had moved out a few weeks before, but that meant nothing. They were supposed to be together, she should have known that. And he saw how men went to her, as he had once done, and how she responded, each kiss and flirt like a fist clenching inside him, increasing the pressure in his head.

  There it was again. The sound of laughter.

  It was time now, he knew it. He had known since he first heard her laughter again. He had taken her away when she came out of the club, some other faceless man on her arm. Laughing, shrill and fun, promise for the night ahead. And so he had waited, the knife in his pocket. She couldn’t do that to him.

  She hadn’t seen him at first. He had been a blur, moving quickly out of the shadows, the knife catching the flash of the club light, just another neon flicker.

  The blade had gone in quickly. She had gasped, her eyes filled with shock, the laugh punctured. With that, her mask slipped, and the real Claire came through, the one he knew. Innocent, scared of life, and as he saw her like that, he knew he couldn’t watch her suffer. She’d died when he stabbed her a second time, and so he sat back and waited for them to come for him.

  Now, it was just him and his four walls, and the sound of Claire’s laughter. It sounded forgiving, as if she wanted it to be how it was before she left. They could be together again, he knew that, because he had planned it.

  Tears pricked at his eyes. They did that whenever he thought of them being together again. He looked at the floor, and it seemed to move. It was plain grey, painted concrete leading to the white-bricked walls. His cell. His final home. His new beginning. He felt its starkness, its coldness, and that’s how he wanted it, because he wanted Claire to know how much he had suffered for her.

  He got to his feet. The time was now. She knew how he felt, because she was looking down on him, flirting with him again. He thought at first that it was the shifting lights outside, but then he realised that it was her, a message to come and find her.

  He gripped the end of the bedpost, hollow metal. He knew what was in there: white paint, stolen from the craft shop. There was no need to pretend anymore. The routine had been the same for the previous month, chipping away at the mortar between the bricks, making a hollow, long and deep. Five of them, staggering their way up the wall. At five o’clock each morning, he filled the gaps with plasticine and then painted over it. The same thing night after night, the plasticine dug out and then more silent hacking at the mortar.

  He flipped the mattress. Five pieces of plywood hidden underneath, sneaked out of the woodwork shop down the back of his trousers. They check for tools and weapons, not wood. They were long and thin, but strong enough to take his weight. His fingers scraped at the plasticine and exposed the slots.

  He jammed in the pieces of plywood, the gaps in the mortar fitting around the plywood so that they rose upwards like steps.

  He grinned. There was a laugh, but it wasn’t him. It was Claire, gleeful and excited. He was going to her. Th
e steps were perfect. His stairway to heaven.

  He grabbed the sheet from his bed and tucked it under his arm. He stood at the bottom of the steps. The moon was bright, so that it seemed like he was heading towards the light, towards heaven. He was forgiven.

  He placed his foot on the bottom step and started to climb slowly upwards. The laughter got louder.

  ‘I’m coming,’ he whispered to himself.

  The plywood held. He had to reach higher to clamber onto the top one, because that was the step that would take him out of reach of the one below when he kicked it away.

  He wobbled slightly and then reached up with the sheet, threading it around the bar and pulled it tight. He made the loop for his neck. He pulled on it. The bar held firm.

  The sheet felt like velvet as it went around his neck, and one yank with his hand and it went tight, so that he gasped. He smiled and then reached up with his hand to take hold of the bar. He let it take his weight and then used his feet to ease out the top step from the wall.

  It clattered to the floor, and he saw that he couldn’t reach as far as the step below. He had got it right.

  ‘I’ll be with you soon,’ he said.

  And then he let go.

  The sheet pulled tight around his neck. His eyes bulged, he tried to take a breath, but there was nothing there.

  He looked down to see his feet in mid-air, just kicking against the wall, and that’s when he knew. He had been wrong.

  As he looked down at the steps, he realised that they were going the other way, not towards heaven, but down, and the laughter just got louder, and as his vision started to cloud, he thought the floor turned red and hot.

  There was the sound of laughter again, but this time it was mocking him.

  BIO: Neil White is originally from Wakefield, and now resides in Preston. He is the author of five novels featuring Jack Garrett and Laura McGanity. The latest release, ‘Cold Kill’, spent four weeks at Number One in the Amazon Kindle charts, selling over 100,000 copies. His new standalone novel will be released in 2012. A lawyer by day, Neil spends his time writing late at night. He recently signed a three book deal with Sphere, with his first release due in 2013.