The wizard who guarded the coach was old, wizened and crabby looking. He resembled nothing so much as a tortoise. But he was what he was, so people generally gave him a wide berth, which made it all the more surprising when the band of outlaws came screaming out of the woods.

“Stand and deliver!”

The coachman pulled up his team and sighed at the predictability.

“Magic wielder. If you please.”

The wizard waved a negligent hand and the sky filled with snapping dragon wings. The horses bolted.

Once the road cleared, the wizard fed each dragon a chocolate button.

©️jj 2018

When the last thing you remember is something that feels like a bee sting on the side of your neck, and you open your eyes to see a skeleton sitting in a wing-backed chair, apparently reading what looks like a very dog-eared copy of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ by the light of a hissing Tilley lamp, the temptation has to be to close your eyes and wait for it to go away. So I tried that. But it was no manner of use. All that happened was that I heard a dry bone-ish sort of chuckle inside my head.
I opened my eyes again and regarded the ossified one with some dissatisfaction. Then I noticed the spectacles – and that was the moment when hysteria almost overtook me. In order to wear spectacles the frames have to rest on your nose and your ears. Of course, a skeleton has neither but, nevertheless, these horn-rimmed spectacles hovered in approximately the correct position and hideously magnified a pair of bloodshot eyeballs, which seemed to be studying me in much the way a schoolboy studies a bug on a pin.
In an effort at nonchalance I snorted indelicately and sat up.
Bones averted its gaze, which alerted me to the fact I was completely naked.
“Can you cover yourself please?” The voice in my head was almost plaintive. “Normally I wouldn’t care, but I’ve been reading this…”
I laughed and pulled the bedclothes up to my armpits.
Bedclothes? At this point, my hair all but stood on end and it was only iron self-control, and the discipline of years, that enabled me to pull myself together.
I looked around me to discover I was in an enormous barrel-vaulted chamber – windowless except for one narrow slit high on the ceiling which threw a line of light on a clock face equally high on the opposite wall. This would seem to be suggesting that it was three o’clock in the afternoon. I registered that piece of information and filed it in my brain for future reference, before carrying on with the catalogue of my situation. I was sitting on what was possibly a tomb or, more likely, some sort of an altar, on a thick soft mattress and I had a downy coverlet pulled over me. At the side of my ‘bed’ there was a small pile of clothing: not mine. There was also a leather satchel – which was mine, and which I was very pleased to behold.
A deep, cool voice from behind me all but had me snapping my head around in surprise.
“Is there aught you require, lady?”
I turned around with calculated slowness to find myself looking into the eyes of an obviously female stone sphinx.
“My own clothes” I said coolly “and food”.
The creature met my stare head on for a moment before inclining her cranium ironically. She whistled shrilly, and a troupe of fauns clattered into view, bearing various items of clothing and a basket from which the scent of new bread oozed its enchantment. I inclined my own head as the little males disposed their burdens on the coverlet at my feet.
“Right boys” I said briskly “everyone turn away so I can dress in peace.”
They all turned, except the sphinx.
“You too sister. I have no desire to wring your little marble heart with my beauty.”
She snarled, but turned to face outward.
Once I was dressed in leather trousers and a form-fitting multi-pocketed weskit I opened the basket to find bread, bacon, honey, and a flask of wine.
“You can turn back now thank you” I remarked “and can somebody please take the bacon. I don’t eat flesh.”
One of the fauns trotted over and showed me its sharp little teeth in a feral grin as it took the lump of fat bacon out of the basket….

This is an extract from ‘The Nature of the Beast’. Just one of the stories in ‘Pulling the Rug 2’ by Jane Jago.

Rosita lit cigarette from the stub of the last and scrubbed a yellow sock.

“Me and Manuel don’t get jiggy no more. He’s so fat I can’t find his cojones. Last night he’s begging for it, so I go looking. What’d I find under his great belly? I’ll tell ya. I find the biro pen he lost last month. I find a half-eaten sucking candy. I find cannoli from the ristorante we went for his last birthday. What don’t I find? His pênis. I’m shouting out the list and he laughs so much the bed collapses. Hombres. Who knew…” 

©️jj 2019

This, Carla realised, was what was meant by ‘tea and sympathy’. Only, in this case, it was coffee and sympathy – well latte to be exact – and some comfort-eating chocolate cake.
“So it’s over this time?” Her cup, broad and deep, clicked back on its saucer. “Really? Truly?”
Emmy gave a sad smile. Over the last hour and the chocolate cake, she had burdened Carla’s soul with a gory, forensic dissection of the breakdown of her relationship. Cut by painful cut, from the first misconstrued comment to the final brutal insult.
“Oh it’s over. Dead. Buried. Jake knows it, I know it.”
“You’re sure? Last time – ”
“Last time I was still half in love.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not.”
“So what about Chris?”
Emmy’s blue eyes blinked once, stating clearly that the name was not relevant in her love life and never would be. “I heard from Miranda the other day. Sienna is starting school. Isn’t that incredible? It only seems like last week the three of us were sitting in these very chairs discussing baby names.”
“Emmy – you can’t pretend forever.”
The blue eyes clouded. Emmy grabbed her coffee cup from its brightly coloured saucer and hid behind it. The words ‘I Love Cappuccino’ danced around the rim in bold, red letters.
“Chris won’t just go away,” Carla spoke to the cup.
Emmy lowered the coffee, her face tightly resentful.
“Chris is not involved with this.” Then, suddenly appealing: “Let’s not go there today, Carla hun, please.”
Not for the first time, Carla felt herself being torn between loyalties. Emmy’s baby-blue eyes, pleading, and Chris – dependable Chris – bleeding from a dozen wounds he had never known were being inflicted. Carla shook her head slowly, as the waters of the Rubicon flowed away beneath her feet.
“He’s your husband, not a meal ticket. You have to – ”
Instantly Emmy was by the door, the cup still in her hand.
“I don’t ‘have to’ anything! Don’t you understand? I don’t care!”
The coffee cup arced across the room heading for shattering impact and landed at the moment the door slammed. It bounced on the carpet, with a little spray of coffee and rolled, until it stopped on its handle by Carla’s feet, still safe and in one piece.
Carla bent to pick it up, the words facing her read: ‘I Love…’. For a moment she clutched it close, then she placed it with extra care on its own saucer, where it belonged.

E.M. Swift-Hook

When your mates are hammered by the time you arrive, there’s only one solution. Tequila. Much tequila.

I woke up to brilliant sunshine, a mouth like a crocodile’s armpit, and a sense of unease. There seemed to be something trapping me to the bed. It was an arm. A very hairy obviously masculine arm. I managed to lever myself into a sitting position, and barely repressed a shriek.

Either I was in bed with  grizzly bear, or…

The hairy thing rolled over.

“Morning wife,” it said. 

“Wife?” I heard the panic in my own voice.

I never drunk tequila again.

©️jj 2019

She went to find her mother to tell her she was going back to Thuringen the next day. Instead, she froze in the doorway at the image on the vidcast screen they had been sharing before she had left the room. The face filled the air. It was some documentary her mother had been viewing to do with criminal justice. She moved into the room paused the image and stood staring, feeling her mouth dry a little and aware that her mother was looking at her with real concern.
“Charis? Are you alright? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Uh — maybe I have. Who is that?”
Her mother looked at the screen and then back to Charis.
“That’s Avilon Revid. The man who was an academic genius then murdered his wife and child and went off to become a terrorist. Sad story: brilliant mind goes mad and falls into an orgy of destruction — until they caught him. So happy ending.”
Charis felt sick. She had to be wrong.
“He’s still alive?”
“I would doubt so. It was a big case at the time. If I recall the trial was held behind closed doors for security reasons and he was sentenced to serve in the Special Legion. The judge ruled that the death penalty would be too lenient. Which led to a lot of debate at the time and set a precedent for subsequent sentencing — before the general view had been that the death penalty was the more extreme, but once the —” she broke off with a small smile, no doubt realising she was letting her legal enthusiasm run away with her.
“When was this?”
“It must have been, hmm…” Her mother clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth as she thought. “Must be seven or eight years ago now. Why? Charis, you’re looking as though you recognise him.”
The Specials. A cold frost had started somewhere in her chest and spread out along her limbs. Charis shivered.
“No. Well, yes — it’s just he bears a creepy resemblance to someone I met on Thuringen. But no. It’s not him. It couldn’t be. Just — those eyes.” She shivered again.
Her mother nodded understanding. Then, probably because she was so understanding she turned off the vidcast and took Charis out for the evening. But the image wasn’t so easily dismissed from Charis’ mind and when she got back into the ‘City a couple of days later it was still haunting her. She had just landed when her mother was linking her, very concerned.
“Darling, the man you told me about, the one who looked like that terrorist?”
“What about him?”
“He’s not someone you know well, or have many dealings with is he?”
Charis could hear the tightness in her mother’s voice, see her anxiety.
“No. Not at all. I’ve not seen him for ages. Why?”
“I checked with some friends of mine in the Legal department of CRD. Avilon Revid was released a year ago having served five years exemplary. It was low key and kept unpublicised because of his notoriety. He will have been given a new identity — but they wouldn’t tell me where he was released. That is privileged information.”
The frost was forming again.
“Oh I’m sure this wasn’t the same man,” she said quickly, to reassure both of them. “And even if it was I don’t think I’d be seeing him again anyway.”
“I’m sure it’s not too. I mean, the chances are ridiculously small — but please, take care anyway.”

E.M. Swift-Hook

From Edge of Doom, a Fortune’s Fools book and the second volume of the Haruspex trilogy. 

Nobody wanted Blue because he wasn’t pretty. But he had a big heart, and the girls at the shelter refused to give up on him.

On the day when a decision on the unwanted dog’s future had to be faced, a family came along looking for a companion for a lonely, bullied child. The boy walked among the cages with a closed expression until he saw Blue. His eyes lit up, and a smile lifted the sorrow from his face.

Blue thumped his tail and the boy beamed.

“Mum,” he said. “That’s my dog. He understands because he’s ugly too…”

©️jj 2019

 Fatswhistle and Buchtooth by Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV is seminal work of science fantasy sets the benchmark by which all others are judged. Where quest meets tragedy, and comedy meets despair. Critics are calling it 'the best ever cure for insomnia' and 'the book that finally persuaded me I hate science fantasy'.

A tiny weeny extract in which we explore the tender relationship between our hero and his trusty female companion.

They came out of the desert into the fertile valley of the big river, just as the sun was dropping. Buchtooth kicked her camel until it knelt and leapt off the saddle throwing her clothing off as she ran towards the water.
“Come on Fatswhistle you ugly bastard, get off your frigging camel and get into this water. You smell worse than him.”
Fatswhistle followed his companion in a much more leisurely fashion. He was just removing his cracked leather boots when she threw herself into the water. Her back was broad and freckled and as she dived, the white globes of her arse were displayed to Fatswhistle’s suddenly interested gaze. He removed his clothing at a rather accelerated pace and hurried after her into the brown water.
She was singing tunelessly and washing her long carrot-orange curls when he waded over to her and sat down. The river mud felt like silk under his buttocks and he picked up one of his own feet and looked between his toes. He watched his companion from under his eyelids finding her heavy breasts surprisingly exciting as they dipped in and out of the water. He scooted closer and put out a tentative hand. She snorted and wrung the water out of her hair. Emboldened, he touched the freckled skin on her shoulder. She jumped and swore, dunking him under the water until he saw stars…
“Gerrof.”

Fatswhistle and Buchtooth is currently out of print as one engages in secret talks pertaining to the future of that piece of one’s very soul. Instead, here is a smidgin of impeccable verse

Hibiscus bloom of palest pink
I have not words, I have not ink
To speak of love’s bepetalled face
Watch from afar who walks in grace
Who walks in beauty as the dawn
Who in my breast true love doth spawn
Who shines like effervescent gold
Who shall not wither, nor grow old
Hibiscus bloom thy petals ope
And face the sun and dash my hopes
Hibiscus bloom of palest hue
Who murders hope with lies untrue
Hibiscus bloom of stainless steel
Who stamps my love beneath her heel

A bite of... Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

Question 1: Who is your greatest literary influence? And why?

Dame Barbara Cartland is in one’s humble opinion a writer in the presence of whose excellence we should all bow our heads. And if you cannot see why then one washes one’s hands of you forthwith

Question 2: What is your guilty pleasure?

One must confess to a partiality for that very out-of-fashion but delectable cocktail the snowball. And to being wholly unable to resist white chocolate in any form.

Question 3: Would you rather be a hero or a villain.

On first glance one could only say hero. But closer thought made one discern that one’s hero is always heading for heartbreak whilst one’s villain had no such feelings to injure. Ergo one would be a hero with the moral compass of a villain.

About Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV

The only offspring of a doomed union between the daughter of an English Country Gentleman and the unsatisfactory son of an American stomach pills magnate, Moonbeam resides with his maternal parent in leafy suburbia. His ruling passion is writing, and as he is fortunate enough to be in possession of a small private income he is able to write with only literary excellence in mind, being able to ignore the demands of mammon that may force his lesser colleagues into prostituting their art for a few pieces of silver.
Fatswhistle and Buchtooth was a whole decade in its gestation, and you may expect the next magnum opus to take even longer as Moonbeam hones his craft to ever more delicate points.

In the meantime, one’s his fans may catch more of one’s his highly distinctive wit and wisdom in a slim volume facilitated by the rather boring women who run this blog assisted by one’s his maternal parent – How to Start Writing a Book: The Wit and Wisdom of Moonbeam Farquhar Metheringham IV.

He was as duplicitous as he was handsome, and proud to have left a trail of broken hearts.

He set his eyes on country-bred Kate and wooed her singlemindedly. Sure of victory, he became bored, but decided to relieve her of her virginity before moving on.

Set on seduction, he bowed over her hand, and nibbled on the skin of her palm.

Somehow the evening didn’t quite end as he had planned. 

Is hard to feel seductive when you wake up on a park bench dressed in a tutu and with a placard round your neck reading:

‘April Fool’

©️jj 2019

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It was snowing in Paris, and Anna and Patsy walked gingerly from the burly four-wheel drive vehicle to an anonymous wooden door. Anna tapped a message on the tiny keypad in her pocket and Rod replied in her earpiece.
Patsy pressed the doorbell.
“Oui.”
“Madame Cracksman pour voir Madame Valentina Stephanovitz.”
“Entrez.”
The door opened quietly and the two women stepped into a well-lit hallway. The sound of footsteps to their left alerted them and they turned to face a middle-aged woman wearing a simple brown habit. Her eyes passed over Anna’s denim and leather clad figure more or less unseeingly, but widened at the sight of Patsy wrapped in mink and made up with a lavish hand. Patsy met those judgmental eyes coolly and it was the nun who blinked first.
“Gospazha Stephanovitz is expecting you.” The woman spoke in a carefully modulated and unaccented voice.
“Lead on then sister.”
Anna was pleased to still be able to hear Rod in her left ear. He chuckled mirthlessly.
“Pats not going down too well I take it.”
Anna ruthlessly smothered the desire to laugh and followed the nun’s disapproving figure down a short corridor. She tapped on a set of double doors.
“Gospazha. Your visitors are here.”
“Well show them in and go away.” The voice was tetchy and less beautifully rounded than that of the plain-faced nun.
The woman who sat in a deep window seat watching the snowflakes fall from a purplish-grey sky was so thin the light almost shone through her. She turned a wide brown gaze on them and almost smiled.
“Mrs Cracksman. And?”
“Mrs Henderson,” Anna supplied. “We are sisters.”
The woman in the window seat visibly relaxed. “I’m sorry to appear unwelcoming, but I have received some odd visitors from time to time.” Her English, though careful, was excellent and Anna breathed a silent sigh of relief.
Patsy put out a tentative hand.
“I just bet you have. People seeing you as a conduit to your son. Which is what I’m doing, and I’m sincerely sorry for that.”
“I have no problem with you coming to see me. Your honesty is refreshing. So tell me how I can help you.”
“I’m rather hoping you will be able to persuade your son to leave my sons alone.”
“That may be difficult. He believes he is owed a life.”
“I believe he is not. But if he was I would offer myself to protect my children.”
“I understand that. But the lengths you will go to to protect your sons are the reason my son seeks revenge against your family.”
Anna looked over at Patsy to see a bleak, closed look come across her friend’s normally cheerful face and stepped in before Patsy’s anger could blow the top off this meeting.
“How so?” she asked quietly.
“It is understood,” the woman spoke in a carefully uninflected voice, “that your son got into something over his head. And that when he wanted out you took mayhem and murder to his aid.”
Anna silenced Patsy with an upraised hand.
“How can a child get in over his head?”
“In our world a teenager is not a child.”
Anna began to see the edges of the problem. “A teenager? We are not talking of the same child. When they kidnapped him last year, William Cracksman was eight years old.”
The woman took that like a body blow.
“Kidnapped? Eight years old?”
Anna just nodded.
Their hostess turned and stared out at the thickening snow. Then she squared her thin shoulders.
“Alexei. Will you come out please.”
A door in the white panelling opened quietly, and a bulky but beautifully tailored man stepped into the room. He walked over to Patsy and took her chin in his hand.
“Do you swear to me that your ‘sister’ speaks the truth?”
Patsy broke his hold on her chin with a contemptuous slap to his wrist.
“Before we get to any swearing I think you need to introduce yourself.”
Anna closed her eyes and said a silent prayer. What in hell was Patsy up to? Then she realised. Whoever this was, it almost certainly wasn’t the billionaire who was financing the war against anybody called Cracksman. That man was called Yuri. Anna tensed and tapped out a message to Rod to watch his six. Meanwhile, Alexei shaped to slap Patsy, but a firm command from the window seat stayed his hand.
“This is my husband’s nephew. He heads up Yuri’s personal security, and was sent here to protect me. Although it begins to look as if I am not in need of his services.”

Jane Jago