All Fall Down
Authors: Annie Reed
Five stories of childhood gone wrong
Annie Reed
Copyright © 2012 Annie Reed
Published by Thunder Valley Press at
Smashwords
Cover art
Copyright ©
Rejnkarlgren|Dreamstime.com
Cover and layout Copyright © 2012 Thunder
Valley Press
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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of this author.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and
events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to
real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
For more information on the author, go to
www.annie-reed.com.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
(If you would like to jump directly to the
story, just click on the title)
~ ~ ~
I had a great childhood. I just want to put
that out there up front. I had a mom and dad who loved me, we
always had pets—usually dogs, but I also had a few parakeets and
the occasional tropical fish—and I was encouraged to read from a
young age. We never had a whole lot of money, but I never really
went without anything I wanted. Except for a horse, but for a while
we lived next to pastures where other people kept their horses, so
I sort of had a horse by proxy. I was never frightened by my
neighbors, although
War of the Worlds
scared me pretty well
one night when I was probably too young to watch it. (That's the
original movie version of
War of the Worlds
, in case you
were wondering, not the radio broadcast or the Tom Cruise remake.)
I rode a bus to and from school for years without having to worry
about drugs or gang violence, and I didn't have to walk through
metal detectors to get to class.
Looking back at it now, I was pretty
lucky.
This collection features five stories about
kids who aren't quite so lucky. While you won't find any abusive
parents here, you will find kids facing situations that are
definitely beyond the norm.
In "Uncle Charlie's Toy Store," a trip to a
local toy store turns deadly serious for a boy out to buy his very
own G.I. Joe. I pulled an all-nighter when I wrote this story, the
first time I've ever done that. I've come close with other
projects, but "Uncle Charlie's" was the first story that wouldn't
let me go until I finished.
I had the title for "Harley and the Alien"
long before I wrote the story. Some stories turn out that way, and
I'll admit to being a tad bit influenced by
Sons of Anarchy
when I finally found the story that went with the title. Not that
"Harley" comes close to being a typical biker club story,
considering that time travel's involved.
The next story in this collection is
"Firebug," which was my very first sale to
Ellery Queen's
Mystery Magazine
back in 2005. "Firebug" features an oddity for
me—a child who's not a very nice kid.
Unlike the lead character in "Firebug,"
"Jessie" is about a kid who's just trying to survive in a world
overrun by the walking dead. This story also happens to be set
along my favorite stretch of the Oregon coast.
The last story in this collection is "Missy
and the Man," a story that's pretty close to my heart. Even though
we always had dogs when I was a kid, I'm really a cat person. So is
Missy. Only Missy's love of cats gets her in a pretty serious
situation for a girl just out of kindergarten.
This is my fifth short-story collection put
together by the fine folks at Thunder Valley Press, and we're not
done yet. Each collection focuses on a topic or genre, like this
one. Some stories may appear in more than one collection, such as
"Jessie," which also appears in THE PATIENT Z FILES, my five-story
zombie apocalypse collection. If you like "Jessie," you might want
to pick up THE PATIENT Z FILES as well. Just sayin'.
I hope you enjoy reading these stories as
much as I enjoyed writing them.
—Annie Reed
Reno, Nevada
June 6, 2012
~ ~ ~
Uncle Charlie's Toy Store was Daniel
Preston's favorite place in the whole wide world. Once a month, if
he had been a good boy, Daniel's mom took him on the bus downtown
to Uncle Charlie's and let him pick out one new toy. He had been a
very good boy this month, and Daniel knew exactly what he wanted: a
G.I. Joe.
Daniel's best friend Ned had his own G.I.
Joe. Daniel tried not to be jealous every time Ned played soldier
with Joe, but it was hard when he really, really wanted one of his
own.
From the outside Uncle Charlie's looked like
any other store. It had a red brick store front with big display
windows, and a door with a sign hung in the glass that could be
turned to read either "Open" or "Sorry, We're Closed." When his mom
opened the door to Uncle Charlie's, a little brass bell that hung
over the door jangled to welcome Daniel inside. Daniel loved the
sound of that bell because every time he heard it, he knew he'd be
walking into a store made just for kids.
Uncle Charlie's had just about every toy a
kid could hope to have. Rows and rows of wooden shelves with model
ships and planes; model railroad cars and little trees and fences
and plastic people for when you played railroad; plastic horses of
every shape and size; stuffed bears and a stuffed monkey that
played cymbals when you wound him up; packages of little green army
men; marbles and jacks and jump ropes and kites and roller
skates.
And most important, Uncle Charlie's had G.I.
Joe.
G.I. Joe not only came with a gun, he had a
canteen and real army clothes. If only he had his own G.I.Joe,
Daniel and Ned could dig trenches in the dirt in the backyard, both
their Joes could run from one trench to the next, prop their guns
up in the dirt at the edge of the trench, and fire at the enemy
just like real soldiers did. Dust might get in Daniel's nose and
make him sneeze, and his sister would probably tease him about
playing with dolls, but Daniel didn't care. G.I. Joe was worth
it.
Then Daniel saw the Hoss Cartwright
hats.
A big, tall hat like Hoss's would be fun to
wear when he watched Bonanza. Daniel's sister thought Little Joe
was cute, but Daniel knew Hoss was really the best. Hoss looked out
for other people and helped his friends, and he did silly things
that made Daniel laugh. Hoss was good in a fight, too, just like
G.I. Joe.
But Daniel wanted G.I. Joe, too.
Uncle Charlie had put a big stack of Hoss's
hats right next to the candy machine, the one where you put in a
penny in the front and turned the lever around until the penny
disappeared. Mom always gave Daniel a penny to put in the machine.
Sometimes it had sour lemon drops inside, but Daniel liked the gum
better. It was crunchy and tasted like bubble gum, only the hard
shell made it sweeter.
Daniel put his penny in the gum ball machine
and got a red gum ball. He popped it in his mouth and went to find
his mom to ask her about getting both toys. After all, he'd been a
really, really good boy this month.
He found Uncle Charlie instead.
Daniel knew it was Uncle Charlie because
Uncle Charlie had his own television show, just like Hoss. Uncle
Charlie wore the same blue denim overalls and red-checked shirt
that he did on television. He had the same thin sandy-colored beard
and mustache, the same blue eyes, and the same friendly smile.
In all the months Daniel's mom had brought
him to get his toy, Daniel had never seen Uncle Charlie in the
store before. The real, live Uncle Charlie. Daniel was so nervous
all of a sudden he almost forgot to chew his gum.
"Hello," Uncle Charlie said to Daniel. "And
who might you be, cowboy?"
Uncle Charlie must have seen him looking at
the Hoss hats.
"Daniel Preston," Daniel said, being polite
just like his mom had taught him.
Uncle Charlie held out his hand and Daniel
shook it. Uncle Charlie's hand was warm and dry, and he smelled
faintly of fresh mown grass and something else—an earthy, slightly
unpleasant smell. Daniel didn't mind. Ned smelled worse after
they'd been playing in the back yard all afternoon.
"What are you looking for today, Daniel
Preston?"
Daniel told Uncle Charlie that he really
wanted a G.I. Joe and a Hoss Cartwright hat, but his mom usually
only let him have one toy at a time and he couldn't decide which
one he wanted.
"I'd have a hard time choosing, too. How
about we ask your mom if you can have them both?" Uncle Charlie
winked at Daniel. "Sometimes I can be pretty persuasive, if I do
say so myself."
Uncle Charlie held out his hand again and
Daniel took it, and together they walked through the store looking
for Daniel's mom.
The display shelves in Uncle Charlie's Toy
Store were angled and offset against each other. Daniel was always
just a little worried about making a wrong turn somewhere and
getting lost, even though he could tell where he was and where he
wanted to go by the toys on the shelves. From the gum ball machine
it was a left at the Barbie dolls, straight ahead through the aisle
of baseball bats and mitts and basketballs, turn right at the
roller skates, and then he'd be in the G.I. Joe section. He only
got really, really worried when Uncle Charlie moved the toys around
to different shelves, like right before Christmas.
Today Uncle Charlie led Daniel right to the
shelf full of G.I. Joes.
"Which one did you want?" he asked.
Daniel pointed to the G.I. Joe he'd been
thinking about the whole bus ride to the toy store. Uncle Charlie
took it off the shelf and tucked it under his arm.
"Let's take this with us, just in case,"
Uncle Charlie said. "That way no one else will buy it while we're
looking for your mom."
That seemed like a good idea to Daniel.
Uncle Charlie took Daniel further into the
store. Daniel didn't remember ever looking at anything this far
back. He didn't recognize any of the toys on the shelves. There
were no model cars or trains, no checkers or dominos, no bags of
green army soldiers or boxes of playing cards. In fact, none of the
toys on these shelves were in bags or boxes.
Daniel walked by a shelf full of dolls all
piled together. They had pudgy noses and mean little eyes. Their
clothes were ripped and dirty and their hair was all tangled.
Daniel wondered who would want dolls like that.
Even the stuffed animals looked mean. The
teddy bears all had sharp plastic claws on their feet, and a
stuffed monkey right next to the teddy bears had its mouth open so
Daniel could see its sharp monkey teeth. Daniel didn't know that
monkeys had sharp teeth. He held Uncle Charlie's hand tighter. As
he walked by the monkey, it clapped its cymbals together and Daniel
jumped.