52 Stories in 2023 - Volume Two: 52 Stories In 2023, #2

52 Stories In 2023

Volume Two

Michael Kingswood

Contents

Introduction

The Walker’s Package

Karen’s Rules Of The Pool

Sly’s Raiders

Tesla Collection

Going Loomy In Ybor City

The Corvus Bridge

Garret’s Legion

Sebastian’s Inferno

Wild Rose Compact

Mantrap

Kickstarter Heroes

Message From The Author

Mailing List

About The Author

More Books By Michael Kingswood

Introduction

Welcome back to my 52 Stories In 2023 project!

The project’s objective is exactly what the title says: write fifty-two stories in the year, one per week at least, and then collect the stories into five volumes. This is volume number two, and I just yesterday completed story number twenty-nine, so volume three will be coming soon to a Kickstarter near you.

The ten stories contained in this second volume range from military science fiction to contemporary and esoteric spiritual fantasy. They are presented in the order they were written, and I hope you enjoy them.

Thanks for reading. I’ll see you in volume three!

Warm Regards,

Michael Kingswood

July 2023

San Diego, CA

The Walker’s Package

It’s always fun returning to the world of Dustin Cofield, Elfsterminator, as he works to protect the Big Guy’s operation, and Christmas itself, from the predations of rebellious elves.

But even super-secret secret agents and their support staffs have real lives that go on in time with the secret ones. And sometimes one is hard to tell apart from the other.

Enjoy!

When you spend all your time fixated on the mission to preserve Christmas from the monkey-wrenches that mutinous elves keep trying to throw at it and to keep the normal world from knowing about the battle being fought beneath their noses, it’s easy to forget that normal life still goes on.

But sometimes even the deepest of deep cover special agents gets a call from the real world.

And when that call comes, it’s very hard not to answer.

I’m Dustin Cofield, and I’m an elfsterminator.

For once, I didn’t have any paperwork to do. And there wasn’t any case screaming at me to solve it.

I’d even gotten through my quarterly audit with Accounting last week; on time for once, and without a hitch.

So as I stepped into my little eight by eight office in the rear of the Wells Fargo branch I’d used as cover for the last several years and settled down into the comfortable hardness of my desk chair, I found myself at a loss for what to do.

Very unusual, especially for a Monday.

It had been a good weekend. I’d taken Nora, my girlfriend, camping in a state park an hour east of Lockwood, the suburban cliche of a town where I’d been stationed for as long as I’d been in this bank. And we’d spent an enjoyable and relaxing time hiking, living simply, and just enjoying each other and nature.

It was a shame to have to come back, but I was excited to get back about my work. Defending the world from the Elfin menace, and ensuring the Big Guy’s operation up at the Pole continued without a hitch, was an exhilarating, and important calling.

Most of the time.

I soaked in the ambience of my little office for a few moments. The lingering smell of ink and carbon paper was somehow still in the air despite my finishing up typing my last report on the 1930s-era typewriter atop my desk three days ago. A narrow sliver of morning sunlight streaming in from the one window in the wall across from me gave light to the little potted flowering plant—I couldn’t tell you the variety—that Nora gave to me a while back.

And off to the left was a cork board on the wall next to my office’s door, covered with the mimeographed memos and notices from Higher.

I looked at it, and frowned.

The photo of the Big Guy himself next to the cork board, from an awards ceremony up at the Pole a few years back, seemed to stare at me. His big, jolly smile—that never seemed completely genuine to me—seemed twisted with chagrin, as though he was about to cajole me for forgetting something, or not doing something.

Just then, the old-style rotary phone sitting on the right-hand side of my stout oak-carved desk, next to my calendar blotter, rang. The metallic tinkling of the phone’s bell almost sounded like jingle bells for a second…almost. And it made me start in my chair.

I smirked at the Big Guy’s picture—and my own silliness—and picked up the receiver.

Cofield.

Hey Dustin. It was Colleen, the evidence tech at the Agency’s local lab, halfway around the beltway of the metropolitan area that Lockwood inhabited from my bank office. Are you busy today?

I couldn’t help but chuckle. Not even a little bit.

Good, because I need your help.

I’ll be right over.

A quaver came into her voice, and the hackles on the back of my neck rose. I could practically hear the emphatic head shake in her voice as she replied. Not at the lab. Come by my place?

I blinked. I knew where Colleen lived. I’d been there a couple times for social reasons. She had thrown a couple barbecues, and her parents had arranged a surprise party for her twenty-fifth birthday that I had helped with.

But it had been a while. We were colleagues, but not exactly close friends.

Is everything ok?

She paused for a couple seconds, then that tremor grew a bit in her voice. I’m not sure. How soon can you get here?

I looked over at the wall across from the door and cork board, where an old-fashioned counterweight-powered clock hung. It was five minutes to ten. Rush hour traffic would be mostly dying down by now.

Fifteen or twenty minutes.

Good. Hurry.

I had the receiver back in its cradle and was out the door in a flash.

Colleen was waiting for me outside her place when I pulled up eighteen minutes later.

She had a townhouse in a nice little subdivision two exits away from the Agency’s lab where she worked. Not the corner house, unfortunately, but the next one in. But directly across the street from the neighborhood’s club house, which housed the swimming pool, gym, and tennis courts.

Good on them for the tennis courts. Most places didn’t have those unless they were single family structures.

Then again, there were the HOA dues to consider. Colleen had complained about them to me several times, and it made me feel glad that I had bought a small place in an out-of-the-way, older but non-HOA neighborhood.

Not sure if I could have kept my cool dealing with some of the things she had to go through just to live there.

But as I parked my souped-up Yukon into the guest parking spot adjacent to her place, I could tell from her expression that HOA woes were the least of Colleen’s concerns this Monday.

At the office she normally wore a lab coat over her civilian clothing. Not that she had a PhD or anything; she just liked shows like CSI and NCIS, and thought the coat fit her role well. Nothing wrong with that either, and she more than put the look to justice; she had single-handedly cracked more cases than I could name off-hand with her forensic skills.

But today she just had on blue yoga pants and an off-white athletic shirt that was made of material that would wick sweat away from her to prevent chafing. The outlines of the black sports bra she wore beneath were clearly visible, showing that the sweat from her morning workout was still drying up.

Colleen was pretty enough but a little bit overweight, and not my type despite her intellect and engaging wit. She was a blonde, and even if I was dumb enough to consider dating someone I worked with, I preferred brunettes and ravens.

Didn’t stop me from enjoying working with her, and appreciating her professionalism and competence.

But when I stepped out of my truck and walked over to her, her professional demeanor was only slightly able to keep the emotional turmoil beneath from fully registering on her face.

Thanks for coming so quickly, she said, and gestured for me to follow her as she walked toward the door to her place.

Happy to help, I said, and moved quickly to catch up with her. What’s the problem?

She stopped at her front door, which was painted light blue, a jarring tone compared with the beige-grey stucco of the rest of her building, then turned to the right and gestured toward a little alcove adjacent to her door.

Some people would place a bench there, or a potted plant. Colleen had elected to place a scale model of an Imperial AT-ST scout walker in its place. The six foot tall, two-legged armored assault mech had its—fake but somehow still a little bit intimidating—chin cannons pointed directly at the area in front of the door where a solicitor would come knocking.

She didn’t have a No Soliciting sign hanging anywhere.

I never thought she needed one. Before.

Now there was a package wrapped in Christmas-style wrapping paper between the AT-ST’s legs, with a sealed pink envelope on top.

As I looked the package and envelope, the incongruity between their color scheme, the grey combat tone of the AT-ST, and the paint of Colleen’s house struck me such that I had to stop myself from engaging in contemplations about the multiple strains of input that impinge on our everyday understanding of reality, and how could a person come to terms with them while still remaining sane and…

I shook my head. Forcefully. And gritted my teeth while imagining brutal revenge on my sophomore-year philosophy professor.

That brought me back to the present, nicely.

Someone left you a present, I said, working hard to keep the Why the hell are you bothering me with this? tone from my voice.

Not just someone, she said, and stepped over to the package. She lifted up the envelope and turned back to me, holding it out toward my face.

Almost immediately, the smell of peppermint reached my nostrils, and the hackles on the back of my neck rose to full attention that put their earlier alert to shame.

Pointies, I said.

Colleen nodded.

But…it didn’t really have to be pointies.

As I drove to the forensics lab, Colleen in the passenger seat and the stuff from her front porch tucked away into the back of my Yukon, I pondered the multitude of other possibilities.

I looked sidelong at her. You sure it wasn’t Scott?

Scott was Colleen’s boyfriend of two years. He was an engineer at a civil engineering support firm that handled a bunch of city contracts: repairing roads, things like that. And last I saw him he looked to dig Colleen a lot maybe he had—

I broke up with him a month ago, she said, putting an abrupt stop to that train of thought.

Oh. Sorry, I didn’t know. Was it—? I let the question draw out, curious but not wanting to pry too hard.

She shrugged. We just wanted different things.

Ah. I let the subject drop.

And there’s been no one else—? I asked after a minute of veering through traffic that was moving far too slow for the gap between rush hours.

Colleen snorted, and shook her head. I halfway expected she might be embarrassed or offended for suggesting she had hooked up with someone else so soon after leaving her boyfriend, but if anything she looked amused.

There’s always another man, Dustin, she said, and tossed her head slightly. But no, no one serious, who knows where I live.

I nodded. No chance it’s Scott trying to get you back?

Colleen