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    Winding Unwinding
    Winding Unwinding
    Winding Unwinding
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    Winding Unwinding

    By Dale Hartley Emery

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    Five Short Fantasies from Right next Door

    Five worlds very like our own. Five kinds of magic winding tighter and tighter. Five extraordinary people struggling to keep their lives from unwinding.

    A magical tailor ruins a wedding dress days before the wedding. A woman hitches a ride from peculiar strangers on a lonely road. A student demands a refund from a master negotiator, and wins more than he ever bargained for. Two young brothers fight for their lives in a funhouse. A grieving widower’s outhouse overflows with memories… and something worse.

    Peek through the keyhole into these five fantastic stories from Dale Hartley Emery.

    Includes Tailor’s Tears, Carrion Road, Refund, Funhouse, and Yantriel’s Privy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDriscoll Brook Press
    Release dateAug 11, 2014
    ISBN9781632610119
    Winding Unwinding
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    Author

    Dale Hartley Emery

    Dale Hartley Emery writes fiction in a variety of genres, including fantasy, crime fiction, and mainstream fiction. His stories include Inventory, Marmalade, and The Donation. Dale has worked as a failed shoemaker, reluctant dairy farmer, and ruthless ice cream man. For several years he monitored the nuclear test ban treaty, making sure those pesky commies didn't blow up the planet. (They didn't.) When he isn't writing, Dale advises software teams and leaders about how to play nice together. Colleagues in Dale's industry once created a special award for him for being reasonable. Dale lives in California with his wife.

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      Book preview

      Winding Unwinding - Dale Hartley Emery

      WINDING UNWINDING

      Dale Hartley Emery

      Driscoll Brook Press

      © 2014 Dale Hartley Emery

      Copyright Information

      Contents

      Title Page

      Introduction

      Tailor’s Tears

      Author’s Note

      Carrion Road

      Author’s Note

      Refund

      Author’s Note

      Funhouse

      Author’s Note

      Yantriel’s Privy

      Author’s Note

      About the Author

      Connect with the Author

      Books by the Author

      Copyright Information

      Introduction

      Many years ago, I read Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, his non-fiction book about horror and fantasy fiction. In the middle of the book, King says:

      Fantasy fiction is essentially about the concept of power

      That one line was a major insight for me. I suddenly understood why I am so attracted to fantasy stories: I am fascinated by power.

      And King’s line also explained why I write fantasy stories: I write fantasy in order to explore power.

      Of course, it is not only fantasy stories that are about power. Most stories in any genre are about power in one way or another.

      But fantasy puts power front and center. Fantasy hinges on magic, and magic is power, concentrated and inexplicable.

      A confession: Writing fantasy allows me to cheat. It unbinds me from the constraints of the laws of physics, and lets me aim my fiction right at the heart of power. Power that is unattainable in the real world. Power that is exaggerated so that it is easier to observe and impossible to avoid.

      As much as I enjoy entertaining people with my fiction, ultimately I write fantasy to explore my own questions about power. What are our fears and fantasies about power? How do we learn to accept the power we have? How do we cope when we discover that our power has unexpected consequences, good and bad, small and large? What responsibility do we have for using our power, even knowing deep down that the effects are not entirely within our control?

      Mind you, I don’t have any answers for these questions. But I have great fun forcing my fictional characters to struggle with them.

      The five stories in Winding Unwinding are contemporary fantasy, each taking place in a world more or less like our own.

      In Tailor’s Tears, Clarke Whiteley learns that his own aura magic is only one of the forces unwinding his life, and perhaps not the most powerful force.

      In Carrion Road, Carla discovers that the two people with whom she hitched a ride have a strange power over the road. But even their power is limited.

      In Funhouse, Mark and Davy find that even intelligence (an inexplicable magic if ever there was one) may not be powerful to get them out of the funhouse alive.

      In Refund, Geoff Palmenter receives an inexplicable and powerful gift of time. But even magical time is fleeting.

      In Yantriel’s Privy, a humble farmer finds himself battling swarms of frogs. Frogs that wield a disturbing power.

      Magic. Inexplicable power. In each story, an inexplicable power winds tighter and tighter. In each story, the characters struggle to keep the power from unwinding their lives. Winding. Unwinding.

      I have added an author’s note after each story. If you’re interested in how the stories came to be, read those. But read the story first.

      I hope you enjoy reading these stories. I certainly enjoyed writing them.

      There will be more.

      Dale Hartley Emery

      Sacramento, California

      August 2014

      Tailor’s Tears

      A Tattered Wedding Dress

      There are three things a tailor needs above all others: cloth, needles, and a fresh supply of tears. Clarke Whiteley was all out of tears. He looked at Dulcie Byers’s wedding dress, in tatters on the cutting table, and wondered whether he could retire on the money in his savings account. He decided he could not.

      Clarke’s workshop was empty now, his boutique closed. The cheap battery-powered wall clock ticked heavily, and the mid-afternoon humidity hung in the room like a gas leak.

      Dulcie Byers was likely halfway home by now, screaming into her cell phone at her unworthy fiancé that the tailor he recommended, the tailor he insisted that she use, had ruined her $3,000 wedding dress. Maybe she would scream, as she had at Clarke, that he had ruined her life.

      She had a point.

      Hue Hawthorne, the unworthy fiancé, would call Clarke to find out what had happened, to find out how to make this right. That conversation would lead to nowhere, and he too would yell at Clarke, about trust, about putting my faith in you, about third and fourth chances, about I knew you would let me down when it really mattered.

      Ten years earlier Clarke had shepherded Hue through his senior year at Brown University, tutoring, writing papers, stealing advance copies of upcoming tests, ensuring Professor Combover that surely he was mistaken, surely it was not Hue Hawthorne he had spotted with tender young Fiona Combover leaving Rosa’s Ristorante, because on Thursday evening Hue had been in the library with Clarke, studying diligently for the poli-sci midterm.

      Hue was nothing if not grateful, but gratitude had a shelf life. The cheesy clock on Clarke’s wall ticked past the expiration date.

      The boutique’s phone rang, and Clarke answered before the first ring died away. Hey, Hue.

      You son of a cur. What have you done to my daughter-in-law? It was not Hue. It was the elder Hawthorne. Assemblyman Gorance Goldsmith Hawthorne III. Old Gory had never liked Clarke.

      I’m sure she’s told you the whole story herself, Clarke said, sure she had done no such thing.

      The poor girl was unconsolable. Incoherent. Couldn’t say three words without breaking into great gasping sobs. How could you let her drive in that state?

      That had been a mistake. It would also have been a mistake to try to reason with an enraged bride-to-be in a room full of scissors.

      I do hope she gets home safely.

      Gory shouted, You do not want to play games with me, you little weasel. I advise you to repair that dress with all possible haste.

      That won’t be possible—

      Why not? What sort of incompetent tailor are you?

      I am competent. I am not magical. Which was exactly the opposite of the truth. And that was what created this whole mess. He should not have imbued Hue’s fiancée’s wedding dress with magic. Not with a maiden aura. Not four days before the wedding.

      And certainly not without conferring with the bride.

      Is it money? Is that it? Four days before the wedding and you stoop to extortion?

      No, sir, nothing like that, Clarke said. I can’t repair it for any amount of money. It’s been torn to shreds. And imbued to glow with the subtle pink aura of virginity at her moment of happiness.

      Assuming she was actually a virgin.

      Gory screamed, Why in the name of all the gods would you do such a thing?

      Actually, Mister Hawthorne, she was the one who—

      ‘He ruined it.’ Those were the three words she was able to choke out between sobs. ‘He ruined it.’

      Clarke had to admit that she was right. Sure, she was the one who had torn the dress to shreds, but by then it was already ruined.

      I assure you it was an accident. Not so much an accident as an oversight. He should have known better than to take the prospective mother-in-law’s word for something as potentially catastrophic as this. Even if she was the wife of the most powerful politician in the county. Especially then.

      Well, for god’s sake, man, make it right. Gory’s voice no longer sounded angry. More like pleading.

      Make it right. It sounded like such a reasonable plea. I will do what I can, Mister Hawthorne, Clarke said. I promise—

      You would be surprised how little I value your promises right now, Hawthorne said, and Clarke could just picture the man spitting the words through clenched teeth. But do make this right. I am feeling an exaggerated sense of stress in my life right now, and I would not want that to affect my professional judgment in the upcoming zoning board meetings. A happy, boring wedding would be a great relief. Am I making myself clear?

      Clarke’s Corner Clothier was on the western edge of the commercial zone, next to a large

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