Obsessions: An Anthology of Original Fiction

OBSESSIONS

AN ANTHOLOGY OF ORIGINAL STORIES

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Edited by

MARK LESLIE

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Stark Publishing

Table of Contents

Title Page

Obsessions: An Anthology of Original Fiction

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION: Caught in the Grip

MY PRIZE

CURSE OF THE GHOULMASTER

THE LAST JULIAN

A RARE BIRD

AT THE HEART OF IT ALL

NOT SICK ENOUGH IN THE HEAD

BRINGING LIGHT INTO DARKNESS

A MATTER FOR GOD

SILVER LININGS

BLOOD OF HEROES

SECOND-HAND CASKET

PINK PILLBOX HAT

FOR LOVE OF RONALD STURGIS

EVERYTHING GOT COLDER

THE TOOTH FAIRY

EXECUTIVE DECISIONS

EDITOR’S OBSESSIVELY THANKFUL AFTERWORD

About the Contributors

Further Reading: Literary Haunts

�Copyright © 2020 by Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Published by Stark Publishing

Cover Design © 2020 Juan Padron

A Matter for God copyright © 2020 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

A Rare Bird copyright © 2020 by Joe Cron

At the Heart of It All copyright © 2020 by Kari Kilgore

Blood of Heroes copyright © 2020 by Ezekiel James Boston

Bringing Light into Darkness copyright © 2020 by Dayle A. Dermatis

Curse of the Ghoulmaster copyright © 2020 by Stephen Couch

Everything Got Colder copyright © 2020 by Dean Wesley Smith

Executive Decisions copyright © 2020 by Rebecca M. Senese

For Love of Ronald Sturgis copyright © 2020 by Michael Kingswood

My Prize copyright © 2020 by Leah Cutter

Not Sick Enough in the Head copyright © 2020 by Robert Jeschonek

Pink Pillbox Hat copyright © 2020 by Julie Strauss

Second-Hand Casket copyright © 2020 by Kate Pavelle

Silver Linings copyright © 2020 by Leigh Saunders

The Last Julian copyright © 2020 by Annie Reed

The Tooth Fairy copyright © 2020 by David Stier

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

This is a collection of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of each author’s imagination. Real locales and public and celebrity names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is either completely coincidental or is used in a completely fictional manner.

Obsessions / Mark Leslie.—1st ed.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-989351-31-4

Trade Paperback Print ISBN: 978-1-989351-29-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-989351-30-7

Audiobook ISBN:  978-1-989351-32-1

For Kevin J. Anderson

Thank you, Kevin, for continuing to remind me, through the ongoing example that you set, of those eloquent words of your dear friend that your obsession for writing, for telling stories, in other words your spirit with a vision, is indeed a dream with a mission.

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FOREWORD

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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Here’s what I love about Mark Leslie’s editing: It has heart.

When Mark picks a project, he generally goes for the emotion genres—y’know, horror (emotion), romance (emotion), and fear (emotion).

An obsession is an emotion gone sideways. Often, obsessions are rooted in emotion. An obsession with death, because as a child, our protagonist witnessed the death of a beloved person or pet. An obsession with collecting, because things allow that person to bury their emotions under something tangible. An obsession with another person, based on love or rage or hatred or, well, you name it.

The stories in this very special volume cover a wide range of genres, from fantasy to noir, from horror to something resembling love. These stories have only one thing in common—an obsession.

Sometimes the obsession is sketched in ever so lightly, because the protagonist really doesn’t want others to notice just how big the obsession is. Sometimes the obsession is vast and creepy and hard to miss.

And that’s what makes these stories wonderful.

I have watched Mark edit on a variety of projects. He often takes part in our anthology workshop, which requires a lot of reading before a week of in-person sessions during which we editors discuss authors’ stories right in front of them. I consider myself lucky to have heard Mark’s takes on a variety of fiction.

Sometimes his opinion makes me reconsider something I’ve read or notice something I’ve missed. I love that. (Note the emotion here.)

Mark has great insight into fiction, into what makes it work, and, even better, what makes stories link to other stories.

Obsessions does just that. These stories are different, yes, but they belong together. You might even say they’re obsessed with each other.

(Okay, maybe that is a bridge too far.)

Mark himself was obsessed with this anthology. When it looked like the anthology was going to be canceled, Mark stepped in to save it. He ran a highly successful Kickstarter to help him pay the authors and, ultimately, to put together an audiobook version of the anthology.

You might want to search for the project on Kickstarter, just to see the videos Mark compiled to convince people to support the project. Which they did, in droves.

You now have in your hands (or on your e-reader or in your ear) this marvelous volume. Enjoy it. No, savor it. Once you finish, you’ll understand why Mark (and the rest of us) are obsessed by it.

It’s just that good.

—Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Las Vegas, NV

September 30, 2020

INTRODUCTION: Caught in the Grip

Mark Leslie

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I often liken my role as an anthology’s editor to being your tour guide as we take a stroll together past a series of landmark stories that these dear author friends I am privileged to work with were generous enough to share with me.

Along the way, I point out the sights, the sounds, the smells. And we’ll both revel in the atmospheric emotions, the highs, the lows, the noise, and the quiet; the magic of how we can both experience the same story, and yet be brought to our own unique and intimate internal reactions.

That’s one of the things I adored about the format of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. Those moments where he stepped out to introduce and end a tale, carefully preparing you for the tale you were about to experience.

And, if you consider imitation to be the sincerest form of flattery, then, picture me donning that same style of persona.

Right now, my role is to prepare you for the wonderful voices of the talented writers that you are about to experience. I know that not everybody reads an anthology from start to finish; some readers prefer to dance around from tale to tale to the pattern of their own internal beat. But for those of you who read things in the order presented I have designed and laid out the tales in a way that I hope you can relish.

It is a path, a course, that I have carefully planned out, designed to move you through the various emotions, genres, experiences, the highs, the lows, that these masterful writers will take you through.

Their voices and tales are each unique, but the theme they have explored is consistent.

Webster defines obsession as abnormal preoccupation with a persistent idea of desire.

Sometimes these obsessions are related to a particular hobby, such as avid collectors of various artifacts. Other times the obsession can be something that drives a person to invent something new, cure a disease or attempt to right a great wrong. And at other times, they can send a person down a dark and disturbing path.

Obsessions can be healthy; they can be born out of love and the desire to protect. They can stem from a need to fix something that is broken or replace something that is missing. Obsessions can be perversive and disgusting, unhealthy and bizarre. They can be mild or quaint eclectic things, or they can be all-consuming and life altering.

The stories you are about to read are about different types of obsessions and how those obsessions drive changes or alterations in a character's life and the lives of those around them.

The authors have crafted stories that dig deep into each character's unique obsession. They explore the trauma, the elements of that person's upbringing or their internal character that led to or feeds the obsession. They explore and examine what it really means, on the deepest level, if they obtain that goal they obsess over.

These stories are so rich and fascinating that I’m confident you will be thinking about them obsessively long after you have finished reading it.

But in the meantime, those stories, and these brilliant authors await us both. Come, take my hand, dear reader, and let us take a stroll together as I have the honor of introducing you to the fascinating characters, worlds, and situations they have each spun along this single theme.

MY PRIZE

Leah Cutter

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Leah Cutter still has a journal from when she was eight years old that begins with the words: When I grow up, I want to be a writer. Something else she had when she was a little girl was the first of a growing collection of Kewpie dolls and Kewpie doll memorabilia.

But we’ll get to the Kewpie doll collection shortly.

Leah writes page-turning, wildly imaginative fiction set in exotic locations, such as a magical New Orleans, the ancient Orient, rural Kentucky, Seattle, Minneapolis, and many others.

She writes fantasy, science fiction, mystery, literary, and horror fiction. Her long fiction and books have been published by New York Publishers and small presses, and her short fiction has been published in magazines like ‘Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine’ and ‘Talebones,’ and anthologies like Fiction River.

I have had the distinct pleasure of publishing her story The Glass Girl in the first anthology I edited for the Fiction River series, in the 2017 Editor’s Choice edition.

You can learn more about Leah, her worlds, and her writing at www.leahcutter.com. But in the meantime, let’s get back to that Kewpie doll collection I’d mentioned.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother gave me a Kewpie doll, Leah tells me. Since she preferred stuffed animals to dolls, this was the only doll she had for years.

Leah’s mother was quite the seamstress, making matching outfits for the family; for one camping trip, her mom sewed Leah a sleeping bag and made a matching one for her doll.

"Because other people knew that I adored this doll, they continued giving me Kewpie memorabilia even after I was an adult, such as a hand-painted Kewpie plate, a Kewpie from WWII wearing a German army helmet, and even a rare black Kewpie.

So, it seemed natural to me to take something that was innocent, like collecting a few Kewpie dolls, and turn it into something much darker. It was better for me to use the Kewpie dolls than something I'm actually really obsessed with, such as coffee or chocolate.

And, I, for one, am glad that she did. Because this story stuck with me for so long after I finished reading it that I ended up theming an entire anthology around it.

Now let us find Megan as she is about to enter the sacred room containing her prize Kewpie doll collection.

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Megan took a deep breath and deliberately pushed all her cares away before she opened the door to the room containing her prize doll collection.

The faint smell of old plastic greeted her first, as always. It wasn’t the nasty scent of forgotten, moldy toys that came from pawnshops or second-hand stores; no, this was sweeter, meatier, like fresh rubber.

Megan’s eyes automatically darted to the hygrometer in the corner, making sure that the room maintained a steady forty-five percent humidity. The thermometer beside it assured her that the room was still exactly sixty-seven degrees.

Only then did she step fully into the room and bask in her collection of Kewpie dolls.

The dolls all smiled at her, making her smile in return. As Kewpie dolls tended to look out of the corner of their eyes, she’d arranged many of them to stand sideways, so they’d be looking at her. They always seemed so wise to her, like they held secrets they only told each other.

She’d dreamed more than once that her dolls would fly around the room at night on their stubby little wings, dancing like the angels they were.

Father had always said Megan was his little Kewpie doll, with her dark eyes and chubby cheeks. He insisted that she was the best prize he’d ever won, sometimes calling her just My Prize. She hadn’t minded, not really, that he’d kept her all to himself all those years, especially since Mother had died shortly after Megan had been born so it was just the two of them.

She missed Father so much sometimes. It had been a little over a year since his death. She’d had to celebrate her sixtieth birthday all by herself. She felt as though there was so little left of her without him. She kept his bedroom just as it had been, frequently sprinkling a little of his aftershave on the bed so it would still smell like him when she laid on it.

Though Megan was far from young now, her cheeks no longer pudgy and pink, her dark eyes faded, she still wore the cute dresses that Father liked, the ones that matched her dolls, that were tight across her chest and flared out around her waist, ending just above her knee. She particularly liked the dresses made out of cotton with white backgrounds and tiny prints of butterflies, pumpkins, or even hearts.

When Megan was feeling particularly daring, she might, on a Sunday after church, when she was certain she wouldn’t see anyone she knew, use some mousse on her graying hair and make a little hair lick standing up in the center of her head, just like one of her dolls.

The dark green walls of the room set off the shelves nicely. The shelves themselves were floating shelves, so no ugly brackets marred her display. She knew she should draw the curtains and hide the shelves when she wasn’t there, thereby protecting the dolls from the soft light, but she couldn’t bear to hide them so.

Each doll sat or stood to her best advantage. The collection was arranged by age, with the oldest dolls from 1912 to her left, then continuing to her right, with the resurgence of Rose O’Neill’s drawings in the 1980s resulting in postcards and even stationary.

But no modern dolls, and in particular, none of those fake Japanese Kewpie dolls that had flooded the market in recent years.

Megan didn’t have a lot of time that night, so she turned to her left and walked directly to the originals section. Here, she had over four dozen bisque dolls manufactured in Germany, even two signed by the creator, Rose O’Neill, herself. Most of them were the smaller dolls, between one to six inches tall.

None of the dolls were brightly painted—Megan didn’t want a restored doll; she wanted them in their existing condition. She’d seen pictures of the more colorful museum dolls and thought it was a disgrace. The dolls should be allowed to age naturally, as she had.

When Megan had read about the auction taking place that night, she’d deliberately created a hole in her soldier section. The doll listed as part of the estate going up had a Kaiser helmet with a spike on the top of it and held a rifle in one hand.

Megan didn’t have one of those. She had dolls lying down and pointing rifles, dolls in plain caps with guns and holsters, even the German policeman doll. But this was the only German doll that had that particular helmet, in that particular pose.

The doll going up for sale didn’t have the heart-shaped sticker in the center of its chest, and it wasn’t signed. However, it would complete her German army collection. Once she bought it, she would have one of each type of soldier-themed dolls manufactured between 1912 and 1915.

Well, except for the twelve-inch dolls. Maybe some year, if she won the lottery, she’d have a spare twenty-thousand dollars and could afford to buy one of those.

The estate going up for auction that night had a single Kewpie doll in it. The original owner of the estate had collected all things military. She wasn’t interested in anything else on sale that night, especially not the antique guns and rifles. She had her own gun, one that Father had bought for her to protect herself, a small, ladylike, modern pistol that made a tack-tack-tack sound when she practiced shooting it.

Because there were so few dolls on sale tonight, she figured she wouldn’t have much competition in bidding, except for a couple of collectors who felt the need to bid on everything. According to her books on doll collecting, this particular Kewpie doll should go for only two or three hundred dollars.

She had no hope that the auction house wouldn’t have done their research. The bidding would start at a reasonable price, say, one fifty. Hopefully, she could keep the price low and still have money in her collection account when the bidding was over.

With a final wave to the rest of her collection (it would have been rude not to at least say goodbye), Megan turned and marched out the door, as if going to war herself.

She had to get that doll. She’d take it with her, up to Father’s bed that night, where she’d pleasure herself while it watched. She always swore the Kewpie dolls winked at her as she lay there afterward in a pleasant stupor.

She wouldn’t have to collect another doll for a while after that. But her need would grow, and nothing would make her happy until she’d found the next perfect doll for her collection. It was like Father’s passions, which had only struck now and again. He always bought her dolls afterward. That had been the start of her collection.

Good thing one was going on sale tonight.

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Megan hurried down the empty street. The auction was taking place in the warehouse district south of downtown Seattle. No one really lived down here. The few restaurants only served breakfast and lunch and were already closed. Brisk March winds whisked around her bare legs. She clutched her purse closer to her, glad her little pistol was tucked inside. The air smelled of the heavy trucks that rumbled by.

The only thing that had gone right that night was that it wasn’t raining.

Megan had missed her first bus. Though the bus had been early, she still blamed no one but herself, as Father had taught her. She’d spent too much time with her collection, indulging herself.

Missing the first bus had made her miss her connection. According to the timetable printed on the side of the bus stop sign, with the next connection, she should still make it to the auction before it started.

However, she hadn’t counted on the second bus breaking down. It had lowered its front step for a passenger, then been unable to raise the step back up. Everyone had been told to get off the bus.

Another bus would come along eventually, but Megan would miss half the auction by the time it arrived. She didn’t have a smartphone—Father had always said those things made you dumb—so she couldn’t call one of those ride-share services (not that she’d trust any of them, or just blithely get into a stranger’s car). The cab company she called couldn’t get to her location for twenty minutes. It was faster to just walk.

So, Megan scurried along the sidewalk, tripping over the broken concrete. She wasn’t a runner, had never done anything so undignified as go jogging, so she quickly got out of breath.

If only she had Kewpie doll wings!

The auction had already started by the time Megan arrived at the auction house. Luckily, the nice young man at the entrance processed her quickly, giving her a paddle with the number 338 on it in exchange for her credit card information.

The auction room itself had the feeling of a theatre. A three-foot-high stage took up the front of the room. It was brightly lit, with many chairs stretched across the length of it displaying items from the estate, each with numbers that matched the catalog of things being sold.

The room itself smelled of stale clothes and cigarette smoke. Had the estate owner been a smoker? Hopefully, that wouldn’t affect the bisque doll. She’d just have to make sure that she cleaned it good when she got it home. Maybe even take a bath with it.

She shivered with excitement. A nice hot soak sounded lovely just then.

Megan quickly looked over the audience. Mostly men, as she had assumed, given the nature of the items available. No one sat in the chairs around the edges of the open space—everyone stood, holding their paddles.

Of course, the auctioneer wouldn’t go through the catalog in order. He had to create excitement, so he cherry-picked the items, pulling out some of the rarer pieces for people to bid on, following that with a more mundane piece.

Had the Kewpie doll already been sold? She had no way of knowing, not without asking someone. And she’d never be so forward as that, to ask a strange man about a doll. Father had warned her too often about the dangers of talking with strangers.

As the evening drew on, Megan found herself growing more and more tense. When would they bring out the Kewpie doll? It had to be the next item. Or the one after that.

Maybe there were other doll collectors in the audience. Maybe the auctioneer was holding the doll until the very end, and there would be a frenzy of bidding.

When the auctioneer announced that the next item, a civil war rifle, was the last item of the night, Megan felt crushed. All the air flew out of the room. She struggled to breathe.

Someone else had bought the Kewpie doll. But who? How could she find out?

She was going to have to