I wrote a series of murder mysteries based on nursery rhymes. These short stories are about as serious as you'd expect, but some are unsuitable for young children.
A sample story:
Nursery
Rhyme:
Little
Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,
Eating
her curds and whey,
Along
came a spider and sat down beside her,
And
frightened Miss Muffet away.
I thought there might be a bit more to this...
Arachnophobia
The
trouble actually started when Little Miss Muffet was busted for
gambling.
She was operating under the alias of Wax Liploc. I think she was
involved
with the Pumpkin Eater prostitution/white slavery ring, but making
bets
was the only thing we could pin on her. She was out on the street
again
in less than a year.
My
name is Deadbolt, Hasp Deadbolt, and I'm a private eye. I'd been
hired
by
the City on a temporary basis. They'd been short-handed since the
Jack
Horner
debacle. I had the job of seeing that Muffet went straight.
For
a while she seemed to be adhering to the requirements of her
probation.
She
spent a lot of time in the library, checking out books on explosives
and
poisons, and audio-visual items like "Arabic in 4 easy lessons"
but I
wasn't
fooled. She was a pie waiting to spew birds, a shoe waiting to vomit
kids.
Then
it happened. She was in the park, eating a light lunch on a sort of
portable
stool she'd brought with her, and I was pretending to sail a small
boat
in the pond. It was not easy with no wind. I heard a scream and
looked
up.
A wolf spider the size of a small horse was hitting on Muffet. As I
ran
up I
heard it say "Hey baby, how about you fly into my parlor?"
It wrapped
a
few hairy legs around her and sat down right on the tuffet with her.
Muffet
screamed again and wrenched herself free. She whipped out the
umbrella
that she always carried with her and she brought it down. Again.
And
again. And again. I jerked it out of her hand. She was still
screaming.
I
slapped her once, twice, and she shut her mouth with a shudder. She
was
spattered
from head to toe with spider guts. All she would say, over and
over
again as she was led away, was "I hate spiders!"
Oh
yes. She got off on a plea of temporary insanity. If you ask me, that
girl
is going to be trouble.
Available from Alban Lake
http://store.albanlake.com/product/nursery-rhyme-noir/
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