Dessert Time Tales , livre ebook

Partridge Publishing Singapore - Walter Hyde

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73 pages

English

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The idea of a collection of short stories from personal experiences and encounters was born following several desert time chats between the author and his friends, many of whom disclosed incidents which were bizarre, ironical, unexpected, or even belonging to the supranatural, stories not sufficiently grand enough to be turned into a novel or movie but which nevertheless could provide food for thought and questions on how we should interact with other persons, both visible and invisible. Most of us believe in destiny, though many of my friends would challenge or dispute the rationale of accepting or adopting any specific religious belief. The stories told in this collection are of necessity fictionalised, but the essence or themes of the stories are mostly based on or related to first hand experiences or descriptions which sometimes could, hopefully, stimulate us to think about life again and whenever we face a downturn, whether we should second guess our choices, decisions, and paths we have taken. Last but not the least, the author would hope that these stories are light enough to digest, but substantial enough to linger on in one’s palate for some time.

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Asia

Fiction

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Publié par	Partridge Publishing Singapore
Date de parution	23 août 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781543771015
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

DESSERT TIME TALES

Collection of Short Stories VOLUME 1

WALTER HYDE

Copyright © 2022 by Walter Hyde.

ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-5437-7100-8

eBook
978-1-5437-7101-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all my friends and colleagues who have provided the contents. backgrounds and ideas to this volume of collected stories, and my gratitude to my wife who has suffered much in putting up with my aspiration in and then my protracted attempts at writing these stories.
Dedication
I would like to dedicate my first volume of short stories to Mr. Michael Rochester Addy, my English teacher at secondary school who has inspired and aroused in me my lifelong interest and passion in writing.
CONTENTS
Never Judge a Book by its Cover
Cry Foul
Going Home
The Trouble of Being Honest
The Hero’s Scar
Not On My Watch
Never Lock the Door
The Occupied Bed
Losing A Witness
Never Judge a Book by its Cover
We were enjoying lunch last weekend in a very popular eating place when a nice-looking young woman approached our table and called out to me and my wife.
“Hi there, Sandra!” My wife exclaimed. “Haven’t seen you for a long time. Where have you been? Are you transferred to another hospital?”
Sandra came to our table. “No, still working there, but I have only recently come back from my honeymoon, and that is why you haven’t seen me for some time. You see, I got married less than two months ago.” We invited her to join us, but she explained that she was having lunch with her husband and her in-laws. She agreed to bring and introduce her husband, whom we have not yet acquainted, to us.
Presently she brought with her a youthful-looking smiling slightly built young man, bespectacled, with short well-groomed hair, and a rather pale complexion. “I am Jim, Sandra’s husband, very nice to meet you Mr. and Mrs. Hyde.”
This nice and endearing couple sat down and chatted for some time, and we learned that Jim was a doctor working in the same hospital as Sandra, and he was older than his looks. My wife was keen to find out how and when they met, etc., etc. Sandra promised that they will pay us a visit when they have settled in their new home and tell us their story then. With that they excused themselves and rejoined their family. “I can’t wait to find out their romance,” my wife said, “after all, she has known me for so many years and yet she did not invite us to her wedding banquet!” We have known Sandra for many years as she was the daughter of a neighbour of ours, but we have not met with her or her family after they have moved to live closer to the hospital Sandra was posted after graduation as a nurse a few years ago.

It was three weeks later when Sandra and Jim paid us a visit. We found Jim to be a nice, slightly shy, but sincere and steadfast young man, and enjoyed a good reputation as a medical doctor in training. However, what was totally unexpected and amazing was the story of how they met, which I must repeat here in the most authentic manner.

Sandra was returning to her hospital quarters one evening after a dinner gathering with her high school classmates. She had then qualified as a nurse for more than two years and has been working in this hospital all this time. She made her way back by the subway, and took the usual short cut from the subway station back to the hospital, which was in form of a footpath leading from the side entrance of the station round the bend of a small knoll with some tall trees providing shade during daytime, before the footpath terminated in a flight of stairs leading to the side gate of the hospital compound. This short cut reduced the walking time from the station to the main hospital entrance along the road by more than ten minutes. Hence this route was very popular with the staff of the hospital as the side gate was also much closer to the staff quarters than was the location of the main entrance. However, few people would be found taking this path after ten o’clock in the evening.
Exiting the station, Sandra took this route as a matter of habit, and as she was immersed in her thoughts about her duty the following day, she did not notice the three men who were tailing her from the train carriage. It was almost eleven o’clock now and there were no one walking this path except Sandra. On the deserted path, the streetlamp outside the station entrance cast a long shadow in front of Sandra, and it was the shadows of those three men rapidly approaching and then overlapping with her shadow then that Sandra suddenly became aware that she had company. Turning around, Sandra could see that these three men and their shadows were the only ones between herself and the bright but solitary streetlamp and the subway station. She could tell from their expressions that whoever they were they were not residents at the hospital quarters and their intention was anything but innocent. Perhaps these were punks, trying to get some easy money from decent people who dared not resist or could not run away fast enough. As the police seldom patrol this footpath, and the hospital gate was still some distance away and out of the line of sight from this spot, there is little fear of them being caught in the act. In most instances, the crime is usually so petty and the loss quite trivial that hardly any of the victims would take the trouble of reporting the crime to the police with all its associated tedious and stressful consequences which did not seem to justify the loss of a small amount of money, unless the victims suffered bodily harm.
Sandra was a cool and spirited woman, and in the few years of her nursing training and experience she has already developed the ability to stay calm and try working things out in dicey situations. Yet she was worried about these men, mainly from the look in their eyes. She felt that they probably wanted more than her money, and although she was young and quite fit physically, the odds of her outrunning or successfully fighting off these three men was quite low. She began to walk more briskly towards the hospital, and these men followed suit. Then they caught up with her. She turned around and could see under the illumination of the streetlamp the features of the gang of three. The one on her left was the tallest but looked the youngest, probably just around 20, and had shifty eyes and a devious smile. The one in the middle, clearly the oldest, was probably the leader. He was well built, had small cunning eyes, and wearing a cruel smile on his thin lips. The third one on her right was on the heavy side, stupid-looking with a face full of acne, with a gaping mouth dripping saliva and walked with a heavy gait.
As the tallest men tried to grab her left arm, Sandra instinctively gave a cry and shouted out loudly to tell the man to get lost and tried to push him away with her other hand. Just at this moment, there was a flurry of rapid footsteps, and she heard a loud cry “Leave her alone, let go!”.
The three men turned around to find a bespectacled slight pallid young man of medium height and built, dressed in a simple T-shirt and pants, and carried a duffel bag, who was rapidly catching up with them from behind. Sandra thought that he looked familiar, and then remembered him as one of the young doctors who recently started to work in the hospital, as she had run into him in the corridor and cafeteria but never got to know his name or the department he was with. He must be going back to the hospital quarters as well, she thought. Before she could figure out whether she would cry out for help, he started to intervene by taking several big strides to reach her left side, laid his free hand on the tall guy’s wrist, and with a twist of his hand freed Sandra from his grip.
The young doctor quickly appraised the situation. He could see that the way these three men were looking at Sandra was malicious with lust in their eyes. Their leader stepped forward towards the young doctor. His lips slowly turned into a cruel curve, and the others also got closer and appeared quite threatening. Anyone could have sensed that a skirmish would be inevitable, and the young doctor summed up the situation and came to a decision instantly. He and she would be most unlikely to be able to get away unscathed, never mind the loss of money. To protect the two of them, he would have to act, and act decisively and effectively. He would not be able to avoid fighting these men. If he were to overcome the three of them, he would have to disable each one of them rapidly and in turn before he was overwhelmed by the three of them working together. He decided to tackle the tall guy first, who was the closest to him and appeared somewhat awkward in his movements, to reduce the odds and to create a shock to the other two. Then he would dea