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Austin Macauley Publishers - Tony Cleaver

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91 pages

English

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Unfulfilled in his career and love-life, George Potts did not suffer a mid-life crisis - he underwent a change of species. He knew not how or why, but suddenly found he could metamorphose into a racing greyhound. From a plodding, colourless, two-legged routine, he discovered he could transform his anatomy into that of a muscular, lightning-quick quadruped. This, it transpired, brightened up his life in ways previously unimaginable and became all the more useful when it came to hunting down and attempting to liberate an heiress held hostage by a ruthless gang of kidnappers. Greyhound George to the Rescue!

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Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers
Date de parution	30 avril 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528959247
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0210€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Greyhound George to the Rescue
Tony Cleaver
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-04-30
Greyhound George to the Rescue About the Author About the Book Dedication Copyright Information Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22
About the Author
Originally from London, Tony Cleaver has been a journalist, hippy, teacher, road sweeper, mountain guide, university lecturer and writer. He has lived and worked in the UK, Singapore, Chile, The Netherlands and Colombia – all of which have inspired him to write. Currently at the University of Durham, UK, Tony has written two texts on economics; three novels – El Mono ; Welcome to Camelot and Greyhound George along with a collection of short stories: Frogs, Cats and Pyramids. His ambition is to climb more mountains, play better cricket and to be able to remember all his four sons’ ages without his wife having to remind him.
About the Book
Unfulfilled in his career and love-life, George Potts did not suffer a mid-life crisis – he underwent a change of species. He knew not how or why, but suddenly found he could metamorphose into a racing greyhound. From a plodding, colourless, two-legged routine, he discovered he could transform his anatomy into that of a muscular, lightning-quick quadruped. This, it transpired, brightened up his life in ways previously unimaginable and became all the more useful when it came to hunting down and attempting to liberate an heiress held hostage by a ruthless gang of kidnappers. Greyhound George to the Rescue !
Dedication
To Maria Cristina – who rescued me.
Copyright Information
Copyright © Tony Cleaver (2019)
The right of Tony Cleaver to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528909341 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528909358 (Kindle e-book)
ISBN 9781528959247 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Chapter 1
The first time that George Potts awoke and found he had changed into a greyhound during the night, he blamed it on the whisky: it seemed the obvious explanation.
He had found himself on all fours beside the bed he’d just fallen out of and, with a fuzzy head and eyes that struggled to focus, he slowly became aware of what seemed to be a large black greyhound looking bemusedly back at him from the full-length bedroom mirror.
George thought then it was the last swig of single malt the evening before that had done it. Forty-six proof Ardbeg was powerful hallucinatory medicine, after all.
He later discovered, however, that metamorphosing into dogginess and back again occurred whether he was sober or not. It was not an alcohol-inspired illusion. He really did alternate between two-legged and four-legged life-forms in a manner that was triggered by he-knew-not-what.
Lying awake in the middle of the night now, George pondered on the mysteriousness of his existence and, specifically, what had prompted his sudden transformation from a life of regular, unsurprising middle-aged conformity to that of unpredictable shape-changing heterogeneity. He had emerged from his cocoon into… well not exactly a fragile, fluttering butterfly – more a fiery, mercurial man-dog.
Why? How? What had he done to deserve this fate?
Thinking on it, George realised that his whole life, until just a couple of months ago, had led him slowly, inexorably into a sad, colourless cul-de-sac. Why had he not seen that before? It was because the days pass into years gradually, he thought, taking you relentlessly onward, and he was either too blind or too lacking in courage to understand where he was going. And so he had arrived at his own particular dead end, with no way back. He had become a crushed, caged animal.
For most people, being trapped in a marriage of unfulfilling greyness leads eventually to a mid-life crisis. It was a bit different for George: his was a mid-life change of species.
It had taken quite a bit of getting used to. Many, he guessed, would not be too pleased at finding that they had turned back the clock of evolution and had returned to the limitations of moving around on all fours. George, however, felt liberated. He had risen from the floor, that morning last Spring, with a muscular, quadrupedal racing frame that was infinitely fitter than his previous shambling humanoid model. Also, his reactions had awoken quicker than a spark of energy lighting up a tablelamp. Certainly, the doggification of Durham City Council’s 2nd accountant – converting a respectable, somewhat stodgy public servant into an adventurous, volatile, high-speed canine – was a challenging experience that would have tested the mettle of even the most experienced of change managers, and George had never been one of those. Boring routine had been his modus operandi until then. But he very quickly experienced the joys of reversing his life’s trajectory into monochrome mediocrity. Incognito, he had indulged in a series of wild adventures within a dog’s radius of his home, and – most satisfyingly – he had been able to expose his unfaithful wife and her partner in crime: the next-door neighbour but one.
Mrs Annabel Potts had been carrying-on with one of the creepiest specimens of humankind that George had ever encountered. When he caught them at it, al flagrante whilst in his greyhound alter ego, George considered they fully deserved one another. He was indeed relieved he now had an excuse for divorce and a comprehensive reorganisation of his universe. It was an unexpected but spectacular bonus of doggification.
Why George had been selected to undergo this periodic metamorphosis of his entire anatomy, he couldn’t quite figure out. Nor was he entirely in control of it, it was like flicking a switch inside his brain which he could manage well enough at times, and then at other times, external events triggered the change in spite of himself. One second, he was man; the next second, greyhound. Awkward. But however it happened, he gloried in his new-found transformability. Most important of all, it had led him to Carol.
The most unassuming and unsuspecting of pedestrians, George was walking out one day when he’d met a certain affectionate greyhound called Rosie and her fatally attractive owner. It must have been the combination of a deeply unsatisfying marriage, a bewitching encounter full of forbidden sexual promise, and a welcoming hound that offered introductions to an alternative dimension. That and a liberal intake of single malt whisky which had helped lower his resistance. The next morning, he was leaping around on all four legs and terrorising his perfidious spouse: he had metamorphosed into the most athletic and irrepressible black hound ever seen in the north of England. A concatenation of domestic and professional upsets had followed: workplaces invaded, gardens ransacked; passers-by entertained, leading eventually to the embrace of new friends, the dispatch of and divorce from his suffocating, prison warder of a wife, and a general reordering of all creation. Quite breathtaking.
Now George lay flat out on the bed, back humanoid again, eyes wide open, contemplating his recent history. It was the very early hours of Friday morning, there was a silver glow entering the room from a streetlight outside; and amongst the dull, dark shadows about him, he glanced admiringly at the curved contours of Carol, lying motionless next to him. He smiled. Who would have guessed it? A plodding, submissive paper-cut-out of a man, shackled hopelessly to a malicious harridan, had been transformed in an instant to a grinning risk-hungry adventurer who had bolted out of his cage; and then, after a series of doggy escapades, had gone and bagged as his own the most attractive staff member of St Bartholomew’s College at the local university. Beauty and brains. What a catch.
George sidled over; his head and his hormones both pulling him in the same direction. Before snuggling up to his partner, however, he quickly looked down to check what sort of shape he was in. It was a habit he’d recently picked up. Two legs. Nothing remotely dog-like. Of course. He relaxed and closed his eyes.
Dreams of running free across fields and into the nearby woodlands enveloped him: it was still springtime, the bluebells were underfoot, the sun was filtering through the trees, and he was leaping about like a three-year-old greyhound, chasing Rosie and wallowing in his liberation. His eyes were now tight shut, but his face was still creased with a smile. Oh bliss!
Two bodies lay side by side together, sleeping peacefully, until eventually the first rays of autumnal sunlight competed with the streetlamp outside and summoned one of the pair – Carol – to rise and greet the early hours of the morning. She turned first of all and reached under the duvet to deliver a kiss on the forehead of the man who lay buried beside her. Except her lips met a nose. A wet nose. A wet black nose. She let out a shriek.
“George! How dare you!”
The duvet heaved, rolled and contorted beside her. The volume of the creature that it covered seemed to increase, and after a second’s delay and yet more disturbance, a dark-haired head eventually emerged into the light. Dark-haired