A group of short stories of which I have written over a number of years, and have just fine-tuned.
There are tales of revenge, haunting and possession to enjoy, but don't have sleepless nights!
Excerpt from UNWORTHY OF LIFE:
I stared at the white-washed walls. I stared at the window with iron bars. I stared at the dirty blue and grey striped mattress, which was my bed. Grey stuffing protruded from a hole in the corner and was trying to escape the stitched confines.
The overall I wore was baggy and hadn’t been washed for weeks. My hair, shaved off my scalp, was bristly to the touch. Being physically handicapped they confined me to a wheelchair.
The sound of marching boots outside - the sound of shouts and screams inside the building. Einsicht Mental Institution was an old prison with cold flagstone floors and had been my home for five years since I was given up by my mother.
She came to see me at the start, but after a while she came no more. Dieter, the nurse who cared for me, told me she had moved away because she wanted to give our house to good people.
When I was alone, I took out the small metal cross with the funny little man on it she had given me and I prayed for her the way she had shown me. I also prayed for the other people like me trapped in their rooms.
At night I pressed my hands to my ears to keep out the noise, and I dreamt of my mother, and of a time when we were happy in our Munich home; a time when people used to smile and call me happy, little Friedrich. But then darkness descended over our world and people looked at each other with frightened eyes. From the streets at night there was the sound of breaking glass and the smell of burning.
The dark became darker when it took my father away and left my mother crying into the night. I had wanted to go to her; to console her, but I needed help to get out of my bed. I cried: “Mama, mama!” But she never came.
The rest of 1933 we cowered in our home with the shutters over the windows and the door locked. Boots marched along the street and we heard cries as people were taken away from their homes and their businesses. I asked Mama where they were taking our friends. She told me it was better not to know. She also told me to love God, because he loved me and would not forsake me, and to always remember that, no matter how bad things got.
One day I peeped out of the space between the shutters of the parlour window and saw men in shabby clothes with dirty faces being marched along our street. The men had dead eyes. At the sides of the horde were soldiers in tan uniforms with guns. One man stumbled and fell onto the cobbled road. A soldier then ran over to him and hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle. I screamed with horror, and the soldier looked at me with such hatred in his eyes I cowered away from the window and hoped that they would go away. Mama came running into the room and closed the shutters and said: “When you hear marching boots you must not look out Friedrich.”
The dark took my mother one evening while I slept. When I awoke with the first rays of a frosty dawn slipping through the shutters, I shouted: “Mama!” But there was no reply.
The whole of that day and the next night I called for her from between soiled sheets, but she never came. Then the next day she walked into my room; her skin was pale, and she had a faraway look in her eyes. “Mama!” I shouted with joy.
