Tales From The Cottage is a collection of Flash Fiction written in 2012. The eighteen stories range in style from the macabre to the heart-rending.
You'll never look at a robin, or a bat, in quite the same light again, and for certain, you'll check your facts before jumping from your office window.
This collection is the perfect companion with which to curl up in front of a log fire.
Excerpt from The Frog Who Would Be King:
Marcyn sat beside the shimmering pool, trying to ignore the laughs and jeers being directed at him by the other frogs.
The day was hot, the sun blinding in its intensity, and he ran a trembling paw over his head, spreading what little dampness there was over his eyes.
Marcyn was incandescent with anger.
“You may laugh,” he shouted, “but it is I who’ll have the last laugh when I become King and fill in this putrid pond.”
The laughs and jeers grew louder - the frogs gathered on the lily pads rolling about, hooting with mirth, holding their fat little bellies with their fat little feet.
“You’ll see, you’ll see,” Marcyn screamed at them, turning his back and hopping off in a huff.
One of the bigger frogs laughed so loud at this, that he fell off his lily pad and into the pond with a resounding splash.
* * *
“And where might you be going, my fine fat friend?”
Marcyn jumped, turning to look at the large adder watching him from the tall grass.
“Away from those cretins back there!” he answered, eyes still bulging in anger.
“Your friends have upset you?”
Coming under the spell of the snake’s sibilant speech pattern - the long drawn out S’s tingling his ears - Marcyn stuck out a petulant lower lip.
“What do they know about becoming a King?” he asked. “All they think about is s-x, s-x, s-x.”
“Well then, it is fortuitous indeed that we have met. For I can help you on your quest.”
While speaking, the snake had been lightly stroking Marcyn under the chin with the tip of his tail, his yellow eyes growing bigger and bigger.
“You can?” asked Marcyn, all aquiver.
“Indeed I can. Come with me my fine fat frog.”
So saying , the snake wrapped Marcyn in its tail and slid off along the path at great speed.
“But - but where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to become a King. Yes-s-s-s indeedy.”
* * *
As the snake carried him to his destiny, Marcyn day-dreamed about his future. He would become the most powerful frog in Mizzletop and his name would be on every creature’s lips. Ha, he’d teach those feckless frogs back at the pond to upset him like that. He would show no mercy. There would be no more laughing, and no more hurtful remarks about how ugly his spawn had been.
Born aloft by the adder, Marcyn continued his dreams of power and prosperity, in his mind’s eye burying his enemies up to their necks in the mud, then jumping up and down on their heads.
His smile was broad and egoistical.
After all, he was off to become a King.
