ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Naugle is a Professor of English Literature at Glendale Community College in Southern California. His particular areas of interest are poetry and Twentieth Century American, British, and Australian fiction. He has published a number of poems in literary magazines and has written a screenplay. Through A Fortress In Darkness was his first novel. His other works include Dinner with the Dark Heart Stranger, a short story collection, and The Summer Pier, to be released in December 2013.
Find out more about Michael Naugle on his website, www.mojavewinds.blogspot.com.
DINNER WITH THE DARK-HEARTED STRANGER
By
Michael Naugle
Available now in print!
Dinner with the Dark-Hearted Stranger is a collection of six short works of contemporary fiction by author Michael Naugle. While each story stands alone, together they combine to create an intricate look at the darker sides of human nature, weaving a tapestry of characters and places that are both unsettling and fascinatingly familiar. Inspired by what Carl Jung called “The Shadow,” Naugle explores the dark, mysterious presence that can turn a heartbreaking and disastrous experience into something healing and redemptive. He thinks of you, his readers, as the subjects of his stories, and hopes that they will allow you to ponder the Shadows in your own lives.
The elevator strained and clattered as it started to climb. Ruth clung to her husband’s side and she sobbed as a child might. The tower was a hundred yards tall and the elevator climbed slowly, passing through a narrow chasm that rusted iron bars webbed in on all sides; at last the elevator reached the top and Dale pushed the lever down, and he opened the iron gate as he instructed them off. “As you can see,” Dale told Mark Cunningham, “I have gone to a lot of effort.”
Once they were headed toward the Projects the boy grew suddenly silent, and when the lights of the Projects appeared the boy became visibly nervous; Pete glanced down and he studied Tom’s profile for a couple of seconds, and Pete looked up toward the venomous beads of white light that dotted the black monoliths of the Projects. Small and dark houses passed here and there amid larger industrial buildings. When he was three blocks from the Projects Pete pulled slowly toward the curb. “Are you afraid,” Pete asked the boy, “of somebody here? Does somebody bully you here?” The boy said nothing.
Richie screamed. He kept screaming. It was not a human scream but it was bestial and horrific. It was as if the house itself was screaming down from its deepest roots, down to the very lowest sections of its concrete foundation and its sunken pilings; Janet sat for half a second and she shoved upright, and her white cup full of coffee bounced off her floor and shattered. The basement door was open wide and Janet ran through. She ran down a flight of steps into a flood of fluorescent light.
She drove on. She drove to an elementary school that had a blacktop playground. “This is where my niece and nephew go to school,” she explained. “They had a shooting two years ago, but nobody got killed. Now they have a metal detector that all of the kids walk past. But some kids still get knives and razors through.”
Martha and Paul sat still. Finally Martha pulled away and she parked in front of a house. “This is where I live,” she told Paul, “and my sister, too. This is what I really wanted to show you.”
“Why?”
“I think that you know. You’re a smart man, after all.” James Fricke turned.
Once again Greg Tomcheq realized how foolhardy he had been. This man might be a former classmate but he was now a transient, and he was obviously mentally ill and he had written a letter; he had spewed forth a black venom of irrational hatreds, and he had threatened to murder Greg Tomcheq somewhere in the middle of those ravings. Yet Greg Tomcheq had acquiesced to the request of a madman. Now the two of them were alone and there was no one to intervene.
“Voted Most Likely to Succeed,” James Fricke whispered hoarsely.
“I never asked you what you do now.”
“I’m an architect.”
“That’s good. Would you like to know what I’ve done?”
“I am not suicidal! But I will be suicidal if they keep me locked up in here! There has to be some way out of here!!”
“I don’t agree with you. Something terribly wrong did happen.”
“Hogwash!”
“I saw what happened. When you screamed and swung at that mirror, you were aiming at it. I don’t care what you told the surgeons.”
Carolyn stared out dumbly. Her best friend and her lover had suddenly turned into her enemy. “I think,” Tony went on firmly, “that you need to be there right now. To find out what happened to you.”
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