Now my Tale is Told E-Book

Elizabeth Bell

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Join author, Elizabeth Bell As she gives you a sneak peek into her works absolutely free with no need to share your email! Enjoy  chapters from The Hostage, The Oni, and AKA Johnny Elf as well as two chapters from two novellas When Lightnings Unleashed and Catfish.

If that's not enough you'll also get THREE short stories to enjoy. So if you've been wondering if her creative work is for you download now and find out today!

Leseprobe

Elizabeth Bell

Now my Tale is Told

BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Introduction by the author

Now My Tale is Told

By Elizabeth Bell

Thank you for your support! In this download, you will get a free glimpse into my works! There will be two to three chapters from the following titles:

The Hostage

AKA Johnny Elf

The Oni

Plus, you will get the first two chapters for the following Novellas:

Catfish

When Lightning’s unleashed

These are free downloads, and you can get the entire novellas for free! The links will be at the end of each story.

If that’s not enough, you will also be able to read THREE of my complete short stories.

A Bug’s Heart

The Tooth Fairy

A Night to Forget

Please consider signing up for my newsletter so you can stay in tune with more downloads.

https://mailchi.mp/80060a5a3d19/ebellofhorror5596

The Hostage Chapter 1

 The Hostage

Crime Thriller available on Amazon 

Shy Vickie has spent her life with her head down, hiding from the cruel world.

Not anymore.

She’s decided to help her friends rob a bank and grab a hostage for the promise of a better life.

There’s just one thing they didn’t count on.

This hostage is deadly.

12:38 pm

For once in her life, Vickie didn’t mind the good Father as he droned on about sin and the ways the faithful suffered for those who fell for the devil’s temptations.

She had to be at the small bank on the next corner in an hour to help rob it. She didn’t think she’d ever been so frightened in her life.

She snuck a glance at her mother, who was paying strict attention to the preacher. Vickie knew that her mother had at least 100 to put into the plate today, money that should have been Vickie’s lunch money and bus fare for the month. Not that it mattered, she had dropped out of school for a chance to leave this life behind and follow another one —hopefully a better one.

Vickie shifted, pushing her mousy brown hair behind one ear. She got a quick sharp pinch from her mother to remind her to hold still. Not for the first time, Vickie wondered, did any of these people know her mother was a drunk? Did they know she had tried to pimp Vickie once?

It wasn’t a big city, Cherry Wood, but it wasn’t a small city either. Didn’t people talk? Of course. Vickie’s mom lived in a trashy trailer park as opposed to one of the swankier houses, and they only lived within sight of the city with its tall buildings rising to the sky, so maybe people talked, and it was just considered normal. Maybe, if they did live in one of the more upper-class neighborhoods or in the city itself, it would be different, and someone would have stepped in long ago to save her.

But Vickie didn’t think so. She had always felt very small and very invisible. Even walking to the little Piggly Wiggly and back for eggs and milk had never caused more than a few impassive glances her way, with her torn and patched up dirty jeans and ripped shirts that were too big. 

Her best friend, Tonya, didn’t live much better, but her clothes were chic, and her makeup was faultlessly applied. Tonya never worried about discovering dirt behind her ears or smudges on her nose, unlike Vickie, and Tonya never handled dirty vegetables at the roadside stands. Because ’Tonya’s father was in prison, there was no one to care if she paid cheap for almost rotten fruits and vegetables like Vickie had to. Tonya shopped at Walmart with its’ glittering aisles of fresh food and jewelry and fancy bedspreads.

When Vickie’s mother went to Walmart, she rarely took Vickie, making her stay home with the dog and take care of the trailer. Her mother’s clothes weren’t much better, but her bedroom was certainly more chic and comfortable than Vickie’s was. It was as if she went shopping and forgot she had a daughter.

She snuck a look at her mom, who wore the only dress she had. It had lovely flowers with lacy sleeves and a turtle neck with a brooch pinned to it. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun that seemed to stretch her skin back.

Vickie’s hair, as usual, was sloppy and loose, and she never could achieve what her mother wanted. Her mother’s lips tightened, and she started to glance at her daughter again. Vickie hastily turned her attention to the priest.

“Please make sure you all welcome our new parish members, some of you have already sat with Father Curry, who will help with the confessions and counseling. Father Dunhill will be of help with some of the affairs of the church, such as weddings, funerals, and will help us coordinate charitable work.”

A few parishioners murmured. Those who had met Father Dunhill hadn’t been fond of him. He’d had beady eyes and a hawkish appearance and seemed to take delight in issuing orders to the altar boys. Yet, these things did not make a bad priest as her mother had said the night before while she was pouring herself a vodka over ice.

The small church was growing, so Vickie supposed that meant they were getting more money, and that was why having new priests was a big deal. She glanced around the Catholic Church and had to admit it was pretty.

Yet, she always wondered what a pretty church was doing in such a rundown community. Wasn’t money supposed to be given back to the parishioners somehow? Oh, they had programs, Sunday school Vickie had been allowed to attend when she was a child, addiction counseling that didn’t seem to put a dent in the rampant drug abuse, and of course, just good old spiritual counseling. 

Vickie had been dragged to that a number times, so she could listen to the priest tell her she must confess her sins, be a good girl, and help her long-suffering mother who always made sure Vickie never spoke up too much.

So, Vickie went to confession and confessed her pathetic little sins and was punished and forgiven, and always still felt small and invisible. She had finally decided, long ago, that God hadn’t taken any note of her either.

On impulse one day, she confessed to something that had happened to her in Sunday school. There was a young boy she liked as only little girls could like at that age, and the priest at the time had singled them out behind the rectory. He had then demonstrated, using his fingers, how Vickie could best serve her ‘friend ‘by sucking on his ‘Adams Root’.’

He had forced two fingers down Vickie’s throat, so she could ‘practice,’ and Vickie promptly bit him and ran as fast as she could, all the way home. He left her alone after that, and then one day had simply been “moved,“ but her mother beat her with a switch for assaulting a priest, never asking what his fingers were doing in her mouth in the first place.

The other priest at the time hadn’t believed her and told her he felt she was trying to get extra attention.

Vickie skipped Sunday school after that until her mother gave up trying to make her go.

 Luckily, Father Peters, who took over afterward, never seemed to have such inclinations: to teach things like that, and his hard work made the church much more successful.

Vickie glanced at the clock. 12:30 pm. She had half an hour to get to the bank, and the part of her that hoped she didn’t make it, fought hard with the part that wanted to go. She had only talked her mother into opening an account for her by implying there was money to be had. 

New hymn singers and altar boys were being introduced, but Vickie had them tuned out.

Everyone suddenly stood up to sing, and Vickie nearly dropped her bible. She glanced around, embarrassed, wishing she could duck under a pew, but she got another hard pinch from her mother, this one was hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. She hastily blinked them away.

Her mother glanced around to make sure no one had seen her daughter’s clumsy act, then joined in singing, raising her voice to the Lord as if she didn’t drink and abuse her daughter every night. As if she didn’t frequently hook up with drug users and pedophiles. As if her soul was as pure as Mother Theresa’s, and in the sunlight coming down from the window on her face, she looked just as pure as could be.

Vickie prayed they would get to the bank in time. She sang, and she prayed, and she would have wept, but her safety depended now on how well she could fool people. A mistake in the bank would get her killed. She wondered briefly if her mother would even care about that.

1:25 pm

In a stolen van parked down an unused alley, three people waited with anticipation and excitement. The time would be soon. A young woman, Tonya, Vickie’s best friend, was tucking her hair under a wig and wriggling into one of the black-hooded jackets that all of them would wear. Her face was made up. The effect wasn’t one of beauty, but instead, gave her the resemblance of a vicious small animal that might bite. Her boyfriend and mastermind behind this heist were in the bank, waiting in line, getting ready to hold up one of the tellers to show the people inside they meant business.

Her brother, Marty, was shaking, he was so excited. His friend Jason, the other person involved, patted him briefly on the back. They all had guns and knives. Tonya had two guns. One was shoved down the back of her pants and hidden by her jacket.

Jason murmured, “There she goes....”

They tracked Vickie in her silly dress with her momma beside her as they made their way to the bank. Vickie seemed to hesitate a moment before she went in, allowing her mother to more or less steer her inside, just as she had all her life.

“Showtime,” Marty murmured, getting ready to open the van door.

1:30 pm

Shawn wasn’t surprised at how full the bank was. In fact, he’d been counting on that. This bank was going through a renovation, which meant it was slower than usual and harder for people to get in and out.

The construction also kept a lot of people away, or it would have been a crush. Still, there were a lot of people, and many well-off from the city, who stashed their money in a smaller bank, knowing the bookkeepers, would keep sloppier records. A few bills passed to the right people, in their cushy offices, would keep them from asking too many questions about why some of their more seedy customers seemed to come in to make deposits of way more cash than they could possibly be earning at the shitty little fast food places where they worked.

It was perfect.

He continued to regale the teller in front of him with stories of his dog (he did not have one) while he waited, mentally counting down in his head. A quick glance showed Vickie was finally there with her mother as planned. He had been concerned about that. The silly bitch seemed to be afraid of her own shadow sometimes, and he doubted she had the stomach for this.

It had taken his friend, Marty, his friend’s sister, Tonya, and some rougher persuasion from Shawn himself to get Vickie to agree to this heist. 

He adjusted his hoodie, briefly allowing his hands to brush against the fake facial hair. The hat he wore with shoulder-length fake hair completed this ensemble, and he knew once he got out of it, he would look very different than he did then.

*

Vickie took care not to stare too long at Shawn. It took everything she had not to tremble. Persuading her mom to bring her to the bank at a particular time had been the hardest thing she had to do in a long time. Already, her mother was angry and ready to leave. Vickie knew if she backed out at that moment, she might never get away.

Vickie loved her mother. Her mother loved the bottle and the bible and had taken over the training of her daughter from her ex-husband, which was to keep her cowed. Vickie wasn’t even sure if her mother knew about the abuse she had suffered at her father’s hands and the hands of some of her mother’s boyfriends. It was enough to poison anyone’s life. 

She refused to be like her no-good brother who was in jail. She would be respectful and keep out of her mother’s hair. Today, she would get away to someplace new and start all over again if God would just be a little bit merciful to her.

Her mother’s first instinct had been to refuse to bring her seventeen-year-old daughter to open an account. Then she had thought about it. If her daughter was selling dope or turning tricks or just somehow getting money to put in the account, it would be a fall back for when she, as Vickie’s mom, could use it for whatever she pleased. Some of her money went into the collection plate as she was a practicing Catholic, but mostly, it went to the bottle. She shrugged this off as being human and falling to temptation... Sunday, God would forgive her as always.

*

 “Sir, it’s been wonderful to hear about your dog, but can I please help you with your business? Other customers are waiting,” the petite brunette said a little desperately.

“Don’t rush me, miss, don’t rush me.”