Damn it!
Raymond kicked the door with the worn steel toe of his Doc Martin boots in frustration. Jiggling the lock impatiently, white billows of breath occupied the space separating him and the rigid door. The clouds of air became thicker with his rising frustration. His hold on the key tightened as his dark knuckles flexed involuntarily in anger. He continued struggling with the frozen and aged lock. Then in a final grunt of frustration the lock gave in to his tenacity. The door swung open widely emitting a stale odor into the crisp morning air. Raymond looked over his shoulder with red, bleary eyes towards the Williamsburg Bank clock tower. It read six-forty A.M. He muttered a hoarse profanity under his breath and entered the bare, shabby room lined with comic books and magazines.
A furry white head popped up in detached disinterest and peered out with eyes as red and bleary as his Raymond1s own. A half-hearted 3meow2 escaped before she dreamily placed her dingy white head into the crook of her paw and dozed back into a shallow sleep. Raymond didn1t bother to acknowledge his companion1s greeting and went about his routine of switching on lights and preparing for the day ahead. Still irritated, he complained about spending ten minutes of his time fooling around with the damn door and threatened to get one of his buddies to fix it. He made the same empty promises every morning the lock jammed, yet he knew that the door would not get fixed unless he did it himself. There was a time when Raymond could fix whatever was broken but those days were long gone. He no longer worked with is hands. Now he worked with his mind thanks to the broken down shop he operated.
The spare little shop was nothing more than a mere hole in the wall with a cracked and stained glass counter running the length from the doorway to the back of the store. Endless racks of magazine holders ran the length of the opposite wall with less than half of them stocked with cellophane wrapped comic books and slick covered magazines. From the outside it looked like another abandoned business on the block and inside it didn1t appear much better -- just bare, dusty and dull. Even the small calico appeared that way though she couldn1t have been any more than four years old in Raymond1s estimation.
Cat, as he called her, and Raymond bided their time together six days a week in mutual detachment. He never bothered to name her because he never had a need to address her as anything other than what she was. He didn1t neglect her, but he didn1t take an interest in her as a pet either. He simply made sure that she was fed daily and secured inside the shop when he closed at night. As long as her basic needs were met Cat didn1t seem to mind the absence of love. Raymond mostly kept her around around to manage the persistent family of pesky mice that liked to nest in his shop. She half did her job and spent the remainder of the time sleeping lazily in the shop window next to the faded Spiderman cardboard cut out. When she felt particularly adventurous she would slip out the front door when a rare customer came in or left the shop.
(c) 1998-2001
Determined to confront the hazy memories of his troubled youth, Oliver Matthews, a retired detective and confirmed bachelor, returns to the picturesque town of Henley-on-Thames for the first time in years.
The bulk of the collection is eight short stories that are set in yesteryear. The compilation is filled out with four entertaining fantasy pieces and three poems.
