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“So let me get this straight, you're a space alien?” Father Sebastian Laurence looked at the man dressed in a Santa suit, perched on the barstool to his right.

“Yes, indeed.” The white-bearded man nodded his head and doffed his peaked red hat. “Ho, ho. ho.”

Father Sebastian, or Seb, as he was called by his wealthy Episcopalian parishioners sipped the single malt he'd been working on. “Never met an alien.” He fixed the man with a misty, contemplative stare. “Forgive me for stating the obvious but you look just like Santa Claus.”

“Ain't that the truth,” said the man, unbuttoning the red coat that stretched over his generous stomach. He nodded to the half-empty bottle on the bar between them. “Mind if I join you?”

Seb hoisted his glass. “Delighted. Bartender's in back, so I'm afraid we'll have to help ourselves.” As the man poured a healthy measure of the golden liquid into a glass, an idea broke the surface of Seb's consciousness like a slow-moving bubble. “What are you doing here on Christmas Eve? Shouldn't you be out working?”

His new friend smiled. “Might ask the same question of you.”

“Ah. Why am I not at my two-story, 4,000 square foot rectory in Connecticut with my wife Helen and my daughter Ashley? Why am I at an empty East Side bar drinking myself into oblivion on this night of all nights?” Seb smiled in a vain attempt to hide his broken heart. “I kissed the temporary secretary in the supply closet. My wife walked out on me. I'm finished.” He hadn't the courage to face his congregation after what had happened.

The man sighed. “Ouch. Tough break.”

“How about you? You're the last person I'd expect to see in a bar on Christmas Eve.”

The man pursed his cherry-red lips. “I've got a job to do. Some trouble with one of my own kind here on your planet.”

Seb made an inspired guess. “Gone native, has he?”

“More than that, I'm afraid.” The man stroked his white beard. “He set himself up as a figure of good will.”

Seb shrugged. He could feel generous with anyone tonight. Except himself . “’Long as he’s not making trouble, so what?”

A frown crossed the man's jovial features. “Think of it this way: how would you feel if one of your kind went to a primitive culture and began dressing up in funny clothes and giving things away?”

“Primitive culture? Us? That’s a new take on our world, I'll give you that.”

“To make matters worse, he established himself up as a type of judge.”

“A judge?”

“Who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. You know the routine. A whole mythology has developed around him. The worst of it is that this settler actually turns out to be responsible for all kinds of wickedness. Not intentional, but still wrong. Robbery, murder... there’s no end to the mischief you people get up to in his name. He’s become a pernicious influence. He's got to be stopped.”

“Indeed.” Seb cocked his head. “It occurs to me you're going to have a difficult job catching him. This time of year the streets are full of Santas.” The idiocy of what he'd just accepted returned to him like a wobbling boomerang. Santa as arch criminal? Of the universe? “Now see here my good man...”

The man held up a palm. “I know what you're thinking and I kinda feel the same way. Some of his songs are quite catchy.” He hummed a few notes of an old carol. “But on the other hand, there’s television. And that’s all about money, money, money.”

Seb thought of Christmas specials; cartoons, parades, what-have-you on ice. “But people love it!”

“Of course they do. That’s the problem. He’s influenced too many people. Against the rules.”

“But what about the kids?” Seb thought of Ashley. This Christmas, for the first time, she had asked for something: a Pretty Perky Pony. He’d bought her the whole set, a moment of pure joy. The store had wrapped it and marked it ‘From Santa’. What if there was no Santa?

“It ain't easy, I tell ya.” A shrug, then: “Sorry. He's got to go.”

Something in his tone of voice made Seb take notice. He stared, hard, into the man's twinkling blue eyes. And there, to his dismay, Seb sensed a being vastly more powerful than anything he had imagined. The whole of the universe whirled within the endless darkness in the pupil of his eye. A chill ran up Seb's spine.

He crossed himself. This couldn’t be happening. “So you really are....” His throat went dry.

The figure beside him nodded. “Yep.”

This couldn't be happening, and yet it was. Church bells pealed merrily outside. They seemed to be mocking Seb. He put his hands over his ears until the music finished. Apprehension gripped him by the shoulders. He asked the question he feared most. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to have to shut him down. Erase him from human history forever.” The man paused and cocked his head as the church bells bonged out the quarter hour. “At midnight tonight.”

Seb could feel his mouth gape. Erase Santa? “In forty five minutes?”

A regretful nod.

Seb snapped his fingers. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Seb shook his head. “No. I cannot let you. It means too much to the children, to all of us.” He stood up from his chair and balanced on wobbly legs, the effects of too much alcohol doing battle with his own natural courage. He raised his fists.

The man brought out a little gray cylinder that looked like a cigarette. “Don’t.”

Seb moved one arm in an approximation of a punch. A line of white light touched him. He felt a numbness in his legs, then realized he was crumpling. The being caught him by the arm and eased him gently down on to the floor. From his horizontal vantage, Seb could see the red-coated figure stand up, finish his drink and make ready to leave the bar.

Seb said, “No.” He tried to raise his hand, but it floated back down again as if it didn’t belong to him.

“I am sorry . Real sorry,” someone whispered in his ear. As his eyes closed, Seb heard the slam of a the bar door.

Then: “Father. You been laying here over half an hour. Hey Father?” Seb felt a slap on his face, then a splash of icy water. Bong! He heard the church bell strike one. He opened his eyes. The bartender leaned over him, an empty glass in his hand. Seb stood up, clutching a table for support.

The bartender spoke. “We’re closing, Father. You gotta go.”

Bong! Two. Seb pulled some bills out of his wallet and pressed them into the bartender’s hand. “Where did my friend go?” he asked.

“What friend? I didn’t see no one,” the bartender said, pocketing the money. “Go home. It’s almost Christmas, remember?”

Seb stumbled outside, gulping down great lungfuls of cold air. The third chime rang in his ears. He'd been such a fool. And that ghastly hallucination about Santa....

Bong! The church bells struck four. He turned, maddened beyond endurance by the sound. The chapel stood silhouetted against the night, the light pouring from its stained glass windows making a quilt of colors on the snow. He buried his face in his hands.

The cool wetness of snow melting on his neck made him look up. He saw the cross perched on the steeple and saw suddenly how it had been this past year. One kiss. That’s all. The edge of a precipice. A lesson on imperfection to a proud, pompous man. No one had asked him to give up his congregation. He’d just run away, ignoring his faith in order to marinate in alcohol and self-hate.

Bong! Five. He fell to his knees in the snow, ignoring the surprised looks from last-minute shoppers. He’d been looking for forgiveness at the bottom of a bottle when all the time it was right here. In the church. Where he belonged. A great humbleness filled his heart, then a gush of love as strong as what he’d felt when he’d married Helen. Yes, he had sinned. But he had repented. And now he saw the possibility of redemption. He clasped his hands together and felt warm tears on his cheeks.

Bong! Six. He wiped the wetness from his eyes and scrambled to his feet. Christmas Eve or not, he was going to make a confession. After that, he’d find Helen and make things right with her. And he’d be back at home in time to preach on Christmas Day. He ran up the street towards the church as the clock tolled seven On the eighth strike, he bumped into a familiar figure wearing a red coat.

“My dear fellow!” Seb grabbed the red-coated shoulders as the clock struck nine, his spirit possessed with joy. “Whoever you are. You were right! It’s not about Santa. It’s about forgiveness. About the love of Jesus Christ for us, sinners that we are. Go on, take him! Take Santa Claus.” He looked around at the people scurrying home, his heart filled with righteous happiness. “It will do us some good. I’ll do a sermon on it tomorrow: the true meaning of Christmas.”

“It’s not Santa I came for.”

The church bells tolled ten. As the alien’s words penetrated his mind, Seb ran towards the church. As the bells struck eleven and twelve, he started screaming, but his voice only echoed in the empty space where the church had once stood.

Table of Contents

"A Bon Droit (With Good Reason)" - a widowed Frenchwoman finds a way to make ends meet.

"Advantages of a Classical Education" - a man neglects to learn the names of the Greek gods, to his peril.

"Another Bloody Mess In The Jungle" - special envoy hunts renegade anthropologist, then risks all to save her.

"Another Part of the Forest" - in a post-apocalyptic society, a square peg finds a different kind of love.

"Bird of Paradise" - comfortable Canadian suburbanite loses everything, finds herself.

"Biters" - tough young widow fights an accidental swarm of insects to save her farm.

"Double Wide Woman" - plus-sized woman escapes vicious family.

"Extinction Theory" - earth is doomed by an invading alien force; one young soldier travels back in time to change history. He is not alone.

"Light" - chicken or the egg? You decide.

"Medusa's Handmaiden" - the heartless girlfriend of a philandering politician gets more than she bargained for when she invents a tale about Medusa to scare off a tabloid photographer.

"Pernicious Influence" - a Christmas story.

"Side Effects" - a good man on the edge of retirement is haunted by a past failure.

"Starship Arabia" - traditional veil-wearing woman suddenly finds herself in charge of a starship; faces dilemma when orders from home threaten her vulnerable passengers.

"The Price" - an unjustly imprisoned man risks losing the thing he values most in a bid for freedom.

"Women's Work" - a stranded astronaut compromises herself on a world of extremely robust men; she must learn to conquer same. Or else. Hubba, hubba.

"Zero Point Zero Zero One" - in a world where the human race is increasingly hard to define, a hard-boiled detective finds himself on the sharp end when he looks into his own DNA.

Note: These stories are all speculative fiction, though some lean more towards fantasy and some to science fiction.

"Short quirky Tales" Copyright © 2002. Lisa Tate. All rights reserved by the author. Please do not copy without permission.

Author Bio

Lisa Tate was born in Philadelphia. She regularly submits stories to the small press and has seen her work in print in the USA, Australia and Canada. She is presently living in a village outside London.

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  Reviews

I read this collection of short stories with a smile on my face and a finger on the click button of my Pocket PC, eager to see where the author would take me next. Some stories were vignettes; others were longer. They are the sort of tales that jumpstart the imagination. Beautifully written, wickedly delicious at times: chilling, sensual.

A man has a chance to change the future of the world, yet he turns it down because of past conditioning. A Muslim woman finds herself questioning her traditional behavior when she's left in charge of a spaceship full of women and children. There is an interesting slant on a Biblical tale. A fascinating incident on a Greek island, involving Medusa. And strange things happen to a person when drinking an ancient wine.

A few stories are twists and turns on every day occurrences, too. Others reflect the concern many of us have about scientists gone mad with genetic engineering and gene therapy. Some are futuristic. But I can assure you, all are indeed quirky!

SHORT QUIRKY TALES is an inspired piece of work in which Ms Tate passes on her imagery with fluent ease. I read each story twice and enjoyed each one. I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a thought provoking experience.

Reviewed by Celia A. Leaman, author of Unraveled for eBook Reviews.net
 

I have to admit I am a great fan of short stories with a twist in the tail (as an editor of a site called, Twisted Tales, how can I not be? :-)

I was not disappointed in this book of short tales by Lisa Tate.

The tales are all different, different characters, different locales, some set in the future, some in the past, some in the here and now, but all have a liitle quirk at the end which makes you stop and think.

My favourite two in this collection are "Side Effects", a policeman just about to retire comes face to face with his old friend, now enemy. They fought over an ancient artifact containing a special wine, but when the policeman tries to warn him about the side effects, his old friend doesn't listen...

The other is "Zero Point Zero One", designer babies are commonplace, but what happens when rogue DNA enters the mix?

Although short, the tales are well written peopled with well drawn characters. This is a writer who knows when to end the tale, but you don't get a sense that the stories are too short. The words fit the tale well.

A writer who has pared the short story down to the bone, and it works. There are no twenty pages of description to describe one event, but short sharp sentences that draw the reader in to read more.

Excellent page turner.

Reviewed by Annette Gisby, author of Drowning Rapunzel and Shadows of the Rose for Twisted Tales.
 

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This book was a heck of a lot of fun. When Ms. Tate says quirky, she means it. She doesn't mean shallow, though. Many of these stories have surprising depth, considering that they're only a few pages each.

"Medusa's Handmaiden" is deliciously creepy. "Double Wide Woman" touches the heart in a story of 'haves' and 'have nots.' "Extinc-tion Theory", a tale of love and time travel, has a satisfying and fatalistic tinge. "Starship Arabia" shows what happens when a traditional and religious woman thinks outside of the box. Two stories caught me by the funny bone and wouldn't let go: "The Advantages of a Classical Education" about a janitor in a 'nut-house,' and "Women's Work", about a human woman's contribution tounderstanding between species.

Lisa Tate has a beautiful gift for making her characters come alive. I can still hear that poor janitor, chattering excitedly in my ear: "I swear I was trying to protect, yes, protect the girl! And for that, they put me in here, the blooming nuthouse. I ask you." With equal dexterity, she made me feel lonely, ugly, and unloved in a second story, and deeply suspicious in a third.

It's a true joy to watch Lisa Tate juggling easily with ideas, words, and nuances. She flips my emotions from one side to the other with the flick of a mouse. My only regret is that the book is so short, comprising sixteen stories in eighty-five pages. Personally, I'd be happy to wander along with Ms. Tate any time. I hope she's got many more stories in progress.

Reviewed by Jeanette Cottrell, author of There's No Such Thing!, for eBook Reviews Weekly.
 

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"I found the stories in Lisa Tate's Short Quirky Tales fascinating. They were short, edgy and darkly satisfying to read. Many were fun, some frightening and all were like great snacks of healthy writing. To prove reincarnation, I think Rod Sterling just came back!"

Reviewed by Rick Buda, author of WolfPointe.

 

 

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