The Book Of Really Odd Tales
By Amy Sadler
© 2018
Book One: A Star Is Born
Part 1
Eddie Ericson, was your very typical 18 year old, he had a skin head style hair, which was red in colour, he had cat green eyes, he was 5ft 4in tall and of slim build. Right now he was face to face with a girl that was one year older than him and taller. He backed away from her slowly. “Oh so you’re frightened of me are you?”
“No, I’m just keeping my distance because you have very bad breath.” Eddie remarked with relish.
“What?” Replied the girl in shock, who thought that she had an easy mark, as the saying goes. Not letting the girl recover for a single moment Eddie began a volley of quick verbal attacks. “In fact, you stink so bad, that my cat has just died, you’re as ugly as all hell and no one really loves you.” The girl before him suddenly burst out crying. “That’s not true.”
Being the spiteful brat that he was he then added injury to the insult as the saying goes. “Oh, you cry like a little girl.”
“No I don’t. But I wish that you was one.” Replied the girl, as she ran off crying all the way home. “Ha, fat chance of that ever happening.” Eddie scoffed, as he shouted out after the girl, but just in case she was going to come back with a much older brother to beat him up, Eddie ran off too, grinning from ear to ear, proud of what he had managed to achieve. He began to slow down the moment his sides began to ache from running too much, too fast. He stopped and was surprised to see a shop that he had not noticed before. “That’s odd, I have never noticed this shop here before?” Eddie remarked to himself.
Eddie lived in Salford, in England. He knew every place there was, on King’s Street, there was the barbers, the hair dresser’s, the butchers, Betty’s Sweet Shop, Andy’s Pet Store, Sue’s Fashion Boutique and the local Spar Store. Where there has always been a gap between Andy’s Pet Store and Sues Fashion Boutique, there was now a book shop, called Curios Book Shop. From the outside, it looked like just any other kind of a book shop, curious, Eddie opened the shop door and stepped in. The interior of the shop was also just like any other book shop.
There was many books on book shelves and book displays, but none of them held any interest to him, Eddie walked over to the main counter of the shop, on top of it was a very unusual book indeed, for it was a thick old leather bound book, it looked really old, as it was very worn, it had gold edged pages, it had on the front of the book, a gold boarder, on the inside of the boarder area was the title of the book in large black bold letters, that read. ‘The Book Of Really Odd Tales.'
(The Book Of Really Odd Tales)
Which was an odd title to be sure, but even odder still, was the fact that, there was no author’s name on the book, Eddie checked the spine of the book, it was blank, he even checked the back of the book too, but that was equally just as blank. Eddie’s curiosity was well and truly peaked. But rather than stop to pick up the book and take a look inside of it. Eddie looked around to make sure that no one was watching first of all and that there was no security cameras in the shop.
Eddie could not see any and with that, he quickly took off right out of the shop with the book safely held in his hand. Eddie made his way to a local library, he went inside, found a quite spot, a place to sit down at a table, to any onlooker, he looked like he had just taken out a book to read in the library itself. The library was oddly quiet, there was no one at the reception desk, in fact there was no one at all inside of the library, apart from Eddie, though he did not stop to think about this very odd fact.
For he was far too fascinated to find out what the book that he had stolen, was all about. Just as he opened up the book, a strange force from within the pages, pulled Eddie right into the book itself.
TO BE CONTINUED.