Over the last twelve months we have released seven anthologies, featuring some of the best horror talent from around the world. We currently have a backlog of anthologies to be compiled and published and, in order to do them justice, we will not be accepting any new submissions, hence the removal of the Writer’s Guidelines from the site.

Due for release over the next two months are The Dead Sea, Under the Knife, War Is Hell, Horror-tica, Another 100 Horrors and The Best of Cruentus Libri Press.

Once all these books have been completed and released, we will have a chance to breathe and take stock of where we intend to go as an independent publishing house. In the meantime, all of our books remain available for purchase on Amazon in both Kindle and print versions.

Enjoy.

All paperbacks are now $9.99 in the US, £6.99 in the UK and €7.49 in Europe.

All Kindle editions are now $1.99 in the US and…well…whatever that translates to in your local currency!

There has never been a better time to pick up 100 Horrors, A Fistful of Horrors, Lucha Gore, The Dark Side of the Womb and You’d Better Watch Out!, but remember…this offer lasts only until the end of January 2013.

We wish all of our readers a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

Enjoy.

Full details can be found HERE.

Up next…The Dead Sea. A collection of undead tales set on the high seas.

In the meantime, to whet your appetite, here is one of the tales that didn’t quite make it. Though it was not what one might consider a traditional horror story (whatever that is) After It’s a Wonderful Life is a beautifully written and poignant piece that gives a particularly bleak twist to a Christmas classic.

Vincent L. Scarsella hails from Davenport, Florida and has published many stories and non-fiction works in a writing career that spans more than a decade. His forthcoming crime novel, The Anonymous Man will be published by Aignos Publishing in early 2013 and you can keep up to date with his various comings and goings at his website.

After It’s a Wonderful Life by Vincent L. Scarsella

On Christmas Eve, 1945, after learning that he was in serious trouble, his wife and four children and his many friends in Bedford Falls prayed very hard for George Bailey. Certainly, no one doubted his integrity when informed of an $8,000 deficit in the accounts of the Bailey Bros. Building and Loan. The rumors that he had spent the money on the local flirt, Violet Biggs, or speculating on the stock market, were discounted as vicious lies spread by Henry F. Potter, the richest and meanest man in town. After George’s wife, Mary Bailey, called his partner, Uncle Billy Bailey, and learned what the problem was, she had no trouble raising cash from her neighbors and friends to make up the for the deficient, giving the Baileys the best Christmas they would ever have.

But the generosity of George Bailey’s friends could not save his job with the Building and Loan. At the next board of directors meeting in January 1946, Potter insisted that George be fired for misapplication of funds and, at very least, malfeasance. Potter argued that restitution paid by the riffraff who supported Bailey, though fortunate, did not excuse the crime. Over the objection of two board members, and Uncle Billy’s tearful plea that he was responsible, that he had somehow lost the money, Potter’s motion carried and George Bailey was dismissed. Over Potter’s objection, another motion granting George severance pay of $500 was approved.

“That,” George Bailey said, “was a long time ago.”

I was sitting across from him in the parlor of the sprawling, drafty old Victorian house at 320 Sycamore Street in what used to be Bedford Falls. It had been George Bailey’s home the past sixty years. His wife of that many years, Mary, had died last winter. Long before that, his four children had grown up and left town. Even his last, and arguably favorite, “Zuzu,” had left years ago when her husband took a job in Seattle.

For ninety-five, Bailey seemed in reasonably good health. His hair had gone white and his long, spindly legs stretched out from the sofa as he faced me with a distracted scowl. A gentle flame crackled in a fireplace before us. His stout, over-protective day-nurse had brought the blaze to life shortly after my arrival.

“I’ve really had a wonderful life,” Bailey said, though he hardly seemed convinced of that.

As for Potter, Bailey told me that he had died years ago, in 1957, without heirs. His will had left his estate to nearby Hawthorne College, his alma mater. It had had also bequeathed $5 million to Bedford Falls provided it changed its name to Pottersville.

“Who are you again?” Bailey asked, squinting.

“I’m from the magazine,” I reminded him.

The “magazine” was actually the tabloid, All Weird News.

That morning, its publisher, Caroline Fielding, known to her staff as, “Bitch” Fielding, had called me into her office, yelled for me actually.

“Costello!”

I ran in and scowling, she asked me if I had finished my Christmas article and I told her it should be in her in-basket ready for edit.

“It’s the one about aliens who abduct Santa Claus,” I told her.

“I thought we did that one last year,” she said. I shrugged, thinking that yes, maybe we had. But aliens abducting Santa Claus was always a good sell.

“Well, never mind,” she said, “I want you to do this story instead.”

She handed me a tattered clipping one of the college interns had found the filing cabinet stuffed with old, yellowed newspaper articles we sometimes used to develop stories for the tabloid, an old industry trick. This one was from The Bedford Falls Chronicle, Christmas Day edition, Nineteen forty-five. It reported that some clodhopper named George Bailey claimed that his guardian angel had saved him by showing him what life would have been if he’d never been born.

“Like in the movie?” I said, looking up at her. “It’s A Wonderful Life. You mean, that was true, based on a true story? I always thought it was based on a short story.”

“Whatever,” Fielding said. “The point is that it supposedly happened. George Bailey was a real guy and his guardian angel really stopped him from committing suicide by showing him how bad life would have been for his family and friends if he’d never been born.”

I looked down at the yellowed The Bedford Falls Chronicle clipping. The article was titled, “Was George Bailey Really Saved By Angel?”

“What I want you to do, Costello,” Fielding said, “is drive up to Bedford Falls and make it into a two pager. If you’re really lucky, maybe the real George Bailey is still alive.”

“Now you want me to go?” I asked. “It’s December twenty-third.”

“Yeah, so?” Fielding said. “You want me to send someone else? Ted Merrick for instance? Or maybe you want to get yourself a new gig. Writing blogs for nothing.”

As I hurriedly packed for the trip, I complained to my wife, Linda, that this was the last straw. If this didn’t push me over the edge and out the door to become a real journalist, or to finally start my Great American novel, nothing would.

Linda, as usual, was non-committal. We needed the money, slight as it was, which All Weird News paid me. She patted her pregnant belly, reminding me for the moment, that this was more about me. So, for now at least, I would kowtow to the demands of Bitch Fielding.

***

“Was there really a guardian angel?” I asked Bailey. “Like in the movie.”

“Oh, yeah, the movie,” he said. “Nobody remembers anymore that it was based on what really happened to me that night, as was the short story. They think it’s fiction. All people around here do is laugh these days because my name is George Bailey and I kinda look like Jimmy Stewart, tall and gawky like him anyway.”

“So what about the angel?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah, good ole Clarence Oddbody,” he said and smiled to himself.

“So it’s true?” I asked, trying to read him. “There was a wingless angel?”

Bailey squinted at me again, unsure of my motives perhaps. He sat up and after a long, cold stare, told me this much to start: Just like in the movie, having reached the depths of discouragement in his life, he had come to about an instant from jumping into the murky, icy depths of the Genesee River from Scudder’s old draw bridge that cold, snowy Christmas Eve night, 1945, driven by a drunken, depressed rage because of the missing eight thousand dollars and a whole host of other problems. But Clarence had popped out of nowhere and beat him to the punch by jumping himself into the frigid dark waters. The next thing George knew, he was jumping in to save him.

“While we were drying off in the bridge shanty, Clarence came up with the idea of showing me what life would have been like if I’d never been born.” Bailey chuckled to himself. “Now, that was one convincing show. Turned me around that night. Made me believe that I was truly needed.” He looked up at me. “That I really had a wonderful life.”

Right then I saw the potential for another angle to the story that Bitch Fielding, even at her most ruthless, hadn’t thought about: the aftermath. After it’s a wonderful life! That is, what happened to George Bailey after his guardian angel, Clarence, had saved his life. What happened after the movie version happy ending?

“So that’s what you came here for ?” Bailey asked. “To write about that night, my guardian angel?”

“Not entirely,” I told him, and plunged in. “I’m also interested in what happened to you after that night.”

“You mean, did I live happily ever after? Did I have a wonderful life?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, let me put it to you this way,” Bailey began with a quiet chuckle. “If Clarence came back today, he wouldn’t have much to show me after December 24, 1945. Well, maybe that’s stating it a bit too harsh. Anyway, the kids grew up and Mary and me got older, set in our ways. I got a job selling insurance, and eventually opened my own agency. People trusted me so they flocked through the doors.” He laughed. “They even bought all the useless whole life insurance that I thought they could afford.”

Now Bailey stared off for a time.

“The times changed rapidly after Clarence got his wings,” he finally continued. “One day it was just different around here. As different as black-and-white and color TV. Jet planes. Kennedy. The Beatles, Vietnam, Nixon, Moon walks, Watergate, Star Wars, space shuttles. You name it. Those things were beyond science fiction in 1945. My point is, the world is a very different place now, in 2002. I don’t think even old Clarence Oddbody would recognize it.”

I sighed, unable to disagree with that assessment. And then, on a whim, I asked him, “What ever happened to that girl, that sexy one, Violet Biggs?”

Bailey looked up at me, eyes ablaze. I had hit a chord.

“Violet?” Bailey said. “Why do you want to know about her?”

“I was just curious what ever happened to her,” I said. “I mean, in the movie, it seemed you two had some kind of connection. And at the end of the movie, she said she wasn’t going to New York after all, that she had changed her mind. Plus, there was some implication that you and her, well-”

“What implication?”

Bailey sighed, then looked away. After a minute or so, he looked back at me and came out with it.

“There was this one evening,” he began, “at my old insurance office on Main Street, not too far down from the building and loan . Mary was visiting her brother, Marty, up in Buffalo. It had been a rough week and I had blown my stack again in front of the kids, and she thought it would be a good idea for her and the kids to leave me alone for a few days, give me some space. Mary and me were in a kind of rut, anyway, like most married couples fall into. You know, struggling to make ends meet, dealing with the kids and all that. And like always, I was feeling trapped, stuck here in Bedford Falls.

“Anyway, Vi came by to the office one evening the week Mary was gone. She was wearing one of her pretty dresses, looking good, if you know what I mean. I remember it was a hot day. mid-July, humid, sultry. The old fan buzzing in the background of the office was the only way to keep cool.” Bailey thought a moment. “Nineteen fifty-one was the year.”

He looked off, remembering that evening.

“Mister Bailey?”

Finally, he turned to me.

“Let’s just say, young man, that things between Vi and me, well, they just got out of hand that evening. Naturally, it got all over town, “ he went on glumly, “confirming all the old rumors spread by Potter.

“I didn’t care about that. What mattered was that I had hurt Mary. After she found out, things were never quite the same between us.”

“And Violet Biggs? Whatever happened to her?”

He gave a brief, sad shrug.

“Shortly after the scandal broke, she left town for good and never came back. In fact, I never heard from her again. A nasty rumor spread that sometime after Vi left town, she had a baby. That is was my baby. A girl.” George Bailey sighed. “But that is a whole ‘nother story. Maybe not quite what you’re looking for.”

Actually, it fit quite nicely into what I was looking for. So far, it seemed like the rest of George Bailey’s life hadn’t turned out so wonderful.

“Have you been into town, young fella?” Bailey asked. “Into Bedford Falls. Pottersville, I mean?”

“No, sir,” I said. “Got off the thruway, came straight here.”

“Well, let’s go,” Bailey said.

His nurse was against it. Too late in the morning to go out gallivanting, she insisted And it was much too cold. The weatherman was calling for snow that afternoon. But Bailey prevailed upon her, saying that he was going whether she liked it or not.

“You’re my nurse,” he growled. “Not my jailer.”

Grumbling, she helped him off the sofa and took him to the bedroom on the first floor which he had shared with Mary Bailey for over sixty years. While waiting for him, I paced the dark, musty old living room. It had become a kind of a museum of George Bailey’s life. I had, of course, no idea of the significance many of the mementos, souvenirs, photographs, and bric-a-brac gathering dust on tables throughout the room. But on an easel in a particularly dark corner, I recognized the framed sketch of a young, gangly George Bailey in a silly pose holding the end of a lasso while the other end circled a bright round moon. I stared at the thing until I heard George Bailey’s voice behind me: “Ready.”

The nurse and I helped Bailey into my car and she gruffly reminded me to get him back by three o’clock so that he could take his afternoon meds.

“I’ll have him take me to one of Potter’s strip joints downtown if you don’t hush up,” Bailey chortled.

As we started off, Bailey shook his head and grumbled, “This neighborhood’s going to seed.”

“Why did you stay?” I asked him

“Mary wouldn’t hear of moving. Even after I retired and begged that we move to Florida, she refused to leave. There had always been something about this old house for her, a kinship or something that I never quite felt.”

As we drove on, he told me about his unrequited lifelong dream of forsaking Bedford Falls, to “shake the dust off this measly old town.” Sadly, and bitterly, he had never succeeded.

“It was always the Building and Loan, or this excuse or that. So here I’ve lived my entire life, and here I’ll die.” He looked up skyward for a moment. “You never showed me that, did you, Clarence?”

We came to a stop sign at a busy road. The green street sign blared, “Henry Potter Boulevard.” It was a four-lane arterial jammed with strip malls, fast food restaurants, and self-service gas marts, stretching several miles out from downtown Pottersville.

“Ironic, isn’t it,” Bailey said, “the town named a road after him so near to where I lived. Maybe they thought it was my penance for the missing eight thousand.”

“Which way?” I asked.

“Right,” he told me. “To Bailey Park.”

Bailey Park was a sprawling subdivision which had been around for sixty years. Bailey told me to make a left turn onto “Bailey Lane” which wound past cookie-cutter, modest brick ranch-style houses with cramped fenced-in yards, above-ground pools, wooden decks, and barbecues. The place was mostly deserted this time of day. The dads were at work, as were most of the moms these days, and the kids were at school.

“Over here,” Bailey pointed suddenly to the curb. I slowed and stopped in front of a brick
ranch. “This used to be Martini’s place,” he said. “You know, the Italian bar owner from the movie.” Bailey gazed at the house for a time. “Poor Martini died of a heart attack the summer after Clarence saved my life. I helped his widow out best I could to make ends meet. But with seven kids, that was impossible. She eventually had to sell the tavern to Martini’s bartender, Nick. Not long after that, she packed up the kids and moved back to Sicily, goats and all.”

Bailey stared for a time at what used to be Martini’s house .

“Where to now, Mr. Bailey?” I finally asked.

“Bedford Falls,” he said.

It took about twenty aggravating minutes to lurch from light to light in heavy traffic down Henry Potter Boulevard toward the business district of Bedford Falls. We finally turned left onto Main Street, a two lane road separated by a wide grassy median.

“Here,” he told me, “slow down.”

We were driving past a dark, empty store. The faded sign above the front door read: “Gower Drugs and Confectionery.”

“I used to work here as a boy,” Bailey told me, “just like in the movie.”

“What happened to the place?”

“Old Mr. Gower ran it until he was about eighty-five, but he didn’t have a son to leave it to so he just closed it down one day. That was thirty years ago.” Bailey looked at me with a wan smile. “That’s what happened to a lot of places downtown.”

He signaled with his chin toward the squat granite building at a corner two blocks ahead.

“There it is,” he said, “the old Building and Loan.”

I parked in a space along the curb almost directly in front of it. The sign above the door had been removed years ago.

“Wanna see it?” he asked. “I still have the keys.”

Bailey unlocked an old rusty gate and opened the front door. Inside, the musty, stale smell of disuse greeted us. Cobwebs had formed on the tellers’ windows.

“When did it close?” I asked him.

“About a year after they fired me. Nineteen forty-seven.”

“It’s been vacant all that time? Fifty-five years?”

“Yes. It became a monument of sorts. Of everything we stood for back in those days, and everything Potter didn’t. No one had the nerve to buy the building and make it into something else. Not even Potter.”

Bailey walked around the edge of a dusty counter toward the back. I followed him into what used to be his office, where he had spent many long hours. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and clawed at a window brown with age and dirt.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Even the memories are stale in here.”

Bailey hobbled toward me and drifted sideways. I reached out and grabbed him.

“You alright?” I asked.

“Standing here,” he told me, “I feel like a ghost.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

He had me make a U-turn through a break in the center median and head the other way down Main. It was only two o’clock, but seemed already late that winter afternoon. Pottersville was mostly deserted with little traffic downtown. Most of the stores and restaurants had closed years ago, put out of business by the Wal-Mart we had passed on Henry F. Potter Boulevard.

As I drove down Main Street, Bailey pointed out another small, vacant building.

“That used to be Ernie Bishop’s cab stand,” he told me. “Ernie’s son, Ernie junior, was a gambler and bankrupted it years ago. It was lucky that poor Ernie never knew about that. He got Alzheimer’s and died in a nursing home in Geneva about five years back. Last time I visited him, he didn’t even know my name.”

We drove on until we reached a narrow alley separating two worn red-brick buildings. One was an old, boarded up movie house. The other had a wide sign still hanging out front indicating that, in its day, it had been something called “The Emporium.” He raised a hand signaling me to stop, and pointed with his long arm toward the alley.

“That’s where Bert the cop got killed,” he said with a sigh. “In 1972. Chased a shop-lifter back here. When he turned the corner, an eighteen year-old kid, high on heroin, shot him in the face. Bert only had a couple months left until retirement.”

Bailey stared into that alley for a time. Finally, he shook it off and looked over at me.

“Time to visit the Bedford Falls cemetery.”

A mass of low, heavy gray clouds threatened the horizon as we approached the entrance. I turned onto a narrow access road, mindful of the approaching snow and waited for Bailey to tell me which way.

“Down there,” he directed. “To that clump of trees. To the Bailey family stone.”

The low sun had been completely engulfed by steel gray clouds by that time. I pulled the car up onto the shoulder of the road and helped Bailey out. The wind was whipping around us with the first snowflakes falling and I feared that this tour would have to be cut short. But Bailey didn’t seem to notice. He had me stop in front of a huge granite tomb. The name, “Bailey,” chiseled out years earlier, had endured with only slight erosion along its sharp edges. Below it were the names of Bailey’s mother and father, and another, Harry Bailey.

Bailey was lost to me as he stared down at the stone.

“Mister Bailey?”

He turned. There were tears in his eyes.

“Harry Bailey,” I said. “That’s your brother, right? The war hero.” I remembered that from the movie and the old newspaper clipping. He had been a Navy pilot in World War II, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner.

“Yes,” Bailey said. “War hero. Couldn’t get enough of war, I guess,” he continued. “The thrill of it. Went back to it in Korea, flying for the Navy again. That’s where he got killed.”

That was all Bailey seemed willing to say. I didn’t press it. I could sense that maybe it simply hurt too much.

After a time, Bailey pointed to a second granite stone with “BAILEY” cut into it. I looked down and saw the names, George Bailey and Mary Hatch Bailey, side-by-side. The dates under Mary’s name were complete. She had been born in 1911 and died in 2001. Only George’s date of birth had been chiseled into the stone: 1907.

Bailey stood at the stone with his head down. After a moment, I realized that he was sniffling. I asked how Mary Bailey had died and Bailey said, “Pancreatic cancer. Within a month after the diagnoses, she was gone. Clarence didn’t show me that either.”

We stood at that stone for a time until both of us were shivering. Finally, we moved away from it. Hunched against the wind already blowing wisps of dusty snow up and around, we trudged across the same cemetery section to the graves of Uncle Billy Bailey and his long dead wife, Laura, to the stones of the druggist, Gower, Bert the cop, and then his longtime employees at the Building and Loan, Eustace and Tilly. By then, Bailey seemed out of breath, ready to collapse. I feared a certain tongue-lashing from his nurse when I brought him home. As I grabbed his elbow to get going, he turned to me and said, “So, Mr. Costello. What do you think? Did I have a wonderful life?”

I looked at him and shrugged.

“Well, let me tell you this, like most people, I had my ups and downs, good times and bad. And I never did get out of Bedford Falls. But I wouldn’t change much about my life. Certainly not my sixty years with Mary. Certainly not our happy family and the beautiful kids we had. Certainly not my mother and father and brother, or Uncle Billy. And certainly not my wonderful friends.”

He looked at me, looking old and frail with the wind picking up around him. It was getting dark and cold and we needed to get going.
“Yes, Mister Bailey,” I finally said to him. “You had a wonderful life.”

“It’s crap,” Bitch Fielding said.

She tossed the manuscript among the messy pile on her desk.

Crap? I thought it was damned good. Poignant and sad and funny in spots.

“It’s supposed to be a Christmas story,” Bitch Fielding complained. “Not a maudlin piece fit for Ploughshares or the Paris Review.”

I pursed my lips. I should be so lucky as to have something published there.

“The readers don’t want to read that George Bailey ended up having a rotten life like their own rotten lives.”

She glared at me then picked up my manuscript and ripped it in two.

“Rewrite the thing,” she spat. “And have one we can use on my desk by noon.”

I looked up and gave her a bad ass grin.

“Go to hell,” I said. “And this mindless tabloid can go to hell, too.”

She fired me on the spot. A couple security guards were called to watch me pack my few things into a cardboard box and then escorted me from my cubicle.

Linda was beside herself when I showed up at our cramped one-bedroom apartment and told her what had happened.

“I have my dignity,” I told her. “I’m a writer, goddamn-it.”

With her legs sprawled out from the couch, she rubbed her bulging belly.

“Your baby’s due next month, Ron,” she said. “What about his dignity?”

I sat in the rocking chair across from her and tried to think of something to say. But all I could do was open my mouth and look at her like a sad little boy. I was in love with the woman, even though sometimes I felt suffocated.

“You don’t have a clue, do you?” she went on. “It’s gonna be the rest of our lives like this. The hopeless dreamer, forever writing his novel.” She sighed. “Sam told me it would turn out this way.”

“Sam?”

“Yeah, Sam,” she said, and stood. “Your best friend, Sam.”

Sam wasn’t really my best friend. We had been close in college, sort of, but afterwards he returned to his father’s brokerage firm and we had drifted apart.

“Yeah, and when did he tell you that?”

She gave me a sheepish look, as if she had said too much already. That’s when the suspicion started. I remembered the time I had been sent out of town on another silly UFO story in rural Maine right around the time we supposedly conceived the baby nine months ago. It drove me crazy because I couldn’t get in get in touch with her all night although I kept calling the apartment until I finally fell asleep in my cheap motel room. In the morning, she sheepishly told me that she had too much wine with her friend, Charlene, and decided to sleep over. Maybe, now, I knew where she had really slept.

Anyway, one word led to another until I finally hurled the wild accusation that maybe she was carrying Sam’s baby instead of mine. That infuriated her, lit her up like a roman candle. She bolted from the couch and slapped me flush across the face. Then, she retreated to the bedroom with me on her heels, threw a suitcase on our bed and started to toss in her underwear and maternity clothes.

She was going to Charlene’s, she said, to get away from me, and that was that. I quit trying to hug her from behind, kiss her neck, beg her not to go. Finally, I just sat there on the bedroom floor crying. I knew from the disdain in her eyes that she was going. And that perhaps, I had lost her love for good.

After she left, I slunk around the apartment before finally slumping onto the couch and, with all the lights turned off, started swigging from an old bottle of Jack Daniels. I had sucked most of the Jack out of the bottle when the telephone rang. I stumbled across the room thinking it was maybe Linda calling to forgive me. But it was only Ted Merrick from All Weird News.

“I thought you should know,” he said.

Now that I had been fired, Merrick would be getting my assignments, a promotion of sorts. “Know what?”

“The guy you interviewed, down in Pottersville. The real George Bailey.”

“Yeah? What about him?”

“He – he’s dead,” Merrick blurted.

I stood there trembling in the darkness mildly aware of the telephone receiver in my hand.

“Came down with a nasty cold after you left,” Merrick continued. “After Fielding gave me the assignment, I took a drive down there. I wanted to get a feel for the guy myself. Anyway, that’s when I found out that he had died just last night. In his sleep.”

The news about Bailey sent me over the edge. After hanging up with Merrick, I took one last swig from the bottle of Jack, threw on a coat, and stumbled out of the apartment. Linda had taken a cab to Charlene’s, leaving me our old beat up Ford Tempo. It made no sense, but in my half-drunken stupor, I was suddenly compelled to drive back to Bedford Falls – or, Pottersville. I wanted to spend Christmas Day there, in some cheap motel, and then attend Bailey’s funeral. See him put into the hole in the ground in the grave next to his beloved Mary.

I stopped at a 7/11 near our apartment to buy myself a six pack of beer for the ride. By the time I made it to Pottersville, I was quite drunk. It was a miracle that I had not gotten myself killed or stopped for drunk driving.

Where the hell I was going when I got there, I didn’t have a clue. Most of the town was closed for Christmas Eve. To make matters worse, snow was really coming down, dancing like furious insects in my headlights and was starting to pile up on the lawns and streets. I was listening to non-stop Christmas music on the radio. As I pulled into Pottersville, the song, “I’ll have a blue Christmas without you,” by Elvis Presley came on and I started crying.

I spotted the glowing sign for Nick’s tavern where Martini’s place used to be. I took a wide turn into the small gravel lot next to the bar and parked the Tempo.

The place was slow except for some neighborhood drunks hugging the bar.

“You Nick?” I asked the bartender.

A swarthy fellow with slicked black hair leaned over the bar and scowled disagreeably. “Yeah, Nick, “ he said.

“Your father Nick, too?” I asked, swaying back from him.

“You’re not one of those ‘Wonderful Life’ nuts come to gawk at the place, are you?”

Nick asked, leering at me. “Cause if you are, I’m gonna have you escorted out of the place.” He gestured to an equally swarthy bouncer wearing an old leather biker jacket who came and stood behind me.

“No, I just need a drink.”

Nick’s scowl deepened. “So what’s it be, mister?”

“Whiskey and water,” I said.

Frowning, he brought over a glass filled to the brim, cheap whiskey with splash of water.

“That’s two fifty,” he said.

I had already taken a sip when I reached back and couldn’t find my wallet. It hit me right then that in my drunken stupor, I have left it back at the 7/11 after paying for gas and six pack. I didn’t have a cent on me. With a sheepish grin, I put down the glass and admitted the problem.

He smirked and removed the glass. With an index finger, he called over the bouncer. The next thing I knew, I grabbed by the lapel of my jacket and hurled out the front door into the snow. A couple of the drunks at the bar laughed.

After rolling on the ground in the snow, I cursed as I stood and dusted myself off. The world was against me, every last goddamn soul.

I was crying as I entered the Tempo. After a long sputter, it turned over and I put it in gear and started fishtailing out of the lot and down the empty street. The snow was piling up with only the tire ruts of a long passed car visible now. After a couple more blocks, I turned wildly onto a side street and crashed the Tempo into a thick oak tree in front of a wide ranch somewhere at the edge of Pottersville. I got out of the car and staggered to the tree. I had left a considerable gash, and noticed that it was near an old, similar wound. A realization hit me that almost sobered me up: this was the same tree George Bailey had crashed into the night his guardian angel, Clarence, had saved his life.

A middle-aged guy stumbled out of the house holding a black umbrella and trudged through the snow toward the tree. After a quick look, he snarled at me.

“Look what you did to my tree,” he said. “My great-great-grandfather planted that tree.’

I ignored the guy as he yelled for me to get my car the hell out of there. Instead, I staggered
off aimlessly, hoping to die. After a few minutes, I came to the same old wooden draw bridge
Bailey had come to on Christmas Eve, 1945. The shanty was still there, though dark now since the bridge had been condemned years ago.

I stood at the railing for some time, seriously contemplating jumping in. Just as I lunged forward to actually do it, through the howl of wind, I heard a voice.

“Don’t do it.”

It was George Bailey. But in the shadows and snow, it was not the same George Bailey I had interviewed yesterday. This one was young, like George Bailey from the movie.

“You have worlds to conquer,” he told me. “Things to do.” He seemed to smile. “Stories to write.” Then, he added, “And a child to raise.”

“Now –” I started to protest.

“It’s yours,” he said, and smiled. “The boy is all yours.”

“And if you hurry and finish your story about me,” he went on, “and send it in to a real magazine before that scrub Merrick finishes his version – you’ll be on your way to a decent writing career.”

“Hogwash,” I said. “This ain’t no movie, pal. This is real life.”

“Guess I’ll have to show you some things…”

So George Bailey, Angel Second Class, because he had not yet earned his wings, showed me a glimpse of the life I might lead, the promise before me. And the promise of my children, and grandchildren. Provided, of course, I didn’t kill myself. And I had to admit, it truly looked like a wonderful life.

Needless to say, I didn’t jump off the bridge that night. Standing out there in the cold, I sobered up and headed back to my car. Somehow, I drove all the way back home that night and fell asleep in my bed.

I woke up toward Noon that Christmas Day and wondered if I had gone anywhere at all.

Not a minute after waking up, Linda walked into the bedroom.

“It’s your baby, you fool,” she told me.

“I know,” I told her softly. I got out of bed and held her close.

“And we’ll make it somehow,” she said. “You are going to make it.”

“I know,” I said and kissed her.

As we embraced, I felt a small sheet of paper in my shirt pocket. I reached inside, pulled it out and unfolded it.

“What is it?” she asked.

I read the note and laughed.

“It’s a note from an old friend,” I said. “George Bailey.”

“George Bailey? What’s it say?”

“Remember, your life is only as wonderful as you make it.”

Just then the telephone rang, and I smiled.

“Aren’t you gonna answer it?”

“No, let it ring,” I told her, still smiling.

It rang a couple more times, then stopped.

“What’s so funny?” Linda asked. “What?” Then, he eyes widened. “Oh, I know. From the movie. Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”

“That’s right,” I said, holding Linda in my arms and looking up into Heaven.

“Way to go, George. Way to go”

———————————————————————–

Full purchase details for The Dark Side of the Womb can be found HERE.

Its sister volumes – Suffer the Little Children and From Their Cradle to Your Grave – should be out by the end of this month.

Horror-tica is an anthology for stories that combine horror and erotica into a seamless whole – voluptuous vampires, sensual succubi, well-hung werewolves or any other combination of blood and lust that comes into the dark and sordid back alleys of your mind.

WHAT WE WANT

Stories of evil and eroticism. We run a broadminded church here at Cruentus Libri Press, so whatever you particular little kink of pecadillo might be, it will find a home here, so long as it involves horror in equal measure to horniness. The erotic elements must be integral to the story – don’t just send us a normal tale with a graphic sex scene shoehorned into the narrative; weave it into the plot, make it the focus of the story. We want tales that are character and story driven rather than just heavy-panting descriptions of sexual acts.

WHAT WE DON’T WANT

Pedophilia, lolicon, child abuse…whatever term you use to describe it, underage sex is a HUGE no-no and any stories involving such will be rejected without further comment. Beyond that, we’re not bothered – it is highly unlikely that your particular fetish will shock us. As long as it’s chained and bound to a strong story, we’ll give it a chance.

This is a horror anthology intended for an adult audience. Whilst we have no qualms about including sex (obviously), violence and swearing in the stories, don’t make it gratuitous – ask yourself whether the scene in question adds to the story or if it is simply there to shock.

THE RULES

First, check out our Writer’s Guidelines and, specifically, that part pertaining to Anthology Submissions. They should tell you all you need to know about sending us your work.

Word Count: 2500-7500 words.

Reading Period: 01 October 2012 to 30 December 2012.

Reprints: Yes

Multiple Submissions: No.

Simultaneous Submissions: We understand that writers want to find a home for their work and, as such, we have no problem with sending you story to other markets as well as our own. We ask only that you inform us if your story gets accepted elsewhere before the end of the reading period, so that we can remove it from our slushpile.

Payment: This anthology is a paying market, paying shared royalties based on sales. Please see our royalty guide here for details.

Rights: Cruentus Libri Press request One Time Print and Electronic Publishing Rights for each story published. This means that, once your story is published with us, thereafter it can only be marketed as a reprint. This can limit the number of markets that will accept it, as many publications will not accept reprints and those that do may offer a reduced pay rate as a consequence. Please bear this in mind when submitting your story for inclusion in this anthology.

Once you’re satisfied with your entry and you’re sure it meets the guidelines, submit it as an attachment to cruentus.libri@googlemail.com

We are currently awaiting the cover art for The Dead Sea, following which, it will also be available for purchase.

We are still reading submissions for the three Dark Side of the Womb anthologies, so if you are awaiting a response, please be patient. We received over 100 entries to this particular anthology which means a lot of reading and, regretfully, a lot of rejections as well. We promise to have updated you all on the position of your contributions by the end of September.

We’ll keep you posted as more news rolls in.

War Is Hell is an anthology of horror tales, set to the dark and terrible backdrop of war.

WHAT WE WANT

We are looking for stories set in or around a warzone. The specific war in question is of no great importance – whether it be spirits of the Spartan dead in the Pelopponesian War or ancient Sumerian spirits making their presence known in the Second Gulf War it makes no odds. All we ask is that you make your tale as historically accurate as possible.

WHAT WE DON’T WANT

This is a horror anthology intended for an adult audience. Whilst we have no qualms about including sex, violence and swearing in the stories, don’t make it gratuitous – ask yourself whether the scene in question adds to the story or if it is simply there to shock.

THE RULES

First, check out our Writer’s Guidelines and, specifically, that part pertaining to Anthology Submissions. They should tell you all you need to know about sending us your work.

Word Count: 2500-7500 words.

Reading Period: 01 September 2012 to 30 November 2012.

Reprints: Yes

Multiple Submissions: No.

Simultaneous Submissions: We understand that writers want to find a home for their work and, as such, we have no problem with sending your story to other markets as well as our own. We ask only that you inform us if your story gets accepted elsewhere before the end of the reading period, so that we can remove it from our slushpile.

Payment: This anthology is a paying market, paying shared royalties based on sales. Please see our royalty guide here for details.

Rights: Cruentus Libri Press request One Time Print and Electronic Publishing Rights for each story published. This means that, once your story is published with us, thereafter it can only be marketed as a reprint. This can limit the number of markets that will accept it, as many publications will not accept reprints and those that do may offer a reduced pay rate as a consequence. Please bear this in mind when submitting your story for inclusion in this anthology.

Once you’re satisfied with your entry and you’re sure it meets the guidelines, submit it as an attachment to cruentus.libri@googlemail.com