Happily Ever After. Not Tales of the Unfortunate by D.A. Sanford - HTML preview

Readers be advised

Warning: Contains adult content due to graphic descriptions of any or all of the following:

Battles, Language, Sexual

Both the cover and images in this book are not photographs or hand drawn art. They were created using AI text to graphics programs by the author.

Happily ever after. Not! Tales of the unfortunate © 2024 D. A. Sanford All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author or publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

for permission from the author contact danielsanford@sbcglobal.net

Happily ever after. Not! Tales of the unfortunate Contents

Skunkman

Gods make mistakes

Old habits

The Supreme Goddess

I am time’s mate

Author’s note:

I have stories that sit in my pile that are short but not with that expected ending. Everyone sometimes gets into that mood. I can see an AI generated picture and just see that the person will not have a happy ending.

This is just a few of those twisted tales

Shunkman

I’m sitting here in one of my many caves. I can’t tell you how many years I have been doing my circuit but it has to be around twenty years, a little more or less. My circuit takes me three months to make. I have become a legend.

I have been seen, from a distance. There are wonderful homes that know when I will be there and leave me parcels of food. I will eat a little of it and save the rest for later. They can tell that I have been there by the parcel being gone and my smell.

I am a recluse that wants no one to ask questions. I really don’t want to talk to anyone, not even to myself. To that end and for my protection, I use skunk smell. I trap them and take out the gland. I bottle it. Some around the cave entrance and my rock cover and no one bothers me because I now smell like a skunkman.

That is my name. I like it that way.

My past is the thing that haunts me almost every night I sleep. You see, I once had three wives and a large number of nonwives. I ran away from all of them. The day I ran I left one son, only months old and at least fifty other women that were pregnant. I feel guilt everyday but you see, they threw themselves at me.

Okay, I know what you think. That is the typical male response but I am the one that caused a whole village to be scorned. Their name went from Safe Home to Lost Trust. I was at one time a very important person. I am the reason that people are living a safe and free life.

Safe from mutants and free of the plague that caused that mutation to occur.

The dream, or should I say nightmare, repeats a scene of me coming back to my house after a long campaign to eradicate the last of those mutants. I open the door to my house and there, in my house I find all those women standing there naked and yelling welcome home. Most men would call that a wet dream but circumstances must be taken into consideration.

You see, I am a mutant of sorts. That is the basis for me being in my cave, smelling like a skunk. I look the same as any normal human but looks are deceiving. I was bitten by a mutant and survived but what I did not know was that I had been changed down to my DNA.

Humans cannot interbreed with the other non human races so I had fun after I recovered. My wives readily approved. As a matter of fact they encouraged it. Had my favorites and casuals.

There were a lot of communities that surround Safe Home. I was thrust into the role as leader. I had to make sure that all were doing well. It was a month since I had recovered and I needed to make my rounds. That would take almost three weeks.

On my last stop, there was one woman, that I was close to, that was sick so I convinced her to go with me to Safe Home. We reached the clinic and I found it full of the women I loved. They were of different species and were all pregnant by me. I was told that, because of the bite, I mutated on the genetic level. Now, regardless of species, I would get them pregnant if I even started to enter them.

The women started a joke that, even if I touched them with my finger, they would get pregnant. The village women started to shy away from me like I was contagious. Others would whisper, point and giggle. I became the village joke to all of them. They would not let up. It got to the point that even the men were joining in.

The women started to realize that I was getting mad. They pulled me into a meeting to tell me they were sorry but the room was full of snickering.

Having had enough, I let my feelings be known. If I had known of the change, I would have left them alone. Making me the laughing stock of, not only in Safe Home, but the whole community, cut me to the bone and poured salt into the wound.

I told them that I was moving my things to a vacant building and to leave me alone. I left.

They had never seen me get that hurt. They did leave me alone for a while but they did start to show signs of back sliding. Yes I enjoyed the sex but looking back, it was the women in my life that initiated most of the encounters. Now they were starting going back to touchy feely which I rejected each time.

I needed to take care of a matter that should take a few weeks. At a camp hide, I took the time to put it in writing my conditions for normalizing relations. I wanted them to leave me alone personally. Professionally and casual conversations are acceptable. The biggest thing was that I was going to be the one to initiate sex, not them. It was simple.

I sent a runner with the instructions, “Deliver this to my wives then come back.” He did just that. He said that they read it and then read it to the community. “They were smiling.”

I figured that it was because I laid out some simple rules for trying to come to trust them again. They will now be able to understand that I am not just a walking dildo. I could not have been more wrong.

The campaign took a little longer. Mopping up caused us to be three weeks more. We made it back to Safe Home. They must have had people out watching for us. I was walking

through town and saw women smiling and waving. It was the smile that bothered me. It was happy but sly, like they knew something.

I opened my door and there were most of the women I slept with in my house yelling

“Welcome home.” The thing is, and it is burnt into my mind to this day, all were naked and almost flaunting their pregnant bellies.

Betrayed, I turned and ran out of town. I went not to my usual retreat spot, I went in the opposite direction into the deep woods. I cried until I could not cry anymore. I did hear people calling out my name, including my wives.

After midnight, I went to one of my hides where I knew I had paint. I went to the sign that had the town’s name on it. Painting over that name, I then painted “Lost Trust” Beware of the women.

With that, I ran as far as I could that night.

For months, I put as much distance from that village as I could. All the time fighting myself.

I constantly was telling myself that I needed to go back and confront them but I really knew that it would not change. If having it in writing did not stop them, no return to talk one more time would not.

If you give a threat and don’t carry it out, they will never listen to any warning you make after that. I had given them my conditions and they might as well have torn them up to be used as toilet paper. No I will always keep going away from them.

On a few occasions, before I became the recluse that I am now, I would be invited to sit by the camp fire of friendly folk. We would talk. Over and over, I would ask about Safe Home. They always would correct me.

“Don’t you mean Lost Trust?” then they would go into the same report. The women have now been the subject of ridicule and scorn. No one has been physical but they are the laughing stock of the area. They would go into the fact that the man they drove out was the binding force of that area. Once he left, the other villages would have nothing to do with those women. It was to the point that the group of women have dispersed with the exception of his wives and ten others.

“They stand at both entrances to Lost Trust waiting for him to return. All have knives and vow to kill themselves in front of him while saying that they were sorry.”

After a few of the same tale, I stopped talking to people.

It was around the sixth month of my travel that I no longer heard anything about that village. I found a cave and set myself up. The clothes I had with me when I left were not in the best shape. I had no money to buy new ones.

I have been able to hunt and I already knew about turning hides into leather. I now have all leather clothes. With mountain lion hides, I have warm winter ware. It was because of the lions that I started using skunk.

As the days wore on, I became board and wandered. I found caves along the way and set them up. Always, when I left, I would rock up the entrance. After a long time, I have established a circuit of caves and now I stay at one for two days then move to the next.

This is because, I do not want to over use one location and run myself out of game and wild vegetables.

While making my route, I spotted someone. He was a farmer that was trying to move a large rock by himself to a skid. Without saying anything, I helped him.

At first he recoiled at the smell but accepted the help. We were able to get it on the skid and he had his horse drag it to the edge of the field where we dumped it. All this time he was trying to get me to talk. I would only nod or give one word answers.

His wife saw me helping, came over to watch but was put off by the skunk smell. She went back into the house and brought out a big piece of bread, some raw vegetables and a few other items in a cloth. She handed it to me and thanked me for helping.

Despite the odor, she thanked me. That is the first woman I have had even the slightest interaction with. It was comforting but it hurt very deeply. I took the bundle, looking down, I softly said thank you and left.

Helping people without getting into even friendships, I found that people started leaving food in scrap cloths for me. They always knew the day I would show and leave me something to eat. A lot of them will leave used scraps of soap. I take them but I am now nose blind to the smell. I always nod to them as I take it.

There is always something to help with. I know that they do that so I don’t feel that their food is charity. I don’t want to betray their feelings. I always thank them but, really, I would still take the food. Feelings no longer count for me.

If they knew that I had left untold numbers of children and their mothers behind me, I think that the only thing I would get is chased out of this area.

My circuit is my life now. Change locations every other day, help people that now know that I will help but I don’t want to be welcomed into their town as a resident. They know that I don’t really want to talk so now I get a welcome and a thank you after.

The only thing that stops me is when there is a blizzard. No one has entered my caves, even though they know where they are. In my caves, I have food stores and bedding made from all those scrap food cloths sown together. When a blizzard happens, I will hunker down until it is over.

Mile after mile, day after day, year after year, I walk and help. Untold miles on this route always berating myself for my past. Always thinking that it would have been better to have let them find my dead body near Safe Home.

One day, while holed up in my cave, I hear someone outside say that he was George, my son from my first wife. He and his brothers from my second and third wife were out here to talk with me. I don’t answer but they say that they will stay right here no matter how long it takes for me to come out.

They did not sound hostile but I took a little time to write a last note to the people that will come to find me when I don’t show up. I tell them that I finally was going home. The only thing was that I expected to be killed by them.

After the third time he called me out, I told him that I was coming out. I put the note on my bedding with a rock to hold it. Then I went out to my fate.

There were three men in their late teens, maybe twenties. Handsome but with features that were my wives.

“What do you want with me?” I say in a gruff manner.

“We wanted to find you, father.”

“You have the wrong person. I’m no one’s father.”

“We came to take you home. Our mothers have never forgiven themselves for what they have done to you.”

He pulls out a well worn paper. I take a deep ragged breath. I know that paper. I wrote it.

I push it away. He says that this proves that I am their father since I know what it is. I finally snap.

“Of course, I know what that miserable piece of scrap paper is. That was that person’s death sentence. All I am now is the Skunkman. If you will excuse me, I am almost late for my next stop.”

They stop me.

“If you are going to kill me do it. Don’t you think that every waking and sleeping moment for these years, those days, those women and you children have not been on my mind!

Kill me and put me out of your misery or go away.”

“We, your children do not blame you. Otherwise do you think we would have spent these past six months tracking you down? Going on sightings and rumors of a skunk man? We want you to come home, if only to confront those women. Give all of them and yourself closure. If then you want to leave, we will stop anyone that tries to keep you there. Our mothers, your wives, have had nothing but sorrow since you left. Know this, they blame themselves. They carry knives so that you can kill them if that is what it takes.”

I can’t here this. I won’t listen. I run. Again, it all comes flooding me like an avalanche that I cannot escape. A cascade of memories that are cutting into my soul.

I hear their voices behind me asking me to stop. I just stop.

“Please no more.” I take out my knife and put it to my throat.

They wrestle it away from me. I am broken.

“I’ll go with you. Give me back my knife.”

“Only after you talk with them.”

We walk and they don’t speak of the village or their mothers. It was only casual talk for the six months it took to get back.

I know that we were close because, after all this time, I know exactly where we are. Safe Home was around the corner. I still want to run but we walk the last mile. I now see the town.

Where are the wives. The three looked confused. People are in shock when they see the three but almost in horror as they recognize me.

One brave soul comes up to us.

My son asks, “Where is my mother? Is she at the other end?”

“You were gone for so long. I’m sorry” He looks at me and I am hit in the gut by his words.

“Three months ago, evidently they had an agreement, they all hung themselves in what was your home. Side by side, naked, they stepped off the chairs. We found them later in the day.”

He handed the note to my son. He read it and then handed it to me.

“We do this because we are guilty. Our husband is dead and now our sons are also. We go to the next life to apologize to them.”

I scream so loud it hurt my throat. “YOU FUCKING DRAGGED ME BACK HERE JUST

FOR THIS? YOU SHOULD HAVE KILLED ME!”

After leaving them standing there, I again ran. I did not return to my circuit ever again.

Years later

A few young fledgling adventurers stumbled across a cave. They wanted to explore so they go in only to find a man’s skeleton dressed in leather. When the parents came, they looked and could tell, by the knife in its hand and the cut marks in the neck bone that this was a suicide. In one pocket was a paper the simply said

“I am known as the Skunkman. I now take my own life.”

They had heard of him, who hasn’t. He was a legend. They carefully gathered his remains and buried him in their cemetery. Then put a marker there that just read The Skunkman.

Because he was a legend, the word went out and people went there to pay their respects.

The strange thing is that there is a large group of adults that show up every year.

This story is very loosely based on an actual person.

Only known as the Leatherman. He walked a 365 mile circuit in New York and Connecticut from 1839 until his death in1889. He rarely spoke. When he did, it was in French or broken English. He slept in caves along the circuit.

He was completely dressed in leather clothes he made.