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    Through the Opera Glass
    Through the Opera Glass
    Through the Opera Glass
    Ebook87 pages1 hour

    Through the Opera Glass

    By Sharon E. Cathcart

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    About this ebook

    Author Sharon E. Cathcart took up a challenge in 2012: to write flash fiction and full length short stories based on various prompts. Each story features one or more characters from "In The Eye of The Beholder: A Novel of the Phantom of the Opera" or its sequel, "In The Eye of The Storm."

    Brimming with historical detail, the stories in this collection range in place and time from 19th Century Persia to post-World War II San Francisco.

    "Through the Opera Glass" was the runner-up for "Best Short Story Collection" in the 2014 eFestival of Words Independent Book Awards.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSharon E. Cathcart
    Release dateJan 11, 2013
    ISBN9781301552856
    Through the Opera Glass
    Author

    Sharon E. Cathcart

    Award-winning author Sharon E. Cathcart (she/her) writes historical fiction with a twist!A former journalist and newspaper editor, Sharon has written for as long as she can remember and generally has at least one work in progress.Sharon lives with her husband and several rescue cats in the Silicon Valley, California.

    Read more from Sharon E. Cathcart

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      Book preview

      Through the Opera Glass - Sharon E. Cathcart

      Through the Opera Glass

      A Collection of Short Stories Featuring Beloved Characters from In The Eye of The Beholder: A Novel of the Phantom of the Opera and its sequel, In The Eye of The Storm.

      By Sharon E. Cathcart

      Copyright 2013, Sharon E. Cathcart

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      In 2012, I decided to try writing a weekly tale based on writing challenges and prompts from all over the World Wide Web. I wanted to tell some new stories about characters from my previous novel, In The Eye of The Beholder, and introduce some characters from its forthcoming sequel, In The Eye of The Storm. This book is the result.

      These stories are arranged in three parts. The first shows the characters during the time before either book. The second part coincides roughly with the timeline of In The Eye of The Beholder, while the third brings us into the action of In The Eye of The Storm. Some of the pieces are tiny flash fiction; others are much longer. If it were an opera, it might be Cosi fan Tutti: a little of everything.

      Many thanks are due to the friends and fans I have made since I published my first book so many years ago. Many thanks also to the team of administrators and authors at Clever Fiction (www.cleverfiction.com), from whence many of these stories flowed. These tales are for you.

      Table of Contents

      Prologue Tales

      Tales from In The Eye of The Beholder

      Tales from In The Eye of The Storm

      About the Author

      Prologue Tales

      Untitled Vignette

      Written January 7, 2012.

      Clever Fiction writing prompt: Broken/Desert/Voices.

      Erik’s spirit was broken.

      The sun was hot over the Persian desert. His thirst was beyond tolerance, and he was sure that this would be his dying day. The shah had turned him out; there would be no more Rosy Hours of Mazandaran. His torture chamber no longer pleased the shah or the khanoum and, truth to tell, he was weary of taking lives for the amusement of others.

      He was weary, also, of being treated as a eunuch. His proximity to the seraglio was permitted only because of his ruined face, the assumption being that such ugliness rendered him somehow impervious to female charms.

      Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

      He walked on, his long legs covering the miles. He would find water to slake his thirst, or he would die. Those were the only two choices that remained.

      Erik tried to imagine that he was in Rouen, the French village of his birth, and that he was walking home to a wife who would greet him with a refreshing drink. He could almost feel her gentle caress.

      Erik.

      Splendid, he thought. Now I am hearing voices.

      Erik!

      It was Zareh, the daroga: the shah’s chief of police.

      I am dead now, Erik said as he turned around.

      Zareh pulled up his own horse, and dropped the reins of the one he led.

      Allah be thanked that I have found you, Zareh said. I bring you water, food and a horse so that you may escape this place.

      I …

      Say nothing. Take these things and go.

      A water skin and a bundle of food landed at Erik’s feet. Zareh turned his horse back in the direction from which he had come.

      Erik drank a little of the water, gathered up the food and turned to face the sleek black mare the daroga had left for him. He was surprised to recognize the khanoum’s personal horse. Erik mounted the beast with all of the dignity his exhaustion could allow.

      Now, my beauty, let us go home.

      ***

      From Persia to Paris

      Written June 25, 2012

      Clever Fiction writing prompt: Winner/Leaving/Alone

      Somewhere in the Persian Desert

      1870

      Erik reined his horse around to look, for one last time, in the direction of the Rosy Hours of Mazandaran. What an odd thing to call a palace of murder, torture – and yet the Shah and his Khanoum named it as such. Erik was glad to be leaving.

      Build me a torture chamber, the Shah had demanded. Erik had done just that; he created a mirrored room that constantly reflected a tree with a noose hanging from it. This was not torture in and of itself; the room had no apparent exit, though, and could be heated to an unbearable temperature. Eventually, the Shah’s victims would see the noose as their only escape … which allowed the Shah to declare himself the winner in many a battle.

      Soon enough, the Shah turned a suspicious eye on Erik. Perhaps he had been too trusting of the disfigured man, assuming his face would keep the women away from him. He’d treated Erik as though he were a eunuch; that was the real error, Erik thought wryly. Soon enough, the women of the seraglio had discovered Erik’s voice. Soon enough, some of them were far more entranced with him than they were with their over-fed husband.

      And so, Erik must go. But where? Russia and Italy held no more appeal; only painful memories lived in those places.

      Rouen? What would he say to his stonecutter father? Or to the mother who turned him out? No, going to the place of his birth was madness itself.

      Paris. A man could hide in Paris. He could live alone there and no one would know, so long as he kept to the shadows. Paris it would be.

      ***

      Untitled Vignette

      Written January 18, 2012

      Clever Fiction writing prompt: Candle/Frozen/Rivals

      Erik snuffed out the candle and pulled the blanket up

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