Suggestions, please?

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The story I posted here on Steemit - Baby Blue (https://steemit.com/fiction/@sweetpea358/baby-blue-part-1), was shortened from a longer novella. I began writing with a group of characters and soon, it's all I was interested in writing.

The Fall of Kazimir takes places long before Blue, he's Blue's grandfather (also a warlock), and has been around since the 1800's.

Miss Pickle is a different kind of story, but still, Dmitri, from Baby Blue, shows up eventually.

Bite Me, is a vampire tale that begins just prior to World War II.

Rainbow is from a romance novel I tried, and failed, to complete. Don't know if it's even worth the bother.

I guess I'm asking for assistance in deciding what people like to read: A few excerpts from stories I've written are below.

In the comments, would you be so kind as to tell me which, if any, interests you and why. If none do, why not, and what kind of stories do you like to read? I'm always up for a challenge! :)

Thanks!

OOO

The fall of Kazimir

Morning’s light crept in through the threadbare curtains as Kazimir yawned groggily and stretched. His arm touched another’s. She’s still here? Upon closer examination, he noticed that her clothes had been ripped violently off her body. Her long, dark unkempt hair covered her face. Grabbing her shoulder, he shook her in an attempt to rouse her. Thanks for last night but it’s time for you to go.

She did not stir.

Fear gripped Kazimir’s heart. Shaking her more forcefully this time, he still saw no signs of life. Brushing her hair from her face, he shied away in horror as he noticed the bruising on her neck. I did this? He thought back to how much whiskey he’d consumed the prior evening and how angry he had been - at his wife, at himself, at life. Dread consumed him.

Realizing he had taken his anguish out on this poor, pathetic creature, he touched her face gently, then recoiled at the coldness of her skin.

What have I done! After pacing the room for several minutes, he dressed and contemplated his options.

OOO

Bite Me - Lance's Story

Immortality appears desirable only to those who can never attain it.

OOO

His drink growing stale, Lance looked around for one of the scantily-clad servant girls.

The girl of his dreams appeared next to him, crooking her finger and leading him outside. She also happened to belong to the master.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked, knowing if Peter were to see them together, he might not live out his immortality after all.

Violet giggled and pulled him into the thicket a good ways from the house. Knowing what she wanted, he began to kiss her neck, teasing her with playful scrapes of his teeth against her porcelain skin.

A shriek of surprise was soon replaced with soft, cooing sounds. It had been a long time since he’d thought of sensual pleasures.

Afterwards, they lay on the cold, dark forest floor together. “Does this hold the same allure as before?” Violet asked softly.

“Sex you mean?”

“Yes. Somehow I remember it being … more.”

“Thank you very much.”

She laughed and swatted at him. “You know what I mean.”

“We need to get back. Peter will return soon and we’ll need to feed again before morning.”

“We could feed right now. I see lots of miserable creatures wandering about.”

“Are you referring to the serving girls? They are hardly even ripe. I’d much rather wait until the good wine arrives.” Lance assumed that their host would procure only the finest elixir from the local blood bank.

“You do know what the fine wine is, don’t you?” Violet sat up and gazed deeply into his eyes.

“Not exactly, but …”

“It’s human blood, fresh and still warm from our volunteers.”

“Volunteers?” He sat up, brushing the leaves and twigs off his shirt.

Violet laughed. “Of course! It is not our fault they did not understand what they were volunteering for until it was too late.”

“Where are they kept … these volunteers?” Lance asked, helping Violet to her feet before buttoning his shirt.

She laughed gaily and grabbed his hands. “That’s Peter’s little secret. He doesn’t tell anyone, not even me.”

They walked leisurely back to the nest, a term they used to call their home. Though they were neither bats nor birds, they did live together as a flock, hence the term.

When they arrived, they were greeted by the entire family, welcoming them back into the fold as though they’d been gone for days or even weeks. Peter arrived soon thereafter with a large, oak barrel. It reminded Lance of something off a pirate ship, a time he recalled only too well.

“An especially good year,” Peter quipped before puncturing the barrel and sharing the contents.

OOO

Miss Pickle Goes Walkabout

Cora Jane Pickle was attempting to get through the early morning aerobics class. If anyone were to ask her, aerobics just weren’t her thing. But when you were a resident at the Excalibur Assisted Living Center, you did as you were told.

“That’s it for today, ladies,” said the oh-so-fake and chipper Lilly Ann, as she wiped her brow with a towel for effect. The woman never actually broke a sweat. In fact, Miss Pickle wasn’t sure she was quite human.

Phew! Cora was more than ready to leave the room. No one had emptied Gloria’s colostomy bag and the smell about knocked Cora off her feet every time she did a knee bend. Gloria, of course, was not doing knee bends. She just stood there, looking sad, as those who could did and those who couldn’t, well, didn’t.

How did the staff expect great leaps in fitness under these conditions?

Cora walked back to her small, dingy room at the end of the hallway. Stepping into the bathroom, she checked her look in the mirror. Her white hair clung to her face, held in place by sweat. At least she was human. And not in half-bad shape either. Her hair might have lost its color, but Cora still had her mind.

That’s not what it said on her entrance papers, however. One day she sneaked into the office and rooted out her file. It was worded in carefully assembled prose, but the gist of it was that Cora was as crazy as a loon and couldn’t be trusted on her own. Ha! She had them fooled!

No, she reflected sadly. It was herself she had fooled. Cora Jane Pickle had given up.

She looked into her own blue eyes. Those eyes had once been so bright and alive. Nowadays, she couldn’t bear to even focus on her surroundings, such as they were. Her room, for a start, was dismal. No one had even bothered to take down the Christmas decorations. It was May.

At least she had her own private room. Cora had insisted on that. Six months ago, when her niece and nephew decided she was too feeble to be on her own, they had wrangled power-of-attorney privileges out of her, condemning her to this lowest ring of hell. At the time, Cora didn’t think she had a choice.

She was a spinster and alone. The last of her immediate family, her brother, Matt, had passed away the year before. All she needed was someone to fetch groceries for her once in a while. Was that too much to ask?

The answer to that question, according to Scott and Chrissie, was apparently yes. Once they convinced a court that she was no longer in possession of her faculties, they rapidly received power-of-attorney. Their first act was to sell her cute little cottage at the end of her street, causing her and her little schnauzer to become homeless. Then they imprisoned her in this hell-hole. They had hoped, Cora assumed, that she would be put her down like an aging beast that is no longer needed or wanted.

But Cora didn’t go down. She was waiting. For what she was waiting she was not sure. But in her eighty-two years, she had learned a thing or two. And one of those things was that, if you waited for an opportune moment, almost anything was possible.

One thing was for certain. She was breaking out of this hellhole.

OOO

Rainbow

His eyes.

She recalled how his eyes softened when he looked at her. And his words. Where would she ever again find a man who would tell her the things she needed so desperately to hear?

Twenty-four year old Rainbow Jennings sat at her desk daydreaming. Again. Her boyfriend, Mark Dannon, had been the center of her existence for the past five years. Yet she had known he was up to something.

Rainbow assumed he had bought her a ring and was going to ask her to marry him.

Boy, was she wrong!

He brought another woman into the bed they shared on the rare day Rainbow had gone home early with a headache. Ouch. She screamed until they both fled in terror of the madwoman of Baltimore County. And, at that precise moment, she was quite mad indeed.

The man she had fallen totally in love with; the man who promised he’d be hers forever; the man she gave up having friends for; had found another. She was so angry at him she couldn’t think straight, yet, if she were being honest with herself, she still loved him. Yes, she was quite mad.

“Earth to Rainbow,” snapped her boss, Robin Landers, a tall, lanky woman in her fifties who thought of herself as God’s answer to, well, everything. “Can I see you in my office?”

Rainbow grabbed her tablet and followed her back to the spacious office. She didn’t mind being summoned. In fact, it gave her a chance to stare out the windows for a bit. The leaves were just beginning to populate the trees. It was spring. And Rainbow couldn’t be happier.

Winters in Maryland could be a cruel affair, full of snow, wind and desperation. Okay, technically the desperation had nothing to do with the weather, but desperate was how Rainbow had felt since that miserable day two months ago.

Her boss was prattling on about some client of theirs. Rainbow knew she should pay attention but a beautiful flock of birds was flying past the window and so when her boss said, “Are you listening to me,” she merely smiled and nodded.

“So what did I just tell you?” Rainbow snapped back to reality and realized she hadn’t heard a single word that Robin had said. “You have no idea, do you? What’s wrong with you these days? You were so on top of things and now you can’t even be bothered to pay attention.”

“Do you really want to know?” Rainbow asked, hoping she’d say no.

“Yes, Rainbow, I do. Because if your performance keeps sliding downhill like it has for the past couple of months …”

“Fine. I’ll tell you.” Rainbow took a deep breath. “I’m sorry this is affecting my work. It’s a … personal matter.”

She hoped that explanation would be enough. Instead, Robin just stood up, walking around to the front of her desk and leaned on it, still staring at her obviously unstable employee.

“Well?” she asked.

“My boyfriend and I broke up.” Perhaps the simple version would be enough.

“Details. I want details.”

And, perhaps not.

“I caught him in bed with another woman. And I haven’t been the same since.” There. She’d said it.

“Oh, you poor baby,” Robin said, reaching down to pat her hand as it rested upon her notebook. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry. Take the day off. Take the week off. Do whatever you need to do to heal the wound. Come back when you’re better.”

And just like that, she was dismissed. So she stood up and returned to her desk, yanked her purse from the drawer, pulled her coat from the back of her chair and walked out.

She didn’t want to go home. Home was where it had happened. Home was where she saw his face every single time she closed her eyes. That sweet face … No, he wasn’t sweet. When she had crossed paths with him at the tender age of 19, she thought she had died and gone to heaven. Gorgeous and sexy in a Greek god way, he could make people swoon just to gaze upon him. But no, he was definitely not sweet.

Shaking thoughts of him from her mind, she decided that perhaps a little shopping trip would help. It used to work for her mother, at any rate. Rainbow drove her aging Honda to the nearby town center. She wished she hadn’t kicked all her friends to the curb just because Mark didn’t like them. She missed having girl chats. But, then again, Mark hadn’t liked anyone, but her. That, alone, should have told her something was off. What kind of man never wants to leave his apartment, or in this case, her apartment.

Strolling the town center at 2:30 in the afternoon was different than hitting it at hot times. Only a few mothers with strollers full of babies and a couple of senior citizens dotted the through-fare. Jewelry! Isn’t that the answer to every girl’s dilemma?

Walking into one of the big anchors, Rainbow made her way to the jewelry counter. Rings? Nah, just made her remember Mark. Necklaces. They were safer. He had never given her any jewelry in their years together, so nothing truly reminded her of him. A thin silver necklace with semi-precious stones at its center, drew her attention. She carefully picked it off the display and looked at it.

Then a man grabbed her arm. “Excuse me, Miss. You seem to know what a girl would like in the way of jewelry.” She looked up and up and up - How tall was this guy - into the kindest blue eyes she’d ever seen. His smile lit up his face. She was mesmerized.

He laughed softly and she was shaken out of her dream. “Oh! I don’t know anything … I mean, is this for your girlfriend? Wife?”

“Sister,” he said. “She insisted she wanted jewelry for her birthday this year and frankly, I haven’t got a clue what she’d like. Can you help a poor misguided fellow out?”

Rainbow laughed. “I’ll try. Tell me about her. What’s she like?”

“Mary Ann? She’s a pistol is what she is. Tom boy as a young girl. Now that’s she’s eighteen, all of sudden she thinks she’s Princess Diana. What about this one?”

What he held looked more like something an aging duchess would wear, not something a teenager would go for. “Hmm,” said Rainbow. “I think perhaps something more like … this.” She handed him the necklace she’d been looking at. “It’s simple, yet elegant. We tomboys need to stick together.”

His face lit up. “Thank you so much. I’m Colin Marshall, by the way … and you are?”

“Nobody,” she mumbled sullenly. “Um, I mean, Rainbow Jennings. Nice to meet you.”

“Rainbow?” he asked, a slight smile forming on his lips.

“My parents are wannabe hippies,” she said, laughing.

“Well, Rainbow, the pleasure is all mine, I can assure you. After I buy this necklace, would you have time to catch a coffee with me? My treat.”

He wants to do coffee - with me? “Um, okay.” What the hell is wrong with me? Was she physically incapable of saying no? Perhaps she was burdened with some pathological need to bring misery on herself?

Once the sale was final, they walked in silence to the coffee kiosk in the town center, where he purchased two vanilla lattes for them. He found them a cozy table for two.

“So, Rainbow,” he said, smiling at her across their coffees, “Tell me about your life and how you come to be in a town center at 2:45 on a Wednesday.”

Rainbow sighed deeply. “I’m afraid it’s a very pathetic tale and as I don’t wish to bring you down …”

“Don’t worry about that. Just meeting you has improved my day immeasurably.”

Perhaps it is you who are pathological, she thought, carefully sipping her extremely hot beverage. “Okay, then. The Cliff notes version. Girl met boy. Girl loved boy. Boy didn’t love girl. Boy brings new girl to apartment and old girl walks in. Screaming. Things flying around the room. Boy leaves. You get the gist.”

She was watching his reaction but he did not seem to have one. Darn, this one was very hard to read.

“That is a sad story. But it’s a past-tense story, right? You’ll just have to write a new chapter, won’t you?”

Easy for you to say, she thought cynically, sitting there in your designer suit, buying expensive jewelry for your sister in the middle of the day. “I suppose I will. So what’s your story? How do you come to be shopping in the middle of the afternoon? Independently wealthy? Trust fund kid? Lottery winner? Bank robber?”

“Of those choices, I think I’d prefer bank robber, although I can’t say I’ve tried that one yet.” He grinned at her.

“So what are you then, if not a ruthless scoundrel?”

He took a long pull on his coffee and said seriously, “Just a hard working man on a coffee break to buy his favorite little sister a gift. But alas, I must get back to work so I must bid you adieu, Rainbow.”

She stood up too quickly, almost causing the chair to fall over behind her. “Um, well, thanks for the coffee.” Walk away … just walk away.

“Wait,” he said, as she turned to go. “Are you busy Friday evening?”

“Why do you ask? Need a getaway driver?” she joked.

He laughed. “That’s when Mary Ann’s party is. If she likes the gift, I’d love to be able to say that you recommended it.”

Well, that’s an original pickup line, Rainbow thought, amused.

“Sure, I’d love to come meet your favorite sister.”

“I can pick you up …”

“Why don’t we meet here, by the coffee shop, if that’s okay.”

“That’s fine. See you here, Friday at 7. Until then, let your colors shine.” He laughed and walked toward the exit. The man sure did know how to dress. His clothing hung perfectly on his perfectly manly body. Stop it, Rainbow warned herself. The last thing you need right now is another problem.