Short Stories WR Woodbury

"Hercules is coming to town".  It wasn't every day Bill would have the chance to meet his childhood hero.  This was too good to pass up. "What's he going to do?  Tear apart a few lions?" Paul was sarcastic, pretending as usual he was a world-weary cynic.  He and Bill had been thrown together by the college residential authorities who thought they might be compatible.  It hadn't worked out as planned.  "Don't be stupid." Bill was sorry he'd even mentioned Hercules or Mike Sturges who played him in a couple of films.  The legend was hard to avoid thanks to the poster of the wide shouldered, wasp-waisted, thunder-thighed actor, posing in a leather peplum that was pinned to the wall of their shared room.   Bill was tall but scrawnier than his hero even though his dad kept him working hard on the ranch while he was growing up. He was determined to have a body like Hercules, so with the money he got by selling a calf, he bought the Herc

  “You can visit us on Sundays,” Gordon said.  Pip looked at the pointed toes of his shoes.  “I’d rather not,” he said.  “I’d be in your way,” he said. “Nonsense,” Gordon answered.  “Stella already knows about you, so we wouldn’t have to pretend.” Pip's bulldog face had first loomed into view at Gordon’s bedroom window just as he was about to start primary school. Gordon had woken up one morning and there he was. At first only his knitted cap appeared, but once his mouth was visible over the high windowsill he hadn't stopped talking.  He didn’t tell his own stories but asked a lot of personal questions to get to know Gordon.  What was his name, how old he was, his favourite food, what things he hated, and a lot of things Gordon hadn’t thought about before like whether he liked his mother or father better.  Once they got to know each other, Pip started giving advice, not all of which Gordon agreed with.  “Why don’t we go to the playground instead of school?” or “Think of

It was common knowledge that the Emperor hated the English.  His mother was English and he believed she was responsible for his withered arm.   When he asked the Pianist to bang out "I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside" he was feeling sentimental about the superb show his sailboat had made so long ago at Cowes Week and what a pleasure it had been to thumb his nose at his English cousins. It was a shame they had fallen out.   It was the old lady’s fault.   There weren’t any half-English snobs invited to the hunting lodge that weekend where the Emperor and his cronies were celebrating a day of hunting.   They had bagged a brace of deer, five chamois, a baby boar, and enough woodcock to make the sideboard groan. But if the English relatives had seen the gusto with which the Emperor had slaughtered the noble animals, they would have said he was mad.  He thought the English were mad, starting with his mother.  It was a standoff nobody could win.  That evening, conflicts were forg