Story Orgy Presents: Holiday Flashes #1 By Design part 2

Good morning Story Orgy readers! Hope you're having a fantastic day. Got your coffee? We've got just a few announcements to share today before we get started with our Holiday stories...

Em has a new release today- this is a fabulous sexy re-telling of Dicken's holiday classic, A Christmas Carol. 

You can get more holiday cheer from the Story Orgy crew in And The Prompt Is: Holiday Edition 

now only 2.99 at All Romance E-books and Amazon! 

Merry Christmas to Dianne Hartsock who gifted me with the following prompt: 

Person: firefighter; Place: Santa's Workshop; Thing: sugar cookies

By Design

Conclusion 

copyright Nov. 2012 by Lee Brazil 

***

He stood outside the door of a dingy little apartment in a building identical to his own, balancing the cheery wrapped plate of cookies on one palm, while banging fruitlessly on the door with the other. The sound seemed to echo in the interior, but no answer came. His brows drew tight together; he shifted the plate to his other hand and pressed his palm flat to the door. No heat seeped through.

There was no keyhole to peer through, no peephole to try to spy through.

"Hello?" He called. Somewhere in the distance a thready, weak strand of music drifted in the air. Something sad, and not quite seasonal, not quite distinguishable.

A roaring in his ears soon blocked that sound as well, and all he heard was the rapid trip-thump of his own heart as he stood before that silent, dingy door, waiting for admittance.

In an effort to achieve calm, he drew in a deep breath, and that's when he caught the scent of something evil. Not smoke, no. Smoke was thick and menacing, it reached out and choked you, burned your eyes and will away in visible swirls. If smoke and fire were on the other side of that door, he wouldn't be able to do a damn thing for whoever Aiden had sent him to save.

This was something worse. Something sneaky and perverse, a killer that stole breath without pain, took life without care.

But it was an evil he could fight, a demon he could face more easily than smoke and flame. Foolish as it may seem, he set the cookie plate carefully near the wall, and spun out in a wide angled kick, splintering the door just above the lock.

The foul gas rushed out over him, and he yanked his red thermal long sleeved t-shirt up to cover his nose and mouth, stepping into the bleak apartment. A thin figure lay on a battered mattress in the corner, narrow chest rising slowly under a shabby quilt.

"Hey!" Kyle called. He turned left into the kitchen, where just like in his own unit, a single window let in meager sunlight in the day and reflected desolation back at him in the darkness.  He shoved that window up as far as it could go then, when it refused to stay put, shattered it with a cast iron skillet that sat on the stove top. His second priority was twisting the dial to shut off the flow of sodium scented gas that drenched the air with noxious rotten egg fumes.

The idiot was either trying to kill himself or ...

Let's just go with idiot, Aiden's voice whispered in his ear.

"Hey!" Kyle called again, grabbing a worn blue terry cloth dish towel from the scarred counter top. Kyle ignored the fact that it had a smear of tomato sauce on one end and doused it with cool water from the tarnished tap. Wringing the towel out as he walked to the mattress, Kyle ignored the puddles he left on the utilitarian grey carpet.

At the man's side, Kyle wrapped the cloth about the stranger's mouth and nose and hefted the man in his arms, shabby quilt and all. There was no balcony so, he'd have to take him out in the hall until the air cleared.

And that's where he was, an hour later. Sitting in the dim hall, leaning against the wall, a stranger's ginger head in his lap, sifting his fingers through fine silky straight hair, a plate of sugar cookies on his left. Bemused.

 Frosty lashes lifted from pale freckled cheeks, and Kyle found himself staring down into pale blue eyes. "Hello," he said.

Check back next week for my second Holiday short, 

Wearing His Ring

based on prompts by Jambrea! 

If you enjoyed my post, check out the other Orgiasts at

Em Woods - http://authoremwoods.com/

Havan Fellows - http://havanshawthaven.blogspot.com/

Hank Edwards - http://hankedwardsbooks.com/hankerings

Jade Baiser - http://jade-wetdreams.blogspot.com/