It’s actually not National Tell a Story Day today. It’s tomorrow, but I’ve managed to write stories for two days that are very close to each other. Tomorrow, when National Tell a Story Day is, is release day for Rufus the Dead. Which means we’ll just have to celebrate Saved by the Bear today instead.
This is a short story, and it was part of last year’s Top Ten Gay Romance anthology from JMS Books, yay 🥳 The Top Ten Gay Romance anthologies gather the ten best-selling gay romances of every year that are less than 15k words, so short stories.
Since we’re celebrating National Tell a Story Day, you can count on there being a book. It’s a magic book, one that will tell you your story, and then your future. It’ll even show you how you’ll die.
Frode inherits the book, but it shows him dying the next day, and he can’t let that happen, so he tries to change his fate. Not an easy task, plus it’s hard knowing what’s true and what’s not. Especially since the book shows him strange things, like his neighbour being a bear and such.
It’s a short, fated mates story with a bear shifter.
Saved by the Bear
Would knowing how you die change the way you live?
Frode Hall inherits a book that promises to tell his story, and it does. It starts with a recap of his childhood, leads him through his teens and into adult life. Then it turns a page and shows how he dies in a car crash the following day. Frode panics, but can he trust the book? It’s showing a huge Grizzly sneaking around the garden, and there are no bears in the garden, only Imre, his neighbor.
By not being in his car when the predicted car crash was to take place, he survives another day. But someone has learned he has the book, and it’s showing ninjas breaking into his apartment to get it. Unsure of what to do, Frode turns to Imre. Frode doesn’t know what to believe about his growling and talk of mates, but he trusts Imre to help him. They leave the city in a hurry, but will the book give them enough warning to keep them alive or will their journey end in a gruesome prophecy?
Buy links:
Paranormal Gay Romance: 14,970 words
JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/SavedByTheBear
Chapter 1
Frode Hall double-checked the lock on the front door of his apartment. It wouldn’t keep Imre Warrick, his downstairs neighbor, out if he wanted in, but it made him feel better.
He didn’t believe Imre would break in. He growled and grunted every time Frode was nearby, which was way more often than it should have been, but he hadn’t shown any tendencies of wanting to hurt him.
Imre had a sixth sense for when Frode would enter the building. He was the biggest man Frode had ever had the pleasure of being wary of, but he was convinced it was his imagination that painted Imre in a bad light.
And things could’ve gone spectacularly bad a couple of weeks ago when Dario had found his apartment. He wasn’t hiding from Dario, but he hadn’t let him know where he’d gone either.
When Dario had banged on his door and shouted at Frode to let him in, Frode had opened but not moved out of the way. He didn’t want to be alone with Dario behind closed doors ever again. Then Imre had come up the stairs. He hadn’t spoken, but by a miracle, Dario had left.
If Imre was the biggest man Frode had the pleasure of being wary of, Dario was the first man he’d been afraid of, at least in his adult life. He had no idea how things could’ve gone as badly as they had.
Dario had swept him off his feet. He’d been kind and charming and made Frode want to do everything he asked for. It was fine in the beginning, but then Dario had wanted him to do things he wasn’t comfortable with, had wanted him to stop seeing his friends and family, had wanted him to dress a certain way, to eat and drink what Dario wanted him to eat and drink, and so on.
Like one of those horror stories you read about in the paper, and Frode was too ashamed of having bought Dario’s lies to talk to anyone about it.
The final straw had been when he’d lied about having had coffee—Frode loved coffee—and Dario had slapped him hard enough to split his lip and then smashed all their cups on the kitchen floor. He’d told Frode to clean it up since it was his fault Dario had been forced to destroy the cups.
With a stinging cheek, a pulsing lip, the taste of blood on his tongue, and tears running down his cheeks, Frode had cleaned up the mess. The next day, he’d called every number of every landlord he could find. It didn’t matter where he moved, but he had to get out.
He’d finally gotten hold of Julieta Bedolla, a rapid-talking woman who had a small flat that had been vacated the day before despite there being two months left on the tenant’s contract. It wasn’t until Frode had signed the lease for six months, she told him the reason the previous renter had moved was because the downstairs neighbor scared away all their friends when they came to visit.
Luckily—perhaps not the word he’d used a few weeks ago—he didn’t have any friends left for Imre to scare.
Heaving a sigh, he slumped on the ratty couch he’d picked up at the thrift store. It had been a weird day. He’d been halfway through his first cup of coffee and had been staring at the toast he was working up to take a bite of when his phone rang.
The woman calling claimed to be Norman Hall’s lawyer. Norman was Frode’s dad’s uncle, and he hadn’t had any contact with his dad’s side of the family, his dad included, since he was a teen.
The attorney had told Frode to come to her office, and since it was his day off work, he had. Norman had died peacefully in his bed two months prior, and Frode was one of the heirs named in his will. Frode hadn’t believed her. He hadn’t spoken to Norman since his parents’ divorce, and he’d believed him long gone already.
The lawyer handed him a flat paper box. Inside was a set of keys, some papers about an old cabin in Draymoor, which was about ninety miles outside of Pinedale, and an old leather-bound book with brass-colored letters forming the phrase Will Tell Your Story. Frode stared at the book, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, while the lawyer kept talking as if nothing had happened. He shut the box and shuddered before forcing himself to listen to what she was saying.
She apologized for not having gone to the cabin to check. She believed it was still standing but in need of fixing. The way she grimaced gave Frode a sinking feeling. The damn cabin would cost him a fortune, he was sure of it. Maybe he could sell it. There was some land attached to it, so perhaps it was worth something.
When he’d exited her office, he’d had a voicemail from his father. He’d made sure to block the number, but what the heck was he doing calling Frode? Maybe he too had inherited something, but it was no reason for him to call.
It was all too surreal for him to deal with right now. Instead, he reached for the box with the book. Part of him wanted to grab it and never let go while another wanted to throw the entire box out the window, making keys, papers, and the book disappear.
Now his heart was hammering in his chest as he opened the box. His hands shook as he reached inside.
It was the creepiest, most glorious book he’d ever seen. A shiver went through him as he stroked the cover. Will Tell Your Story. Nonsense.
Carefully, he opened the book and stared at the first page.
It was blank.
What the fuck? A laugh bubbled out of him. An unwritten book. He slumped against the backrest. A diary. He was so silly. All day he’d been buzzing with anxiety over the freaking book. Will Tell Your Story made sense if you wrote your story in it.
Frode had never kept a diary in his entire life, but maybe he should. Maybe this was a push from the universe. Why the hell had Norman wanted him to have it? An unwritten diary.
He bent the pages and allowed them to fall one at a time—blank, blank, blank.
A sentence.
He almost dropped the book, then tried to find the place again where he’d seen something written. The pages turned on their own to the middle of the book where he read Frode Hall sat on his ratty couch in embellished writing.
He stared. Could Norman have guessed he’d sit on a couch when he opened the book?
The words changed. His heart beat fast as he read.
Around him, the apartment spun, his stomach lurching as if he was on a roller coaster, and Frode was watching himself from above. The words on the page changed again, but before he could read them, he shrieked and slapped the book shut.
He hadn’t more than closed his lips around the shriek before feet shook the staircase.
“Frode!” Imre banged on his front door. “Frode, open up.”
Oh, shit. Frode put the book back into the box and went into the hallway.
He stared at the ugly brown apartment door as it shook under Imre’s assault. “I’m okay.”
The banging stopped. “Open.”
“I’m okay.” This time, he whispered it.
“I want to see for myself, so please open. I won’t come inside.”
Frode’s heart picked up speed again. Were the doors so thin Imre could hear him whispering through them? He unlocked the door and opened it to a small gap. “It was a spider. I don’t like spiders.”
Imre gave him an unimpressed look. His blond hair was tousled, and he was dressed in nothing but worn jeans and a black tank top, despite the chilly April temperatures. He looked like a Norse god, which was highly unfair considering Frode was the one with Scandinavian blood in his veins.
“A spider?” Imre didn’t look like he believed him.
“Yes, a spider. I squashed it.”
Silence stretched. “A spider?” This time, he spoke slowly.
“Yes.” Frode dragged it out. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“You screamed.”
Taking a deep breath, Frode nodded. “Sorry.”
Imre studied him until Frode squirmed.
“Let me know if you see more, and I’ll help you.” He turned around and walked down the stairs, barefoot, leaving Frode to gape at his descending back. Had the mean-looking Norse god below offered to kill spiders for him? Maybe Frode had misjudged the level of meanness.
Holly Day 