As a digital exclusive, I'm including one extra short story that's not in the print edition! Enjoy!
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On his 257th birthday, Reginald got stuck in a bank.
Well, yes alright, it was a bank robbery, but you know, it sounded better to say "in a bank." Less horrifically embarrassing.
Imagine, someone like Reginald Schilverspün (and he's heard all the jokes about being born with things his mouth, and yes, they're all very clever but, you know, after 257 years the joke gets rather tired don't you think? So he'll thank you very much for not telling it. Besides, he wasn't.) Imagine! Reginald getting stuck in the middle of a bank robbery on his birthday.
Really now; only Reginald.
∞
On his 8th birthday, Reginald got new shortpants from his father ("Practical, son. Take good care of those and they will take good care of you."), a set of chalks from his older brother ("Colourful, see? Yellow and red and white – half a yellow, sorry. I got a new set, so you can have these.") and a pudding-bowl haircut delivered by his mother.
∞
Reginald hadn't meant to be in the bank at the same time as the robbers, only it was his birthday. He was going to pull out exactly one hundred dollars to buy new shoes and a haircut.
The first thing Reginald always did after his birthday was finished was buy a pair of solid leather shoes. Then Reginald went to a barber, the kind with the striped poles outside and straight razors inside, the kind that did haircuts the way young men should have them, not the sort that flop about in a man's eyes.
Reginald did not like using the plastic, faceless bank machines. They beeped at him and electric lights always hurt his eyes. That was one of the draw backs of having the sort of birthdays that Reginald did. Instead, Reginald liked to go inside to smile prettily at the nice young ladies in the smart suits. He preferred the personal touch of a teller, although he missed the crisp smell of the pink slips that he used to fill out.
Had Reginald used the machine today, his eyes would be smarting, but he would not be stuck in the bank.
∞
On his 13th birthday, Reginald got a new pair of leather shoes from his father ("Practical, son. Take good care of those shoes and they will take good care of you.") and a wooden sword from his older brother ("Sorry 'bout the nick in the blade, yeah? Had to try it out, first. You can have it. I made me a better one.") and a pudding-bowl haircut delivered by his mother.
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The men wore black balaclavas, which Reginald thought was entirely clichéd. Nowadays, crimes were solved with blood splatter patterns and the scratches along the sides of retrieved bullets, or at least they were on television. What good would hiding your face do when the authorities could identify a person by voice print? Silly.
Still, the blank facelessness of the masks were sufficiently intimidating, which Reginald supposed was the point.
"Oh, dear," Reginald said when they brandished their pistols and told everyone to get down on the floor. "I say, this puts me in rather a spot, boys. Do you mind terribly if I just pop out the front and let you continue without me?"
A masked man hit Reginald in the side of the head with the butt of his gun, which hurt far more than television heroes let on. He slammed the floor with the other side of his face. His last thought before the black swam over Reginald was gratitude that at least he wouldn't have the headache for long after he woke up.
∞
On his 17th birthday, Reginald got a new ledger book from his father ("Practical, son. Take good care of that ledger and it will take good care of you.") and a two-mark whore from his older brother ("Sorry she's a bit dishevelled, mate. Had to try it out, first. I found me a better one.") and a pudding-bowl hair cut delivered by his mother.
∞
The floor was cold. Reginald turned his head over so the throbbing part was pressed against the ostentatious industrial marble instead, and that felt marginally better, if not completely fantastic.
Reginald sniffed, and the dried blood that had been hanging out of his right nostril shot back up it and gave him a sneezing fit, which made his head throb even more. The horrid young man in the balaclava hit Reginald again. Reginald put his hands up over his head and said, "Sorry, sorry, my fault of course. Only, the floor is cold, rather, so do you mind terribly if I just sit up?"
"Slow," the thug said, and wasn't that just the problem with kids these days? All grunts and one word sentences that were primarily cuss words. Reginald mourned the loss of the love of language, he really did.
The man in the balaclava seemed to forget Reginald the moment he had himself upright. Of course, none of the other hostages saw fit to help Reginald. The nerve.
Reginald probed the goose egg on his temple gingerly and frowned. He really had hoped something like this wouldn't spoil his birthday. He had been so much looking forward to it this year, too.
∞
On his 22nd birthday, Reginald got a new set of fountain pens from his father, ("Practical, son. Take good care of those pens and they will take good care of you.") a pint of warm beer from his older brother ("Where on the Lord's fat backside have you been? Drink that piss and get out. She'll be here soon.") and a pudding-bowl hair cut delivered by his mother.
∞
When the throbbing in Reginald's head had subsided enough for his vision to be single, he looked around the bank. He supposed the guard was dead, though Reginald couldn't tell from where he was sitting whether the man's chest was bobbing. The pool of blood under his head suggested 'no', which was a pity because Reginald had sort of fancied being a police man this year.
Oh well.
What other options were there?
Reginald was trapped in the bank with the robbers and the hostages and the pretty tellers. Did he want to be a bank teller? No, those were all women and Reginald had never been a woman before. He wasn't really sure he wanted to be one; high heels and make up and hose, and Reginald wasn't at all sure that he'd know what to do when it came around to that time of month, and honestly, the thought of having to deal with it not only once but twelve times was rather more terrifying that he'd like to admit, so no, no women.
That left Reginald with the fellow hostages, or the hostage-takers.
Reginald found thuggery rather too dirty for his tastes, so a fellow hostage it would have to be. Reginald did so like his creature comforts.
Reginald turned to the fellow beside him – rather large about the waist and soft in the belly, which a hundred years ago would have meant wealth and nowadays meant middle class and addicted to the drive-thru – and asked, "I do beg your pardon, but what is your profession, exactly?"
"What? I'm a bartender, what the hell is it to you?"
Oh.
Well, no, Reginald did not like modern bars, with their indecent dancing girls and their loud noises, and the bright lights that always, always hurt his eyes no matter how many birthdays he'd had.
The thug behind the counter started throwing wads of paper bills towards his cohorts. They were stacked neatly and bound in a single blue rubber band in a tidy way that Reginald appreciated. The robbers all stuffed the cash into their pockets, down their shirts, into their blue jeans.
Reginald counted almost six thousand dollars vanishing into the closest thug's ratty back pocket.
Hm.
∞
On his 28th birthday, Reginald got a name-plate for his clerical desk from his father, ("Practical, son. Take good care of that plate and it will take good care of you.") and a punch in the arm from his older brother ("Piss off. Don't you have somewhere better to be, you little pus?") and a pudding-bowl hair cut delivered by his mother.
∞
"Shut up already," the closest thug said when Reginald asked another hostage his profession. Reginald was disgusted with the thug's manners and his tone, but as he was the one holding the pistol, Reginald was not about to say as much. He would like to see another 257 years, thank you.
"My apologies," Reginald said politely, and slumped backwards to lean back against a pillar and sulk ever so slightly.
This was, perhaps, the single most rotten birthday he'd ever had.
Second worst, at the very least.
"This has got to be the worst birthday I've ever had," the thug closest said.
∞
On his 31st birthday, Reginald got a new cravat from his father ("Practical, son. Take good care of that cravat and it will take good care of you.") and a door slammed in his face from his older brother ("Sod off!") and a pudding-bowl hair cut delivered by his mother.
Reginald also got pissed drunk in the public house, toasted himself with a muttered, "bothersome things, birthdays," got mugged in an alley way, and pulled out of the gutter by a strange, slightly aromatic man in a too-dark coat.
"Rough run of luck, eh?" the man asked.
Reginald nodded, unsure he could speak around his split lip.
"Happens every year, eh?" the man asked. He scratched his chin, at the mangy beard, then stopped and stared at the backs of his hands as if he had never seen them before. Odd. "This is a bad day to have a birthday."
Reginald nodded again.
"My birthday too," the man said.
Reginald raised an eyebrow. That hurt, so he lowered it again.
"Maybe next year will be better, eh?"
"Rather," Reginald ventured, drooling blood on his shirt front. He frowned down at it and tried to brush it off, but only succeeded in smearing it further. "Oh, say; how did you know it was my--."
He was gone.
"I say," Reginald muttered and picket at the grime off his jacket and took himself home and ordered up a bath.
∞
"Oh," Reginald said to the thug beside him, "I do beg your pardon, but did you just say that today is your birthday?"
The man's eyes gave the impression of scowling behind his knit mask. "Yeah, so?"
Reginald smiled pleasantly, wide and white. "As it so happens, today is also my birthday. How fortuitous."
"Yeah, whatever."
"I say, may I have a word with you in private, then?" Reginald asked. "Just in the men's, you know. I really do need the loo," he added, for the little extra push.
The man sighed but nodded and followed Reginald to the washroom with his gun pointed at Reginald's back.
∞
On his 32nd birthday, Reginald got nothing from his father, nothing from his older brother, and never had time for a pudding-bowl hair cut delivered by his mother. Reginald was attacked by the rather aromatic man, the same one who had helped him up from the gutter the year before.
"Oh!" Reginald said. "How did you get into my rooms?"
The man stepped away from the window – oh, yes, there was a large tree beside it, wasn't there? – and then rather presumptuously sat on Reginald's chest.
"Oh!" Reginald said again. "Oh, I say! Now, now, I am... I am not the sort of fellow who... I know I have never been married, but really I have just been waiting, you see for the right girl. I prefer girls, really--"
It wasn't precisely a kiss, though what it was Reginald would be remiss to explain, even after 257 years. He only knew that it was very, very different. And very unpleasant. Reginald suddenly had great sympathy for his mother; beard burn was singularly uncomfortable.
Something pushed at Reginald and it was not the aromatic man's hands or thighs or tongue or, god forbid, his hips. It was something else, something more. Something deep down inside that started warm and tingly, kind of like what Reginald had always supposed love would feel like, and ended cold and hard and shoving, like having a block of ice dropped on one's innards.
To be perfectly frank, Reginald did not enjoy it one bit.
And so Reginald, who really was finding birthdays to be oh, so very tedious, pushed back.
The smelly man jerked his mouth off of Reginald's, squawked: "How did you--?"
But Reginald was really very angry, furious honestly, and perhaps he was exercising just a smidge of that terribly bottled-up frustration that came from thirty two years of the most horrible birthdays that any man has ever had to suffer, so Reginald pushed, pushed, pushed until, pop!, Reginald was in the wrong place.
"Oh dear," Reginald said, staring down at his own body, laying very, very still on the bed under his thighs. "I do believe I'm not breathing."
∞
Before Reginald exited the washroom, he pushed the balaclava up off his head and let it drop on the floor beside the dead body. "Ta, chap," Reginald said to the body, because it really had been a good body to him. No venereal diseases at all. Shame the bodies only lasted one year before rotting.
Reginald crawled out of the tiny washroom window, shimmied rather gracelessly down the filthy wall of the alley behind the bank, and slipped down a manhole. Reginald made his way carefully through the tunnels, noting regretfully that this was probably the smelliest birthday he'd ever endured, though most definitely the richest, and followed a bend and a service door into a subway station. He waited for a thick crowd of commuters to pass by and slipped into the press of people.
At the barrier, Reginald reached into his back pocket and pulled out enough change to make fare. He rode the train for a few hours, humming the Birthday Song to himself, and exited at the first station that started with "R".
∞
On his 33rd birthday, Reginald got a new body, one that wasn't at all smelly and rarely got razor burn, one that was very young, and attractive. Then Reginald got a room and hot bath at an inn a few hour's walk down the road, and got a large dinner and a serving wench sent up. Then Reginald got drunk, got laid, got robbed by the wench in the middle of the night, and got a splitting hangover in the morning, in that order.
Then Reginald got the hell out of that town and headed towards France.
On his 35th birthday, Reginald returned to Germany. He gave his father back the ledger, the fountain pens, and the name-plate. He gave his mother a pudding bowl hair cut. He stole his older brother's body and spent a year treating his brother's sorry wife better than his brother ever did. On his 36th birthday, Reginald got a bank account and put five marks in it. Then Reginald took out a very large insurance option on his own life. Then Reginald got a new body and left his widow with everything except a husband.
∞
"Spare some change?" the boy sitting beside door of the subway car said, and held out a battered paper Tim Horton's coffee cup.
Reginald stopped and looked down at the boy. "Is it your birthday today, son?"
"Sure," the beggar boy said. "Could be."
"It's mine too!" Reginald confided. "How lovely."
∞
On his 100th birthday, Reginald got a panic attack and spent the whole night in a church. In the morning he got the body of the priest and spent the next year learning all the juicy secrets of the congregation. For a group of people who committed the sin of fornication so often, Reginald thought it was unkind of them for not sharing with him.
On his 101st birthday, Reginald stood in front of the congregation and said as much. As he was fleeing town, Reginald remembered that he had left a bank account in Germany and went to see how much interest he had accumulated.
∞
"Here," Reginald said, taking a sheaf of the flimsy red and amber bills from his pocket. "Buy yourself some solid leather shoes. They're practical, son. Take care of them and they will take care of you."
The beggar boy blinked. "What does that even mean?"
Reginald blinked back. "Frankly, I have no clue."
Reginald shrugged kind of sideways and began to whistle. He stepped off the subway car onto the garish, sticky platform and bounced towards the exit.
He emerged into the too-bright city, and did not let the annoyance of new eyes niggle at him. The world was filled with typical urban ambience – crying children, honking horns, the chug of mufflers, the whine of distant sirens, the concrete rattle of construction.
Reginald split his new lips into a wide white grin. Finally, a good birthday. Happy birthday, Reginald!
The sirens got closer.
It wasn't until they were right beside his ear that Reginald remembered that his new face had been all over television, wanted for theft.
∞
For his 258th birthday, Reginald got to walk out of the jail in the body of the rather portly guard who used to bruise Reginald's shoulder if he took too long in the john.
Serves you, Reginald thought mercilessly, stepping over his old body neatly, already looking forward to his new haircut.
A police officer at last. He was feeling a little, well, vengeful. The baton felt good in his fist.
Maybe this year would be better.