Touching the Rainbow

Paul Jones

Description

Touching the Rainbow tells the story of a young man, Pete, a victim of a dysfunctional childhood who is riddled with insecurity and self-doubt. He is not married, but has been engaged to his long-suffering girlfriend for 11 years. Suddenly, fate delivers a severe blow and he is killed in a car crash.To his horror, he becomes a trapped soul. His salvation arrives in the form of a celestial helper who tells him that it is all the emotional problems he suffered on earth that are keeping him from moving on. To free his soul, he must accomplish a mission that will force him to face up to all the fears and regrets he tried to shy away from when he was alive. However, in doing this, he also discovers some shocking revelations about his past, and a startling twist to the meaning of his former life... Touching the Rainbow has been inspired by the works of James Herbert; the simplistic yet realistic style of Herbert's TheRats led Paul to emulate the same style. The book will appeal to fans of paranormal romance fiction, as well as readers with a deep sentimental core and a natural curiosity about the mysteries of life.

Sujets

• Romance

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783067541
• Langue: English

Extrait

Touching the Rainbow
Paul Jones

Copyright © 2014 Paul Jones
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador ®
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ISBN 978 1783067 541
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador ® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

For Pat, Katie, Max – the big fella – and Baz.
Contents

Cover


CHAPTER 1


CHAPTER 2


CHAPTER 3


CHAPTER 4


CHAPTER 5


CHAPTER 6


CHAPTER 7


CHAPTER 8


CHAPTER 9


CHAPTER 10


CHAPTER 11


CHAPTER 12


CHAPTER 13


CHAPTER 14


CHAPTER 15


CHAPTER 16


CHAPTER 17


CHAPTER 18


CHAPTER 19


CHAPTER 20


CHAPTER 21


CHAPTER 22


CHAPTER 23


CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 1

So you want to know what happens to you when you die. You want to know whether you go to heaven or hell, or do you just become consumed by total darkness and vanish from existence forever?
Fine, then I will tell you. First, for all those people out there who think that when you’re dead, that’s it, finite, nothingness, this does not happen. How do I know this? Simple, I am dead. No, I don’t mean that in a figurative way, I mean, I am actually dead. Just like the famous parrot scene in Monty Python’s – And Now For Something Completely Different . I am bereaved of life; I’ve run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. I am an ex- human being.
The thing is, I am dead, as I’ve already mentioned, but I am still here to talk about it. I think, therefore I am, and all that... My consciousness still remains; I can still hear and feel in the emotional sense. But in the physical sense I can’t touch, at least not in my present state. And things, whether they are in a physical or material form, cannot touch me. I’ll go into all that in much more detail later on, I promise.
Secondly, is there a heaven or a hell? Well, there isn’t for me, not for Pete Cooper, that’s my name by the way. No, it looks like both those places have also rejected me. Even in death there appears to be abandonment, typical, my luck. As for the actual existence of an everlasting paradise for the pure and righteous, or a place of fire and brimstone reserved for evil souls – I really have no idea. Or, simply, I haven’t experienced either, yet. Maybe, that comes later, who knows?
However, before I delve deeper into all the common myths and the actual truths about death and the other side, I suppose I’d better give you some background information about myself. Once I have explained who I am, or was, what kind of person I used to be, and what actually caused my demise, I’m sure everything will be a little clearer.
I was born thirty-six years ago to an unwedded couple, Pamela and John, who looked like the odd couple straight out of the seventies. There was my mum, a no-nonsense, prim and proper young lady with her nose so high in the air that they almost had to put a beacon on it to warn low-flying aircraft. And then there was my father, the polar opposite, a chain-smoking hell’s angel wannabe with a silly ponytail. Just what is it with good girls and bad boys?
Apparently, I was the result of a brief fling, a September courtship, or whatever you want to call it. As it happened, my mother and father worked together in a carpet shop. My father was one of the carpet fitters, and my mother was the daughter of the man who owned the shop, my grandfather. Mum, incidentally, used to help out with the sales and administration work in the office.
It was during that time, my mother and father began to date for a while. I say for a while because their romance faded out after only six months. Well, you know what they say: sex always gets in the way of a perfectly good relationship. Or the only good thing to come from casual sex is a great sleep. In fact, the real reason that their relationship floundered was because my mother had suddenly realised that becoming a future Mrs Cooper wasn’t such a great prospect. In other words, she discovered that he was cheating on her. Yet, not so long after she split up with my father she found out she was a few weeks’ pregnant with me. But instead of doing the decent thing and getting married, both my respective parents decided to become the right-on, free-thinking radicals and bring up their child as single parents.
Of course, this stirred up a lot of trouble with my proud grandparents, in particular, my grandfather, plus the fact that it threatened the very moral fibre of our respectable community. You see, back in the late seventies, this type of unwedded behaviour was frowned upon by society in general. Anyway, the tension between my father and grandfather had got so bad that my father had to quit his job in the shop. Later he set himself up as a freelance carpet fitter.
Not so long after all this I was born, a 7lb bundle of wailing pink flesh and was named Peter simply because the comedian Peter Cook just happened to be in the newspapers at the time. It was my grandfather who had noticed the similarity: Pete Cooper and Peter Cook. I couldn’t really see the connection myself and I later suspected that he must have drunk too much bubbly in celebration of my birth.
During my early upbringing, my mother couldn’t quite handle the burden of being a single parent. She just wasn’t the maternal type. There were never really many hugs and kisses; she hated all that touchy-feely stuff. Sometimes, when I would wrap my arms around her, she would softly clip my ear and tell me to behave. Although, saying that, my father wasn’t much different either. To show me that he cared, he would buy me presents instead. At the time I didn’t mind. What kid doesn’t like getting gifts on a regular basis?
In my mother’s defence, being a single parent was extremely hard for her, especially back in those days, and particularly as she didn’t even want a child at that time in her life. That said, it’s safe to say that she was lucky to have my beloved grandparents, to help bear the brunt of rearing a child.
My grandfather was a big bear of a man. He was about six-foot-three and always reminded me of Grizzly Adams, especially with his rug of silver hair and his white beard, plus he always smelt of Old Spice aftershave. He started his carpet shop business back in the mid-sixties and sold his carpets mainly to trade customers, businesses, hotels and nursing homes. The types of carpet he sold back then were the machine-woven ones like Axminster and Wilton. He started out fairly simply and didn’t provide the wider range of products most carpet shops have today like rugs and mats, linoleum tiles, vinyl, cork and wood strip, cushions and throws. Of course, as his business grew he did include many of these items as part of his stock.
My early memories of my grandmother were of this jovial little woman with rosy-apple cheeks who used to live in a flowery apron; I’m sure she used to sleep in it too. She always reminded me of those post-war housewives whose main job was to stay at home and look after the family. Although she was small in height, she compensated for this in width as she was quite a pear-shaped woman. This was probably due to all those pies she used to bake and secretly scoff when my grandfather was at work.
My early years were spent living with my mum at my grandparents’ house. We all lived in a well-kept, middle-class detached, with a grand, old pine tree at the bottom of the garden, on the outskirts of a small Welsh seaside town called Llangwyn. Of course, my father visited me on occasions, and would always bring me a present. I remember thinking that he must be Santa Claus or something, as Christmas would come twice a month for me. I was the luckiest boy alive.
When I was two-years-old I had my first brush with the paranormal. I suffered a major epileptic fit and was rushed to the hospital. I don’t actually recall anything about the seizure itself, but I was told by my mother, when I was a bit older, that they found me in the chair in the living room with my eyes rolled to the back of my head. On the way to the hospital, however, I had stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated. I can’t honestly say for sure but it was during this time that I had what I would call an experience. I remember seeing this young, freckled girl of about nine-years-old; she had rich-copper hair that gently ruffled in a light breeze like flames licking at her head and she had the most gorgeous azure-blue eyes I have ever seen. And she was dressed in a little denim pinafore. She giggled at me, a giggle of pure excitement, the way a child reacts when their grandparents come to visit. Then, she waved her hand at me and made a sad farewell face before blowing me a kiss. Who was she? Was it a dream? Or was it for real?
Yet, despite the fact that I had stopped breathing, was I actually dead or was my brain still functioning efficiently enough to cause some sort of hallucination? This is what some sceptics and many members of the medical profession would have you believe. Well, if it was a dream, I never dreamt about her again so I can’t say for sure.
In any event, the paramedics managed to save me, although for th