Ira Robinson's Blog, page 4

Innocence: Black Rose Files | Book 3

My newest release, Slipped: Black Rose Files | Book 1, is now available through Amazon!

The Black Rose Files is a new book series!

Book 1, Slipped is released! Click here to find it on Amazon!

Book 2, Revenant will be released 1/23/19 (Preorder TODAY!)

Book 3, Innocence will be released 2/6/19 (Preorder 1/12/19)

Follow me here as well as on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to keep in touch with each new release!

Innocence: Book 3 of The Black Rose Files

Blurb coming soon!

Pick up Slipped: Black Rose Files | Book 1 today on Amazon, and it is also enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program, so you can even read it for free!

 

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The post Innocence: Black Rose Files | Book 3 appeared first on Original Worlds.

Revenant: Black Rose Files | Book 2

My newest release, Revenant: Black Rose Files | Book 2, is now available for preorder through Amazon!

The Black Rose Files is a new book series!

Slipped is released! Click here to find it on Amazon!

Book 2, Revenant will be released 1/23/19 (Preorder TODAY!)

Book 3, Innocence will be released 2/6/19

Follow me here as well as on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to keep in touch with each new release!

REVENANT: Book 2 of The Black Rose Files

Dark magic family secrets can kill…

Samantha Miller is a cop in a small town she thought was like any other, until she uncovers the magic and monsters that threaten all of existence, starting with her.

Tanglewood is where the paranormal is normal and the weird come to live.

When she awakens to new powers, magic tied to a past she has no memory of, the evil at the center of it all takes notice, and wants her for itself.

Has her family been involved in a secret society that has kept the nightmares and magic at bay?

The race to save Samantha’s life has only just begun…

The Black Rose Files is urban fantasy gone wild, a series that tells the story of one small town caught in the crossfire of magic and nightmare, beauty and demons, ghosts that taunt and monsters that are not always what they seem.

The Black Rose Society has everything under control…

Buy REVENANT – The Black Rose Files Book 2 today and discover the secrets a small town mired in darkness wants kept silent.

Pick up Revenant: Black Rose Files | Book 2 today on Amazon, and it is also enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program, so you can even read it for free!

 

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The post Revenant: Black Rose Files | Book 2 appeared first on Original Worlds.

Slipped: Black Rose Files | Book 1

My newest release, Slipped: Black Rose Files | Book 1, is now available for preorder through Amazon!

The Black Rose Files is a new book series! Slipped will be released officially on 1/9/19.

Book 2, Revenant will be released 1/23/19

Book 3, Innocence will be released 2/6/19

Follow me here as well as on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to keep in touch with each new release!

SLIPPED: Book 1 of The Black Rose Files

What would you do if your child was gone?

Tanglewood is a small town, much like any other. There are the families that run the place, people stuck in their day-to-day grind jobs, and spots to be entertained.

But Tanglewood is also where the paranormal is normal and the weird come to live.

Liz owns the bakery. She’s proud of what she does, and her place is really popular. She’s also mother to Cassie, a little girl she adores, who just happens to be a bit on the precocious side.

When Cassie goes missing, life stops and a desperate search begins.

Was it the father? He’s always had his problems, but could he go so far as to steal her child?

Or could it be something much worse?

Those woods are dangerous. There are things moving among the trees people don’t like to talk about.

And Cassie could be trapped within it all.

What’s a mother to do when her little child is lost, and the one place too horrible to think about is where she might be?

The Black Rose Files is urban fantasy gone wild, a series that tells the story of one small town caught in the crossfire of magic and nightmare, beauty and demons, ghosts that taunt and monsters that are not always what they seem.

The Black Rose Society has everything under control…

Buy SLIPPED – The Black Rose Files Book 1 today and discover the secrets a small town mired in darkness wants kept silent.

Pick up Slipped: Black Rose Files | Book 1 today on Amazon, and it is also enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program, so you can even read it for free!

 

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The post Slipped: Black Rose Files | Book 1 appeared first on Original Worlds.

Tales of Center: Clockwork Heart is NOW AVAILABLE!

My newest release, Clockwork Heart, is now available for sale through Amazon!

This novelette takes place in the world of Center, which, if you remember the previous installment of that series, is a place filled with magic and technology, monsters and men.  It’s  n interesting place to be, with wonder and danger at every turn.

If you were given the chance to live forever, would you take it? What if the offer came from an unlicensed Wizard?

Within the walls of the sprawling metropolis, Center, anything is possible. Need a dragon to do your dirty work? There’s one for hire. Want to find your true love? If they’re not in Center, one can be created for you.

When a man is given the offer to have his wish come true, and it only comes at the price of a few year’s service, he realizes he can’t pass it up.

But not everything in Center can be taken at face value…

Magic and machines, fairies and demons, humans and beings of infinite power, all call Center their home. Anything you want can be found, but sometimes what you want isn’t what you need.

Pick up Clockwork Heart today on Amazon, and it is also enrolled int he Kindle Unlimited program, so you can even read it for free!

 

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Connection – Free Short Story

“Night is coming. Get inside your shelters, and good luck.”

I flipped the switch off, the crackle of power and the descending hum that always accompanied the winding down of the radio broadcast board in front of me comforting in a strange sort of way.

I hit the button on the turntable, and the whirr of its spinning up filled the silence that had come. Soft music – an old metal song – began to filter through the speaker above the mixer. I tend to play that kind of music when the night is falling. It helps get people amped up a little, gets the adrenaline flowing. Just in case. Some of them need it, desperately.

I turned the volume down a bit more, just to make sure there would be no sound coming out of the small room I kept the equipment in. I had about five minutes before the end of the song came along and the need to switch it to something else to replace potential dead air, and started my nightly ritual of getting ready for the passage of the sun outside.

First things first, check the windows. The wood paneling I found a few weeks ago has been holding up well, and I think it’s doing a good job of blocking out any light from inside of the small building I had come to occupy, but I check it every day, just to make sure everything is in its right place. The glass has been gone for a long time, I think, but that’s okay. I wouldn’t want to look out of it, anyhow.

Door locks in place and still solid. Good. That’s always my first line of defense and would be the first thing to go if the things decided to come.

The large desk and filing cabinets I had waiting on the other side of the door would help. Hopefully.

I opened the door and checked outside, the sun still shining bright in the sky over the endless expanse of green grass and brown hills to the north, and there was no sign of anything walking that I could see.

Good. That was one of the things I really liked about this place. Whoever built it had done a good job, its structure sound and steady, and the fact it was surrounded by flat land for a mile around it each way was something I had come to appreciate.

The door slipped closed and I flipped the lock into place, then slid desk and cabinets in front of it to create a blockade.

I went to the kitchen and prepped what I would need for the night. Three bottles of water were already on the counter waiting, and I filled the filter bucket with another batch to decontaminate for the next few hours. Dinner was simple and easy, as it usually was, but I was starting to get worried about my meager provisions. I would be able to hold out for another few weeks without much issue, but I’d have to start foraging soon, and that was always a danger.

Not only from the things, but other people, too. Desperate times…

While the cook fire was getting the batch of rice ready, I went back to the broadcast room and flipped the record to another one, a dance hit from sometime in the Eighties. Whether people liked that kind of thing or not, I didn’t know, but it was a catchy tune and made me smile, anyway.

I checked the dials and saw everything was broadcasting out at the best power I could manage, the solar cells having charged the battery banks in the basements nicely without the cloud cover we’d had the past week. I was glad it finally cleared out and smiled once more at the effectiveness of whoever had built this place.

I had been so surprised to find it sitting empty, and there was no indication at all of who had created it or occupied it, nor what happened to them after the Fall, but I wasn’t going to say no to the taking.

Besides, I was doing a service, an important one, at that.

Morale is so hard to come by these days, and having a voice in the darkness can really make all the difference. I’m sure you understand completely, having lived through all of this hell, too.

If I could be a bright spot in the nightmare this world has become then so be it. I am happy to take on that lot in my life, and the few people who have been able to contact me tell me they appreciate what I am doing.

That’s good enough for me.

I brought the rice back to the room and closed the door behind me, settling into the cushioned chair for the evening.

I flicked the switch for the microphone and waited until the song playing was over, the soft whine of subtle feedback a little annoying to my ears, but that always happened when I put power to the device. I’m not sure if something is going wrong with it, or if it’s just a product of its age, but thankfully it only lasts for a couple of moments before fading out entirely.

“I hope everyone is settled in,” I intone into the microphone, my lips only a few inches from the metallic edge of it. I watched the monitor in front of me to make sure I wasn’t coming through too hot. “According to my clock, sunset will be in about 20 minutes. I’m ready for the night. Are you?”

I pulled another record out of its’ sheet and sat it on the turntable while I talked. I set it into motion again and popped the needle down on it, letting the first cadences of the song come through before going on.

“I’m going to be here with you, guys. I’m always here with you. We’re going to get through this, if we do it together.” I put my finger on the button to turn the mic off. “Be good to each other.”

The mic whined down and I sat back, letting the sound of the song, softly humming through the speaker, come into me, and I relaxed into it.

No one really knows how the things came to be, but the impact they’ve had on our world has been devastating. I’ve hear the rumors, and I am sure you have, too. Aliens? Nah, I don’t think so. If it was, I’m betting they would have come down by now and taken everything over. There are so few of us left now, after all.

All I know is the things are bright, lighting up the night like an extravagant candle while they hunt, and the day is the only time it’s safe to show your face outdoors.

I’ve only seen them once, and that was more than enough for me. It was the night before I found this place, in fact, before I took on the role of the DJ of the apocalypse, spinning the hits while oblivion opens its maw in front of us all and sucks us in.

I’d been walking through a field, desperately hungry with a pack almost as empty as my stomach. There was a hill not far ahead, the one to the north of this very building, in fact, and with night coming on, I knew I was in trouble. I’d hoped I could make it to the next town while the light of day still shone, but there was no such luck. I wasn’t even sure which direction it would be.

When I saw the flare of light, the body of the thing igniting its white-hot glare, I pressed my body into the dirt and prayed it hadn’t seen me.

I belly-crawled along as a keening wail started up, echoing across the flat of land I was occupying and each time it resounded, my stomach dropped even more. I was scared, my friend, terrified I had been spotted and would soon find myself a hollow meal for a monstrosity that thought nothing of humanity but that we were cattle.

Another echo from somewhere behind me told me there was more than one, and I knew I was in trouble. Oh gods, I was in serious crap.

My movements became more frantic as I desperately sought out some kind of shelter, something that would hide me from the watchful gazes of these incarnations of malevolence.

I think a god of some kind must have been watching out for me that night, because my body slanted downward as a large, long ditch opened up before me. I crawled into it and pulled lengths of grass out of the ground and covered myself with them camouflaging my body as much as I could.

One of the things was close. Oh, so close. I could hear the soft pads of its feet against the ground, and I am sure it came to the edge of that ditch, sensing me, perhaps, or having heard my frantic pulling at the grass to coat myself. It knew, I think, something was there, but did not come closer.

A burst of sound came from the end of the ditch I found myself in and I almost jumped up to run when I heard it, almost feeling the cold hands of the thing grasping me.

But it had been a rabbit or some other small animal, I think, startled into motion by the approach of the creature.

A loud hoot-howl emanated from the light and it shot away from my position, giving chase to the movement. I held my breath as its companion joined it, and held myself stock-still for the next few hours it took night to come to an end.

I don’t know if that bunny made it. I hope so. It was my salvation that night.

I’ve heard those hoots out in the fields surrounding this place, and I wonder if they, perhaps, are aware they missed me and are searching for me in their way, but I cannot be sure.

I do know I never want to look at one again, and, as the night comes down once again over the little land of oblivion we all now occupy, I hope you do not either.

Night is coming, folks. Get to your shelters… and good luck.

To us all.

 

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Sacred – NaNoWriMo Day 13 Story

It remained on my tongue, ashen and warm, the sacred drink a nectar so sweet the gods, themselves, would weep for its touch.

And it was mine, given as was right, nothing more than a taste, perhaps, but enough.

More than enough.

My head still reels as the priests chant their words, the hours of time since the liquid touched my mouth a blur, lost in the maze of wonder and peace as I await the coming time.

I have been cleansed already, the beautiful women washing my body with the holy oils and herbs that only they know the mixtures of, and those, too, brought a strange peace to my mind as incense carried on the winds through the temple tinkled the instruments which hung from the rafters.

Smoke haze made it difficult to see much in front of me, but that did not matter. I enjoyed the touch of their fingers on my skin as the oils were rubbed into me, and even now, if I were to run my own hands along my torso, I would feel it remaining there, a soft shield against the breeze in my otherwise nakedness. At one time, I might have been embarrassed about being uncovered, but it does not concern me now. Only the future, the coming moments in time where I am the focus of all of the power, all of the might of our people and the duty for which I have been chosen.

It is my entire purpose, the very reason I was born to begin with, my parents chosen because of their special bond with the gods and their holiness. They, too, had been set aside from birth, knowing their union, their joining would bring about this body and this life for the singular purpose I am aimed toward.

I have never known difficulty in my life, though I can recognize it in others when I see it. I would often be permitted to go out into the city which surrounded the temple. Indeed, encouraged to do so by the priests who oversaw my upbringing.

I have been graced by the eves of so many wonderful people, those who have lived their lives in the hope that I would be the one to help uplift them. I am their glory, they know, and they gifted me with anything I could desire, incapable of denying me anything I should wish.

I remember one small child, in particular, who was unable to walk, born imperfect in the legs which twisted beneath him. He looked so sad as he sat on his mat in front of the shop his parents ran, an advertisement, of sorts, you could say, his tiny voice calling out for people to come in and buy. Oh people would, as I saw; many dozens entered the shop that day. Perhaps they did it out of sympathy for the child, knowing if they were to purchase something from his parents, it would be a way of helping him, as well.

But when he saw me and recognized my glory, he did not ask me to come in and buy. No, all he wanted was for me to tough him. I could see it there in his eyes, the faith he had. It was, perhaps, one of the most beautiful things I have ever known.

I did touch him, laying my hand upon his dirty, greasy hair, tinged wet by the sweat in the hot sun that day, and said a few words, but my heart was owned by him, taken by his faith in that moment and my voice did not wish to work.

I moved on, the gaggle of priests behind me remarking at how much that child would remember this day for his life, but he would not be alone in that. I still carry that moment with me, even to this singular time when my purpose is to be fulfilled.

The gold and gems around me, embedded into the walls and carried by the priests who still chanted their incantations are not so fine as the heart of that small boy, his innocence as he prayed for his life to be better, knowing I could be that resolution… it humbled me in ways I cannot describe.

I remain silent as the men around me speak, their words rising to meet the gods in the sky above as they await the coming moment, the sign by which they will know the moment has come. The sun above was so bright when I took in the nectar, but a strange dimness has begun to obscure the clouds as I turn my eyes upward. It won’t be long now.

It is, perhaps, no magic that this day, of all days, should also be the day on which I was born eighteen years ago, carried into the world by the water that spilled from my mother and the blood I was coated in as I slid from her into the waiting arms of the priest attending her. I never knew her, but they have spoken of her many times. Her beauty was unmatched in our realm, they say, and her heart was as unblemished as her body, and though the knife that ended her life was glittering and gold as it cut her throat, it could not equal the radiance with which she went to meet the gods, the smile on her face wide and perfect.

Her name is still spoken with reverence on the streets, the people whispering it among each other as a prayer, and I find it satisfying that it should be so. She fulfilled her purpose, as will I, as do all things within the realm the gods have created. They set it all in motion, the stars above and the land below, each in its own order. Who are we to argue against it?

Who am I, of all people, to think anything is out of place?

All things in their time, and all things in their rightful order, the paths of our lives given to us from the moment of our birth. Sinners and exalted, abundance and depravity, all part of the unfathomable plan the gods have set in store for us. That was their duty, to give everything its beginning and end. Ours is to follow the pathway they want of us. As it is proscribed, so we must do.

I once asked Takana, the Highest, what he thought of the ones who sin, who have murdered or stolen from their fellows, unsure how they, too, were fulfilling their purposes.

“My son, they teach us.”

“What do you mean, master?” I asked, my young mind so confused.

“When a man kills another in anger, he has reminded us to be vigilant against rash decisions, to hold ourselves always in check, even when things look their worst. When a man steals bread, is he really a thief? Or is he merely trying to survive? Can we blame an animal for seeking out nourishment? No. We are reminded in those moments that we must do all we can to ensure there is no lack.”

“And if there is?”

“Then,” he said, before turning away, “that is because the gods wish it that way.”

I nodded, understanding that all things were, in the end, in their hands, not ours, and we must do what we can with what we are given, and ask nothing more. If it is for us to have, we will have. If we are fated to lack, then we lack.

All things were, as always, for the greater glory of the gods, to amplify them and bring them more into the hearts and minds of man, to signify by our witness that we are all within their hands.

Silence has fallen around me as the sky dims more, the words having been said, the cleansing complete. One of the priests takes a taper and lights the rest of the tallows around the circle, knowing the dark will soon be coming upon us.

The wind has grown, not enough to blow out the flames, but carrying on it the heady scent of the city below. The great mass of people has already started to gather, and from this great height, I can look down upon them and see them as, perhaps, the gods themselves do. They seem so small, so hard to discern as individuals, a great heartbeat of organisms moving as one as they, too, chant. I can almost hear them, but it is indistinct from the distance.

Is the boy there? I wonder if he, too, has become a part of the great throng or if he is one whose life has faded from his bones in the passage of time since I saw him last. Maybe he is there, somewhere in the morass, sitting on a mat drug to the place by his parents or a friend and is now looking up at me as I look down.

So many. A throng of bodies brought together for a singular moment, just as I have been. They, too, were born to be here at this time, each working their lives through struggles and survival so they could add to the music of the mob, the choir of cacophony as they lend their voices to the praise of the gods and the time of glory for which I was born.

Tears flow from my cheeks and I wish I could wipe them away, but the hands holding my arms tightly remind me that it doesn’t matter. The water flowing to my cheeks is only a small part of what will soon be released and it can stay there as it is.

My heart swells, though, as the darkness looms, and I look into the sunlight above to see the circle of light there is dimming further. The moment is upon us.

Us. Yes, the great throng below, the priests around me and my own body are united in this singular purpose, and I can feel the love of them all as they gaze upon my naked body.

A gentle prod against my arm pushes me forward to the stone sitting in the center of the circle of flames, the jasmine and musky spices wafting into my nostrils fully as I take in a deep breath and smile.

They are gentle with me as six of the men around me lift me by my limbs and I float for a brief moment as they bring me back down to the top of the stone. Its smoothness surprises me as it touches the skin on my back and I shift myself slightly to become more comfortable against its heat, warmed by the sun as it waited for me.

The Highest is there beside me now, his wizened face smiling down upon me as his beard trailed playfully in the breeze. I smile back at him as he places a gentle hand on my shoulder.

My heart is thudding, skittering inside of me as I nervously await the moment to come. It is not fear, but anticipation, knowing in a few moments all things will change for me, for the priests around, for my people as a whole. All will be transformed, bettered by my birth, and I cannot wait until I can once again look down upon them all as they live their lives.

It happens quickly, the darkness slipping over the sky like a veil, the sun becoming a ring of glory unmatched by anything a jeweler could create.

I cannot take my eyes from it, that beautiful creation the gods have graced me with as my moment has come upon me, and I am grateful I am the one to bear it witness.

A singular moment of agony rips into my chest as my skittering heart is brought to a halt by the blade that slips between my ribs, and the darkness that was a moment before only in the sky flashes into my mind and I slip away.

My purpose has been fulfilled. The last gasp of my body is the power I need to meet the gods in their heavens.

 

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“Melanie, don’t go too far,” I said as I watched my young daughter run down the street.

My stomach always dropped a little when I saw her legs moving, in those first few moments of freedom I could allow her to have.

She was four years old, and all I had left in of the life I once knew. The life we all once knew.

These moments of pureness, of when I could allow her to explore, to play, hell, to be a child, were precious and few. She was so special to me, with her long blond hair flowing behind her as the wind caught it up and tossed it all over, as the heavy clothes I had to put her in before she walked out of the front door to protect against the cold that had come on.

She was my gift.

I know every parent has the same kind of words they use for their children. Special, gifts, precious, sacred. But Melanie was different.

I guess all of our children are different, these days.

I watched her pick up a ball and bounce it around, a smile on her face even from this distance. I know I should be closer, should be watching over her like a hawk at a meal, but I also felt the need to let her have a small taste of freedom, to explore what it meant to be alive and, for a time, a kid. Those moments, too, were far and few between.

One of the other children, Max, I think, passed her by at a run, heading off to his own devices. He was a little older, probably wanting to have little to do with trying to have fun with a peer so young compared, but Melanie, at least at first, didn’t seem to pay him much mind.

I saw her turn around toward him though, and thought I caught a fleeting glimpse of regret on her face. She went back to her ball, though, the moment passing her by as Max disappeared behind the corner of a house.

I looked around me, trying to see his parents, but they were not in sight. I’m not sure why they were not, but a nervous trill ran through my veins just the same. Didn’t they know any better?

Such is the way, sometimes, though, when life is lived on a the edge of a knife so sharp you can lose everything in a heartbeat.

So much loss, so much regret. It weighs on you, a millstone sinking to the unfathomable depths of a sea that never ends. Pain, loneliness, these things become as familiar to you as your own breath, and it is only in the darkest moments of night, those few seconds between waking and sleep that you can have time to actually process it, to think about it in some kind of healing terms.

Healing. There’s so precious little of that left to us, too, a word we use to try to convince ourselves things have a sense of normalcy, that there might be some hope for the future, but it’s a hollow word.

Hope, too, is a dangerous word, though, as I looked at Melanie playing in the brightest moments of the day, when there was little space for any shadows to be able to exist, I could not help but see hope for the future.

That word though, that sensation of hope can make you lax, can lull you into a sense that all things are right with the world and there’s going to be something ahead that will make everything you go through worthwhile.

Will it be worth it, though? Will there be any kind of future, when the bleeding edges of sanity fray more and more by the day?

Hope, freedom, healing, these words are so rarely used, so rarely spoke in our little community these days, and with reason, but as I said, those moments in the night when the fears are the greatest need to have something to hold on to.

Especially when the screams start.

Even in the light of day, when the shadows are at their furthest away, the echoes of those screams can haunt, and I am glad Melanie does not seem to be bothered by them as she plays.

It makes me glad, because recess is, for our children, such a rare commodity and they must embrace it without fear, without regret.

I wish I could feel it, could let go of those sounds that filter through the thin walls of our house as we hide ourselves away in the attic. They stay with me always, even as my eyes roved over the street, looking for any sign that something was out of place.

No, it’s not possible to just let them go, to find a way to no longer hear the sound of my precious wife screaming in the night as she was taken away. The sound of her voice as she begged me to save her, plead with them to let her go, the horrific wailing that still wrenches my guts to this day as her flesh was flayed open and the beloved blood that kept her alive in this god-forsaken world we live in was shed across the ground, lapped up by desperate lips and tongues that had no right to exist.

No, those sounds I will never be able to heal from, to throw away. To forget.

So many of us gone, so many lost to the shadows that come, and though I miss many of them, she is the one from which I will never recover.

If it weren’t for Melanie and her need for me to be here for her, to protect her and keep her safe in an insane world, I would have put the shotgun to my mouth and pulled the trigger long ago.

I can’t do that, though. Melanie needs me and there is no one else who would be there for her without me. There are too few of us, now. Too many who have been lost, leaving us without the ability to sustain ourselves, even, especially with the oncoming winter.

Oh, god, what are we going to do, then?

Already, the two of us huddle in the cold room at the top of our home, the place my wife and I thought would be a shelter from a world we once understood. There is already so little in our bellies, holding off what we can to make it one more day, one more week. One more meal, clinging to the hope that we will be, finally, rescued, set free from these bonds of the shadows that come.

And, yet, I know we’re not the only ones. Those around us are going through it too, but I cannot give them any care. I can’t. We don’t have enough, even as I watch the other children around the street falling into emaciation, falling away bit by bit, day by day.

So few of us left now. Is the rest of the world still spinning? Still going through its’ travails as it always had?

Or is everyone else going through the same thing as we few are here? I suspect so. The few rumors we once had coming through our community as one person or another shuffled into the city limits spoke of the horrors they, too, witnessed.

No, we may not be alone in the horrors, but Melanie and I have always been an island unto ourselves, clinging to each other as the rest of the world falls apart.

She’s still able to smile, though more infrequently. I would give her one back, but the thought always ran through my head that she might have been doing it just to appease me, to give me something to hold on to, as only the wisdom of a child who has survived a torturous event can do.

My stomach lurches and I jump to my feet again as the loud whistle blows, the watcher pulling the string on the alarm that once was merely to warn of impending storms. Warbling, loud, echoing through the countryside.

Melanie dropped the ball as she ran, her eyes wide and desperate, back to the house, and I watched her legs flying beneath her, the sound of her footfalls against the ground muted by the volume of the siren.

She made it into the house and I slammed the door behind her, swinging the makeshift barricade into place. It always made me feel better, even if I secretly wondered if it did any good.

The ladder to the attic came down easily and I helped her make it up there, checking things over once more before joining her. She was already lighting one of the candles and pulling out one of the few remaining tins of food we had on hand.

Recess was over. The shadows were coming, and there was precious few moments left before the screams would begin again.

The post Recess – NaNoWriMo Day 12 Story appeared first on Original Worlds.

Paranoia – NaNoWriMo Day 9 Story

Jim’s day started off hard and later than he’d wanted.

A little too much to drink the night before made the alarm in the morning a klaxon he didn’t really want to deal with, but he couldn’t ignore it for long.

The bills had to be paid, after all, and sleeping in would not ingratiate him with the boss any better. That particular relationship was already bad enough, with the blame being placed on Jim for the loss of that client two days before.

Of course, that hadn’t been any of Jim’s doing. That bastard Tom was directly responsible, but had shuffled the paperwork enough to cause the evidence to go on Jim’s head, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to change that.

If he thought he could get away with it, he’d take Tom into a dark alley and show him what it meant to be honest.

But, of course, with Jim’s luck lately, it would go terribly and just cause trouble he couldn’t deal with right now.

He slammed his hand down on the clock and cut its clanging off, muttering to himself as he shifted his body to a sitting position and rubbing at his face. His mouth felt like cotton dipped in shit, the tequila drunk late into the night coming back to haunt him. He knew better than to drink it; it never brought him any good. But the stress of the past few days needed some kind of release, and he saw no better way.

He finally managed his feet and went to the bathroom, waves of nausea greening the edges of his face. He held it back, though, swallowing down what threatened to come out.

He stripped and turned on the water as he rubbed his cheeks, trying to get the life energized back into his sallow skin. The warmth of the shower did some better, but his head still ached terribly by the time he was done. He opted not to shave, though there was a definite shadow of hair growing.

Not worth the effort. Who would he be trying to impress, anyhow? He was already in dire straits.

He knew he should get something in his stomach but the nausea was still present, at least a little, so he decided to wait until lunch, or maybe grab a snack from the machine at work once he was there.

Feeling at least somewhat put together, he stepped away from his front door and locked it, taking in the cool morning air.

Being outside made him feel some better. The place he lived in was a bit secluded, about two miles away from the nearest house, and the thick stands of trees around his house gave him a calming effect whenever he needed it. He’d always fancied himself close to nature, even though he had not spent as much time outside as his father did. Still, he enjoyed any time he was able to get from it.

It was why he chose to buy the place to begin with, using up most of his savings to get it in his hands. It wasn’t large, but it was good enough for his bachelor self, and had a room to spare if, in the future, he should start a family.

That wasn’t a temptation, yet, though. He made enough to live comfortably, and the string of relationships he’d had with the ladies of late had turned out rotten. Most saw him as a means to their own ends, and he did not feel inclined to take care of someone, preferring to find someone who was, at the least, self-sufficient enough to take care of themselves before getting involved.

Was that really too much to ask for?

No matter. Someday, maybe, someone would come along, but until then he would be just fine on his own.

By the time he pulled his car into his assigned space, the clock on the dash showed he was ten minutes late. Normally not a problem, but with the heat being focused on him right now, he did not want to give them any excuse to trouble him. Tom would probably make a stink of it, just so there would be that much more pressure on him instead of facing the direction it should be.

Jim was right. When he walked through the front doors, there was Tom, sitting at his desk with his hands behind his head.

“Oh, hey! Look who made it!” Tom’s voice was loud enough to echo through the large room. The others shot their eyes upward at the sound, conversations pausing as they paid attention. “It’s Jim, everybody!”

A crap-eating grin was on his face as Jim’s own reddened.

He hunched his shoulders and made his way to his desk, feeling the stares of the others as they resumed their sales calls or business with each other. Sidelong, whispering. Were they talking about him?

Probably.

He put his briefcase on his desk and slumped into the chair as Tom, still grinning like a cat, shifted his attention away.

Bastard.

The door to the manager’s office opened and Jim felt the withering gaze of Christopher.

“So glad you could make it, Jim,” he said. Jim looked over his desk and saw Christopher’s hand upraise with a come-hither finger.

He sighed and took off his jacket, leaving it behind on the chair as he stood and crossed the room. The talk around him became more hushed and Tom was nearly in laughter as he watched Jim’s slow walk of shame to the office door.

“Have a seat,” Christopher said as Jim closed the wood behind him. “We need to talk.”

Jim could already tell what was coming, and his ire rose in his guts that he was the one facing the fire instead of Tom.

“We’ve got a problem,” the manager said, his large frame plopping into his own chair as Jim took one across from him.

“Yeah, that we do,” Jim replied raising his voice a little. He hated being on the defensive with this crap, and didn’t want to make things worse by getting irate with Christopher, but his anger at the smug look Tom bore as he came in was hard to handle.

“We really needed that client, Jim,” Christopher began, as he shifted some papers around on his metal desk.

“I know, and you should be talking to Tom about this,” he snapped.

“Tom has nothing to do with this,” Christopher said, his own anger written across his face. “Looking at these numbers, I’ve got no choice here. You’ve been with us for three years, Jim, and you’ve done a good job until now. Why steal from the client?”

What? Steal? Jim thought he was only being blamed for muffing the numbers. Tom stole money, too?

“Now, wait a minute, Christopher,” Jim spat out. “I didn’t do a damn thing, and definitely never stole anything…”

Christopher cut him off. “The paperwork says otherwise. You hid it well, but we can see how it was taken out.”

“This is ridiculous,” Jim shouted, the rage inside of him burning through what was remaining of his hangover. “You can’t just accuse me of something like this without evidence. It wasn’t me, I’m telling you, Tom did it.”

“Shifting the blame is not going to help with this,” Christopher said. “We’re opening an investigation, and the police have already been called about it.”

“Good!” Jim screamed, standing and slamming his hand on the metal desk. The thing rattled beneath his palm and a few of the little knick-knacks the boss kept on the desk jerked. “Call them. Bring in the fuggin army if that’s what it takes. I didn’t do it!”

Christopher slid back in his chair, the casters shrieking across the floor as he moved. “You’re done here,” he said as he stood, himself. He was bigger than Jim, though his mass was more fat than muscle. “Get out. They’ll be contacting you today, I am sure.”

He was done, he knew that. Even if he was proved innocent, the way he acted here would likely not be forgiven.

He wanted to rail at Christopher, to take out all of his ire on the man standing in front of him, but it would do him no good, and would likely end up with him in jail. The guy should know him better, though; Jim had worked there for years.

He jerked the door of the office open and stomped out, walking to his desk with fury in his veins.

“Aww, what’s wrong?” a snide voice asked, and Jim tore his gaze from his coat in the chair to the visage of Tom.

“You son of a bitch!” Jim screamed as he lost control of his rage and pounced at him.

His fist connected with Tom’s nose, the teeth beneath causing a spark of pain to shoot through his arm as one of them scraped his knuckle open.

Tom’s head jerked and he tumbled backward, the kinetic energy carrying him a few feet. Blood instantly began to spout down from the break in the nose Jim created, and he sputtered as he groaned with agony.

Jim’s fists were still balled up but he didn’t step forward, barely keeping himself in check, but the way Tom’s face looked gave him a satisfaction he could not describe.

Oh, God, that felt good to do.

He felt hands on his arms as a couple of the other guys grabbed him to pull him away, but there was no need. Jim had done what he’s wanted to do for ages, and he laughed at the way Tom held his hand to his nose, streaming tears tumbling down from his eyes.

He pulled his arms away from the grips and said, “Get off me.”

“Victoria, call the police,” Christopher said from the office door, while Jim grabbed the coat from the chair and stalked toward the exit.

He left the office with a raucous din going on behind him, pissed off yet satisfied with what he had done.

He didn’t go home right away, taking the time to stop at a small diner for a bite to eat and a little time to calm his nerves. It wasn’t all that great, but he did feel some better after getting some food inside of him, countering the after-effects of the hangover that still remained. It sat heavier than he’d have liked, though, as he drove back home, concern over what he was going to do from here preying on his mind.

He would probably be blacklisted at this point, his sales career likely not able to recover from the way he walked out, let alone the things he was being accused of. Nothing would come from it. Nothing could come from it, he was sure, but the fact he was even accused would blot him in ways he couldn’t fathom, and Christopher was probably already on the phone to his cronies to discuss the situation.

That meant he was probably done. Their town wasn’t big to begin with, and the pool of businesses that handled the things he was experienced in was difficult enough to get into. It was all he knew, and the last thing he wanted to do was to be stuck working in some podunk job at a burger joint or something, because of what Tom had done.

What was he going to do?

There was a police car in the driveway when he pulled in, the two officers it contained stepping out when they saw him coming. He glanced nervously at himself, hoping his appearance wouldn’t give them a bad impression, but he knew it was not a social call they had in mind.

The interview lasted more than an hour, one question after another coming from them about his dealing with the client they claimed he had stolen from, and about his activities of late.

Of course he defended himself, and, in the end, demanded they look into his own bank accounts to see money had not been transferred to him from the client, signing paperwork that would help facilitate a warrant for it. There would be nothing, he was sure, but then they mentioned the punch on Tom…

He admitted that was real. How could he deny it?

For some reason, though, Tom was not pressing charges. That shocked him, expecting that he would be taken away for a night or three in the lockup for letting his anger get the best of him.

But when they left, telling him not to leave the state for now, he considered things. Tom might have been letting things go because he wanted to keep the heat off of himself. The more involved he was, the more chance there would be of the police focusing on him, and that would lead to disaster for the man.

It made sense, though Jim almost wished they would have taken him in, just to let that kind of ball start rolling.

In the end, they would realize he was not guilty and any investigation of him would have to be dropped, but he would have to play things carefully until then.

By the time evening came, Jim was a wreck, nerves on edge at the constant preying of his own mind against itself. Tom was guilty, he knew that, but his memories spun all around looking for any possibility the police would find something they could use against him.

For all the fretting, though, nothing overt came to his mind. He’d never done anything to cause real trouble, at least not since he was a kid and didn’t know any better.

No, there should be no reason for the police to suspect he had been involved in any wrongdoing. Everything that way should blow over without any consequences.

Still, though, his mind nagged at him, eating away his surety, and by the time evening came on fully, the light fading away from the huge glass double sided doors that led to his back porch, he had a drink in his hand, the fourth one downed.

His brain was heady, fuzzing from the alcohol, but he sat in his chair and felt he could relax for the first time that day. It sucked that it took a buzz to do it, but his options were limited and the last thing he really wanted to do was to go out somewhere.

He clicked on the TV and watched numbly the images on the screen, the volume barely turned up. Just enough to add a background din, but his mind was on so many other things it didn’t matter.

Why the hell was all of this happening? What did he ever do to Tom that would make him even want to wreck his life? Piss in his Cheerios or something? The man was a dick, to be sure, and the two had never gotten along very well, but to ruin his life, to take so many steps to crash everything down on top of Jim’s head just made no sense.

He thought back to the many snide remarks they’d shared between themselves, the rumor mill that churned around him as people gossiped about the latest incident they would have. Just words. Nothing more than that.

He glanced down at his knuckle, the bandage he put on it reflecting the subtle light coming from the kitchen and sighed. He balled his hand into a fist and remembered the sensation of his skin striking the man in the face.

That was the only good moment of the long, drawn out and horrible day.

A sound began outside and his eyes flicked to the patio doors. A bright flash of light made him wince and blink repeatedly as the lightning struck something, probably miles away. What had been an unnoticeable light sprinkle grew in earnest into a heavy rain.

He shook his head, fascinated at how quickly it had come up, but that wasn’t necessarily strange in these parts. They were not far from the mountains, and sometimes the storms that rolled through were massive, leaving the ground wet for days.

He got up and went to the kitchen, pulling the bottle of wine from the refrigerator. He refilled the glass and sipped at it instead of downing it as he had the last. He smacked his lips a couple of times as it slid down his throat.

A pattering on the patio distracted him, pulling his eyes that way. He could see it reasonably clearly from the kitchen, the openness of the living room adding to the way the light would pour in during the daylight hours. It always added a nice effect to the space.

In the darkness outside, he could see nothing, but the rain pelting the windows reflected from the lights coming from inside of the house.

Must have been the rain, or maybe a branch fell from a tree outside.

He took the wine to the living room and sat on his couch again, sighing once more as the fabric embraced him. The wine was having the lulling effect he hoped it would and he stared dully into the flashing images on the set, trying to not think of anything at all.

The rain falling outside dulled his senses, as well, and he drifted into a semi-sleep, his eyes barely open as his mind shut down. So much energy expended through the day after a long night of drinking got the best of him.

His eyes opened in a flash and he sat up straight as the pat-pat-pat sound entered his ears.

He glanced around, trying to throw off the haze his brain was inundated with, the wine fully kicking in a buzz.

The patio doors still revealed nothing but the rain outside, the glint of the wet wood of his porch barely visible with the light from inside of the house.

He stood and crossed the room, his hand swishing his hair around to try to relax the buzz a little, but didn’t do much good. He flicked the switch on the wall to turn the light outside on.

It was one of the bright types, a security lamp that shed quite a lot of illumination across not just the wood of the porch, but extending our toward the woods, too.

He squinted, trying to discern anything out of place, but nothing out of the ordinary to be seen. The tree line was barely in sight, rain falling between his house and there blocking some of it, but the porch was barren of anything that hadn’t been there before.

He flicked the light off and turned around to go back to his seat, shaking his head. Maybe it was something in his sleep.

Pat-pat-pat.

He whirled around, his nerves instantly on edge and a chill running down his spine.

It took a moment for his mind to catch up with his instincts, realizing as he stared into the darkness that it had been the distinct sound of foot falls on the wet wood.

His knees bent, his ears perked for any hint of more sound and he reached his hand for the switch again. His fingers began to tremble as they stretched.

Click.

The light came on, shedding its blow everywhere around. He readied himself for whoever might be there.

There was nothing. Only the rain falling heavily across the red-stained slats and the grass beyond.

What the hell?

He remained at the double-door for a long while, his stomach quivering and his eyes wide, seeking any sign of movement, but there was nothing out there. Certainly nothing big enough to have made the sound he heard, and he had moved so fast to face the window again after turning off the light that he should have seen whatever it was.

Had it been Tom? Was he, somehow, screwing with Jim to make him paranoid or freak him out? To tweak him in some way to get revenge or continue whatever damn plot the guy had in store for him?

Even as those thoughts came to him, Jim rejected them. If it had been Tom, he would have seen the man moving. There had been nothing, even though mere fractions of a second passed between the times he turned around.

If it had been him, he would have to be some kind of superstar jock to move as fast as he had without being spotted, and Tom was no athlete. The guy weighed a ton and breathed heavily just crossing the damn room at work.

No way it could have been him.

Jim shook his head again, confusion and paranoia running rampant through him, but his legs were getting tired, the strain of his stance becoming harder to bear.

Nothing’s there, man, he told himself. You’ve had a bad day and too much to drink.

He moved back to his couch and huffed down into it, picking up the warming glass of wine. He put it back down again, though, without taking a sip. He’d had enough for now.

He kept his eyes on the patio doors, though there was nothing moving but the rain beyond them, sure that there was nothing going on. Still, though, he could not shake the sensation that he was being watched, somehow. That there was something just beyond the doorway staring back at him as he sat.

It was a creepy feeling, and it stayed with him throughout the rest of the night. He waited on the couch, not wanting to move, the light of the porch still shining brightly across the wood and the grass, while the rain continued to fall.

When it finally began to let up, as the first rays of dawn began to cluster in the world outside of his house, he was grateful to see nothing at all was outside beside his grill and the two wooden chairs stored nearby it. He used them rarely but it was nice to have them on hand if he got the gumption up to cook something out there and the weather allowed it.

The feeling of being watched had subsided with the first bits of light passing over the sky, and he was grateful for that, too. He could not fathom where it had been coming from, but suspected the wine and the stress of the day had gotten to him too much.

What he really needed was some sleep. Things would look better after catching a few hours of it, and avoiding drinking for a couple of days wouldn’t hurt, too.

The sunlight outside grew brighter still, as the clouds above began to break apart. This time of morning, it would send a nice splash of color across his glass doors and the inside of the house would match it, another selling point of the house for Jim.

He grabbed the half-full glass of wine and started to stand, intending to take it to the kitchen to dump it down the sink. But when he shifted his body to rise, the wine spilled from his hand to the carpet below his feet and he gasped.

The light outside was beginning to stream into the house through the panes of glass on the patio doors and his mouth gaped open as he saw something was in between, casting a slight shadow into the room.

Two hand prints were on the glass, both larger than his own would be. The palms and fingers had been pressed hard against it, the dirt and oils transferring from the skin of whatever it had been to the pane.

Above and between them, the distinct features of a face, nose, eyes and mouth, were also imprinted into the glass.

Jim’s stomach dropped as he realized something had been there, watching him, after all.

 

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The post Paranoia – NaNoWriMo Day 9 Story appeared first on Original Worlds.

Serpentine – NaNoWriMo Day 8 Story

The ritual was, thankfully, rather simple.

It had taken some time to find it, but when Shannon finally did, the smile on her face was hard to hide. She couldn’t believe how cheap the bookseller was letting it go for. They probably didn’t realize what kind of a treasure they had on their shelf, tucked away behind a few other dusty tomes, and she almost laughed aloud when she reached the doorway without the teller behind the counter stopping her from leaving.

So much the better. It’s not like she had to worry about money, but the less she spent, the less questions her husband would ask, and this was something she could not let him know.

Some things had to remain secret, even between husband and wife. Planning the death of someone was one of those things.

Shannon wasn’t a bad person. Far from it. She spent a lot of time at the church, working to help those who were in need, as so many were in this poor town, and she gladly gave of herself to make sure they were taken care of. She never even hurt a fly if she could avoid it.

And it’s not like she was going to do anything, herself, after all. Simple tweak of the natural order of things, one might say, to allow the world to be a better place. Nothing more.

She was glad, though, the small shop tucked away in the midst of other poor businesses trying to stay afloat was as dank as it was. At least she was not likely to be spotted by cameras, and their “CASH ONLY” policy suited her just fine.

She didn’t think there would be any kind of trail to her, regardless, but better safe than sorry, so they say, and Shannon was definitely a stickler for keeping things in order.

It wasn’t a decision lightly made, to do Karen in, with many weeks of time spent circling around the thought that she shouldn’t do this, but something had to be done about her, and Shannon was the only one who could make that happen.

Or, at least, that’s how it seemed.

Everyone was afraid of the woman, her stern mannerisms and pushing for perfection driving everyone at work crazy, not to mention nosing into every single thing she could get her fingers into and then using what she found to put people against each other. She made everything she touched miserable, not least of which being Shannon herself.

Since Karen took over as manager, the owners of the factory bypassing Shannon in favor of hiring her from outside, business had slowed, and Karen took it out on everyone, demanding they work even harder to make up the differences. Shannon already worked herself to the bone. How was pushing to go even harder going to do anyone good, when it wasn’t the fault of those laboring, sweating, under her that things were going so badly? They were doing their jobs. They couldn’t be blamed, right?

But Karen kept insisting it was, and the owners took her advice, threatening lay-offs and worse, because they couldn’t be bothered to come, themselves, to see what was happening.

It was all one-sided, and only because Karen wanted to save her own job.

Meanwhile, good people like Shannon were suffering and had to smile into her snide, puckered face, because to do otherwise was to risk loosing the source of income, and the way things were in this town, good jobs were hard as hell to find.

Shannon sat in her basement with the book in front of her, the leather binding it cracked a bit with age. Though there were not many pages within its spine, the thing was heavy and took up most of the small table she laid it on. It was dark, dusky from age and disuse, whatever original color it held being long gone.

She hadn’t even been sure it was a real thing, the old woman she heard about it from seeming almost senile at times, but Rashaan had been correct. It was in the same shop she told her it would be.

Rashaan was an odd duck, surrounded in her little house by shelves of strange bottles containing the weirdest assortment of things Shannon had ever seen outside of the movies. Some of the things in the jars even seemed to move when she wasn’t looking directly at them, shifting out of the corners of her eyes as she stared at the old woman.

“Sscon can take her,” the woman said, after Shannon described her situation. “Give her to Sscon.”

Shannon released her hands from the old woman, who had taken them into her own to stare into the center of them, her lips moving without teeth behind them as she muttered about whatever she imagined seeing there. Shannon wasn’t sure whether she believed Rashaan or not, but there seemed no harm in at least asking the woman if there was anything that could be done, and she came highly recommended by one of Shannon’s friends from church.

“Who’s Sscon?” Shannon asked as she pulled her hands back.

The woman leered at her with one eye squinted shut and laughed hoarsely. “An old one, dear,” she said as she gathered her breath again. “An old god, you might say, forgotten in the mythos of the modern day.”

“How is this supposed to help?” Shannon could not believe this woman was serious, blurting out a small laugh of her own. When Rashaan realized she was being made fun of, she turned deadly serious.

“Sscon is real, woman,” she spat. “More so than the dust you’ll find in that church of yours.”

“So how’s he supposed to help?”

“By removing the trouble from your life,” the elder said, her tone dark as she rasped out the words. “He will give you what you want.”

She paid Rashaan the twenty dollars for her fee and walked away from the house, still not sure whether she could be believed. But when she went to the book store Rashaan told her of and looked on the shelf she was described, her mood shifted considerably.

Maybe this would work, after all.

Shannon pored through the pages in the book, flipping through the tome slowly so she could understand what it wanted her to do. The ritual seemed simple enough, and it described the protections she should do before getting it started.

Sscon was old, the book said, reiterating what Rashaan told her, one of the Titans of Olympus that had been discarded from the myths. He granted the wishes of the mortals, but always asked for a price which was easily paid.

Shannon wasn’t sure how old the book was, there being no copyright page at the beginning or end, and the words in the thing were all hand-written in ink, scrawling notes among the edges obscuring some arts of it here and there. She had to squint to make out some of it, but from what she could tell, she could do this.

If Karen was removed from the picture, Shannon and her fellows could once again have an easier time of things, and, who knows, the owners might finally recognize that it was she who should be managing them, anyway. Karen being gone would only be a benefit and certainly no one she knew would miss the foul beast of a woman.

It had to be done.

She closed the book and hid it behind the water heater in the basement. Stan would be home soon and she did not want him knowing what she was going to do. The less he knew, the better.

She cooked dinner and watched some TV with him, then went to bed earlier than her usual time, telling him she was not feeling well.

A few hours of sleep later, Shannon crept out of bed and down the stairs, her nightgown flowing in the soft breeze coming in through the opened windows to cool the house in the summer heat. She wished they could afford to get the air conditioner fixed again, the sweat already beading across her forehead as she went into the basement and the thankfully cooler air.

If she got the manager position, they would be able to get that fixed, and maybe even get the new roof on, like they needed to three years ago.

The emergency candles were there in the basement already, and she arranged them as the diagram in the book showed her to do, then marked the symbol it commanded to be in place in the white chalk Stan sometimes used to mark wood when he cut it.

She read over the ritual again, realizing she had forgotten the eggs, and went back up the stairs to get them, as well as a patty of ground beef that they had saved for dinner the next weekend. She would have to pick up some more, but it’s what the ritual wanted.

Well, technically, it said a meat sacrifice had to be made as the spell was cast, but she didn’t have a lamb or cow handy and thought it might work as an alternative.

The three eggs went in different places around the circle of chalk, and she put the cold meat into the center, arranging everything to match the picture in the book as best she could.

She stood back, surveying her work, then brought the book to her face and began chanting the words of the spell.

She could not help feeling a little silly while doing it, and hoped to God Stan didn’t decide to wake up at that moment and come check where she might be. The last thing she wanted was to try to explain what she was doing to him.

Her insides squirmed as the smoke began to rise from the meat, the silliness of the situation dissipating instantly as the words continued from her mouth. She didn’t hesitate, taking the warning to heart at the beginning of the book, that once started, it could not be stopped without extreme danger to the priest working the spell.

Another sentence came out and the candles brightened, rising on their wicks far past what they should be able to do. The wax didn’t melt further, almost pausing in their flickers.

When the eggs began to tremble, her own body joined in, her hands shaking almost too hard for the book to be straight any longer, but she redoubled her hold on it, her free hand still moving in the circular motions the book showed her to do.

A hiss resounded off of the cement walls of the dark basement, and she thought, at first, it was the meat, which smoked more as it seemed to cook on the floor, but when she realized it was coming from all around her, she faltered for a brief second in her words, her eyes darting everywhere.

She resumed the pace, though, uninterrupted, and the air in the basement began to not only smell like the frying meat, but also something else, something musky and deep. It wasn’t the dankness of the basement, though, this was something more akin to an animal exposed to a summer rain.

The smoke from the beef grew thicker as she restarted the ritual, beginning from the top again as it said to do, each sentence punctuated by a deep intake of breath to catch up. The haze was so thick now she could not even see across the basement to the other side and the light from the candles did nothing to penetrate it.

The eggs smashed open, spilling out the contents over the floor, and though they had been raw when she put them down, they seemed almost half-cooked, now, the clear whites thickening like the haze around her. The yolks, too, split, the yellow bubbling.

The hissing grew louder, one long, uninterrupted sound intensifying around her, like a steam valve opened and shooting out. When it cut off, her stomach dropped. Had she failed, somehow?

She reached the end of the spell once more, and stopped her words. Say it twice, that’s what the book said, and she waited in the deep haze of smoke that had formed, wondering what the hell was going on.

“Ssso,” a deep voice said behind her, and she whirled around with the book still in her hand, raising the other defensively. “Sssuch a ssstrange plasssce.”

It was bigger than her, nearly reaching the top of the ceiling above her, but it could have made it more, she suspected, as she stared at the thing with no legs and a deep set of sapphire eyes that reflected the light of the candles back to her.

It was a snake, but more than that, the long arms extending away from it ending in claws that could have taken off her head in one swipe if it should desire to do so, its face taken up mostly by the huge mouth, which flicked a tongue toward her, tasting the air and, perhaps, her.

She trembled, dropping the book to the floor with a loud thump. It came to rest against her bare foot, hot in contrast to the cold stone floor. She bit her tongue to keep from screaming, but everything inside of her told her to run. This thing was death incarnate and could swallow her up without even thinking about it.

Its’ wispy, lisping voice poured out of it again, smooth as silk, and as its words came, she felt her legs stop trembling, almost hypnotized by the power of the being.

“What do you want of me,” Sscon asked, eyes glinting as it weaved slightly in and out of the shadows near the wall.

“K-Karen,” she stumbled across the word, having planned out exactly what to say but faltering now that this being of immense power was before her. Her body was in shock, her mind racing to try to understand what was happening even as it screamed none of it could be real.

She could get no more words to come forth, both terrified and enraptured by the eyes of the thing, this old god, before her.

It’s hooded orbs fluttered a few times, staring into her soul as licked the air again. The tongue, as big as her own arm, stretched out toward her and flicked once across her face, barely caressing her cheek. It was damp but not unpleasant, the warmth of the creature soothing on her chilled, sweat-slicked skin.

“Death you ssseek,” the beast intoned. “Yesss?”

It took her a second to process, the words coming to her in waves across her mind. How had it known? Did it, somehow, read her thoughts?

Perhaps it was written on her like the book she dropped, and it tasted those words with its’ tongue.

She finally nodded, trying to stand up straighter to face the creature with strength she knew she didn’t have.

“Isss it worth the prisssce?” The fleshy wisp of a tongue flicked again, the dewy dampness of it glinting in the candle light.

Shannon had been prepared for this. She was sure, whatever price it commanded she pay, she could meet. She could always make it back if and when she was chosen to replace Karen as manager, the raise in pay being far more than she made now. Stan would be so proud of her, even if she could never tell him the means by which she got it.

“Yes, Sscon,” she muttered, her voice catching a bit in her throat. She cleared it and let her hands go to her sides. “Yes,” she said again, clearer this time.

“Karen will die,” it said, ducking down a little lower to make its own head even with hers. The scent of its breath, heady and moist, musky like decaying plants wafted over her, the breeze from it fluttering the sides of her hair. “You agree to the prisssce?”

She nodded again, letting the barest hint of a smile cross her face. She was glad this would be over soon, the fear ebbing away as the seeming gentleness of this being, the way its words flowed through her like a soothing wine, edged her away from the dread she felt when she first saw it.

“Ssso be it,” it said, almost nodding in its strange, swaying way. “A life for a life, as the price demands.”

Her brows furrowed as the words followed one to another. She opened her mouth, the question forming on her lips. “Wait, what?”

The darkness enveloped her before she could inhale another breath, dank wetness and fetid decay taking over all other scents as she was taken into the throat of the being.

She tried to scream but nothing more than a burble escaped her throat as the gullet of the beast constricted her and the tightness of the hold crushed what was left in her lungs out in an instant.

All she might have been faded into black as her mind screamed that this was not supposed to happen.

 

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Crumble – NaNoWriMo Day 7 Story

“What shall we do with the prisoner, m’lord?”

The question was innocuous enough, and one I heard many times before. Hundreds.

Why was it so different this time, though? Why, when I looked into the eyes of the man standing before me did I feel something strange?

I waved my hand and commanded he be remanded into the prisons below, as had happened so often before. My servants obeyed me without question, knowing their duty, and I stood, glad for the day to be done.

It had been a long one, in a string of difficult days since receiving word of the uprising to the east. It was a small part of my realm, and one I normally did not care to pay attention to, but being so close to the border, the people there were a more rambunctious lot than the rest of my demesne and, with the lesser harvest this year, they were taking it upon themselves to be heard. Rattling sabers and banging against their shields.

It happened before, of course. What righteous ruler hasn’t had such during their reign? This was no different than the one the peasants in Telembre had done some ten years before, and, like then, I expected sending in a contingent of my loyal troops would do much to assuage the riotous nature of the lesser classes.

As soon as they had food in their bellies, they would quieten, but that, unfortunately, was not in large supply.

If they kept it up, removing some of them from the fields by way of the sword would go far to helping not only return the people to peace through the show of strength, but would be a few less mouths to feed, as well.

Dealing with the situation, though, had taken a large portion of my time in the last week, and I would rather keep myself with other diversions than being concerned about whether a group of the peasantry had enough to go on. Starvation through the winter might, in the end, force them to work harder the next year, and that was not a bad goal for them to attain.

The stream of those same peasants coming through my court, dragged before me, sometimes kicking and biting, was tiresome, but I knew I had to deal with it as firmly as I had power to do. Rebellions are, by their nature, a cancer, growing out of control swiftly when not dealt with at their first signs, and the problems on the eastern part of my realm were not an isolated case. The north, too, would be impacted by the shortages, and would soon join their brethren in the rabble.

That must not be.

As I stood to make my way to my inner chambers, the prisoner being carted away to the cells below managed to turn himself around and stare at me.

Normally, I would pay no attention, but perhaps the wear of dealing with this rabble had become overwhelming. Perhaps it was because I had not eaten since a few hours before and my stomach grumbled at the thought of the repast my servants had awaiting me in the dining room.

Whatever it was, I hesitated as I stepped down from the dais and the throne ensconced upon it, the wood and gold glinting in the torchlight surrounding the chamber.

“Curse you, demon king!” he shouted at me, his voice raspy from, perhaps, lack of water and food. Maybe it was his age. He seemed quite frail for one involved in a rebellion, but one never knew what people were capable of.

One of the guards slapped him across the face with his armored hand and the man reeled backward, spitting out blood and one of his remaining teeth as he moaned. I squinted as the words he spoke entered my ears, the echoes of his cry resounding through my throne room.

“I bring a curse upon you and your house, demon!”

I laughed at the words, the audacity of this little man thinking that he could say such a thing. Did he not know his life was in the palm of my hand?

I had not intended to punish him too severely, his age mitigating his crimes with my mercy. A few nights in the dungeon would have done him good.

“Quarter him,” I said, glancing at the guard restraining the man, a sadness in my heart over the necessary step this elder was forcing me to do. Such things could not be brooked, no matter the age or infirmity.

“Yes, m’lord,” the guard replied, as he pulled the man away from the chamber and into the long hall outside.

I could not help feeling a little shaken by the encounter, surprised at the vehemence with which the man spoke and the gall of it all. Never had someone spoken to me that way, and talk such as that was dangerous.

It is the lot in a ruler’s life to not be favored by all of his servants, I knew that. But such things were not spoken openly, certainly not while facing judgment.

I shook my head, upset that I would have to bring the old man to an end.

I dined well that night, though my stomach troubled me when I went to my sanctum for rest. Such a long day, so many faces over the past days trailing before my throne, young and old alike. And yes, even some women I had to command be taken to the prison below.

Filthy creatures, desperate, perhaps, but ones ungrateful for what I had done for them throughout the many years of my reign. I treated them well, and they dared to rebel.

It saddened me, and angered me at the same time.

Had Father ever gone through this? In my time of knowing him, I could not remember there being such trouble within the borders of our realm, but I was so young, then. Perhaps there had been, and it was not made known to me, sheltered as I was within my rooms filled with tutors and learning the ways of rule.

I could not shake the feeling, as I lay my head upon the pillow for sleep, that a darkness had fallen across my land, and I could not see any way to avert its flow.

I awoke to a chamber dimmed of light by the faltering of the fire and wondered why someone had not come to stoke it while I slept. I sat up, my robe falling slightly off of the bed as I sat up and looked around.

A strange sound came to my ears, then, a crackle not unlike a fire, but not coming from the stone and brick that waited nearby to have more fuel added to it. That space was silent, ashes and coals the only things remaining.

No, wait, it was not a crackle.

I furrowed my brows as the sound continued, realizing it was more of a scraping sound, but interrupted at intervals, and seemed to be coming from the hallway outside of my door.

It was unlike anything I had heard before, a scrambling rattle of a kind, and I stood up, my bare feet slapping against the cold stone of the floor as I crossed the room and placed my ear upon the door.

Yes, there it was again, distant, perhaps, but definitely coming from somewhere beyond the thick oak of the door. Tap-tap tap-tap-tap.

I went to the other side of the room and pulled aside the heavy curtains against the window. The thick panes of glass were always difficult to see through in the best of circumstances, but with the light of day far gone and the moon above barely giving a glow, it was difficult for me to discern much of anything outside.

My chambers were a flight above the ground, enjoying a view of the courtyard. I liked to sit with the window swung wide during the summer months, watching as the people below me milled about during their duties. Efficient activity pleased me, and it was an interesting diversion for a while, especially when I had much on my mind.

All I could see now was a fire in the center of the courtyard, large and tall.

I pushed the window open, the cold wind blowing across it instantly sucking away any heat remaining in the room and trembled as a chill ran through me.

It was a bonfire, one barely controlled, and I could see figures in front of it milling around, seeming at random. I took them for guards at first, but within a few moments I realized they were not actually doing random movements, but had a purposeful lope, and I could see nothing of the metal my soldiers always bore.

I squinted, trying to make out as much of the detail as I could in the bright light of the fire breaking the darkness, but the figures moving around it were difficult to pick out unless they went in front of the flames, and by then the shadows were too deep along them to be able to make out more than the lines of their bodies.

Was it the executions? That could be it. I usually did not pay attention to when they occurred, preferring to move on with the business that needed to be handled, but since there were so many of them to get through, Iben, the prison master, may have decided to start them early, going through the night.

I nodded. That made sense. They were probably just getting things ready for the many prisoners who faced their final hours today, working through the night to set it all up.

I smiled at their efficiency. I would have to commend Iben for his forthright thinking.

As I swung the window closed, something else caught my attention and I flung it wide once more, leaning out of it a little to try to get a second look.

There was metal, the firelight glinting from the armor of a soldier, but he was not standing with a prisoner or helping with the preparations. He was laying down on the paving stones nearby the fire.

As I renewed my attention, I noticed another not far away from that one, also laying down, but his body was not flat. Instead, it was twisted at a strange angle, contorted in a way that seemed unnatural.

A gasp escaped my lips as I spotted a few more, each of which were laying, and none of them moved no matter how many moments had passed.

The figures around the fire still jilted and .. danced. Yes. That was it. They were dancing, jerking themselves around the flames to an unheard music, soundless except for the crackling of the great pile of wood before them.

A dread entered my guts, trembling in a way I had never felt before as fear rose inside of me. Who were those people? What happened to my guards? Questions stormed through me as I brought my body back inside and closed the window, careful to be as silent as I could.

I went to the door then, the nervousness at what I had spotted outside playing havoc with the dinner that weighed heavily in my belly, bile and undigested food threatening to come up. I put my ear once more to the door and listened, but could hear nothing now.

I pulled it open and an odor wafted into my nose; a strange combination of smoke and metal. The hallway was not well-lit at the best of times, but the torches that lined it were lit and crackling, a soft haze in the air between myself and the end, where the stairs leading down to the ground floor waited.

I crept slowly through that hall, my feet padding silently on the stone below me, with my hand on the wall for support.

A coughing sound came to me, then, coming from somewhere ahead of me, and I hesitated in my steps as I tried to recognize what it was. There was a weirdness to it, like someone unable to catch their breath.

The haze cleared a little as I paced, and the glint of metal a few steps down the stairwell forced me to pause, a gasp fluttering from my mouth as the bile came up the rest of the way.

I vomited on the floor, turning my head but not my eyes, unable to stop staring at the grotesquerie in front of me.

He was unrecognizable, but was obviously one of my soldiers, the patches of his armor hanging loosely from what was left of his flesh. It had been torn asunder, ripped apart by a force I could not fathom, shredding through the metal as if it were the skin beneath, which was also rendered aside.

Gobbets of the man’s flesh were flung on the ground around him as rivulets of blood flooded for feet around what was left of him, his eyes staring into nothing as even now were glazing over. Steam rose from his opened chest, his heat mixing with the chill of the air around. The stench was horrid, gagging me with copper and shite from intestines that were quavering with the remaining paces of his heart and lungs.

Even with all of the damage, he still lived, though how, I could not fathom. Breaths ragged and shallow, barely clinging to the life that once flourished inside of this man, as the last gasps of him faded in front of me.

What had done this to him? What could have done this amount of damage, able to pry open his armor seeming without effort? Had the soldier been able to fight back? If so, there was no blood of whatever had attacked him that I could see, only his own spread all around.

I moved past the soldier, carefully stepping beyond his body to the next stair without slipping, a wrenching gaze on my face as the still-warm blood squelched between my toes. When I neared the bottom, I picked up the sword laying there, flung away from the guard by the force that brought him to an end.

I hefted it in my hand, feeling the cold hilt within my seating palm and swung it a couple of times to accustom to the weight of it. It had been a long number of years since I held a saber, but I was well-trained in their use, as all Kings must be.

The horror within me scaled to a level I had never imagined before as the tableau opened in front of me. The bottom stair, its wood and stone frame cracked and bent, sent a small splinter into my bare foot but I paid it little care, my mind locked on the scene of so many bodies torn to shreds locking me in a moment of insanity.

They were everywhere, both peasant and guard, and the robe of my High Chamberlain was among the closest to me. He was more “together” than the rest, but the head separated from his body laying a foot away from where his neck once held it spoke of his survival, the scream still embedded into his face.

A dozen bodies, maybe more, all laying in ways no human should, broken and rendered asunder as blood dripped, literally, from the ceiling to the floor below.

I screamed, then, I think, though I cannot be sure. I could not come to terms with it, the scene shattering what I had left in me to hold on to as my body quaked. It was not merely fear, though. There was something primal to it, a depth untouched in all of my years not only ruling but in the world to begin with.

I whirled as a new sound joined the dripping of fluids and chemicals, waste and gore. A hallway, one leading to the outside, had its doors opened there, the cold seeping in, draining away what was left of the heat in my once awe-inspiring throne room.

Standing in the hall was a thin figure, an emaciated old man covered in blood, himself, taking a step forward. A terrible laugh came from the depths of his throat and I recognized him as the man I had given the order to execute by quartering.

Another step forward and he raised his hand toward me, pointing to the center of my chest.

“Do you like your realm, demon king?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper but cutting across the charnel room like a knife. “You’ll rule it forever, you know.”

I said nothing, could say nothing, really, but raised my sword defensively, aiming it for his face.

Had this old man done all of this? Had he, somehow, the power to create such horrific chaos? How? None of this made sense to me, the terror locking my legs into numbness now.

He stared at the sword and laughed, a chuttering almost like a cough, and I recognized it as what I heard in the hallway.

“It’s not me,” he said, his eyes on the sword. “It’s all on you, demon king.”

From the edges of the room, the shadows playing in the torchlight seemed to burst away, hazy smoky bodies made of nothing but vapor pouring out of the darkness into the light. The torchlight did nothing to dissipate them, however, as they swirled around the outer wall, and a keening scream emitted from the center of them, a thousand voices as one in a devastatingly loud discordant shout.

I screamed with them, my voice joining their own as they came down, descending in an instant on top of me. They slashed at me, vapor claws forming into solidity for only a moment, long enough to cut into my flesh and start the flow of blood.

I heard the man laugh again as they went for him, too, and he raised his arms and got on his elderly knees, in a gesture I took as almost supplicating. The beasts, whatever they were, the shadows of nightmare horrors that crept into children’s rooms at night, tore into us both, but they did much more to him than to me.

The claws tore into me and teeth that should not be real bit my neck, my sides, slicing through the robe to get at the skin below. My screaming intensified as I opened my mouth and that, too, became a target for them.

I tasted blood as it poured down my throat from my tongue and wrenched my mouth closed once more, falling to my own hands and knees for a moment only before I covered my head and put myself into a ball, trying to protect my stomach and chest from these things.

“Live on, demon king!” I heard the old man shout, more vigor in his voice than I had heard from him before. “Cursed, crumbling king!”

The last of his words became a keening wail as the shadow things tore into him until he went silent as they rended him apart, a horrifying parody of the quartering I had commanded he endure only hours before.

The shadows swept away from him, and from me, as well, as they went back up into the air and spun, darkening the room until only the glow of their eyes could be seen, thousands and thousands of eyes flashing and flaring.

They all stopped, then, and I gasped as their bodies, tall, thin, fat, ugly, all different kinds apparated into view, each distinct from each other.

All of the eyes stared at me, my bloodied robes barely hanging together as they soaked the fluid from not only my own veins, but from those around me. I whimpered, and begged them to leave me alone, to let me be freed of this torture.

They crept forward and, as they did, my eyes widened as I recognized some of them. There was a woman I had seen in my court not long before, committed to the axe for stealing bread. That one was a man executed for murdering one of my soldiers as he ran from them.

One by one, they stepped forward, my mind flashing on the memories of when I had seen them come before me, begging for mercy, themselves, and each I sent to their paupers graves.

Mercy. I gave them none when they were before me, and now that I was before them, they had none to spare.

They pounced again, crashing into me as the world around me shattered. One by one they entered into my body through my chest and, as they did, I could feel their rage, their horror, the torturous moments they felt, themselves, in those moments before they were doomed. I became them for that moment, that singular frame of time as they pulsed inside of me, until it was replaced by the next.

My back was on the ground by the time all had come into me, tears shedding from eyes that could no longer see the world as I once had.

No longer was I the ruler of my kingdom, set in place by the properties of birth and blood.

Now, I was the ruler over the decimation I had wrought.

My kingdom fell to the nations around us, taken a piece at a time as they realized the king was no longer there, no longer in his throne room as it was.

No. Now I rule this small space, my once glorious throne and castle around me crumbling away inch by inch. I have been here for many years now, hundreds. Maybe more. I no longer know.

No one comes before my throne, seeking supplication. I am no longer a man, but a shell, left to rot forever in this place of my undoing, and the grounds around me no longer grow anything more than dust as the unholiness of it keeps me trapped.

Every day, those shadows play in my mind, doing their dance as they had done around the bonfire, forcing me to relive every moment of horror they endured in their lives and deaths as if it were my own, and, in reality, that’s what it is now.

My kingdom has crumbled around me, and I am left to gaze around the shattered remains of the greatness that once was, forever locked in a hell of my own creation.

There will never be mercy for me, and I know there is none I deserve.

 

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The post Crumble – NaNoWriMo Day 7 Story appeared first on Original Worlds.