Cold as frozen shit …
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The Place In Between
Reverend Steven Rage
Title:
The Place In Between
Author:
Reverend Steven Rage
Released:
01/08/10
Paperback:
240 pages
Dimensions:
203 x 127 mm
ISBN:
978-0-9805938-3-9Available here: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002BLNAEO
LegumeMan Books is proud to announce the release of Reverend Steven Rage's The Place In Between'.The Place in Between: When Del is sent pictures of his wife's latest affair, he reasons a .45 caliber bullet will answer his problems. To Del's dismay, that's only the beginning of his time spent wedged in the place in between. Luci's lover tortures Del relentlessly. Del wants to recover just enough to seek revenge on them both. Sure enough a demon shows up with her silky-sweet promises. Then the ambiance twists dark and cruel beyond anything any one of them could've imagined.Blood and Bubblegum: It's colder than frozen shit down here in the dangerous tunnels of The Harbor in the post-cataclysmic world (ACE). Juan and I find ourselves here, in this horrible place because of The Good Doctor. His organic narcotics trade is booming. Juan, Mary and I want in. We have to find TGD and the nocturne, see if they will let us. We are down. We are hungry. And we are bringing Blood and Bubblegum to sweeten the pot. All of our dreams will come true. The only uncertainty is Mary and Juan living long enough to reap the rewards.Bad Notion, Traveling Potion: The second day of the fifth waxing moon, in the 24th year, ACE. The frozen earth of The Harbor is in the grips of a new Little Ice Age. The human populace is down to just one-third. They are forced to exist in long, dank tunnels and cramped domiciles underground with The Good Doctor and his creations of Halflings and other freaks and geeks. TGD's latest organic narcotic discovery goes LIVE and becomes self-aware. The bad notion traveling potion makes meat puppet users do its unholy bidding. Then the monster decides to turn on TGD, the Creator. Not the best idea, this. But it sure is going to be fun to watch.
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/steven_rage/blog#ixzz10qPesxME
FOUR
Del remembered this next part, right down to
the tiniest of details. The sun was shining
through the bedroom window and over his
shoulder. He could hear Luci as she padded her way
down the hallway from the front door. The bright
yellow light shone a spot on a spider. It was crazy
busy trying to wrap up a bug it had caught. It was a
housefly, probably.
He sympathized with them both.
The spider and the fly were both caught by their
own designs and the whims of nature. Both will be
dead before long – the fly obviously sooner than the
spider – and no-one will even know that they had
been alive. It was just another travesty of the food
chain. Either you eat, or you get eaten. It's as simple
as that. Del knew what that was like. He was becoming
real acquainted with them. He'd had plenty of life
and death questions. They were all mixed up lately
with his dangerous revenge fantasies. It took him a
while, but he knew what he must do. Oh, boy was he
going to school her. Was he ever? You could count
on it.
Del heard her as she approached the bedroom
door. He saw Luci as she broached the threshold of
the doorway. Del opened his legs. He let Luci see the
gun. It amused him to no end watching as her fake
grin crumbled. She stared at the gun Del held as if
fixated by an unbreakable trance. She barely heard
him as Del spoke.
"I've had enough of this shit," he told her. Del
raised the .45 and leveled it steady at her chest.
"More than that, I've had enough of you."
"Del, don't," she said, her eyes locking on his
now. Her voice quivered as she spoke and the color
drained from her face.
"Bitch, please," he replied wryly. "I'm not going
to shoot you," he told her. "I just wanted to get you
shook." He lowered the gun. Luci began to cry from
the release of the strain. Her hands flew dramatically
to her face. It was a crying shame to see her so upset.
"Oh, my God, Del," she said, taking a tentative step
toward her armed husband. "For a minute there I
thought you really were going to kill me." She stepped
closer. "You scared the shit out of me, you jerk," Luci
told him, smiling once more. Del smiled back at her.
"I really got to you, huh?"
"Yeah, honey, you really did," Luci replied and
stopped right in front of her husband. He cocked his
head to the side, peering up at her.
"Well then," he said, "You're really going to get
a kick out of this," and he placed the .45 in his own
mouth. Time skidded to a stop. As Luci shouted and
lunged for him, Del squeezed the trigger.
The blood from the gun shot splattered everywhere.
The police were the first to arrive on the scene.
They took one look and started rolling out the yellow
crime scene tape. Luci had to prove to them that Del
was still alive. He had a pulse, but wasn't breathing.
The cops called for the emergency services and
waited for them to arrive. There was no way they
were going
to do any mouth-to-gaping-gunshotwound
on him. There was just no way. The fire and
ambulance teams arrived in short order. They got
Del stabilized, but it was just enough to move him to
the military hospital and immediately into emergency
surgery. The surgical team had to resuscitate Del
three separate times. He was in surgery for hours.
Some of the Navy's top surgeons leaning over Del's
face and neck, their damp foreheads nearly touching.
They were compelled to remove a good portion of the
man's face because the bullet had pretty much disintegrated
the entire jaw. Bits of bone had fragmented
and peppered the wet mucosa. The finer particles
of bone dust had been inadvertently sucked into
Del's lungs, causing a horrifying and life threatening
pneumonia. It began to take so much pressure to
oxygenate Del that the doctors had to strap him into
a roto-bed. Being constantly turned, Del was rotating
like a roasting pig in a luau. Using gravity to manipulate
his perfusion, Del was blissfully narcotized and
thankfully unaware.
Behave or they will toss you out of The Harbor Underground and up-top ...
