Category: Short Stories

Sword of the Saints: Sinner Chapter Five

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In the dark tumbling dungeons of Erebus flooded with the endless tears of dead and dying mortals, even there is light, as bubbling forth, yearning to crest into the amicable shine of day and join the everlasting sky came a man’s final panicked and exhausted exhortations and wild exclamations as he vainly grasped and fussed at the fastenings of his divine armor appointed in whirling stars as he sank further and further into the nether vorago voracious to steal his mortal breath forevermore.  On all sides, the broken and blasted bodies of slaves and sailors drifted aimlessly downwards, strange and blinkless as if the very wax figurines of some monstrous diorama.  Just the broken tip of a sailor’s lance had he, dulled with the long years of use and abuse—now little more than a bludgeon, his sole implement against the sinking steel dragging him ever downwards—slow, slow, proving ever more finally his downfall.  Garbling black imprecations at the outrageous cast of fate muddled in the blackening waters threatening the bloodied burst of his eardrums to undoubtedly attract the predatory gaze of murderous things conceived before the first tread of land, exasperated he tried and tried with every last exasperated essay only to witness the stiffening of his extremities as invisible hands continued to pull him downwards—the abyss increasingly his home.

But like the screaming, howling resuscitation of the struggling dying, heart pumping with every last gasp of berserkergang vigor, he strained just one last time, as the invisible tears drained down his cheeks with his final glimpse of the escaping star stalwart above, an old friend from what seemed a bygone age consumed with the inevitable progress of time and the obliteration of childhood innocence within the unceasing blows of the practice yard.  And then he whispered something only for his fiery ears contemptuous.  His dying hand drifted aimlessly to his hamstring and fixed meaningfully across his own leathern snap, which rapidly gave out and burst under the merest expression of intended force, and so similarly gave way the clasps of his greaves, which sunk with accelerating desire for the far-flung ocean floor.  And so, as if by miracle, the grand part of his panoply gave away, and with a renewed desire to live a long life—if only to escape such a fate—he trailed the final abandoned bubbles of his violent imprecations towards the shadowless noon forever away from the drifting, swaying dance of the horrible drowned.

As his head crested the remunerating waves, with the sound of slaughtered swine gasping the beloved respirations of the gentle air, he couldn’t help but notice—quite impossible—the inferno oven of something nearby crackling and exploding like the collected contents of a thousand overheated furnaces.  Whirling about hither and thither, seeing only dissident refuse of timber and canvas in his waterlogged vision, he suddenly came to rest upon something brilliant and bright, blinding against the sky.  She was alight, the brigantine.

“Nothing could survive that,” he mumbled without evident sadness, as he clasped upon the nearby flotsam straining to see upon the horizon any evidence of friendly land.

See You Space Cowboy

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All twenty-eight chapters of the Gregory Samuels series have been released.  There’s no more, but there will be sequels in the future.  For the time being, there will be about a week and a half of unreleased though essential content–that I just never got around to posting–to be followed with a forty-four part series about pirates and slavery–and what you might call “romance”–and spectacle violence.  It’s the incipient story of the chevalier Arius and how his life got “flipped turned upside down.”  Gritty fantasy with a dash of dark humor.  After writing mechanized violence for nearly two years, trying to make it sound visceral, it was refreshing to just be able to plug the other guy with a bit of pointed stick with the effusions of gore necessarily entailed.  Anyways, that’s all I’ve got for the moment.  Wish I had more to tell.

Eliza the Pluck Part Proof of Concept

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This is something that I wrote years ago.  It was intended to be the first chapter in a book, but other obligations carried me away so long that when I returned my ideas about the book had changed so dramatically that this chapter simply couldn’t be used.  Nevertheless, it has been edited to a degree, but it remains rough.  Since that time, I produced a thorough manuscript featuring Eliza as a main character, but that too has since been delayed due to ever-new consideration on my part of how the narrative should actually play out.

The evening sky boiled and billowed with the bilious fury of a vengeful god pounding his indomitable fists upon the invincible vault of heaven.  The black and boisterous clouds that consumed altogether the starry lights of the glittering firmament resounded and sharply shimmered bright with his fury that struck superlative sparks from the dusky shroud of pregnant darkness.  The rain came down effluvial and did not merely soften and moisten the closely-crowded paths of rootless mud that proved a slippery obstacle amidst the unrelenting downpour; indeed, the streets were virtually abandoned of soaked and shivering travelers, far more numerous with the swaying torches ensconced within leaded glassware that danced choral amidst the pitiless wind that bade them bounce upon their housings.

The cast of regretfully heavy foot-falls came plodding about the corner, splashing about the heavy mud amidst the growing flood.  A figure, enshrouded within an increasingly water-heavy cloak of darkened green, rounded the corner, struggling to maintain a safe and regular gait upon her unsteadied soles.  The enkindled and guarded flame of a public house stilled and nevertheless bade welcome upon the weary traveler—the silent crier for an establishment known as “The Sultry Priestess,” known to be a hive of undesirables, untouchables, and even the occasional capital criminal.  Staggering upon her slippery feet with inexorable purpose, she nevertheless went among the vacated way not unobserved, laying a dainty and woman-like hand upon the thick and wax-preserved door of ancient and unmaintained manufacture which squeaked and reeled upon its hinges with ear-piercing protest against this unhoped and undesired intruder, who knew already well the dangers she exposed to herself in such display of presumptuously child-like innocence. Read More …

The Sagas of the Iron Hearts: Fragments, The Fall

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The following is the first of five short stories from my recently published book, The Sagas of the Iron Hearts: Fragments, which can be found here and the Kindle Edition here.  If you enjoyed it, you can peruse at your will the remaining four for the low low price of $5.99 paperback  and $0.99 kindle edition.  Every sale is a step towards paying my utilities and a step away from being evicted from my meager lodgings by my girlfriend, whose mother warned her about me.

Anyways: The Fall

1.

sagas_front_v2Lost amidst the infinite specks of starry sky there hurtled through the void an errant youth huddled within the still belly of a metal monolith.  The dusky ovaloid capsule—engraved with the ancient production markings of an age beyond memory, scored and seared with centuries of use—was a thing monstrous, several stories in length.  The wild-eyed youth of fluttering heart, the traveler comfortably enshrouded within the armored auspices of the soaring bulwark, could strangely think only of his own inconsequence—how small he was against the titanic backdrop of stars and galaxies that would dwarf him just as easily as the events at hand—and his own part in them.  Dread ruminations of catastrophic failure, that there is no undying glory, crept, slithering like a poisonous thing, unbidden through the hollows of his gray matter, as, with some disbelief, he remembered the sparkling image of the tiny speck he observed from the brazen bridge of the vanguard cruiser, that this tiny point in the umbra sky constituted itself a whole world with its own millions of souls—his destination. Read More …

The Weary Old Heroes of a Forgotten War

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And the band played Waltzing Mathilda.  And the old men still answer the call.  But year after the year, the numbers grow fewer.  Some day no-one will march there at all.

An army of wind-warping lead, to the clatter of innumerable casings, ricocheted from pavement and brick facings through the broad window panes of shop-fronts and high-rise apartments, as the police pressed their assault. The venerable Ms. Other, concealed in the cover of the rear seat loaded another magazine and racked the slide, grinning maniacally.

“Really makes you feel alive, eh Richard?”

Richard was practically dislocating his every joint to flatten himself into the very bottom of the passenger’s seat, babbling incoherently for his mansioned mother, while Poena only laughed, and hoisted him again into the rear seat.

“Get your shit together, little man! How many times in life do you think you’ll have the opportunity to be shot at?! You might as well enjoy it!”

One day we’ll all be in the ground.  Make sure you dance while you’ve still got your legs, still got the wind in your lungs–nevermind what others may think.

Edit: Click the link.

 

The Fall

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The following is the first of five short stories from my recently published book, The Sagas of the Iron Hearts: Fragments, which can be found here.  If you enjoyed it, you can peruse at your will the remaining four for the low low price of $4.99 paperback  and $0.99 kindle edition.  Every sale is a step towards paying my utilities and a step away from being evicted from my meager lodgings by my girlfriend, whose mother warned her about me.

Anyways: The Fall

newtest_031.

Lost amidst the infinite specks of starry sky there hurtled through the void an errant youth huddled within the still belly of a metal monolith.  The dusky ovaloid capsule—engraved with the ancient production markings of an age beyond memory, scored and seared with centuries of use—was a thing monstrous, several stories in length.  The wild-eyed youth of fluttering heart, the traveler comfortably enshrouded within the armored auspices of the soaring bulwark, could strangely think only of his own inconsequence—how small he was against the titanic backdrop of stars and galaxies that would dwarf him just as easily as the events at hand—and his own part in them.  Dread ruminations of catastrophic failure, that there is no undying glory, crept, slithering like a poisonous thing, unbidden through the hollows of his gray matter, as, with some disbelief, he remembered the sparkling image of the tiny speck he observed from the brazen bridge of the vanguard cruiser, that this tiny point in the umbra sky constituted itself a whole world with its own millions of souls—his destination. Read More …

The First Among Many

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He leveled his weapon, which began to spit forth with the venomous lick of surging fire at four-hundred-and-fifty rounds per minute, forty-five caliber rounds. He felt the familiar kick of the weapon, its poorly mitigated recoil—it was not an elegant weapon—with bitter nostalgia, as round after round tore the occupied seats, nailed-down stools, and the hardwood table itself to warm, fluttering splinters. All was silent, save for the panicked and dazed screaming of the damned, for a few seconds as he ejected the spent magazine and loaded a fresh one. It sounded like songbirds. He then recommenced firing until there was naught but an audible click, until there was no more movement but the slick trickle, sputter, and surge of sanguine ooze from uncountable gaping holes in trembling flesh marked very shortly for death, as the final crypt-guardian garbed and invisible amidst a pall of shadow covered the eyes of all in endless night of no awaking.

A short story, indeed a quite old one, one that’s nearly two years old.  She’s finally available.  A bit of fun, a bit of satire, punctuated with scenes of devil-may-care social violence.  And when I say “social” I mean in the manner of “socii,” rather than the doctrine of being rude on the train.