BOOK ONE Sunrise and bad weather on the Prairie can be a site of sadistic beauty -- A frightening thing, like a lion loosed from its cage while the tamer sleeps. Often when the weather is bad I am restless, sitting up nights or rising early before the dawn to walk out and watch the rainfall when sleep won't come to me. The summer nights have only just beco...
Copyright 2008, 2009 hammingbyrd7 Chapter 1. Time: Friday, December 21, 2018 4:05 PM EST, nine kilometers northeast of Burlington, Vermont "Are you sure you know where you're going?" Jada looked at the driver with only a tiny hope of getting her roommate to give up. Once Emily had her mind latched on an idea, she had the tenacity of a Maine lobster ho...
+++++ Huntress of the Fallen +++++ The following tale is my entry in the 2020 Halloween Story Contest. It acts as both a sequel and the final act of a trilogy that began with the 2016 Halloween Contest First-Place Winner "Sisters of the Fallen" and continued in the 2019 Halloween Contest First-Place Winner "Redeemers of the Fallen". I hold no expectation of...
CHAPTER 1: STRONG HAND The cold water ran over Moralez's prosthetic fingers as he held them beneath the flow of the faucet, turning them over, flexing them as the liquid poured across the tread-like pads that helped them grip objects. He could feel the chill on the black polymer that encased the machinery and electronics within, as if it was his own skin,...
CHAPTER ONE: Before Sunset He decided to run the mask through two more rinse cycles than he ran with the rest of the costume. Washing the head-piece was usually the most important part of laundry day. He spent so much time breathing in his own breath through the thing that he really didn't need a three-day-old body-funk included. He knew this from experienc...
1. "Your new book is selling pretty well," said Irina Slonimska, Roger's editor. "Plumbing for the Panic-Stricken fills a definite need. I don't mind telling you that it saved me several hundred dollars in New York City plumbers' bills when I was editing the manuscript." "Did it really?" asked Sharon Hillstein, eying her old college roommate across the t...