This is my submission for the 2016 Halloween Story Contest. It is a gothic horror novella based on the vampire mythos. My goal was to try and make the vampires as dark and scary as they were seductive and I hope you will find my attempt successful. The story is a bit of a slow burn since I've taken time to establish the characters, setting, and atmosphere be...
Chapter 1 Prince Leofrick Wykeham kept a lose grip on his yew longbow as he stepped cautiously. Silence was the order of the moment, though no trace of any game had been found for hours. Bryce Cartwright is a good man. But he's too overbearing. And too loyal to Father and Mother. Why couldn't they have assigned me a personal guard who was more fun? Leofri...
The Wolf's Den Chapter 1 Winter is my least favorite time of year. I'm a California girl to the very core of my existence. The relentless gray skies and blinding white of nothing but snow as far as the eye can see are certainly not as pretty in reality as they appeared in the glossy pages of the travel brochures I collected along the way. I hate being c...
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely unintentional. Part of the Wine & Old Lace event, with a few literals corrected. PROLOGUE WE walked slowly, almost reluctantly from the warm and stifling waiting room across to Platform 7, to where the puffing engine had just dragged its train of c...
14 Years Ago... "Hey mom, can I go look?" A young boy who couldn't have been more than six years old asked this to his mother. The mom looked at her son who tugged at her shirt. Normally she would tell her kid to stop being rude and let adults finish their conversation, but no young kid wants to listen to a boring conversation between their mother and gra...
Mikael cut the pear with a sharp knife, dropping the pieces into the bowl that he had in front of him. He put a segment in his mouth and chewed it slowly as he finished, enjoying its flavour. Its cool wetness proved refreshing, too, a welcome relief in the stifling heat. Mikael had already removed his shirt due to the warmth; the feeling of cotton hanging on...
--Day 1-- Rob Walsh pounded on his steering wheel in frustration. It was already 6 p.m. and he had told Katy he was going to be home by six. The damned traffic on Highway 53 was backed up a mile from I35, and there was no exit he could take that was going to help get him home any quicker. It looked like there was still some construction going on at the junc...
Synopsis: Shanghaied into a universe of gamers who are in a constant fight for survival Ralph Bronson took the fight to 'Goddess Lyria.' After ignoring her for 20 years she forces the character back into the game. After a shouting match with her that ended with him refusing to worship or venerate her, he found himself in blackness. Inspired by so many thin...
Chapter 1: Getting off track ..................................... It was the perfect start to the worst day of her life. She just didn't know it yet as she sipped from her cup of warm morning coffee at her kitchen table. From the speaker of the radio beside her played an age old piece of classical music to which she hummed along to while enjoying her morn...
Author's Note: This is a story I wrote almost ten years ago and had completely forgotten about, recently discovering it while cleaning up my hard drive. It was going to be a multiple chapter series; however, thought it would make a perfect submission for the Halloween event so submitting in its entirety. I hope you enjoy and vote favorably! * "Mr. Wilcox?"...