"It is official; I am insane." It had been more than forty-eight hours and no sleep. But Julie couldn't help but smirk. A peculiar theme in the drawings placed nearest her bed had struck her. Dark eyes with a tinge of Heaven and Hell watched over her framed by long masculine hair. "Insanity – I'd have to be insane after all this. Besides the fact that I'm ta...
The Kaiser's war finally reached our remote village that night. They came from the west, and made real our worst fears. I refused to cry, even when yet another German soldier came into my room to have his turn with me. This one appeared much too young to be wearing a uniform. His frightened expression vivid beneath the mask of dirt and grime collected on the...
This is some straight-up unedited freestyle shit. This is how it really went down. I'm my own man. I make my cheese outside the law, and I don't understand how any man can think himself a man and abide by these laws that make a bunch of muckety-muck motherfuckers richer and keep him boxed in. I sell anything you need. If you want it, I got it. My only worri...
June 14, 1987 A six year old girl sits alone at a small oak table; toys stretched out in front of her. She has constructed a castle out of her alphabet blocks, with a pink dragon atop it, and a cowboy astride a black horse sits in front. A small, tattered rag doll smiles blankly up at the girl, a paper crown perched lopsidedly on its stained head, its black...
Note: This is another piece I had written but not submitted over the past year or so. There are several more chapters written, unlike Take a Chance. Yes, the NerveGear comes from an anime/manga series, Sword Art Online. The series raised some questions, I thought, that could not be explored in that format, because of the age of the target audience. The wor...
Prologue A rare find, that beautiful crimson hair. That color was usually the result of cheap dye and a childish personality, desperate to prove individuality by opposing normality. It was a rare gift from nature, every strand like melting rubies, when most so-called redheads possessed only a diluted orange hue. But hers was like blood, drawing the eyes of...
Author's note: All characters and companies mentioned in this story have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone or anything bearing the same name or names. Events portrayed in this story are pure invention and have not been based on any events that have happen in real life. All the characters involved in...
She tapped at the keyboard slowly, picking out just the right words to convey for the story she wanted to tell. Lost in her own, self-made world, she only barely caught the flash of movement in her eye, followed by the gentle ding as the door to her shop struck the small bell that hung over the frame. Silhouetted by the setting afternoon sun, was a petite f...
After a lifetime's work, and so many sacrifices, Ember had finally attained her goal. She stood at the heart of the dormant volcano, Mount Nazzad, on a black stone platform suspended by enormous chains above bubbling magma. Before her glimmered a very large ruby on a pedestal. Within it, she knew, slumbered the immense power of Zad the Stoker of Passions, se...
He was a friend of her brother's. Out to dinner with a large group of his friends only a few hours after her flight had landed in Prague, feeling overwhelmed and peevish, she'd shifted in her seat and their knees had touched. There had been hastily mumbled apologies from both sides, a shared laugh at the over-politeness of it all and then he'd struck up a co...