Category: Fiction

The Master Butcher (Halloween special aphorism)

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An aphorism is different from a short story or a piece of flash fiction in that it does not seek to set up or resolve any plot. It is like a snapshot of a particular setting, character, or an expression of a feeling. The following horror aphorism is somewhat inspired by (but not derived from) a track called, “The Master Butcher’s Apron” off of Death Metal band Carcass’s last LP, Surgical Steel. Check it out if you have the time. There was a flash from the east. A burning streak split the evergrey sky, lit coldly by a blood-red sun in…

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He Should Have Taken his Gun (Halloween flash fiction special)

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The point of flash fiction is to condense a story down into its barest and most essential parts. I have attempted to do this with horror, providing characters and plot points in just over 200 words. Enjoy! Julie’s hand hesitated over the buzzing phone. It was a DC area code… probably that FBI investigator again. That meant it was important, but she didn’t want to answer it. It meant hope was gone. Memories returned. It was like the beginning of a horror movie. They were in bed. Something went bump. Probably the cat again, but she had to be sure.…

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Prophet of the God Seed, part 5

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Padalmo grimaced as he swallowed another spoonful of the strange, semi-solid grey substance. He would not have known it was food had he not seen the bald man slurp down half a bowl himself. Moses. I like that name. It has a godly quality to it.  He looked at the bald man, sitting in a chair beside Padalmo’s bed in the long room that made what Padalmo assumed to be part of a hospital. Now conscious, he could take in more clearly the image of the man beside him, who was tall and lean. He wore a simple set of…

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Prophet of the God Seed, part 4

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Padalmo dreamt nothing more. Fala did not come to comfort him. He awoke to the sounds of machinery, humming quietly and clicking away in uncertain rhythms, and was aware of a soft repeating tone. He forced his eyes open. The ceiling was a cool white interrupted by grey lines intersecting one another in squares. He tried moving his head and found he could move slightly to either side, though it hurt gravely to do so. He could see that he was on some sort of bed, only raised off the ground a few feet. There were similar, empty ones off…

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Prophet of the God Seed, part 3

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Death, at long last. Padalmo was crawling now. His legs had grown too tired and weak to continue shoveling through the sand. He got better traction crawling, though the infinitely small particles of silica slipped through his fingers like they were water. “I am a child again,” he said aloud. His voice croaked. “You must become like a child to enter the kingdom of God. So be it, either I enter now, crawling like a baby, or I become its prophet.” His mind was flooded with vivid memories of his home, the high house of Tala’Drog’Chu, the mansion of Imalmo,…

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Prophet of the God Seed, part 2

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Padalmo woke to darkness. It was not the darkness of drapes drawn on the sunward side of a house during a sleep period, which was deep and overwhelming, but rather a soft, rippling diffusion of light. He could see the sand outside the rock overhang, sitting still in piles and dunes where it once was shifting. The shadow of the rock itself blended with the color of grey sand outside. A storm, Padalmo thought. There’s not supposed to be storms over this part of the desert for another quarter year. He crept out and looked at the sky. Large billows…

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Prophet of the God Seed, part 1

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The desert. That is where prophets are made. Across the vast wastes of time, when each year past is but a grain of sand and each world gained and lost a chapter of a book, the desert has always meant something to men of faith. Flat, desolate, waterless… only a man of God can survive, and only with the blessing of his god, or so it seems. Karakum. The Place of Burning. Drogathalum. The Sea of Sand. It marched all the way from the mountains of drought, Staltutum, to the steaming sea, or Drog’ta. The sea was the only sure…

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Muramasa: Blood Drinker, an Author’s Reflection

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At long last, the writing and subsequent digital publishing of my “little” samurai novel is complete. The first words were typed while I was on a break from teaching a special education class in El Segundo, California, and the final words were written in an uncomfortable high chair in a Starbucks that was attached to Marriot in Sacremento, California. That is somewhat symbolic for me, as there were as many words written away from home as at home; my life has been in a state of upheaval for some time, but I still got the work done.  Muramasa was definitely the…

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The Chal’cha Napkin (flash fiction)

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From The Huffington Post “It looks like a gigantic napkin,” Tommy said. “Like they put in your glass at nice restaurants.” “You ain’t never been to a nice restaurant,” Julie said. She was always saying things like that jokingly, but Tommy never laughed, and she never quit. They walked toward the strange building, seemingly dropped overnight in the middle of the countryside miles away from any convenient skyways. It stood about eighty feet tall at its highest point, and did look a bit like a crumpled cloth from where they stood, with long ripple-like folds spiraling up to a narrow…

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Blood Drinker: Chapter 17-2

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Back to Table of Contents   Yoshio waded through the reeds, donning only a cloth that was wrapped around his loins, his kimono having been left on the shore. He dug down in the water, coming up with handfuls of silt, littered with grass, which he put beside a large clay bowl that sat upon one of the many rocks that protruded from the slow stream. Sengo, stripped down in similar fashion, went through the piles of mud and sorted out a grey, malleable clay from rocky soil and watery brown silt. Emi sat under the shade of a willow…

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