Prey In The Dark
Chapter the 2nd: What goes around…
The pictures were strewn haphazardly across the ancient metal desk. Someone in the building probably remembered what the original color of the paint had been, but no one could think of who that might be. Moonlight struggled through the dirt and grime encrusting the narrow windows set high in the wall, a pale and wan glow in the dark room. Erin pushed back the errant strand of hair that insisted on escaping her severe bun and rubbed her tired eyes. Harsh white light from the gooseneck lamp on the far corner of the desk glared back at her from the glossy surfaces of the pictures. Black and white newspaper file photos mixed with fuzzy, color Polaroids and the occasional professional-grade picture. She slowly shuffled them around on the desktop like a gypsy fortune-teller, not really looking at them, almost feeling her way to some kind of pattern amidst the scattered images. Lost in thought, she didn’t notice the long-fingered hand extend from the shadows to land heavily across her shoulder.
She managed not to scream, but the photographs flew wildly over the top of the desk, some whipping out of the circle of light and disappearing in the darkness as she reached for a gun that wasn’t there.
“Erin, go home already.”
“For the love of God, Terry Paul! Don’t DO that!” She reached up irritably and slapped his hand away.
“Partner mine, you aren’t going to find anything in the next hour you haven’t found in the previous six” her partner said, bending over to pick up some of the scattered pictures. “Not that you’re likely to get much sleep after staring at this lot. “You have a helluva taste in bedtime stories” he said, fanning several of them and grimacing slightly at the mutilated bodies mixed with wildlife photography of wolf kills and close-ups of different breeds of wolves. “You have a phobia about technology or what? The digital archives are a hell of a lot easier to search and organize.”
“I’m just old-fashioned that way” she said scooping the pictures into a small pile and sorting them by size.
“I’ll say. I don’t think I’ve ever been down here. I don’t think anyone has been down here since maybe Tommy Edison.”
“Smartass” she replied without heat. “Sometimes the old ways are best.”
“Some time after the industrial revolution would be nice.”
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Lives Lost In Time: Chapter 3
Interlude the 1st: Timeless Promises
The voice was a silken caress across his flesh as he slept, whispering “You have done well my disciple. Have I not given you everything I have promised? Have you not destroyed your rivals? Have not your enemies died beneath your feet, screaming?” The doctor twitched restlessly, his eyes darting beneath closed eyelids. The long, delicate fingers of a surgeon bunched handfuls of sheet by his sides as he dreamed on. “Yet even now you have failed me, failed your benefactress, your true Mistress!”
A quiet whine escaped from bloodless lips as the sweat-soaked body on the bed jerked as if struck by invisible whips.
“This magic you call science is but a wan reflection of the power I offer you. You have but tasted of the glorious power I can give to you! Your heart and soul belong to the Mistress. You are filled with the darkness you dance with and that darkness is my home. The shadows between your desires are my hunting ground.” The voice inside the mad doctor’s brain grew sibilant with menace, the razor-edged words slicing across his mind.
“Do not disappoint me.”
Prey In The Dark
Prologue:
She ran, heart pounding in her chest, each panting lungful of air a tearing rasp down her raw throat, even in the humid summer air. She ran through the trees behind the parking lot, the full moon giving her just enough light to miss some of the larger branches that threatened her as she rushed between the darker masses of tree trunks. Her dress was torn in a hundred places from the smaller branches that whipped her as she fled and her bare feet left spots of blood behind her. Her high-heeled shoes had been lost in the first frantic moments of flight across the inky blacktop of the common parking lot between the nearly deserted dormitories as they quickly flanked her, cutting her off from the safety of the dorms, forcing her into the woods.
She cried out, a small, frightened yelp, as she heard her pursuers close behind her. She made a desperate turn away from the sound of something crashing through the underbrush on her right. For just a second her long auburn hair whipped across her face, the sweat-soaked strands clinging to her dry lips as they blinded her for a bare moment. She misjudged the distance to a huge tree as she turned and twisted her ankle on the thick roots that stretched outward from it.
She hit the ground in an awkward sprawl, barely getting her arms beneath her in time to save her face from slamming into the moist earth. Desperately gulping down air she managed to get to one knee before they were upon her. She couldn’t even find breath to scream as their claws ripped bloody gashes across her upper arm and shoulder and she fell heavily. She writhed in pain, but was able to twist to the side far enough that the next set of claws gouged into dirt rather than soft flesh. She used her good arm to scrabble to her feet once more only to be driven forward by a heavy body slamming into her from behind. She hit the tree with stunning force, the rough bark tearing the skin on her face and chest. The impact forced the air from her laboring lungs and she slid bonelessly down the tree trunk. She rolled over just as the rest of the pack reached her, rushing through the pools of moonlight that filtered through the branches above. She managed a whimper as their hungry eyes met hers, the blood dripping down her cheeks and arms, and then they were upon her.
The Sweet Seduction of Madness
Prologue:
Sarah Mary leaned forward to pat her horse gently on the neck as they watched the enormous orange ball of the setting sun slip farther and farther below the horizon. A cool breeze rippled down the mountainside, stirring her long black hair about her shoulders. Her black horse pawed the ground as if impatient to be moving once more.
“Yes my friend, we will go soon enough,” she said to her familiar companion, but still she sat quietly as dusk crept across the land and the first tentative stars pierced the vault of the sky. Sighing, she finally urged her mount onto the slight path leading down the mountain. She shouldn’t have taken the time to come up here, she knew, but she had desperately needed a break from the constant grind of the research laboratory. She loved the work, had only dared imagine she would be given an opportunity like this when she graduated from P&ITT, but the safety precautions and unceasing vigilance required while she was working was exhausting. More than one lab assistant had been relieved when the lab cameras or the silent observers standing patient guard detected any hint of irregularity or lack of concentration. She tugged the wide-brimmed hat she wore lower in front as her mount picked up speed headed down the mountain. Grinning, Sarah gave the horse his head and a trot turned into a gallop as they raced the darkness back to the corral.
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Silver Wings and Chrome Kings (2nd Installment)
Chapter the 2nd : My Brother, He’s Heavy
I flipped down the latch and palmed the slide as it slipped from from the guides beneath the barrel. The springs were next and then the barrel itself. I laid the parts carefully out on the oilcloth. The familiar movements were calming, but my hands knew them so well that my mind was free to wander. The meeting with the Tween had gone down like Sarah had said it would and now she and the arms merchant were headed into the sprawling megalopolis that had sprung from the bones of old Atlanta after the firestorm of ’33. There was powder residue inside the barrel. The twisting hexagonal sides stayed much cleaner than the old lands and grooves system and the caseless rounds burned cleanly, but full auto was a bitch on machinery no matter how high the tech and lead was still lead. The silvering was still good and the barrel shined in the dim light against the darkness of my skin. My fingers found the cleaning materials where they always were and began brushing out the barrel. People in the cities never took much effort in preventive maintenance. Their lives depended on tech that could die during the next solar flare, but if they didn’t think about it then they didn’t have to worry about it. After all, there was always some ‘nician just a vid away and who’d want to get their hands dirty like that anyway? It was different out in the open spaces. Parts were precious and some nearly impossible to come by until you hit the next concrete and steel aberration covering hundreds of square miles, choking out anything that dared push its impudent head up to the sun. The drifters knew the value of good tools and solid tech. Survival wasn’t glamorous but it beat hell out of bleeding out down in the neon cesspools where the city threw its failures because your carry piece decided to throw a shitfit. A gun that can’t shoot straight doesn’t even make a decent paperweight.
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Lives Lost in Time Chapter 2
Please note: As with earlier stories, while the characters in this story are original, they exist within and were created for the City of Heroes/City of Villains MMORPG copyright NCSoft and Cryptic Studios. It’s their world, they just let me play there. Enjoy!
Chapter the 2nd: Where there’s smoke…
“I’m tellin’ ya, nothin’! I don’t know nothin’!”
“Then tell me who does” Spyker hissed at the Skull gangbanger. For good measure she bounced his head off the wall once more. The Skull’s feet scrabbled fruitlessly as she held him a couple of inches off the ground. “I can do this all night, you gutterpunk. And I’ll enjoy it right up until your brains splatter out and I have to go find some of your friends by myself.” Her balled fists twisted into the lapels of the cheap leather jacket the punk wore, Spyker shook the skeleton-masked man once more.
“A’right, a’right a’ready!” screeched the punk. “There’s a guy that knows a g… OW!”
“If I wanted fairy tales I’d go to the movies! Last chance.”
“Okay! Jeezus! Ask for Bonebreaker over in the Gish. He moves around a lot. I’m tellin’ ya!” the punk yelled as Spyker shook him once more, “He doesn’t let anyone know where he hangs. Over in the Gish, the Gish I swear!”
Spyker let the power within her begin to seep through the leather wrappings around her forearms. The ebony energy looked like a cross between black flames and dark grey, sooty, smoke. The Skull’s eyes widened as he felt the hungry fingers begin to creep toward his face.
“Wha the! Hey, no! I told ya!” he screamed as the dark cloud covered his head.
Spyker dropped the unconscious punk to the ground. The police band beacon, a “chirper” in the lingo, she set by his feet. The PCPD should arrive long before the Skull and his buddies regained consciousness. Spyker faded back into the shadows, the black tiger-strip camouflage on her dark orange catsuit blending her outline into the night’s cool darkness. She headed slowly toward the park she knew was nearby, staying to the shadows while she thought her way through what she’d learned.
Rumors had been circulating about a new type of villain terrorizing the streets of Paragon City. Not that there was a shortage of evil-minded freaks wandering about after the Rikti invasion. There was also no shortage of new heroes as well thanks to the incredible energies released during the Rikti War. Many had formed teams and even groups, but Spyker had avoided them. Her single-minded mission hadn’t seemed to leave much room for working with other heroes. Yet, she knew other heroes might have information sources she did not. She had been a loner for so long, she wasn’t sure how to approach these other superheroes. For now, she had another goal in mind. Homeless people had been disappearing. It wasn’t as if the city kept accurate records on the homeless, but several of Spyker’s sources had reported friends and acquaintances going missing. Worse than that, she had seen copies of several police and forensic reports where bodies had been found, or rather pieces of bodies had been found. Few of the victims had been identified since DNA-style identification was mostly useless; the homeless rarely had occasion to have DNA typing done. In every case the police had been unable to positively identify the victim. More disturbing than that was the information that hadn’t made the papers: in many cases the body parts found together didn’t belong to just one individual.
Finally, a good charity that does it right!
OK folks, this one is important so listen up. I get calls all the time from “charities” soliciting money for their cause. When you ask a few questions you find out this is a front company for the “charity” and they are skimming as much as 80% to 85% of your donation to cover “administrative fees”!!! Talk about getting screwed. We might donate $100 (it makes the math easy), and $15 or $20 might make it to those who need it. That to me is not acceptable so I don’t give them any of my hard earned duckets.
Now, that isn’t to say that I don’t give money to charity, on the contrary, I do. But I have been burned in the past so I try to check them out now. That’s why this post is important, I found a great charity that helps children in need, it was started by a pair of cool guys (Yep, the same pair that brought us Penny Arcade) and they take almost nothing in “administrative fees”. Instead of taking 85% off the top, these guys take as little as possible and make sure it doesn’t go over 2% or 3%. Yeah, you read that right, it’s not a typo. Have I got your attention now? Good.
The charity is called Child’s Play, and they work to help children who are stuck in hospitals with long term illnesses cope with the mental anguish, fear, boredom and everything else they go through. Tons of money goes into the medical research side of things which is good, but these guys are trying to help the other side, the kids and coping with whatever hardship they are going through. They are hooked up with over 70 hospitals all over the world with more getting added all the time. Most donations are made through a third party like Amazon.com. You can go to the Child’s Play website to pick the hospital of your choice, and then buy something on amazon for that hospital. It can be a toy, a game, a game console, books, whatever moves you, it’s all good. However, instead of shipping it to your location, you can instead ship it directly to the hospital. Wanna know the best part? 100% of that donation just went to the hospital that you picked. You can donate money too, and other things/ways/etc that are spelled out on their website, and almost everything goes straight to the intended target.
So, check it out, take a look at the site, spread the word and when you feel like giving, do some good with a charity that is working as hard as you are to help kids that need all the help they can get.
Thank you.
Hiding From The Moon
Breathing hard he tore through the woods, in and out he cycled cool moist night air. Light from the silver glow of the full moon belched out upon the woodlands. Free. He felt free, felt as if he had not been alive in years. Strength and power surged through him, rushing through his veins as he let loose and ran though the underbrush, snatches of branches and brambles nipping at him, taking tufts of hair as he passed. He didn’t care about leaving traces, he was free.
Stopping at a stream he knelt and drank, long slow draws from the cold water, water that fed the earth, fed him. I am the night, I am the earth, I am the power he thought, all the power in the universe. He had forgotten just how good it felt to run, feeling his powerful muscles move him along. Feeling his lungs exercise and work for a change. He pushed his body hard, only to have it respond by wanting more. It felt good, so he ran. Read the rest of this entry »
Lives Lost In Time: Chapter 1
Please note: As with earlier stories, while the characters in this story are original, they exist within and were created for the City of Heroes/City of Villains MMORPG copyright NCSoft and Cryptic Studios. It’s their world, they just let me play there. Enjoy!
Chapter the 1st: The Time Before
“DAD!” Elektra Duras screamed as she leapt up from her sweat-soaked sheets.
She was halfway to the door before her conscious mind reasserted itself and reality spun away the fibers of her nightmare. She fell to her knees, the terrible images still so real inside her head: the awful smell of the laboratory as the black flames roared hungrily through shattered glass beakers and test tubes. The heat was terrible; she could feel it beating against her, but somehow inside her skin rather than outside. Even now she could still feel the twisting agony echoing within her, just as she had first felt it racing through her father’s office door only to be engulfed in darkness. Read the rest of this entry »
Dreams Lost In Dawn
Desire drifts delicately o’er my cheek
Your breath like the rarest of wines
Night winds whisper across my eyes
The petals of your lips o’er mine
The stars reflected in your eyes
Your scent, your touch, the dream of you
Your skin, your voice, this dream of you
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