Surrounded by the limping hosts of doom,

With defeat closing in on our smiles,

We pray to the gods of thunder

For just five more seconds.

Don’t let us fall with

The empty sound

Of our gun

Going

click.

CHAPTER 2.

As the dawn broke, 65 year old Klaus Goddard walked with his cows back to the milking barn on his meager farm. Morning chores would not wait, war or no war. 1944 had been a hard year, particularly with so much of his crops and milk production being diverted away for the war effort. It had been so much harder after the Allies landed in France and began pushing the Wehrmacht back. It seemed inconceivable to Klaus that things could become so unraveled. If anything, 1945 appeared to be much worse. He sighed tiredly. Things had been like this back in the Great War too. It was a vicious cycle, it seemed. (more…)

Humphrey sat in his seat, his head slightly higher than the edge of the door.  He could see over the dashboard and at the road ahead of us.  My little stuffed traveling buddy.  We sat atop a hill overlooking a small town—Jalopa, South Carolina.  It wasn’t much of a hill, but it gave me a clear line of sight in all directions.  The town wasn’t much of a town either—a couple of buildings that looked as if they belonged in the fifties, some cars lining unmetered parking spots.  A red vehicle sat stopped at a street light.  The light itself had long since expired. The death of electricity made sure of that.  The few houses off in the distance ran along a cracked blacktop that was in serious need of repaving.

There wasn’t much to see.  (more…)

The following handwritten account – found in a farmhouse in Lisdoonvarna, Co. Clare – was initially accredited to flamboyant Z War hero John Fletcher as it had been signed with his name.

At the time it was widely discredited as a forgery as its manner and tone did not reflect Fletchers famous idiosyncratic style, nor did his apparent timidity in the text match the warriors’ well known ferocity. However, new anecdotal evidence has recently come to light that hints at this documents possible authenticity.

The following abridged version, appearing here in print for the first time, was originally intended for inclusion in the biography: “John Fletcher: Corpse Killer!” but was excised by the publishers who feared that this unverifiable adventure would leave them open to litigation should it prove false. Also, Fletcher’s controversial actions during the War might subsequently have become open to serious revisionism. (more…)

In September Baelynn was still with us…although that always seemed to be a relative term given the circumstances of the situation. When I would make my visits to her in the hospital she wouldn’t know who I was. There were several times where she just didn’t respond to my visits at all. It’s a double edged sword in that when I would visit her I would feel depressed and when I wasn’t visiting all I could feel was a great wave of melancholy and overwhelming guilt come over me. High fevers, rapid aging of the skin and tooth decay and a plethora of other symptoms didn’t keep the doctors at ease, but it didn’t stop them from collecting their money and going on with their day-to-day activities either. They still gave their fake smiles and counted down until they could get their next fix on some cigarettes and coffee. I hated the doctors, but at this stage in the game they were my greatest allies. I wasn’t the only one facing these problems. Several other people that I worked with at the warehouse had family members dealing with the same illness. No one could really make any sense of it. My boss, Mustafa Alford, and I shared the same plight, though both his mother and son had fallen ill, so I’d say that his situation was slightly worse. (more…)

Sequel to EVERYBODY BUT LAZARUS – LIVING DEAD GIRL

Dr. Rob Klein looked through the glass at the girl in the hospital bed on the other side. A patch of gauze the size of his palm was taped across her right eye and her limbs were strapped to the bedframe. An oxygen mask across her face obscured her expression, but her one heavy-lidded eye stared straight back at him.

“How is she?” (more…)

The tourists had left by then, leaving Charlie Copper to finish his day’s chores in peace.  They were summer people mostly and, apart from a few die-hard fanatics, were harmless in their visits to the oldest lighthouse in Connecticut’s history.  Mary, the gift shop girl, and Ted, the tour guide and resident aficionado on all things lighthouse had gone home an hour before, leaving Charlie to close up shop on his own.

In less than two hours, four people would be dead in Charlie’s living room. (more…)