The story of Lovecraftian doom and courage at the end of the world is available for free download at Amazon now through Thursday!
While you’re there, check out the rest of the library!
Tag: Amazon
An Excerpt from Killing Time!
Hey, all! The free giveaway for Killing Time ends tomorrow, so if you haven’t downloaded your copy yet, I thought I’d just give you a taste of what you’re missing:
July 5, 2002
I thought I’d lost it. Totally flipped, tripped and fallen into strait-jacket land. But I went back this morning, and it was still gone.
Listen to this. Sounds crazy, but I swear it’s what happened.
Yesterday, I was down watching the fireworks over Liberty Island, when the Statue of Liberty disappeared. Just like that, just—ffft! —vanished in front of thousands of people.
That’s right. You probably don’t know what the Statue of Liberty is. Nobody else did.
It’s a good thing that New Yorkers are used to random street lunatics. If I’d been anywhere else, running around and screaming at people about a 300-foot statue that no one else remembers existing, I probably would’ve been locked up.
When I woke up this morning, I thought maybe it had been a dream, or a hallucination, so I went back downtown to check it out.
Still gone. Liberty Island was a major entry point of immigration, just like Ellis Island. And nothing more.
July 12, 2002
Patient is beginning to suffer from hallucinations. Further evidence of an organic-related dysfunction, perhaps damage or chemical imbalance effecting the sensory and memory areas of the brain. The need for that CAT scan is becoming urgent—a regimen of drug therapy should be started as soon as possible.
Dr. West
July 7, 2002
Now I get it. Now it makes sense. I know what’s wrong with the shape of the world, now. Things are missing.
I didn’t get lost, that day, looking for my deli. It really was gone—and isn’t it funny how I haven’t thought much about it since it vanished? I used to go there three times a week! I didn’t even bother trying to look for it.
How often has that happened? All along, I’ve been noticing—subconsciously—that things were missing, but I’ve explained it away, then forgotten about it. That must be what’s happening to everyone else.
So why do I remember?
August 3, 2002
(Rustling. Leaves? Wind? Footsteps.)
I’m walking in Central Park. Some monuments were missing—a statue here, a fountain there—but I expected that.
But the trees!
What I didn’t expect were the trees. Some of the trees are missing. Whatever’s happening, it’s happening to living things now, too?
What could be doing this?
August 16, 2002
(Whispered)
Fred didn’t come in to work today. Not that unusual, right? People take sick days and days off, right?
Wrong.
Someone else was sitting at Fred’s desk, and his cubicle was completely redecorated. So I asked what happened. Did Fred get fired? Did he finally retire, only really quietly to avoid all the fuss? They all looked at me like I’d just grown antlers. Who’s Fred? They asked. Mary has worked here for the last six years.
(Pause. Footsteps pass by)
Six years? What’s this horsehockey? Fred’s been in this company—in this same damn spot—for as long as anyone can remember. At least twenty years.
I looked around to make sure that I was in the right department. After all, I’m going crazy, right, doc? Maybe I just got confused. But no, I was in accounting, right enough.
(Pause. Footsteps pass.)
I tried to call Fred’s home, but I just got one of those damn sirens and the message that says the number’s no longer in service and there’s no further information.
So I find myself with two options: either I hallucinated eight years of stopping by this cubicle every day, Super Bowl parties, and stopping by the pub on the way home; or someone is messing with me and has ‘disappeared’ Fred and all evidence of his existence to do it.
Which is crazier?
(Phone rings. Pause. Phone rings several more times, then stops)
Or maybe there’s an option three: that Fred really doesn’t exist anymore. Just like the Statue.
My god, is it working on people now?
(Phone rings)
I have to answer that.
For the rest, head on over to Amazon and download yourself a copy. And while you’re there, check out the rest of the library. Keep watching for further promotions, and new stories coming soon.
Killing Time Available for Free Download Now Through Thursday!
The Lovecraftian (or Twilight Zone-ish, if you ask my father) story of a man watching as time fragments around him is available for free download at Amazon now through Thursday!
While you’re there, check out the rest of the library!
Looking The Other Way Available for Free Download now through Thursday!
Like the title says, Looking the Other Way, one of my more popular short stories, is available for free download from Amazon, now through Thursday 7/28. More news in the coming week!
It Was Taking Too Long
Hey, all.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been rolling out my old short stories one at a time, each complete with their own product page and a promotional post on the blog. But like the title says, I decided that was taking too long. Those stories were published before. There was no point in drawing things out.
So now, all previously published stories are once again available at Amazon. All are also enrolled in KDP Select, so if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, they are available there for your reading pleasure.
Product pages coming soon, as well as new stories. And keep your eye out for promotions!
Looking the Other Way is now available for sale!
The first story of the dark beneath the City is now available for sale! Check out the updated Short Stories page, the story’s own page, or, if you’re in a hurry, just go straight to Amazon. It’s available both for purchase and for checkout with Kindle Unlimited.
(All stories previously released through this site are now available only through Amazon, and can now be checked out through Kindle Unlimited.)
Excerpt:
The tracks were full of vermin.
It was a living river, flowing from the Queensward side – from the deep and unbroken dark beneath the East River. Probably shin-deep or worse, if I’d actually dared to get down there: rats squirming and climbing and tumbling over each other as an endless current of cockroaches carried them along.
They were running from something. Was the tunnel flooding? Should I be headed for the surface, like right-frigging-now?
But no, that wasn’t it. If I looked further up the tracks, toward the tunnel, I could see what they were running from. Right behind the cockroaches was a tide of…well, they looked like cockroaches, too, except that they were black – I mean absolute, gleaming, lightless, deep-space black, like chips of the all-consuming Void moving among the plain brown carapaces of New York’s everyday garbage-eaters – and they were big. The ones the size of my finger were running before the ones the size of my palm, who were running before the ones the size of my whole hand, who were…
Then, just as I was about to make a run for the surface – possibly while screaming like a little girl – a dark shape appeared in the tunnel. It looked human and it lurched along like it was drunk or unsteady on its feet, like the homeless guy up on the platform.
I started forward; plague of giant mutant cockroaches or no, a person down on those tracks is in several different kinds of deep trouble. The train would be along any minute, but it might not even be that long before a stumbling drunk stumbled into the third rail.
I didn’t get two steps before Janitor’s Coveralls grabbed my shoulder. “Dejalo, m’ijo,” he said. “Leave it. This is their territory.”
“Their what?” I said, starting forward again. Then I stopped short as the figure emerged from the tunnel.
It wasn’t human. If it ever had been, it wasn’t anymore. More of the black cockroaches – these ones with weird silver-colored ridges and knobs forming patterns on their shells – were swarming all over it. Over it and through it. Black bugs dripped from the sleeves of its trench coat and the cuffs of its raggedy corduroys; they spread like sweat stains across its ancient white undershirt; they concealed its feet as it shuffled forward through the swarm. It opened its mouth and a horrible crackling noise emerged, followed by more of the finger-sized black beetles. Worst of all, when it raised its head so I could see under the battered brim of its hat, I saw two of them lodged in its eye sockets, like tiny pilots operating the vehicle that had once been a man.