[26 short stories of surrealistic horror]
To begin, find a source of static. Static is everywhere. To look is to find.
The sanity wallpapering the world is thin and grows thinner every day. Everywhere there are little holes where order has broken down. So put an eye or ear to a hole and witness the storm gathering beyond. Turn the static up as loud as you can endure and listen.
The hive is listening back. The thing. The space in the middle. The forgotten. The overlooked. The nameless, constantly grasping towards a name and a shape. And above all, a home.
You might find you like static. You might find you like chaos. That means the hive is building its home in you.
[$0.99. Have posted some already. Might post more.]
Old age.
A massive gray glacier, moving slowly while pulverising everything.
Every day, Jules felt the creeping pressure of the glacier. The soreness in his muscles after a soccer game took three days to fade instead of two. Every glance in the mirror revealed a new gray hair and a new line on his face. All of his faculties were in decline. He guessed his eyesight would be the first to go. Already, he was having trouble reading books, which was a shame, because the one he was working on was damned interesting.
He’d found the book at the library, a tiny volume of only ten pages. No title. No author. He’d taken it to the counter, only to be told that that it did not exist in the library’s system.
“Can I keep it?” He felt tugging pity for the little lost dog of a book.
“If you like.”
He’d opened it up on the bus and found that the volume’s slim length was still greatly deceiving. The majority of the pages were blank. Only one had writing on it.
It was just a single long run-on thought that smothered the page in dark ink.
A RIVER OF SILVER FISH, EACH WITH A MAN’S FACE. A MEADOW OF BLUEBELLS, SUMMER FLOWERING, WINTER CRYING. A PLACID SEA OF TOMORROW, FED BY A BABBLING STREAM OF YESTERDAY.
He struggled through the entire page, feeling like a man wading waist-deep through treacle. The words were very close together. It verged on being unreadable. Sometimes, his brain would mistakenly join two words together, like Siamese twins. Other times, his brain would mistakenly separate a single perfectly good word, like Solomon’s baby.
Then at the end of the page, the writing stopped abruptly, seemingly in the middle of a word.
A WAND AND A CUP OF PROVIDENCE, SPITTING AND EXTRUDING DAMNATI
Or did it really stop? Did the story continue somewhere else? He had page 1. Was there some other library, perhaps in this town, perhaps on another continent, that held page 2? And still another that had page 3?
The bus shuddered to a stop. Unease had settled over him like the shadow of a preying bird. Jules knew he was missing something. Something very obvious.
– Sample from “Book”
The Solar Arm is overthrown, and the depraved and cruel Sons of the Vanitar now control the entire solar system. As darkness falls, it’s becoming clear that something has gone very wrong at the deepest level of reality.
Paradoxes. Signs. Wonders. A cloud that covers the entire planet of Terrus. A mysterious rhythmic pulse has started beneath the surface of mankind’s homeworld, counting down to a date six months in the future.
Andrei Kazmer has regained his memories – and lost his sanity. Ubra Zolot hunts him with the wrath of the dead. In the grave of a dead empire, they are drawn together for the final clash, one that perhaps neither plans to survive.
The final apocalyptic struggle is at hand, and the Vanitar are ready to return.
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The planet Caitanya-9 has been destroyed.
With its ominous and ancient glory shattered, leaving behind only mysteries, Sarkoth Amnon has disappeared, and the solar system is in the grip of civil war.
With armies massing on each side, one small fact escapes attention. Not everyone on Caitanya-9 was lost.
Andrei Kazmer has returned himself to custody, and has submitted himself to medical study. Long-suppressed secrets are beginning to stir. So too has Ubra Zolot, who carries a baby and a heart full of rage towards the father.
The handful of survivors now walk Terrus and ride the starlanes, trying to find anyone who will believe their tales and hear their warnings. In a universe of inhumanity, they are beginning to realise that Caitanya-9 might never have been needed to end the human race.
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It is the year 2142. The planet Caitanya-9 has vanished from the heavens, along with its promises of doom. Only Sarkoth Amnon knows the full truth. The planet was a superweapon, created by a race of godlike aliens for the very purpose of their own extinction. Its power is now in the hands of a psychopathic madman called Wake, a man who has every reason to hate Amnon and the empire he now controls. Moments before the apocalypse, he disappeared with the planet to regions unknown. He left behind a single promise: he will be back.
Amnon has returned to Terrus, and faces new problems. A doomsday cult that wishes to possess Caitanya-9 for their own ends, and which Amnon has just betrayed. A childhood friend, snatched from the planet, who might be the key to Amnon’s salvation or his ruin. In a world full of uncertainties and falsehoods, of treachery and lies, Sarkoth Amnon knows that only one thing is certain.
Caitanya-9 will return, and the skies will burn from horizon to horizon.
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“I’ve been thrown out here on this planet. No memories. A gun in my hand, an enemy in front of me, but no memories. And now I see the truth: I was put here to fail. I don’t get to be a martyr, or a hero. I get to be destroyed. You want anger? I can help. Anger is what I do.”
Caitanya-9. Unmappable and unchartable. Orbited by two supermassive black moons, its landscape is in constant flux from earthquakes and volcanoes. The only inhabitants are a mysterious race of aliens, and when a team of geologists makes a terrifying discovery beneath the planet’s surface, the aliens turn hostile.
Five years away Terrus receives a distress call and dispatches a team of six marines to control the situation.
Interstellar travel erases the subjects’ memories. When the marines wake up from a five-year sleep, they have no recollection of who or where they are.
The rank and file receive memory implants, informing them of their pasts.
Their leader receives nothing.
Either by mistake or intent, his identity is a mystery. Battle looms on Caitanya-9, and while the marines prepare to fight a deadly enemy on an ever-changing world, their leader must face the enemy before him, the enemy behind him, and the enemy inside his own head.
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[26 short stories of surrealistic horror]
To begin, find a source of static. Static is everywhere. To look is to find.
The sanity wallpapering the world is thin and grows thinner every day. Everywhere there are little holes where order has broken down. So put an eye or ear to a hole and witness the storm gathering beyond. Turn the static up as loud as you can endure and listen.
The hive is listening back. The thing. The space in the middle. The forgotten. The overlooked. The nameless, constantly grasping towards a name and a shape. And above all, a home.
You might find you like static. You might find you like chaos. This means the hive is building its home in you.
$0.95 on Amazon
Donatella Massimo’s business is Uber for suicide, and in a city full of depression, business is good. It’s safe, sane, and completely legal – you sign the form, and then die. As the company advances one funeral at a time, Donatella begins to wonder what the future holds for her own body. Infodeath is a terminal-black satire of startup culture, the commodification of human life, and the promise of man-made digital immortality.
$0.97 on Amazon
What would you do to change your life?
What if you said ‘anything’…and meant it?
Jiro Zhang is a small-time criminal, steadily circling the drain. Then he meets Makassar, psychologist and founder of the Gateless Gate, Skyless Sky method.
This method is like nothing that has ever existed before. Its techniques are terrifying, illegal, and perhaps deadly. It can cure you of anything, even your humanity. It’s Zen Buddhism on steroids, crack cocaine, and Zyklon B. Jiro just has to sign the dotted line.
Under the guidance of the sinister Makassar, Jiro will walk a path to the edge of sanity, and then far, far beyond. He’s on the ultimate self-help journey…but he might look inside and find there’s no “self” left at the end.
Gateless Gate is a horror novella that mixes Buddhism, transhumanism, and ultra-violence. It’s the tale of a man who tears out the darkness in his soul and replaces it with something a thousand shades blacker.
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A terrible disaster befalls the United States. It must never be repeated. To ensure that it doesn’t, tomorrow’s light now reflects in a thousand million million eyes.
Invisible nanobot-based cameras now blanket the cities and the skies, recording data and transmitting it to the Pentagon. Every single event: recorded. Every single incident: captured. It’s the ultimate law enforcement tool, a security feed that spans coast to coast.
Something is going wrong.
The nanocams are transmitting bizarre scenes to the Pentagon – events that have never happened, images that seem to be from another world.
Are the recordings being doctored?
Or is something far more sinister afoot?
A powerful and malevolent intelligence is emerging from the ruins of America, and it might be too late to stop it. An intelligence analyst called Viktor Kertesz now stands at the threshold of a new chapter of human history…and zero has just become one.
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More short stories. Slipstreams of burning ectoplasm, exteriorized with a literary scalpel.
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[26 short stories of surrealistic horror]