Archive for Original Fiction – Page 13

Childish Fears

The hallway was dark and full of hiding places. The black shadows halted Anne for a moment, but it was crawling out from its lair. She flung herself out of her room, crossed the great void, and smashed into her parent’s bedroom door. She fumbled with the knob. Scooting, scratching…

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The Path Ends

Yesterday four more workers died. That made nearly fifty in the last two weeks. But it would not stop the Path’s progress, for Foreman Elias Acunto knew the bricks of the Path had always been laid with blood, and he kept this fact constantly before him to steel his resolve….

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The Clock Tower

The clock tower outside town has terrified Simon all his short life, but when Eliza, convinced the tower is harmless, forces him to climb it with her, he must face all his nameless terrors. This short story percolated in my brain for several years and finally made its way onto…

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Above

Josiah hunched over his table, etching out his thoughts in thick, straight, penciled lines. The dim fluorescent lent the page a sickly white that obscured rather than illuminated the words. The crank-powered radio choked static and strained gasps of music. The heavy scratch of No. 2 lead counted the seconds,…

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The Last Confession

For all the tests and needles, all the frantic whispered exchanges and phone calls, what it came down to was this: Richard was old, and he was dying of it. He protested little against all the useless activity rushing about him. He let himself be shuttled by car and wheelchair,…

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The Unremarkable Squire

A squire’s oath is to be of service… but to whom? In the kingdom of Basileon, an unremarkable and emotionally detached young man named Obed Kainos is about to stumble into adventure—quite against his will. When the knights of the realm gather in a quest to search for the lost…

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The Butterfly

He listened to Charlotte’s laugh from where he pretended to study and watched her from behind his notebook. The sun shone in her hair and on her cheeks, and the song of flowers was on her voice. He could pick it out distinctly from among the six of them jabbering…

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The Wheel Is Broken

He stopped to dig the pen from behind his ear. He wrote in the margins of that age-old book these words: The Wheel is broken. Yes–yes, that was the center, the thesis, the seed. If the structure which they had created, if the rules and systems which guided Jalseion, if the…

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The Duel

The dome shook. The ground quaked; the battered alley walls cracked; the air pressed down upon Corban Priest. He widened his stance and waited for the blow to pass. Concrete dust billowed into the air, shrouding him from his foe’s eyes, and veiling his foe from his. He was close….

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The Select’s Bodyguard

The first three novels of Bron & Calea — The Select’s Bodyguard, The Doctor’s Assistant, and The Well’s Orphan–are now available in one print volume on Amazon! I wrote The Select’s Bodyguard and The Well’s Orphan. The back cover copy: When Bron, bodyguard to the Select, is jolted awake by an explosion, he quickly discovers…

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Christians Have A Word

Fallen A euphemism for the world. Why not Shattered?: The mirror of God Smashed by His reflection, Lacerating Man, His hand. I know it here, blindly— In the foreign streetlights, The yellow line in headlights, Tired, with hours behind, Dead tired, and hours ahead Unknown. I know it Like failing…

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House of the Living

When scientists stumble across the perfectly preserved body of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the first question is: How? But as one scientist spends his life studying the extraterrestrial crystals that caused its preservation, his questions become deeper, touching his deepest fears of life and death. “House of the Living” is a…

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