Son of a Preacher Man: Hunter, Part Three

Dreary could only describe the cold southwestern night as Jack slowly made his way up to the top of one of the many stores lining 6^th street. The emergency ladders alongside the buildings were old and rusted, their bolts loose, grinding against the roughly hewn bricks they were set into. Groaning beneath Jack’s weight, the ladders still bore him up to his destination with little trouble.

The gigantic neon sign of the bar flickered rhythmically as the letters flashed across the car-lined street below, deep shadows springing to life with every shade of brilliance that lit up the empty space in front of the packed bar. Standing on the roof, Jack could feel the heavy bass of the music reverberating through the cement as he moved to the edge of the roof, dropping his pack to the ground unceremoniously.

Son of A Preacher Man: Hunter, Part Two

Previously

The Fortune of War is perhaps the closest thing to a gathering place for supernatural creatures in all of New York. An old style English pub, the small tavern is located in the Bronx, a place not exactly known for seedy taverns. But some way or another, it always seems to make enough money to linger on. I push my way in through the front door, a small set of chimes ringing above head allowing the barkeep to know of his new customer. An obese man by the name of Charlie, I’ve never been able to quite place where he fits into this world.

He knows damn well I’m a Vampire, but doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, he’s offered me on three separate occasions hints and tips that have saved me a good deal of time as well as money, all thing considered. I know he deals heavily with the occult, not as heavily as the man I’d originally meant to visit tonight, but enough to know a thing or two about the dealings going on throughout the city.

Son of A Preacher Man: Hunter

          Previously

Sitting in my armchair, I errantly flip through the pages as I notice with a sense of grim satisfaction that, according to the headline, a horribly mutilated girl was found and able to be saved sometime a few evenings ago.

“Good for you Angelina…” I mutter to myself as I skim over the article. It would seem that she hadn’t been able to properly identify me during my night time assault. All the better, I suppose. I merely shake my head as I finish the article, the typical plea from local authorities asking anyone for information on the attacker.

A small editorial piece next to the main article debates over whether this attack is in any way related to the Organ Snatcher, the killer that has been plaguing the Big Apple for nearly a year now. I smile to myself as I flip the page over to the business section, my eagle eyes seeking the stock reports for my numerous holdings and bonds. They seem to be stable, which is really all one can ask for in this economy. I lean over to the side table next to my high backed chair and make a note to sell some of my stock in the newer computer gaming country that I’d invested in a few years ago. I’d been slowly watching it decline in value over the course of three years, small spurts of activity aside, and was having serious doubts over the continued value I could derive from the dividends the company paid me on a regular basis.

The Many Misadventures of Master Mystery: Murderous Mohrgs from the Moors, Part Five

Previously

Reginald sighed as he cut along the sternum of the first victim, the delightfully charming Mary Ann Nichols. Well, she had been delightfully charming.

Now she was just a ragged corpse with holes sliced into it.

“What are you doing?” She asked from Reginald’s shoulder, hovering over him by a few inches to watch as he cut into her physical form.

Reginald sighed again, choosing to focus on his task at hand rather than look up into the silvery face of the dead woman who had yet to pry herself away from him! “I’m going to search your body for physical evidence before I search it for nonphysical evidence.”

“Nonphysical evidence?” Another ghost piped up, this one a portly male with a savaged stomach and three neat symmetrical incisions along his throat. His voice was as raspy as someone with a lungful of opium smoke, and his pallor was dreadful, as if he’d been drug from the bottom of a lake.

“Ghosts are a rarity good sir, a rarity that only occurs when there is a sudden and very violent death. The fact that I am speaking to three such beings at one time suggests something supernatural is killing people here in jolly good England, and I for one would like to discover what it is.”

“Well what could do something like this?” The spirit asks after a moment, glassy eyes reflecting nothing but sadness and confusion.

Smiling grimly as he folded back the outer layer of skin on the young corpse, exposing muscle and bone for all the world to see. Along with the maggots crawling about inside the dead flesh, wriggling between the sinewy cords and along the pink bones.

“That’s odd.” Reginald muses before looking up to Mary Ann for a moment. “And you said that you never saw what killed you, right?”

“That’s right,” Mary Ann said evenly, folding her arms over her translucent form. “It all happened so fast, all I remember is a flash of pain then darkness. And now just this endless cold.”

“Yeah well, the endless cold will have to do for the time being. You’re going to be like this until I get to the root of the problem, the problem being what exactly killed you.” Reginald replied with a somewhat genial tone before splitting the sternum with a pair of calipers. “Sorry you have to see this.”

“Not at all, it’s actually quite interesting.” Mary Ann said almost cheerfully, peering into her own ribcage. “I’ve always wondered what exactly makes us all tick.”

“Well this isn’t a very good representation of what keeps a normal person alive, just so you know.” Reginald moved a leather-clad hand into the slimy recesses of the chest cavity. “Besides the maggots, which shouldn’t even be here this quickly, you’re missing a few vital organs.”

“Like what?” Mary Ann asked, clearly interested.

“Like a heart. And judging from the arteries leading to it, the whole thing was torn out through those nasty little incisions along your stomach.” Reginald pointed out, pulling his hand free from the slimy interior of the body, flicking off a few maggots for good measure.

Bloody Mary

The frigid chill of the darkness is all that I seem to be. I cannot tell where I begin and the unknown begin, instead viewing myself as a horrid amalgamation of the darkness given the ability to think. The few times I can think, outside of my own endless existence… I don’t like it.

I open my eyes, the siren call ringing true through the darkness. Someone is calling me.

Tears welling in my eyes, I shake my head back and forth, my stringy black hair floating around me weightlessly. No! I think bitterly as I feel the darkness swirl around me. Not again, please not again!

The call grows stronger as a sliver of light pierces through the darkness, slowly chipping away to reveal an open doorway, full of light and warmth. Sadly, the doorway is too small for me.

They always are.

Ravens: Chapter One, Part One

     Prologue

It all started some time ago, in a land not far from here. A land known as the Kingdom of Aura. A prosperous land that grew on the labors of hard working men and women in fields of barley and rye, of brewers most bold and of frivolous merchants and moneylenders that made the whole kingdom run so well. Knights and soldiers patrolled the borders, ridding the kingdom of the occasional bandit menace that was so prevalent during those budding years of our happy little city-state.

I was one of those knights… well, truthfully I was one of those knight’s footmen, a spearmen that moved with the young lad to act as one of his personal guard. Yeah, I know, guards for the guardians of the realm. Seems silly doesn’t it? I always thought so. But I was paid a sack of grain a month, and it was more than enough for me to barter with for food and… luxuries. We’d gotten word from a ragged looking man that his town, some nameless little burg on the Eastern most edges of our borders, had succumbed to the Plague.

That meant Zombies.

Netflix Movies Worth Watching

     Even I like to take time every now and again and relax to a good thrillerama, especially now that I'm so often away from home now. This is where Netflix comes in; with their instant streaming option, I have the ability to watch movies wherever I am, be it from my phone or my computer. I tend to enjoy the darker horror movies, but every once in a while I like a good dark romp that is equally funny as it is terrifying. This of course requires a bit of research on my part, something that I am glad to share with those who grace my little dark hole on the internet.
     I Sell The Dead is a British horror/comedy about a pair of grave robbers that have begun to literally find and sell the undead. While delightfully fresh in many regards, it goes so far as to pull cliches from the horror genre, if only to mock and make fun of. With a surprise appearance by Ron Perlman (from Hellboy) as a priest interrogating one of the grave robbers before he is to be executed, the entire movie is full of well versed characters. Have a look.

Fighters of the Damned Part Two

           Part One

Matt slowly opened his eyes, groaning from the pounding in his head along with the general soreness throbbing throughout his joints. Looking around to try and gather his wits, he could only curse inwardly as he found himself in possibly on of the worst possible situations.

Strapped to a table beneath a bright light in a darkened room.

He was nude, if the chill of the room and steel of the table were any indication, with an IV steadily dripping some mysterious liquid into his left arm. Flexing his arms and legs individually, he was pleased to learn he hadn’t suffered any breaks or sprains, but cursed his luck at how tight his restraints were.

There was no chance for escape, to be certain.

Fighters of the Damned, Part One

Matt heaved a sigh of relief as the roars of the crowd washed over him, raising his wrapped hands high as the referee called out his victory to the world. This had been what he’d been training for the last six months, and now that it was over he couldn’t be more proud of himself.

He’d taken on the United States Heavy Weight champion in Mixed Martial Arts and won. Not only won, but won through a landslide of a fight, tearing through his opponents defenses and getting under the man’s weak guard to deliver bone cracking blows in a hailstorm of regimented fury. According to the clock on the wall, the fight had lasted less than five minutes.

Perfect.

Bookworm

David sighed as he leaned back in his stiff-backed chair, stretching his aching muscles and popping his back in a series of sigh-inducing cracks. He’d been studying for his Mythological Creatures class for the last two hours now, a dismal flickering light barely keeping his small study room lit enough to read the numerous books by.

He’d signed up for the elective after hearing the class was essentially an easy A. This was before Professor Stocking retired and Doctor Vicks came on staff to take her place. The surly old polish professor was one of short stature and even shorter temper, demanding the utmost attention to detail in his class. Between the long and sundry list of books David was expected to read, he was told he had to research in the Miskatonic Library a minimum of three hours a week. The old coot had even left a sign in the roster at the front desk for his students to check in and out throughout their studies.