Showing results by author "Stephen Donald" in All Categories

How long can one sensitive youth tolerate the incessant shelling, the nerve-wracking eruptions, the slumber-slaying shockwaves of bombardment? How much terror can a soldier endure before he takes that last short walk beyond the trenches and coiled barbed wire into no-man's land to meet his violent fate? The bloodiest war of the bloodiest century in human history. For some, it never ends.

The last frontier is not a destination of space, but of mind. Beyond the constraints and laws of human civilization, freedom is the rule and confinement the exception. Social authorities detest Far-World and all who voyage there, because therein lies the ultimate unknown, the ultimate fear, if only because that mysterious land lies far beyond mortal control. Is it pure imagination? Is it life beyond death? Because it is wonderful and strange, a rigid society long ago outlawed Far-World, but laws have never deterred a single seeker. If you plan to go there, be sure to pack a bag and plan to ...

A special agent with a special job, he's the janitor of all the unhappy, unpleasant, bleeding places of the world. He'll clean up your messes and leave nary a living witness in the muck that remains. Man, woman and child, his conscience is absent, his drive is relentless, and his soul is a ravenous void. Cyclic rates of cannon fire and napalm. Cluster bombs and poison gas. Ever the calm, cool professional, he feels nothing. He is nothing.

If you listen long enough, you may be convinced of anything. Provided the voice you heed is sufficiently provocative... provided you are prepared to ponder its lies or truths... provided it gets to you early enough. What are the origins of human evil? Is it guaranteed from birth, or is it visited upon us via infantile nightmares?

Tarn is a water world, covered from pole to pole by an incredibly deep ocean. Humankind built only one city there. Situated directly on its equator, terraformers strategically emplaced this massive port to continuously exploit the planet's boundless fisheries. Unfortunately for the common sailor, adult fish are many times larger than the tiny boats that hunt them, so the death toll climbs after each six month tour. Human life and labor are Tarn's cheapest commodity. Many will not survive their first encounter with the Devilfish.

When we dream of falling, we inevitably awaken at the moment of impact. When we run for our lives from nightmare monsters, we invariably rouse before the bloodthirsty end. Myth and folklore imply we die in the waking world when we die in our dreams, and this is why living human beings never dream all the way through such slumberous events. This assertion begs a question. How many of the dead have suffered such fates? Countless anonymous people populate our night visions. Who are they? What becomes of them when we lay violent hands upon them in lividity of dreams?

Every ten years, a lottery draws them from all over the country. Every lottery is always the same: four boys and three girls, each with an exceptional mind and each mired in a neglectful or abusive life, which is sure to eventually destroy them. The spooky mansion at 472 Malign Terrace will become their home and their salvation, strange and mysterious though it may seem. Neglected by his addicted mother, a mysterious lottery is the one chance this boy has for a normal life. He reports to 472 Malign Terrace alone and trembling with a strange mixture of terror and excitement.

They are five rough characters in service of the mysterious and powerful Heart Witch of the Gods. She has tasked them to enshrine the latest acolytes of her Sinister Profligate Palm, a jewel-encrusted platinum talisman of unknown power. Follow them through benighted crevasses of the nation on a quest to recruit their sinister counterparts from the ranks of underworld outcasts, vagabonds and felons. A career burglar, doomed prostitute, football player rapist, psychotic teen, and precognitive child form an unholy alliance. What comes next?

On a lonely plot of land in the middle of a desolate night, a forlorn man sits drinking and smoking on his porch as he watches a sinister shadow slowly, intrepidly crossing the abandoned rows of a forgotten farm. While a damaged siphon pump works rhythmically in the distance, he ponders the nature of destiny and fate. Will he survive the evening? Something black and terrifying crosses fallow rows, bound for your porch lamp in the darkness. Welcome or no, fate never knocks.

Take away all a man has. Burn away every sense but that of pain. Blow away the ashes of everything he once was and will no longer be. What remains? Something deadly. Make a man into such a thing, and you make him into something worse than an animal. Such a creature is capable of anything, since it is willing to do anything. Become anything. Anything it has to be to end its suffering and die properly. After a terrible crime, Maxwell Deem chooses the divergent pathway of revenge. With a laser-beam focus, he identifies his targets and then cuts straight to the kill. Sun hot. Blinding white. ...

It's a new approach to criminal rehabilitation. It's tough love at its toughest. There, complete isolation and unending hours of boredom act like an acid drip against the tough granite exterior of its recalcitrant inmates. Though it is a humane system, it offers no mercy to the incorrigible and it has no patience for those who refuse to learn. Only the strongest can long resist, but no human being can resist forever. Unreasonably hard and unforgiving, this prison receives only the worst of the worst, and it serves only one purpose. Despite his vows to break it before it breaks him, he will ...

Born to the street and abandoned by his paranoid, drug-addicted mother, a young boy struggles to evade vicious predators, who hope to exploit him, and insistent authorities, who hope to save him. His only ally is his extreme natural intelligence, and his only home is the public library. Daily, the noose tightens after his mother, his last link to childhood, goes missing. His future seems as bleak as the cold, hard streets. Then he meets Longbow. In a gritty, existential world rife with threats, a young boy fights to survive. One man has the power to save him.

She takes her job seriously. Whether it be unruly school children or an armed madman, she tolerates no mischief aboard her school bus. When confronted by her worst nightmare, this bus driver will pull out all the stops to make certain her young passengers get home safely. When a crazed gunman boards a bus full of small children, it makes for a bad day at school. This bus driver will make certain its most deserving passenger boarded with a one-way ticket.

He is Hate Equinox. She is Loathing Solstice. He is dark of eye and complexion, while she has ivory skin, white hair and a diamond blue gaze. Though they both come from the same community of pagans, they are polar opposites. Growing up together in public schools, each strives to outdo the other, but neither manages to successfully dominate. In time, they graduate high school and then attend different universities, enjoying a parting of ways. Many years later, their fates converge and the sparks fly. Given the conspiracy of proper circumstance and much time, mortal enemies may occasionally ...

On Friday of Easter weekend in Juglan, Texas, many strange events distract from the festivities. Telephone service is sporadic and failing. Fires burn out of control. Police services are nonexistent. The dead and the dying accumulate on city streets. Before the village’s clocktower chimes midnight, many of its citizens will perish and the city itself will lie in flaming ruins. This is the terrible revenge of Nelson Sedgewick. Tonight, he and his Animal Emporium will redefine ‘family fun’.

The Korengal Valley of Afghanistan was one of the most dangerous places in the world during 2008. There on a daily basis, brave Americans confronted the grim realities of a determined guerilla resistance as they opposed an all but invisible enemy exercising a ruthless determination to achieve their objectives at all costs and without heed to civilized rules of war. Using improvised explosive devices and ambush tactics, stubborn jihadists of the region worked fanatically to sap American will to fight by bleeding its forward forces white via use of the most brutal weapons on hand. Deployment ...

This is the true-to-life horror story of a boy born without a name into a lifetime of loss, suffering and sorrow. Bestially abused throughout his formative years, the boy has the appearance of a patchwork monster by the time he arrives at a notorious desert orphanage in Pecan County, Texas. Ostensibly intended to alleviate and soothe the misery of such children, he quickly discovers that Parker House is instead a diabolical nightmare of neglect, exploitation and sadism. There, the boy will travel new realms of torment in the company of his sadistic keepers, Momma and Eugene Parker, who will...