Showing results by author "J.L. Shojosh" in All Categories

Seven strange stand-alone tales involving unusual people caught in disturbing circumstances are presented in this collection.

In this dark, paranormal short story and coming-of-age tale, Scott and his family move into their new home in the middle of summer. On the surface, they are settling into your typical quaint lower-middle-class suburban neighborhood. We follow Scott’s exploration of the place as he battles to make friends, gains acquaintances, and goes on to discover that his new home harbors a dark secret. Can one tell the difference between imagination and actually talking to a non-human entity?

In this psychological short thriller, an elderly loner, who spends most of his days at home, becomes the subject of a home invasion. A young and unmasked man with a gun soon arrests the elder to a chair, beginning a daylong ordeal that both men will never forget.

Nine-tenths of the world’s population is dead. A biological scourge - a dark blight swimming through human veins - was to blame. Adam is thrust into a world of loss and would no sooner set out in search of a woman for whom he is willing to travel across the broken globe to see again, if only to serve as her piece of comfort for a loss that they both share.

Lana undergoes a near death experience. Michael’s life, as a baby, is just beginning. What tethers together the two lives? This pseudo-paranormal short story has a few mysteries that beg to be unpacked. From having to contend with notions of the Lazarus effect, to briefly flirting with other dimensional space, find yourself entreated to an odd day, as Francistown folk grapple with life, friends, family, and courage.

James is tossed into the flames, so to speak. He has a pair of masked assassins on his tail. After finding himself having been teleported to a different realm, James finds refuge in Grace’s willingness to rebel against the Shadow Clan - an oppressive regime. Thus, Grace will side with anyone that the Clan deems as a threat or an enemy. In truth, James discovers that Grace’s motivations are tied to the prophecy of the rise of the King Maker. Who was this King Maker? Does James ever get to go back home? Do the people of Tartra ever get their freedom?

Includes the stories King Maker, Iron Born, Ungodly, Strange Ties, Soul-Bender, and Eclipse.

Rolana and her father escape a higher dimension in order to free themselves from an oppressive regime. However, no sooner would their new life come to a start, the pair would be separated. The telepathic teen is instantly flung into the deep end, as all alone, she now has to figure out how to live and blend amongst humans.

Aisha, an orphaned youth from the streets of Baghdad during the Middle Ages, seeks to raise herself from the poverty and squalor that surrounds her. Fleeing her unknown past, and her petty life of crime, the young Persian ventures off to Egypt, where she’s approached by a man who claims to belong to a secret sect of assassins. After the convenience of free food and shelter ceded importance to the heaviness of the dark acts being asked of her, Aisha tries to escape The Order of the Hashashin. But Aisha’s story was more intertwined with The Order’s than was initially apparent.

A collection of seven cautionary short tales find characters in unnerving situations, all dealing with strange and sometimes supernatural events.

General Jack Lupis, an intelligence officer, receives a call from a stranger. His son has been kidnapped. To free his son, Jack is instructed to jailbreak eight dangerous and high-ranking war prisoners and thus betray his country. Jack races against the clock to move things along as discretely as possible, but things quickly take a wrong turn during the prisoner exchange.

Based on real life events, and embellished in the quirkiest manner, this short story explores the moment that a janitor’s rags turn to riches. The inner workings of Alfredo’s mind are brought to bear in the outer world, since: As within so without, as above so below.

In this modern day fantasy short story, Shojosh paints a world of seers, sprinters and normals, humans with different or no abilities, who live alongside a world of bountiful creatures, on several of earth’s dimensions. Beneath the façade of your typical coming of age story is an atypical coming together of several mystical forces. Lana and her family are secluded from the rest of Pink Coral, a tiny town that now assumes the worst of the seldom seen and rather odd characters within the Mackenzie compound. But how groundless is the townsfolk’s fear? What evil approaches Pink Coral?

In this reincarnation story, Goovu and Katala’s destined life together is cut short by transatlantic slave traders, who were traitors and cousins from a couple of villages away. The couple’s home village was ravaged to smithereens. Five hundred years later, and in the present-day United States, could there be a chance for the two souls to reunite? After a fateful car accident sends a youth, Jason, into a coma, the young man begins to remember a past life, which now haunts him to seek out the woman of his actual dreams.

Nothing ever happened around Aiden's Loch or the rural town of River Fall. Though, unbeknownst to the human inhabitants of this quaint cadre, a hidden community of alter-dimensional beings known as Roji and nayaps live among them. The little town is teeming with all sorts of other-dimensional beings who are stuck there and, likewise, plastered to the routines of this realm - the third dimension.

Danny is trapped in Leria, an alternate realm, made by sorcerers and for sorcerers. There’s only one problem with this magical world: Four of the five kingdoms have been invaded by an authoritarian regime. Having narrowly escaped Leria and found his way back to his realm, will Daniel risk it all and go back, in order to save an ally that he’d made and left in turmoil? If he was a sorcerer by blood and his mother had never mentioned it to him, could it be that his magical heritage comes from his long-deceased father?

Three lives are indefinitely altered on a little girl’s birthday. Two decades later, this small town girl ventures off to the big city to seek higher education and better opportunities. Becky navigates successfully through life in the big city of Brockville, but is soon caught off guard by the baggage that comes with her job. Her family history, and the reason why her father had no pictures of her as a baby, would abruptly and painfully catch up to her.

In this short story magical fantasy, an oddball group of sailors embark on a botanical research expedition. However, at the journey’s onset, the starkly differing personalities in the vessel would clash and misunderstandings festered. As if being on a four-month-long journey wasn’t bad enough, the crew had to contend with the possibility that the waters beneath them may purposefully have been working against their progress.

Black, like a select few other beings, is a soul reaper, whose sole predilection is to claim human souls. However, his life is turned upside down in a chance encounter with a human woman. Black’s memories of his past human life come flooding back to him. Will he continue to hunt human souls or will he turn against the authority and now hunt the hunters? This is the tale of the beginnings of Black’s journey as a changed reaper.

A solar eclipse sends a couple of teens hurtling through time, as they find themselves several centuries in the past. Without the slightest of clues as to what had allowed the impossible to happen, Cameron and his companion struggle to survive in a dangerous world, while working toward piecing together the time-traveling puzzle back to their time. Does the pair of spoiled brats have what it takes to not only survive but work together to get back to the year 2020?