7 Slices

By Donny Swords

From horror to fantasy. Seven amazing short stories by Donny Swords. Sparks, Boots?, The Cleansing Bar, Sandra, Scotty, Dark Places, and Only a Dream Away.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donny Swords
• Release date: Nov 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311102003

Donny Swords

Donny Swords is an uncompromising author of dark fantasy, heroism. & horror. His story are riveting, encouraging the reader to keep going until hours pass by and they are still reading. His stories are peppered with heroism and passion. Among his novels are The Bitter Ends and the Ways of the Stygia series. http://mishanoamy.blogspot.com/

Book preview

7 Slices

Smashwords Edition

Donny Swords

©2014 Donny Swords

All rights reserved.

Edited by Jennifer Herring

Primal

Publications

Sparks

Boots?

The Cleansing Bar

Sandra

Scotty

Dark Places

Only a Dream Away

Foreword

Dear readership,

This collection covers a few bases. I wanted to try to give readers some of my short stories that appeared in other publications without receiving much attention, and a few stories never released before. I want to offer the eBook free, to help these stories gain a little traction. Since I am offering this book for as little as I can or free, I would greatly appreciate your reviews on Amazon.com or Goodreads.com.

The mix of tales is eclectic, as I wrote some of them for the Indie Collaboration. I have chosen to collect them here. I enjoy working with the collaboration, and the verdict is still out whether I will put more stories out in their volumes in the future. For now, I plan to focus on Primal Publications and the high quality standards we maintain with each release.

While four of the stories here are horror, the first, Sparks, is not- nor is Boots?, the next story. The third tale, The Cleansing Bar, is the start of a broader novel entitled, Favor of the Gods, due out in 2015.

Time for further darkness…

The next story, Sandra, is from The Bitter Ends- Other Side of Town. This is the newest novel in the series. If you are not familiar with BE, each story is based on the character that is its namesake. Scotty comes next in all his insanity, fresh from The Bitter Ends (volume one). While intriguing, these two Bitter Ends shorts barely scratch the surface of the novels they originate from. If you like zombies, you will love these books. Check them out.

The next story, Dark Places, might stir something inside you…

The final story, the most obsidian, foul, and twisted tale I have ever written- Only a dream away is definitely not for the faint of heart. Consider yourself warned.

Thanks for your support,

Donny Swords

Sparks

The fatal error occurred around the hemi quadrant. Signs of oxygen leakage were apparent enough as the Dirvak race faced its last omen. As pressure escaped the cabin, it began to buckle. A thin vapor scented the air, the control panel sparked…

With one tiny electric pulse, one minute spark, thousands of years of hiding came to a close. The Dirvak’s war with the Scala ended with the deaths of the last Dirvaks- Fula, Tantas, Zena, and Koat.

Damish, king of Scapinia had his victory, so with the combustion of Ranca, the Dirvak’s ship, he ordered a new course. They would go home in triumph. The Scalas put their present galaxy behind them, shifting into hyper drive.

Forgotten were the few stones passing as planets in the insignificant galaxy. Forgotten once again was Ranca’s wreckage, the Dirvak Vuls, and those things that when lost might be found.

Ranca burned like a firefly in the cobalt sky. Where Ranca’s wreckage reached, ghostly light glistened glamorously over emerald greens and delicate ivories across the mountain prairie, orange and lurid. Ufburk, a mountain man of the Taraks watched the ship fall in fiery rain, as he sat frozen in the field.

Cultural eons separated the viewer from the viewed. What fell was alien to the Tarak race, and to Ufburk’s dismay, it fell nearby, smoldering in the drop cliffs near Whispering Stream. The explosion’s blinding flash still haunted his primitive mind, one that would have been as shocked to see a wheel as a detonating space transport from 57 galaxies away. Inventions, other than a few weapons of wood and stone, or netting were rarities to the bearded native.

For 23, Ufburk was fiercer than his peers were, though peak ages in his clan usually numbered a dozen years higher. In his 35th year, a Tarak became a hunter. This period marked the peak years of their physical prowess. With melancholy, he stared after the fawn he had tracked as it fled fleetingly, leaving him little or no hope of returning to camp with supper.

As pieces of searing shrapnel shot towards and entered the atmosphere, they howled through the wind, shrieking like the banshees at Tib Summit. Ufburk paid rapt attention knowing whatever he saw did not belong. His hackles harassed his hardy disposition, tingling his backbone like thorny feathers.

The frigid air chaffed his high cheekbones, as the wind whipped his knotted mane sideways and back again. He felt nothing- nothing other than the surmounting curiosity, and odd superstition. Where the sky bled disintegrating teardrops in millions of torrid torches tumbling from the heavens, Ufburk sighted a few pieces actually reaching land, near the stream.

Whispering Stream was a dangerous place- especially at night. The stream itself lay in a gulley, cut deep and dividing the land for hundreds of miles. The steep climb down, while treacherous, at least afforded a false security for Ufburk. Footholds located themselves under his searching feet, and handholds came easily. He wondered if he could locate the debris under the darkened night the gully granted.

Progress was steady, though the wind gusted sporadically seeking to throw him from the cliff face. He persevered; his thick muscles remained capable amidst the heavy strain. As he descended the darker places, swathed with shadows, his survival instincts excited him. He almost went back up several times. There was no telling what he would find. Whispering Gully seldom had visitors. As he made his way closer and closer to the floor, the scent on the air was thick- the smell of burning plastic and white hot metal.

The frozen floor crackled as the crust gave way to Ufburk’s leather moccasins. He cursed his luck. Sound carried well in Whispering Gully. It radiated from the stony surfaces and ice faster than the predators lining the forest floor to his southwest soon would.

They did; their cries sounded awful, like a person slowly torn in two. Ufburk heard some of their strides and he marked their trajectories accordingly. He pulled out his stone cudgel, prepared to fight now that it came to it. His weapon was weighty, its head formed by ebon granite and iron. Most men would have died it the next few moments. Hearing a crinkle from a few yards off, he whirled with his weapon swinging in a round, vertical arc.

A strange cat, with striped fur had jumped at him, but now it lay broken at the spine and ribs, dying from internal bleeding. More came but Ufburk smote them. The exchange transpired in a blur of motions, shadows, and misting scarlet. Shattered and strewn about were Ufburk’s assailants, failures trans-mutated to pulp with dust for bones.

He kept moving, low and silent. Waiting around freshly killed flesh was folly within Whispering Gully. Bad things could happen. They often did. He wondered if he was mad, not knowing he had the same disease every man has. He wanted answers. Knowledge, or the search for it, often precedes violent conflicts… and rivalry- a kind of knowledge linked to jealousy.

Something drives men in ways unmentionable. Compulsions trigger actions, perhaps set by genetics, maybe by culture. The concept of death does not dissuade the pursuer. The tribesman hunched lower, moving lightly to not disturb stones or soil. Things tracked him in the thick trees, often on higher ground. Here he was extra cautious.

He found a thin path, lit eerily by ghostly starlight, too far away, affording him an advantage as far as remaining silent, but still a creeping trepidation concerned him over what had