Epiphany

By Stanley Sykes

What is an Epiphany?
Some say it is a moment of clarity. When things that seem disconnected come together. A moment when one sees the big picture.

These are the definitions for the norm. But, what about those outside of the norm? The people who see things that others dont. The people who hear things that others cant hear.

Like love and hate, there is a thin line between sanity and insanity. Is the person who hears God tell him or her, all sinners must be punished, having a moment of clarity? Is the person who sees and talks with invisible people having an epiphany?

Do these definitions apply or is there more to it? These short stories will try to shed some light on the subject.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524525774

Stanley Sykes

Stanley Sykes was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1953. He is the second oldest of five children. His mother Katie was a seamstress. His father Clifford worked in a large bakery in Manhattan. He had a normal childhood. By the third grade he was sent to an all-white school in Queens. There he met a variety of different nationalities. He loved to read and by the sixth grade, he had a college reading score. After graduating junior high school, he went to a high school in Brooklyn. He dropped out of school in 1970. He went back to school and got his G.C.D. in 1982. In 1994, he got a job as a nurse's aide in a state mental facility. He left work in 2006 due to medical reasons.

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Copyright © 2016 by Stanley Sykes.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/16/2016

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Contents

The Never-Ending War

The Elevator

REFLECTIONS

Prologue

Reflections

The Observer

A Day in the Life of a Sociopath

Shadow Master

Part One

The Never-Ending War

Since the day of my birth, all I’ve known is war and survival. In my world, nothing else exists. Our pleasures are short-lived, and each day is spent finding new hiding places from our enemies. They are relentless—always developing new weapons to kill us. Our war has gone on for so long that no one can remember when it began.

It is said that we have always outnumbered them. When they discovered we could not be wiped out by brute force, they started making their weapons of war. Throughout our history, we have been persecuted. Why? Because we have no loftier goals than to eat, find shelter, and procreate. Are these not our inalienable rights? No one knows for sure.

For centuries, our only victory has been that we outnumber them. Our numbers are infinite. Kill us by the thousands and a thousand more will take their place. Our biological makeup is such that we become immune to their weapons after several exposures. So we lose countless tribesmen, women, and children each day. By the end of each life cycle, we are one billion strong again. So they try out new weapons, and we hide and survive, scrounging what scraps of food they leave behind and seeking shelter from harm.

So it has been for centuries before my time, and so it will be for centuries after, or so we thought.

They know we avoid light as much as possible, so they leave traps for us in the night. Most of these we just avoid, but some still attract us due to our hunger. That is how my parents died.

***

It was late one night, and they picked up the scent of food. I was half awake when I felt our link expand. I knew they had left our hiding place. I was drifting back to sleep when I heard their screams in my mind. As the rest of our tribe awoke, I raced to where my parents’ screams had originated. It was too late for them.

They were caught in one of our enemies’ housing simulations. It looked like one of their housing complexes except that it was on our scale. On the outside, it looked normal, but once inside, you were caught on a sticky, sweet-smelling substance that covered the floor. You didn’t die right away. Depending on how you were stuck, you either starved to death or suffocated. The more you struggled, the more you became covered in the glue-like substance.

For those who were caught like that, there was no hope. They could not even be integrated back into the tribe by allowing it to be replenished on their remains. I learned a