Ozarium: Transitional Delusions Series, #2

By Brick Marlin

Welcome to the genesis of a new world which begins with the colony of Ozarium. Follow along with an older woman who finds out surviving the apocalypse isn't such a good thing. Briefly meet a killer robot clown. Take a trip with Fred, a ghost attempting to figure out life as an apparition. Then find out what happens when a child wins the lottery, something strongly forbidden in Ozarium…until now.

  

Ozarium is the second book in the Transitional Delusions Series, following Shadow Out Of The Sky, but it can be read as a stand-alone novel!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seventh Star Press
• Release date: Oct 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736812525

Brick Marlin

Brick Marlin has been writing since he was a child. From an early age he was exposed to older horror movies. The great ones making their mark in history. He also tackled reading the likes of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Dean Koontz, Charles Dickens, Harper Lee, H.G. Wells, etc. Thus, he decided to engage himself and write horror, dark fantasy and dark sci-fi, scaring readers such as his parents, his friends, neighbors, and even leaving a few school teachers scratching their heads wondering if the boy should be committed or not with his gruesome tales of terror. Short story ideas continued to visit. A book idea or two sometimes stopped by for a sit. In 2007 he decided to take a more professional approach with his work. Hence, as a member of the Horror Writers Association, already having nine books published by small presses – this you hold in your hand, constant reader, makes his tenth – nearly thirty short stories published, adding to the few anthologies and collaborations with other authors, Brick Marlin trudges onward, hoping to achieve more creations, wallowing in the brain pans of his characters, giving them the choice whether to twist the knob and enter through the Red Door, or enter through the Blue Door where a group of servo monkey badgers are consuming packages of cinnamon-flavored Pop Rock Candy with a Kung Fu Punch of caffeine.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright Information

Dedication

Quote

Author’s Note

Ozarium

About the Author

OZARIUM

Transitional Delusions Series

Book Two

BRICK MARLIN

Copyright © 2021 by Brick Marlin

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be copied or transmitted in any form, electronic or otherwise, without express written consent of the publisher or author.

Cover design: Enggar Adirasa

Cover art in this book copyright © 2021Enggar Adirasa & Seventh Star Press, LLC.

Editor: Stephen Zimmer

Published by Seventh Star Press, LLC.

ISBN Number: 978-1-7368125-2-5

Seventh Star Press

www.seventhstarpress.com

[e-mail]

Publisher’s Note:

Ozarium is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are the product of the author’s imagination, used in fictitious manner. Any resemblances to actual persons, places, locales, events, etc. are purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

Second Edition

Dedication

For Kristy Kronz

Quote

Everything that happens before Death is what counts.

― Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

Author’s Note

Let me start by thanking you for purchasing this book. What you hold in your hands is the revised edition of Ozarium. The first publication wasn’t exactly bad—but it wasn’t good. I’ll take full credit for it. I should have written it much better. I should have planned out a map better. I should paid more attention to detail. I should have worked harder to produce a better product. I should have listened to my characters, they weren’t exactly on board how things went.

Look, I can keep saying "I should have done this and should have done that" all day long and it wouldn’t matter, right? What does matter is that I there were some really good ideas in the first book and I used them for this revision. Decent, solid ideas to work with. I even performed a Silly Putty operation by making the Putty pliable and flat and sticking it over the text, then lifting it to reveal copies. Used to be able to top that with newspaper articles, you know?

Anyway, with the support of readers this move I performed would not have been possible. Readers pointed out the mistakes and I listened. I mean, why not? They’re the experts when it comes to reading. Not me. I’m just an average schmuck writer. Just along for the ride listening to my inner channel of Creativity and placing pen to paper. Least my characters were on board with the new design—not so much with he hell I put them through; but, hey, that’s what they’re around for, right? To make sure the story flows and doesn’t become some so boring someone would rather watch paint dry on the wall. Or watch a tire slowly lose air. Or have to smell beef liver and onions cooking all day.

Damn, that might a punishment!

I would like to point out that the ideas not carried over from the first book are tucked away in a file. I’ll put them to use one day soon. I’m sure of it. Especially those bizarre commercials? how’d the heck did those things surface? I actually enjoyed writing them. Hell, I still have ideas for more commercials. How about that? Maybe I should write book and only stick those commercials in it.

Or…maybe not.

Who knows?

That’s how my brain works, too many ideas, not enough time in the day to write.

And don’t worry, I didn’t yank the premise of Ozarium, it’s all here, plus much, much more. Near the end of this book I realized there’s more story to tell. I can’t stop writing this series quite yet. Can’t just leave my characters hanging around, either. They’d only stuff themselves in my office and pose like a statue or something. They’d stare at me. I do not like that. Someone looking at me for along length of time. Say, two minutes tops? Kind of an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder I must have.

So, without further ado, I feel good about this finished product. I hope you feel the same. The Transitional Delusions are here to stay, folks, its bizarre worlds aren’t going anywhere.

Especially surfing. It doesn’t like water very much.

Transitional Delusions:

A dark change from one state or condition to another; appearance is often…deceptive.

Ozarium

Sometimes, Change Is A Very Bad Idea

God threw in the towel and walked off the stage. They even announced the big guy has left the building. Let’s look at it this way, don’t you think God has been patient, perhaps wincing, for some time watching us humans do terrible things to one another? I believe it’s possible. The late, great comedian Robin Williams said it best about God, saying: I gave you a planet and you fucked it up.

Simple.

To the point.

So, that being said, God probably woke up one day, stretched, yawned, grabbed a cup of Joe, and got to thinking. Really got to thinking. And thought some more. He took a stroll around his kingdom, checked the locks on the doors—never could be too safe these days—then gathered a few things up and sent out a mass email to everyone working for him. He shut down the laptop and walked down the block to see his son for a bit. They talked. God said his goodbye’s and headed off to retirement.

I mean, the man surely deserves it. 4.543 billion years and change of being the head cheese is quite an accomplishment. His son decided it might be time to do the same, you know. That’s where the job was handed over to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. After they were given the job, they all stuck their heads together and pondered. Being given this kind of power is a huge honor. They had to prove to the Powers That Be—whoever they might be—that they could do the job. and do the job well.

Quite a long time ago. the Red Horseman noticed an opportunity, an idea he could use when the world ended. He snatched a dead soul who used to catch rats and took him to the side. He gave the guy an option to return and take revenge on a village called Woodbin, now called Woodbury.

The rat catcher loved it so much he jumped up and down. I’ll be a shadow out of the sky and bring vengeance to this planet! he cried, holding up a fist.

The Red Horseman knew he had the right guy.

Boy, if this didn’t please the rat catcher, I doubt a chocolate milkshake would compare.

Not long after, the Horsemen decided to change their names when the time was right. They would be considered demons of the Apocalypse. They certainly needed a different title. A few ideas were written down on small bits of paper and thrown into a hat and shaken up.

The first title plucked wasn’t very fitting. The Master Blasters. That didn’t work. Satan’s Boy’s. Naw. Satan’s Quartet of Killers. Nope. King’s In Satan’s Service. Um. Nope. Thou Smack You Down!

At this point, three of the Horsemen looked at the fourth as if he was nuts.

After a few more odd titles thrown around, the Horsemen decided on The Reckoning. This defines what happens to the planet. Things will twist and turn, and they will be chewed up and even spit out. If not, the Heimlich Maneuver will be performed.

The world will take a hard right, when it really should have paid attention to that sign back there, and crash head-first into a tree.

An Old Lady and Her Gun

Pain radiated with a pulse down her broken arm. Fighting back tears was not in the equation. Somehow, luck had sided with her when the beast attacked, impaling itself on the desk leg. The only thing saving her from its fangs sinking into her face. Martha’s throat felt raw, and she could still feel the ghost of the rat’s claws around her throat.

Martha’s hometown had decreed a sinister death by the hands of evil. Children possessed by an evil figure, then morphed into huge rats, leaving bodies chopped to pieces, leaking abstract designs of human blood.

Her stomach churned at the thought. She wanted to puke.

There would be no more laughing, no more crying, no more giggles from children playing outside in the summer evening, catching fireflies in glass jars or waving sparklers during the Fourth of July.

Had Wendy and Shro died? Hard to say.

Had she been bit? Damn, can’t remember…

Chuckle. Wouldn’t that be just great? Attacked by a five-foot rat, only to gain rabies alongside the broken arm. Ha! What a joke! That would be the least of her worries! She’d probably die long before being able to stand up to the evil. And this she wanted to do the most. She wanted to stand against this beast. Her God against its. If it even had a god. Martha wanted to destroy the evil.

Could she actually do something like that?

Martha, what the hell are you trying to prove? You’re too old to do this. You actually think you, Misfortunate Martha, could do such a thing? Isn’t that what the kids used to call you a long time ago, when you went to school?

Misfortunate Martha! Misfortunate Martha! Misfortunate Martha! the kids would chant, swelling like a bloodsucking tick. The name stuck because you were always accident-prone. Losing control of your bike and crashing it into a tree and turning your foot counterclockwise until feeling a pop under your skin. Her ankle was never the same after that.

Or when you really showcased your talent, your legs pinwheeled, mimicking a cartoon character, when you slipped in Richie Simmons’ pile of vomit in the classroom back in tenth grade. All you were doing was returning from using the girl’s restroom that day.

She did not know the reason she remembered this. Nor did she understand why she had the distant past flowing around inside her brain. Lots of memories; some bad, as it is in the circle of life.

A large wave of pain from her bad arm severed the transmission somewhere between remembering being pushed down in the mud by the bully, Rebecca Carter, and reflecting her wedding day. Nausea coiled inside her stomach. Too bad she couldn’t saw her head and arm off and replace them.

She leaned against a building as the pain subsided. Where the heck was she anyway? The community park lay twenty feet from her and had been built a few years prior, shoving away anything but nice. A severed head could be discovered with every spin of the carousel. The splash of red coated the green grass.

Martha shoved off, stumbled further. She needed to find a car. This walking was tiring her out. Her knees weren’t the same anymore. Arthritis had become two resolute, painful friends, each speaking their piece with every step she took. Of course, she cursed them back, and, still, they wouldn’t shut up.

Vehicles were overturned. Washed with human remains and blazing fire, billowing smoke, odorizing the air with copper. The smell sparked memories of when her father slaughtered pigs and chickens on the farm. She could smell the death and the blood in the barn, where the dastardly deed was carried out.

Martha’s legs wobbled, the pain in her arm worsened, wracking her husk. Her vision winked a blur of the street. Again, she had to stop and lean against a building until the pain subsided.

Two blocks later—Lord, how’d I get that far? she wondered— was an abandoned car with keys stuck in the ignition and the driver’s side door hung ajar. Not quite her style of vehicle, a little blue sports car which looked as if it could damn near do zero to sixty in two clucks of a chicken’s beak—something her daddy used to say.

No dead driver, no blood.

Bonus.

Martha slid inside the driver’s seat before the pain gut-punched her. She doubled over. Bile clawed into her throat, receded. She sucked in air; blew it out. After what felt like an eternity, she leaned back and stuck the butt end of it in the floorboard on the passenger side, so it would lean against the seat.

As if waiting for the right time to do so, it happened.

She turned and spewed red vomit onto the pavement.

Very red and very bright.

Jesus…am I…bleeding from the inside? she wondered. Had the kid who tried to strangle her done something worse?

Squinting, tears streaming down her bony cheeks, the pain in her head decided to sidle next to the hurt in her stomach, blurring her vision again. A helmet of pain slammed down on her scalp, the increasing war wasn’t over just yet. When she thought she couldn’t take anymore, the switch flicked itself off, scurrying off into a bush.

Martha sucked in a breath, blew it out. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Closing her eyes, a few seconds slid by. Or hours. It was hard to tell which.

Voices.

Her eyes opened.

Craning her neck, she looked behind her, seeing nothing but a desolate, decaying town.

A light breeze snuck in and ruffled her grey hair.

She wiped a hand across her face and reached over and turned the key. The car’s engine fired up. She grinned. Only bad thing was the transmission was manual. That, she chuckled at. She hadn’t driven a manual in years. Probably the last time was when she was sixteen and learning to drive Daddy’s old truck. The shifter was behind the steering wheel rather than on the floor. Boy, did it take a good while before she got the hang of it. Daddy thought she was gonna rip all the gears out of his truck before she rolled ten feet.

She shoved in the clutch with her left foot, slid the gear into first, punched the accelerator. Before the car bucked and shook her back and forth, nearly shoving her out the back window, it died.

Guess I’m still not that savvy driving a manual.

Her second try wasn’t as bad, and after about ten more she was cruising. Just getting it out of first was the trick. She drove away from town and houses whipped by, as if propelled on a moving canvas. Staving off an interest of glancing at them, she knew they had become skeletons of the past.

Where to go was the question now.

***

The road curved. Tall trees lined the road, standing as sentinels in front of an army of the woods. In the distance, a blanket of green reached high and stretched over a hill filled with more trees and more woodlands.

WELCOME TO WOODBURY!

FAMOUS FOR THE APPLE FESTIVAL!

The sign sat on the side of the road, illustrated with a huge red apple with two eyes and a wide smile. A worm burrowed out of where the apple’s nose should have been curled, at the base of the neck—if a worm could have a neck—and cheesed with a rack of white teeth.

A few miles later, Martha drove through Woodbury, noticing the similarity of Hampshire. Desolate. Dead bodies thrown in the streets like trash. Strewn in the streets.

Passing by one house, an ensanguined path had long but crusted on the sidewalk, stretching from the front door to the body hung from its neck on a tree limb. Stripped naked, a smiley face had been carved into the woman’s stomach, allowing the intestines to be vacated onto the ground.

Martha wondered if this could be where all the horror started. Or could it have possibly started in the next town over? Or back in Hampshire? The only reason she questioned this was because the night Penny came to visit, the radio had been transmitting the local Christian station out of Woodbury and suddenly went dead without warning.

She didn’t think anything of it, switched it off, and read her Bible before going to sleep. Martha missed Penny, the normal one who couldn’t have ever been the sweet little girl who loved eating freshly baked cookies, right out of the oven. Who didn’t? Warm with a gooey chocolaty center. Martha always made sure to add extra chocolate chips whenever she made them for Penny. A must!

Martha would place about six cookies on a plate, pour two tall glasses of milk, and retire to the living room with Penny, who sat playing with her dolls. Both would drink their milk and eat their cookies. If Penny’s parents had known Martha allowed the girl to eat four cookies, they wouldn’t be too happy. So that became Martha’s and Penny’s little secret.

Martha held onto those pleasant thoughts. They were happy ones. But those horrifying ones about Penny…she shoved them off. She didn’t wish to process them again. Ever.

She drove around the town square until the terrible pain invaded again with razor sharp claws, raking down her arm. Wincing, she kept one eye open; one eye shut, draining tears. She had to eventually slow down, allow the car to come to a complete stop.

A weird feeling crossed over her before the car did stop. She didn’t know if it was from the pain coursing her bloodstream or not. But this odd sensation was something. It wasn’t something the naked eye could see. Martha was of the many who crossed over and didn’t realize it. She had rolled in and out of it in the blink of an eye.

The left front tire kissed a curb. There was no way she could drive like this. The pain was too intense.

Through the car’s windshield sat a wooden gazebo where bands set up to play during the summer months. The area even had a farmer’s market set up where she loved to come pick out apples, tomatoes, green and red peppers, and cucumbers. This was a place where she remembered a man half her age flirting with her about twenty years prior. Not that she minded it, she felt flattered; made her feel a tad young even. She didn’t really know why, but maybe there was some youth in her heart or –

The sound of another vehicle’s brakes squealed to a stop. In her rear-view mirror sat a 1960’s black Lincoln Continental with suicide doors. Two tall men in dark business suits stepped out of the car on both sides. One was holding something.

The man at her driver’s side window bent down to look at her. His face was long. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. His black suit and tie were neatly fit on his body. No blemishes.

Mrs, he glanced at the device in his hand, Wells? First name, Martha?

Martha blinked. Who were these men? Their faces were so…pale.

Mrs. Wells?

Y-Yeah. That’s me. Her throat felt dry and raw. Her pain stuck around like an unwelcome guest. Wh-Who are you?

He tapped his finger on the electronic tablet and swiped. According to my Recog, you are in need of assistance. We are here to help you, Mrs. Wells. Please, come with us.

Help me? Help me how? Who are you two?

We were sent here to improve your life, Mrs. Wells. You are hurt. You are in need of medical attention. Allow us to accompany you to a place where they will attend to your every need.

You mean…you’ll take me to a hospital?

A short span of seconds passed before the man’s facial expression appeared to search his brain for an answer, whether correct or not. He drew in a deep breath. Yes. That is correct.

Martha didn’t reply. These guys looked like they were government officials. And if it was true, maybe they had been working on getting to the bottom of why this horror occurred. Did they already have an explanation of what happened in Hampshire? How about here in Woodbury? Maybe. Hard to say.

Too many questions to be asked in this painful state she lived in. She hurt. Bad. The waves of pain worsened by the minute. She really had no choice and knew she should go with them, hoping to God they could help her. If she intended on tracking down the evil, she needed to be patched up before she did so. She sure as hell wasn’t as young as she used to be, and even though her will to face the monster that snatched away her town and caused the murder of everyone was strong, she could not do it by herself. Could be these guys would help her in the quest.

Pulling herself out of the car, the man who had spoken to her grabbed hold and helped her walk to the Lincoln. The other man had the passenger side door open. Once she eased into the leather seat, another bolt of pain shot through her. She winced. Then there was a small sting, and then