The Dark Verse (Horror and Fantasy Fiction Podcast)

[Sharkchild]

Download the final installment of The Changing Feyth series with Episode 40, The Changing Feyth (Part 4)!

Get it at TheDarkVerse.com

On iTunes

Or on Zune

Excerpt:

A body fell from the opening above me. It fell so fast there was no way to tell if it was living or dead. It crashed upon the stone floor, bones cracking and flesh splitting. And then another fell. And another. And another. And another until thirteen bodies had splattered across the floor in front of me—children, women, and men.

The carcasses then slid together, connecting at their heads: a sick star of mutilation. It rose. The bodies dangled like raggedy ornaments, every limb swaying without provocation as if some invisible thing were playing with it. Then the limbs all at once began to swing, lashing upon each other in an unsynchronized display. One by one the limbs stuck together; they melded and warped with their neighbors—clothing, flesh, bone, and all—creating a thick tarp of malformed carnage. Once this floating blanket was completed, it started to spin. As it spun, it stretched its hanging mass until all sagging elements elevated and flattened; blood danced from the strained, splintering wounds.

The unnerving conglomeration of flesh became a disc and rotated perpendicular to the floor; it spiraled its contents, sending them back and forth, back and forth, instantaneously between this place and another, exchanging elements, bridging worlds. Blackness opened; color digressed. Then color reemerged, more vivid, more plaguing, reaching out with stories of untold damnation and unconquerable agony. Sinister visions flashed before me and explosions filled with screaming resounded behind the portal of spinning bodies.

[Sharkchild]

Download Episode 41, Symptoms Of The Astral!

Get it at TheDarkVerse.com

On iTunes

Or from the Zune Marketplace

Check out the upcoming book on Amazon. I am going to have the book available on my own site as well by the time I release it; the copies I sell myself will be signed.
*The release date will most likely change by a week or two.

Excerpt:

“Just get inside!” my mom yelled.

“But please, let me—” I tried to explain.

“No! I don’t want to hear about it. Just go to your room. I’ll let you know when you can come out.”

I climbed out of the minivan and went into the house. My body trembled with a mixture of rage and adrenaline. I went to my room and closed the door.

It had been another day at school gone irrevocably bad.

I was sick, but that did not stop me from getting into trouble. Having sickle cell disease actually made things worse. As if a magnet, I attracted the most fiendish people—the bullies, the cheaters, the socially elite. My sickness was a beacon to the devoid of morals, and I did not like to concede to their ploys. It was that trait that proliferated my folly. Being weak and different in appearance was one thing, but the impulse for people to use me was more twisted than the disease itself. I had resolved to never give in without at least a half-hearted fight with my feeble arms. It was those same, very feeble arms that put me on the school’s list of irredeemable troublemakers.

I sat at my bedroom desk with my face between my hands, staring coldly into the tattered wood. When the sun set, I did not even turn on the lights. I stayed in the darkness, festering in thoughts of hatred and disgust.

What was wrong with me? I thought. I was imperfect physically, but I did not understand how that encouraged, or predestined, my daily demise. There was no justice; there was never a verdict to explain how I was so punishable. My wayward health was the splinter of my life, but it was not the source of the pain; the source of the pain was the unending rejection.

[Sharkchild]

Download Episode 42, Thirteen Door Roulette!

Get it at TheDarkVerse.com

On iTunes

Or from the Zune Marketplace

Check out the upcoming book on Amazon.

Excerpt:

I was handed a small, round cage; I curled two of my fingers around the s-hook fastened to its apex. The cage had a minute door fixed with a comparably insignificant latch. It did not—by sound and feel—seem to have anything within its grasp, although nothing could be seen within the tightly placed metal panels that formed the entrapment. These surfaces caught and reflected the inconsistent light of the corridor I stood in—which consisted of flickering bulbs overhead, pleading idly for the repair of the troubled circuits supplying them. At the end of the corridor before me, a mirror stood as the wall, reflecting back the entirety of the scene.

A woman stood behind me. Her hair was auburn and her skin was upon an age of older days. A strong musk emanated from her presence, encapsulating all of my senses. Even my eyes teared as the scent entered my nostrils. A green shawl draped across her shoulders over a pale blue dress.

In front of me stood a middle-aged man in tight jeans and a leather jacket. His nerves had the better of him; he twitched his arms and legs in anticipatory dread while his head swung from left to right, the long black hair on his head following in delayed pursuit. Slight mumblings left his lips periodically; whether prayers or words brought about by an encroaching insanity, there was no distinguishing.

Both the woman, the Elder, and the man, the Manic, had also been given cages identical to my own. At our sides, the cages were motionless, but in our reflections, the cages jolted back and forth.

Along the sides of our triptych ensemble, ten doors pressed. Each door was labeled with a Roman numeral; the first was given an “I” and the last an “X.” These labels were coated in thick, greasy oil. Their slick surfaces were magnets for the light and so were illumined vividly for all to see.

[Sharkchild]

Download Episode 43, The Hunt!

Get it at TheDarkVerse.com

On iTunes

Or from the Zune Marketplace

Check out the upcoming book on Amazon.

The Dark Verse, Volume I: From the Passages of Revenants is NOW AVAILABLE at my own e-commerce shop for pre-order!

www.SHARKCHILDSREMAINS.com

Each copy is $25.00.
Each copy is signed by me.
FREE Shipping.
NO Sales Tax.
All major credit cards and PayPal accepted.

The first 50 people to use the coupon code "verse" when checking out will save $2.00.
And if you want to buy two or more books, use the coupon code "darkdouble" to save $5.00.

If you act now and use both codes, you could get two books for only $43.00!

I don't want you to buy my book from somewhere else; I want you to buy my book from me! So I'll always try to give the best price and deals.

Excerpt:

An army of ghastly forms waited listlessly at the gates of life. Each entity was unrestrained and raw—knowledge had yet to enter, conform, and orchestrate a platform of thought and personality for its cloudy mind. Step by step, they were pushed forward towards the slim opening in the gates. One by one they popped through the cavity, falling into the oblivion of consciousness that awaited them.

My father told me I had to be exceptionally fast and focused to catch an Alpha Spirit.

“You only have one try,” he told me. “If you don’t make it, then to hell you go to stay forever.”

I was confident I would succeed.

Hiding under the debris of multi-spectral galaxies, I waited at the crossroads of the physical and spiritual domains. I looked on as the Alpha Spirits showered down upon the Earth to seed the bodies of the living. I was seeking the perfect host—a spirit of exceptional promise. Once I had it in my sights, I would look nowhere else—not until the spirit had embraced me as its master and dragged me with it into life.

Shortly enough later, I scouted it, careening differently towards the Earth than the others amongst it; it stood out. I liked that. Without hesitation, I propelled my writhing haze towards it.

[Sharkchild]

Download Episode 44, Names: Apherdane!

Get it at TheDarkVerse.com

On iTunes

Or from the Zune Marketplace

Order The Dark Verse, Volume I: From the Passages of Revenants NOW at my own e-commerce shop at:

www.SHARKCHILDSREMAINS.com

Each copy is $25.00.
Each copy is signed by me.
FREE Shipping.
NO Sales Tax.
All major credit cards and PayPal accepted.

Excerpt:

On the dull road called Mayberry Lane, I stood at the turn of the evening. I had just flicked a cigarette at a passing vehicle, watching as its cinder flashed into the night. In front of me stood the Cursory—a name given to a house because no one ever gave the place a second glance. It was tucked a short ways off the road, but far enough away so that even the bluntest detail of its presence went unobserved; it was the home of my love.

As I began my walk to the house’s secluded porch, a succession of pricks began jabbing the back-ends of my eyes. In patterns of circles, the pricks drilled, pushing forth into my retinas. The burrowing continued once inside my eyes; when in the middle, the digging descended and came out through the bottom. There, the apparitions poured invisibly out into the open; it felt as if they were flowing forth like worms through a meat grinder, but there was nothing to see—no evidence of any such happening. The sensation then ceased.

I had just turned twenty years old.

[Sharkchild]

Check out this Promo Ad I just put on YouTube for my book! John Stifter made it with CGI and some other goodies. I created the music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4SbUICOPRU

[Sharkchild]

Download Episode 45, Names: Chillanthon!

Get it at TheDarkVerse.com

On iTunes

Or from the Zune Marketplace

Order The Dark Verse, Volume I: From the Passages of Revenants NOW at my own e-commerce shop at:

www.SHARKCHILDSREMAINS.com

Each copy is $25.00.
Each copy is signed by me.
FREE Shipping.
NO Sales Tax.
All major credit cards and PayPal accepted.

Excerpt:

The chillanthon was waiting for me outside of my house, calling to me with its unsettling voice, tearing through my heart with its restlessness. I could hear its arms whip across its torso as they swiveled back and forth from shoulder sockets detested with freakish pivotal ability. It stood in the middle of the street, shrouded in an ink-drawn fog that swirled around the neighborhood as a cursed drape.

As it called my name, my family looked to me from beneath the dining room table with eyes that spoke of fear so deep that pus muddled their unblinking outlines. They could not speak, and might not have ever again. They did not understand what was occurring; I did. I had been thrust despairingly into an abominable fate. There was nothing left for me but to embrace the terror, pain, and incredible sadness quelling the last remnants of my life.

I took my wife’s face between my hands, followed by my children’s, drawing them close to me one by one. To each of them I left the grace of my departing love—all of the embers of goodness remaining within me to give. I left no words unspoken—no virtue unkindled. With a kiss, I sealed each of their spirits with my own, and then I walked out of my house to encounter the nightmare stalking my existence.

[Sharkchild]

Download Episode 46: The Ilks Of Devotion

Get it at TheDarkVerse.com

On iTunes

Or from the Zune Marketplace

Excerpt:

Grand castles full of cities and heavy, luscious woods lined the horizon. Their mixtures of grays and greens flooded my sight with thick promise. It was Alvershiven’s Den; the long journey was finally over.

“Are you going to do it?” Ten-Men asked while he bent down on one knee beside me on the hill overlooking the magnificent scene. His pale yellow shoulders stood taller than my head.

“Yes,” I said, “this is what we have come for; I must.”

“Rest their souls.”

“Seize me, Ten-Men.” The star-child giant stood and positioned himself behind me. He wedged his knees heavily into the ground and then grabbed me by my arms, fastening me to the earth as surely as flesh bound by an iron stake. “Do not let go until I have returned and spoken the words of rekindling.”

And with that, I cast my eyes to the sun, capturing its rays and connecting them to my soul.

“Hivenitar,” I spoke.

A flagrant burst of light expounded from the sun and leapt through space and time into my being, filling me to the brim with astral, cosmic transmogrifying energy. It burned through my insides and masked my shape and form immaculately, holding my physical presence within Ten-Men’s grip as a glowing shell while my true essence was released. I then shot across the valley before Alvershiven’s Den like an arrow at the speed of light.

[Sharkchild]

Download Episode 47: Nigh Outlasting The Fear Of Death

TheDarkVerse.com

iTunes

Excerpt:

Tears from the heavens bore death like cannonballs ignited under the misery of hate. Like meteors sentenced to the fate of the world, these burning embers fell—fist-sized, amorphic masses of light ripping through plane. They poured through the hull and people alike with effortless elegance, spewing portions of things into a cataclysmic collage of mingling elements.

These vessels of execution uttered strange calls as they voyaged between the lives of those who would live no longer. Their unidentifiable forms billowed chime-like twinkles of melody mixed with discord. It was the baroque sound of demise.

Before long, I was falling from the sky, still buckled to my chair—a part of the grotesque spread of disastrous art. Pieces of plane were scattered about me as well as other hapless souls—whether alive or dead, I could not tell. I was falling from twelve thousand feet above the ground with nothing on me but the business attire I was traveling in. I flailed my arms to control myself, to rework the destiny of my situation, but the final page had already been turned. Death, I knew, awaited me, and with that realization, came a wash of terror equal to the scribbles of Alpher Myle’s picturesque unraveling in My Grave Departure.

[Sharkchild]

Download Episode 48: Severing The Lost

TheDarkVerse.com

iTunes

Excerpt:

I once had a best friend; I liked to call her Dime. The name came to me when I found a dime in my pocket during a time of need. She was always there for me; she was the “dime” in my pocket. Our relationship was brilliant. We shared secrets, experiences, and adventures. Dime was one of those friends that childhood memories revolved around.

It was not until our sophomore year in college that we were ever separated for more than two weeks since we met each other in preschool. Dime had been accepted into a study abroad program. I applied for the same program, but was not accepted. She refused to go without me, but I convinced her that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Hesitantly, she decided to go, and so Dime vanished from my life for a year to live in a faraway land.

—

I remember vividly the day we were reunited.

After a year of only letters, I was bursting with anticipation while I waited for her at the airport by her arrival gate. And when her plane landed, person after person walked by me, but none were Dime. Soon the crowd had dispersed and I was left waiting at an empty gate. I checked with the nearby desk and they confirmed Dime’s occupancy on the flight. For a moment, I was rather confused. Then I asked if I could be accompanied inside the plane to see if she was still there. A flight attendant was contacted and she came out to greet me.

“Hi there,” the flight attendant welcomed me with a smile. “Follow me. It must be your friend that’s still on the plane. We’ve tried talking with her, but she won’t say anything. Hopefully, you can help us. We need to clear the plane as soon as possible.”