His face wore the burden of a man at war, although he did not look like a soldier. A private war, perhaps. If you met this man in a bar, you might notice, if his shirtsleeve rode up, scar tissue on his arm. He might tell you about the way the skin itched late at night while he lay in bed awake. He might tell you about his nightmares. He might tell you a story, a story so terrible it couldn’t possibly be real.
Or he might just smile, a sad half smile, and tell you about his girlfriend and the way her eyes almost took the darkness away. The way her hand slipped into his at just the right times, how her hair always smelled of coconut. And when he lifted his glass to take a drink and the bar lights shined in his eyes and you saw, really saw, the shadows there, you would be glad he’d kept the dark things to himself.
Later, while walking your dog or tossing the ball to your son in the backyard, you’d remember the man and shudder, even on a fine, warm day. His eyes were haunted, you might say to yourself. Later still, in bed with the sleeping body of your wife warm against yours, you might hear a noise, a small little creak of the stairs and close your eyes, praying it was just house noise. Praying it wasn’t that man’s nightmare coming to visit.
The man knelt for a long time, not speaking, not moving. The air tousled his hair, and when he stood, he rubbed his left arm, and a quick wince of pain flashed across his face. Then he turned his face into the breeze. His mouth moved and the wind blew his words out into the air like tiny living things.
It is what it is.
2
The man at the end of the bar was thin but well muscled. His forearms bore the faded ink of old tattoos, his eyes rimmed with red. He raked his fingers through long hair in dire need of a shampoo. John S. Iblis tipped a nod in his direction before he waved the bartender over.
“Please give that man another drink. On me.” He tipped another nod to the man at the end of the bar and grinned.
He had plenty of skins, but there was always room for one more.
About the Author
Damien Walters Grintalis lives in a Baltimore suburb with her husband. Ink is her first novel. Visit her website at: www.damienwaltersgrintalis.com
It’s the dawn of a new era…the year of the zombie!
AZ: Anno Zombie
© 2012 Peter Mark May
Fire rained from the sky over Tucson that day. A dust cloud settled over the city. And the dead rose from their graves. Tom Hollinger raced to his ex-wife’s place to make sure she and his son were safe. They weren’t. Tom was barely able to save the boy from his undead mother. Now, surrounded by a city in chaos, Tom, his son and a handful of friends are battling their way out of town, desperate to make it to safety while the army of the living dead grows in number every hour. The world no longer belongs to the living. A new era has dawned…Anno Zombie!
Enjoy the following excerpt for AZ: Anno Zombie:
Outside the world was silent. The sand storms of the night before had obviously blown themselves out. Tom was drinking some apple juice out of the cartoon, when a loud crash came from his backyard. Cursing and dribbling juice down his stumble covered chin, he slammed the carton down on the kitchen counter. Wiping his chin with his forearm, he walked over to the back kitchen windows and pulled up the blinds.
He thought it might he the Jacobson’s dog from down the street, but to his surprise it was a large dark skinned guy in coveralls. The guy had his back to Tom and was routing through the garbage bins.
“What the hell?”
Tom jogged back to his bedroom and pulled on his pants and t-shirt from the previous day. He kicked on some shoes and made for the door that led into his garage. After picking up an old baseball ball that he and Tommy used sometimes on visits to the park, he opened the back door of his garage and raised the bat up beside his head.
“Hey, what the hell you doing, man?” he called. The man was rooting through his garbage, like a hobo who had been on hunger strike. The unkempt man seemed not to hear Tom and continued to root deeper down in the trash. Behind the intruder there seemed to be an orangey-brown mist covering the rear of his yard; probably a dusty remnant of the slept-through dust storm.
The smell of the guy wafted over, invading Tom’s nostrils, which flared with disgust. The trashcan hobo stunk like had crapped his coveralls and then cleaned them with six week old rotted meat and vegetables.
“Hey, numb-nuts, I’m talking to you,” Tom shouted and prodded the bat into the back of the man.
The guy jerked upwards like the bat was a 100 volt cattle prod and with spasmodic twitches of his elbows and broad shoulders turned to face Tom. Or he would have, if the man had a whole face. The left cheek was dark brown with a touch of grey to it, but the other was gone, with only cheek bones showing. His scalp on that side flapped slightly as he jerked and twitched and shuffled his large booted feet towards Tom.
“Jesus, you been in an accident or something?” Tom asked and stepped back.
The man raised his grubby hands and aiming them at Tom’s throat, lumbered closer. Revulsion and years of army training took over and Tom swung and hit the guy on the exposed bone of his cranium before he realized he was doing it. The guy’s lower jaw shattered, hung for a second and then fell to the dirt floor in two pieces. Something like brown snot shot out of the guy’s remaining nostril and down his front. He staggered for a second, and then, fixing Tom with his remaining milky covered brown eye, raised his hands once more.
Tom took another step back, planted his feet and swung like he was hitting a home run out of Soldier Field. This time the force of the impact on the guy’s head caused the bat to break, but not before knocking the guy’s head onto his right shoulder with a sickening crack. Tom, hands numb with shock, let the bat fall, as the man tottered two steps to the left. The side of his face was cracked open into an oozing mess of broken bone and the left eye socket was shattered, exposing the grey inner workings of his brain.
To Tom’s astonishment, the guy steadied himself in his big workman boots and advanced towards him again with silent menace. The guy’s scalp was now flapping up and down with every jerky movement like he was wearing a badly fitted toupee. Weaponless, Tom retreat back into his garage and shut and bolted it.
Not once had the man spoken, cried out in pain, or even grunted.
Tom was thinking about what to do next when two hands came punching through the mesh covered window panes in the rear garage door. The glass gouged deep cuts into the grey fingers of the attacker, the hands flailing about after Tom, who ducked out of reach. Then the arms bent down as if the guy was trying to find the lock, unimpeded by the injuries his arms were taking in the effort.
Once again old army training kicked in. Tom ran over to his cluttered workbench and ran his eyes over every tool, screwdriver and socket wrench there. Even the two hammers he owned seem wrong for the job at hand. The man began to tug at the screen and the thin wooden frames of the six now broken window panes.
Gulping down some rising bile in his throat, Tom finally grabbed something from a cobweb covered shelf. He raced back to the door as his attacker pulled aside enough mesh to reach in and get a grip the doorknob.
Tom had to avoid the man’s grayish lacerated hand as he plugged in the long unused power tool…
Ink
Damien Walters Grintalis
A tattoo can be a work of art…or a curse. The devil is in the details.
The fearsome griffin inked on Jason’s arm looks real enough to climb off and take flight. Jason thinks his new tattoo is perfect. Until he wakes up one night to find his arm temporarily ink free. Until he finds a brick wall where the tattoo shop should be.
As Jason’s world spins out of control, he comes to realize a truth as sharp as the griffin’s talons. The tattoo is alive, it’s hungry, and if Jason tries to kill it, he’ll die. The artist will remove it for a price, but he’s not interested in money or Jason’s soul. He wants something far worse…
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
Ink
Copyright © 2012 by Damien Walters Grintalis
ISBN: 978-1-61921-079-0
Edited by Don D’Auria
Cover by Scott Carpenter
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: December 2012
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
About the Author
Also Available from Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Copyright Page
Ink Page 28