It shapes the cosmos by confining the stars and is, perhaps, the interstellar sire of human spawn. Within each mind Dark Matter abides, the primordial ancestor of all things chaotic, violent and destructive. Gravitational and inert, it unyieldingly obsesses our most deviant desires while alternately flinging our most violent impulses into the fringes of destructive behavior. Take time to embrace the Dark Matter of life, if only because it is utterly inescapable. Explore the horror of contemporary darkness when you read "Ogre," "Cassandra's Cat," "Redemption," "King Charlemagne Ebersol,"...

Has Earth been visited by extraterrestrials? Yes. They live among us today. They watch us every moment of our lives with one intensely unwavering focus: to maintain the secrecy of their presence. Their surveillance technology is unimaginable. Their control is absolute. Yet, nothing is perfect. Through the years, a few clever people have learned the truth, but this knowledge invariably bears an extreme cost: keep the secret and survive, or speak the truth and die. A handful of inquisitive men and women have discovered the extraterrestrial presence among us. Those smart enough to keep the...

When we dream of falling, we inevitably awaken at the moment of impact. When we run for our lives from monsters or madmen, we invariably rouse before the bloodthirsty end. Myth and folklore imply we die in the waking world when we die in our dreams, and this is why living human beings never dream all the way through such slumberous events. This assertion begs a question. How many of the dead have suffered such dreams? Countless nameless people populate our dreams. Who are they? What becomes of them when we lay violent hands upon them in lividity of dreams? An insightful short story.

In a dystopian future, humankind has lost its love of violence. Peace has so long ruled the land that we have lost all means of confronting the resurgence of a genocidal revolution, which threatens to reduce human society to a state of chaos and anarchy. The most vulnerable citizens face annihilation as they confront the revolution's inevitable success. Only one defense stands between them and oblivion. They are genetically modified warriors, bred and born to fight. They are Reapers. He has been biologically engineered to do one thing: fight for the survival of his people. Can one Reaper make...

He is a secret agent assigned to fight a war of time. He serves an alien overlord, which has subjugated humankind through untold generations. They use him to execute subtle manipulations of time and space by sending him on mysterious errands to faraway places and distant times in the past or future. Each journey erodes a bit of his mind, his memory, his personality, and his psyche. As his personality erodes, he encounters another alien race intent on aiding his struggle for rebellion. Waging a genocidal war through time and space, can he preserve his sanity long enough to free his people? An...

He hates clowns. His wife thinks they're cute. When they unexpectedly inherit an unimaginable fortune complete with fast cars, fine furnishings and multiple large houses, they learn nothing comes free. The one catch to their apparent good fortune is a clockworks harlequin. Animated and entertaining, the life-size doll initially appears to be nothing more than yet another of his estranged uncle's bizarre idiosyncrasies. Nothing could be further from the truth. No need to wind it. It doesn't require batteries. This life-size clown runs on the power of black magic An insightful short story.

Born to the street and abandoned by his paranoid, drug-addicted mother, a young boy struggles to evade vicious predators who hope to exploit him and insistent authorities who hope to save him. His only ally is his extreme natural intelligence and his only home is the public library. Daily, the noose tightens after his mother, his last link to childhood, goes missing. His future seems as bleak as the cold, hard streets. Then he meets Longbow. In a gritty, existential world rife with threats, a young boy fights to survive. One man has the power to save him. An insightful short story.

Pyatak, in Russian, means "slash five." It is the last stop for the most violent and incorrigible prisoners in the modern Russian penal system. Famously, it is said to have two ways in and only one way out. Inmates enter its cages via a dilapidated, one-hundred-year-old foot bridge or an aging boat. The only way they leave is via their grave. Lately, however, many of its worst have gone missing from their cells, although they never escaped its walls. Something ancient and evil has alighted in Pyatak. A mysterious entity, it is both vicious and insatiable. No one is safe. An insightful short...