Showing results by author "Stephen Huff" in All Categories

If the trials of childhood form the adult, then Stanley Newberry is growing into a grotesquely misshapen lump of a thing. All the popular people tell him so. Since he first met his classmates in grade school, Fat Stanley has singly borne the brunt of their endless insults, taunts and abuses. Passing from eighth grade to their first year in high school, purple-nurples and Indian-burns have long since given way to chocolate-swirlies and blackened eyes, but Fat Stanley has grown wiser and warier, too. Bastard twins born of terror and torment, fear and cynicism render him increasingly aware of ...

An ordinary traveler. A typical business trip. Nothing unusual or out of place. If the inhabitants of Spittsville, Texas seem a bit odd, blame overbearing sunshine and endless horizons of arid wastes. Since a rational mind will neither conceive nor believe the startling truth. As gradual as the growth of a creeping vine, deep within the wilds of West Texas an unholy invasion begins. One changeling at a time.

On a beam of light as in the fog of dreams, a hundred human beings of all ages and walks-of-life find themselves standing on narrow pedestals in a strange auditorium filled with noxious, frigid liquid. With no room to sit or recline, they cannot rest or sleep. They can only shift from foot to foot atop the pedestals, standing for hours then days, their fears unresolved and their fate unknown. Only one man among them, a hardened felon zapped out of solitary confinement, seems to have any answers to their questions. Countless hapless human beings relate tales of alien abductions, and each ...

At five years old, Tiffy is worldly beyond her age. Her disinterested mother and absent father have not wielded much influence in her life, and she roams neighborhood streets at all hours of the day and evening without supervision. Recently fleeing with her mother from yet another intervention by community advocates, she has landed next door to Mr. S, a mysterious figure with a dark past. Though his home is large and lavish, his dress impeccable, his manner beyond reproach, and his education of sterling pedigree, Mr. S is not the average neighbor. When they make fast friends, the child's ...

This course provides a detailed executive-level review of contemporary topics in supervised machine learning theory with specific focus on predictive modeling and linear regression. The ideal student is a technology professional with a basic working knowledge of machine learning theory. Additionally, to better inform the interested student, the final lesson of this course presents samples in Python describing the essential implementation of described regression methods.

He is the most prolific sniper in a long, deadly war. In fact, he succeeds to the point that his own comrades have learned to shun him. Not even this form of isolation can prevent him from compiling a frightful tally of numbers though. Behind each number, a face and a name. It's his job. He's good at it. Too damned good.

Every man who murders his wife and every wife who murders her husband does so with the firm belief that they will never be caught, although this belief belies the inevitably obvious suspect. From time to time, however, chance mates with fortune to present the perfect crime. She's worth a life and the price of a bullet. He will risk all for one selfish act of violence.

Human beings are abundant. Yet for every person on Earth, countless insects thrive, chewing through the roots and underpinnings of nature. This year, it will be a very good year for bugs! An ocean of insecticide cannot suppress their demonic hordes. They could easily dominate the planet. Why not?

Insomnia is a special kind of torture. Its short-term effects are something everyone experiences from time to time, but its long-term effects are known only to an unfortunate few. These effects include panic attacks, paranoia, and phobias. Eventually, hallucinations and convulsions become noticeable, followed by symptoms of dementia, coma and then death. Inevitably, the difference between waking and sleeping dissolves and the two become inseparable. After months of restlessness, a chronically sleepless man loses the ability to differentiate between nightmares, daydreams and reality. While ...

He has perfected the necessary skills, collected the requisite equipment, and buried the resultant bodies. Like a grotesque human hermit crab, he periodically sheds one shell for another, gutting the original to make it his own, and no regard whatever for previous ownership. Fluid and untouchable, he stalks the nation, forever in pursuit of his next lifetime, and nobody knows his name. A ruthless master of disguises, he lives many lives. Maybe one of them will be yours.

Upon opening a time capsule from 1968, the author finds a letter written by a condemned insurance agent from Texas only minutes before his arrest on capital murder charges. The letter relates this agent's downfall at the hands of a crooked police detective and a twisted woman. Though he was undoubtedly innocent of the crime, history long ago recorded his apprehension, trial and execution. By the time you read his letter, fifty years will have passed, and nothing can be done to save its author. His tale is a cautionary one, however, and so well worth reading. Beware of dames, dives, and death.

Facing the hangman's noose, why not confess everything? If you've lived a notoriously colorful life, most of your stories cannot be believed! Read this confession, and make your own decisions about the veracity and implications of it all. You'll get your chance to make a final statement. Make it count.

Jo-Jo's father died young and his mother, while present, could not pick up the slack. It's not easy to raise an unguided young man of high school age, especially a young man as misunderstood as Jo-Jo. The last day of school will forever change everyone who experiences it. Life is too short to mourn the dead forever. In a smile, a frown. In laughter, sorrow. Today is Jo-Jo’s “Big Day”.

Awakening night upon night in a feverish chill, fresh from the throes of disturbing nightmares, one hapless human being ponders the separation of dream and reality. Within phantomic landscapes of half-slumber, he stalks nightfall with a violent, predatory intent, though he inevitably awakens uneventfully in his own home. Eventually, muddy feet betray the truth. Black River runs through the center of Pecan Groves, Texas. Lately, it floats.

When the constraints of the mission make it impossible to use electronics or cameras, they send him. His memory is eidetic. “Photographic”. His infallible mind is simultaneously his most blessed gift and his most devilish curse, because nothing is more haunting and vengeful than memory. His is a graveyard of murdered faces.

He is ruthlessly ambitious. He believes in selling people what they want to find a shortcut to the good life. He's not a thief, but he'll take anything he can get. He's not a killer, but he's responsible for countless deaths. The first day he shows up at your door, it's a party. The last day he shows up at your door, it's a funeral. A working man. Keeping the appointments of a lifetime. It's a living.

1943. World War II. The U.S. government drafted him out of his life of normalcy and complacency into the life of a United States Marine Corps officer. After intensive training, he would serve during some of the bloodiest assaults of the war. The violent rigors of combat would teach him the rules of long-term survival amid the most lethal fighting in human history. Those who failed to learn these lessons would not return home to their families. During the bloody throes of combat, all is fair and the only rules that apply are those that promote survival. When confronting evil, what is the ...

Civilization deconstructed itself like a riot in a madhouse. One minute it all functioned with a standard sort of craziness, and the next it devolved into ten billion psychotic inmates at each other’s throats like suddenly sprung animals. Survivors refer to civilization’s final irrational act as "Terminus", but this is an unofficial label. It simply gives them a handle with which to wield the concept of their end times. It bifurcates their memory. Before. After. In between, an unspeakable river of blood.

Matriculating across that stage, nothing betrayed the Texas sand behind his ears, though his stiff, high collar hid a neck roasted red by long hours spent laboring beneath August sunshine. Indeed, years of careful study and patient attention had polished away the roughest facets of his country-born demeanor with a doctoral degree, but he would always be Charles Ray McCormick, white trash. Learning from the invariably negative example set forth by his errant, wayward siblings, Ray avoided the pitfalls of youth via intervention of a well-meaning mentor and pursuit of an academic career. ...

The plight of the village is desperate and dire. Once protected by a powerful shaman, their savior has grown old and decrepit, perhaps too weak to save them from a violent storm brewing on the horizon. To save them, he must perform the ritual, but will he beat the clock and conjure before she comes, the devil? Ethereal and sublime, theirs is a lust to outlast the ages. No matter what else happens, their final tempestuous passion will make for one hell of a ride!