Showing results by author "Stephen Huff" in All Categories

Simian Wynwood opened Simian’s Gate by recording first contact with alien intelligence. Within weeks, civilization rapidly changed. Renewable energy, resolved. Global pollution, remediated. Cancer, cured. Eighteen months later, six-and-a-half billion people lay withered in death, victims of a technological Trojan horse. In the aftermath, survivors divide, hunter and hunted. Extinction looms. No one will survive Simian’s Way unscathed.

The worst of the worst, he is notorious even within a notorious system. When the most violent prison riot in the history of human corrections threatens to bring down a prison’s walls, this consummate gangster will trade inside information for removal of his tattoos, one image at a time. Afterward, he will become a different man. Only a clean skin can provide the key to his cages.

His pranks are sinister and macabre, but each one offers a critical life lesson to his hapless victims. His neighbors, coworkers, and acquaintances rarely associate their strange misfortunes with the odd young man in their midst. Yet he is always watching, always aware, and his cunning mind is inevitably filled with delightfully perverse plans for their future. Any outcome is possible given proper context, impeccable timing, and the right props.

He was a child prodigy born with an irrepressible genius. He grew into a clever sociopath. When he graduated at the top of his class at a remarkably young age, the U.S. government recruited him directly out of the university and assigned him to a top-secret project entitled "Ogre", the man-eating giant of mythology and folklore. As he rose through the ranks of government service, he learned to adapt the incredible power of Ogre to his personal benefit. Caught, he must pay a terrible price for his crimes. "Project Ogre" is the most powerful information-gathering computer system ever ...

Not everyone in war-torn Europe believed in bigotry and hatred. A few human beings remained, hidden and camouflaged within the guise of Nazism and fanaticism. This is the story of one such old man, a railyard, and tiny scraps of paper drifting on the wind, each bearing a desperate last message from the dead. This really happened. It didn't have to happen, but it really, really did.

In this vision of the future, the most prestigious vacation money can buy is a trip to a corporate planet overgrown with a jungle wilderness. There, wealthy tourists gird armor and fantastically powerful weapons to hunt strange chimeras through an endless forest. These beasts are all genetically engineered to be fierce, bloodthirsty, and difficult to kill. Despite the benefits of their high technology, only experienced guides can lead their pampered clients safely through to the end of the game. Every year, countless bored tourists pay exorbitant fees to hunt terrifying synthetic monsters ...

A thousand years ago, stoic Norsemen built resilient ocean-going longboats from wood and iron. Through four centuries of conquest, in these robust vessels countless Viking adventurers set forth from homelands of ice and snow to claim victory or Valhalla along far western horizons. Cast into a vast, hostile ocean aboard a small longboat, a handful of stoic Norse mercenaries gamble their lives in pursuit of freedom and fortune. All are bound for horizons of history, inevitably destined to find their eternal home among sagas of the never seen.

He's the proverbial grumpy old man and he ruthlessly keeps his hit-lists. You had better hope he never jots your name down in his notebook, because he'll make you the object of his obsessive ire and his dissatisfaction is notoriously relentless. Unfortunately, today is his last day on Earth... and god just made the list!

When their yacht sinks just east of New Zealand during a round-the-world sailing trip, three survivors somehow manage to pile themselves into a single tiny life raft. Adrift on one of the wildest seas in the world, their struggle to survive is a desperate one, and their hopes for rescue dwindle daily. Many weeks later, a violent storm sweeps them into the frigid and dangerous Antarctic current, and they realize they will ultimately freeze if they are not rescued before winter comes. As their anger and frustrations grow, they know they must take matters into their own hands if they are to ...

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.

He's a notorious corporate spy. His last job uncovered a disturbing truth long and deeply buried by the powers-that-be. Though his corporate enemies have kept him imprisoned by flying him endlessly around the world, he is neither forgotten nor alone. When a band of anonymous hackers finally locates him within his prison in the sky, they will stop at nothing to free him and expose his discovery. It's a hell of a way to travel!

While the vast majority perishes in quiet anonymity, a tour of any national monument quickly reveals countless names carved into stone. These names generally identify three classes of people; scribe, conquered and conqueror. Indeed, if anything, life is an endless series of contests, large and small, but these stone-graven records typically ignore the latter for the former. Too often, history overlooks the struggles of mundanity, which perhaps better define those who endure. Pause a reflective moment to ponder the future – anticipate all the boastful elite to be immortalized there. ...

Everyone loves a good joke, but nobody enjoys being subjected to the fun. Pranks are an especially childish form of delight, perhaps because they are the ultimate expression of prurient sadism, which we must disavow as civilized adults. We, the same civilized adults who teach our beloved youth the art of warfare while stockpiling an obscene surplus of thermonuclear weapons. Now that is funny! So, tease a guilty moment to titillate your secret sadist today. Giggling, it whispers. Of spoiled affluence and nothing better to do; of grotesque victimization that makes monsters from innocent ...

Bad things happen to the people that Pablo loves. Bad, bloody things. Indeed, his hapless path through life is littered with the human wreckage of lives badly wasted; of men, women and children inexplicably maimed and murdered. Though his presence is ever the common denominator among the many deaths that surround him, evidence never ties him physically to any of the crime scenes. One frustrated Texas detective believes Pablo is culpable after one fashion or another, but he can never prove his suspicions beyond reasonable doubt. When Pablo's threat becomes personal, however, he is hard ...

Several of the best human hypocrisies are immortalized in catechisms. We say “violence never solved anything” when history repeatedly teaches us otherwise, and once we prematurely labeled an entire, global war as “The War to End All Wars” long before we recorded its half-formed outcome. Dynasties fall. Empires rise. In marble, granite and concrete, we immortalize these events, large and small, and we celebrate the human beings named heroes there. Rightly so. Pause a moment before The Wall – let your finger trace names in stone. From pits of despair and summits of glory, they ...

Within realms of the unknown, superstition stalks. Primitives see god in a rainbow, but they also suspect a deadly serpent beneath every unturned stone. Ignorance and fear sometimes unite to inspire us or spare us, but more often this demonic duality serves to light the torches of enraged mobs. Indeed, history tells stories of witches burned alive amid great celebrations. We know these things happened. We also know witchcraft is a figment. Fearlessly now, step away from the staid, known world that shelters you. Venture into lands of conundrum and enigma to witness ciphered matters of mind. ...

Continuing their unlawful flight across the broad State of Texas, Corporal Terrance “Tare” McGee (retired) and his four-legged handler, Perquisite Bombdog, must evade arrest and successfully do what they need to do, whatever that might be. Properly supplied with ample snack foods, drugs and liquor, and having collected an endangered primate named “Bobo” along their way, they must flee south into the rugged and notoriously violent Rio Grande Valley, despite running desperately low on ammo for Bobo’s Squad Automatic Weapon. Only their camo-painted benefactor can detail why they must...

Rascals, rapscallions, villains and varlets; all terms of a bygone era intended to describe the guy in the black hat, that perverse character of low virtue and strayed morality who forever ties the distressed damsel to cold, steel rails. Gasp! Within fictional fantasies, they are always guys and damsels, and they must wear black. In reality, we still mostly read about bad ‘guys’, but the women tend to fight back now, often with devastating effect. Tonight, the devil laces thigh-high boots over fence-net stockings before taking a turn through town. Be warned and beware. Of evil delight ...

Tabloids invite us to gorge ourselves on tales of epic personal failures, and so many of us eagerly oblige. Guilty pleasures, we savor these stories most satisfactorily with a garnish of sex scandal, a dash of fiscal malfeasance and a generous dollop of social corruption. Next, we expect a weeping dessert of shame and regret to follow. Afterward, everything ends in a dumpster or the backseat of an aging sedan before we stagger home again, sated, smug and full of improving condemnations. Cup your ears and shade your eyes now. Peer into the gloom of your neighbor’s windows to eavesdrop. ...

Champions come in all shapes and forms. The same is true of cowards. Most of us line up somewhere between these two extremes of potential, but none of us eagerly anticipate having to prove ourselves in a crossfire. In fact, most notable acts of heroism are not the results of well-considered, carefully laid plans. Rather, these are often spontaneous yet deliberate demonstrations of selflessness occasionally on display when normal human beings must confront life-threatening risk. Take a deep, calming breath now before you dare gaze into the face of death. Trembling, heed its heckling catcalls...