Showing results by author "Stephen Huff" in All Categories

Disinfectants, detergents, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and homicides – everything a human being needs to clear his or her lot and start fresh in life, clean and pure, and it all waits at the press of a finger. Some of us love a good disaster, but we watch from a safe distance and it always happens to someone else… somewhere else… never here. Never us. Distended bellies and skeletal children are always the misfortune of others. Stop and wonder why. Your preferred answer no doubt leaps easily to mind, but the truth is probably quite different, because pestilence comes in all ...

A silly titmouse once sang sweetly to describe love as “a many-splendored thing”. Perhaps this is so. For some. For others, love’s terrible spectacle shines in its many violent twists and unexpected turns. Each feckless angle of its affection or disaffection invariably leaves a disfiguring blemish that renders exquisite facets of character from alternating impacts of tragedy, disaster, triumph and ecstasy. Too briefly, desire’s artistry sparkles the amazed eye with a fateful brilliance before fiery passion fades to leave its victims cold and trembling in its wake. Steal a secret ...

Within each human being lingers a mischievous child, but each of us also cages an unformed primitive. We keep our individual id-monster within the tempered bars of civility, yet it remains our secret delight of a darkened, unobserved evening and we make it our fondest fetish at every available opportunity. No matter how mightily we struggle, history scrawls with endless tales of failed self-control, so each scandal both titillates and disgusts depending upon personal sensibilities. Indulge your inner-beast. How it roars! Of broken souls crushed between despair and revenge; of normalcy ...

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.

While we collectively fear wild animals and muggers, most contemporary plagues come in the guise of unavoidable corporate logos and unforgettable commercial jingles. This new and most modern form of disease presents symptoms that include unhealthy obsessions, unwise compulsions and preprogrammed responses, all accompanied by an irrepressible tune that inevitably drives a rational mind to the very brink of lunacy. Visualize anything except the latest fad slogan while engrossing yourself in a moment of hysteric interest, and then pause to think. Of dreamscape dominions wrought from the felt ...

Boogeymen, banshees, werewolves and vampires; all figments of horror drawn upon parchments of fable, each the scrawl of individual phobias revisited by trembling quills dipped into inkwells of collective nightmare. Despite vaguely amusing caricatures, these monstrous legends probably developed from grisly human origins. Indeed, we confront our violent primitives in every new atrocity, and each murder teaches a simple lesson that humankind consistently resists. Consequently, we forever lack viable means for exorcising so-called ‘inner demons’. Even now, your secret devil whispers into ...

Peddlers and snake oil, pimps and pornography, lunatics and paranoia… each pair travels the same darkened alleyways to service identical shadow-bound gates. We receive them by the backdoor, thank you, and always well into the evening. These are private matters undertaken and clearly marked by clandestine hush and furtive sidelong glance. Sometimes concealed in the open but more often hidden in a fog of disinformation, our every secret contains a kernel of truth wrapped within a burlap of proficient lies. Patience and due diligence may unwrap the enigma to decipher a hidden message, but ...

A marauding legion of starving aliens arrive on Earth for a brief but terrifying raid on the planet. For a few unbelievably deadly days they will hunt humankind to fill their larder before they can continue on their indeterminate journey. Though the invaders are impervious to most human defenses, one man finds safety with a household pet! They are many and they are hungry. Human beings are defenseless. You never needed a cat so badly!

To be certain, there are bad men in the world, but for every fistful of male villains there exists a shrewd woman to corrupt and torment them. She is the spider at the center of a web, and they have come to struggle violently in her traps. He's as loving and caring as a Gaboon viper. She’s as gracious and hospitable as a bristling spider. Choose your friends carefully.

Campaigning with Alexander the Great to wage war on a high plateau above an un-named eastern sea, he suffered a bite from a giant canine. His life would never be the same. Wandering through the ages from continent to continent, an immortal, his only distraction from eternity is warfare. Having fought in every major war through human history's long, bloody list of such conflicts, he ultimately finds himself mired flanks-deep in the trenches of World War I. There, he encounters his own kind for the first time in three thousand years, and he realizes the other side is destined to win with such...

In the not-so-distant future, professional life is reduced to help-desk duty, the workweek is eight hours long, and the average citizen lives a leisurely lifestyle. When an inconceivable glitch named 'Ed' appears mysteriously within the ubiquitous network, however, a global revolution becomes unavoidable. Ed stepped out onto the web, naked as pure energy. It's a better way of life.

Somebody has to do it, and his mind is sufficiently perverse to qualify for the job. It's the age-old conundrum of time travel. It's the ultimate experiment. He packs a handgun before he steps into the time machine. What happens when a young man travels into the past to kill his own parents? Hello, father. Hello, mother. Good-bye, Thaddeus.

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.

Hunted runaways fleeing bestial keepers across a desert wasteland. Bound for Sanctum. A boy named Manga. A girl named Heaven. Each a patchwork monster born of strap and stitch and scar, bestially abused but unbroken. Unbeaten. Not so badly undone that they have forsaken their sense of humanity. For they have yet to abandon all hope. This is their struggle. In love. For freedom.

Klis would be their first failure and it would mark the end of their conquest. When the first Mongol envoy entered its city walls, he offered its citizens the same thing Mongols offered every conquest - tribute or extermination. Its city inhabitants would refuse the former to brave the latter and they would survive. Mongol hordes once marched from the Far East into Europe. There, they encountered their first breaking point at the fortified city of Klis.

Deep within the guts of this world, men and women struggle daily to deliver fuel to feed ravenous industry. It is dangerous work. Indeed, this is a story about fire catching in a coal seam buried deep underground, where a dozen lives hang, choking, in the balance. Regardless of color, creed or religion, hard-rock miners work together as one to avoid perishing individually and alone down in the dark where the devil dwells.

Quickly and easily learn to create vibrant, believable, durable and reproduceable images, videos, music, and voice tracks using textual prompts for artificially intelligent generative systems! This brief guide includes a list of basic rules of composition accompanied by an illustrated instruction manual that will teach the curious reader how to create outstanding multimedia content using any generative AI system (such as Aitubo, MS Designer, etc...). This quick study includes everything the novice needs to know to get started and then progress to the creation of award-winning images, videos...

Declared missing-in-action while serving in Afghanistan, her eldest son's disappearance left a massive whole in this mother's life. Her misery cannot be assuaged by human sympathy or the keepsakes of memories. Although he is certainly dead, she refuses to speak of it and insists he is still alive somewhere out there in the world. On her deathbed, she reveals to her family that he has been calling her every Friday when it rains. A mother's love for her children may transcend time. When it does, who can determine where reality ends and desperate fantasy begins? Only she and her son know the ...

Black eyeliner. Black lashes. Black lips. Black hair. Through it all, peers the white cake face of Darling Girl Jones, orphan. From time to time, she awakens in her academy dorm room to find an ethereal spirit haunting her bed. Never disturbing, always intriguing, such an event is a certain promise of ghoulish adventure and mortal danger. Most girly-girls might scream. Not Darling Girl. Orphaned young and, so, relegated to the care of starchy Miss Jenkins, headmistress of her all-girls boarding school, Darling is no stranger to hardship and unquiet spirits. Today, in the company of a hippy ...

Every ten years, a lottery draws them from all over the country. Every lottery is always the same: four boys and three girls, each with an exceptional mind and each mired in a neglectful or abusive life, which is sure to eventually destroy them. The spooky mansion at 472 Malign Terrace will become their home and their salvation, strange and mysterious though it may seem. Neglected by his addicted mother, a mysterious lottery is the one chance this boy has for a normal life. He reports to 472 Malign Terrace alone and trembling with a strange mixture of terror and excitement.