Dime Novels From Oblivion

ton  (image from https://www.instagram.com/ozotheclown/) Doctor Erhard's manner rested in the shadowy heart of an ancient pine forest. It was the doctor's vacation retreat, but for the last two years, it had become his home. Erhard was vehemently against Hitler's war and his government, and despite the dangers involved, he didn't make this a secret. He served in a medical unit during the first great war, and he witnessed first-hand war's ravages. Every night he dreamt about stumbling over-bloated corpses in the rain flooded trenches. His nightmares were like vivid pieces of cinema set to the soundtrack of screams and artillery fire. Every night he watched his hands perform the same amputations, cut away the same burnt flesh and excise bullets that had lodged themselves in the soft tissue of internal organs. Every moment was reborn in overwhelming detail. The rusty color of dried blood that stained his worn-out instruments, the feeling of dirt showering on hi

                                      (image from https://www.instagram.com/ozotheclown/) The line of guns went on as far as the eye could see. Their barrels stood in tight rows like the pipes of an organ. Their roar was their song their collective thunder shook the ground all through the night. A cloud of dust and debris engulfed the field where their shells struck the earth. The acrid mist grew and pulsated with every salvo. It swallowed the battlefield, and the wind carried the haze all over the front lines.   The shock troops were subjected to the thundering fire for longer than their nerves could bare. They watched the encroaching mist with terror. They stared into the swirling clouds and saw the grinning faces of death beaconing them into suffocating fog of pulverized earth. The tempo was slowing, and the roar of the guns began to peter out all along the line. Lavrov's hand's clutched his rifle so tightly his fingers turned red, he clenched his teeth to keep them f

This is a follow-up to the first story I ever wrote that went to print. The story was called "The Beast" and it as published by Skive Magazine. This sequel is the story of an apocalypse that unfolds in a mere microcosm. The suffocating darkness engulfed the corridors of the Frontier. It swallowed the walls and the titanium habitat into a void. The black was absolute it flooded away everything. The sting of the frigid air and the sound of screams echoing through the metallic confines were the only things that reminded Anton he was still alive. He clutched the cable that connected him to his brother Curzon. It was the only thing that gave him any sense of security as they felt their way along the walls.  Even though the tether assured, Anton and his brother would never be more than four feet apart it was impossible to see him in the impenetrable dark. They moved carefully. They felt along the walls and floor the way a mole navigates its tunnels in the dirt. Sometimes they w

Death is one expression of the eternal triumph of entropy. Death is also the terminus of the individual human experience. Any complete understanding of homo sapiens would require insight into how they experience the process. Life is the foundation of consciousness the materialization of the metaphysical that inevitably disappears when the biological structures that supported it cease to function. It is the simple transformation of matter from the orderly to the chaotic.  I was assigned to experience death as a human would. I inhabited the frail body of a homo sapiens and used it as a vessel with which to experience this process the way they do. My neurology was completely integrated with that of my host's body physically. We became a singular entity. My muscles spasmed and went numb. A cocktail of neural chemicals was released by the physical brain in the moments before. Death was gradual. It seemed to spread over the body steadily.As I exhaled my last breath, The ceased its for

Madame President Allison Perez was convening yet another emergency council of her economic advisers. Interest rate payments on the national debt now exceeded the total budget. With no money to spin the wheels the mechanisms of government and society at large were grinding to a shaky stop. The walls of the oval office were barren, and the blue carpeting with the stitched in seal had been pulled up.  All the relics of the nation's heritage that had once adorned the office had been practically given away to visiting VIPS, who held vast sums of the country's crushing debt. They held these meetings every time the 11th hour was at hand when the hungry wolves came banging on the door demanding blood. They usually found a way to delay their inevitable devouring by the hungry financial leviathans for just a few more weeks, but now they were running out tricks. Thier meetings were silent gatherings now. Every so often someone would speak up only to dismiss a half-formed idea that