Showing results by author "Stephen Donald Huff" in All Categories

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. Such twisted ...

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. Cup your ears and shade your eyes now. Peer into the gloom of your neighbor’s windows to eavesdrop. Such twisted threads weave life’s strange tapestries. Of tragically flawed characters, here find deplorable examples, and of losers, legions.

Champions come in all shapes and forms. The same is true of cowards. 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. Such twisted threads weave life’s strange tapestries. Of redemptions failed or delivered, here find disturbing variations, and of heroes, none.

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. Steal a secret moment now and listen to your heart. It confides. Such twisted threads weave life’s strange tapestry. Of love, here find endless variations, and of lovers, nine.

In the limitless expanse of the cosmos, intelligence need not be confined to water-filled flesh. For every form of imagination, there is an embodiment of it out there in the void. On this world in this system, everything may be uniquely alive, from the rocks to the sandstorms. Journey here to die. Or be reborn.

During the summer of 1968, the Nightland, Incorporated carnival stopped in suburban Pecan Groves, Texas to stage a one-week show. Its performances paralleled a three-man prison escape, the miraculous resurrection of a cherished young boy, and the mysterious appearance of a young lady with a potent pedigree. If the squalor of its Freak Show and the rigged games of its midway are now known only within the faded archives of history, then contemporary society is its primary benefactor and direct ancestor. We see its shadows and hear its echoes everywhere.

He is the scourge of the night, every bachelorette's worst nightmare. He has already killed many single young ladies, and he will certainly kill again. Tonight, he lingers outside the house of his next intended victim. Watching. Waiting. Every matchmaker claims there is someone for everyone. This is what happens when like evils meet.

He is an enigma and a genius. He is perhaps the greatest strategist of all time. Unable to relate to his fellow human beings, he relies upon his pieces in rank and file for all his companionship and comfort. While he plays, the bloodiest conflict in history is in an endless state of stalemate. In the end, only a mad genius can save humankind from itself, but the price for victory might be too high to pay.

A ravaged, remnant human population claims the Earth's dismal daylight hours, while bloodthirsty savages rule the night. One aging warrior struggles to take back the darkness. He fights bloodlust with bloodlust, but his most powerful weapon is a terrible one that might turn on him at any moment.

Like an onion, his plan for her conquest is multi-layered and complex. First, he must educate himself, then he must use that education to accumulate wealth. Finally, he must find a way to enter into her life as an equal. In the meantime, he can always jog alongside her in the park, just another stranger on the trail.

A contemporary incarnation of Janus, the two-faced god, Mordrake is not one man, but two, for he lives with a conjoined, parasitic twin. He is both Adonis and demon, gentleman and lunatic. He is Mordrake and Mordrake's Whisper, the former a handsome young gentleman of renown and refinement, and the latter a silent, sinister mask fixed to the back of Mordrake's head.

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. Too many children share young Tiffy's lot in life as they drift from apathy to neglect and back again, their little lives lost and void of parental intervention. Too few of them encounter an advocate like Mr. S. Will he go too far to save her?

His nickname at work, where his colleagues avoid him like a plague, is "Mr. Accident". His history is a sordid tale of endless cacophony and disaster. Death follows him like a shadow. Today, he earns his nickname with flare. Few survive their first closeup encounter with Mr. Accident.

One morning on a vacation with this extended family, all bound to watch the patriarch run his first marathon, Mortimer witnesses a terrible crime. He’s no hero. He's retired and has nothing better to do. Run, daddy, run!

He drives a specially modified Snow Cat, shuttling roughnecks to the wildest gas fields on Earth, which are situated along a frozen peninsula in the far northern wastes of Siberia. After a global catastrophe, he is perhaps one of the last men left alive, but he survives with the hope that somehow his young daughter is waiting for him on the far side of the globe. It's the end of the world, but it's not the end of “Lucky Thirteen”.

In a dystopian, apocalyptic future, he is the quintessential survivalist, a heartless loner. The only things that stand between him and death each day are his maxims. He relies on them to manage the violence inherent within a world gone mad, and they are as unforgiving as his soul. Then she comes along.

Born into a wealthy family, Mercy Worth will enjoy every privilege that unimaginable riches can provide, but she will never know love. No baby was more beautiful than Mercy, in pink. No toddler was more darling than Mercy, in yellow. No bride more brilliant than Mercy, in white. And humankind has never known anything as terrible as Mercy, in black.

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. They are many and they are hungry. Human beings are defenseless. You never needed a cat so badly!

She has come to his office to give birth, but she is accursed and he knows it. Fortunately, she has chosen wisely and she can afford the best phy-magician in the country. He will safely deliver the demon inside her, and then he'll help her to determine who would cast such a spell on her in the first place. This is an age of science in magic. A phy-magician must master both trades with equal alacrity.

Dire questions inevitably linger when someone disappears from a troubled marriage… from a troubled life… from the entire world. When Efren Sinclair’s wife takes a permanent vacation from their comfortable existence, all eyes turn to him, accusatory and condemning. His family and friends suspect her husband has alibied himself with an industrial grade Live-Jack, an artificially intelligent system capable of passing the forensic Turing Test for Sentience. Perhaps we all should ask… Which is real? Which is Live-Jack?