PriestSnatcher

Insomnium --EKB For the fourth time in four straight nights, Wade Barrett was having that dream again. It was a nightmare as unnerving as it was relentless, and more persistent in the recent days than it had been at the start of things. The dream itself never changed; it was always the same. Each time, Wade found himself wandering in the cold night through an old churchyard. There was a sliver of moon that hung upside-down in the sky like the grin of a Cheshire cat, barely enough to illuminate the tops of snow-covered headstones that jutted up from the uneven ground. It was much darker than it should have been, and the frozen snow that cru

Secondhand Gifts --EKB It was on a bleak and dreary morning in mid-December that Paul Edgecombe made the trip out to Briar Ridge to see Percy Wetmore. A grey-veiled sky had been threatening rain through much of the morning, and it was not until Paul had gotten on the road that the clouds actually let loose. Now, a cold and piss-poor drizzle was falling; too sparse to consider a downpour, but just substantial enough to make the going downright miserable. The god-awful combination of damp and frigid put the sort of chill in the air that seeped straight into a man's bones and stayed a spell. It had been dreadfully cold lately, mused Paul, over

The Devil You Know --EKB Somewhere down the line, it has come to dawn on Paul Edgecomb that he is hopelessly, quite impossibly, in over his head. It is a stark revelation, one which has never been so clear to him as it is now, in this very moment as he stands at the open window on the far side of Percy's bedroom. The Louisiana summer midnight is hot and damp, the air thick and stagnant with the threat of rain. Violet lightning races across the sky and Paul can make out the tall columns of cumulonimbus clouds looming at the line of the horizon. He closes his eyes and fills his lungs with the August air. Thunder rails in the distance, ominou

If The Winter Sun Should Set --EKB Dusk found Percy by the old wooden fence at the edge of the property line, in the fast-fading light of that late winter afternoon. Somehow Paul had known where to find him, had expected to find him here in the snow-covered clearing, a solitary splash of color against a canvas of dead hues. What he had not expected was how taken he was by the sight. Errant flakes of white sifted down around him from a slate-grey sky that looked as if it might crack and fall to earth, shard by frozen shard. The sound of Paul's footfalls seemed too loud in the black-and-white silence. He felt like an intruder who was interru

Jump/Start A scant few hours into the ordeal, Jack had already decided he was not feeling up to this. They were in an abandoned house a few blocks down from the scene of the explosion, Jack and his newfound comrade Assad. The clock was ticking and neither of them had the slightest idea where to go from where they were at present--no leads, no clearly-mapped-out Plan of Action. Their next move, if there was one, depended solely on whether or not Shaheed would spill his guts. He had to, one way or another. There was no alternative choice, no other recourse. This is necessary, Jack told himself as he went through the motions. Step one, demand

Common Causes --EKB "Dammit, Assad." The incredulous protest rang out, lingering heavy in the air between passenger and driver. "You can't seriously be considering this." But Assad was, and Jack's protests--however adamant--fell ultimately on deaf ears. The man clearly wasn't hearing a thing Jack was saying, and if Jack could infer anything at all about the way Hamri al-Assad thought (the fact that he could was the most disquieting notion of all), he knew his newfound partner had no doubt already devised a way into the warehouse full of hostiles they were presently staked out behind. "His guards will be heavily armed," was Assad's reply,

After the Darkness: An Epilogue --EKB He woke to the pitter-patter of rain on the rooftop, to the lingering scent of damp earth and water that washed in through the open window of the small parochial house. By and by, Bradshaw's eyes flitted open--though it was only for a moment. They closed again just as quickly and he drifted, half-awake and listening to the sound of the falling rain. Bradshaw could remember a time not at all long ago when this, the very sound of a rainstorm, might have sent his nerves reeling into a full-blown panic. A mere few months prior, he had barely been able to sleep without waking without a start, without a cold

Hard Time: A WWE Fanfiction--EKB The police station in Bayou City, Louisiana was set in the center of town, across from the city courthouse and a towering old Pentecostal church. Small and square, the diminutive brick building held barely enough space for an office and-a-half--enough for the town sheriff and his deputy to conduct their business. The city lockup, as it were, was located under the police station. Three holding cells took up the area beneath the building and were usually reserved for regulars: a couple town drunks and disorderly vagrants, mostly. It was safe to say that the two men currently occupying the cell closest to the wa