INSOMNIA
One afternoon, at low water, Mr. Isbister, a young artist lodging at
Boscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of Pentargen,
desiring to examine the caves there. Halfway down the precipitous path to
the Pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man sitting in an attitude of
profound distress beneath a projecting mass of rock.
Chapter I: Ten Gold
It was a dark and stormy night. Or at least it had been. Fuck, it’s hard to put the pieces together. The afternoon had started with a strange type of gnome fungus, led to beers at The Salty Dog, then elf dust — sweet merciful fuck, the elf dust.
Two shadows met in the basement of a 22-story skyscraper and conversed in an all too human tongue. They were human and in an unlit corner they cast a spell of shadows to distant eyes. One was a female’s and the other a male’s for one’s laughter chimed and the other’s giggled.
“Fire and Ice,” by Matthew Campbell.
*****
Matthew R. Campbell lives in Colorado, creating all kinds of art and occasionally raising creatures from the pits of Hell. He currently lives in the backwoods where he fires upon trespassers.
From LANUGO
Though Oliver might not have always been able to remember much, he knew this world was one he had never been granted access to before. A new stone mansion overlooked a broad street in a neighborhood of the city Oliver didn’t know existed. Furnished with ancient portraits and faded daguerreotypes, the deep red of the interiors exuded a moneyed superiority one can only be born to inherit—even if the walls were the only vestiges of a heralded past.