Haunted Angel Part 2

I shot three quick bursts at the creature. After taking nine bullets to the head, it simply laughed at me. The lights suddenly flickered and the creature was not alone. Demonic versions of my entire team now surrounding me. ” Oh… fuck , ” I muttered, as a sense of utter dread overcame me.

Panicking, I began firing at the entire room, not really aiming at anything specific. About the only thing I accomplished is shooting out the light. I quickly flipped on my night – vision goggles. Unfortunately, they were still there , but it seemed like they couldn’t see me, because they were all standing around looking confused. One of them swiped at air. Crouching down, I slowly started to back away as quitly as I could. Apparently, I wasn’t quiet enough.

They began stalking me. Moving ever closer, they took random swings in hopes of finding me. ” Ahh,” Lead said. “He’s figured out that we are blind to him. Does it feel good knowing that you have a tactical advantage over us? It doesn’t matter. You’re still not going to make it out of this room alive.”

He’s trying to scare me into giving away my position. Silently, I took off my headset and threw it across the room. Four of them stopped and started to move in that direction. Lead looked right at me. ” Did you really think that would work, Angel?” he asked.

The door was not far. I needed to make a distraction. Pulling out a grenade, I pulled the pin and threw it in front of Lead. I took off running. The grenade went off and I was momentarily blinded. Dammit! It was a flashbang. The demons groaned in frustration and I ran right into the door. I felt the blood start running out of my nose. After feeling around for the knob, I found it and got my ass out of there.

Locking it behind me, I took off running again. I heard the door shatter behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I kept running. Taking many twists and turns as possible, I began to think I had lost them. It seemed as though my problems were over, but unfortunately, I had forgot one critical element in my mad dash. There were still soldiers in this place. That thought had escaped my mind until I ran into a whole squadron of them.

One of them yelled for me to stop. Instead, I shot him in the throat as I dove for cover. Bullets whizzed by me. A few even managed to nick me, but none were even close to serious. Kneeling behind a large box, I chucked a grenade off to my right. Pivoting left, I used the ensuing explossion to cover my gunfire. Three down, about 30 more to go. At this rate those monsters won’t have to kill me. These soldiers will do that for them.

While I was trying to think of a way out of this impossible mess. Shouts of terror came from the soldiers behind me. I dared a look. The three soldiers I had just killed had turned into demons and started killing the others. The entire courtyard filled with the sounds of gunfire and explosions. Shit! Not only do I have to get out of this place in the middle of a war, I have to do it without killing anyone else or they’ll turn into one of those monsters.

“There he is!”

Turning, I saw my team coming after me. There was no way out. I was dead.

Mostly Away

Hello, my friends. It’s been awhile. Things have been hectic around here lately and I haven’t spent much time in the blogosphere in the past few weeks. I’ve read a few posts and thrown out some likes, but I haven’t written anything and I really haven’t commented on much.

The next week doesn’t look like it’s going to be any better, but I’m going to try to carve out a few minutes when I get home so I can schedule the second part of Haunted Angel to publish tomorrow.

Until then, I’ll be mostly away, but still kinda here.

Haunted Angel- Part 1

Here is the start of my Dead Set spinoff series entitled Haunted Angel. Like the last story I put up with the handwriting to text app, I feel obligated to inform you that the app likes to put in extra spaces and doesn’t always get the punctuation correct (mistaking commas for periods, etc.). I probably should go through and fix those things before I publish these chapters, but I’m feeling lazy right now. Maybe I will on the later ones.


What do you see when you’re in the dark and the demons come for you? I see all the pain and suffering that I’ve caused in my life. It’s come back to haunt me, and I’m not sure that I will live through it.

My name is Eric Brazelton. Right now, I’m in the top ten of the F.B.I.’s most wanted list. I’m not in the top five yet. If they knew how many people I’ve actually killed, I’d probably be higher on the list. Not that I’m complaining. I don’t want to be the most hunted man in the world.

After being dishonorably discharged from the Army (apparently they don’t like it when you beat the crap out of your commanders), I stuck with what I knew best. I became a sniper for a mercenary outfit. The pay was much better, plus my first target was the bastard that got me kicked out. He’s longer with us. All in all, it’s a pretty nice job. I get paid to kill people. At least, that’s what I thought.

Our final mission was coming up. Once completed, we’d all have enough money to retire to some island country. The six of us met to discuss the battle plan. We were breaking into a government weapon depot and setting our “findings” to the highest bidder. while the plan had some flaws, it easily doable. Now, it’s time for action.


***** ***** *****

Two silenced shots went out and two men fell dead. ” Two down,” I crackled into the headset.

“Confirmed,” came the reply from our leader. “Group B, excecute. Angel, position shift.”

I, being Angel, replied, “Affirmative.” Grabbing my gear, I ran to my secondary location and quickly set up for my next shot. For the next few minutes, it was deathly quiet. Something was wrong, I thought to myself. Sure enough, about two seconds later I heard the call on my headset.

“Granger is down. I need cover, Angel.”

Shifting my sight, I saw my troubled teammate. He was pinned down by gunfire. In rapid succession, I took down three of them. The rest of them dove for cover. ” You have a window. ” Get clear now. ”

As he ran away, gunfire erupted on the other side of the complex. Without being ordered, I shifted position again, heading for the source of the fire. ” Lead,” I asked. “Status report?” No answer came.

I should help them get out of there, I thought. Wait a minute, to hell with them. I should get myself out of there. They’re probably all dead anyways, ” Team, ” I said through the headset, ” if you’re still alive, abort. Fall back to site B. If you’re not there in the next few minutes, you’ll be left behind. I turned around and ran. A voice in my ear stopped me in my tracks. It was Lead.” Angel, execute Swoop.”

Swoop was the order to go down there and rescue them, I quickly turned around, switched from my sniper rifle to my assault rifle, and ran down to the fence. Pulling out a canister of liquid nitrogen, I made myself entrance. After avoiding a few patrols, I found two of my dead teammates. Quickly putting them out of my mind, I kept going to where Lead was supposed to be.

Finally, I made it to the vault. Dead bodies were all over the place. Nobody was left alive, not even the remainder of my team. I knelt down over the body of my fallen commander. ” I failed you, Lead,” I said, ” I should’ve gotten here sooner.”

“You’ve failed everyone who ever trusted you, ‘Angel’,” I heard from behind me.

Turning around, I saw Lead standing there. How the hell was that possible? I was still touching his dead body. “What the …, ” I stuttered.

“Surprised to see me? Not as surprised as I am seeing my corpse, I bet.”

I stood up and backed away. This was the freakiest thing I had ever witnessed.

“I bet you’re wondering how I’m standing here even though I’m dead,” it said to me.

“The thought had crossed my mind, ‘ I replied, after regaining some measure of composure.

“It’s quite simple, really. In death, I have joined a new army. Unlike the one we were in, I’m no longer in charge. I’m a simple recruiter.”

“What are you talkin about?”

“I recruit people into Death’s army and the next target is you.”

With that, his body began to change shape. His appearance was now quite frightening, almost demonic. Horns grew on his head, talons on his hands, ” Now,” it hissed with its forked tongue, “it’s time for you to get what you deserve.”

Another Handwriting to Text Story

Back in November, I published a number of posts containing parts of a story I wrote way back when I still used notebooks and pens. I found an app for my phone that took my old handwritten stories and converted them to text files. It’s not a perfect technology, but it is a lot easier to do than going back and typing it all out myself. Since it worked relatively well for that last story, I began looking through some of my other notebooks for other stories I might be able to put up here and I think I found one.

My longest solo story, as far as number of chapters anyway, that I’ve posted on this blog is Dead Set. I doubt many of you reading this know what that story is because it’s been many years since I’ve posted it. The final chapter posted in 2014, to be exact. Since most of you don’t know the story behind Dead Set, I’ll give a quick recap of it: when I first started writing it, it was supposed to be turned into a comic book. I had an artist who originally was on board with drawing it for me. He went as far as coming up with a number of character concept renderings before dropping out without any explanation. I kept writing, hoping to find another artist, but never did.

Back then, I hoped that I could take Dead Set and turn it into my own comic book universe. Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be, but to that end, I did start writing a spinoff of Dead Set that told what happened to one of the characters of Dead Set that was written out of the main story, although he wasn’t the main character in the spinoff story. In fact, in the four chapters of the spinoff that I finished, the name of the Dead Set character is never mentioned, but if you’d read Dead Set you’d recognize him.

Using the app, I’ve gotten the first two chapters scanned and digitized. I will schedule those for publication and work on getting the last two scanned. If you are new to the Dead Set universe, or simply want to refamiliarize yourself with the story, click the link in the second paragraph or in the My Stories page.

RTOTD: 22365

I was walking with my wife and daughters through Target earlier today. They went into the makeup section and I was obligated to follow. While in there, I saw a section of mascara dedicated to one brand. It was called “Better than Sex”.

Thinking that my girls had walked out of earshot, I said to myself, “If you think mascara is better than sex, you’re not doing it right.”

Turns out, 15 year old Baby J was not out of earshot. I looked at her and her eyes were wide and she was trying not to laugh.

Either way, my point is valid. If you think mascara is better than sex, you’re obviously doing something wrong.