Patricia Wilson
Stories
10
Chapters
3,347
Words
163.4 K
Comments
0
Reading
13 h, 37 m
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The Army discharged him at the maintenance depot, then loaded him onto a bus back to the city. It dropped him at the central bus depot in the middle of Harban City, along with thousands of other soldiers getting discharged that day. A lot of families turned up to greet their returning children. Truth told the sibs to stay in school. He had some errands to run. The train carried him away from the central station out along one of the spidery limbs of the subway system. It was kind of funny. This line, the…-
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The crow headed man was about nine meters tall. Nine meters is a funny sort of distance. On the one hand, it’s just a few steps to walk. On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to fall nine meters. And you really, really wouldn’t want to have a nine meter tall crow-headed, dual-flaming-ax wielding murderer running over to give your insides some fresh air. When you are armed with a screwdriver. And the bastard is Truth scrambled out from behind the corner as the axes smashed down. He hesitated a…
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Truth was pleasantly surprised by how much he liked the Army. Everyone else was grousing about this being terrible or that being stupid, but he liked the rigid structure of it. What time did he get up? 5:00 AM. Not a minute before or after. He was to get dressed in the approved manner with the supplied clothes, make his cot in exactly, and only, the specified manner and otherwise attend to all other matters before marching with the unit to breakfast. Which was hot, and at 5:30 every day. Then he was given…
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The brilliant night opened above the waiting youths, as the stars showered blessings upon their chosen. The little star-sparks swirled and danced and drifted to their fated one, settling upon their brows. Instantly, the status sigil on their wrist was updated, their department confirmed, their name added to the Starbrite company rolls. Truth watched the first of the white-gold orbs land and felt bittersweet at the joy convulsing the chosen. He would have no fate with these little orbs. No fate with…
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At sunset the day before the Starbrite Aptitude Test was held, churches would ring their bells, temples banged gongs, and civic groups would drive around in buses, reminding people, via bullhorn, that tomorrow was SAT Day. Absolute silence was to be observed until sunset tomorrow. Or else. When the sun vanished below the horizon, so did the noise. It was the one night of the year that didn’t belong to the Ghūl. It belonged to the parents. Mom and Dad were so excited. It was finally their time to show…
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The smell of the birthing vats of the Ghūl, those human skin cauldrons of corruption and depravity, poured into Truth’s mind like a glass of water into a pot of smoking hot oil. “I’m going to kill Prentiss.” Then, “Am I part Ghūl?” followed by “This is why the cops burn the statues- cut off the Ghūl supply.” “Am I turning into a Ghūl?” He couldn’t hold it together, and like a glass of water poured into a pot of smoking hot oil, he exploded. He rushed the nearest cauldron, club…
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Truth retreated back into the light of the doorway for a moment, just to reset. The Ghūl hated bright lights, but wouldn’t wait long. They would start throwing crap around the door. Eventually, something would knock out the light. This would happen pretty quickly, as the light was the cheap little underpowered talisman flashlight that Prentiss fished out from under his counter. The bathroom mirrors, however, were not some fancy glass job. They were high polish steel with a spray-on clear layer of…
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Truth was curled in the fetal position at the center of his nest of light. He thought he would have been thrashing. He was certainly covered in just about every sort of fluid his body produced. Every fiber of his being hurt. Every centimeter, every scrap of him, ached. Even his hair ached, somehow. He knew that the first thing to do after breaking through was to cultivate. He couldn’t possibly move an inch, but he could do the breathing, right? Right. Just… focus on the breathing. Don’t worry about…
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Well to do families would give their newly married offspring a choice- do you want the down payment for a house, or do you want a cultivation elixir for your kids? For many young families, it was a tough choice. Everyone wanted to own their own home but… who knew how much elixirs would cost in eighteen years? If you pre-purchased them now, you would have the security of knowing your kids were covered for their Level One breakthrough. That would set them up for life. A good elixir guaranteed a smooth…
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Truth looked around the washroom. The building had been some kind of commercial or light industrial space- lots of bare concrete floors, spots where shelves and tables had been bolted down, sconces that would have held high capacity Cosmic Energy relays. Those relays would have been the first things stripped out of here, maybe even before the… whatever it was… officially went out of business. It was inky dark, damp, cold, and smelled of mildew and rat piss. The fact that it wasn’t filled with…
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