Unknown

by Jane

  • • • • •

  At the edge of the jungle, Raymond hides. He is afraid of them now, and hesitant to approach. After everything that happened, he doesn’t feel the same. The caves, the portals. So he watches them build and he waits. He watches them grow crops and he waits. He watches the women grow big with child, and he waits. Every once in a while a surge ripples through him and he often wakes up in strange places. Now and then a message crawls across the inside of his eyelids, green text on a black screen:

  //

  REBOOT

  Richard Thomas

  Richard was the winner of the ChiZine Publications 2009

  “Enter the World of Filaria” contest. His short story "Maker of Flight" was chosen byFilaria author Brent Hayward and Bram Stoker AwardWinning editor Brett Alexander Savory. Some of his publishing credits include Cemetery Dance ( Shivers VI, early 2010), Living Dead Press ( Eternal Night: A Vampire Anthology), 3:AM Magazine, Word Riot, Dogmatika, The Oddville Press, Colored Chalk, Cause & Effect, Gold Dust, Vain, Nefarious Muse, Troubadour 21, Cherry Bleeds and

  Opium.

  In his spare time he edits and designs for Colored Chalk and Sideshow Fables and is a workshop moderator at The Cult (chuckpalahniuk.net).

  He is currently writing his second novel, a neo-noir, transgressive thriller entitledDisintegration. Richard is also a member of the Horror Writers Association.

  Richard lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago where he has worked as an art director for the past 14 years. He was born in St. Louis, MO, attended Webster Groves High School, and did his undergraduate studies at Bradley University in Peoria, IL. He is currently pursuing an MFA at Murray State University in Murray, KY.

  Also from Otherworld Publications

  in 2010

  COMING JULY 2010

  Remember by Laura Griffith

  After a freak car accident, Professor Robert Madigan begins to suffer impairment of his short-term memory. Suddenly, moments that have just occurred are impossible for him to recall. His family and friends struggle to help him, but, as time goes by, it starts to appear to be more than a temporary condition. His job, his marriage, and his life begin to suffer, but nothing he tries to do works.

  On his way home from work one evening, Robert finds himself standing over a battered, dead body. His hands are covered in blood. He has no recollection of what transpired before that very moment. The police arrive on the scene and take the professor in for questioning as their lead suspect.

  As the police investigate the murder and sort out the details, Robert and his family begin to question the professor's lost memory. Had he been under enough stress to have snapped? Or did he witness a crime that he cannot remember the details of? And if he were a witness, what would a murderer do to keep his only witness quiet?

  To uncover the truth, Robert must work with the detectives to piece together what happened that evening, no matter what the cost. But will he remember anything, and will it be too late?

  COMING SEPTEMBER 2010

  The Price of Life by Greg McCarthy

  Eight-year-old Jennifer Haller’s brain tumor is killing her. A timely CT

  scan would likely have saved her, and a new surgery offers hope for a cure, but Julie Haller is crushed when their insurance company refuses to pay for her daughter’s operation.

  Shortly after Jennifer’s diagnosis, Marine Captain Ed Haller loses his leg to a roadside bomb in Iraq. He comes home to rehabilitate while Jennifer wages her own losing battle with cancer and its treatment. Jennifer’s death leads the family to Fort Worth lawyer Grant Mercer, whom they hire to sue Jennifer’s neurologist.

  As Mercer works the case, Julie Haller learns the results of recent tort reform efforts, including a $250,000 limit in medical malpractice cases. She and her husband realize that a quarter-million dollar price tag on a beloved eight-year-old girl is simply inconceivable. They have no interest in the money, focusing instead on their responsibility to honor their daughter by seeking justice for her death.

  The murders of a lobbyist in Austin, a state senator on a remote country road, and an insurance executive in New York seem unrelated until Jennifer’s doctor is kidnapped. Mercer makes the disturbing connection between the victims and his case, and discovers how far some people will go when the usual avenues of justice are too sharply curtailed.

  COMING OCTOBER 2010

  The Silk Worm by David Rosenstein

  CIA agent, Richard Gibson, is sent to Hong Kong where he is to meet with a known informant to assess the possibility that a major assault of cyber terrorism, the next terrorism, is about to be unleashed on the free world by brilliant Chinese graduate student, Lee Yong, in an attempt to remove the evil influence of western values imposed upon his country by the capitalist countries of the world.

  Richard assembles a team of America’s top computer experts to try and thwart the attack. Within days of Richard’s team starting to work out possible scenarios, the first attack of the Silk Worm hits an airport control tower in northern Taiwan, which results in the crash of two airliners and the death of over three hundred and fifty passengers. The American Ambassador in China is instructed by the President of the United States to lobby the Chinese government in an attempt to allow this team to setup shop in Hong Kong to lead and work with Chinese agents in an effort to kill the attacking computer program and capture its creator. Richard and his group of field agents hit the streets of Hong Kong with telemetry coordinates in hand to search for the physical locations of the ones responsible for the attack and soon discover that they are the ones being hunted.

  COMING NOVEMBER 2010

  The Oracle: The Succession War by Richard Wayne

  Waterman

  What price would you be willing to pay for an instrument of absolute power? Would you be willing to betray your friends and family, to even kill your own father? Or would you be willing to commit even more heinous acts of mass murder, including genocide?

  Guided by the spirit of a dark and powerful villain, the demented Count Belicki, various vibrantly articulated characters discover that they must sacrifice something they treasure more than life itself in order to acquire the transcendent power of the mysterious Oracle. Driven by an insatiable ambition, these individuals seek unlimited power, for if they are strong enough to bend the Oracle to their own will; it is capable of translating mere thoughts into stark reality.

  But these mere humans are not the only ones who seek to control the Oracle. For the battle for omnipotence also occurs within the Oracle itself.

  COMING DECEMBER 2010

  Stay God by Nik Korpon

  Damon lives a content life, playing video games and dealing drugs from his second-hand store while his girlfriend, Mary, drops constant hints about marriage. If only he could tell her his name isn’t really Damon. If only he could tell her who he really is. But after he witnesses a friend’s murder, a scarlet woman glides into his life, offering the solution to all of his problems. His carefully constructed existence soon shatters like crystal teardrops and he must determine which ghosts won’t stay buried—and which ones are trying to kill him—if he wants to learn why Mary has disappeared.