Tales of Magic and Misery: A Collection of Short Stories by Tim Marquitz Read online

  Tales of Magic and Misery

  A Collection of Short Stories

  Tim Marquitz

  © 2015 Tim Marquitz and all respective authors

  Cover art by George C. Cotronis/Cover Design by J.M. Martin

  Created in the United States of America

  Worldwide Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form, including digital, electronic, or mechanical, to include photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the author, except for brief quotes used in reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  The Demon Squad

  A Hell of a Way to Die

  The Great Brain Robbery

  Trials of the Morning Star

  Prohibition Black and Blues

  The End Begins

  Discordia Ascendant

  The Err Apparent

  The Horror of It All

  Grave Times

  Meat

  A Night to Remember

  The End

  Sperare Victor

  Bitter Pill

  Evilution

  Cenotaph

  Tales of the Prodigy

  Redemption at Knife’s Edge

  A Taste of Agony

  An Empire of Tears Preview

  Clandestine Daze

  Chapter One of Eyes Deep

  Author Showcase

  All stories included with permission

  Armand Rosamilia

  Nathaniel Connors

  Adrian Collins

  Danielle Ackley-McPhail

  R.B. Wood

  N.X. Sharps

  Daniel Weaver

  Amanda Shore

  Glenn Hefley

  Chris Garrett

  GR Matthews

  J. Cameron McClain

  C.L. Werner

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  Tales of Magic and Misery

  Introduction

  Tales of Magic and Misery combines several eras of my short stories, from the very early efforts at flash fiction, to limited release books, to stories that were only released on my blog, all the way to those published as recently as 2015. Because of the nature of the releases I feel that many of the stories might have slipped past their intended audience. Anyone who’s only read the first few Demon Squad books, for example, will have missed all of the shorts in the DS world. As such, I have collected them here so those interested in dipping their toes into my various works can read them at their leisure without worrying about long term commitment.

  I’ve also included a never before released short story entitled Evilution as well as an exclusive look at the first two chapters of the forthcoming Tales of the Prodigy novel, An Empire of Tears. The story follows the mercenary Gryl who’s been showcased in the Blackguards, Neverland’s Library, and Unbound anthologies. There’s also the first chapter of Eyes Deep, an introductory novella in the Clandestine Daze urban fantasy series.

  As a bonus to Tales of Magic and Misery, I have included a number of works by writers other than myself. Publishing is a tough business, and it’s hard to make a name as an author. It’s a struggle most of us deal with daily; how to get our stories in front of more people. I’ve been extremely lucky to have found an audience for my work, for which I am eternally grateful, but I don’t feel that it’s enough just to succeed. While writing is seen as a solitary venture, it’s anything but. We writers and readers are a community, a group of people tied together by our love of stories. And in order to strengthen the community, it falls on each and every one of us to spread the word so that no story goes unread.

  So please, when you’ve read your fill of my worlds, take a moment and step into those of the other authors included in this collection. If you enjoy what you find, let folks know, leave a review, hunt down more words from these authors, and friend them on social media. Your support means everything. We wouldn’t be here without you.

  P.S. I’m honored to have C.L Werner’s help in promoting this project. He’s generously offered up a story for the collection in the hopes of expanding the audience of the authors involved. You can’t buy awesome like that.

  Tim Marquitz

  June 3, 2015

  The Demon Squad

  A Hell of a Way to Die

  Featuring Chatterbox

  Originally published in To Hell and Back 2014

  Blaspheme took the stage with a roar.

  The brutal chug of the guitars rattled Dave’s teeth, the buzzsaw crunch of “Angelique Diabolique” ripping through the stacks. The crowd swirled around him as the riff accelerated. People pressed in tight on all sides, Dave dripped with sweat, strands of his long hair plastered across his cheeks and chin. He was a wave in a sea of frantic bodies crashing into one another in an orgy of primal ecstasy. An elbow clipped his ribs as he roiled along with the others. The impact was a dull thud, nothing more than a hazy contact at the edge of his consciousness. He could have been hit by a train right then and not notice. His eyes were rooted to the singer.

  Vampyria held court at the misty center of the black-draped stage. Her waist-long ebony hair swirled as she undulated to the throbbing backbeat. A double-bass barrage thumped in the well of Dave’s chest, vibrations throttling his heart as Ribspreader pounded his kit. Someone clipped him across the ear with an errant fist as the pit swelled, but Dave didn’t give a damn. It was all part of the experience.

  Vampyria writhed in her skintight leather and spandex outfit, grinding against the mic stand in a way that made Dave envious. Her serpentine slither had him rigidly attentive in more ways than one. Vampyria grinned as she looked out over the crowd, the red dots of her eyes piercing. She gripped the mic in both hands and pressed it to her lips with a sigh. A cold shudder ran down Dave’s spine as he drew in a deep breath in preparation of the onslaught. He raised the horns as Vampyria let loose with her trademark howl.

  “Satan! Master! Hear me!” One of her hands slid across a barely restrained breast, fingers trailing the soft white flesh that quivered with her voice. The riff whirled around her words. “Fill me with your darkness, let me taste your seed. Ravage me with demons, and make. Me. Bleed!”

  “Violate!” the band cried out in unison.

  “Take me to Hell and lick my wishing well…I’ll ride the crown and make you glad you fell.” Vampyria ground her crotch against the stand as she screeched into the chorus. “Fuck me, Satan, fuck me now. Lilith ain’t got nothing on me, that sow. Fuck me, Satan, fuck me now. I’ll make you forget God, that I vow.”

  Corpsefondler ripped into his solo and the crowd erupted, arms flailing and voices shrieking, the dense, dope-laced air whiffing past Dave’s nose. He inhaled deep and let the throng take him. There he stayed, lost in the clamor and chaos of the pit until his arms were bruised and sore and his neck twanged like an over-stretched rubber band.

  And when the last riff of the night shuddered to a halt and there was nothing in his ears except the whistling skree of tinnitus and the muffled murmur of the mob, Dave stumbled to a halt. The room settled around him in eager anticipation of what was to come.

  “Thank you, Old Town!” Vampyria screamed from the stage, the jagged edges of her vo
ice on full display after the two hour set.

  The crowd exploded once more. Screams of “Encore” filled the air, desperation dripping from the growing chant. Vampyria waved the room to silence. Dave watched the silver trail of sweat that ran down her chest to disappear inside her cleavage, its glory gleaming under the stage lights.

  “I know you want more…” the singer purred. The blue of her lipstick was smeared across her cheek, distorting her smile. The black circles of her eyes took in the congregation.

  “More! More! More!”

  “…but not now. Sorry, loveys,” she said over the eruption of boisterous complaints. “It’s a special night, though. One we’ve been waiting on for ages. We’ve a surprise—”

  The crowd exploded. Basketcase thunked his bass in response, slicing through the noise like a scythe. The concertgoers went silent in the wake of its reverberating hum.

  “But I’m sorry it’s only for a lucky few of you,” Vampyria went on. “The chosen three.” She held up a ticket like the one Dave had purchased for the show. He only started paying attention to her hands as the slip of paper cut across his line of sight. “Recognize this?” she asked, waving it in the air while the crowd scrambled to yank theirs out. “We marked a select number of tickets with the sign of our savior.” Vampyria gave a blackened grin. “You know what that is, right?”

  “Six! Six! Six!” the club screamed in eerie unison, the rafters rattling. Dave joined in on the last six.

  “That’s right, my children. The sign of the beast, our lord and savior, Lucifer.”

  “Old Lou! Old Lou! Old Lou!”

  Vampyria laughed, her voice filling the club with its smoky allure. “Check your tickets, my pets. If you’re lucky enough to be blessed by the Morningstar, you’ll spend the rest of the night with me and the boys at a private party where we’re all yours, body and soul.”

  The shuffle of the audience was nearly as loud as their shouts, scrambling sounds and excited mutters ricocheting throughout the club. Dave drew in a deep breath and plunged his hand into his back pocket. The stiff edges of it scraped his fingers as he yanked it out. His eyes blurred as he stared, trying to focus, weed and alcohol and the club’s flashing lights doing a number on his vision. He blinked and rubbed away the glaze, shutting one eye to focus as the other moistened. The ticket came into blurry view. Dave’s shoulders slumped as the words appeared. There was nothing there but the concert information. He sighed.

  “Check the other side,” a voice whispered in his ear out of nowhere.

  Dave snapped his head sideways to see one of the club’s bouncers looming at his shoulder. The big lunk of muscle motioned for Dave to flip his ticket over.

  Dave grinned. It was an excellent idea. “Thanks, dude.”

  The bouncer nodded and gave him a thumbs up as Dave flipped the ticket over and repeated the ritual of getting the stub to sit still in his hands. When it finally settled, Dave scanned the ticket, alternating eyes to make sure he scoured every inch. That’s when he saw it.

  There at the very end of the stub, right at the ragged, perforated edge, loomed what he was looking for: 666. The Devil’s Mark.

  “Fuuuuuuuuucccccccckkkkkkkkk,” he muttered.

  “Shhhh. Not so loud,” the bouncer told him. “Don’t want to start a riot, do ya?”

  Dave just nodded his agreement, gaze locked on the ticket. The sudden burst of Vampyria’s voice started him. He looked up at her, clasping the stub so tight he crushed it into his sweaty palm.

  “Praise hail, Satan!” she screamed from the stage. “We’ll see the blessed few soon. Goodnight!” Fog billowed about the apron, sending up whirls of choking gray. The band slunk into its embrace and disappeared, the ring of their instruments fading.

  “This way.” The bouncer clasped a meaty hand about Dave’s arm and led him through the tempestuous crowd. Tempers were burning like slow fuses as the audience looked about to find the lucky winners, fury and jealousy in their eyes and scratched in ugly lines across their furrowed brows. Dave swallowed hard while the bouncer led him past the bar and through a door with a sign that stated: Employee’s Only.

  “Duuuuuude. Are you sure we’re allowed—”

  “You’re the chosen one, right?”

  The words were a metallic opus to his addled ears. He liked the sound of them. “Chosen one, niiiiice.” Vampyria’s sultry voice resounded inside his skull: body and soul. Dave stumbled as he pictured just that.

  The bouncer just chuckled and dragged him on through the narrow hallway that ended in a big, steel door. He yanked out a set of keys and slipped one into the lock, a heavy clack sounding as he turned it. Fresh air slapped them in the face as the door swung open, revealing a fenced in alleyway alongside the club. A massive tour bus filled the majority of the space, stage hands and sound guys milling about as they sorted and packed the band’s gear. Dave grinned when he spotted Blaspheme’s name etched in blacks and brilliant reds across the side of the bus. He stumbled toward it, a beacon in the hazy desert of his excitement.

  “No, not that way,” the bouncer told him, correcting his direction with a tug. “Over here.” He dragged Dave around the front end of the massive bus and over to a nondescript passenger van with blacked out windows. “This is your ride tonight. Can’t go anywhere in that monster back there without half the city following along. You don’t want your party spoiled, do you?” he asked with a chuckle while he whipped open the side door just as another bouncer appeared, two young women in tow.

  Dave’s eyes snapped to their chests where a four pack of tits just were barely held in check by skimpy, and blessedly, way too tight T-shirts embossed with Blaspheme’s logo. He wiped at his mouth as they bounced closer, only just remembering to look at the women’s faces when they walked up in front of him.

  “Heeeeyyy,” Dave said, giving each a wave, noticing then that one was blond and the other was a brunette. He grinned at the different flavors. Diversity is awesome.

  The women, however, barely registered he was there, their voices battling for supremacy over the sound of the roadies hauling gear…and winning.

  “We get to meet Ribspreader!” the first shouted, her voice stuck on 45 rpm.

  “And Basketcase and Corpsefondler and—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” one of the bouncers cut in, waving the women to the open van door. “All of them. Don’t worry. Just get in.”

  The pair squealed in unison, and Dave pulled his eyes from their boobs long enough to see if they’d summoned a herd of whales or dolphins. Satisfied no aquatic creatures were going to ruin his buzz, he returned his eyes to the women as they slipped into the van. He wasted no time following after them. The brunette scrambled through the door, and Dave inhaled the scent of her leather-clad behind when she hunched over to avoid hitting her head.

  She dropped into the seat alongside her friend with a huff. “Did he just sniff my ass?”

  Dave slid into the seat across from them, gaze firmly locked on the window as his tongue scraped across his dry lips.

  “Who cares?” the blond shrieked. “We get to meet Blaspheme!”

  The sneer fell from the brunette’s lips only to be replaced by a swollen smile. “I know, right?”

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” they both squeed in unison.

  Dave’s shoulders swallowed his neck, the sound cutting through the after-concert hum like a chainsaw. He wished he’d thought to bring ear plugs.

  “Buckle up and have fun,” the bouncer said from the door, throwing up a peace sign before sealing the lucky three inside with a jarring thump, the latch clicking shut.

  The girls started up again, each turning sideways on the bench seat to face one another so they could ramble on about this and that and whatever groupies chatter on about. Each of the words was a nail hammered into his ears. He let his gaze drop from the blurs of their ebony lips to the less than subtle jiggle of their breasts as the driver crawled into the seat up front.

  “And we’re off,” he said, the van r
umbling to life and rolling out of the parking lot a moment later. “The band will meet us there.” The volume in the back increased another hundred decibels.

  Nearly hypnotized by the scantily clad young ladies across from him, Dave imagined unpeeling Vampyria from her spandex. He groaned low in his throat, and then stiffened, a morbid thought intruding on his moment. With the grace of a pocket pool champion, he reached down and pawed at his crotch. He let out a sigh when he felt the comfortable swelling still there. Whew! Weed-dick crisis averted.

  The entire ride, the women ooohed and aaahed and weeeehed and wooohed and Dave fondled himself just feet from their oblivious excitement. Not once did he glance out the window to see where they were headed, not even after the whir of the highway transformed into the bumpy grumble of a dirt road. He didn’t care. All that mattered was that Vampyria would be waiting for him at the end of the ride and there was a brilliant display of boobage across the way to keep him rigid.

  When the van finally crunched to a stop, Dave slid his hand from his crotch just as the wide eyes of the women swung around, awareness finally intruding upon their glee.

  “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod…”

  “We’re here,” the driver called out and slid from the van, the side door opening a moment later to silence the annoying chant. His smile gleamed in the brilliant light of the harvest moon. “Come on, already.”

  The acrid waft of smoke stung Dave’s nose as the driver ushered them from the van. The brunette raced to be the first one out, the blond right on her heels, hands and feet flailing. Dave sighed as the impending catfight failed to materialize, the women making it outside without a blow being thrown. Their feet shooshed in the sand with every antsy step, and Dave sidled out to join them. A small campfire burned in the middle of the mostly empty clearing they’d pulled into, its flickers distorting his vision. He blinked away the floating red stars, only just clearing his sight as the brunette turned to the driver.