OnAHiatus

(SHATTERPOINT) IMPENDING DOOM

The bus stop on the long street full of hole-in-the-wall businesses was little more than a crooked bench and a leaning scrap of metal roof, stained with dirt, rust, and the remnants of a dozen old posters. The kind of place that attracted people you didn’t want to talk to, skeevy loiterers with twitchy eyes and even twitchier hands, and the streetlights worked just often enough to give you false hope of visibility.

Anakin didn’t wait for the bus. He preferred to walk.

His shif...

(PU) SOPHIA HESS

Two weeks before the story began… The school was supposed to be empty. No students, no teachers, no scuffed sneakers squeaking against the t

Two weeks before the story began…

The school was supposed to be empty.

No students, no teachers, no scuffed sneakers squeaking against the tile floors, or conversations in the classrooms. Just the faint and constant bzzt of overhead lights and the occasional, distant rattle of a janitor’s cart trudging do...

(LIMITLESS) CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: NIGHT AND FOG

The woman was fast. Too fast for a civilian, fast enough to give most Wards a bad day. She moved with a finesse usually only seen in movies.

The woman was fast. Too fast for a civilian, fast enough to give most Wards a bad day. She moved with a finesse usually only seen in movies. A deft flick of her wrist sent a flashbang clattering across the boardwalk, followed immediately by a pellet. At the same time, she flung her black cloak toward Taylor like a weighted net, aiming to disorient,...

(AV) JUST HER LUCK

Her dad had always called her lucky.

Not in a cheesy, cutesy, ‘you’re my lucky star, kiddo’ kind of way. No, with Danny Hebert, it was more dry than that. Usually a resigned, you-survived-this-too-huh sort of mutter after the latest Hebert household disaster. Like the universe enjoyed dangling her over the edge, only to pull her back at the last second. Like survival was the same thing as success.

Taylor used to laugh when he said that, back when laughter came easy and the w...

(SHATTERPOINT) THE BAIT

Chisel wasn’t the brightest, and even she’d admit that, though probably with a shrug and a half-laugh and a beer in hand. 

She wasn’t a smarty-pant like Stubs or charismatic like Skidmark, but she could follow instructions, swing a bat, and hold her own in a conversation better than most of the drugged-out zombies the boss kept around. That made her useful, and in the Merchants, being useful was the only thing that kept you above the bottom of the barrel.

So when Skidma...

(OPB) TAYLOR MEETS SAITAMA ONLINE

Taylor didn’t use social media much.

Too many triggers. Too many people who used to shove her into lockers now posting #blessed selfies.

But one night—bored, hoodie up, sitting on a rooftop with a half-crushed juice box—she logged into a forgotten forum.

A thread caught her eye:

♦ Topic: Did Anyone Actually Try That Saitama Routine?

In: Boards ► General ► Cape Fitness

Most of th...

(THO) CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Amy hated hospitals. She hated the sterile smell. She hated the lighting, too bright in some corridors and too dim in others, but always mak

Amy hated hospitals.

She hated the sterile smell. She hated the lighting, too bright in some corridors and too dim in others, but always making that bzzt sound. She hated the muted sobs behind curtains, the hiss of ventilators, the steady beeping of machines keeping people alive just long enough to be handed over to her. She hated th...

(LIMITLESS) CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: MENDING BRIDGES

Her dad was waiting by the boardwalk entrance, standing awkwardly in a posture that tried too hard to look relaxed. The jeans were too new, the polo shirt had one collar uneven, and his jacket was the kind a middle-aged man only pulled out for ‘special occasions.’ His eyes lit up when he spotted Taylor, relief, hesitation, and something stubbornly hopeful shining behind his glasses.

She slowed her walk as she approached. Her blindfold hung loosely around her neck, and her outfit was...

(MARKED FOR DEATH) PROLOGUE

It was well past dark and, though the wind howled in his ears, the usual white noise of traffic was absent. It was possible the weather had chased most indoors; the city was riding the tail-end of a heatwave that had the government issuing red alerts. During the day, the soaring temperatures—combined with overcrowding—had made it nightmarish to navigate tourist hotspots, and as a result, the Red Cross offering water and first aid to the homeless was a never-ending scene amidst those avoid...

(SHATTERPOINT) PROSPECTING

Skidmark knew, without a doubt, that the universe hated him.

Not in the cosmic, grand, ‘you were born under a cursed star’ kind of way. Or in that fate or karma or any of that religious bullshit. No, it was personal. The universe had it out for him. It fed him scraps of luck just often enough to keep him desperate, tossed him scraps of power just strong enough to make him reckless—to keep him stupid—and then kicked him in the dick every time he got his hopes up that he ...

ANNOUNCEMENT!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE READ

I know this might be asking a lot, but I’d be incredibly grateful if you could take a moment to check out my original fiction on Royal Road. If you leave a comment, let me know you’re coming from here. I’d love to see familiar names.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/119649/marked-for-death

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that becoming a published author has ...

(THO) CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Gojo was wary. It wasn’t a feeling he liked. Or one he was used to entertaining. Flippant? Yes. Hypervigilant? Always. But wary—that slow-cr

Gojo was wary.

It wasn’t a feeling he liked, or one he was used to entertaining.

Flippant? Yes. Hypervigilant? Always. But wary—that slow-creeping unease that coiled low in the gut and whispered you know what’s coming and can do nothing—was foreign. Unwelcome. And worse? It made se...

TEASER FOR A NEW STORY

She died with her mouth open.

Screaming, or trying to. There wasn’t much strength left to scream with as her throat burned with rot and bile and mold and other things. The stench alone had started to eat away at her senses within the first hour. Later, she had stopped noticing the smell. That terrified her more than anything.

She died clawing at the locker door with fingers already bleeding, already broken, already numb.

She died knowing no one was coming—that n...

(SHATTERPOINT) EASIER SAID THAN DONE

The clang of metal echoed through the garage as Anakin tightened the last bolt on a battered engine block. The machine—a rust-colored pickup from this world’s previous decade—rattled like it wanted to fall apart just out of spite. Still, it ran. He made sure of that.

He wiped his hands on a rag that had long since lost the battle against grease, then leaned back, breathing in the heavy scent of oil and scorched rubber. The smell reminded him of the maintenance bay aboard his TIE f...

(TSSFH) CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE - TAYLOR

The day she almost died, really died, wasn’t the day she fought Mannequin. Or the day she did her best to rescue civilians while Leviathan rampaged just blocks away.

It was a random Tuesday.

She didn’t remember much at first. Just a sense of her knees buckling, the pressure in her chest tightening like it wanted to wring the life out of her lungs, and cold sweat beading under her mask. Her bugs had dropped mid-flight like tiny marionettes with cut strings, and she had...

(THO) CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Rebecca didn’t breathe. Not because she was afraid, but because at that moment—when the tension between Gojo Satoru and Contessa thickened i

Rebecca didn’t breathe. Not because she was afraid, but because at that moment—when the tension between Gojo Satoru and Contessa thickened into something barely containable—every breath felt like it might tip the balance.

His head turned slightly, like he was looking at something just beyond the room. The faint amusement in his smil...

(TSSFH) CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO - SIMURGH

The Simurgh did not mourn.

She understood the concept. She had studied it in countless expressions: the keening of widows, the shattered silence in hospitals, the ink of eulogies spilling across newsprint. She had stood, wings outstretched and motionless, atop a mountain of rubble in Canberra while the city wept around her, and she had learned.

But she did not mourn.

Because the Simurgh did not feel in the way humans did. She wasn't human, and couldn't operate like ...

(PU) THE ONES WHO DON’T GET NOTICED

Winslow was a school built on the art of not-seeing. Not in any magical sense—Taylor didn’t believe in that kind of thing—but in the quiet,

Winslow was a school built on the art of not-seeing.

Not in any magical sense—Taylor didn’t believe in that kind of thing—but in the quiet, rotting way people learned to look past what made them uncomfortable. A hallway fight? Not their problem. A bleeding nose in the girls’ bathroom? Coincidence. Whispered insults, tripped feet,...

(ITB) ISSUE #11: EPILOGUE

Taylor didn’t write in her journal anymore.

Not since then.

Not since the locker—the dark, fetid tomb of rotting garbage, mold, and diseases. Not since Emma’s betrayal and the day something inside her broke and never quite fit the same way again.

She used to pour herself into those pages. Thoughts, sketches, dreams. Before the world turned sour. Before the fear and exhaustion sank into her bones like a second skin.

But tonight, for reasons she c...

(TSSFH) CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE - CLARK

Clark Kent watched as the television above the bar flicker with static before it stabilized again—just in time to catch the bright, gleaming smile of Max Anders filling the screen, his face framed by campaign banners and red, white, and blue bunting.

‘A New Future for Brockton Bay,’ read the slogan beneath his name.

Then the camera cut to the crowd. Dozens, maybe hundreds, had gathered in Central Park as cameras hovered on drones above the stage, broadcasting every ...

(PU) THE FIRST LESSON

Taylor had seen some bizarre things at Winslow.

She’d once watched a girl get smacked in the face with a frozen juice box during lunch. There was the time someone poured bleach in the water fountains and no one investigated. And of course, the latest rumor: Sophia Hess, caught skulking the halls after hours with garbage bins and uncollected waste, looking like she’d just lost a fight with a raccoon. Or three.

But none of that prepared her for the sight of Naruto-sen...