Fifth Monday

This year, Next Year

/ Ben Van Dongen / 2 Comments

We’re getting to the end of 2016 and it’s the time of year for us at Adventure Worlds to take a look back on what we did and tried throughout the season, see what worked or didn’t, and make our plans for 2017. Sadly, that means you have to read this post instead of a story (like normal) but things will be changing and we thought it would be unfair to not let you in on it.

We’ve had some big personal strides this year, both Christian and Ben managed to write the first draft of a novel (Christian knocking out four drafts by the end of the year). They went to several events a month, hosting some and going out of town on two occasions. They also took the step to become an imprint under Mirror World Publishing, putting out the Illustrated Edition of No Light Tomorrow (the second printing of the year).

With all that, the story requirements of this site were mostly supported through submissions. Among the ever present and creative Edele Winnie taking lead most weeks, and local author Ed Gagnon filling in many times, we had submissions from around the world. It was exciting to work with so much diverse talent and to showcase their stories, but it also requires a big time commitment on our end to keep them posted regularly.

That said, this coming year will be a turning point for Adventure Worlds where we spend less time on the blog and more time on publishing. We currently have three books slated to come out in 2017 and they will take up the majority of our time. We will still be posting stories on this site, but rather than post a random story every other week, we will be featuring an author each month. That means we may have a one post story, a multiple post story, or even a couple of stories from a single author each month.

The Fifth Monday will continue as well (it’s too fun not to keep that going). This year, the fist story will be by Maine based Fantasy/Science fiction author Jason H. Abbott. He has a couple of blogs himself and posts every weekday over at Aethereal Engineer. The first part will be going up on the last Monday of January.

Also, look for the first Featured Author post by Edele Winnie on Monday January 2nd.

Thanks for sticking with us as we grow and transition from a jumble of posts from fledgling authors to a real publisher. We love what we do and this site is a large part of that. Have a great holiday season and a Happy New Year. We’ll see you bright and early in 2017.

Hole in the Wall: The Fifth Monday Three – Part Four

/ Ben Van Dongen / Leave a comment

By Edele Winnie

“Jocelyn, is it really you?” Carol asked the white-coated woman up on the catwalk. “I am so…. muddled.” Carol ran her hands through her brown hair but the confusion remained. They were surrounded by buzzing machines, tubes and metal catwalks. “What is this place?”

Jocelyn laughed. “It’s definitely not the bank. The Jocelyn who works there with you is just one version of me. A sister, if you like.”

Carol pointed at one of the large glass tubes. It was filled with green liquid and an exact copy of Carol herself, floating languidly. Beside that there were more tubes and copies. Carol shook her head, unable to find words. Beside her, Gary shifted into a quivering red cylinder shape.

“I see you’ve met Gary. He’s a portal jumper. A creature that can transfer between dimensions without decomposing.”

“You make me sound so dull.” Gary complained and transformed into a star shape. “I’m actually a star.”

Everything seemed to be swirling in her head and Carol looked for a place to sit. She settled on the bottom step of a metal ladder that led to a catwalk above.

Gary changed into a rhombus. “There was a cloh enforcer right behind us.” Continue reading →

Hole in the Wall: The Fifth Monday Three – Part Two

/ Ben Van Dongen / Leave a comment

Ben Van Dongen

Gary rolled into the portal and fell to the ground, landing with a splat. “Ahhh! Damn that hurts! Tanya? Where are you? That crazy thing threw acid or something at me!” Composing himself, he became a ball again.

The ground was a piece of land, ten metres around, floating in the ether. The bare earth beneath it bowed out, like the bottom of a bowl, but at a sharper angle and uneven.

A large tree sat in the middle, stretching up to the empty nothingness, its roots dangling below the platform. Shrubs and tall grasses sprouted all around, making it look like the tree was dug out of a forest, taking the ground coverage with it.

Hundreds of other platforms floated in the void, stretching out into blackness. Each of them had a single tree, roots dangling below the convex bottom, nothing tethering them, nothing holding them up.

“Tanya? Did you hear me?” Gary formed a cube, a tall cylinder, and went back to a ball. “Tanya!” Continue reading →

Hole in the Wall: Fifth Monday Three – Part One

/ Ben Van Dongen / 1 Comment

Edele Winnie

The man in the long coat shuddered and his left arm fell off. The breeze was toying with his long black hair, pulling it off his head and whirling it away. His other arm detached and hit the ground with a dull thud.

“The hole in the wall,” he said. His teeth were drooling out of his mouth, and falling away. His nose slid off and his eyeballs rolled out and splatted to the ground. “Hole in the wall,” his bloody mouth said and then his legs crumpled and what was left of his body thumped to the ground.

His clothing seemed to unravel and the flesh began to slide off of the torso, leaving shiny white bones. The blood and flesh withered and vanished as the bones settled and then began to crumble. In just a few moments, all trace of him was gone.

Carol was rooted to the ground. At first she’d been afraid, then horrified, and now disbelieving. She took a few tentative steps towards the spot where the body had vanished. When ferns started sprouting before her eyes, she backed away, her thin legs shaking. She stumbled and had to grab on to a nearby wall to remain standing. Somehow she managed to find her way back to the bank. She tried telling Jocelyn, a fellow teller and her friend, but Jocelyn just laughed and accused Carol of drinking on her lunch.

 

The rest of the day played out like a parody of normal life. Customers came and went; the clock charted the extremely slow voyage of the afternoon. The people lined up to do their banking didn’t seem real. Carol felt they were robots, or paid actors. When it was finally time to go home she stood at the bus stop and shivered even though the breeze was warm. The same breeze that had torn away the man’s black hair. Continue reading →

The Fifth Monday – Hard On’s Curse Conclusion

/ Ben Van Dongen / Leave a comment

By Ben Van Dongen

Chad struggled to wake up. His dream, something about a hot Quebecois redhead with a Charles Bronson moustache, kept tugging him back to sleep. Yawning, his jaw cracked, and water slipped into his open mouth. The half of his face he wasn’t sleeping on was wet and cold. The sensation, along with a burning desire to take a piss, roused him.

Burning. The word repeated in his head. Burning. It was distasteful, making him frown and fidget. Burn. He smelled smoke, or char. Burner. The word made him sneer.

“Ah!” He jumped up, running in a circle, kicking up snow, screaming and clutching his bottom.

The grumbled, deep voice of the snoozing demon joined the yells. “Shut the fuck up Hard-On, I’m still fucking sleeping.” The words, accompanied by small fires, caught dry branches and grass in the patch on the ground, melted by the demons heat.

“My asshole is on fire! My asshole, it burns!” Continue reading →

The Fifth Monday Two – Hard On’s Curse – Part 3

/ Ben Van Dongen / 1 Comment

By Edele Winnie

The long flight to Quebec City was torturous. Cardinal Molson, nearly eighty years old and fortified by a glass of angel semen in water, was a constant attraction on the aircraft.  Women hovered around him like flies on dead meat. Three of the male flight attendants offered to give him a tour of the private areas of the aircraft- or maybe it was their private areas in the aircraft? It required a lot of forgiving, but Molson was up to it. It also helped distract him from his travelling companion. They were flying first class so Mr. T was already over-filled on complimentary beer and little packages of crackers. He was sweating profusely- the skanky smell of beer cold filtered through a human body with a bushy layer of greasy black body hair. The cardinal was named Molson but Mr. T was Molson inside and out. He was so drunk he was eating the crackers without taking the plastic wrappers off.

When he heard the commotion near the back of the plane the cardinal suspected the flight attendants were scrapping over him. Angel semen seemed to be some kind of crazy aphrodisiac.   But this time he was wrong.

“In the name of Allah!” a bearded man shouted. “American Imperialists and crusaders will pay the price!” He had some kind of button thing in his hand, with his thumb poised ready to press.

People were screaming and swooning. Cardinal Molson heard some praying to a Christian God and that snapped him out of his reverie. He raised his right hand- he wasn’t sure why at the time- and a bolt of white light came out and zoomed towards the bomber. And then the light was gone and so was the man. People blinked and rubbed at their eyes. The trouble maker had vanished. Cardinal Molson wiped the tingly palm of his hand on his black pant leg.   Angel semen indeed.

Far below a man with a beard hit the metal roof of a snowy barn and slid off, bones smashed after a freefall from thirteen thousand feet. Fourteen year old farm girl Ashley Bloomfield looked up just in time to be crushed by the falling pulverized body, killing her instantly.   One virgin, anyway. Continue reading →

The Fifth Monday 2 – Hard On’s Curse (Part 2)

/ Christian Laforet / 1 Comment

–Five Years Later–

“Honey, I’m home.” Chad walked through the front door of his raised ranch house. A gust of snow followed him in, sending a shiver down the back of his neck.

“Where were you?” Sarah, Chad’s wife, came out of the kitchen. “I thought you’d died in a car crash or something.”

Chad knotted his eyebrows. “You know my boss, he always wants the reports on his desk before the end of the day. If you were really that concerned, you could have just called me.”

Sarah rolled her eyes and turned back towards the kitchen. “Well, dinner’s ready. It’s probably cold, but I guess we can microwave it.”

Chad chased behind her while trying to pull off his jacket, drop his briefcase and kick off his shoes. “Sarah, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you worry.” He knew his apology was in vain. If there was one thing he could always count on with Sarah, it was that once she was in a bad mood, nothing could change it.

She had been right, dinner had gone cold. Chad refused to heat it up though, instead insisting to his wife that it was just how he liked it.

After he finished the dishes, Chad headed for the garage to grab a beer.

The garage was cluttered. Boxes from when he and Sarah had moved in two years earlier still sat against the walls. She was always telling him that he needed to clean the space so that they could actually park their car inside it, but he seemed to never get around to it.

“Hey Charlie,” Chad said as he slapped the bronzed Charles Bronson bust on the shoulder. He made his way to the old fridge and gave the handle a yank (it always stuck). He reeled back in surprise when he saw that the fridge was empty.

“God Burner!” He stalked over to the pulldown ladder which led to the attic above the garage. He jumped to reach the string but it was too far above him.

“What’s up, homie?” The demon came walking into the garage from within the house. A beer hat sat on his head, the last two beers sitting snuggly in the holders on either side. Continue reading →

The Fifth Monday: Hard-On’s Curse – Complete

/ Ben Van Dongen / 1 Comment

Part One

Ben Van Dongen

Chad sat at a scarred counter, behind bulletproof glass. The pawn shop was empty and he was on the verge of beating his Joust high score, on his phone. His boss, Mr. T, was in the back office doing the day’s banking, and probably, he thought, some blow.

“Hard-on!” Mr. T’s yell was accompanied by a bang, crash, and swearing.

“I pity the fool who calls me Hard-on.” Chad ignored the continuing swearing that grew louder.

“Cut that shit out.”

Chad put one hand up, the other was furiously tapping his phone screen. “Don’t call me Hard-on and I won’t point out that you go by the name of an 80s icon.”

The owner of the pawn shop was perpetually sweaty. Thick black, sweaty, body hair poked through his t-shirt. Even his voice was greasy.

“Put that damn thing down. You responsible for that coin on my desk?” Mr. T swatted at Chad’s phone, but missed. Spit flew from his mouth and he pointed to his office.

Sad digital music played from the phone as the last ostrich-rider died.

“Come on T, I was going for the high score.”

“This is serious, little shit. The coin, on my desk.” Mr. T wiped his brow with a dirty handkerchief.

Chad pocketed his phone and swiveled to face his boss. “Yeah. Some super old, jacked-up, dude brought it in this morning.” Continue reading →

Fifth Monday – Part Three

/ Ben Van Dongen / 6 Comments

Andy opened his eyes, but wherever he was, it was too dark to see. He shivered, feeling the cold concrete beneath him. His stomach rumbled, then gurgled. A mouthful of vomit climbed his throat and he coughed, clearing the liquid away. It tasted like bile and it burned.

He struggled up, afraid of the spreading pool. The dark room was disorienting. Andy’s legs shook under him, his teeth chattered, and he had to throw up again. Continue reading →

The Fifth Monday – Part Two

/ Alanna / 1 Comment

By Alanna Piche

Looking in the mirror, Cerise gave a sigh of resignation.  She couldn’t believe the lengths she had to go, especially ones involving wearing a vinyl maid’s outfit.  Getting close enough to him would be hard otherwise, and this would make it much easier.  Hell, this would make it impossible not to be close to him.

“C, report,” a voice crackled, cutting into her thoughts.

“I’ve narrowed down the target, and will intercept tonight,” she replied, still fussing with the costume as she turned side to side in front of the mirror. Continue reading →