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    Dark Fantasies and Other Stories
    Dark Fantasies and Other Stories
    Dark Fantasies and Other Stories
    Ebook48 pages42 minutes

    Dark Fantasies and Other Stories

    By Joel Puga

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This collection brings together five different fantasy tales.

    The Last – Terrorized by the thought of death, a man lets himself be contaminated by vampirism to prolong his life indefinitely. However, when Hell and Heaven’s legions face each other in the ultimate battle, he becomes the last human being on Earth. Will he let himself be dragged peacefully into one of the afterlife kingdoms?

    Sasabonsam – During the War of Guinea, a group of Guinean guerrilla fighters bring down a Portuguese airplane. When investigating the wreck, they discover not only that the pilot survived, but also that he isn't human. Intellectual, one of the guerrilla fighters, is forced to face the monster, as well as the tribalism that infects the minds of his comrades.

    The Castle – Thomas gets a last minute invitation from his cousin Michael to Christmas dinner. But Michael's motives are darker than Thomas could have ever imagined.

    Susan – After a short and awful life, Susan faces death. Recalling her days on earth, she tries to deduce to which of the postmortem kingdoms she will be sent. However, her final destination reveals itself as surprising in more than one way.

    A Literary Quest – In his search for rare books, Cirio finds the elusive bookstore of Mormont, the location of which changes constantly, but is said to contain some volumes almost impossible to find. However, even after everything he went through to get there, will Cirio's quest be completed?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXinXii
    Release dateMay 7, 2016
    ISBN9783959262644
    Dark Fantasies and Other Stories

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      Book preview

      Dark Fantasies and Other Stories - Joel Puga

      author.

      The Last

      Moments earlier, the room was dark, but not now. A red light wanders from the windows to the south, painting everything it touches in blood. Through the windows to the north, we can see another light, golden, transforming curtains and furniture into gold, just like Midas’s touch.

      Challenging all chromatic laws, a black line appears where the two lights meet, in the middle of the room. Beneath it, sitting in a leather armchair, rests baron Ekkehard, his eyes fixed on the fireplace, which hasn’t seen burning fire for over five centuries.

      He remembers the day he discovered the truth about Heaven and Hell, when, in this very room, using a crystal ball, an old mage showed him the two possible destinies every man had to face after his demise.

      Hell didn’t please him. Excessive light and heat always bothered him. Not to mention the complete and total anarchy and the torments the Horned One inflicts to everyone who ends down there.

      However, Heaven wasn’t any better. An excessively quiet realm, where everything had a rule in an attempt to suppress individuality and create an artificial and impossible equality.

      Ekkehard decided, then, that he would do everything he could to keep himself on Earth. The mage told him to search for a man he heard rumors of and that might be able to help. However, he warned him about Armageddon; the day where all beings, with no exception, would be taken to one of the afterlife realms. The baron, however, didn’t pay attention to this last advice. After all, that doom was still far away.

      Ekkehard takes to his mouth a cup of Bordeaux, the only wine his taste buds, withered over the centuries, could feel.

      The baron then recalls his trip to Transylvania, including all the adventures and misadventures. There, he found the man that the mage told him about. That is, if the creature could be called as a man. It was a deformed and hunchbacked thing, bald and with purple skin. Only a few perceptible words fell out of his mouth, full of crooked and missing teeth, among which two long canines could visibly be seen.

      Ekkehard understood why he looked like that when he saw the shelter of this once a man: a cavern in the middle of the forest, lost between the Carpathians, without furniture or tools or any other signs of civilization, but full of bones and animal carcasses whose blood had been drained.

      With a lot of effort, the baron was able to make the creature bite him without drinking blood. Only enough to pass the disease, to make him one of the eternal living-dead, capable of enduring until the last days of this Earth.

      Ekkehard rises from his armchair and adjusts the plates of his secular armor, which he kept in perfect condition precisely for this moment. Calmly, he walks to the fireplace and takes the sword resting carefully upon it.

      Images of the centuries following his transformation start coming to his mind. Practically immortal and still looking Armageddon from afar, he dedicated himself to what he loved the most: war. Leaving his castle to the care of his mortal servants, he participated in every single war he was able to: the Turkish wars, the Anglo-Spanish War, the American War of Independence, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, and many others. And during them, he also quenched the thirst every member of his undead race bears - human blood was much more nutritious than animal blood.

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