Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Napoleon
    Napoleon
    Napoleon
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    Napoleon

    By Wayne Kyle Spitzer

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    She was in the habitat—actually in it, not seated at her workstation on the other side of the glass. She was standing before Napoleon in her white lab coat, which, inexplicably, she unzipped and shirked from her shoulders, allowing it to slide to the marshy floor. She didn’t know how she had gotten there or how time had rewound so that the habitat and its great glass window were still intact ... she only knew she was there to take the experiment to the next level. And as Napoleon looked down at her with eyes that had become strangely human, she knew that he knew why she was there as well ...

    And then she was awake as fast as she’d gone out, and she was standing, slowly, amongst the trees again ... wondering why she would dream such a thing. And wondering, too, about the hidden obsessions each and every human being might harbor in the darkest recesses of their subconscious. And then she scanned the trees, realizing, suddenly, that they were swaying—even though there was no wind—and saw Napoleon glaring back at her.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWayne Kyle Spitzer
    Release dateOct 13, 2017
    ISBN9781370610204
    Napoleon
    Author

    Wayne Kyle Spitzer

    Wayne Kyle Spitzer (born July 15, 1966) is an American author and low-budget horror filmmaker from Spokane, Washington. He is the writer/director of the short horror film, Shadows in the Garden, as well as the author of Flashback, an SF/horror novel published in 1993. Spitzer's non-genre writing has appeared in subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History. His recent fiction includes The Ferryman Pentalogy, consisting of Comes a Ferryman, The Tempter and the Taker, The Pierced Veil, Black Hole, White Fountain, and To the End of Ursathrax, as well as The X-Ray Rider Trilogy and a screen adaptation of Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows.

    Read more from Wayne Kyle Spitzer

    Related to Napoleon

    Related ebooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Running Dead

      Apr 30, 2021

      Running Dead
      3 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2020

      Ivy Lugbill, age 8 Indianapolis, IN I was so excited! My dad and I were going camping! After we packed all our stuff, my dad said, “Hop in!” I grabbed the paper towel roll binoculars I had been making and jumped into the car. It was a really . . . re

      7 min read

    • Article

      Nature Heals

      Jul 27, 2020

      Nature Heals
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Well No One Can Reach

      Mar 15, 2022

      A Well No One Can Reach
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Scars We Bare

      Apr 13, 2020

      The Scars We Bare
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Unlikely Lasses

      Sep 28, 2022

      The Unlikely Lasses
      6 min read

    • Article

      Swimming with Riba

      May 23, 2022

      Swimming with Riba
      5 min read

    • Article

      Ka And The Wolf

      Apr 1, 2022

      Ka And The Wolf
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Jan 1, 2023

      Mythological Creature Ryan Coppa, age 9 Shaker Heights, OH The Day with Cerberus “But it’s unfair!” I protested. “For the last time, no World Series tickets,” Dad explained. I stomped to my room, not turning back. When I entered my room, I saw a m

      11 min read

    • Article

      A Chance Too Good To Miss

      Apr 12, 2023

      A Chance Too Good To Miss
      5 min read

    • Article

      They Call Me Kiera

      Dec 4, 2022

      They Call Me Kiera
      8 min read

    • Article

      The PRIDE

      May 1, 2023

      The PRIDE
      5 min read

    • Article

      THE PULL Of The PENGUIN

      Mar 1, 2021

      The past summer in Antarctica, Elaine had spent long hours inside the plain, practical buildings of the McMurdo research station. Her job was to look after the fire extinguishers and fire alarms in the machine shops, sheds, boiler rooms, dorms, and w

      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2020

      All the animals you knowwill die. You set foodout for them anyway,let the oily seeds fallamong the fiddleheadsto be ground downpermanent as bone.The forest fills and unfills,drops itself down roottubes and turns to dark lace.One undoing: leafto sparr

      1 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2024

      When the call cameshe ran. Outside, outthe back door, screamingNo No, got to thefence and ran back, droppedto her knees and pawedat the earth, clawingup handfuls of grass.She was howling. Aululation. Something I’d never heardbefore. Likea wild horse

      3 min read

    • Article

      Africa’s FOOTHOLD OVER ME

      Oct 7, 2022

      Africa’s FOOTHOLD OVER ME
      7 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      When I said, to my mother, What was a goodthing about me as a child?, my mother’sface seemed to unfurl from the center,hibiscus in fast motion, the anthersand flounces springing out with joy. Oh you wereenchanting, she breathed. What do you mean—craz

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Close Encounter With A Lion

      May 25, 2023

      My Dear Baker Mrs Oswell and myself thoroughly enjoyed our stay with you and your charming wife in June. It was a true pleasure for us both to renew old times and friendship. We trust that your trip to India will be a pleasant one, and the ship you a

      6 min read

    • Article

      What Sharp Teeth You Have

      Apr 23, 2018

      I know how to stay safe among lions in the wild. Around men of my own species, things feel more complicated. The post What Sharp Teeth You Have appeared first on Guernica.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Crescent City

      Dec 1, 2021

      Crescent City
      5 min read

    • Article

      Concerning The Future Of Souls

      Mar 19, 2024

      As a toddler she had caused a sensation in her family when she announced she wanted to live in a little hole like the ant. Not an ant, the ant. This might have been misheard. She was an easygoing child, not particularly thoughtful and stubbornly inar

      13 min read

    • Article

      Controlled Burn

      Sep 2, 2022

      Controlled Burn
      9 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2019

      She grazes in a meadow, sulphur blossoms spillingfrom her jaw.At this moment she seems so calm, she could be holyif what that means is something like beingwholly unaware of the good she gives,how even her rooting tills the soiland even her shitting f

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Language Of A Hunt

      Sep 3, 2020

      The Language Of A Hunt
      20 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Napoleon

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Napoleon - Wayne Kyle Spitzer

      NAPOLEON

      by

      Wayne Kyle Spitzer

      Copyright © 1994, 2017 Wayne Kyle Spitzer. All Rights Reserved. Published by Hobb’s End Books, a division of ACME Sprockets & Visions. Cover design Copyright © 2017 Wayne Kyle Spitzer. Please direct all inquiries to: HobbsEndBooks@yahoo.com

      All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this book is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Prologue | The Visitor

      They lay in the still of the valley, huddled in groups against the freezing cold. A late Cretaceous dusk had fallen, forcing a respite from their grueling march south; now the hadrosaurs slept—the clouds of their breath like pulsing gray ghosts.

      An animal cried out from somewhere behind them. Seeker raised her head; to her—youngest of all the calves—the call sounded like another duckbill. She looked about, blinking. The snow had stopped. The moon shone; all was silent. She lay her head down.

      The call sounded again, closer, followed by a dry rustling and breaking of branches. Seeker mewed and rose with a start. She shuffled around, her back to the herd, and stared into the night with her cow-brown eyes.

      Moonlight lay pale and cold across the life-giving cattail marsh; nothing moved. She reared up on her hind-legs for a better view. Still nothing. She dropped onto all fours. Then the lost animal cried out from the trees on the far side of the water—but this time, its voice sounded strained, almost sickly.

      Seeker hesitated. She glanced at the herd, then back to the trees. (Something was urging her to investigate: perhaps just the herding instinct intrinsic to all her kind, perhaps just curiosity—her own particular quirk.) Head bobbing, she waddled forward.

      She splashed through the shallow water, its ice broken earlier by the thirsty bills of the herd, and entered the trees, dripping. The moon was swallowed by a canopy of needles. Pausing in the darkness, she sniffed the crisp air; the calf detected nothing but the pine’s bitter fragrance. She mewed nervously.

      There was a fleet-footed thud-thud-thud-thud, which blew through the trees and was gone. It was followed by a series of gentle clicks and splashes, as if pine-cones had shaken free of the branches, falling onto the ice and into the water. But there was no wind, and all was still.

      Seeker whimpered. Water coalesced along her underbelly, pattering against the ground. She shifted her meaty bulk and turned toward the herd, began walking …

      And froze.

      Her path was blocked by a lithe, pale shape—alone in the moonlight at the center of the marsh. It stood poised on two powerful hind-legs, its knees and ankles flexed like a bird’s. Its neck curved in an S from the razor-toothed head to its upper body, which lay nearly horizontal, and its tail was held high and rigid as a lance. The forelimbs were bent as if held up in prayer, and from them dangled smart little hands, long delicate fingers, curved talons. The thing was four feet tall from its long wolfish snout to its narrow feet, and each of those feet bore a unique and wicked killing tool: a glinting, sickled, triple-sized claw.

      It was a bird of prey in no need of wings. (Sixty-five-million years later, men would rightly call it, Velociraptor: the Speedy Hunter.)

      Seeker had no name for it, only a profound, instinctual terror, and backed away farther among the trees.

      The raptor crept toward her across the ice, moon-glow flashing off its killer spurs and ashen hide, its black stripes, its red eyes.

      Seeker turned—and bolted. Her heart thumped as she raced through the shadows. Listening, she heard the raptor bounding after her, gaining fast. Its hot breath fell on her shoulders—and was gone, suddenly.

      She broke from blackness into a moonlit glade, which she cut across without pause. Breathing heavily, she began to falter. Her mouth hung wide; her tongue lolled out streaming ropy strands of saliva. Finally she could maintain the sprint no more, and galloped to a halt in the middle of the glade.

      Panting and drooling, she looked behind her; the raptor had come to a stop, as well. It stood perched on one leg at the edge of the glade, balanced like a flamingo, its tail straight out.

      The tortured call came again, now from the dark woods opposite the glade. Seeker faced forward and bleated a response.

      Nothing came back. She shifted her feet and looked to the raptor. It remained poised, its raised leg folded beneath its belly.

      At last the invisible hadrosaur answered, and Seeker turned.

      This time the cry did not end, but quavered like moonlight on water. She tilted her head, and her brown eyes rolled. Dim recognition warmed her walnut-sized brain. It was another juvenile.

      She hooted back, making a baying sound which rolled over the trees and was gone. Then she started trotting toward the northern edge of the glade, toward the sound’s origin, pausing once to glance at the raptor.

      Its blood-red eyes appraised her: huge, round, cold. It didn’t follow.

      The sickly call grew stronger as Seeker neared the trees, and something stirred deep in the shadows. Eagerly, the calf moved toward it.

      Abruptly, the strange cry stopped.

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1