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    Bizarre
    Bizarre
    Bizarre
    Ebook80 pages1 hour

    Bizarre

    By Sarah Osborn

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    About this ebook

    A novella of considerable proportions, Bizarre takes you to the very ends of the earth and beyond. Cryer Baron, in his search for someone dear to him, follows a mysterious serpent to the furthest point in his world: the great Tower of Eden. What Baron seeks awaits him at its highest height, beyond even the heavens and the poisoned clouds of his destroyed planet. Some say God waits at the top. Some say there is no final room in the tower; the Tower of Eden is simply endless. Others say a great catastrophe awaits those bold enough to venture into its ancient, skeletal structure. Baron only knows one thing: He will not stop until he finds what he is looking for.
    At times allegorical, Bizarre takes its inspiration from science fiction films of the seventies, where depictions of our future were often ill-fated and dangerous. A rotten earth is all that remains of our planet in Bizarre, and perhaps Baron himself will be the key to saving it...or dooming us all.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSarah Osborn
    Release dateSep 4, 2018
    ISBN9780463618295
    Bizarre
    Author

    Sarah Osborn

    My name is Sarah Osborn I am a full-time SF, Horror, and Fantasy indie writer; blogger of dogs, video games, and scary movies on whatapup.net; occasional artist; feminist; lifelong geek; and mother of a Pitador named Paris who is just a delight when she's not chewing on my shoes and socks. I am a newly published author with tons of manuscripts I've written over the years and never published. With enough backlog to fill several years, I have now started the process of editing and formatting all of my manuscripts for publication and I've also been working on some new stuff, too! I'm currently engaged to a magnificent, tall, bearded man named Tyler Osborn. He has supported me every step of the way in my journey and encouraged me to always FEEL as if I am a writer, because just because I had never published before September 2018, I have written stories and lived in my own little imagination land since I was 5-years-old. Much of the inspiration for my writing comes from my lifelong struggle with anxiety and depression, as well as a fondness for the works of Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison, Shirley Jackson, Anne Rice, and Stephen King. My favorite movie series as a weird pre-teen was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre films. At one point I believe I had every single DVD and comic book set in that universe I could find. Between my love of Horror and Fantasy, and my anxiety and depression, I have found writing to be an awesome coping mechanism to help me express myself. I've always found that the genres of Horror, Science-Fiction, and Fantasy are some of the best creative tools we use to examine the nature of humanity and even madness. That being said, I am honestly a cheery person (really!) and I tend to involve bits of humor here and there in my stories to liven the mood. My stories tend to also involve violence and other sensitive subjects, however, so that is my one caveat concerning my books if you find yourself triggered or uncomfortable concerning such topics. Don't forget to check out my blog, www.whatapup.net and also support me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/sarahosborn and receive cool monthly gifts from me!

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      Book preview

      Bizarre - Sarah Osborn

      Bizarre

      Sarah Osborn

      Smashwords License Statement 

      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 reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit your favorite ebook retailer to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Bizarre

      Acknowledgements

      About The Author

      Connect With The Author

      Other Books By Sarah Osborn

      Bizarre

      The Serpent slithered ahead of Cryer Baron quickly, narrowly slipping between a pair of rocks that were precariously sharp and stood intimately close to one other. Baron and the Serpent were out in the open of the outside world for now, but several dozen yards down this rocky precipice would be the entrance to the Tower of Eden. Baron’s faded black armor was made of a durable material, and even with his supply pack slung over his back and the strap over his right shoulder that held his semi-automatic he was lithe, maneuvering easily around the rocks down towards the tower. He wore rusty reddish-brown goggles over his dilated crimson eyes so that he could see through the clear miasma. His nose was covered by the thick cloth of his tattered gray scarf that hung around his neck and head to insure the miasma didn’t choke the air from his lungs. The Serpent had no such worries; whatever the Serpent was, it was a rare creature that was unaffected by the miasma.

      The Serpent was a long, slender, bulky snake-like creature, but it was not a snake. It was the width of Baron’s body around the middle, and its scales were hard as diamonds. Its eyes were slicked around to the side of its tapered face, and the slits representing its nose were hardly there at all. In this respect it almost resembled a worm, or a wyrm, like Baron had heard in the stories from the elders in Quiet City. He would not rule out the possibility of the Serpent being a dragon, or at the very least a smaller relative to a dragon-like species. Its color was normally black, but in the short sequences of light he had seen the Serpent its scales glistened a dark red and silver pattern. In the shadows of the normal lighting his world existed in, he saw no such patterns without this rare occurrence of light.

      Baron had been following the Serpent for days now. At first its appearance had alarmed him. Not frightened him; there were many things that frightened him in this world, but a larger-than-typical snake creature did not. It truly was alarming, though: The Serpent had to be longer than fifteen feet with its body straightened out. Also alarming was the Serpent never seemed to eat, nor was it affected by the miasma. Most normal animals that had not mutated were kept in human cities. Only mutants captured and ate mutated animals roaming the wastes, as they obviously did not need to fear infection.

      Baron had set up camp the night before he began traversing the mountain, and it was that night that the Serpent appeared to him. It had spoken to him in a frightful dialect Baron did not recognize, but its words were clear:

      I will lead you to the Tower of Eden, if you swear you can reach its highest height.

      This was all that he had heard the Serpent say, as it had not spoken to him since. Therefore, Baron was unclear on the motives of the Serpent, or what its interests were in his reaching the highest height of the tower.

      It did not matter, as Cryer Baron had every intention of reaching the top of the Tower of Eden with or without the Serpent’s help.

      Baron had left Quiet City two weeks prior, and had been on his own for most of this time. This was both a blessing and an omen. The blessing of this was he had not encountered any villainous scavengers or mutants. The omen of this was that this area was filled with useful junk that scavengers would enjoy, and mutants made their homes in even the most inhospitable of locations from Baron’s scouting experience. This meant that even desperate scavengers and mutants avoided the vicinity of the tower.

      In truth, Baron was somewhat pleased to have this silent companion by his side. The Serpent was mysterious and almost brooding in its regal, sullen demeanor which kept it from interacting verbally with Baron any further than the occasional impatient hiss in his direction were he to linger too far behind it. Odd birds flew in circles overhead, hundreds of them. Not black, not crows or ravens. These birds were pure white from beak to talons, and their caw was akin to a woman screaming in fear of being brutally murdered. The white of their feathers stood out against the incessantly gray and brown sky, as the sun only showed on the fifth and twenty-second of each month of the new calendar, which, incidentally, was formed around the phases of the sun. The caws, or screams rather, of the birds echoing in the distance around and inside of the mountain made the blood in Baron’s skin chill at first. Travelling with the Serpent had given him something else to focus his mind upon. For this he was thankful.

      He wondered if the Serpent would venture into the tower alongside him. Perhaps even a creature that bared the appearance of a lesser dragon’s ferocious form feared the androids and cyborgs that were rumored to call the tower home.

      The Tower of Eden was in of itself, technically a city too, after all.

      There was a chance that even this creature would choose to steer away from it.

      The war with the aliens from Yaun was years over now, how long in

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