He Earned His Rest

[Robert Crisman]

A Small Husk Of Refuse

The song brought him back from the darkness and stench that will last till the North Star gives up the ghost.
He struggled up through the muck of the thing that had wrapped him, and burst free and rolled a safe distance.
Back in the land of the living, he stood and his eyes cleared and fixed on the poisonous fog.
The song came fully alive in his blood and swelled to a full-throated chorus. And as he stared at this essence of people now dead in the streets and the alleys above, he started to laugh--and then spit on the thing, laughing still.
And like that, this smoke, ghost of ashes and nothing at all, became a small husk of refuse that skittered in circles and died like a roach on the floor.

Somewhere a Clock Ticked the Coming Of Ice

And then the two stood in the room, the young black-haired witch who'd sung to him softly and with her the Queen, a pale wraith whose heart had been ripped from her body, and with it the sight from her eyes.
The witch smashed the glass that held the Queen's heart, the Queen's beating heart, and slowly the Queen came alive to its rhythm, and as the man watched she reclaimed that rhythm and death fell away and joined the dead stench on the floor,
Her eyes now, black light, a million things in them, anguish, fierce joy, and with these a hardness, a calculus born of long horror, and she looked around at the room and beyond it, and into the soul of every last smiling killer on earth.
Her smile was a terrible thing.
Somewhere a clock ticked the coming of ice, drowning out legions as dogs howled and howled...
The witch turned to the man, and held him a moment in solemn, triumphant regard, and then took his hand and led him away through the bowels of the earth toward sweet rest.

[Angela]

You paint in flashing images.  I feel like I am blinking my eyes, and with each blink some new and awful imagemakes a quick hard appearance.  This is really not an adequate description of what your brand of writing does to me.  It is just unique.

[Jeanette Cheezum]

My plan was to read the first A Small Husk Of Refuse, but it was enticing. Forget how far behind I am at reading my friends work. So I moved on to find that  Somewhere a Clock Ticked Off the Coming Of Ice

POWERFUL 6.