Demon Freaks
by J.R.R.R. (Jim) Hardison
Release Date: October 3rd 2017
Publisher: Fiery Seas Publishing
Genre: YA Horror/Comedy
BLURB
It’s
the night before the SAT test. The forces of darkness are stirring.
Twin
brothers, Bing and Ron Slaughter, know they’ve got to cram like their lives
depend on it because their college plans sure do. If they don’t ace the test,
they’ll be doomed to spend the rest of their days flipping burgers at the
McDonald’s their parents run. That’s why they hatch a plan to meet up with the
members of their punk band, the Ephits, spend the night studying at a secluded cabin
in the woods, and maybe squeeze in a little jamming. What could go wrong with a
brilliant plan like that?
Ancient
evil. That’s what.
As a
cataclysmic lightning storm rolls in, Bing, Ron and the rest of the Ephits find
themselves tangled in a sinister plot to summon a demon. Yes, demons are real.
To survive the night, the band must find a malevolent artifact, battle
bloodthirsty monsters and stand against the most dangerous and powerful foe
humanity has ever faced…the Golfer’s Association.
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Teaser:
“Wait,
wait, wait,” Ron interrupted. “The Golfers Association? Don’t you mean insane
cultists or Satan worshipers or evil wizards or something?”
“Demon
freaks,” Bing repeated in a whisper. “That sounds…bad.”
“Oh,
it’s bad alright,” the prisoner shuddered. “You have no idea.”
GUEST POST Death’s Sweet Kiss
Having a bad day?
Would a sweet little drop of horror brighten things up? How about a massive wave
of horror?
Imagine
you’re walking down a sidewalk in a major city, minding your own business, your
breath steaming in the air. You congratulate yourself on avoiding a slushy
puddle that would have soaked your shoes. You’re on your way to grab a quick
lunch, hurrying a little because it’s cold and already a few minutes past noon.
Your boss will be mad if you’re late getting back again.
“You’re
slow as molasses,” he always complains. “Slow as molasses.”
You
hear a rumbling that breaks you out of your reverie, then the sound of panicked
screaming. A shadow falls over you from behind and you look up into a towering dark
wave surging toward you. You run, not straight down the path of the wave like
an idiot in a horror movie, but like a smart person, dodging off to the side.
Except the wave is so wide you can barely see its edge. You channel everything
you’ve got into your legs, but the stuff is moving more than twice as fast as
you can sprint. It surges around and through the shops, it crushes the cars
parked along the side of the street, flattening their roofs and exploding their
windows like gunshots. You have a few terrified seconds, muscles burning, heart
hammering its way up your throat. You are almost to the edge. You’re almost
there.
The
wave smashes down on you, tumbling you like a rock in the surf. Again, you’re
smart, a fighter. You don’t lose your head. Eyes shut tight, you try to swim to
the surface. But you can’t. Your limbs are glued to your sides. You seem to
weigh tons. You struggle, but you’re trapped in a sea of viscous goop, entombed
like a bug in honey, mere feet from the edge of the devastation. You hold your
breath and pray. Unbeknownst to you, a bystander rushes in to try to save you.
His feet stick instantly and he topples, sinking into the muck which sucks him
down on top of you. You don’t understand what’s thrashing against your body,
but you feel a glimmer of hope and you crack your eyes to see what’s happening.
No chance. The world is dark, dark brown. Blinded by the suffocating, goopy
mask, out of air, you open your mouth to scream and the fluid rushes in. Your
last sensation as it floods your lungs is the utterly confusing taste of
overpowering, cloying sweetness.
Yes.
You have just been drowned in molasses.
Does
that sound like the most horrific and ridiculous way to die? Well, it actually
happened, just after noon in Boston, on January 15th, 1919. In what
was called The Great Molasses Flood, a massive storage tank at the Purity
Distilling Company cracked open and spewed out 2.3 million gallons in a 25-foot-high,
300-foot-wide, 35-mile-per-hour tidal wave. It swept the city with such force
that it knocked a fire house off its foundation, crushed entire buildings,
injured 150 people and killed 21.
We
normally think of molasses as slow-moving, but it’s what’s called a
non-Newtonian liquid, which means that its viscosity changes when subjected to
outside forces. If sudden force is applied, non-Newtonian liquids become much
more fluid—like when you smack a ketchup bottle and the ketchup suddenly flows.
The smack, in this case, was the rupture of the containing tank, which was
unfortunately made from the same kind of steel as the Titanic, and prone to
fracturing. Once it gave way, the sheer weight of that much molasses exploded
the fluid out of the tank in a massive wave. It flowed with such initial force
that it was more damaging than a similarly sized wave of water would have been.
It literally ripped the buildings in its path completely apart.
As
bad as the initial wave, however, was the aftermath. The cold January air
rapidly cooled the molasses, raising its viscosity even higher than normal, so
that those who’d fallen beneath the wave were completely trapped. Rescuers were
powerless to save them because those brave souls who waded in to help became
stuck and were pulled down to their deaths as well. Rescue crews of firemen and
police used giant hydraulic siphons for days to pump the sea of molasses out of
flooded cellars and basements, where more bodies were recovered. In the end, it
took almost a week before all of the bodies were freed, and months before the
cleanup was complete.
So,
remember, as bad as your day might be going, at least you’re not suffocating in
molasses. But do keep your eyes peeled. These kinds of things do happen.
Author
Info
Fish
Wielder is J.R.R.R. (Jim) Hardison's first novel novel (He wrote a graphic
novel, The Helm, for Dark Horse Comics). Jim has worked as a writer, screen
writer, animator and film director. He started his professional career by
producing a low-budget direct-to-video feature film, The Creature From Lake
Michigan. Making a bad movie can be a crash course in the essential elements of
good character and story, and The Creature From Lake Michigan was a
tremendously bad movie. Shifting his focus entirely to animation, Jim joined
Will Vinton Studios where he directed animated commercials for M&M’s and on
the stop-motion TV series Gary and Mike. While working at Vinton, he also
co-wrote the television special Popeye's Voyage: The Quest for Pappy with actor
Paul Reiser.
Jim has
appeared on NBC's The Apprentice as an expert advisor on brand characters,
developed characters and wrote the pilot episode for the PBS children's
television series SeeMore's Playhouse and authored the previously mentioned
graphic novel, The Helm, named one of 2010's top ten Great Graphic Novels for
Teens by YALSA, a branch of the American Library Association. These days, Jim
is the creative director and co-owner of Character LLC, a company that does
story-analysis for brands and entertainment properties. He lives in Portland,
Oregon with his lovely wife, two amazing kids, one smart dog and one stupid dog.
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