by Sean Gilbert
Is God dead? Is that even possible? When angel cops are on the case, the question isn't just who could have done it, but how?
Gabriel travels beyond the curtain to find the only angel before him to leave God's presence.
But will he find what he's looking for? Or will he lose himself in the chaos of a world beyond the scope of God's design?
If you want the whole story, just buy book! The Divine Idea is available for puchase at www.comixpress.com.
Whisper World is primarily interested in works of dark fiction and sublime horror, but we will consider any work of good quality that is original and exhibits a degree of innovation. E-mail us with queries or submit work directly to submissions@darkcrazy.com. For any additional questions, e-mail me directly.
Look for Dark Crazy Publications at the Dark Crazy Store. You can purchase Sean Gilbert's first collection of short stories, Night People.
You can also buy The End of the World, a slightly introspective pseudo-novel told in the Extreme of Consciousness.
The first three issues of the Whisper World print mag are available on the online store.
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It's All Downhill From Here by Sean Gilbert
Only 6:25 in the morning and already drunk. That time of morning when the dusk is indistinguishable from dawn-had I drank straight through? The dew on the grass and damp gravel answers my question as I stagger out of my car towards the public restroom at Castle Park, the most elaborate playground I have ever seen.
It is awesome to walk through fog three feet high like a sweltering sauna towards anything-drunk or not. It keeps my mood-this haze-I think of dry ice and epic heroes-I think I need to piss. Only gods walk through clouds to piss, I think.
Castle Park did not exist when I lived here before-its pinnacles beckon me now as the deep-groin phantom-pain sensation pushes me to the cinder-block building where the urinal awaits. I guess I waited too long to take this piss-it's a very recognizable feeling for a drunk-the weight and the relief. I think I've actually had close to orgasmic pisses, those pisses where you actually moan and wonder if anyone hears you. I've had piss sessions where angels appear.
It's hard to describe Castle Park. It is supposed to look like a castle...cont'd in Fiction Section
There are two kinds of drinkers in this world: Those who begin to wonder after a sufficiently dramatic drunken experience if they should stop drinking, and those who after the same experience resolve themselves to drink more. The way things are going for me these days, I choose the latter.
In fact, I'm finding with some concern that the trouble only occurs when I am between bars. Once safely inside, everything is fine. It's when I leave the bar that things go sour. Which illustrates to me a somewhat alarming concern that I have gotten so accustomed to drinking in bars that any time I step away from this routine I am stepping away from the pattern of my life.
People find it spiritually soothing to walk labyrinths, I've read. The simple act of tracingl...cont'd in Fiction Section
There was barely warning
enough to jump.
Opportunistically,
the mice in the walls,
as slanderous as old cracks,
stole the drug salesmen's pen.
They are at this very moment
forming lines,
having deciphered directions
to his flawless lawns.
by Colin
James
by Donna Taylor Burgess
In a world closed to violators
They made their home in the iced pond
Of a December city park
Secrets held fast for a long season of white sleep
The Ice Nymphs worshipped the bloated
Form of a man
Mugged and beaten and robbed and rolled
Into shallow waters, forgotten until thaw
A god grotesque, eyes black like the ice-sky above
Like the leaf-rot below.
The Ice Nymphs hid inside his mouth sometimes
And they felt secure.
Reveling in bleakness, the darkness was safe
They danced and swirled like clipped-winged angels
Bodies thin and fluid as ribbons of flesh
Rather than muscle and bone
They wore feral faces like pixies gone awry
Pale as death's sidekick
Their pointed hands loved the cold touch.
But precious inkiness gave way to sunshine death eventually
And the skies of the ice kingdom began to
Melt, melt, and fall.
The god grotesque ascended toward the light
No longer bound by ice
He forsook them all.
The Ice Nymphs cried tears that ran
Down faces newly colored by agonizing heat
Pain within and without
The bleakness in which they thrived churned slowly
Bleeding in sick, revealing light
Vomit greens
Shit yellows
Pinks like open sores on a child's feet
With screams silent yet piercing
The Ice Nymphs surfaced against their will
And melted like the rest of their murky kingdom.
"Lost Girl" Sean Gilbert
"Crazy Baby" by Sean Gilbert
"Every Woman" by Sean Gilbert
Eric S. Brown and Gail Davis
On the outer limits of human occupied space, the research station Sol-Zeta Five continued its orbit around the binary star known as Cerebus XI. Inside its metal walls, officer Brendan Mclaughlin ran for his life. His heavy combat boots sent echoes through the empty corridors. His sweaty hands clutched an X-prototype heavy particle rifle with white knuckles but that didn’t matter. He knew it would be useless against her. He’d watched her murder the other two members of his squad with only a single glance from her fiery eyes. Gerad and Lucus had fallen to the floor, their bodies jerking and hissing as their blood boiled, cooking them from the inside out.
Perhaps if Dr. Hall, the resident genius, had still been alive he’d have managed to come up with a way to stop her or at least contain her. Unfortunately, Brendan knew he didn’t have time for his mere average brain to do so. He was barely managing to stay one step ahead of her.
She had made a point of killing the doctor first. He was the only person aboard who’d understood fully what had happened to Sarah. As if that hadn’t been reason enough, he was also her father. She had suffered enough years of neglect to turn the love of a daughter for her father into a bitter anger and cold dislike.
Dr. Hall had given himself over to his work long ago. It was said that force had existed since the beginning of matter and energy and the end to the void. It was even hinted that the force was the creator itself, entrapped in a new existence of its own making, forever locked away inside the burning hydrogen of the star. Finding the truth had become an obsession. Contacting the primordial force that resided within the Cerebus star cluster had consumed him and taken over his every waking moment. Perhaps if it hadn’t, if he had paid just a bit more attention to his daughter, he might still be alive.
Brendan had served three years active duty as a shock troop for the Terran Alliance before requesting to be assigned to this station. He had seen enough death to last him his whole lifetime and had hoped to get away from it all here among the stars. On this quiet civilian station, its sole purpose for existing being research, he’d thought he might have a chance at a peaceful life.
He remembered the day he had first come aboard eight months ago. He had met Sarah that day. Seven years old with a mess of unkempt pig tails on either side of her head. Her deep blue eyes had been full of wonder and her mind filled with questions about his travels and the things he had seen during his service. His heart had gone out to her and they had become fast friends. She was to him a symbol of his new life and the hope of a better one. Yet he didn’t delude himself into believing that friendship would save him now. Sarah was no longer just a little girl, cuter than one could imagine. She was the force of the star incarnate.
The Doctor had succeeded in his dream. Contact had been made two days before through garbled radio emissions from the star. They had swelled to a cacophony that overloaded the station’s communications system and the station had nearly been torn apart as the force moved its essence from the star and aboard it seeking freedom. It found a host in Sarah almost immediately and the terror began in earnest. Brendan was the last person left alive and he had no hope of contacting Earth Prime.
He skidded to a halt outside the station’s central power core. His last, desperate plan was a simple one that involved destroying the station and himself and Sarah along with it. He hoped the eruption of the fusion core would be enough to drive the thing back into its burning home inside Cerebus when its host perished, being vaporized along with everything else in a 120 klick radius.
He eyed the keypad lock on the core’s main door and fought to remember the access code. All thought stopped, his insides turning to ice when he heard a giggle behind him. He turned to see Sarah standing in the bend of the corridor, nearly hidden in the shadows of the dim red emergency lights.
Only her eyes stood out clearly in the darkness, twin pools of blue that
crackled with the energy of the universe itself. She waved the arm of her
teddy, “Bear-Bear”, at him in greeting with a hollow smile on
her lips. Brendan whirled, leveling the rifle at her chest. A stream of charged
ions streaked toward her from its barrel but the energy merely curled about
her like a halo. The thing inside her absorbed it, unharmed.
She spoke, her voice like a chorus of angels singing. “Brendan, I want
to go home.”
Brendan’s hand trembled as he dropped the rifle to the floor and typed the code into the lock. The core doors slid open as tears filled his eyes. He stood with his back to her, his shoulders squared.
“Brendan,” she pleaded, “Please don’t make me kill you, too. The void must return, Brendan. There can only be peace in the void. This anomaly called life must cease.”
Brendan ignored her and stepped forward, knowing his life would be over in the next few seconds. The petulant child wailed her fury. She ran toward him, raising the palm of her right hand. Energy bristled and shot from it, enveloping him as she howled.
Brendan felt his skin melt away from his bones and drift away as the station’s gravity failed. His fleshless corpse toppled to the floor and his last unspoken thoughts pleaded to God for mercy on them all.
Sarah stood over him as the station tore itself from orbit and flung forward into the void on a course for Earth Prime. Sarah laughed as tears streaked her cheeks. There was no better place to start making her new home than at her old one. The void would be reborn.
I am the Morning Star.
Six days I fell through the Blackness, the nothingness of the dark.
There I saw the God of the Void. I learned the Mystery of Shadows,
The nothing that is everything.
On the Seventh day I opened my eyes.
Now I see.
So many still sleep.
I will make them see.
This is Dr. William Matheson, interviewing suspect Sam Lyle, pursuant to court order 57309. It is September Seventh, 7:14 p.m.
I’ve only read reports about this man before, only learned of him through broken down fragments of data that had been homogenized and re-packaged to make sense in a sane man’s world. But it’s difficult to use words like “psychotic” and “megalomaniac” when you’re sitting across the table from someone so normal-looking, so real. His hair is starting to grow back now; they won’t let him shave it. That ought to make his lawyer happy. He isn’t perturbed at all for someone so disturbed. He is calm without being indifferent, relaxing in the chair he’s chained to like a King settling on his throne. Sam Lyle, the Morning Star.
“Good evening, Mr. Lyle,” I say to him. Best to get started. I feel like I’ll lose my nerve if I don’t. “I’ve been appointed by the court to determine whether or not you are competent to stand trial. Do you understand?”
He nods like he’s annoyed at the question, a curt response to someone asking the obvious. “I’m very familiar with the procedure,” he reminds me...cont'd in Fiction Section
