Dr. Clarence Valis knew he was one shell away from death.

Dr. Clarence Valis knew he was one shell away from death. Spluttering blood and saliva, he desperately tried to reign in his quaking hands and fingers just long enough to ram in his last remaining shell into the sawed-off shotgun. He could not command his fingers properly and the blasted shotgun kept jumping and weaving around. Icy rain sluiced over his head, through his clothes, and pooled into his glasses, making it even harder to see through the gathering gloom and focus on the task at hand.

But all of that, even combined, was mere child's play when it came to his concentration when one factored in the creature that was slithering it's way toward him. Valis finally got the shell into the chamber and snapped the single-shot weapon's barrel into place. Terrified, he crab-crawled back away from the lurching, scuttling, slimy thing--at least it was lurching, that meant the other shots had done something, right--and tried desperately to make himself seem like just part of the refuse-and-garbage-strewn alleyway.

The disconnected, cold, and logical part of Valis was pretty sure that hiding from this thing would be utterly fruitless. He was pretty sure that it did not even see using the visible light spectrum anyway, but the terror-saturated part of the Doctor's mind told him to hide hide hide Hide Hide HIDE HIDE HIDE!!!

Still the monstrosity kept sliding towards him. The long, proboscis-like tentacle-tongue was questing forward into the darkness now, like a snake tasting the air. The three red gashes that the Doctor assumed were eyes began to emit a soft, bloody glow that reflected off the wet concrete.

"Matt! It's getting closer! Are you ready?" Valis screamed, his water-and-blood filled eyes scanning the rooftop in desperation. If he had been a praying man, he would have prayed at that moment that his fellow Orbis Observer co-worker had escaped the other creature and made it to the rooftop. Then, if he had been a praying man, Dr. Valis would have considered praying that "Mad" Matt Olsen's plan was going to work.

The alien horror seemed to key in on his voice and threw itself in a massive lurch towards the Doctor. The beast's movement seemed to betray desperation, pain, and hunger all at the same time.

"MATT!" Valis screamed, pulling the trigger.

In that instant, Dr. Valis really regretted not having ever been a praying man.

Art Source: "The game is not over" (c)/by MorkarDFC

Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #MattOlsen, #OrbisObserver, #DrClarenceValis

"Alien powers linger in their bodies?"

"Alien powers linger in their bodies?" by Greg Orikson (Printed Posthumously)

Orbis Observer vol. 92

Ever read the Monkey Paw? It's based on a "true" story. That's Alkaev's hand, in which the alien shapeshifter has been trapped since someone ate his body and turned him into a good luck charm. That's ok. Alkaev granted the dude his every wish, to include a swift death after all the heartache his first hundred wishes brought him.

After extensive research, I discovered that Alkaev once haunted the long-lost Rus kingdom between the Baltic and Black seas. A Norse inscription in a Jarl's tomb tells a cautionary proverb, "Beware the Heart-Giver of Garðaríki." Curiously, the runic inscription was written on a stone heart next to the corpse whose ribs were expanded, suggesting its own heart had been forcibly removed.

The alien shape-shifter features in a monastery's logs. Near Inkerman the monastery of St. Clement lurked in a cave as a hideaway for Byzantine religious refugees. They brought many relics, to include the bones of St. Clement. They also speak of securing the "cursed hand of the Seducer" until the British looted the place in the 1850s. Alkaev had been reduced to a single paw by a ritualistic "god-eaters" guild and passed down as an heirloom of authority. They lost this powerful totem somewhere before these monks became guardians of the hand. It is rumored that another Orbis favorite, the Grey Man, had a hand in this transfer.

Once in British possession, the artifact switched museum vault to museum vault. Apparently, each research team had terrible tragedies. Some ended in mortuaries, others in bedlam. In a curious event, the Paw changed hands across the Pond to an American novelist, H.P. Lovecraft, for a short time before making its way into another family's collection after his estate sold.

As you fellow enthusiasts for truth know well, I could not let this mystery go unquestioned. I located the family and obtained a first-hand look at the paw on condition of anonymity (I was in central Romania--read Transylvania--at a former Count's family castle. Hint, hint.). Its shriveled, five-digit shape has long, coarse hairs along its back. This gives it an anthropoid appearance, whether man or monkey is hard to tell. Golden chain links mount the wrist where it seems to have been sheared by a finely sharpened blade. This chain is 6 to 8 inches in diameter, enough to place around an average head.

The owner warned me not to touch it, which made me suspect it was a forgery. However, upon pretense of requesting tea, I allowed myself to be left alone with the artifact. I touched it and immediately felt a hum as though some form of energy emitted from its surface. I slipped the necklace over my neck and, as the paw touched my chest, I simultaneously heard a voice in my mind and felt that same electric warmth all over me. The voice asked, "What is your heart's desire?"

I had planned a clever response you see, but it didn't ask my mind. It asked my heart. Of course, I wanted to know the truth. Every.Bit.Of.It. Now, I'm telling you: Beware the Paw before it kills you.

The room shifted from light, to dark, and back to light again in the span of a couple of blinks.

The room shifted from light, to dark, and back to light again in the span of a couple of blinks. Matt yawned, trying to rub the sleep from his eyes. He could smell the rich, earthy and spicy scent of the brewing coffee from down the hall and prayed silently that the machine would hurry up and finish.

Clarence droned on about his presentation—something about free-roaming Class IV entities that he’d found some records of in the New York City Public Library—but Clarence was all about research. It was all theories and postulations to him, nothing real, nothing solid.

Nothing solid. Matt snorted at his own joke.

Ray took my internal snort as a outward laugh and Matt felt the blazing eye of SauRay fall upon him. He felt like Sam and Frodo cowering in the plain before the Black Tower. Ray zapped him with question. “You got something to add, Olsen? Or are you just so ready to begin your presentation that you’re ready to interrupt Dr. Valis?”

Matt yawned, stretching theatrically. “Sure, Ray. I can go if you need me to. Clarence was just putting me to sleep, that’s all.” Matt shot a wink to the presenter to let him know that this was about zinging the boss and had nothing to do with him. “But what’s new?”

Ray chomped down on his tongue—a habit so severe that Matt had often wondered if the man would bite his own tongue off one day—and ground his teeth. “You’re up, Olsen,” he spat.

Matt stood and pulled up his presentation with a couple of clicks. “Cool.” A single slide appeared. The slide was filled with images, an artist’s compiled conception of an odd-looking, fantastical creature. It appeared small and vaguely bat-like, but it was bipedal and clothed. All in all, it looked like something that Weta Workshop would have a blast building and bringing to life.

Eyebrows around the room went up.

Matt didn’t even notice. “Goeblins,” the words hit the table like a stack of flapjacks.

“Goblins? Really?” Ray sighed, ripping off his glasses and tossing them on the folder in front of him. “You expect me to send you off on some wild goose chase looking for a goblin just because you dreamed up this goofy image of one?”

“Not goblins, goeblins. And I didn’t dream these up, Ray. This is an image that an eyewitness produced—an artist in Mortain, France—after seeing these creatures first hand. Two weeks ago, a rash of sitings occurred and I have over thirty eye-witness accounts, all pretty much describing the same thing. Swarms of these guys,” Matt jerked a thumb towards the screen, "ransacking small isolated towns, stealing supplies and then vanishing almost as quickly as they appeared.”

Ray was silent now, which was exactly where Matt wanted him. It was time for the coup de grace.

“And here’s the kicker, Ray. All of these reports come from a two-mile radius around an ancient site in France. A site known as the Gap of Goeblin.”

Matt was on a plane headed east two hours later.

Art Source: "enemy_creature_design" (c)/by christopher onciu
Story and Characters: (c)/by Brannon Hollingsworth

#MMWW, #Makes, #Me, #Wanna, #Write, #BrannonHollingsworth, #MattOlsen, #OrbisObserver, #Mortain, #France, #goeblin, #GapOfGoeblin, #Matt, #Ray, #Clarence