October's month long DARK MOCHA BITES celebration delivers the best we have in dark, delicious horror and dark paranormal romance. Our third offering of the week is anything but dull...it is quite bitter.
Taking us down into madness is our resident editor and author extraordinaire, Michael LaRocca. We've witnessed it talent for suspense and twists and turns in LAZARUS.
For October, Michael has given us something truly fresh and straight out of the Twilight Zone in DESCENT INTO MADNESS.
Blurb: Did you ever feel that your life was but a series of experiments being conducted upon you by forces unknown and unknowable? Does the nature of reality change almost daily, as if someone wanted to see how you’d react? Are there things you knew in your very core you’d never do, until you discovered you were wrong and you did them? Did you ever wish the dead would just stay dead?
Excerpt
Wouldn't life be simpler if the dead just stayed dead?
Bert gazed at Wendy's closed eyes. He held one of her tiny hands in his and noticed how cold it was. Behind him stood the doctor and the nurse who would disconnect the vast array of machinery that all but surrounded them.
"This isn't her," Bert said to no one. "This is only an empty shell."
Bert squeezed Wendy's hand. There was no response. He leaned over her and whispered, "I love you," into her ear. He rose to his feet, released her hand and stepped aside. There was no change, no sign that she was anything more than a rock or a piece of furniture.
The doctor was waiting patiently when Bert turned to him. Bert nodded. The doctor smiled weakly, sympathetically. Bert felt vaguely like an intruder.
The doctor signaled the nurse to switch off the respirator. The nurse complied and Wendy's chest collapsed. The doctor reached for the tube that entered Wendy's nose and led to her lungs. He wiped it with a cloth as he pulled it out—pull, wipe, pull, wipe, pull, wipe—then handed it to the nurse.
The EKG and EEG alarms beeped loudly. Wendy's eyes opened and she bolted upright in the bed. The stunned doctor quickly stepped away.
"Bert?"
"Wendy?!"
"Bert!"
"My God!"
Of course it was a miracle. What else could it have been?
