A painted rock.
A rock about the size of a small child’s open palm. Painted an odd, curiously light reflective smoky gray hue. One side of it was curved slightly. The curve gentle, suggesting that it would fit perfectly in the palm of a small hand. Like some kind of Neolithic hand tool; maybe a tool used to scrape the flesh off an animal hide. Or maybe some kind of stone hammer.
Continue reading The Chin By B.R. Stateham
“Smitty, I . . . I need your help.”
The voice was barely a whisper. It came from a man lying in a bed with sheets soaked with sweat and stained with blood. He was a muscular, dark complexioned man. Gray had begun to stain the dark Continue reading A Gift by B. R. Stateham
Through the light rain the black limo sped along the long ribbon of empty asphalt. Headlights knifing through therain and gathering dusk with narrow beams of white/yellow intensity.
The countryside. A few miles outside the city.
He was nailed to the wall.
Literately.
Not a stitch of clothes on. Nailed to the white painted wall with arms and legs splayed out. Nails, about a dozen of them in each arm and leg, held him firmly on the wall about six feet off the dull colored gray cement floor. A dead carcass on a virgin white canvas-covered wall. Blood, dark . . . almost black . . . from the gapping hole in his neck ran down his chest and one leg, pooling on the floor beneath him in a grim lake of past deeds.
Evil burns in colors sullen, Pilgrim.
Aye, Fellow Traveler. In the eyes of a wizard Evil smolders in colors dark and menacing. All life shimmers and glows. Trees. Flowers. The animals of the forest. The denizens of the watery deep. Dragons. Man. All life shimmers a color and a hue unique to its own. Even Magic, Pilgrim. Magic glows in colors unique to the brand of magic used.
B.R. writes like a shadowy back alley. He nails his words to the page with a sledgehammer.
& as for Smitty, well, Smitty damn well smoulders in his stories. Dark eyes & an even darker heart. If your stairs creak at night just hope it ain’t Smitty.
P D B recently chewed the literary fat with him.
PDB: Your character Smitty has really captured people’s dark imagination. How did he come about?
Continue reading Talking Smitty! – P D Brazill talks to B R Stateham
This Makes It Even
We were cruising on Wilmont in the ’91 Z-28 Camaro ragtop and enjoying the first truly summer day. The sun was out and hot. There was a slight breeze stirring the trees lining Wilmont and young girls were strutting their stuff in tank tops and scandalously short cut-off raggy blujeans. It felt good to be alive. Funny how one’s luck can change in the blinking of an eye.
Continue reading This Makes It Even/Dues Paid by B.R. Stateham
Through the driving rain he saw the three of them standing at the corner. The mother, holding a baby heavily wrapped Continue reading Goodbye, David by B.R. Stateham
Three in the morning.
PULP METAL MAGAZINE 