Back today with another taste of darkness is author Tom Olbert, sharing his Dark Mocha Bites story, Hellshift.
For those that don’t know, Dark Mocha Bites is a short horror series presented by Mocha Memoirs Press. They’re short, creepy, and best of all they’re only $.99 a pop! Here’s Tom once more with a glimpse into Hellshift.
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Preston Chandler is a lonely, overworked corporate office drone on the worst assignment of his life. In the dark future world of Preston’s time, low-level clerks like himself must serve a 1-year shift on a corporate mining colony on a hellish alien planet whose indigenous population has been wiped out by nuclear genocide.
He isn’t safe even in his corporate offices, as dismembered human bodies begin turning up. Preston fears he is losing his mind. He desperately wants to return to Earth, but is trapped in an escalating nightmare. Computerized psych-evaluation technology probes his mind with dehumanizing invasiveness.
Preston finally completes his assignment and is looking forward to returning home to Earth at last. But will his Hellshift ever end ?
Something was moving in the shadows, in the sputtering light of the dark tunnel. Something inhuman.
Preston Chandler’s flabby chest was tight, his breathing shallow. He was afraid to move. It stirred just outside the darkened subway car, the guttural breathing and scraping claws of the thing outside inching their way up his spine. Preston had dozed off on the subway on his way home from another exhausting double shift at the office. At first, he’d thought it another bad dream. The hair prickling on the back of his neck, he’d dug his fingernails deep into his forearm, the pain infuriatingly real. His eyes swept the darkened car. Only intermittent power remained in the tube station outside. “Hello?” he called out in a strangled throat, hoping desperately he wasn’t alone. His eyes froze, his jaw dropping in a silent scream. In the brief illumination of an electrical flash, he saw disemboweled human cadavers. Their flesh was shredded like cheesecloth, their, disembodied organs strewn across the inside of the car like butcher’s scraps. The walls and seats were splattered with gore.
The thing outside shrieked and howled, throwing its lengthy bulk against the side of the train.
MORE ON TOM:
Blog: http://tomolbert.blogspot.com
HELLSHIFT: http://mochamemoirspress.com/hellshift/