Doc Sherwood
Bio
Stories (497/0)
Broadside for Broadside, Chapter One
Pavements soaked with standing rain stretched beneath a hard grey-black sky seared through with red. The city drew in breath. Something was moving through the clouds, something huge, something fast. Doors and windows rattled in its unseen overhead wake, and lakes and canals parted into deltas as if cloven by an invisible prow. Those citizens who turned their eyes fearfully upward saw only an immense indistinct shape, darker than the heavens it was forging through, throwing even gloom into shadow for a moment then just as swiftly gone.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Overture, Chapter One
Stars and planets wheeled overhead for a vertiginous instant before the combatants crashed through the bulkhead wall together and plunged into the cavernous square vault of the battle-cruiser’s cargo hold. Bret Stevens proceeded along the quickest route into the dark, punctuating this vertical course with rebounds and springs from the walls while striking brilliant sparks and clashing notes between his samurai sword and an alien bladed weapon that flashed with equal speed. Its owner, a lean and lithe and man dressed in form-fitting white and a round black helmet, had so far matched Bret in his aerial acrobatics and countered thrust for thrust and parry for parry.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Please be Waiting, Chapter Two
Soon a pair of sisters were in each other’s arms. Carmilla had once decried Phoenix as a traitor to The Four Heroes’ cause, and although this was not wholly unreasonable since Phoenix engineered that deception herself, there had been prior harshness and accusation too for which reconciliation never came. Now however, as Carmilla and Phoenix held one another close, their peace was finally made.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
At the Drive-In, Chapter One
Two glaring eyes on a monstrous faceless visage burst upon the horizon without any warning at all, as heavy beats of warlike music began to pound. Flashthunder, beholding in the dark, trembled. He had dreaded this moment. The tiny comfort that usually accompanied it, which was in knowing that for once in a way he wasn’t the only one terrified, scarcely applied tonight. For this evening it was very important he somehow find it in himself to not to show his fear.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
At the Drive-In, Chapter Two
The evening’s film, as Flashtease had hinted, was not proving a hit with the audience. These days any seasoned director was in the unenviable position of having to pitch his works at a younger generation which bore no resemblance to that of his own Arcadian days, and most efforts to do so misfired disastrously. Even Joe, a stranger to the region, could tell after the first ten minutes that an intricate and involved war-drama following the progress of an ever-growing number of splinter-groups, and paying pedantic attention to which particular faction owned which particular weapons at any given point in the struggle, was not exactly going to grip girls and boys of Flashtease’s age. It occurred to our hero that this sector’s film studios were leagues behind the local music industry, for example, or indeed leagues behind he himself, in keeping up with contemporary tastes. Sure enough, early signs of unrest were beginning to appear on the canyon floor below. Through the deep blue night Joe could perceive tiny figures in tunics and bouncy underskirts exiting their starships, and there was a busy bustling motion about them suggestive not of ennui but purpose.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Flashthunder
Flashthunder had stayed behind after the game to gather up the spare Flashballs, principally because he was terrified of going into the changing-room where the other Mini-Flashes were. Not that he knew for absolute certain that they knew about the plans for tonight that only he and Cherry were supposed to know about, but Mini-Flash Frill had raised her little eyebrows in a most decided way while observing aloud he had his lucky red pants on. That incident alone was more than enough to fill Flashthunder with dread at the prospect of well-intentioned but horrid ribaldry in the sonic showers followed by weeks of attendant emotional anguish. Volunteering for Flashball collection duty seemed mild by comparison, even though being the only Mini-Flash in a deserted gymnasium frightened Flashthunder quite badly too.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Please be Waiting, Chapter Three
Sunset had arrived on that early autumn day in Nottingham. Long black shadows by now claimed the alleyways and yards, while the western sky blazed a magnificent orange-red that lit the world but from which the last of the daytime warmth was all but gone. The stars tonight would glint brighter and sharper than they had done all year, and maybe a wind would start to blow, rustling leaves that had clustered silently on their branches since spring. These first gusts of the season, presaging winter frosts to come, might even steal through ventilators into bedrooms and rattle a waste-bin liner or a sheet of paper on a dressing-table. Then sleepers would stir at the unexpected noise in the night and ponder once again all that had come to pass that day, not only its joyful celebrations but also the future that herewith began, in which The Four Heroes and the city they created would seem to have parted company at last and forevermore. For some time it had not been as it was, but henceforth no member of the quartet remained on Planet Earth, and the chill wind of tomorrow even now striking up needs must be faced without them.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
The Four Heroes, Chapter Three
The fluxball’s southern hemisphere rolled slowly before Neetra’s upturned eyes, as might that of some moon of light bellying into the atmosphere to orbit a mere hundred or so feet above the Earth’s mantle. Our heroine had pretended to Bret far more confidence than she felt about her chances of ever coming back out of this leviathan’s guts once she was in. But there was no point getting her knickers in a twist. Duly Neetra cast out her astral form, which looked exactly like her and was wearing the same clothes, and thus entered the sphere while her physical body slumped to sleep on the pavement.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Lilith, Chapter One
Some musicians sat on their stage at the foot of Nottingham’s domed Town Hall and stared up together at a sky which was darker than it should have been in the middle of the day. To her backing group the golden-haired female lead-singer remarked:
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Lilith, Chapter Three
The bleak star had become visible in Nottingham’s heavens. It filled the sky. Earthlings and Solidity were side-by-side, any fighting forgotten now as they gazed wordlessly to a man. Even the Vernderernders of Toothfire had no illusions about eliminating this threat through their usual means, so hunched on the summits of buildings like the vultures they resembled and merely watched. A hush fell across the land as preternatural night began.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
The Four Heroes, Chapter Four
Joe and Dylan arrived at their sinister rendezvous. Behind them the circumference of Earth shone in space, while ahead stretched a ghastly cobweb whose strands were giant fungal tendrils and whose nodes the wrecks of a million battle-starships. From this obscene interconnected hugeness seethed the infernal tempest that still darkened Nottingham’s heavens, its roiling fury held for the moment in check, but which unleashed would be akin to a runaway star colliding with the planet such that no living creature could survive.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction
Lilith, Chapter Two
Neetra and Gala had scrabbled upright at the bottom of the cliff to confront each other once more across a stretch of several feet. The latter was facing the rocky slope, while Neetra’s back was to it, such that behind and above our heroine’s head the baby atop the elevation was within Gala’s line of sight.
By Doc Sherwood3 years ago in Fiction