Jacob Fike
Stories (5/0)
Close Encounters at Taco Bell
It’s late at night. Nearly midnight, in fact. I’m tired. No. Exhausted. And I’m hungry as hell. There’s food at home, but I’d have to prepare that myself. I just want to shove something hot and edible in my mouth and make my stomach stop its infernal growling. As I muse on these thoughts, I see a Taco Bell sign glowing like a beacon through the bleak and endless night. The decision is made. I pull into the driveway, but I’m dismayed to find a line of cars packing the drive-thru like it’s the Exodus and rather than a column of flame by night, God sent a great luminous bell to guide us. Oh well. Even a little wait means I don’t have to put in the work of cooking.
By Jacob Fike3 years ago in Fiction
The Black Passage
A silent, sullen man hurried off the street and into his apartment, a bundle of supplies in his arms. He closed the red door behind him and locked it with three locks, then set about the business for which he had prepared for months. He swept everything off his kitchen table and spread out the contents of his bundle. He changed into the robe the bundle was wrapped in and donned all the various amulets and instruments he would need for his journey. He laid down on his bed, next to which he lit a line of eight candles, each carven all over with mystic runes. After sleep took him, he slipped from his body and stood beside it, the world around him faded and out of focus, unable to touch anything except the smoke curling upward in eight colors from the candles. He took from his spectral pocket the instruments he had stowed there before in the waking material world. With these he drew a doorway in the air before him and then summoned up seventy downward stairs beyond. He passed through the shimmering gossamer film stretched across the doorway and began to slowly descend these steps, and at the end found himself alighting in another world, and weight and solidness had returned to him. He stood in a stone-brick chamber with slick lichen growing all over every surface, lit solely by a single light like a dim purple candle flame floating in the chamber's center.
By Jacob Fike3 years ago in Fiction
Midnight Burial
Four figures labored at the top of a hill, barely illuminated by the cold autumn moonlight. Dirt was thrown onto a mound, landing with muted thumps that spoke of death. The only other sound to be heard was the grim scraping of shovels across earth and rocks. Two men stood in the hole they were digging, the edge of which already reached above their heads. Ben threw the last shovelful of dirt over his shoulder and the two silently climbed out of the pit. The others began dragging a wrapped up blanket over to the hole. Ben broke the eerie silence. “Hurry up,” he said, reading the time from his pocket watch. “We don’t have long.”
By Jacob Fike3 years ago in Horror
The Gaunt-Faced Rider
Marla shivered and pulled her coat tighter around her as the fierce wind tried to rip it away. The muddy road pulled at her boots and made the walk miserable. She had been on her way from her home town to visit her uncle’s manor when a wicked tempest swept in suddenly and caused her buggy to crash in a ditch by the side of the road. She had decided to leave the buggy behind and come back to try to salvage it when the weather was better, and so went trudging through the storm and the forest, hoping she could get to her uncle’s manor before the storm killed her or she passed out from exhaustion. She wished she had brought a hat. Her beautiful bright red hair was getting drenched by the rain that lashed against her face.
By Jacob Fike3 years ago in Horror
Memories and Dust
Eleanor trudged across a wide plain covered in swirling dust and shattered rocks, periodically scanning the horizon for anyone pursuing her. Here and there the spectral memories of ancient buildings flickered in and out of existence. She didn’t want anything to do with Koenigville anymore. Clayton Koenig had taken her books from her to try to control her, and now the only thing she had to remind her of her past was the heart-shaped locket that now clinked against her glass-coated chest with every step. She wouldn’t let them take that too, and hold her memory entirely hostage. Koenig and his posse that called themselves the High Council were dangerous, controlling, and vindictive. She didn’t at all trust them to leave her to wander the waste on her own.
By Jacob Fike3 years ago in Fiction