Jim Morris

“Elizabeth stood in a model pose, whip thin, with a face beside which the faces of angels are coarse and unappealing, in clothes of rags needing to be hauled off and burned, yet somehow arranged into punk couture. Her black pageboy haircut peeked from under a cloche that appeared to have survived the Crash of ’29. She wore a torn black leotard under a skirt of gossamer net, and the exact shoes Boris Karloff had worn in Frankenstein. Two large lean hounds, one black, one black and white, sported, lunged, and whirled around her.
Dave inhaled sharply, in both love and despair.”
― Jim Morris, A Battle of Sorcerers

“Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”
― Studs Terkel

“Hildebrand turned after closing the door of his truck and the raven mocker struck. He sunk viselike talons into Hildebrand’s shoulders, flapping wildly to stay in the air, intending to distract him while he took his soul, all of it, leaving him dead on the ground. So no one would be able to go into the other world to retrieve it, because there would be no place to return it to.
Hildebrand screamed as the raven mocker sucked his soul from his body through his breath. He was strong. The raven mocker filled with soul energy. He was charged with it, changed with it.

Before Sky reacted Dave was out of his seat and in through the front door. He raced through the house. On the back porch he stopped, arrested by an astounding sight. A huge crow attacking Rocky, enormous, like a mastiff with wings, talons hooked into Rocky’s coveralls, flapping furiously, pecking at Rocky’s face. And something else, the bird was draining Rocky’s life.
Filled with adrenalin, he perceived all this instantly; he reached down, pulling his Levi’s pants leg up with his left hand and drew the .32 Beretta in his boot with the right. He drew, aimed and fired twice in one smooth motion.
He hit the son of a bitch, but all it did was piss him off. The crow dropped Rocky. Dave re-aimed and fired another double tap.
The bird flew at him, growing large in his vision, filling all of it, even as John opened the door behind him and Dave fired again, absolutely sure he hit him every time he squeezed the trigger. No effect. No effect whatsoever.
Talons clawed his shirt and the gun fell from his hand. The raven locked eyes and Dave felt his energy draining. He felt an invisible tentacle enter his body through his eyes. He didn’t know what was happening, psychic wrestling, not connected with anything physical; something inside him grabbed that tentacle and shoved it out. Then he was through and inside the bird’s eyes himself, reaching in there, doing something.
He heard Sky’s feet stomp on the porch as he cried, “Usinuliyu Selagwutse …” in Cherokee as he scooped up the pistol.
The bird flew away, cawing, straight into the sky.
Dave stood on the porch, gasping, weak in the knees, as Sky darted past him and went to Rocky. He knelt beside his friend, touched his face, and said, “Let’s get him inside.”
― Jim Morris

“Stalking is a very difficult art to come to terms with, for in reality, you can’t apply yourself to it. This art inevitably has to apply itself to you.”
― Lujan Matus, Shadows in the Twilight: Conversations with a Shaman