It’s been a while (way too long), however, I am nearing the finale of the third book in the Epilogue To Humanity series. I’ve complained before about the struggles of writing series fiction, but I have learned something recently. It doesn’t matter what you’re writing. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be work. This project has challenged me in ways that I never thought of before. I can say that coming out of it, I am a better writer than I was at the beginning. If nothing else, that is valuable to me.

Now, here stands the tricky part.

After two and a half novels of secrets and mystery, I must finally give it away now. I can hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the back of my mind, and that is helping, but it’s hard to let go of. I’ve spent so long guarding these answers that the final reveal feels hard to live up to. That, ultimately, will be for the readers to decide. While I do not have a release date scheduled as of yet, I am confident it will be soon. For now, that’s the update.

Here’s a sample of the upcoming novel. Thanks for reading.

“When is the last time you had faith in anything? Anything at all, Roland, and that includes yourself.”

“It’s one thing to say you have faith in something. It’s entirely different to actually believe, without question.”

Without question, to actually believe.

Faith in anything, Roland.

Anything.

To scream without sound is drowning. To drown without water is suffocating. To suffocate without the desire for air is something akin to insanity.

He remembered this. He’d been here before. He let desire go, every urge to see, to hear, to breathe, he sent them away. The world returned around him and the words stopped thundering against the nothingness.

He stood on the roof of a building, too familiar, a sharp stab to the stomach.

“Why here?”

“You tell me. You chose this place.”

He hadn’t expected an answer, hadn’t realized his body surrounded him until he turned to find the voice.

“This is your memory, Roland. You set the stage.”

“Where am I, Sera? What happened?”

“You know where you are, Roland. You know what happened.”

“I’m dead. This is my hell.”

Her laugh didn’t belong in his hell, yet it wrapped around them, humid and clinging. “You believe in Hell, Roland?”

His eyes snapped to hers, attempting to scald the amusement he found there. “Tell me what is going on, Sera. I deserve to know, at this fucking point, what is going on.”

“You don’t trust me.”

He snorted. “Trust you? I don’t even know who or what you really are.” His anger lit the edge of his words with a crackle. There was nothing left now, except the truth. The only justification could be to know why, to understand what he’d done.

“I’m sorry. It’s the only way.”

Before he could form another word, hell exploded into blue.

Fevered white lights shrieked at his eyes, striking and recoiling, burning closed lids with a kerosene wick. Deafening thunder ruptured at the seams, a locomotive bursting from a tunnel, the devastating echo of a metal heartbeat in a steel cage.

Screams rang out and bodies fell, suddenly frozen, collapsing mid-step into the snow. Red carpet spread from beneath, steaming and melting as their eyes turned to glass. He was running and then he was falling, dying with them, over and over. It was only when the last heartbeat struck that he could see them. One after another, blue orbs, fleeing into the night sky, expelled with the final breath of each life lost below. Each time he stayed behind, living another moment, dying another way.

The screams faded to silence, absorbed by the darkness. A final blue light jetted away, careening towards the stars. He would have followed, but the idea of leaving without knowing where he was, where he would end up, seemed foolish, even terrifying. With the fear, everything disintegrated.

 A new world was crackling into existence. He could feel it, static energy, every fiber, as if it existed as an extension of his mind, and in turn, his body was this very moment. His cells were the rays of sunlight, his breath the wind. His legs were the earth and his eyes were the canopy above it all. For an instant that could have been eternity, he thought he understood true peace. With the understanding, the feeling slipped away, shattering.

P. B.

Water floods my lungs, my throat overflowing with the taste of metallic silt. I’m choking, fighting to breathe though all I want is to give in, to let go and stop. I asked, no, begged for this. Absolution, in one form or another. Don’t think too much. Don’t set it off. Stop trying. Just let go.

She’s crying, beating on my chest, tears and water mixed together on the floor. Glass beads clink in her hair as she leans over to force air into my lungs again. She’s lifting my head, begging me to hear her, to open my eyes.

I hear everything and I can’t answer her. Her tears are stable now, sliding off her chin. I asked for this. I did this. I can offer no comfort, and I know I can’t stay.

I’m weightless, a sudden relaxation of gravity. I have no focus, no direction. My vision refuses to respond, leaving me in darkness. Panic surrounds me like cobwebs, twirling, entangling and adhering until I cannot shake it, and I am spinning. I can’t catch a breath. There is no air to take in. There is nowhere for it to inhabit, and I suddenly know this without a doubt.

I am nowhere, but I am everywhere all the same.

I am particles of sunlight, warmth pouring from a star, and I fall softly on loaded shoulders. She looks up from the ground, and I know she cannot see me, yet she smiles. If I ever had one prayer, it would have been this; to only know she was all right. If nothing else, dying is worth this moment.

Eleanor stares up at the eternal blue above her and I allow myself to believe she knows that’s where I’m going, that she can see them waiting there for me; that soon, they will know her as I do and love her just the same.

A. L.

Red, black, red, black. My eyes open, shut, open again without reason. I can’t see a thing beyond the flashing colors. My arms don’t move. My legs must be broken, frozen, too much weight on top of me. Not my weight. I try to scream, to beg for help, but I have no voice. The weight has taken it from me.

He told me not to come here, that it wasn’t safe. I’d never be able to tell him he was right. He was right, and I wasn’t going to see him again. I should have told him what I saw. I swore I was only trying to help him. I’m so sorry. I feel tears burning where my eyes should be open, where there should be light.

Only the red is there, fading to black, and guilt turns to recognition. I forget to struggle for breath. I ignore the hands around my throat, the man behind them, the soldiers watching. I can’t remember his face, and now I can’t remember his hands. I can’t even feel them. Finally, the thoughts are silent.

I’m looking down and I see me, but I know it’s not me anymore. I’m rising, floating above the city, and now I can see everything. Everything, even him, running down the alley, fleeing the same men he tried to protect me from, the same men who took my life when I didn’t listen.

I wonder if he will always be alone, if he will always be running. Maybe someday he’ll find what he is looking for.

A night sky of pulsating stars surrounds me, welcoming blue warmth radiating from every photon, waiting to know all that I am, all that I’ve learned. I think of him again, and I remember.

C. M.

Time isn’t the same when you’re falling. It forgets about you for a while, just lets you be.

I never knew that before.

I wait for the impact, but it doesn’t come. Time is playing with me, and I am going to fall forever. All I can picture is his face. His voice haunts the silence between my ears, calling my name. But the words don’t fall as fast, and I am leaving them behind.

I am leaving him behind.

I am a coward, and I am running the only way I can.

I love him more than I’ve ever loved myself, but this can’t be for him.

This is for me, selfish and afraid. This isn’t his guilt. This is mine.

And still, I’m destroying him.

If I fall forever, so be it.

My punishment, unending, and I will fall into the nothingness I deserve.

***

He’d been wrong before.

He’d never truly understood torture, never fully realized how much just knowing something could hurt, until now.

Hell.

From the flames to the core of his soul, Roland now understood pain. Those memories, theses scenes played out for him to witness and succumb to; one death after another, as if they were all his own. The finale, a brutal and ravaging firsthand account of the thoughts she left this world with, things he could never unlearn.

Chelsea.

If he could scream, the gods would cover their ears in agony, yet he wore no physical form.

He’d left his body to burn.

Now the inferno would take his soul.