Joshua My Hermes System

by Joshua Blum

"A… giant spider?", Van could not help but gulp as he slightly backed away from the creature that was crawling its way out of the Portal. And soon, all the hairs in Van's skin stood up as the spider completely revealed itself. "What… the…", were the only words that came out of Van's mouth as he stared at the face of the spider. A face that it shouldn't have in the first place-- the face of a human baby. The creatures of the Portals… looked like this? Van has seen a number of them from the Deadzone, but only from a mile away and only as a silhouette or as a shadow. He had seen one from books and scriptures, but never a live one, not this close… and definitely not one that looked like this. Come to think of it, the skewers that Harvey bought numerous times from the market were from the meat of the creatures from the Portal. Was one of the skewers… from this spider? Van quickly shook his head, this was not the time to be thinking of unnecessary things. Even though he almost wanted to puke from the thought, he tried his best to calm himself down as he looked for a weapon he can use. It seemed that it hadn't noticed him yet, so this was his best chance to find one. The spider-human baby in front of him was big, almost half his size. But still, as long as it was not bigger than him, then he still had a chance of squashing it into pieces.

35 pages, Paperback

Published April 6, 2022

About the author

In 1998, Joshua Blum wrote and illustrated an early draft of his first novel, "The Thirteenth Hour," inspired by his love of 1980s fantasy and science fiction movies, fairy tales, archery, and martial arts. He finally had the time to publish it sixteen years later. In the interim, he graduated from Princeton and Penn State Universities. He is grateful to his parents for instilling in him a love of learning, his brother for keeping him young, and his wife and children for their love. He is currently working on his next novel and hosts a weekly podcast (available free on iTunes @ apple.co/1S3FBWi)