The Trenches: Billy Stevens, The Western Front, 1914-1918

The woman standing there was nobody that Scars had ever laid eyes on before, but holy God, he knew her. He knew her on a cellular level. In his blood. In his bones. In his heart and in his cock. He’d dreamed about her and he’d waited for her. He’d been looking for her forever, and now here she was. ** Six years ago, Zoe Parish fled Denver after a brutal encounter with a motorcycle club man, swearing never to trust one again. Now a mother and desperate to help her oldest friend, she returns when Wolf Connor promises his club is out of the life and she’ll be safe. Back in Denver, Zoe keeps her guard up, especially around Scars, whose effect on her is far more unsettling than she wants to admit. Vic “Scars” Innis has spent twenty-two years loyal to the Road Devils, earning his place as Vice-President. He thought he was content, until he meets Zoe. From the first look, he knows she’s the missing piece, even if she despises everything he represents. As danger closes in and an enemy threatens to destroy their fragile peace – and take Zoe’s child – Scars and Zoe are forced to confront their pasts and each other. The question is whether their bond will make them stronger… or finally tear them apart for good.

The night before our wedding, my mother needed a fifty-thousand-dollar emergency deposit for surgery. I went to my fiancé, Major Adrian Hayes, hoping he would listen before it was too late. He only saw the number. He paid the deposit in the end, but something between us broke that night. That money became the beginning of every name he would ever use against me. After that, every time I asked him for help, he sent me one hundred dollars. When I was in a car accident, he sent one hundred dollars. When I begged him to attend my mother’s funeral, he sent one hundred dollars. Eight months ago, I found out I was pregnant. I sent him seventy-seven voice messages, desperate to tell him we were having a baby. He never listened. He only sent seventy-seven payments of one hundred dollars. Later, when I started bleeding and was rushed into emergency surgery, I called Adrian and begged him to come to the hospital, to answer the doctors, to save our child. He sent one hundred dollars again. At the same time, Madeline’s Instagram story showed Adrian in his dress uniform beside her at a lavish officers’ charity gala. The comments all treated them like the perfect match. I stared at the screen until my hand went numb. I was begging for him from the edge of an emergency room while he stood under chandeliers beside another woman, looking as if he had already found the wife he wanted. By the time Adrian finally turned his phone back on, his staff officer’s voice was shaking. “Major Hayes... your wife and the baby did not make it.” And in that moment, Adrian went feral.

There are monsters in this world. And they used to be us. Now it's time to euthanize to survive in a hospice where Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. Post-infection Chicago. Christmas. Inside The Hospice, Emily and her fellow nurses do their rounds. Here, men and women live out their final days in comfort, segregated from society, and are then humanely terminated before fate turns them into marrow-craving monsters known as ‘Smilers.’ Outside these imposing walls, rabid protesters swarm with signs, caught up in the heat of their hatred. Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. But in a world where mortality means nothing, where guns are drawn in fear and nobody seems safe anymore – at what cost will this pursuit come? And through it all, the soon to be dead remain silent, ever smiling. Such is their curse. It won't be long before that snow-speckled ground will be salted by blood. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

Now everything is changing...with everyone of us sweeping under the carpet the scars of yesterday's sins. Those scars are what kept me alive until you are all born to hear the story. The world government was powerful and taking advantage of the human colonial minds, they buried our freedom and equity. But now that we the Elites whom they educated and rose to revolts against the fingers that had fed us... What do you call it? Oh! yes they had termed it Rebellion. They did call us rebels, for seeking a small ration part of the best that nature has given to mankind. Al-sural-tu-Nas. This for mankind, tell ye that the beast you trained in the dark had turned to an angel in the day. We are filled from the pot of lies now that our bellies cannot contain what they obtain, the promises that were compromised, treaties that were breached, least they covered the black mails and lies with a blanket of Diplomacy. But now is the snatch of the gallon beer from the drunkard because now there is what when diplomacy fails.....is war. "Now we are free." Later in the future a seed germinates bearing fruits of the YESTERDAYS as she possess the abilities to time travel and set broken pieces together but this has consequences in the future of mankind. Read along

Seventeen-year-old Caleb spends his days swimming in the abandoned quarry and dodging his alcoholic father. Everything shifts when Eli, the preacher’s brooding son, returns to town after years away. As the boys grow close amid cigarette breaks and stolen glances, they must navigate small-town cruelty, family expectations, and their own fear of being seen. A raw and emotional exploration of first love in a place that offers no refuge

Matthew O'Donnell is a respected soldier that loves his family as well as his work. The things of his past haunt him down that made him dig himself in work. But an accident that happened will force him to go back home.Will it force him to face the haunted past?Will Matthew give in and listen to his mother’s wishes and live on a safe and happy life?Find out as the story progresses