Buried In The Backwater Novels & Stories

“It was buried.” And deep beneath the Academy ruins—something massive began opening in the dark.

Bailey. The dead grass is slick beneath my boots as I claw my way across the backyard. At long last, I feel the suck of mud at my feet and the welcome rush of water that tells me I’ve reached the swamp. Despite Amos tearing at my mind, I push forward, wading through the water until I pull myself up onto the mossy outcropping of the cemetery. If I go any farther out into the marsh, the water will be deeper and more treacherous. It’s my only option.

The underground parking garage beneath the defunct textile mill was a tomb of concrete and damp air. Water dripped rhythmically from a rusted pipe, the sound echoing like a countdown in the oppressive silence. Jonathan stood by the hood of his black sedan, his silhouette swallowed by the flickering orange glow of a dying sodium lamp. He didn't look like a Prince here; he looked like a ghost haunting the ruins of his father’s empire.

“I have no reason to lie to you. Feel free to check for yourself. But don’t be too surprised when you find out what a wonder woman you abandoned.” After he finished speaking, Milo called the maintenance guy to fix my grave. Lucian left in a hurry, Selene trailing behind him. Milo turned to my tomb with a quiet whisper before he left. “You won’t blame me for telling him the truth, will you?” I couldn’t bring myself to blame him. In fact, I owed him a thank you. "Mr. Carrington, the things you asked me to investigate... I found a lot of photos." As Milo stepped out of his car, his assistant approached and whispered in his ear.

"James, the company is loaded, so there's no need to be so petty. After all, we did love each other at one point. I'm begging you not to be so cruel to us. "I really do love you. I had come back with the only intention of being with you." James couldn't bear to look at Sophia's pathetic and lowly self for a second longer. "Sophia, if your ex hadn't gone bankrupt, would you have come back?" Sophia crumpled to the floor. "James, I do love you." "Hand them over to the authorities. Let the law deal with them." "No, James. Don't do this to me, please!"

came running back, slightly out of breath. Completely unaware of the situation, he reported loudly, almost proudly, "Mr. Smith! It's done! Just like you ordered, I dumped the old lady into the septic tank behind the hill. Fast and efficient!" Hearing that, the last thread of sanity in Nash's mind snapped. "What… what have I done…" He grabbed his head with both hands, collapsing like a wounded animal, crying out in despair. Watching him like that, I felt nothing. No sympathy. No pity.

Brambles had spread everywhere, festooned over the yawning archways, branches reaching out inquisitively as if trying to push in through the thick walls. The house was woeful and an eyesore, being consumed from within as well as without, but still, it bore the remote marks of grand antiquity in its giant frame and foundations, deep inside its moldering bones somewhere. It was an echo from another time, and for that reason alone the township of Blackwater Valley would never bulldoze it down. It waited for the Reverend, the Orchestrator—deserted and mute and harboring its secrets there, leering out at him with a kind of primitive, terrible purpose.

The Hollow Garden bloomed only in silence. Not the silence of emptiness or death—but the hush that comes when memory grows so thick it cannot bear to speak. Hidden deep beneath the Dustborn citadel, it curled through catacombs that no longer had names. Its roots drank the bones of kings, its air thick with the perfume of grief and secrets. The world above—war councils, shifting allegiances, the endless politics of power—forgot about this place. Only one ever returned.

An embrace that changes with the drum of his heart beat, when echoing coils being to snap, and we’re dropped several stories with the tracks skidding like brand-new brakes on a ice covered back road. Handing the cherub off to Dad. I’m sure that people are speaking, but I can’t hear it. It’s that underwater world of panic where the only thing that exists are worlds colliding in my head. When my body knows it has to do things that my brain can’t remember learning. Whatever verbal diarrhea accompanies that, I am not liable for. First off, I have literally been buried alive. That doesn’t even take into account that Nicky made me watch the nineties action flick Speed with him over the weekend. Yo

“They dug a giant pit at the base of a mountain… that’s where they’re dumping them. That’s their final resting place—don’t you understand?!” No one buried the dead—not because they didn’t want to. But because there were too many. ***