Swamp People: Blood And Guts Novels & Stories

If Jasmine gets worse, I'll never let you off the hook. The doctor looked unsure for a moment. A nurse hurried over and said, "The patient's in critical condition. Do we have any blood left?" Without further hesitation, the doctor started the disinfection process on my arm. Will's grip was unyielding, and I could only watch helplessly as my strength slipped away. "How much blood does the patient still need?" The doctor, noticing my ghostly complexion, turned to the nurse. She whispered, "We're 600cc short. I'll try to find more..."

I looked up, ready to fight whatever had dropped me here. The growl died in my throat. This was not my forest. The air was thick, humid, and smelled faintly of rot and stagnant water. I stood in a swampy morass. Around me, ancient, skeletal trees clawed at a sky that was neither day nor night, but a bruised, hazy gray. Ruins of colossal stone structures jutted from the muck, covered in weeping moss. The only light came from strange, bulbous mushrooms that glowed with sickly blue and yellow neon, casting long, shivering shadows. A shallow river of sludge wound through the alien landscape, reflecting the eerie light.

Up close, they’re bleached-out, hard surfaces with the texture of a dried alligator carcass. Cars zoom past at alarming speeds. When trekking through the swamp, I’d heard the distant sounds of these beasts and seen them from afar, but up close, the rectangular metal boxes are bigger than a swamp monster and even more intimidating. I stop and shake my head, unwilling to take a step into this foreign land and be trampled by one of their metal monstrosities. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Ama mutters. “Has Axel made a mistake or what?” “What do you mean?” I ask, grabbing her sleeve.

We completed walking across the flat verdure terrain and was now treading across a deep brown brackish swamp area surrounded by bald cypress and willow trees. My feet are soaked up to my knees. Papyrus and cattail bushes as tall as our heads slapped against our skin as we pleated our path across the waterlogged ground. Even though I'm a warrior, I could have done without the stinky rotten egg stench that stuck up my nose from the swamp. The rogues around me briskly go through it as though they were used to it. Approximately three miles of the journey, the swamp waters got deeper. I mumbled curses that caused the rogues beside me to snicker. Only my mate kept me on good behavior. Otherwise, I

I counted them myself when I walked around the garden. I walked into the living room and put on some music to lighten up the house a bit. My favorite song started playing when I sat on the couch reading Hamlet from William Shakespeare. I murmured along the lines and tapped with my fingers on the book along the rhythm. 'You said that you'd never hurt me Be the band-aid when I bleed But I guess that that band-aid was all made of paper Cause you never stuck to me And you say that you conquered the lion Without even tryin'

ie jerked his head toward the greasy old man and Mj felt the tickle at the back of her mind, “no wolf,” Jay’s voice whispered through her mind and she pursed her lips before leaning her back against Moxie’s shoulder, “they are all eyes,” she observed and Moxie placed his chin on the top of her skull before wrapping his arms around her shoulders, “aye, the creatures that own this land watch humans close sher… lest they forget the true animals own da swamp,” Mj rolled her eyes as their smelly caption began to cackle once more, the moist phlegm that gurgled up his throat with every wheezing laugh was starting to turn her stomach and in turn Mj could feel Theron's anger itching under her skin.

I finally landed at the bottom with a sickening splash into a heap of muck. The stench was so horrific I immediately gagged. I opened my eyes and realized with a jolt of pure horror that my hands were submerged in a lake of blood, mud, and rot. Flies and maggots were everywhere, crawling over the half-eaten carcasses of wolves, deer, and even men. It was a dumping ground, a graveyard of victims. Cyrus’s victims? I wondered. "Ahhhhhhhhh!" I screamed, scrambling to get up, but the more I struggled, the deeper I sank. The muck was like quicksand, sucking me down into the rot. I threw up as a drop of the foul liquid splashed near my mouth.

“Thank you” He waved me off, then I got in. The first wave of attack was the filth, the strewn pieces of paper, the rat traps and the empty containers of take away packs. The second wave was the stench, the warm, clogged metallic stench of blood. It seemed to be coming from the seats and emanating from the very being of the man. I scrunched my eyebrows but said nothing. Had he been injured?. I sniffed again; that was too much blood to come out of one person and survive.

Once I'm in place he pulls out the chair next to me and takes a seat as I start stacking papers and flipping open the history book. I am all too aware of the shifter next to me. He's so close I can smell him. Mint and honey flood my nose, it's so overwhelming my head pounds in protest. I take my glasses off again sighing as I massage my temples. "Damn migraines." I whisper to myself.

But I just could not help it any longer, being face to face with a wolf had everything flooding into my brain, and I wanted to scream my lungs out. Blood. It was blood that I saw. My parents' blood, spilled on the wooden floor around their heads. I saw their lifeless eyes and still bodies, and wounded faces. I saw my eleven year old self crying and screaming for them to wake up and look at me again, to call me their baby again. But that did not happen, it never happened. And I saw the people that had done that to them, their smug faces and crooked smirks, their hands stained with the blood of my parents, and the set of tattoos on one of their forearms.