Category Archives: coming soon

the shivering of bare flesh

A quick excerpt from THE TALL PRIEST, the fourth book in The Martuk Series, Vol. 1, A Collection of Short Fiction (available now for pre-order):

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I was blood.

The taste of it raced ‘round my teeth and flooded my throat. The warmth of it fell from my eyes and stained my cheeks. The red of it dripped off my chin to wander along my neck and down my chest.

I’ll give you my son, she’d said, the Seer from the Mountains. Leave me here to do what must be done and I’ll give you my son.

Her words the darkest of shadows clouding my calm, I’d returned to Uruk that morning, the Seer’s son, an unexpected charge, in hand. Soon I’d stood in the Temple, my explanations useless, The Elder’s rage quiet and terrifying. Moments later, I, a powerful priest in a land of powerful priests, had been dragged across the stone to face my fate.

Now I kneeled, a powerless man in a prison of wood and stone, broken and bloodied in the dead of night.

By morning I’d be a corpse.

I’ll give you my son.

Those words, heavy with heartbreak, had come from the Water first.

Days ago in a small room hidden far beneath the Temple, I’d stood with my beloved, The Elder, as the shimmering pool had whispered

Blinded…

Silent…

Bleeding…

“Don’t. Please,” The Elder said as I’d waited, gripping the edge of hollowed stone, my face dipped low as I silently called to the Gods.

The Veil…

The Darkness…

It comes…

the Water whispered, answering me, the words caressing my cheeks.

He’d begged and pleaded, the Elder, this most powerful man in a city of powerful men. Implored me to turn away. Allow the Water to hold its tongue. Keep its secrets. “It’s dangerous and I can’t bear to lose you,” he said, his voice thick.

“I need to speak with the Gods,” I said, braced with uncommon courage. And I’d ignored him, leaning forward, blade in hand, to slice, to watch, to see. To listen and hear, the blood dripping from my wrist the key unlocking my fate.

And the Seer from the Mountains had appeared in the shallow bowl, the words

Take my son

falling from her lips.

These words, these three syllables, soon to be spoken a three nights walk from Uruk where she, the Seer, and I would stand, watching, under the shade of trees.

Take my son

Hearing her, I’d pause.

For that the guards put me in chains.

More words would be spoken on that path a three nights’ walk from Uruk, a darkening sky above. Of dangerous shadows and ravenous demons. Of monsters and magic. Of battles being fought and wars being lost. Here. Now. Unseen yet all around.

My heart, my gut, trusting her, I’d listen.

For that I lost my eyes.

Days later, now days ago, the tears wetting her cheeks as she stood, silent and waiting, her story at an end, my heart heard

my son

and, against logic and reason and rules, braced with yet more uncommon courage, I’d relent.

For that the guards cut out my tongue.

Learning I’d heard and listened and trusted, my secret beloved, The Elder, had grown dangerously quiet. Discovering I’d acted against logic and reason and his rules, he betrayed me. In response to my misplaced courage, he ripped out my tongue, robbing me of my words, my knowledge, my secrets. And then, my eyes dug out and tossed to the hounds, those two words

my son

finally took from me the pleasure of seeing the sun, the moon. The once-adored face of the love who betrayed me.

The Water in a small, secret room far below the Temple had spoken of that, too.

As had the sky, the earth, the forest, the stones…

Days ago.

Now I turned. My long legs tucked under, I rested on my knees, the cold stone of the cell burning my shins. In the dark of blindness, I heard them. Other prisoners. Their sighs and whimpers, tears and whispers. Heard the shuffling of thin fabric and the shivering of bare flesh. Felt the Silent Other, a stranger to me, waiting, watching. Drawing near, slow and patient, from the other end of the earthen hall.

A Silent Other I’d glimpsed when my eyes could still see, though I stood in the shade of trees under the gathering grey of relentless clouds. He haunted me still, this Silent Other, this stranger. His dishonest smile cutting through the terrifying darkness. The leather cloak falling from his shoulders hemmed with the clattering clank of tiny bones.

I swallowed the memory away, the blood from the still-bleeding root creeping down my throat. It still stung, that stolen tongue, though the burn in my missing eyes had given way to an exhausted thump, thump, thump.

Had I tears, I would have wept. For all I’d lost. All I’d never have. For mistakes and regrets. Lies. Betrayal. The ache of a broken spirit.

For my stupid willingness to abandon reason and peer into an endless wall of black.

But I’d been warned.

Days ago.

Silence

the earth had whispered.

Darkness

the trees had echoed.

Death

the sky had promised.

I’d been warned.

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Available June 20th

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wounding the tender skin

A quick excerpt from RED AND GOLD, the third book in The Martuk Series, Vol. 1, A Collection of Short Fiction (available now for pre-order):

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Do not lose your soul …

In the quiet of my mind, the whisper came.

I held my breath, silencing my thoughts.

He waited, the young man, kneeling before the fire, his head bowed, his shoulders wrapped in the coveted red and gold robes of a Priest.

We waited, kneeling, priests, acolytes, initiates, all of us knowing what was to come.

He stood, the older man. Somber, focused, perhaps even sad as he gripped the blade in his hand, the light of the flame dancing in the polished metal.

Wordlessly, he stepped forward, his small eyes lost in the shade of his heavy brow.

Wordlessly, the young man tensed, his slender hands tightening into fists.

Wordlessly, we held our collective breath.

The blade met flesh.

The whisper quiet, I looked at the stone floor beneath my knees. Focused on my hands, my long fingers. The glow of the flames warming the flesh of my knuckles. How even though I kneeled some distance from the fire, I could feel the heat, watch the heat, allow myself to be distracted by the heat, my heart refusing to acknowledge the sacrifice before me.

A moment later, the blade moved again, slicing, cutting, sawing, the blade wounding the tender skin.

A moment after that, the whisper returned.

The weeping …

Again, it was ignored.

The man kneeling next to me, an older man, an elder, the two of us shoulder to shoulder, sighed, his breath heavy.

My eyes glanced up.

It was not he, the old man, who spoke, who whispered. And the young man who kneeled remained still, the old man above him working in silence.

And the blade still cut and scraped and sawed, the dark locks falling free from the shocking pale scalp of his bowed head.

These silent whispers could not distract me, my feelings more focused on my jealousy, my impatience, my long simmering rage.

Soon that would be me, I promised myself, my eyes now refusing the kneeling acolyte who was almost a priest.

Soon I would kneel, feel the cold metal as it chopped from me my own thick hair. My innocence, my youth, my powerlessness falling away with my own dark curls.

Soon I would move beyond being a mere initiate. A lowly servant. A someone Those in Power never saw.

Soon I would move from here, where I kneeled in subjugation, to there, where I would kneel at the altar and then rise to take the next step into power.

Soon.

The air shifted. I could sense it, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. From somewhere in these dark, secret rooms beneath the Temple, something had changed. Something I could feel. A knowing not driven by whispers only I could hear.

This was a gift given to me by the gods. Or at least that’s what I’d decided. It was a silent knowing. An understanding of words not spoken, of thoughts unsaid. A look, sometimes brief, sometimes not, into the hearts of those who stood before me, their words landing in my ears, their truth singing to my heart.

There were even times, like now, when this truth spoke actual words. Words I would hear in my head, like secrets whispered in the darkest dark from the farthest corner of the world. Like the whispers surrounding me now.

This is what I felt when I speak now of the shift, of this change, in the air.

This is what I felt before we smelled the acrid scent of thick, black smoke.

Yes, smoke.

Heads turned. A wave of whispers, these spoken and calm and urgent, rippled through those of us who continued to kneel. And the old man with the blade paused, the supplicant’s head still bowed, a ring of dark hair remaining ’round the edge of his skull, the scalp bleeding delicate beads of red where the knife had gently nicked and cut and wounded.

The older ones rose and, their robes gathered from the floor, the red and gold held in their hands, rushed, calm and quick, to the door.

Those of us who were younger waited and then rose to follow.

Calm. Quick.

The initiate, now priest, waited, kneeling, his head still bowed low.

And there we stood, elders and initiates, priests and acolytes, in the low-ceilinged hall, noses in the smoke-filled air, calm and desperate to find the source and extinguish the flames.

From the hidden corner at the end of the dark, a door opened.

He stepped forward.

Older than most, more powerful than all, he was the beating heart of the mightiest Temple in Uruk, the most glorious city on earth.

The Elder.

One was to bow when The Elder passed. One was not to look at The Elder when he passed. To do so would incur the wrath of The Elder. A wrath both venomous and vengeful. An anger infamous in its volcanic cruelty.

It was best, when faced with the presence of The Elder, to avert one’s eyes and bow one’s head and even hold one’s breath.

He drew near, The Elder.

I held my breath, my eyes on my bare feet, my hands behind my back, the fingers laced, the knuckles white.

The Elder was not alone.

Young Priest …

This stranger walked behind him.

You can hear me …

He smelled of places foreign and strange.

You know me …

The robe around his shoulders was hemmed in bones. Delicate bones taken from tiny children. Slender toes and tiny fingers and small, square teeth that dragged along the ground behind him as he moved calm and slow down the hall.

Listen well, young priest …

I could hear him, yes. In my heart, my soul, he whispered.

And I will tell you all …

The Elder was now passing in front of me.

I exhaled, deep and slow, inhaled, deep and slow, and then held the breath. I felt I would weep, so great was my fear of this tall, skeletal Priest who had worn the red and gold long before I had taken my first breath as a new babe in the mountains.

That’s where I had been found, my life offered to the Temple when I was but a boy. But my memories of my father, my mother, whatever brothers and sisters I had left behind, they mattered little now.

Listen well …

The voice, the whisper, came again.

I listened.

The Elder was passing me. He moved by, calm and quick. I did not exist to him. I was no one. A stranger to ignore. An initiate who had yet to earn the priesthood, my thick hair damning me to ignominy on sight.

Ah, but this stranger, the one with the cloak ringed with the dull white of bone, he was not one to ignore. I could sense fear in the old man, The Elder. I could feel the air thick with secrets and shame and an utter sense of powerlessness.

The Elder stopped.

I glanced at his bare feet.

They were covered in blood. And bits of flesh?  Yes, that’s what it looked like, his long toes smeared in discarded shards of torn flesh. And the hem of his red and gold robe, it, too, was covered in blood. It was dripping, small drops of blood staining the stone beneath his feet.

Dripping.

The blood was fresh.

And they, the two of them, The Elder and this stranger who could whisper to the darkest depths of my soul, both smelled of smoke and raging fire and torn flesh.

But The Elder had stopped. Could he hear my thoughts? Could he read my soul? Did he know I had linked his name, his greatness, with words like shame and powerlessness?

If so, I would incur his wrath.

No …

The stranger grew close. Looked at me. He, too, was covered in blood. His robe dripping fresh blood. His feet stained red. More so than The Elder’s. As if this stranger, whose toes almost squished with fresh blood, had waded through an ocean of red to stand before me.

Yes …

I raised my eyes, slowly, so, so slowly.

His chest was bare. It was covered in blood.

His head was shaved smooth. It was covered in blood.

His eyes, peering from beneath a layer of red, were looking at mine.

A small smile grew on his thin lips.

Young priest …

came the whisper.

Listen well and I will give you the world.

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Available June 20th

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a stunning world

“Be prepared to be taken outside of your comfort zone…a stunning world…awestruck…These stories are not only about magic they are MAGIC!”

Yep, the first official review of The Martuk Series, Vol. 1, A Collection of Short Fiction has been released and it’s amazingly kind and generous. Want to see for yourself? You can do so HERE

And the book? Available June 20th but you can pre-order it HERE

Okay, back to work.

kings and gods

A quick excerpt from THE WOUNDED KING, the first book in The Martuk Series, Vol. 1, A Collection of Short Fiction (available now for pre-order):

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“Yes, soon,” she said, her ample flesh shining with oils and unguents beneath a thin layer of cloth as she sat back on a low chair of polished wood.

“A king, a great king, is dying. So, yes, the Gods will come forward and swallow our sun. And the Dark Gods, those who obey me, those who listen when I call, will come and fight and return it to us. As they always do.

“You’ve seen this how many times?” she asked as she turned to me.

A young girl with dark hair and even darker eyes kneeled in front of Mother, cradling the woman’s large feet and, a small knife in hand, set to work.

I shrugged, unable to respond.

She watched me, waiting for an answer.

“But the Priest,” I said, my clumsy tongue reaching for words it couldn’t find. “The Elder. He said the Dark Gods come when he calls, when the sun is swallowed, and –”

The girl waited as Mother shook with laughter.

“That silly old fool.” Tears ran down her cheeks as she fought to catch her breath. “As if the Gods would listen to a barbarian from the mountains.”

She snapped her fingers, the girl returning to her work, the knife cutting the delicate nails, the polished stone beneath littered with the slender shards.

“Do you believe he has more power than me, a God? He is old now, yes, and with that comes some power, of course, perhaps. But do you believe he could rule over one who is supreme? One who cannot die?”

Her eyes had narrowed, challenging me to disagree, to doubt.

I simply shook my head.

“What can he do?” she asked.

“Call the Rain, or so he says. Foretell the futures of worthless strangers. Maybe he can make a potion to bring you love or give you health or, I don’t know, make you a great warrior. Does it matter?

“The Gods, the Dark Gods, mind you, listen to me, one of their own. They come when I call. They rule when I say they can rule. And they, at this moment, are taking the King as their own.”

“The wine is poisoned.” The words came from me, careful and quiet.

“The wine is blessed,” came her own words, wrapped in dangerous delusion. “He is healthy and strong. A fighter. But the sun will soon disappear and the Gods, the Dark Gods, will demand a gift for its return.

“Is he not the greatest gift we can give? Greater than any of those nameless souls who stumble through the city?

“Even if we were to bleed them, all of them, and offer an ocean’s worth of blood, there is nothing greater than a King. It is his time to pass Beyond the Veil. His time to leave this life and his time to join the others in giving us what we need to rule, as Kings and Gods.”

“And the gifts we give …”

I hesitated, not sure how to say what needed to be said.

“During those quiet times, those secret times, in the night, the dark …”

I stopped again.

The girl, her head still bowed, ignored us, the fragile bones falling as they were sliced away, one by one.

Mother watched me, a small smile at her lips.

“In front of the fire, with the Priests …” Another pause as I glanced at the girl.

“Why?” I suddenly asked, the word tumbling out before I could catch it.

“Why what, Almost King?”

I held my tongue, my eyes on the unwilling witness to what we said.

Realizing this, Mother leaned forward and snapped her fingers in the girl’s face.

The young beauty looked up and, with a signal from her Master, moved the hair back from the side of her face.

Her ears had been cut off, the gaping wounds stuffed with linen and wax.

And with another snap of the fingers, she returned to her work.

I felt sick, then, the tears welling up in my eyes.

“Why must it be me?” I asked as I blinked, and then blinked again. “Why must I be there?”

“Becoming a God is a gift.” She gave a deep sigh as she laid back. “A great and very rare gift, yes. But a gift. And there’s a price, as there is with anything given. Power that great demands something in return. Something to be paid first.

“The path to becoming a God is not an easy one, nor should it be.” Her eyes once again watched mine.

“And what price did you pay?”

“To become a God?” She grew silent as she watched the wounded girl’s hands skillfully wield the knife, the bones trimmed and sliced and discarded by the sharp edge.

“There were others before you,” she said, her voice quiet. “Other boys, other girls. Babies. Children. Others, unlike you, who gave themselves. Who gave their lives, their essence, who they were, so that we, you and I, would be who we are.

“The first, a girl, a beauty who had only breathed three, maybe four moons. She was taken ill, this girl, her flesh red and blistered, her breathing thick, her tiny chin stained with blood as she coughed and coughed. Her eyes swollen shut as she cried. Only three or four moons.

“There was no hope, they said. There was only one thing to do, they said.

“And they lit a great fire and handed me a knife and then gave to me this precious bundle, her eyes not yet opened.

“My daughter.”

She stopped. The girl now massaged her feet, the nails cut, a flat stone having smoothed the rough edges of her heel and the soles of her feet.

“Her blood blessed me, her gift in the wine. She still lived with me as long as the wine lived. And sip by sip she was there with me, still. A comfort.

“She’s a part of everything now, you know.” She took my hand in hers, a small smile again on her lips.

“Yes, they burned away her flesh, they did, in the great fire, and took the bones, the tiny bones burned black, and broke them, smashed them, and then ground them to dust, and gathered them in the finest linen and brought them to the Temple.”

“To the Temple,” I said.

A nod from her. “She still lives there, in the stone, between the stone, the bones broken and ground into dust and added to the stone, the space between the stones, her blood, that blood not in the wine, pressed between the stones with her bones, her Spirit not Beyond the Veil but here still, with me, in my heart, still.”

Sitting back, she closed her eyes as the girl gathered the clippings from the floor.

“In the stone, in my body, her blood in my blood, in the wine, still with me. She was the first, but others followed. Others not from my flesh. Not from the flesh of the King, the First King.

“But some were, of course. Yes. Those who seemed healthy at first, but then wouldn’t sleep. Or coughed. Those who were fitful, unhappy. Who cried and cried and cried, as if begging for release. She was the first, my daughter, the first to offer a gift, but others followed.

“And they always agreed, they did. Urging me to act, urging me to move forward. To bring their crying bodies, their little bones, to the great fire and release them, release their blood, give themselves to the power of the Temple, to me.”

“They?” Though I knew what she would say, I feared her response.

“The Priests. The Elder. They always agreed, always said ‘Oh yes, absolutely, yes’ And I trusted them. I still do, though my power is greater, much greater. The power of a God, not a mere Priest or Elder.”

The girl returned, the clippings at the bottom of a heavy stone bowl, a blunt stone on its rim.

Taking it, Mother balanced the bowl on her lap, the delicate slivers soon ground to dust.

“But you?” she asked as she scooped the fine powder from the bowl and, her fingers stained dusty pale, washed them in a glass of wine. “You were silent, you were healthy, you lived. The Priests, they insisted, but you, no, you I kept. You I loved. You, I knew, would rule and rule well.”

She paused, the wine in hand as the girl wiped her fingers clean.

And then she drank.

“I released their tiny souls,” she said as she passed the empty cup to the girl, “so that, together, you and I, we would sit with the Dark Gods.

“I burned them so their power would be trapped, feeding us, their strength now ours. The Elder promised that, with their bones forever in the stone, they would always be at our mercy to help us live, help us rule. Life Everlasting ours so that we’ll never need to join those useless ones Beyond the Veil.

“His barbaric magic from the hills trapped those in the stone, the ancient prayers guiding them to their fate, their power ours.

“But now you need to pay. If you’re to become a God, to rule, then you, too, will need to burn the flesh and grind the bones and give to the Dark Gods what they hunger for.”

She paused, her hand on mine, comforting me.

“The first …”

She stopped.

“Oh, my beautiful boy, you don’t forget the first. It lives with you always. A shadow on your heart, in your soul. But it gets easier after that.

“Much easier.”

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Available June 20th

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a horror reader’s nightmare come true

“Equal parts deceptive beauty, haunting darkness and shocking brutality. Jonathan Winn’s prose drags you, the reader, through a gauntlet of experiences. It’s a horror reader’s nightmare come true.” – Zakk, The Eyes of Madness

The Martuk Series, Vol. 1,  A Collection of Short Fiction

Available June 20th. Pre-order now. 

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like no other author I’ve read

“Powerful and brutally honest. Assassin’s Creed meets a darker and more ancient mythology. Winn sees the world like no other author I’ve ever read.”

– Joe Mynhardt, Publisher/Founder, award-winning Crystal Lake Publishing

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Available June 20th (click for pre-order)

 

2C – The Second Feast

It wasn’t the surprising sting of a knife’s blade stabbing and slicing. Or the shock of a needle plunging and poking. It was the strange, dull pressure of a wound being stitched, careful and quick.

– Apt. 2C, Eidolon Avenue: The Second Feast

COMING SOON (2019)

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2B – The Second Feast

She wedged the knife deep, the blade angled just so.

– Apt. 2B, Eidolon Avenue: The Second Feast

COMING SOON (2019)

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Umbra – Eidolon:The Second Feast

“‘Tis not death, child, only darkness.”

– Apt. 2E, Eidolon Avenue: The Second Feast

COMING SOON (2019)

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that shallow bowl of blond

He feared the yellow waiting below. That shallow bowl of blond wavering in the breeze ringed by the dark trunks of monstrous trees. He knew what waited there, hidden in the grass.

– Apt. 2A, Eidolon Avenue: The Second Feast

COMING SOON (2019)

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