One Sentence Or Paragraph At A Time Story

[aTOMiC]

Shriven shuddered for a moment, surprised by the blow, but then almost immediately the wound began to heal itself, the cleft side of his head, that hung down near his shoulder, swung upward and joined with the bubbling mass of flesh that hissed and popped audibly until Romagen stood whole again with a wide, bloodthirsty smile on his blood splattered face.

[wayfriend]

Mallory said "uh oh" again.

[aTOMiC]

Unable to fathom any other option Mallory suddenly turned and dashed out of the room and up the stair case taking two steps at a time, while Shriven calmly and relentlessly followed, deliberately raking his sword across the stonework walls as he slowly advanced, giving Mallory a chill as he scrambled desperately upward through the levels of the castle in search of escape like a gazelle pounding through the tall grass attempting to elude a hungry lioness.

[wayfriend]

Running from floor to floor, peering into empty rooms filled with incomprehensible machinery or blocks of cargo, Mallory waited for inspiration to strike, which took less time than it felt like, as it felt like a couple of years, because strike it did, like a matter/anti-matter blast in a coal mine, when Mallory spied a small table, upon which rested a small jar containing exactly what he needed.

[aTOMiC]

Filled with a sudden sense of relief, Mallory sprinted past the table at a dead run while snatching up the jar with his right hand and simultaneously grasping for the jar's lid with the left, while continuing to flee from Shriven and also navigate the complex pathways of the castle, Mallory managed to screw the top off of the jar and shake its contents down upon the floor behind him as he ran.

[wayfriend]

The tiny animals that fell from the jar hit the floor with tiny bounces, and were stunned for only a few seconds, but they had completely recovered when Shriven ran among them like a bunny into a cage full of tigers, and the tiny animals, which were Balduvian piranhamice, scampered and bit, scampered and bit, rapidly gnawing down Shriven's body, much faster than he was able to regenerate, until he looked like the half-eaten remains of a jelly donut left in a box in the workroom by someone who secretly despised his coworkers.

[aTOMiC]

Mallory stood at the head of the staircase gasping for breath, staring down at the deck below him where the undulating swarm of piranhamice had almost completely stripped Shriven's lifeless skeleton of the last bits of his flesh, however Mallory now found himself near the top of the castle and he knew that he could not return the way he had come; there was nowhere left to go but to pass through the final hatch and into Southerland Castle's command bridge to confront his worst fears and the purpose for his long journey through the treacherous Southland forests to reclaim the lost pieces of his soul.

[wayfriend]

It seemed the lost pieces of his soul were very hungry though, so he first skipped into the ship's canteen for a quick sandwich and some coffee, but while he was looking for the mayo in the refrigeration unit he found some shrimp and some chicken, so there was nothing for it now but to make some gumbo, for which he had a stellar hankerin', but the quest for okra seemed to go nowhere, so after giving that up he decided to make some kabobs, using some juicy tomatoes, some red peppers, and some cilantro, which is a good recipe for when you just don't have a lot of time to cook, and by the time that was going well the pinot was nicely chilled, so all in all it was a real good turn.

[Vain]

And then, as he dozed off in a stupor, the ill-planned meal and pinot got to work inside his stomach.

[aTOMiC]

Mallory suddenly awoke, startled by an odd sound which turned out to be the piranhamice gnawing on the remains of a chicken bone lying on the floor only ten feet away which sent Mallory into a frantic scramble to get to his feet; he then ran down the corridor to the final hatch and began hurriedly searching for a handle or lock mechanism with which to open the door and found none but then the overhead speakers of the ship's intercom suddenly crackled to life and a familiar voice recited an even more familiar greeting, "Mallory, you magnificent bastard!"

[wayfriend]

"Leave my mom out of it!" cried Mallory, who, on many levels, had no idea where to go from here.

[aTOMiC]

Then Mallory suddenly recognized the voice and felt nauseous as the realization that none other than his ex-wife, Captain Cassandra Farragut, was in command of Southerland Castle and was probably behind the numerous attempts on his life from the moment he entered the ship; "Um...Cassandra...would you be a lamb and open the hatch for your long lost schmooky-bottom before I am eaten by these carnivorous death-rodents?"

[wayfriend]

While waiting for a reply, he pondered the cosmic significance of his ex-wife having possession of the lost pieces of his soul.

[aTOMiC]

Since there was no immediate answer, Mallory began to wonder if he'd just imagined Cassandra's voice but after a few moments he heard the electronic locks of the hatch cycle open and the door instantly swung inward; Mallory was struck silent when he saw Cassandra standing just inside the hatchway, she had the unmitigated nerve to look absolutely breathtaking; her curled, crimson hair tumbled down upon her shoulders past her beautiful, perfect face which was only surpassed by the bright-blue, spandex catsuit she wore like a shiny, second skin covering her curvy but athletic form, "Um...uh...er...um...er...uh..." Mallory mumbled absently.

[wayfriend]

Just then the Cassandra jumped a bit, and then tilted to the side ... and then her middle section slid to the left ... and then her image dissolved into holographic static, accompanied by the sharp pop of a blown electronic circuit, revealing a small, old, wizened man with a bald pate above a shock of white hair, who was wearing a motion-capture rig over his lab coat, and who had incongruously cocked his hips and held out his hand for kissing.

[aTOMiC]

Mallory was both shocked and relieved, but mostly confused, and he stood frozen with his mouth hanging open while trying to compute what had just transpired, however before he could utter a sound a massive explosion ripped through the side of the ship near the bridge sending the old man skittering across the deck to slam unmercifully against the far bulkhead before being whip-lashed back across the room and immediately ejected through the damaged wall and out into space; the concussion of the blast blew Mallory backward off his feet to slam into the deck within inches of the leading edge of the advancing line of piranhamice and then back upward over a nearby railing to then immediately plunge down ten meters to the next deck, then crashing into a stack of boxes that were fortuitously filled with packing popcorn.

[dANdeLION]

Looking around to see if there were any more asinine threats scurrying about, Mallory noticed that everything was about to implode under the crushing weight of the ponderous, inept, and dysfunctional plot.

[aTOMiC]

Unfortunately the hull breach was sucking the atmosphere out of Southerland Castle at an alarming rate and the only way to stop it was to climb back up to the top level and close the hatch to the bridge manually; the idea of which made Mallory feel dizzy and nauseous like an agoraphobic riding a mile high roller-coaster without a seat-belt while wearing a tuxedo made of live rattlesnakes and rusty hand grenades.

[wayfriend]

Then Mallory remembered the navigation shielding that he had discovered on page 4, and realized that the ship would probably be fine, which alleviated a lot of his anxiety, so he was able to climb the stairs relatively calmly in order to discover what had caused such a ponderously coincidental explosion, whereupon he noticed a pair of white knuckles clinging to desperately to the edge of the hole torn in the wall, which caused his anxiety to return, for he recognized those knuckles, knew without a doubt whose they were, and that filled him with the kind of trepidation that only authors of a story written one sentence at a time can feel.

[aTOMiC]

Mallory looked aghast at the gruesome sight of the disembodied knuckles, which had belonged to someone he knew, but just then the navigation shielding failed due to the aforementioned massive explosion that had torn a major hole in the wall of the bridge which also destroyed most of the command consoles but especially the really important knobs, levers and dials that were directly linked to the Navigation shield generator which miraculously re-started itself after being knocked out by the initial explosion but then failed completely after Mallory made the almost unimaginable choice to calmly walk back up the staircase to find out what had happend and due to this baffling lack of judgement, Mallory himself was sucked out into the galactic void of space and he watched in abject horror as the long cylinder of Southerland Castle drifted further and further away; Mallory knew he had but seconds to live and frantically searched around to find some way to re enter the ship but he only spied two hands worth of knuckles floating by with a noticeable sheen of ice building up on them, reflecting the dim starlight peeking through the cold, black curtain of doom.