The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe - 1842

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The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death".

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Ozymandias by Horace Smith

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

– Horace Smith 1815

A Tale by Edward Thomas

There once the walls
Of the ruined cottage stood.
The periwinkle crawls
With flowers in its hair into the wood.

In flowerless hours
Never will the bank fail,
With everlasting flowers
On fragments of blue plates, to tell the tale.

Darkness by Lord Byron

Darkness is a poem written by Lord Byron in July 1816. That year was known as the Year Without a Summer - this is because Mount Tambora had erupted in the Dutch East Indies the previous year, casting enough ash in to the atmosphere to block out the sun and cause abnormal weather across much of north-east America and northern Europe. This pall of darkness inspired Byron to write his poem. Literary critics were initially content to classify it as a "last man" poem, telling the apocalyptic story of the last man on earth. More recent critics have focused on the poem's historical context, as well as the anti-biblical nature of the poem, despite its many references to the Bible.

Darkness
by Lord Byron
1816

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy Earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crownéd kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the World contained;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenchéd hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past World; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnashed their teeth and howled: the wild birds shrieked,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again:—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no Love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was Death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shrieked, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The World was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

Thundarr the Barbarian - Magical Mystery Treasure by Sheila Shillingburg

From Thundarr.com, Thundarr the Barbarian - Matical Mystery Treasure is the second of two fan fiction stories by Sheila Shillingburg.

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THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN: MAGICAL MYSTERY TREASURE
By: Sheila Shillingburg

CHAPTER 1
POST APOCALYPSE

In the near future, a comet broke loose from its predetermined orbit, and streaked through space. It passed too close between the earth and the moon, tearing away some of the Earth's protective atmosphere. The moon shattered under the sudden burst of gravitational pull.

Down on the earth, things were no better. The earth quaked, volcanoes erupted, tsunamis washed away beaches, and whatever else happened to have been built there. Every sign of civilization was either destroyed or laid to ruin.

After a thousand years, people re-built their lives from the destruction. Like the mythical phoenix, a bird that rose from its own ashes, civilization began its slow return.

But, the new world that emerged was one rather primitive by our standards. A brutal, savage world of slaves, super-science, and sorcery. One man, a slave by the name of Thundarr, burst his bonds to fight for freedom and justice. Accompanied by the beast-like Ookla the Mok, and Princess Ariel, the sorceress who had helped Thundarr to free himself, he set about righting the wrongs of the future, and challenging the absolute rule of the tyrants. Armed with a powerful, magic sun sword, given to him by Ariel, and a hair-trigger temper, Thundarr was well equipped for battle.

Unfortunately, his knowledge of the past was limited to the few remnants he saw about him. A broken streetlight here, a priceless BMW--now smashed to bits and pieces--there. Although Thundarr and Ookla appreciated the learning of the past, and those who remembered it, they were ignorant of it. Only Princess Ariel knew anything at all about the vanished world. Her grandfather had taught her to read, and she had read almost every book in the library of her stepfather, the evil wizard Sabian. So, it was Ariel who knew the tales whispered by the ruins.

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Thundarr the Barbarian - How to Catch a Vampire by Sheila Shillingburg

From Thundarr.com, Thundarr the Barbarian - How to Catch a Vampire is the first of two fan-fiction stories by Sheila Shillingburg.

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THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN: HOW TO CATCH A VAMPIRE
By: Sheila Shillingburg

CHAPTER 1
ENTERING LAS VEGAS

Horse's hooves pounded the ground, and a trio of riders crested the hill. The lights of the desert oasis were beginning to come on, creating a twinkling labyrinth. The blond leader of the trio looked over it all. The beast-like creature woth him growled a question.
"People of the past enjoyed a sport called gambling," the raven haired woman with them began in explanation. "They created this town for their habits, and called it Las Vegas."

Their leader, Thundarr, made a move as if to turn away from the twinkling valley. "Maybe we should find a calnmer oasis," he suggested. But, his horse whinnied in protest.

"It's getting late, Thundarr," Princess Ariel said. "And, we're going to need a place to camp for the night."

In the animalistic tongue of his people, Ookla pointed out that this was the first oasis they had come to after days of riding. Their stores of food and water needed replenishing. Thundarr agreed that his freinds were right, and turned back to the futuristic Las Vegas.

The future had not been kind to Las Vegas, as it had not been kind to the rest of the earth. A comet had passed too close to the earth, shattering the moon; and tearing away some of the earth's protective atmosphere. The comet had lkong gone off into space, but left Earth in ruins.

After a thousand years, people rebuilt their lives from the ruins. But, the new world that emerged was one rather primitive, by our standards. A brutal world of slaves, super-science, and sorcery.

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Tales of a Blood Earth by Steven Montano

In the time after The Black, humans battle against the onslaught of the vampire armies of the Ebon Cities.

In a desolate patch of remote wasteland, a young woman named Rooke, part of a group of prisoners held by the corrupt prison wardens called The Revengers, struggles to stay alive. Ordered to unearth a terrible chamber of ancient power and hounded by once-frozen vampire savages, Rooke's journey into darkness will reveal forgotten secrets of the conflict that has brought The Black to our world.

But will Rooke survive long enough to tell anyone?

This 9,300 word short story originally appeared as a web-fiction series at www.bloodskies.com. This newly compiled edition also features new cover art and a sneak preview of Book 3 in the BLOOD SKIES series, "SOULRAZOR", coming March of 2012!

View Steven's other works at BloodSkies.com.

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TALES OF A BLOOD EARTH

one

Rooke saw red water and black skies.

She was dizzy. Her lips were dry and cracked.

The trees behind her formed a dark wall. Dirty golden light tried to break through the charcoal clouds, but couldn’t. Bodies crawled and toiled in the shadows on the bleak plains.

“Dig!”

The mud was as black as coal. Shards of shattered rock and blanched bones shifted in the crumbling morass. Her hands bled. Blisters and cuts riddled her pale skin beneath the ebon muck.

The air smelled of sulfur. To the west, the dark land went on forever. They dug holes at the edge of nowhere.

Rooke closed her eyes, just for a moment. In her mind, she escaped back to the swamp, where she used to hide on hot summer days and wait for miniature crocodiles to float by in the water so that she and her brother could catch them. They were quite good at it, really.

That was before she’d become a prisoner. Chattel of Black Scar.

A rod struck her from behind. Pain flared down her back. Rooke cried out.

“I said dig!”

There were twelve prisoners in all. Rooke was one of the only humans; most of the rest were Lith, Doj, or Gol. They weren’t allowed to speak, and as far as she had guessed they came from different cell blocks of Black Scar. She’d never seen any of her fellow diggers before they’d been put on the ship that morning, and when the day was done she doubted she’d ever see any of them again.

Revengers were close by. There were two men and a woman. Rooke didn’t know their names. The Revengers never told the inmates their names. They wore tight-fitting leather armor with enameled black shoulder plates, tall boots, and leather gauntlets. One of the men paced the ground in front of the diggers, his boots slurping in the cold mud. The other two stood on the ridge just in front of the line of trees, watching, joking about which prisoner would be the first to fall down from exhaustion and drown in the mud.

Rooke was sixteen. She’d been a prisoner in Black Scar for only a few weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. It was a dank and bottomless place, a dark and subterranean hell filled with violence and fear.

It was just as bad there, on the fields of dark mud. They might have been near Blackmarsh. There was no sign of civilization anywhere. The airship had brought them there, and those that survived the day-long dig would be flown back and dumped into their cells with a few scraps of whatever hadn’t been eaten by the other prisoners.

She dug, her hands numb. She tried to think again of the swamp, and of her brother, but she was afraid if she did that the Revengers would somehow know, and she would be struck again. So she dug, and tears made black from the mud ran down her face.

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A Plutonium Record by Maria Stanislav

This would be done in the memory of all musicians survived by their art...

The world has ended. Not entirely - it never really does that. Yet many things would never be the same again. As time goes on, people try to restore some semblance of the normality that used to be. Yet while everyone is busy trying to rebuild their own lives around them, some things lie forgotten, everyone's and no one's at the same time. Is it any surprise that the first person to remember about them is someone who has no life left to rebuild? Back in the old world, music had never failed to be of invaluable help to her. In the new one, she can repay the favor.

Visit Maria's site at https://thecoffeeclef.wordpress.com.

Read A Plutonium Record below, or download in PDF here.

To John and Patrick
(probably the entirely wrong place for a dedication)

Some say we are the cursed generation. On some days, I am sorely tempted to agree. After all, we have faced global warming and ensuing climate chaos, the gradual destruction of the ozone layer and the melting of ice shelves. We have seen innocent numbers become symbols of the death of thousands, and female names growing to be associated with disasters. We have experienced trepidation as the end of the century and the millennium coincided, and some follow-up on that as different calendars forecasted their own versions of the apocalypse.

Did it make us less cursed, or even more so, that we tended to laugh in the face of all that? Too many fears, too many tragedies – could anyone blame us for becoming maybe a bit more callous than was appropriate? Callousness can be both a blessing and a curse, in my experience. We could make fun of things we were supposed to be afraid of, and it helped. To an extent, at least. Because all those scares, they were hardly sufficient to earn us the name we could have bragged about under different circumstances, as did some X-ers, and then Y-ers, and as would the Z-ers, if there were a generation Z. But the real reason we were dubbed cursed was the fact that among the things we had witnessed was the end of the world. Even for us, that was rather hard to laugh off.

I lay the pen down and stretch my fingers, clenching and unclenching the fist a few times. Three years, and I still have trouble writing with my left hand.

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Cathartes Aura and the Apocalypse Zoo by Eighty Six The Poet

Cathartes Aura and the Apocalypse Zoo is a one-thousand line post-apocalyptic novel-in-verse about a zoo on the day no one showed up, narrated by a captive turkey vulture. Written in 10 by 10 format. Episode 2: "Cathartes Aura on the Road from Nowhere" is due to be released in August, 2011.

Visit Eight Six the Poet's site at http://eightysixthepoet.blogspot.com

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Cathartes Aura and the Apocalypse Zoo
Published by Eighty Six  
Copyright 2011 Eighty Six
 
Chapter One
 
Off day at the zoo.  No one came to work.
The gates were not unchained.  No tourists tapped
At the glass, grackled, squawked, mimicked the birds.
And we were never fed.  Three times a day
They liked to throw us parts: legs furred with hooves,
Hindquarters with the tail, heads with antlers
Or horns attached.  Every beak grab a gland
And tug, twist, flap with all your appetite.
Get your gutful before they pull the corpse.
End of show.  But the gawkers, they loved it.
 
Pressed their cheeks and faces into the glass.
Strobe shots from lenses and flashbulbs.  Big-eared
Buck-toothy profiles uglying my view,
Laughing in languages, throwing chocolates
At the children and monkeys running loose.
Sketch artists with pads on easels, scratching,
Brushing, crushing graphite into pulp.  Bent
Foreheads and frowns.  Crooked caps and wire-frames.
Grunting and waving off kids, they stop, stand
To smoke, to hiss and nod at their markings.
 
But no one today.  No chap-stick blowfish.
No high-pitched docents.  The straw-hat lady
Did not enter with rake and bag, cooing
Like a dove, whistling like a finch, to scrape
Feathers, dung, and coughed meat from our sawdust.
The two men with the cart did not roll up:
One strangled the garbage while the other
Snapped on fresh plastic.  The can overflows
With half-eaten dogs, unwanted lunches
And fly-buzzed cans stinking outside our cage.

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The Prophet.com by Brent Knowles

This is a story about the early years of the post apocalyptic hero Wanderer and tells of his search for his missing wife. He has not yet found his battlesuit and his foes in this tale are his fellow humans, the ones, like him, who have survived the end of days.

This story was originally published in END OF DAYS: AN APOCALYPTIC ANTHOLOGY VOLUME 2 published by Living Dead Press.  You can see more of Mr Knowles work on Amazon.

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THE PROPHET.COM
by Brent Knowles

The helicopter disappears beyond the horizon and Wanderer returns his attention to the laptop sitting awkwardly on his knees, sharing space with a can of cold beans. He digs into the beans with a plastic spork as he views the web site behind his dust-covered screen. A photo of a large man with wide, powerful eyes, stares back at him.

It surprises him that these remnants of the old order linger still. Web sites: illusory constructs, full of ideas and utterly lacking in physical substance -- devoid even of the paper reality of a book. Of course, they too will fade eventually as power grids collapse and the servers of the world die. Well enough. As long as this one site remains, even if only to goad him.

He snaps the laptop shut, drops it into the bag where he carries his dwindling supply of batteries, and stands up, stretching, bones popping back into place. He takes a moment to stare across the badlands surrounding him and with a heavy sigh he picks up his equipment. There's less than when he started out. He walks. Dust rolls across his boots.

Figures approach Wanderer. He watches them out of his sun-squinting eyes as his hand drops to his gun but he does not worry. They are Scavengers and he is not a corpse. He watches them disappear into the sand dunes and wonders where they came from. Would they trek from Calgary all the way out here? Unless-

Adrenaline raises his pulse. Taking a swig of dry water from his canteen he carries on, wiping a callused hand over his bearded face and catching the pearls of water that cling to it. Ducking his head, he plows through the field of wind towards his destination. He walks for the day. Dusk comes before Salvation. But he knows it is near. He can smell the metal in the air, can almost taste it. That night he sleeps restlessly on sharp earth.

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