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    Marrow's Legacy
    Marrow's Legacy
    Marrow's Legacy
    Ebook83 pages57 minutes

    Marrow's Legacy

    By Keith Deininger

    ()

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    About this ebook

    At the center of Meridian, deified by its citizens for countless generations—a vast compound of spires and interconnecting tunnels—the Machine, relentlessly, clanked on and on.

    Within, among rumors of a horrible crime involving his childhood friend Ballard, Eli Sol lives a simple life as a maintenance worker, spending his days cleaning the endless corridors of the Machine. Eli is content and happy, with Nora, his wonderful wife, and Pia, his intelligent and imaginative daughter. But soon, following tragedy, Eli will be forced to confront a legacy passed down to him for innumerable generations. He will begin a journey that will take him away from everything he’s ever known, to a place filled with wonder...and death.

    The Flood is coming...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKeith Deininger
    Release dateOct 11, 2015
    ISBN9781311203045
    Marrow's Legacy
    Author

    Keith Deininger

    "Like Bradbury on acid" (Greg Gifune, The Bleeding Season), Keith Deininger is an award-winning author known for blending elements of fantasy with horror in his surreal, literary style. His work is often described as disturbing, surreal and cinematic, "its tutelary spirits are Barker and Lynch, Carpenter and Cronenberg" (Peter Tennant, Black Static Magazine) and he has been called "one of the finest writers of imaginative fiction out there" (Craig Saunders, Deadlift). Deininger grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado where he wrote some of his first stories while in grade school, odd tales about finding dead people in the basement and about waking up in strange worlds. He then moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico where, in high school, he won first place in a science fiction writing contest judged by Ray Bradbury, who presented him with the award and said, "I really enjoyed your story." In college, at the University of New Mexico where he received his BA in creative writing, Deininger focused for a time on poetry, winning an Editor's Choice Award in the literary magazine Conceptions Southwest for his poem "Grandma." His first novel, The New Flesh, was published in 2013 to critical acclaim, called a "dark and sinister debut" (Ronald Malfi, Little Girls), and Deininger hailed as a "prodigious talent" (Jon Bassoff, Corrosion). His follow up, Ghosts of Eden, was equally well received as a "twisted masterpiece" (Allan Leverone, Tracie Tanner thrillers) and a "psychedelic journey through alternative realities, familial relationships and the mysteries of the mind." Deininger has since published several novels and novellas, including the horror novel Within ("Best horror 2015", Michael Patrick Hicks) and the "Mcarthyesque fever-dream" (C. M. Muller) Fevered Hills. He is also the author of A Game for Gods, the first title in a highly anticipated, literary and imaginative dark fantasy series. www.KeithDeininger.com

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      Book preview

      Marrow's Legacy - Keith Deininger

      Marrow’s Legacy © 2015 by Keith Deininger

      Cover design by Sumrow Art and Illustration

      Editor: Kari Sanders

      www.KeithDeininger.com

      This book may or may not be a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or evidence of fictional realism. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, may or may not be entirely coincidental.

      Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

      Get a free copy of the acclaimed Meridian Codex fantasy, Shadow Animals, when you sign up to join my Reader’s Group.

      Click here to get started: www.keithdeininger.com/get-a-free-book

      The world began in hazard and will end in it.

      ― John Fowles, The Magus

      NUNTIUS EX MACHINA

      (MESSAGE FROM THE MACHINE)

      At the center of Meridian, consumed by the unending rains and murky grayness of the Maelstrom, a vast compound of spires and interconnecting tunnels, of vents belching steam and domes blurred by sluicing water, of massive girders and gears, it continued to stand, as it had for countless generations: the Machine. Within, metal ground relentlessly against metal, ironworks clanked and hissed—oily smoke and tar—its machinations maintained by its citizens, who worshipped its power and its strength without question or understanding of its true purpose or origin. The Machine created and the Machine destroyed. There was nothing but the Machine.

      Immense halls and endless corridors circled and turned in labyrinthine patterns, coming round and through row upon row of cramped living units, then upon tunnels of odd, multicolored lights—sometimes coming to abrupt dead ends with seemingly no purpose, or spiraling downward before opening into spaces dark and dank and abandoned—plunging into huge factories where machines with mechanical arms toiled to construct and paint, conveyer belts hummed, glass was blown into various shapes, things spun and twirled and flew. And in each sector, no matter its purpose, a common room in which people gathered for meetings and discussions and, most importantly, HaloMachina, weekly services in which the Machine was celebrated and worshipped, the largest being the cathedral in sector one, deep within the Machine, at its very center, in which a strange device long thought to be no longer functioning began to blink and ring, having been silent and still for innumerable generations…

      ~

      Bill Trident noticed it first while sweeping the floors. He stopped what he was doing and walked over to it. The light was a greasy yellow, blinking slowly, as if with a great effort, but the ringing coming from the mesh set into the wall behind the podium, beneath the great window of colorful glass depicting David the Enlightened, was shrill and insistent. Bill blinked at it and ground his teeth, as was his habit when faced with a situation in which he wasn’t sure what he should do. He propped his broom against the wall and reached his hand out. The device vibrated as it rung. He lifted it with a click and the ringing stopped. It remained attached by a wire to the wall. Bill waited a moment, then, when nothing happened, he placed the device back into place and shrugged. He picked up his broom and was just about to continue his duties when the ringing began again. Bill dropped his broom and ran to fetch Father Bodum.

      Father Bodum lived at the end of a long hallway, an offshoot of the cathedral, windowless, terminating in a single round door, like the entrance to a vault, although it secured only modest living quarters. Bill rapped his knuckles on the metal, then, when he remembered the buzzer, pushed it once and then again and again.

      After a minute or two, Bill could hear the lock being drawn and the door swung inward. What? Father Bodum said, stepping into the opening, looking strange, to Bill, in his civilian clothing.

      Uh...well…

      What is it, Bill? Father Bodum said, a greenish light blinking from within his chambers.

      There’s, ah, something making noise.

      Father Bodum brought his hands up and put his fingers together so that they mirrored each other. Yes. The Machine works in mysterious ways. Now, please let me be. He began to swing the door shut.

      Ringing, Bill said. It’s ringing!

      Father Bodum sighed, holding the door. What’s ringing?

      Something by your podium, beneath the window.

      "There’s something ringing beneath the window? Beneath David’s Trial?"

      Bill nodded his head vigorously. Yeah, that’s right.

      Father Bodum held up his hands in surrender. Fine, he said, stepping out into the hallway and pulling the door shut.

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