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Black-Toothed Grin is the new Suspense-Thriller by Todd Miland, available soon, that fuses mind-warping allusions regarding our true purpose in the grand scheme with dark, gripping action and inventive characterizations of those surreptitious forces that truly guide the mechanizations of our world. Is your neighbor, that frail woman quietly gardening across the way, something more than the kind-hearted dowager that she seems? Is the brash teenager terrorizing the sidewalks actually a sinister illusion? Who could ever be sure - their lives mired in the trappings of a routined existence? Who looks up long enough to care? The truth is rarely so easily decipherable and taking a step back for a clearer view has its consequences. For those who've inadvertantly stumbled upon the chilling deception, life can never be the same - should they survive at all.
The Burgess Thickets was a curious plot of rural Wisconsin land - unsettling to even the most sensible, steely natives of the U Upper-Midwest. The secrets that the chilling woods holds were never meant to be uncovered and now, knowingly exposed, will propel a unlikely band of the heros towards the very heights of wonder and the depths of terror.
Happy reading…
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Were anyone to span a rule between footprints, the pattern depressed into the sand would confound even the most gifted mathematician. Even modern methods of measurement would have proved inadequate – incapable of drilling the uniformity down to its ‘N’th degree. Although evidence was being accumulated (at an absolute pace), such precise regularity was simply impossible to calculate. The laws of physics plainly should not allow for such precision to exist in so imperfect a World.
Even the slightest misstep could be catastrophic.
The face of Doctor Kay Briggs should have been much easier to gauge. There was nothing. Her features read like a short story filled with blank pages – devoid of content or imagining – her skin every bit the stark, pallid emptiness that was her expression. Of course, some of the blame might have been attributed to her Scottish heritage. The doctor’s fair complexion was common to her birthright, along with the fire-bright trusses. This particular hue of red, however, would be impossible to discern in its distinction under a sky that had given up all willingness to conspire any further. Blue was now virtually orange, a contrast in color and of a normality turned frightening by way of subtle transform. Under its wash, the doctor’s hair appeared white.
But the sky’s transformation was not as inconspicuous as preceding deceits – a striking revelation that was far too difficult for one to inadvertently dismiss. The reassuring veil of familiarity had been brusquely torn free. Shedding the gossamer with little resentment, the World finally revealed herself for what she truly was - a fraud and a harlot. She would no longer suffer shame or guilt over betraying her subjects, her lovers, in the name of petty vanity. Any shallow beauty she’d been bestowed was merely the illusion it had always been on each previous application. With trappings discarded, the World had become ugly once more.
The dream was all too real as Kay brushed against an outcropping of sharp Bluestone. The gash on her colorless shin went unnoticed. Arriving at this juncture, the fact that she’d injured herself at all was something of an anomaly - glitches that had been typically less obvious, unlike the collection of biting rocks. The summit’s highest peak changed abruptly – in eerie transition – before righting in a waver. The charade was starting to fold.
… Nobody there to notice…
When she was merely a child, Kay had visited the ruins outside West Amesbury as a tourist. She’d come with her ‘Mither’ and ‘Fayther’, along with her five older siblings to view the wonder. It appeared much different then. On this day the stones were no longer broken and the massive structure had been reorganized into unimaginable splendor – a flawless archway. Although unadorned and mirror smooth, its beauty flowed from the simplicity of shape and refinement. Typically dark stones had been reshuffled and blanched white under the changing sky, set ablaze by a severe sun. Mist now settled between the stanchions of the structure – a phenomenon in contradiction to the scorching, dry morning. As the haze congealed, a gateway was fashioned amidst the swirling vapor. The barrier appeared no less impenetrable than if it were formed of much denser matter.
Had Merlin had come back to restore his masterpiece, summoning the giants from the ground of Salisbury Plain to aid in his task? As is generally the case, legends contrived to answer the unexplainable fall far from reality’s mark. They only serve to further spice the expanding fiction that is history. Who could ever trust the record of Man’s past, given his short and selective memory? Although a rare exception, truth on this occasion would be considerably more fantastic than any imagining.
The snow upon Kay Briggs hair and slender shoulders eventually melted to evaporate into an arid sky – the spotty wetness drying. Any opportunity for acclimation was short-lived. The seemingly erratic course that had first guided her through rolling grasslands and across a stretch of frozen ocean, now deposited Kay at the feet of the lush forest circumventing an ancient and imposing formation - Stonehenge. Preoccupied with her own disenchantment, the World showed little concern for anyone else’s comfort. Environments were randomly interchanging without relationship. At least the gray, wool skirt and blazer Kay wore would no longer coax prickly perspiration or prove inadequate against the icy extremes. Not that it really mattered. Any discomfort would not have registered.
There was the briefest of moments when Kay mimicked the understandable awe one might experience from a sight so impressive as the archway stretched before her. The doctor’s delicate, pink lips parted in mock astonishment, but it was more the echo of an encoded response then reveling in the splendor. Any symptom of awareness was but sleight of hand. Even if she’d seen them, the seven others would have gone unnoticed as she passed. They’d gathered in a clearing just outside the line of strange, unfamiliar trees guarding admission into the forest - nearly a hundred yards due east and a hair’s breadth below the doctor’s line of sight. Her spirit stolen, instructions given and carried out now followed a set programming. It would have been impossible for Kay to have diverted from the specified path – her destination already predetermined.
She’d come so close… unfortunately there was no prize awarded second place. If it weren’t for the one mistake she’d made - that lone, critical misstep that cost her everything and affected her fate into a spiral. The choice seemed so harmless at the time, but all her hard work and self-sacrifice would amount to nothing in the end. This would not be her time. While salvation had seemed so close at hand, the mirage proved only that. There would be no tomorrow for Doctor Kay Briggs. With little more than a tremble, her body strained south - away from Stonehenge gate and into the gnarled clutches of the strange, untamed forest.
It wasn’t long before the mouth of a fissure could be spotted through the expanding gloom that had been clouding her mind and vision. This was a much different portal than the other. Thick tangled vines, like fleshless limbs, waved in the rising winds – beckoning her inside. As the air grew increasingly violent, her whipping red mane plastered against her face to obscure sight. The added blindness was irrelevant when compared the void that had already stolen her senses. Nearing the doorway, enshrouded by her wind-lashed tresses, she seemed haloed in flame. Unconscious motion compelled her across the mossy footpath towards her inescapable fate. Floating like an apparition, she passed between barbed stalactites and stalagmites that protruded like venomous fangs. Doctor Kay Briggs vanished like a fleeting shadow into the jaws of the mirthless, black-toothed grin.
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