eBooks „hurt“
483 eBooks were found for the search term „hurt“.
Ben Agar
Secret War: Warhammer 40,000
- Science Fiction
- English
- 5742 Words
- Ages 16 and up
- 199
Despite my newfound determination, I found I couldn't run much farther, making it only five or six metres down the corridor, before stopping to catch my breath again.
+Attelus,+ said Karmen. +Attelus you've got to keep moving.+
I nodded and forced my body onward, ambling while using my forearm to pull myself along the corridor, glancing around at every crash and roar that echoed through the building from Darrance's and the daemons' struggle. There were, without doubt, more daemons; I had to be careful.
I made it to the end of the corridor, finding another window.
With battered, bloody and hurt hands, I clumsily slid it open and leaned to look outside. The next building over was another long, six-story hab unit. It was nearly a three-metre gap, and the nearest fire escape was a few windows on my left.
I quickly recalled that there was a fork in the corridor a while back. Most of all, what caught my attention was the light; the blood-red light had grown in intensity. It was like my eyes had blown their blood vessels. I sighed, about to push back into the building but stopped as I felt slight droplets of rain on my head.
I blanched in bemusement and looked up at the thick, crimson clouds above. It never rained in the underhive; it couldn't rain in the underhive; the ceiling of the over hive forever prevented that. The few droplets quickly escalated into a full-on downpour, but I couldn't see the rain; I could hear it, feel it, but couldn't see it. I reeled inside, abruptly shut the window and backed away in disgust and horror.
It was raining blood, frigging blood.
Another great crash down the hall made me jump and brought me back to reality. I turned and ran to the intersection, turning right. As much I didn't want to go outside, I had to get to the roof; it was the best way to go. Making it to the next turn, I ran to the fire escape door and, without looking back, opened it and stepped outside.
The force of the blood rain hit me like a punch to the jaw, and I raised my arm to protect my face with a growl of anger and fighting the urge to vomit. I started up the metal staircase.
Edracian wasn't just throwing daemons at me but the very elements. I couldn't help but take some pride in that. Clenching my teeth, I trod carefully, all the while clutching hard at the handrail to keep my feet on the treacherous, slick surface.
Finally, I made it to the top and looked about, trying to find this church. I saw it through the blood-red, a large, two-story monastic and overly grandiose thing; its two towers which stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the simplistic hab buildings around it. It would've been gaudy if it wasn't in such disrepair. My brow furrowed involuntarily, the Ecclesiarchy, always having the thrones to build such monstrosities but never really helping those in need. Ohh, they did but only 'spiritually', which meant nothing to me and not just that they'd charge for it too. I shook away such thoughts and walked to the other side of the roof.
After wiping my sticky, blood-slicked hair from my eyes, I spun on my heels, fell into a sprint and lunged over the three-metre gap.
Landing well, I finished into a crouch and ran to the next edge, stopping to look along the side, trying to find another way down.
The tallest building was only four stories high and was a good one hundred metres away, which would've made me curse, but I froze in fear as I saw daemons, frigging dozens of the bastards. They stood perfectly still throughout the streets and the buildings below. As I noticed them, all their snouts simultaneously snapped upward, somehow looking straight at me. Desperate with utter terror, I threw myself to the floor, although I suspected it was fruitless.
"Karmen! Karmen! You could've frigging warned me of this!" I hissed through clenched teeth.
It took a good few seconds before Karmen finally replied that her voice was pained and distant when she did. +Warn you of what Attelus? I am sorry, I am...busy. I cannot see everything.+
Slowly, I climbed up and peered over the buttress, but what I saw scared me even more. All the daemons were all gone.
+Attelus? What's wrong?+ "I-" My reply was interrupted by a massive crash followed by another, then another that came from below.
I furrowed my brow in bemusement, climbed to my feet; then the realisation hit me; it hit me hard.
+Attelus!+ "They're collapsing the frigging building!" I roared, more to myself than to her, and as if on cue, the roof under my feet began to sway and tilt, making me stumble to keep my feet. Panic gripped me so hard I couldn't think straight, and I sprinted straight for one of the rooftop doors. Then found much to my distress; it locked. Without thinking, I kicked at the door; the first did nothing, the second not much more. It was only after the fifth that my panicked mind finally remembered, I was carrying a frigging powersword. I activated it, sliced through the thick lock. [more]
Keywords: warhammer, character-driven, 1st person perspective, action, assassins, inquisition, 40k, warhammer 40k, battle, swordsman, mercenaries, fanfiction, neo-noir, noir, cyberpunk, corporate espionage, infiltration, gang wars, psychological thriller [more]
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BS Murthy
Sundara Kãnda: Hanuman's Odyssey
- Religion
- English
- 40926 Words
- Ages 16 and up
- 693
- 3
WhileMahabharata's Bhagvad-Gita is taken as a philosophical guide, Ramayana's Sundara Kãnda is sought for spiritual solace; many believe that reading Sundara Kãnda or hearing it recited would remove all hurdles and usher in good tidings!
Miracles apart, it's in the nature of Sundara Kãnda to inculcate fortitude and generate hope in man for it’s a depiction of how Hanuman goes about his errand against all odds.
Besides, it portrays how Seetha, on the verge of self-immolation, overcomes despair to see life in a new light?
With rhythm of its verse and the flow of the narrative this sloka to sloka transcreation of the canto beautiful of Valmiki's adi kavya - the foremost poetical composition in the world, Hanuman's Odyssey that paves the way for Rama to rescue his kidnapped wife is bound to charm the readers and listeners alike.
Interestingly, as the following verse illustrates, it was the forerunner of the magic realism of our times – “Gripped she then him by shadow / Cast which Hanuman coast to coast, Recalled he in dismay then / What Sugreev said at outset / That one fiend had aptitude / To grip its prey by mere shadow.”
On a personal note, my paternal grandfather, Bulusu Thimmaiah-garu, like many in his time, was a life-long practitioner of Sundara Kãnda parayana (the epic’s daily recital in part or full), whose spirituality could have providentially guided me in this, rather an effortless, trans-creative endeavour.
Cantos of the Kanda
1 - Hurdles in Skies
2 - City in Clouds
3 - Prelude to Entry
4 - Foray into Fort
5 - Life in Lanka
6 - Precincts to Beat
7 - Palace in the Plane
8 - Pushpak’s Prowess
9 - Harem at Night
10 - Women in Want
11 - Qualms of Celibate
12 - At Wits End
13 - Errand in the Bend
14 - Garden of Grief
15 - Withered Flower
16 - She is Seetha
17 - Guards all Hideous
18 - Ravan on Heat
19 - Dame in Despair
20 - Womanizer at Work
21 - Steadfast in Love
22 - Deadline to Death
23 - Guards that Pander
24 - Carrot and Stick
25 - Hapless Soul
26 - Wandering Thoughts
27 - Dream of a Nightmare
28 - On the Verge
29 - Good Tidings
30 - Hanuman’s Dilemma
31 - Rama’s Ballad
32 - Is it True?
33 - Genesis of Exile
34 - Swings in Mood
35 - Winning the Trust
36 - More of the Same
37 - Aborted Move
38 - Story to Tell
39 - Doubts to the Fore
40 - Repeats the Dose
41 - Rampage in the Park
42 - Panic in the Town
43 -Itching for Fight
44 -Takes on Prahastha’s Son
45 - Marshals in the Mire
46 - Generals in the Dumps
47 - Akshay’s Life on Line
48 - It takes Indrajit
49 - Ravan’s Darbar
50 - Cause of Loss
51 - Advice to Deliver
52- Placates the Sibling
53 - Tail on Fire
54 - Arson to Hurt
55 - What of Seetha?
56 - Havoc of a Take-off
57 - Flight sans Hassles
58 - Odyssey in a Nutshell
59 - Pep Talk to Peers
60 - Angad on Rebound
61 - Eying the Madhuvan
62 - Orgy in the Garden
63 - Sugreev’s Reading
64 - Return of the Platoon
65 - News in Brief
66 - Tears in Torrents
67 - Hanuman’s Replay
68 - Times of Hope
Yuddha Kanda: War on Ravan
01- Embrace of a Gift
02- Coronation and After [more]
Keywords: Indian mythology, Ramayana, Sundara Kanda, Rama's story, Lanka, Hanuman, Sita's captivity, Sanskrit Classics, Religion, Hinduism, Hindu mythology, Sanskrit epics, Hindu epics, Indian epics, Valmiki, Rama, Sita, Ravana, epic poetry, epic verse, epic Indian verse, epic Hindu verse, verse, Indian verse, Religion and Spirituality [more]
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Susan Willingham
Crystal Masquerade
- Short Story
- English
- 1508 Words
- No Age Recommendation
- 496
- 2
CRYSTAL MASQUERADE
By Susan Willingham
The girl didn’t know how she got there, but it seemed as though she had been with them her entire life. She had suddenly found herself living with a family where the people were made of crystals. They had the form of a normal flesh and blood person, but there were tiny, gleaming jewels of different colors making up their eyes, lips, hair, and skin. They looked like crystal dolls. The entire family was outwardly beautiful, each part of their perfect bodies sparkling with colorful clarity. The mother had black hair, each strand consisting of tiny gems of shimmering blue-black onyx. Her eyes were of a brilliant sapphire, emblazoned with a radiant light, so brilliant that it was impossible to look at them for more than a few seconds at a time. Her lips consisted of jewels of ruby, like fiery embers of red, that flashed and moved when she spoke. Her teeth were a perfect glimmering white. When she moved, every minute gem of her body appeared to move singularly in a synchronized form. The rest of the family…father, son, and daughter, had the same likeness of appearance. The only difference was that the men were not as spectacular as the radiant women. Even the family dog was dazzling, with a beautiful coat of shining gold that moved with a fluid grace.
Another surprising thing was that their bizarre behavior did not seem to affect the rest of the town. The citizens of this ordinary town actually appeared not to notice their abnormality. The Crystal family interacted with others as if they were just everyday people. They had jobs and went to school like everyone else.
The girl observed the exquisite family closely while she was in their midst. Even though they appeared to have thoughts, feelings, and emotions of happy, rational human beings, there was something different about them besides their appearance that she could only discern after a period of close observation. Their beauty was deceptive. Their smiles and laughter were too quick, too bright, too fake. There was some internal struggle, like a cancer eating away at their insides, consuming them, while they were frantically trying to ignore it. Their jeweled smiles hid their pain and they had beauty to cover their weaknesses. This family’s performance was convincing. The whole town was convinced. And maybe if the whole town believed the façade, they would believe it, too. But at times, when the girl looked closely, she could detect what appeared to be tears glistening behind their beautifully jeweled eyes. She wondered if they fell apart when no one was watching. Maybe they would let her in on their dark secret, their hidden torture, and she could help them somehow. But the farce was too deep, too hidden. They would only deny that anything at all was wrong. They were living among the dead.
They accepted the girl as if she were one of them, as if she had always been one of them - like maybe she had been born into their family, or that she was made of the same things as they were. She marveled at this and wondered why they welcomed her and why she felt so comfortable with them. Suddenly, with an awakening that struck here like a lightening bolt, she knew. She knew only too well. The girl had been drawn to them because she was becoming like them. She began to remember where she had come from. She saw herself running… running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction and searching for someone, something to save her from the chains that are holding her prisoner. She hoped someone would hear her crying and carry her away, perhaps a prince charming that would step in and save her life. She was running from the ugliness in her life that had instilled itself into her heart, making it cold and hard. She had a cesspool inside, just like the Crystal family, and if she didn’t clean it out and allow herself to be filled with “something good and wonderful”, she would become like them. Instead of a beautiful diamond heart that matched their jeweled outside, this picture perfect family carried around a hard black piece of coal. The girl could begin to feel her own heart freezing.
It was a slow fade, so slow that the girl didn’t realize that her life was anything but okay. It started when she was a child; it probably started before she was even born. The life was all she knew and she thought everyone else’s life was the same. She thought that it was normal to live in a family where the father drank himself into a stupor every night. She thought it natural that her father would beat her mother until she cried out in hushed whimpers. She was remembering it all now, the past crashing in on her like a tidal wave, knocking her to her knees. She was dredging up memories of the abuse, the drunkenness, the fear. Suddenly the girl was back in her childhood, hiding under the porch all alone with her demons, clutching the puppies that her pet Evie had given birth to recently. She stroked and consoled them as if they, too, felt the dread of the fight above them and were also dismayed at what the future held for them.
The girl was heaving with the burden of shame she had carried since she was a child. She continued to carry that shame as she grew into her teens and began to realize how sick her family and her life were. She felt beneath her classmates and friends, and believed that if they really knew her and knew what her life was like, they wouldn’t like her at all. She was rejected by the “popular” kids because she wore old clothes and lived in an ugly house, and everyone in the small town knew about her father. Soon she found drugs, and in the first instance she tried them, she felt complete. She felt powerful, in control, beautiful, rich, everything that she was not. The drug crowd accepted her. They didn’t seem to care where she lived, what she wore, or that she had a father that was an alcoholic. They had the same problems as she did, and some worse. Even though the drugs worked for her for a while, they eventually became ineffective in covering her pain. The girl found herself searching for something else, anything to make her feel okay. She tried it all and nothing worked. That is when her heart began to harden and she put a wall up to keep out the hurt and shame.
The next thing the girl knew she found herself living with these beautiful people make of crystals. She had to leave them. She had to find the answer for her life, and the answer was not in beauty and riches. She had to find “Something Good and Wonderful.” She dropped to her knees in anguish. It was there that she found the answer. She would take back her life from the demons that had snatched it since she was small. She would take back her identity, her heart, and her soul. She would find out who she was and what her values were. She would no longer believe the lies of her past, the lies of the devil…that she was no good. She would no longer live with shame and with the misery of jumping from place to place, relationship to relationship to find happiness. The “Something Good and Wonderful” spoke to the girl and said “Do you want to be free? Lift your arms. I have the keys for the chains that bind you.” She was free! She would go back to the Crystal family one last time to tell them the good news.
When the girl went to them, she saw that they had gotten worse. Their appearance was even more perfect and beautiful than she had remembered. They were trying harder to delude themselves. She confronted the mother and told her about the “Something Good and Wonderful.” The beautiful woman slowly shook her head, her hair flashing with the motion, her ruby lips trembling. Her amazing cerulean eyes began misting with a slow agony. They gazed at each other for what seemed like eternity. Slowly the girl could see the woman’s flawless body begin to melt, her lovely features fading away. The colorful crystals ran together into a dripping twinkling wax. The onyx of her hair blended with the blue of her eyes and with the red of her lips, creating a merging color of sparkles, shimmering into a pool on the floor beneath her. The girl stared at the glittering substance on the floor in front of her and gravely watched as it changed into a colorless powder. Sorrowfully, she scooped the powder into the palm of her hand and softly blew, scattering it into a mist of a million tiny pieces. [more]
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