The Bully Killers: Video Trailer

10 Authors Every Writer Should Read

10 Authors Every Writer Should Read

by Michael Engelby

Have you ever wondered which books or writers have most influenced your writing? Sure you have. But have you ever tried to pick a top 10 list and rank them? It’s more difficult than you might think, mostly because 10 becomes a small number fast and the books that get left off the list probably deserve to be on it. So after a few months of adding and taking writers and books on and off the list I think I have come up with a list that would be acceptable to many writers...see full article http://thebullykillers.com/

Short Story: Love Her To Pieces

Love Her To Pieces

News at 5:) Man Cuts Off Own Arm to Feed Starving Girlfriend after Plane Crashes in Mountains.

Denver CO-- A man in Colorado actually cut off his own arm so he could use it as food for his starving girlfriend after their plane crashed in the mountains about 100 miles Southwest of Denver last week. The pair was flying a small Cessna from Boulder to Las Vegas when they crashed. Rescue teams were unable to reach the pair for over a week because of a severe snowstorm and the remote location of the crash. When rescuers arrived they found the woman conscious but delirious. Unfortunately the man had already died from exposure and blood loss. Rescuers also discovered a half-eaten hand and forearm over a small campfire along with a note that the man had left behind explaining what had happened. The woman is currently hospitalized in serious condition but is expected to make a full recovery.

See full story http://www.thebullykillers.com/love-her-to-pieces.html

Short Story: Three Days Gone

Short Story: Three Days Gone

by Michael Engelby

How I came to this place, and all those before it for that matter, remains an indecipherable shadow of a comprehension mired in a confusing myriad of illusions, but I assure you, this thought isn’t going to be another one of those mental trips which unequivocally fails to create calm for the disrupted, although I must admit to feeling a bit of a lateral progression—generously provided by intoxication—which seems to have lightened a certain sincerity for unemotional appreciation and it appears that the advantages are serving themselves honestly because that distinct disdain for pity, eternal restlessness, self-insinuated sorrow, and ceaseless guilt all seem to have transcended in and upon, above and beyond themselves, fading into the dusty blue hue tinted so because of the way the sun shines off of the reflection of the face in the mirror.

“It was all washed away in the last rain. Scared off. Swirling black clouds, the lightening skies, the rage of the thunder, all that water and the demons. You were there! You saw them! Remember how their voices blew down the old elm tree across the street? Three hundred years. Fell to the ground and thrashed itself into a million pieces. All dead and rotten inside. Left running through the flooding gutters with nothing but a piece of driftwood for a soul. Coming back again. They’re coming back again!” His hands, it was the way they shook as he reached out towards God...and his eyes. The devil was eating his mind. It wasn’t the thunder that he was screaming at it was mercy. You could see the intensity, the purity of fear in his eyes when the lightening flashed."

See full story at: http://thebullykillers.com/

Short Story: The Fool Stood Standing

The Fool Stood Standing

by Michael Engelby

“No Dad, I don’t think there will be any problems.”

“But honey, it’s only been a year and the doctor said…”

“That’s another reason were getting out of here for awhile. The doctors. I am sick and tired of doctors.”

“Sick and tired,” said Albert from a large stuffed chair in the corner of the bedroom.

“Yes, I suppose. But what if he…”

“Look Dad, I really need this break and I know Albert needs some time away from all the poking and probing.”

The phone was squeezed between her shoulder and ear as she continued to pack.

“Poking and probing,” said Albert.

“But he doesn’t even like cars. How in the world…”

Albert reached over to the table beside his chair. He rested his finger tips on its surface. He turned his head slowly and surveyed the items on the table’s surface. He could see the brass base of the lamp with the white shade. Next to the lamp he saw a set of keys and a handful of change. Then there were the stamps for the letters and postcards.

“He’s going to be just fine. Have some faith will you,” she said. She knew that she was gaining rapidly on being annoyed but she struggled against it. She didn’t want to leave things that way with her father. He was already worried enough...

See full story at: http://thebullykillers.com/short-stories.html

Short Story: The Day At The End of All Days

The Day at the End of All Days

by Michael Engelby

“Today is the day that comes at the end of all days. So what of all those other days? All those days that came before today? Were all of those days strung together--placed in order as though they were but a string of empyreal pearls dangling backwards into infinity--as if they were intended, or rather, were destined to be a direct line to this day? What shall become of all those days here at the end of all days?” These were the words that ascended upon his mind just before he began to wander through the town one last time.

How was it known that that day was the day at the end of all days since the events arrived too quickly to join the cursed ways of the daily news? It arrived at the brim of an amber sunrise after a thick moonless night that crept on longer than all previous nights and then at the first sight of light Jacob found his ears filled with the sound of horns blowing in a mind-deafening resonance that was supported only by the charging sound of thundering, earth crushing hooves and as so the skies before his eyes filled with all of man’s panoplies and all of man’s evil ways turning the air into a venerable, heavily-heated, sin-coated haze which sentenced the last light of all days to a place where no one could say.

Jacob wiped his sudden tears away as he emerged from the alley, the place he called home, and went to the street and stood just below the brownstone where he used to stay. From the edge of the alley on the edge of the street he saw the windows slide open and the doors swing wide as the people looked to the skies and poured into the streets. He looked around and he could see in the people’s faces, and in the reflections of their disturbed eyes the fears of their misbegotten ways but from their howling mouths there came no sound, the sound stolen away by the blaring horns and the thundering hooves that were coming his way...

See full story: http://thebullykillers.com/short-stories.html

The Bully Killers Serial Novel on Blogger: Chapter 3

The Bully Killers Serial Novel Online

by Michael Engelby

http://thebullykillers.com/


Chapter 3

Charlie Dalinger

March 11, 1988

A wicked evil end, that’s what it was. A wicked evil end…yeah, yeah…and that’s the way it plays and always will be. Got a pretty good idea when it started, a pretty good idea maybe, but not exactly. There’s comfort, an advantage in knowing the exact moment when something starts. To know when the game begins, to know when the rules change.

Everybody’s got games running through their lives, blowing in the wind like long strands of silk tied to the branches of an old willow tree down by the riverside on a full-moon night. It’s beautiful just so long as the wind doesn’t blow in a hard rain.

The wind. Been blowing like this for what, two days now?

“Clack, clack,” against the window again. Here it comes loud and “thump,” the collision of gust and building and now the water in the toilet sloshes back and forth, ebb and slosh, no tidal consistency, up one side and down the other, slower, slower, slower, and calm.

“Clack, clack…thump,” the slosh and ebb naturally terminal.

Burn warm and tingle

The burning sensation haunts the mouth and leaves the residue of aftertaste upon the tingling tongue putting the soft numbness on the brain with nothing but vindictive intentions? One more day, you and I together on a misanthropic binge against the perceptions of the world...

See full chapter at: http://thebullykillers.com/the-bully-killers.html

The Bully Killers Serial Novel on Blogger: Chapter 2

The Bully Killers Serial Novel

http://thebullykillers.com/

Michael Engelby

Chapter 2

Walter Dalinger

April 21, 1985

Don’t worry sweetheart, you haven’t been here for a long time. They’ll never see us coming.

Walter loved the sound of her voice, soft and gentle, calming. The raindrop beat on his pickup blurred the light outside of Chubby’s Tavern on the other side of the street. Walter liked sitting in his pickup. He had been sitting and thinking and listening and watching for hours. A set of lights pulled into the parking lot and joined the other five or six cars.

Looks like everybody’s here. Let’s go in and say hello.

Walter opened the door and stepped out into the rain. A car passed splashing rain up onto the sidewalk of a sleeping Main Street. Walter could feel the red taillights on his face as he stepped off the curb and walked across.

They’re going to be so surprised. Isn’t this delightful?

The familiar weight of the heavy oak door pressed against his palm. He followed the flood of light into the bar. The television above the bar glowed and droned on as the dank smell of cigarettes and stale beer rushed into his nostrils...

See full chapter at: http://thebullykillers.com/

The Bully Killers Serial Novel on Blogger: Chapter 1

The Bully Killers Serial Novel

http://thebullykillers.com/

by Michael Engelby

Chapter 1

The Dalingers

October 1st, 1975

My brother Jerome died when he was little, but then he came back to life again. Talks to angels, chases demons. Makes the seasons change while he sleeps. I know it’s true because I watch him at night.

Tosses and turns when he turns winter to spring. You can hear the chunks of ice and driftwood on the river break up and crash against each other in water that looks like old coffee and cream. Sounds like thunder.

It’s different for summer. He twitches and mutters and only sleeps a little. In the summer it gets so hot that the trees around the edges of the cornfields start to wobble. Annie says it’s because your eyeballs are boiling inside your head. I don’t believe her though.

When he changes it to fall he sleeps like he’s dead. Nothing, except drool out of the corner of his mouth. Only the tree branches scratch against our bedroom window. Don’t like the cold. Jerome says he likes getting goose bumps, but he doesn’t understand why the feathers won’t start growing.

When winter comes, and everything is so cold it turns to black and white, and at night I can’t tell if I am asleep or awake, and the wind pushes so hard the house creaks, and Jerome screams and kicks until Josie runs in and holds him until he stops. He says he is suffocating. I don’t know what suffocating means.

She kisses him on top of the head and whispers over and over again, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” I feel scared until she looks at me and says, “It’s alright Charlie. Go back to sleep, it’s just the changing of the seasons.”

“Charlie! Get down out of that tree and come here.”

“Yeah, okay.”

See full chapter at: http://thebullykillers.com/the-bully-killers.html

Sneak Preview: The Bully Killers Serial Novel and Short Stories 2011

You are cordially invited to The Sneak Preview of The Bully Killers Serial Novel  & Short Stories 2011, where it’s a tightrope walk between reality and insanity. The new easy to read layout is a joy to the eyes and the Scribed Readers on the website make it easy to scroll and enlarge the text as needed. Besides the serial novel, now entering its 4^th chapter, and the short stories, another great new feature on the website is Channel TBK on YouTube. This is a video archive of over 50 videos including such writers as James Joyce, William Faulkner, Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein, Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen King, and more. After visiting the website you are invited to blog about your experience on either Blogger or WordPress blogs dedicated to the website. The Bully Killers Serial Novel and Short Stories is completely free, no strings attached, and all advertising has been relegated to the bottom of the page so you can read in peace.  Be the first to see the new look of The Bully Killers before it’s submitted to the Web on January 1, 2011. Any and all feedback is appreciated. Hope to see you there soon and have a happy holidays. www.thebullykillers.com