Tales of the Fallen Book I: Awakenings

Tales Of The Fallen

David G. Barnett

Kindle Edition

Necro Publications

2011

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Tales Of The Fallen

Book 1: Awakenings

Kindle Edition

all stories © 2010 David G. Barnett

cover art © 2010 Travis Anthony Soumis

this digital edition March 2010 © Necro Publications

Cover, Book Design & Typesetting:

David G. Barnett

Fat Cat Graphic Design

http://www.fatcatgraphicdesign.com

a Necro Publication

5139 Maxon Terrace • Sanford, FL 32771

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to an eBook vendor and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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This is dedicated to all of my peoples,

I give bigtime love, huggie huggie!

Bounce!

Oh, all right, let’s get somewhat serious. Special hugs for the brilliant Gerard Houarner, mastermind behind Painfreak, for allowing me to play inside his creation. To Edward Lee, mentor and friend. To Charlee Jacob, whose literary genius I could never even hope to come close to with my writing.

To my boys, Stefan, Scott R., Robert N. and Sean, who got my back when I become an idiot. Scott R. for driving my drunk ass home and holding onto my belt so I wouldn’t splat face first onto I-4 as I puked out his passenger window. For Stefan who at least threw a blanket on me when I passed out in the Ybor Hilton after too many of Ms. Tia’s vodkas with Red Bull and shots at The Castle. To Robert N. for having even more fucked up hours than me so I have someone to play World of Warcraft with after midnight.

And finally to my lovely women that decorate my life with their beauty: Audrea, Amanda, Amy, and Angel. Why do they all have names that begin with the letter A? Weird.

And finally, to my family, who just simply rule.

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Book 1:

Awakenings

Introduction

Of Angels Fallen

Daddy Demon’s Day Out

Sleeper Agents Awaken

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Introduction

By Edward Lee

I
n a world that can often be viewed as a symbolic pile of excreta—depending on one’s perspective, of course—we all need our modes of escape. Fiction serves as one such escape, and in my opinion it’s the most effective, because it invites all of the participant’s sensibilities, unlike, say, film, which only requires the viewer to point his or her face at the screen and pay attention, or, I suppose, drugs, which not only turns people into losers, it merely requires the induction of said drug, then you get high, then the high goes away, and you’re still a loser. But the high of good fiction NEVER goes away. It’s always there, long after the final page is turned, recurring to our faculties, replaying its thrill, and maintaining its invitation to provoke not just thought in general but deep, thematic, and even philosophical speculation. This is very important when one considers the sheer function of escapism; i.e. GOOD fiction gives us that very special bonus—or double-whammy: entertainment, PLUS an ethereal fulcrum, so to speak, on which we are entreated to weigh the subjective “in-betweens” of our world-view, and—dang it!—the best stuff out there always seems to be negative or even nihilistic. It is my judgment, then, that the fiction that we like the most provides our avenue of escape from this enormous hock-ball of the gods—this symbolic pile of excreta—called the world, or, more broadly, the modern human condition.

Gee, Wally, isn’t that pretty fuckin’ cynical?

Well, yeah, Beave, I guess it fuckin’ is.

Personally, cynicism doesn’t suit me, or at least, I find myself growing more and more optimistic as my fifty-year-old ass trudges ever onward toward being a fifty-one-year old ass. Ultimately, however, it occurs to me that the fiction of today which offers the most mental meat to the reader is modern, cutting-edge material such as David G. Barnett’s
Tales of the Fallen
. This is cynicism and then some, brothers and sisters. In fact, these three intertwining stories propose a work that may well be the Mother of All cynicism.

Think Tarantino meets John Fowles’
The Magus
, with a dash of Bosch and a shot of Count Cagliostro, all mixed up in Macbeth’s cauldron and distilled down to a phantasmal mental ichor, a wild mix indeed. Populated by supernatural killing machines, snide demons, monstrous apprentices, anti-Godheads, and aspiring sorcerers, Barnett shows us the crumbling, corrupt vista of our own world made grimmer by a coal-black antithesis of spirituality. Here a trine of plots twist about our inquiring minds like Cthulhuian tentacles, only to merge into not just a singular denial of status quo religious thesis but also in a proposition of a Heaven-Hell mythos so far-reaching you’ll get lost in ensuing contemplation for some time to come: a very dark wonderworld of subjective opposites which all seems to function as a character itself. If you’re into literary symbolism, look harder between this book’s ornaments (the staunch gore, the gritty naturalism, the belly-busting sarcasm, and a wonderful modernized M.R. James-like occult science) and you’ll be left with something staring back at you darker than the visage in Nietzsche’s Abyss. It’s not everywhere you can find such theologic gems packed into one break-neck occult thriller.

Hmmm, perhaps this preamble is getting a bit stodgy; there seem to be more run-on sentences than, say, an M.R. James story! But I’m weary of new millennial intros/blurbs/endorsements because they all sound so colloquial. Certainly I could say, instead, “Shit-yeah, Dave Barnett’s
Tales of the Fallen
kicks mucho ass, man, and it takes names! Dude, it’s got all kinds of cool shit, like incarnation spells in one of those 25-cent lick-on tattoo machines, and a devil’s whorehouse, and enough blood and guts to fill a fuckin’ dump truck, oh, and Bunklewarts, man, which are these slick little demonic shit-bugs that live in a monster’s ASS, man! Conjuration, masturbation, ejaculation, assassination, and GOD in a fuckin’ diner—yowzah! It’s got it all! No shit! It’s the best fuckin’ horror story I’ve read this year! Dude!”

Certainly, all of the above are quite true but, lo, such exclamatory banter is not a reflection of my style. Such a tone is too inexorably commonplace, which supports an ultimate point. Barnett’s horrific ternary of words, places, and characters is anything BUT commonplace. Instead, it’s a unique and very refreshing vision, the perfect fruit to pluck off of horror fiction’s tree for the new dark age. So? Back to stodgy run-on sentences.

Here’s my favorite line in the entire book: “For what falls from your diseased and worn womb will be the salvation of us all.” Ah, such exuberance! But there’s a joke hidden in there—a joke on us all—because when you think hard and consider the potential symbology of that line, Barnett leaves us with the book’s core truth: take the summation of what we typically want to believe and then turn it inside-out. There’s our truth. An inversion more perverted and depressing than anything we can imagine. And when we look at the world of the past and the world of today—and all its escalating outrage, prevarication, and horror—it may well be that the aforementioned womb proves far more than a vessel for birth. In fact, it seems to be gestating quite well in my opinion, and is perhaps quickly approaching the end of the last trimester. Barnett, either cruelly or gleefully, forces us to envision what might come out.

In a hip style and sharp, velotic prose, Barnett has unleashed a celebration of abomination, a pallet of mythological freight right to the readership’s front door. Cynicism and heresy has rarely been more provocative—or entertaining—than what you are about to read.

Edward Lee

March 23, 2008

St. Pete Beach, Florida

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