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  Fallen Stardust: A boy, an outcast and an alien must find salvation in a world of ruin. Samuel must find a medicine to cure the fever ravaging his village. Markus must find the motive that murdered those he loved. And an angel must find a future in a city crumbled into debris. But something lurks beneath the wasted world, and waking it may doom what little of humanity survives.

  The Sisters Will Dance: Blaine Woosely claws his way back to the living. He has cleaned his blood of his addiction, and an unexpected, family farm home rewards his efforts. Only, the country acres isolate Blaine when a sharp-toothed monster hunts to bring Blaine back to dark. The sad history of Blaine's blood brings magic to the country home's new master, but in the end, only Blaine himself can break his chains.

  Mr. Hancock’s Signature: The dead walk in Monteray. The corpse of a nearly forgotten farmer named Hancock arrives via train. Ian Washington remembers Mr. Hancock and vows to return the body home. Yet Mr. Hancock's body will not rest while Ian works to reopen a cemetery, and the corpse staring each morning upon the doorstep forces the town to choose between the isolation of their fear or the hope of their fellowship.

  Opal, Is That You?

  Brian S. Wheeler

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2013 by Brian S. Wheeler

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  Opal, Is That You?

  "Whoever said you can't turn back the clock?"

  Mallory Howard purred in the fading sunlight seeping through the hotel room's window. She felt reborn standing naked in the day's final light. Mitchell was right. They needed only a sudden trip into the northern woods, an unplanned retreat from their schedules crowded with responsibilities to resummon the passion both feared long lost in their marriage. Perhaps it was just as Mitchell said; if they could not rediscover those strangers they had been a decade ago, before their love had frosted in the following chill, then, perhaps, they could become new people.

  Mitchell smiled from his pillow. "Why don't you come back to bed? We could stop time for a little longer."

  "I'm tingling in anticipation."

  Mallory took a deep, contented breath and paused long enough to enjoy the view one more time before returning to bed. The lake's deep, blue waters swayed beneath the moon. The sun's falling rays splintered into thousands of golden mirrors dancing upon the waves.

  Mallory smiled and imagined the shape of her reflection should she walk to the lake's shore. Would she recognize herself after only one afternoon of lovemaking in a small, private hotel so many miles off of the interstate? Or would she fail to see any change to her reflection at all? She could not have imagined herself standing naked in front of a window only a few days ago. She would not have been so foolish, or so brave. And though the hotel was so secluded, though its view upon the lake water so private, Mallory felt there was a motivation she could not yet describe that gave her such confidence to stand exposed before that northern lake and the forest surrounding it.

  "Isn't it even better than we hoped?" Mitchell pat the bed beside him. "No outside world. No deadlines. No clients. No surprises. Only us, and whatever we want to do with the time."

  Mallory closed the window's thick curtain before stretching back into bed. She felt Mitchell's heat against her, how her shape and scent aroused her husband as it had so many years ago.

  "Can we go ahead and rent the room for the night?" Mallory nuzzled into her husband, planting kisses down Mitchell's neck, trailing them lower upon his chest.

  Mitchell rolled upon Mallory and filled his hand with the deep black of his wife's hair. "Sure we can. I doubt this hotel ever turns off the blinking vacancy light. There wasn't another car in the lot, and it's so far off the main road. We'll stay however long we like."

  Mallory arched her hips into her husband. "As shame to think a room like this goes to waste."

  It was a room Mitchell and Mallory Howard were not in the habit of renting. Thick, umber carpet massaged the toes. Heavy, golden curtains swallowed any light attempting to seep through the windows. A bubbling hot tub gurgled in the adjoining bathroom.

  Exaggerated notions of sophisticated style from four decades past crowded that small hotel's romantic suite, and such decor glared loudest from the ceiling. A wide chandelier of looping chains suspended from the ceiling's center, a cephalopod of plastic pearls and glass gems that shattered the room's light into a sea of blue and yellow twinkles. Polished mirrors occupied the remainder of the ceiling's space.

  Mallory breathed into her husband's ear. "You know, we could bring a few of these mirrors home."

  "I'll make sure to stop at the hardware store on the way back," Mitchell grinned.

  Only a few days ago, before setting out upon their adventure into the northern woods, the Mitchells would never have dreamed themselves a couple whose preferences leaned towards plastic tastes and glass desires. Yet had they not hoped their spontaneous trip would encourage them to brave such tastes? A decade of marriage had transformed them into a couple they hardly recognized in the mirror.

  Contentment did not accompany the consistency that anchored their days. The kisses with which they greeted each other in morning vanished. Children did not arrive with the lovemaking that had been so easy at the start of their marriage, and careers masked the disappointment until neither cared for the lovemaking at all. Casual banter over dinners of mashed cauliflower and sauceless porkchops surrendered to the silence of frozen pizza and fish sticks. The Howards' appetites faded until Mitchell and Mallory hardly touched one another at all.

  Only an ember remained of what once smoldered between the two. It was a heat that had no outlet in love, and so instead found release in hurt - accusations of broken promises, skeletons dragged from the closets, curses snarled at sunset.

  And then one morning Mitchell and Malory Horward stared long into the mirrors that hung over the dual sinks of their master bedroom. They looked deeply into that glass and realized that their separation might only be dodged with change. If they were to remain together, they needed to become, if not the young lovers they had been so long ago, then a different kind of people for the future.

  Mallory moaned at Mitchell's touch. "Oh, and if you do that again to me, I will do that other thing for you."

  "We've gone back in time," Mitchell sighed as Mallory touched him back, "to a day before we became too timid to name such electric sensations."

  Mallory swooned and stared upon the ceiling of mirrors hanging overhead. She smiled to see the woman her husband's love made her - a woman flushed with the blood and the warmth, who still glowed no matter the weight gathered with the years, a woman whose energy still pulsed through a heart still filled with the pungent blood.

  She wondered if before that afternoon she had ever been the woman reflected in the mirror above her.