S.R. Hughes Books & Quotes

“Deirdre’s consciousness flooded with unbidden images. Her foot on a man’s throat; her gun against a man’s head; her hand wrapped around power; her seat atop a throne of yellowed bone, a kingdom spread out below her in bloodstained wasteland. In return: offerings, worship. Worship: apes eating their own young, faces smeared in meatjelly. Worship: jackbooted soldiers marching over corpse-strewn battlefields. Worship: a father staring at the severed hands and feet of his own child. Inside her gut, an instinctive gospel heaved itself into her diaphragm. The scripture said there were two kinds of people in the world: predators and prey. All other truths were secondary. Deirdre could be a predator in exchange for worship. If not…”

Evil Predator Predator And Prey Dark God Evil Philosophy

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“She wondered what stories wrote themselves across the bedsheets in so many rooms, how many of them ended in jittery pacing up and down an unlit hall.”

Life Empathy Addiction

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“He jerked his arm back, nearly launched the car keys into the sea, stopped just short of letting go. He needed the car, now more than ever. The idea flattened him. His arm fell limp to his side, the keys back in his pocket. Draining the rest of his whiskey, he settled for hurling the glass into vast ocean darkness. The bottle followed shortly after, though he stumbled in the throw and ended up breaking it on the end of the pier. He made his way back to the laptop. He didn’t learn anything important. Story of his life.”

Learning Addiction Alcoholism Changing

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“What could someone say to the dead to earn their forgiveness?”

Impossible Forgiveness Redemption

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“A memory unearthed itself: the way his wife had looked in the weeks following the news, the way she looked at things but never really saw them. The way she always seemed to be staring at something he couldn’t make out. The broken-down pits of her eyes, high on painkillers, opiates, staring at the wall, silent tears streaking drug-slacked cheeks. Maybe that had finished them off even before the divorce papers. Neither of them could live with what happened and neither wanted to watch the other one die so slowly.”

Loss Grief Failure Addiction Mourning Grief And Loss Coping

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“US Highway 1. A gray snake of concrete writhed past her. The Oceanrest exit let off onto an artery road, two lanes on either side of a double yellow line, a dying pulse bloodletting into the sea. Before the iron lung economy, there’d been a trailer park by the highway, and an ice cream shop, and a very large church. Their razed bodies curled in shallow graves, their bones hidden in underbrush. A monster licked the skulls empty, scavenged the flesh.”

Vision History Metaphor Creepy Time Passing

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“She pushed herself through the opening, around an ornament that was simultaneously a hanging light bulb and a uvula, and stepped inside. She entered the Mouth, the Throne Room, the Jaws of the Devouring God, or maybe just another in a series of countless double-wides gutted and lashed together with scavenged steel and magic, the bare skeleton of an illusory power. Tongue. The Devourer. God, the Devil, or nobody at all.”

Vision Magic Metaphor Surreal Dark Fantasy Occult Dark Fantasy Horror

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“Consider yourselves innocent. Easier said than done.”

Guilt Innocent Guilty Innocence Remorse Hardboiled

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“It was teeth and talons and fire and mustard gas, it was ghosts scorched into Hiroshima streets, showerheads pouring poison into tiled rooms, and a grasp that twined itself around his own bones, a tongue that licked for marrow in his own spine, and a hunger he could feel in his own stomach.”

God History Of Mankind Atrocity Lovecraftian Dark Fantasy Horror Dark God

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“if you’ll let me hijack your feed for one second, I think we could help each other. The voice was chemical-sweet, carcinogenic, a pool of oily promise cooking in a silver spoon. Its silky bravado reminded Deirdre of stories about devils and demons, about dark fae spirits feasting on firstborn children after a handshake and a trick.”

Fae Faust Lovecraftian Mephistopheles Bad Faith

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“You believe that. People believe all kinds of crazy shit. People think the sky is up. The sky is out though, isn’t it? We just feel more comfortable thinking it’s up ‘cause otherwise you gotta admit the whole world is a little speck of rock floating in the fucking dark.”

Truth Villain Dark Fantasy Villains Pale Blue Dot Villain Quote Dark Fantasy Horror

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“In the receding wake of the engine, night faded into day. Birds twittered in the growing forest. All around her, a sprawl of rotting ex-suburbs roused its wheezing way into sunlight. Vines clung to abandoned houses like lover’s limbs as if saying come back to the earth with us. come back to the earth and sleep.”

Nature Civilization Wilderness Abandoned Recession

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“New names cost. They’d sacrificed things in their transfigurations. Tyrell Meeks. Imani Greene. Razz. Deirdre. They’d carved open their histories and offered up their guts.”

Names Identity Cost Reinvention Transfiguration

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“Under lightless skies, dark things flourished.”

Horror Creepy Creepy Quotes

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

“I’m looking for information.” She lifted her arms, indicating the breadth of the library, and declared with self-parodied drama, “I’m surrounded by it!”

Library Libraries Librarians Archivists

Book:The War Beneath

Source: The War Beneath

S.R. Hughes Books

The War Beneath

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