Darker Reality Studios

This excerpt is from a scene deep in one of the stories currently on the processor. Hope you enjoy it!

Without warning, his eyelids began to flicker rapidly with his flaccid grey face twitching in tandem. After a few seconds, just as abruptly as it began, the twitching and flickering fell suddenly still. He slowly pulled himself up into a sitting position, his eyes shuttering open, revealing only the bloodshot whites, burst vessels spiderwebbing across their surface. He twisted his neck around and stretched his back at the same time, both cracking and popping loudly in the quiet cavern, a loud sigh escaping his lips in the process. Placing his hands on his outstretched thighs, he swiveled his head about, the milky whites of his sightless eyes tracking with his surroundings, somehow seeming to be able to see despite the obvious blindness. When their gaze fell across her broken, still form, his head paused in its travel. A blood-stained grin creased his face as a low chuckle escaped his lips.

Many, many years ago, I began thinking about mash-up novels. This was around the time that I was REALLY invested (from a time and financial standpoint) into comics and would devour dozens of these literary gems every week. This was around the time that several of the competing comic publishing companies sprouted into existence, such as Image and Dark Horse Comics. During this time we began seeing many cross-over one-shots, where characters from one universe or company began appearing in tales of other universes and companies, mashing them together. I remember thinking at the time that it would be very cool to take existing literary characters and put them in twisted and corrupted version of their respective universes or completely new settings (think of the various modern day and futuristic Sherlock Holmes stories that have appeared over the years).

At this time I thought about all the different character and setting mash-ups I would have liked to have seen. One of the only ideas that I retained over the years (in the last 20+ years mind you) was an idea involving The Three Musketeers.

Fast forward a couple decades.

Nowadays mashup novels are fairly common and are gaining mainstream recognition, such as: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter; Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monster; Android Karenina; Little Women and Werewolves; and Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter, to name a few.  Along those lines, the tale I have floating around in my noggin involves The Three Musketeers in an alternate reality, facing a daemonic incursion and infestation that has been building for centuries. I’ve been working on some outlining, the preface, and the first couple chapters so far… hopefully I can find the time to work on this more in the near future…

The mundane and the commonplace is just a lie, a means of camoflage for the deeper and darker secrets of the universe.  Darkness permeates everything, bleeding over into the waking world of light. Beneath the surface of this reality, evil and entropic decay awaits, spreading its influence like a disease, seeping into the very cracks of hope, joy, and life. Though unseen by the majority, it awaits, corrupting, feeding on the unaware, breaking down order, eating away at the very foundation of the fabric of this reality and the next.

Poke in the corners, dust off the cobwebs, and peer into the shadows. Plumb the deeper, darker aspects of reality, open your eyes to what lurks just beneath your perception, just below the seen.

These are the dark recesses and the negative spaces of the mind. Enter the realm of Darker Reality Studios, the aphotic depths of creativity…