Liars Called by Stephan Morse

Release date: February 26, 2019

Subgenre: Dark fantasy, Portal fantasy

About Liars Called: 

 

Abandoned by his father, too proud to ask his brother for help, and lured by the promise of money, Lance gets on a bus that mysteriously appears outside his house in the middle of the night.

It brings him and others to a dream-like land where anything can be bought and sold, even magic. When he returns home, he finds his family has changed, the world has moved on, and monsters from faerie tales overrun the town.

Survival is paramount—but everything has a price.

 

Excerpt:

 

Statement: Time had passed. Lots of time. More than I ever expected. On the ride home the storm overhead cast down lightning. In bouts of brief illumination a countryside, the city, and finally my neighborhood had clearly changed. I did not start questioning this until a few days later. Why?

At first I believed this all to be a dream. It might still be. Yet the entire event had been just familiar enough to make sense. Human seeming bus drivers. Human seeming store owners. Machines that resembled those from school. It was carefully designed, like a badly painted stage would represent some storyland. But unlike a theater event, this one kept right on going after the curtain close.

There was another line which led to a smaller bus. This hardly surprised me. I tucked the book into an inside pocket and limped into the much tinier group of people. We hadn’t all made it, but part of me hoped others had left on earlier rides home. Perhaps this single story tiny bus, which looked like my county supplied door-to-door service, served as a final take home.

The driver was not Leon or one of the green-eyed stewardesses. A large fat balding woman with a cigar thumbed me on. I limped back to a seat, feeling slightly better but still hungry. Twisting knots in my gut suppressed all other pains. There was no time for a bathroom. 

I felt thankful that my desire to eat had dropped since the accident. One bottle of water should be survivable for the bus trip. My vision shifted in and out of focus. My current goal was to go, wherever this bus went. Then once I landed it would be possible to evaluate how to survive.

Staying compartmentalized was not easy. My body shook and arms were unsteady. The only reassuring factor was a return to my town. I recognized the city. Distance between where we’d been and my hometown was too short. California had a lot of towns and a few major places that could have housed that stadium-sized shopping mall. 

Everything felt almost normal. A storm boiled overhead, rain poured down in thick waves, and lightning flashes illuminated an almost normal looking town. Bright lights along the street helped me feel comfortable. Signs were in the right spots.

The words were illegible through the water. I attempted to read them over and over to distract myself from stomach issues. The supermarket was lit up, but it looked less white and more yellow. It might have been a late night casting of the lights.

I suspected it wasn’t. This world was no more normal than the long line and vending machines. Or the barely human-looking stewardesses. There had been many slightly off items. Word choice, features, each one nagged me for attention. Debt cards, Wildlings, Underkin, Secret King, whatever the heck all those things meant was beyond me.

 

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About Stephan Morse: 

Stephan Morse was born the year 1983 in San Diego. The next fifteen years were spent slowly escaping California and surviving a public education system. Thus far he's made it to the Seattle (WA) region with little desire to go further. When not trying to shove words together into sentences Stephan spends time reading, catching up on sleep, and otherwise living a mundane life.

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