Standalone
I Am the Monster
A barrage of smells struck Sheriff Conrad Atkins as he entered the house, vomit, gunpowder, gore, and beneath it all, the acrid bite of something burning. He'd spent a lifetime with violence, long enough to know the difference between the smell of blood and the smell of gore: one coppery sweet, the other cloyingly pungent. The first meant something had gone mildly wrong. The second always meant someone was dead.
Alex Walker is the strange one. He lives out of a van. He can't hold a conversation, can't read a room, can't tell you why he checks the windows of every house he sleeps in or keeps a knife within reach of the bed. For fifteen years his friends have found this odd. Not one of them has ever asked why.
They're about to find out.
When three armed men storm the remote mountain house where the group has gathered for their annual reunion, they expect what men like them always expect: money, fear, and victims who do as they're told. What they don't expect is Alex — and the long, bloody night he has been preparing for his entire life.
Some people do monstrous things when they have no other choice.
And some people were only ever waiting for an excuse.