The Verge

By Catherine Rose

Something was happening in Shawn Boothe’s idyllic small town of Beddington, Maine. Something that gave every man, woman, and child in Beddington a reason to stay out of the woods. Something that turned the town into a deathtrap for the workers of the last timber company. Something that is living in the woods across the lake from the Beddington Inn.
Caution- adult themes, erotic content, some violence.

Excerpt:
The trees were — only trees.
Boothe returned to the inn and said nothing of his encounter across the lake. He ate his dinner silently on the porch and retreated to his room. Later that night he sat by the window in a comfortable tatty old arm chair and gazed across the moonlit lake. They were still just a little band of trees. That and nothing more. He leaned his head back and slept

• Language: English
• Publisher: Catherine Rose
• Release date: Mar 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310979705

Catherine Rose

Catherine Rose is the pen name for a perverted old lady that likes to write stories inspired by her earlier days which she very much misses. Granted anything involving monsters, aliens, and horror stories are pure fiction...the rest? Not so much..

Book preview

The Verge

Catherine Rose

Smashwords Edition

Copywrite 2016

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the retailer and purchase your own copy. Cover art copywrite Catherine Rose. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Please note this is a work of fiction any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All characters engaged in sexual acts within this work of fiction are stated to be eighteen years of age or older. All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in reviews, newspapers, or other media no part of this book may be reproduced by any means without permission of the publisher. Thank you.

Authors Note: Material may contain words that some may consider taboo, blasphemous, racist, biased and in poor taste. In other words-it may be pretty damn nasty! The fact is that some people are deeply offended by a sneeze so that being said if you are one of those people that gets offended at every little thing and spend your day worrying about how to be politically correct; please go no further. Stop-now! If you read further it is at your discretion.

Access to minors is strictly forbidden! If you believe you might be offended by the material do not read it.

Boothe sat on the porch of the little inn that squatted like a brown gnome among the pines on the eastern shore of the lake.

It was a small and lonely lake high up above the tiny town of Beddington, Maine and yet, lonely is not just the word with which to tag its spirit; rather was it aloof, withdrawn unto itself. The mountains came down on every side, making a great tree-lined bowl that seemed, when Boothe first saw it, to be filled with a soft green haze.

Boothe had worn the wings in Afghanistan and Iraq with honor, flying combat missions for special ops. And as a bird loves the trees, so did Boothe love them. To him they were not merely trunks and roots, branches and leaves; to him they were personalities. He was acutely aware of differences in character even among the same species — that pine was benevolent and jolly; that one austere and monkish; there stood a swaggering bravo, and there dwelt a sage wrapped in green meditation; that birch was a wanton — the birch near her was virginal, still dreaming of a snowy night.

The war had decimated him, body and soul. He’d been left an empty shell of a human being. The constant heightened state of anxiety was destroying him a bit more each day. The sudden anxiety he felt if he saw anyone who looked middle-eastern was not helped by any pill he’d tried. They called it PTSD and offered him a fistful of drugs to stop the screaming nightmares and paranoia. Nothing from the pharmacy worked. He’d been forced to leave New York his home town and seek solitude elsewhere. He’d wandered around the country trying to find a place to belong. That long winding road had ended in a tiny town of fifty hardy souls deep in the woods of New England.

Through all the years that had passed since then the emotional wounds had never fully healed. He only felt at peace when he was in the soft green of the woods. But now, as he slid his truck down the vast green bowl, he felt its spirit reach out to him; reach out to him and caress and quiet him, promising him healing. He seemed to drift like a falling leaf through the clustered woods; to be cradled by gentle hands of the trees.

He had stopped at the little gnome of an inn, and there he had lingered, day after day, week after week.

The trees had nursed him. The soft whisperings of leaves, the slow chant of the needled pines had first deadened and then driven from him the re-echoing cacophony of the war and its sorrow. The gaping wounds of his spirit had closed under their green healing. Over time he felt them scar over and five years later even the scars had been covered and buried, as the scars on Earth's mountains are covered and buried beneath the falling leaves of autumn. The trees had laid green healing hands on his eyes, banishing the pictures of war. He had sucked strength from the green breasts of the hills.

Yet as strength flowed back to him and his spirit