The Melting Man

By Stephen Wise

Detective Peale had dealt with Todd and Lori Harlin over the years, as their drinking often turned to violence toward one another. One night, Todd confesses to Peale that he has killed his wife, then weaves a tale about a mysterious substance he found in a warehouse and its horrific effects when exposed to flesh.

Stephen Wise brings you this dark tale, a cross between a noirish detective thriller and body horror that will keep you turning the page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Wise
• Release date: May 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215441350

Stephen Wise

Stephen Wise was born in Michigan. At age eight, friends of his invited him to participate in a “home movie” they were making. This set him on a course of filmmaking where he wrote and directed his own films on Super 8 through his teen years. His family moved to Texas and then to Oklahoma, where he earned an Associate’s Degree in Broadcasting. He then relocated to Orlando, where he was one of the first 30 students inducted into the inaugural class of the University of Central Florida’s film program and graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree cum laude.With a love of writing, Stephen focused on screenwriting. He received accolades from Creative Screenwriting Magazine, Writer’s Digest, and the Screenwriting Expo. He co-wrote a script for a proposed Batman film that was in consideration at Warner Bros., but was eventually passed over in favor of the reboot “Batman Begins.” IFC listed his effort as one of the seven best unproduced Batman screenplays.He has had a varied career in film production and in the private sector. Among the dozen short films he wrote, directed, and/or produced, several played in film festivals around the world. He has worked on video projects for Walt Disney World and Lockheed Martin, as well as winning three Addy Awards for commercials he produced and directed. He has worked in theater, both onstage and behind the scenes as director and technical director, and lent his screenwriting skills to the Blue Cat Screenwriting Competition as a contest judge. Most recently, he appeared as a background performer in the feature films Jurassic World and The Fantastic Four. If you don’t blink, you might see him. Since 2013, he has also served as the programming director for Pensacon: Pensacola Comic Con, where he also coordinates the Pensacon Short Film Festival.Short stories have always been a creative outlet for him, so he finally decided to publish an anthology of stories he wrote entitled “Portals of the Mind.” He has plans for another collection and possibly some novels. His favorite genres are adventure, science fiction, horror, fantasy, and suspense–basically anything that sparks his imagination. His favorite authors are Stephen King, Piers Anthony, Orson Scott Card, Alan Dean Foster, Tad Williams, Caleb Carr, Ray Bradbury, and Agatha Christie.

Book preview

The Melting ManHalf Title

Contents

Other Publications by Stephen Wise

The Melting Man

Afterword

About the Author

The Melting Man

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Copyright © 2021, 2024 by Stephen Wise

Second edition January 2024

ISBN: 979-8-483-36526-6

Edited by Starla Wheeler

Manufactured in the United States of America

Other Publications by Stephen Wise

Short Story Collection

Portals of the Mind

Individual Short Stories and Novellas

The Barn

Electronic Telepathy

Ode de la Lune

The Poem

Screenplays

Batman DarKnight (with Lee Shapiro)

Paradigm (with Eric Kaplan)

Maelstrom

Full Title

To Mike Ensley,

Thank you for making my life

interesting the past few years.

In twenty-three years on the force, I thought I had seen everything. Rape. Murder. Unimaginable atrocities one human can do to another. Then I witnessed something so horrific that I have been trying for the last three decades to erase it from my memory. I never included the events of that night in any official report—the one and only time I ever lied by omission as part of my duties as a public servant. In fact, I have not told another soul until now, at the end of my life.

As I sit in my bedroom, my frail body propped up with pillows to offer a semblance of comfort that I will never experience again, I have to leave some record of that incident. Sunlight streaming in through the window can make one forget darkness also exists in this world—darkness that I saw first-hand and wish I could forget.

Perhaps my hospice nurse will find this manuscript and consider it the ravings of a man whose brain has been ravaged by the disease that turned a once robust—dare I say, even overindulgent—body into a mere skeleton with well-worn skin hanging from it. Or perhaps my son, who I haven’t seen in person in four years and have spoken to on the phone no more than half a dozen times in that same period, will come across it while sifting through my belongings and will dispose of it along with my other meager possessions.

Regardless of where this may end up, I need to write it down and purge it from my memory. That’s the only way I’ll die in peace.

Some background on myself—I graduated from the Academy at twenty-one and was soon hired as a patrol officer, but I had my sights