Dragon Snatch: The Author, #3

By Aaron Abilene

The morbidly obese bum of an author returns to the land of his mental delusions. This time he meets the queen aka fire crotch, the woman with the dragon snatch.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Syphon Creative
• Release date: Apr 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224656349

Book preview

Dragon Snatch

The Author, Volume 3

Aaron Abilene

Published by Syphon Creative, 2024.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

DRAGON SNATCH

First edition. April 25, 2024.

Copyright © 2024 Aaron Abilene.

ISBN: 979-8224656349

Written by Aaron Abilene.

Also by Aaron Abilene

505

505

505: Resurrection

Balls

Dead Awake

Before The Dead Awake

Dead Sleep

Bulletproof Balls

Carnival Game

Full Moon Howl

Donovan

Shades of Z

Codename

The Man in The Mini Van

Deadeye

Deadeye & Friends

Cowboys Vs Aliens

Ferris

Life in Prescott (Coming Soon)

Afterlife in Love (Coming Soon)

Island

Paradise Island

The Lost Island

The Lost Island 2

The Lost Island 3

The Island 2

Pandemic

Pandemic (Coming Soon)

Prototype

Prototype

The Compound

Slacker

Slacker 2

Slacker 3

Slacker: Dead Man Walkin'

Texas

Devil Child of Texas

A Vampire in Texas

The Author

Breaking Wind

Yellow Snow

Dragon Snatch

Golden Showers

Nether Region

Evil Empire

Thomas

Quarantine

Contagion

Eradication

Isolation

Immune

Pathogen

Bloodline

Decontaminated (Coming Soon)

TPD

Trailer Park Diaries

Trailer Park Diaries 2

Trailer Park Diaries 3

Virus

Raising Hell

Zombie Bride

Zombie Bride

Zombie Bride 2

Zombie Bride 3

Standalone

The Victims of Pinocchio

A Christmas Nightmare

Pain

Fat Jesus

A Zombie's Revenge

The Headhunter

Crash

Tranq

The Island

Dog

The Quiet Man

Joe Superhero

Feral

Good Guys

Romeo and Juliet and Zombies

The Gamer

Becoming Alpha

Dead West

Small Town Blues

Shades of Z: Redux

The Gift of Death

Killer Claus

Skarred

Home Sweet Home

Alligator Allan

10 Days

Army of The Dumbest Dead

Kid

The Cult of Stupid

9 Time Felon

Slater

Bad Review: Hannah Dies

Me Again

Maurice and Me

The Family Business

Lightning Rider : Better Days

Lazy Boyz

The Sheep

Wild

The Flood

Extinction

Good Intentions

Dark Magic

Sparkles The Vampire Clown

From The Future, Stuck in The Past

Rescue

Knock Knock

Creep

Honest John

Urbex

She's Psycho

Unfinished

Neighbors

Misery, Nevada

Vicious Cycle

Relive

Romeo and Juliet: True Love Conquers All

Dead Road

Florida Man

Hunting Sarah

The Great American Zombie Novel

Carnage

Random Acts of Stupidity (Coming Soon)

Born Killer (Coming Soon)

The Abducted (Coming Soon)

Broken Man (Coming Soon)

Graham Hiney (Coming Soon)

Paper Soldiers (Coming Soon)

Zartan (Coming Soon)

The Firsts in Life (Coming Soon)

Giant Baby (Coming Soon)

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Also By Aaron Abilene

Dragon Snatch

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Also By Aaron Abilene

Dragon Snatch

Written by Aaron Abilene

Arthur Quill sat hunched over his desk, the glow of the computer screen casting long shadows over a landscape of paper mountains and ceramic valleys where the remains of caffeine battles lay strewn about in empty coffee cups. His eyes, red-rimmed and weary, flicked from the accusing cursor blinking on the screen to the scattered sheets that bore the scars of earlier attempts — each a testament to his mounting frustration.

The pen in Arthur's hand was no Excalibur; it seemed as much a prisoner to the writer’s block as he was. Tap, tap, tap — the rhythm of restlessness echoed against the wood, an impatient drumming that resonated with the silent cacophony of his thwarted creativity. The pen danced, twirled between his fingers like some kind of cheap parlor trick meant to conjure words from thin air. It didn't.

Damnation, he muttered under his breath, the words barely more than a whisper of defeat.

With a suddenness that sent another cup toppling off the cliff-edge of his desk, Arthur pushed back his chair and stood. He towered over his cramped kingdom, a solitary figure enveloped in the blue hue of failure. His shadow stretched across the room, painting a momentary illusion of grandeur on the walls that would never know the touch of daylight's glory.

The blank page remained, a silent adversary in the battle of wills, and Arthur could not help but hear the whispers of doubt that gnawed at the edges of his mind.

Arthur pivoted on his heel, the groan of the floorboards underfoot breaking the stillness. His cramped apartment, a dimly lit box of shadows and forgotten corners, seemed to shrink with each shuffling step he took. The peeling wallpaper hung like aged skin, flaking off in patches to reveal the bones of plaster beneath. It was a room that had seen better days, much like the man who occupied it.

The glow of a solitary lamp threw more shadows than light, a futile attempt at illumination that only deepened the sense of confinement within these four walls. Dust motes danced in the sliver of brightness, their ballet a silent mockery of vitality in this stagnant air. A musty smell clung to everything, a constant reminder of the damp and decay that festered just beyond sight, creeping through the fibers of the threadbare carpet and the swollen wood of the window frame.

He approached the window, the closest thing to an escape but just as much a prison. The glass, smeared with the residue of rain and neglect, offered a view into a world that moved on without him. Down below, the city pulsed with life—a river of people flowing through the arteries of concrete and steel.

In that vast tableau of existence, they were all there: lovers entwined in fleeting moments, vendors hawking their wares with voices that carried hope and desperation in equal measure, children whose laughter rose above the din like music. Each one a story, a life unfurling in the endless narrative of the living.

But Arthur stood apart, a silent observer perched in his high tower of isolation. His breath fogged the glass as he watched, the warmth a stark contrast to the chill that seeped into his bones. No one looked up, no one wondered about the man in the window. To them, he was just another brick in the monolith of apartments, indistinguishable from the rest.

He traced a finger down the cold pane, the city blurring as if trying to evade his touch. He was a ghost haunting his own life, yearning for the thrum of connection that seemed so effortless to others, yet so elusive to him. Here, in his solitary domain, words were the only companions he kept—words that now refused to come, leaving him ensnared in the silence of his own making.

Arthur's gaze drifted from the window back to the clutter of his existence. The cursor on his screen blinked incessantly, a silent and mocking metronome that kept time with his flagging spirits. He ran a hand through his unkempt hair, which stood at odd angles like the wild thoughts that refused to be tamed onto paper.

A shiver coursed through him, not from the draft that whispered through the ill-fitting window frame but from something else—an eerie prelude to the phantasmagoria that often danced at the periphery of his vision. For a moment, the shadows clinging to the corners of the room seemed to shift, to coalesce into something more than mere absence of light. His heart thumped a staccato rhythm against his ribs as he watched, transfixed.

The walls of the apartment pulsed once, twice, then fell still. Out of the corner of his eye, a figure emerged—a wraithlike version of himself, eyes hollow, mouth agape in a silent scream. It hovered there, a specter wrought from the inkwell of his own mind, a manifestation of all the stories untold, the characters unborn. Arthur blinked, and the apparition dissolved into the motes of dust that danced lazily in the beam of sunlight struggling through the grime-coated window.

Get a grip, Quill, he muttered under his breath, fingers clawing for the solidity of reality as he reached for a pen, only to find it as empty as his page. In frustration, he grabbed a half-crumpled sheet and straightened it with an impatient flick, scanning the disjointed words that littered the page like casualties of war.

Pathetic, he growled, his voice the rasp of sandpaper against wood. With a sudden, violent motion, he scrunched the paper into a ball, the texture of defeat rough against his skin. He tossed it towards the trash can, watching it join the ranks of its fallen brethren. The bin was a graveyard of paper, a testament to the myriad false starts and collapsed dreams that littered his path.

His face twisted into a mask of self-doubt so profound it bordered on despair. The muscles in his jaw tensed, a physical embodiment of the inner turmoil that threatened to consume him. How many times could one man hurl himself against the barricades of his own limitations before succumbing to the futility of his efforts?

Arthur's hands trembled, not with fear but with the raw, unbridled need to create, to pour out his soul in ink and word. Yet that very yearning seemed to choke him, squeezing tighter with each attempt to break free from the chains of mediocrity.

By the gods, I will not yield, he whispered, his voice barely more than a breath lost in the musty air of the room. His resolve was a fragile thing, but it was all he had. With renewed determination, he turned back to the blank screen, the white expanse both a challenge and a promise—a battlefield upon which he would either triumph or perish.

Arthur surged to his feet, the old chair groaning in protest as it scraped against the uneven floorboards. He began to pace, his movements heavy and deliberate, each step thumping a dull echo into the stagnant air of the cramped apartment. With every labored breath, he could feel the weight not just upon his frame but within him—a leaden presence that seemed to fill his chest and press down on his lungs.

He walked from one end of the room to the other, back and forth beneath the flickering light of the single bulb overhead. The bulb's sallow light cast long shadows that danced grotesquely with his movement, mocking his futile exertions. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he wiped it away with an impatient hand, his breathing growing more ragged with each pass through the dimly lit space.

At the turn of his path, Arthur's eyes caught the spines of books crammed into a sagging shelf, their titles engraved in gold or stamped in sinister fonts: The Enchanter's Descent, Bones of the Betrayer, Feast of the Damned. Each book was an artifact of his own voracious consumption of the dark and the macabre, talismans of a mind that revelled in the perverse and the twisted. They were beacons that flickered in the shadowy recesses of his imagination, whispering promises of stories yet to be told, of characters born from the abyss of his deepest fantasies.

Damn it all, he gasped, stopping momentarily to catch a breath that seemed to evade him. His gaze lingered on those silent sentinels of paper and ink, each one a testament to the darkness he courted in his hours of solitude. It was a darkness that fed him even as it starved him, a paradoxical muse that demanded ever more of his soul with each word he wrought.

With effort, Arthur steadied himself, using the back of the chair as an anchor against the tide of exhaustion. He knew this dance well—the lure of the forbidden, the seduction of the pen that beckoned him to explore realms others dared not tread. And as he stood there, panting in the dim glow of necessity, the only certainty was the call of the page, the relentless pull toward the unseen, the unspoken, the unwritten.

With a final, shuddering breath, he straightened his back, wiping away the last beads of sweat as if shedding the doubts that clung to him like cobwebs. There was work to be done, words to be conjured from the ether, and whether they bore the mark of madness or genius, only the gods of his craft would judge.

Arthur lunged for the bowl, his fingers closing around a fistful of candy with a fervor that betrayed his desperation. The vibrant wrappers crinkled under his grasp as he brought them to his lips, the sugary morsels tumbling into his mouth. He chewed with abandon, the sweet rush a momentary distraction from the emptiness of the page before him. Each bite was an invocation, a silent plea cast toward the recesses of his mind where inspiration lay dormant, waiting to be roused from its slumber.

The bright taste of artificial cherry and lime mingled on his tongue, a stark contrast to the dull atmosphere of the room. For a fleeting second, the surge of glucose seemed to spark something within—the barest flicker of an idea, a wisp of creativity that fluttered like a moth seeking the flame. Yet, as quickly as it came, the sensation dwindled, leaving behind only the cloying aftertaste of disappointment.

With a sigh heavy enough to stir the dust motes dancing in a shaft of light, Arthur's hand hovered over the keyboard. The keys were cool and unyielding beneath his fingertips, each one a gateway to worlds he yearned to create. But what worlds would they be? Would he succumb to the siren call of his own twisted psyche, delving once again into the macabre tapestry that had become his signature? Or would he steer his ship toward safer shores, penning tales that might warm the heart rather than chill the soul?

His breath hitched as he teetered on the precipice of this decision, the weight of his own expectations pressing down upon him. It was a dance as delicate as it was dangerous, choosing between the allure of darkness and the promise of redemption. The pull of his perverse fantasies was strong; they whispered to him, coaxed him with the intoxicating scent of forbidden fruit. Yet, somewhere deep within, a small voice clamored for the light, for stories that did not tread in the shadows of human frailty.

For a moment longer, Arthur remained still, the battle within raging silently. His pulse thrummed in his ears, a drumbeat to accompany the quiet turmoil that played out in the theater of his mind. With each passing second, the tension drew tighter, a bowstring straining against the draw of opposing forces.

Then, with the faintest click, his finger descended upon a key, the choice made manifest in a single letter appearing upon the screen. The path lay before him, murky and fraught with uncertainty, but it was his to walk.

Arthur's fist came down on the desk with a thunderous crack, rattling the motley array of pens and trinkets that had settled into their own quiet existence amidst the clutter. The small, dusty room seemed to hold its breath, absorbing the violence of his frustration. Coffee sloshed over the rim of a forgotten cup, staining papers that lay in disarray like fallen soldiers on a battlefield of thwarted creativity.

Enough, he growled to the silent witness of his apartment walls, the word a serrated blade cutting through the dense air. His voice was the clash of steel, resolute and edged with the ferocity of a man cornered by his demons yet refusing to yield.

He would not be caged by the labyrinthine twists of his psyche, would not let the specters of doubt and convention bind him in chains. Arthur Quill was more than the sum of his fears, greater than the looming shadows cast by his twisted musings. In this solemn vow to himself, there was no room for hesitation, no crevice for second thoughts to seep through and poison his resolve.

The city beyond his window pulsed with life, each distant light a heartbeat in the sprawling organism of civilization. They were indifferent stars in a sky that watched over him, a celestial audience to his solitary stand against the tide of his own mind. But within these four walls, he was god and creator, master of worlds that teetered on the brink of birth.

Breathing heavily from the exertion of his defiance, Arthur sank back into the worn embrace of his chair, fingers poised above the keyboard like a conductor before an unseen orchestra. Slowly, his hands descended, and with purpose, they began to dance across the keys, conjuring words from the ether.

In his eyes flickered the flame of a relentless spirit, the glimmer of determination that belied the dark circles beneath them. It was the look of a man who had peered into the abyss and saw, not his end, but his beginning—the raw canvas of infinite possibilities.

As the first sentences unfurled onto the screen, weaving the tapestry of a narrative laced with shadow and sinew, the room seemed to expand with the weight of creation. Here, in the sanctum of his making, Arthur Quill embarked once more into the depths of his imagination, a realm where only the brave or the foolish dared tread.

And so he wrote, words flowing like a river breaking free from winter's grip, charting a course through the twisted labyrinth that sprawled, uncharted and wild, within the frontier of his mind.

Arthur Quill gasped as he bolted upright in his bed, the sheets twisted around him like iron chains. His nightshirt clung to his back, drenched in a cold sweat that seeped from every pore. The fiery Queen's visage still burned behind his eyelids – a phantom glow that flickered with each racing beat of his heart. Her image was a brand upon his mind, stoking an inferno of fear and awe that left his breaths shallow and erratic.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, the floorboards cool under his bare feet, a stark contrast to the imagined heat of her presence. Arthur's fingers clawed through the tousled mane of his hair, now sticking up in wild disarray, mirroring the tumult within. Shadows danced across his chamber, cast by the moon's silver gaze through the window, but they could not dispel the darkness that lingered in his wide, haunted eyes.

The urgency of the dream compelled him. His hands, though trembling, were quick to find the pen and paper he kept on his nightstand – always at the ready for moments such as these. The pen felt heavy, alive with potential as it quivered above the parchment. He dipped it into the inkwell, the black liquid a small pool of midnight that would carry his thoughts into form.

As he scrawled across the page, his handwriting was a frenzied dance of loops and lines, desperation lacing each word. The allure of the Queen unfolded from his memory onto the paper, her fiery crown, the enigmatic curve of her lips, the penetrating depth of her eyes – orbs that promised both creation and destruction. Each detail etched with an anticipation so palpable, it was as if he were a mere scribe for the visions that held him captive.

Arthur's breathing steadied as the essence of the Queen poured from him, a stream of consciousness that sought to capture her every nuance. And there, bathed in moonlight, surrounded by the quiet whispers of the night, he forged an intimate archive of his dream. An archive that bound him ever closer to the enigma that visited him in the dark recesses of sleep, where reality blurred and the fantastical took hold.

The candle had burned down to a nub, its flame flickering in the draft of Arthur Quill’s cramped study. The walls were lined with towering bookshelves, each tome a sentinel of arcane knowledge. Arthur’s eyes were bloodshot from hours spent poring over ancient texts and forbidden scrolls, seeking any mention of the fiery Queen who haunted his dreams. His fingers were stained with ink and weariness, yet they moved with an urgency that refused to wane.

Papers scattered across his desk, a chaotic tapestry woven from his feverish research. Amongst them lay drawings of her – the Queen, her image captured in countless forms as if she were shifting through the ages, an immortal enigma. He sketched her silhouette against a backdrop of eternal flames, wrote sonnets to her beguiling smile, and chronicled imagined histories where she ruled as sovereign over realms unseen by mortal eyes.

His imagination had become a labyrinth, and he was both architect and prisoner, crafting corridors that led ever deeper into obsession. Arthur could feel the boundaries between his world and hers thinning, the fabric of reality fraying at the edges like the pages of the books that surrounded him.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the windows, snuffing out the candle and plunging the room into darkness. In the void, Arthur’s heart faltered. What if these dreams were not a gift but a curse? What if his mind, once a haven for his prolific thoughts, had become a plaything for forces beyond his understanding?

He reached for the flint and steel, hands shaking as he attempted to reignite the light. Shadows danced across the walls as the candle flickered back to life, casting grotesque shapes that mimicked his inner turmoil. Arthur’s gaze fell upon the manuscript that sprawled before him, a chronicle of his descent into madness. Was this what became of a mind too eager to grasp the ethereal, to court the whispers of the otherworldly?

Have I crossed the line? he whispered to the silence. Arthur's voice was a stranger, hoarse and uncertain. It echoed off the spines of the books, the keepers of knowledge that now seemed to mock his plight. He buried his face in his hands, feeling the grit of the ink as it smeared across his skin. The Queen's visage swam behind his closed eyelids – vivid, mocking, seductive.

Am I mad? The question hung in the air, unanswered. His heart pounded against his ribcage, a drumbeat in the quiet dread of the night. He knew he should retreat, forsake this path that led only to the brink of his own sanity, yet the allure of the Queen, the thirst for understanding, clung to him like a shroud.

With a breath that mustered the last of his resolve, Arthur turned the page of his manuscript, the parchment crisp and accusing under his touch. He would continue, for the siren call of his dreamt Queen was a tale not yet fully told, and he, Arthur Quill, was its sole chronicler. Whether prophet or