Unreal Serial: a new series of short stories in serial form.

Wicked Web, Part 2/6:

Dan felt a fizz at his temples after smoking the web-glazed cigarette. It was slight at first – an almost imperceptible simmer under the surface of his skin on either side of his head. Then the sensations grew – fizzes became buzzes; buzzes became vibrations.

Those vibrations spread across Dan’s brow, drawing closer and closer to one another, nearer and nearer until they converged right between Dan’s eyes, two coalescing into one. 

FLASH! 

A fist-sized bulb of blue light erupted from Dan’s forehead into the sky – an incandescent sapphire hovering amidst pitch-black. Dan felt his face for an exit wound, but there was none. No gaping hole, no shattered skull or blood. Just his skin and a few zits.

The glowing blue bulb began rotating above the valley, and with each revolution it pulsated bright and brighter, spun faster and faster, gaining so much speed that it’s rounded edges blurred and broke, unfurling prismatic threads from the bulb’s center into the air.