"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

Spurred by a plethora of tales cascading throughout antiquity of death, destruction, mayhem, dismemberment, and an unfathomable list of evils and punishments slathered like butter on hot toast upon humankind by the supernatural; the unseen, yet often spoken of in hushed terms, those things that go bump in the night, monsters hiding under the bed daring a foot to free itself from the covers and venture a step to the floor on a dark night, ghosts, goblins, and gargoyles inhabiting old abandoned houses, vampires, ghouls, werewolves, witches and warlocks, sorcerers, and sundry other frightening, menacing, paranormal creatures which send screams of fright from young and old on Halloween, lurking in dark cemeteries, unlighted corridors, mausoleums, and locations "known" to harbor these harbingers of painful, excruciating, unimaginable death, the human animal carries charms or talismans of rabbit feet, silver crosses, amulets around the neck, bags of garlic, and an elaborate set of rituals to ward evil away.

Yet, for all of the stories and concerns, one would ask, are there any recorded deaths from any of those aforementioned evil doers or does the real evil, the most insidious cause of death lay within the real world rather than the supernatural, embodied in the human animal itself?

Oh, man how evil is thy nature when seeking a fortune through illicit, illegal means? Oh, man how can thee murder, according to the Center for Disease Control in the United States for the period ending December 30, 2016, 71,135 of your own kind by drug overdose, a life and death most destructive, more painful, and deleterious than those imagined by myth by fabled creatures?

Perhaps, just perhaps, it is time for those creatures to act and notice to those manufacturers and marketers of this death to heed well Shakespeare's warning,

Double double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, cauldron bubble.
By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes.

It comes on padded feet, gnashing teeth, scorching hell, and gives truth to fiction.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental or used in a fictional content.

The Literary works of Nicholas Hall are protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America and are the property of the author.

If you enjoy my stories and the many others found on this free site, please consider a donation. It is your donations which make all of our stories free and available for you to read and enjoy.

Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.^* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.

[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]

^* Some browsers may require a right click instead

Fire Burn, Cauldron Bubble

by Nicholas Hall

Prologue