Near-Life Experience: A Gripping Tale of Anxiety
5/5
()
About this ebook
Glenn Tillman runs a successful business, has a beautiful girlfriend and is about to take a well-earned overseas holiday with her.
So why is he so scared?
This short novella can also be found in A Promise of Pain: A Collection of Dark Psychological Writing. Dave Franklin is the author of ten novels.
Dave Franklin
Dave Franklin is a Brit who lives Down Under. He has also written ten novels ranging from dark comedy and horror to crime and hardcore porn. His naughty work includes Looking for Sarah Jane Smith (2001), Begin the Madness: The Straitjacket Blues Trilogy (2014), The Muslim Zombies (2018) & Welcome to Wales, Girls: A Violent Odyssey of Pornographic Filth (2018).
Read more from Dave Franklin
Girls Like Funny Boys Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5English Toss on Planet Andong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Then Came The Last Days Of May Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Evil Arse Soup: Three Ultra-Dark Comedies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blundering Blokes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5To Dare A Future: A Novel of Rage Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Saving a Child from God Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Looking for Sarah Jane Smith Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Eaters of Evil Spirits Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Manic Streets of Perth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Riders on the Storm and Other Killer Songs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Muslim Zombies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nice Man Jack Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shelter: A Supernatural Short Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We Should Be More Like Fish: A Medieval Novella Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Promise of Pain: A Collection of Dark Psychological Writing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to Near-Life Experience
Related ebooks
Near Death Near Life: A Journey into the Mystic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrash V: Crash, #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSolar Weapon Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Haunted Tales Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tribulation: The Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Crash IV - Run Free: Crash, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsApocalypse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Point of No Return: Surrender the Sun, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTormented Souls Series Books 1 - 3: Tormented Souls Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAngels and Demons: Perspectives of a Violent Afterlife Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Crash II - Highrise Hell: Crash, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTribulation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMullins Collection of Best New Horror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrash III - There's No Place Like Home: Crash, #3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Nightmare's Testimony: A Collection of Creepy Tales from the BisMan Writers Guild Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNear-Death Experiences Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Race to Refuge Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Muslim Zombies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Near Death Experiences: Astonishing, True Stories, Lifestyle Transformations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSurvive: Day One Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJust Another Day in Purgatory Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Possession: Suffer the Children 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDie Again Tomorrow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5BLOOD Brothers: a memoir of faith and loss while raising two sons with cancer Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Pandemic Survivors Omnibus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpecies: A sci-fi medical thriller of riveting suspense and intrigue Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Walk on the Other Side: A Young Woman's Near Death Experiences That Prove the Continuity of Life After Death Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeaven Is Near Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVillains of the Apocalypse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Ambulance with Wings: Learning to Trust God Through the Journey of Isaac: a Special Needs Child Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Short Stories For You
Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of the Best American Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ficciones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skeleton Crew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Tuesdays in Winter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four Past Midnight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lovecraft Country: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Scorched Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Explicit Content: Red Hot Stories of Hardcore Erotica Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Skin Folk: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Near-Life Experience
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Near-Life Experience - Dave Franklin
"Ja, it just gave way when my son leaned on it, the old woman said, pointing at the broken wooden fence that ringed the backyard deck.
He’d finished mowing the lawn and was taking a rest when he almost tumbled straight through. Gave us both quite a shock, it did."
Glenn Tillman nodded as he peered at the honeycomb texture of the snapped-off railing. Coptotermes acinaciformis by the look of those clean galleries going across the grain. He got up, opened the rickety gate and squatted to examine its base. Telltale mud tubes snaked up from the neatly cut grass. He glanced at a tree stump a few metres away, already certain it was the major source of the infestation.
He was about to get up again when a picture of hundreds of the tiny creatures blindly scurrying along their moist, subterranean passages forced its way into his mind. He frowned and put a hand on his forehead. The vision grew stronger, more detailed, zeroing in on a pair of workers probing each other’s pale, glistening heads with their twitching antennae as they relentlessly chewed detritus. Now he felt connected to the colony, almost able to hear its vile insect chatter. Dizziness threatened and he became convinced that if he stayed in the same spot they would turn their attention toward him and start streaming upwards, burrowing in through the soles of his feet.
Just as suddenly the mental image vanished, leaving him to stare at the old woman’s stockings sagging around her ankles. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
You all right?
Yeah...
He stood with purple dots flaring before his eyes. Maybe Becky was right. Maybe he had been working a bit too much lately. Then the bout of dizziness passed. He cleared his throat.
I just...
"You want a cuppa? Some rooibos?"
He took a deep breath, trying to work out her accent. It was a bit harsh and grated on the ear. German, maybe?
Yeah, ta, but about the deck. I’m –
Is it bad?
she asked, her voice tremulous with age and fear and hope.
He offered a tight smile, suspecting she was facing a calamity. Upon parking in the driveway and surveying the house’s exterior five minutes ago, a whole host of red flags had shot up – a timber structure, a garden that sloped toward it, far too much wood to ground contact, and at least two mulched flowerbeds that actually touched the sidings. The whole place was like a Mecca for white ants.
He dusted off his hands, knowing the deck would have to be burnt.
I’m afraid, Mrs...
Her name had gone. He still felt a bit weak, gripped by an odd coldness in the pit of his stomach and an intermittent urge to brush things off him. It doesn’t look good.
Is it?
She smiled weakly.
Well... I still have to look inside.
"Ja, of course... I’ll... boil the kettle and let you... She looked at the broken fence again with a hand over her mouth.
I’ve been having a coffee on this deck just about every morning for the last twenty years."
Then she led him into the kitchen, his mouth watering at the rich smell of roast beef. Such a shame he’d had to give up red meat a few months ago after reading too much of it led to rectal cancer.
You do what you have to,
she said, and I’ll... How many sugars?
None. I’ll start in the hallway.
He quickly found pronounced damage to a skirting board and wood-coloured frass piled up in a corner. In the living room he almost walked into a row of hanging dried meat before tapping on a very hollow-sounding wall and discovering at least ten holes near a window joint. Given it was early spring and the peak time for swarmers, at least there weren’t any discarded wings, although the possibility remained of an ancillary nest lurking within a wall cavity.
He went to call the old woman’s name and again it eluded him. He put both hands on his hips, trying to recall as a telly in the corner burbled away. What the hell was wrong with him these days? And what had been that weird turn in the garden?
He took a long, slow breath and glanced at the TV screen to see aircraft wreckage strewn over a paddock before the picture changed to a grim-faced