Praying To The Aliens

By E.W. Story

The survivor of a terrible car accident wakes oddly changed, leading his wife and best friend to suspect that he is no longer, or not entirely, himself . . . The dying discoverer of the Golden Screaming Tree Frog finds comfort in the strangest of places.

It’s often hard to tell the difference between insanity and alien invasion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: E.W. Story
• Release date: Oct 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9780995380813

E.W. Story

The initials in the name “E. W. Story” stand for “Evelyn William”. He might also be called “Ed”. Ed was possibly born in Cleve, South Australia, and raised in Adelaide, where he may have studied mathematics. Some propose that he lived in Perth and Darwin as well. It’s not beyond the realm of chance that he has a wife (Liz), two children (Luke and Sarah-Jane), and a dog (Darth). He definitely sold a story called “Cold Sleep, Cold Dreams” that was published in the landmark 1994 Australian science fiction anthology Alien Shores.He is also, almost certainly, the author of “On the Blink”, a story that rated third in a readers’ poll of the Canberra SF Society in 1992. That story appeared under the name “Bradley MacMillan”.He could also be #1 New York Times-bestselling author "Sean Williams".Which is the pseudonym? You decide.

Book preview

Praying to the Aliens

1. The Coma

I knew Ken Bridge for nine years, but I have no idea why he killed himself. Or Pam, his wife.

That’s what I told the police when they asked, and I repeat it for Inspector Gadget. He just sits quietly for a while, sucking deep lungfuls of smoke into his lungs and looking me closely in the eye. Eventually, he says:

Bullshit.

And he’s right.

Ken Bridge died two months ago, Pam with him—and I know exactly who killed them. But I’ve said nothing to anyone about the truth, because I don’t understand why.

Why they had to die.

#

January 8th, 1997. Ken Bridge was driving his car south-east along the stretch of Highway One between Crystal Brook and Adelaide, in a hurry to get home for his sister’s fifth anniversary party that weekend. The night was warm, sparklingly clear, and he was doing one hundred and fifty kilometres per hour. It was one-thirty in the morning.

He told me later that the last thing he remembered was something jumping into the glare of his headlights. Most probably a kangaroo, but it could have been a fox or a feral cat. Whatever it was, he slammed on the brakes to avoid it, lost control and rolled five times into the scrub. The mangled car came to rest upside down against the trunk of a large tree which, had he been travelling slightly faster, would have torn the car in half—and him as well.

What happened in the next four hours is anyone’s guess. No-one noticed him until dawn. His headlights were smashed; only the globe of the interior lamp survived the impact.

But I dreamed of him, that night. In the dream, he was splayed out on the ground somewhere in the desolate and featureless countryside. There was no blood and, apart from the shallow rise and fall of his chest, no sign of life.

My dream-self nervously approached Ken’s body. The back of his skull had been bent and peeled back. His brain trembled within its cup-like embrace like wrinkled, grey jelly. Inside Ken’s head, wrapped in the soft flesh of his mind, was something unspeakable, coiled like a black, glistening, unearthly snake. It pulsed slowly to unknown rhythms and uncoiled with a moist, slithering sound as my face loomed over it.

I awoke when it suddenly sprang for my eyes, tearing through cortical tissues as it did so. I sat upright in my bed with my heart hammering, fearing that something terrible had happened, or was about to happen. Or both.

#

Ken and I had been friends for six years. A branch manager of the Australian Central Credit Union, he’d been sent to Port Lincoln to inspect some claim or other—a job he enjoyed doing because it got him out from behind his desk and into the country. No matter that the drive was eight hours, alone and along dead, straight roads; Ken enjoyed it. He played tapes and, I would imagine, sang along with them to keep himself awake. I don’t know what he had been listening to when he began to roll, however; the tape deck was chewed up and spat out of the car like a piece of chewing gum.

But Ken didn’t only work for ACCU. He, like myself, kept a finger in a few pies, and it was through one of these side-interests that we first met.

I first worked at Thebarton Theatre in September 1990. The job was simple, little more than making sure the patrons didn’t smoke or take drinks into the venue itself, and I enjoyed it. Ken Bridge also started that night. Like me, he was working simply for fun, rather than out of necessity. We had plenty in common, and one of those things was music.

Ken’s knowledge was more extensive and detailed than mine; his tastes varied from heavy metal to classical and twentieth century avant-garde. Some of his tastes rubbed off onto me, as we got to know each other better and I was exposed to an ever-widening landscape of musical colour, but I never equalled his apparently limitless capacity for the storage, instant recall, and pure appreciation of music in all its forms. I suppose it might have removed some of the pleasure I took from learning about his favourite field had I done so. Perhaps our friendship might have been less immediate, and lasting.

Sometimes it seemed to me that he lived first for music, and everything else second.

Pam humoured her husband’s little foibles with good grace. When I asked him once why she had married him, he replied:

Because she’s very tolerant, and she knew no-one else would have me.

#

The wreck was spotted first by a truckie, who radioed immediately for the police and an ambulance. The car was so twisted they had to cut it apart. Ken himself was miraculously untouched, except for a nasty gash on the back of his head. Blood had streamed down the back of the seat and pooled like hot raspberry jam in the space where the rear seat had once been.

Had the attending officers been able, they would have told him how lucky he was to be alive. But they couldn’t. Ken was in a coma. He awoke eleven months later.

It was in that time that I started fucking Pam.

#

She was a good-looking woman by anyone’s standards, almost a year older than Ken and younger than me by two. She was petite, but not easily over-looked, and had thick, blonde hair. Her eyes were blue, her lips red, her skin smooth and clear. Her limbs held surprising strength, but she was as flexible as a teenager. She looked very much younger at the time of the accident, I think; my memories of her from those times are probably tarnished by those more recent.

Ken was not much taller than she and skinny, although what he lacked in weight he made up for in wiry strength; I had a hard time beating him at squash, and I am a big man, proud of my flesh. His hair was that particularly non-descript brown that would have elegantly streaked with grey when he grew old, but not receded. His eyes were hazel, his nose thin and small. Dimples flashed when he smiled, which was often, and laughter-lines crinkled the skin around his eyes like veins in