Near-Life Experience: A Gripping Tale of Anxiety

By Dave Franklin

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.

 

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baby Ice Dog Press
• Release date: Jun 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386496366

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).

Book preview

"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