Lost in Nightmares: Tales of Romance and Death

By Marinus Terblanche

A collection of short stories penned (or rather typed) in an era of grunge rock, horror movie revival and teen angst with one newer tale inspired by the mess that was the year 2020. These tales of morbid romance and macabre revelations will fuel your nightmares with new levels of fear, ensuring that waking up brings with it a new appreciation for being alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marinus Terblanche
• Release date: Dec 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005912475

Marinus Terblanche

Marinus Terblanche is the host of the LGBTQ+ South Africa Podcast as well as the owner of RedoYou Personal Growth and Development Coaching in Pretoria, South Africa. As a freelance writer and indie author, he has written several eBooks on topics that include leadership mindset, mental and physical health, self-esteem, and addiction.He was born in the beautiful Eastern Cape in South Africa in 1977, but grew up in the eastern suburbs of Johannesburg where he wrote in many formats since his early teen years. From articles and interviews to poems, lyrics and short stories.He left Johannesburg in 2012 and now lives in Pretoria where he offers personal development coaching, plays bass guitar, writes self improvement books and the occasional spooky tale.

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Lost in Nightmares – Tales of romance and death

By

Marinus Terblanche

Copyright 2021 Marinus Terblanche

Distributed by Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Content

Then Came the Noise

The Day I Met My Soul

Until Death Do Us Part

Trees

Of Love and Hunger

The Mystery of Mary Webber

Words

Marked

About the Author

Then Came the Noise

I couldn’t really tell you when it started. But I can tell you exactly when I noticed it for the first time. It was subtle, hardly a strange thing except for the irritation that drove my blood pressure so high that I immediately thought of how odd it is for me to get so angry about something so silly. I mean dogs bark, right? It’s what they do. And never before did it bother me much because it would just be one more sound among the many making up the cacophony of the everyday soundtrack. Along with traffic, the guy mowing his lawn down the road, the fan trying to stop my perspiration while I spend hours in front of my PC on that midsummer’s afternoon. These are the sounds you hardly notice until they stop. It’s sometimes their absence that makes you realise how annoying they actually were.

But that day my two Labradors were driving me crazy. It was as if someone had managed to connect the sounds of the day to a mixing desk and turned nothing but the barking of the dogs up a few decibels. I tried to keep working but soon it was as if I could hear nothing but the dogs.

The barking wasn’t even frantic as if there were intruders scaling the fence. It was just normal, unenthusiastic look-another-car everyday barking of dogs. It was nothing out of the ordinary and it was driving me insane. And that was only the first noise that seemed intensified somehow.

It was maybe two days after the dogs started driving me to thoughts of poison and euthanasia when the fridge started sounding more like a tractor than an appliance. Being a freelance writer, my days are mostly spent at home in my study working on articles and reviews, perhaps a short story or a chapter of the never-ending novel I’m attempting. Thus, my first thought was that the fridge must be packing up. Some thingy inside its electronic guts must have melted or broken and now it sounds angry and dying. The only problem was that it did not sound odd to anyone but me. Old Frank from next door popped by that afternoon and when I asked him if the fridge sounded like something ready to explode, he said no. But Frank is old and old people don’t hear too well so I phoned an electrician anyway who came out the next morning. But he too said the fridge sounds fine and an inspection of the wiring didn’t reveal any kind of damage. Very odd right? Because you’ve heard all those stories of electricians charging clients for repairs that were never actually done. Either there are still some honest electricians in the world or this guy thought I was loony so best just get out quick. I may have conveyed my irritation with the tractor fridge noise a bit too passionately while screaming at the dogs like a maniac every 5 minutes.

That night I started unplugging the fridge before going to bed. Yes, it was summer but the nights are cooler than the days and I only sleep about 5 hours a night so nothing spoiled. There was never much that could spoil anyway. As I mentioned before I am a writer. It was either that or not sleeping because at night the thing sounded like a bloody chainsaw in the kitchen. If my study wasn’t an upstairs room, I probably would have risked leaving the fridge off for most of the day as well. The noise of the fridge however didn’t mask the ear-piercing woof woof woof of the Labradors outside. They became two equally loud disturbances that made me squint with concentration when reading and grind my teeth with frustration when writing.

That Friday morning, what I now refer to as the morning of day four, I decided if the problem cannot be removed from me then I will remove myself from the problem. The fridge I could unplug at times but the dogs? I remember wondering if surgically removing their tongues would cause them to not bark but still leave them able to eat. I may have daydreamed of removing their tongues myself in a very nonsurgical manner. You see, when one is afflicted with constant auditory irritation your thoughts seem to darken and morals become debatable. This became very clear when I took my seat at the coffee shop where I had planned to do day four’s writing and reading.

The coffee bean grinder, the barista machine, the clatter of dishes and the children, oh the children. I could not believe everyone else looked so unaffected, reading newspapers, working on laptops and tablets, going about their business. I placed my order with the waitress anyway realising by her expression that I was screaming at her the way people listening to music through headphones tend to when talking to people around them who do not have the new trendy Foo Fighters single blasting in their ears. I made an effort to speak in a softer tone and off she went to fetch my cappuccino and croissant. I thought maybe it’s just exceptionally busy and it will calm down soon as the morning rush wanes and then noises will fade. They did not. Instead, they became louder and louder even when some clients had left. This is when I realised something was very, very wrong. There were no sounds added to increase the general noise yet the existing sounds all became louder as if they were being turned up. We have all had the