Author William Fripp

Chapter One

In the red light of the failing sun, Conan the Second, King of Aquilonia, stood on a hill and surveyed the first great battlefield of his reign.

Five years earlier, the young king’s mighty sire, Conan the Great, then in his sixties, had abdicated his throne and disappeared into legendry, some say to meet his bane, others claiming the barbarian king and hero of a thousand tales was a demigod, an immortal who yet lived, still battling his way west, across the oceans and continents of the world still unmapped and unexplored by any in the Hyborian age.

Whatever Conan’s fate, his eldest son, known to his family and friends as Conn, was left to rule the greatest nation state in their part of the known world, and his legendary father’s many enemies saw Conan’s abdication and disappearance as an opportunity to seize power for themselves.

Not the least of these was a man named Titus, a once powerful nobleman from Zingara who had sided against Conan when the former king had first claimed the throne of Aquilonia decades earlier. At first, Titus was reluctant to test Conn, fearing his ferocious sire would return at his moment of triumph and crush him, as he had done to so many others, so many times before. However, when Conan had not returned after five years and rumors of his death at the hands of the red shadows that had plagued his kingdom shortly before his departure reached Aquilonia, Titus had begun plotting the overthrow of the young king.

In secret, he allied himself with the Picts, the dark, wild men of the west who had for centuries fought the ancestors of those who now ruled over lands that had once belonged to their own ancestors.

Savage and undisciplined, the Picts were nonetheless capable and tenacious fighters, fearless in the face of death and able to withstand brutal punishment ere they fell. All they lacked was leadership. Indeed, had the Picts the discipline to organize and band their factious clans together rather than fight amongst themselves, they may still have inhabited all of the lands the white men now lorded over, but they were a jealous and barbarous people, given to slaughtering one another over the slightest insult and feuds between clans sometimes went on for decades.

More than once they had rallied under the leadership of one of their spiritual leaders, powerful shamans whose magic could invoke supernatural horrors, who used fear to control them and drive them to blood crazed frenzy, hurling them against the war machines and cold steel of the men of Aquilonia and her allies. Each time they had been driven back, their shaman slain and their will broken. The last two times this had happened, it was Conan himself who had delivered the fatal stroke and then years later when at last he had torn the bloody crown of Aquilonia from the head of depraved king Numedides with his own hands and declared himself king, the Picts had faded back into the night haunted forests and kept to themselves, content not to test the giant berserker who had in battle after battle claimed so many of their fathers, brothers and sons.

Now, however, they were told that Conan had gone and had left on his throne a young heir, untested, they heard, in real battle and the man who told them these lies had also promised them their lands back and much wealth to boot should they aid him. The Picts had believed him, and laying aside old feuds, had banded together to form an army that, together with mercenaries hired by Titus, numbered in the tens of thousands.

For the first time, the Picts were given arms to match their foes and trained to use them, taught the ways of steel and iron, given armor to cover their naked and vulnerable bodies.

Then there rose among them a new shaman, Achak, the unholy offspring of a fallen shaman and some believed, a she-demon summoned from the Pit.  Achak’s magic, it was said, was very strong.  He was master over the beasts of the forest and with a glance could mesmerize a man rendering him completely under the witch’s control.

 Rumor had it that during a midnight council where dozens of warring clans had gathered under a totem of truce, Achak had summoned from the forest a giant saber toothed cat, a beast thought to be long extinct. It was said that the beast, a twenty foot monster with two foot tusks and paws the size of small shields, at Achak’s command, had glided from the gloomy mist of the great forest, gone directly to the shaman and lain down,  it’s great head bowed at his dusky feet. This was a powerful sign, the sign that they had waited for, the omen that had convinced them to join with the white man and his soldiers who sought to help them overthrow the hated Aquilonians once and for all. From that night forward, they were committed to defeating Conn; they would stop at nothing to see him, his family and any who opposed them roasting over open pits.

 Now, a year later, the Picts, under the leadership of Titus and Achak, had crossed the Black River in their blood mad hordes and over run the Bossonian Marches. They slaughtered all who stood in their way; men, women, children - none were spared as the swart brown marauders hacked and slew their way toward the Aquilonian border.

As soon as the reports of the massacre reached Tarantia, the glittering capitol of Aquilonia, Conn had gathered his host and ridden out to meet them.

They had been shocked to see the Picts armored and carrying steel rather than the inferior copper weapons they were used to seeing. At first they fell back in the face of the Pict attack, seeming confused and disoriented, but then a figure clad in black armor emblazoned with a golden lion, the harness of the king, and wielding a huge double bitted axe, rode in amongst them, striking right and left, dispatching the Picts as though they were stalks of wheat under the scythe and bellowing the Cimmerian war cry taught him by his titanic sire. To his men, it was as though Amra (for that was Conan’s nickname) himself had returned from his sojourn to lead them to another roaring victory and they rallied to his cry. In an explosion of violent action, they mowed down the Picts, slaughtering all that stood to fight and pursuing those that fled into the forest.

Now as evening fell, the young king assayed the gory scene before him. Unhelmeted, Conn wiped the sweat from his brow and watched as his dead and wounded were removed from the field and any wounded Picts were dispatched. From behind him, he heard a familiar voice mutter, “So, this is what war is like.”

Conn turned and gave a grim smile to his younger brother, Taurus. Conn himself was the very image of his father, square jawed and grim, with coarse black hair and strikingly blue eyes. His brother, while as powerfully built, was a foot shorter than Conn, and favored more his mother Zenobia, who had died giving birth to their sister, Radegund. There was about them both, however, the stamp of their barbarian sire that set them apart from other men and which bonded them together as closely as two brothers could be.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” Conn taunted him.

Taurus did not return the jest. “No, brother, it is not pretty. It is gory and horrific. Is it necessary to kill the wounded? Surely they cannot harm us now.”

Conn turned back to face the battlefield. This was the basic difference between them. Conn had received more attention from their father, been in the field with him, had fought beside him while Taurus still toddled in the palace court. He knew that in the world in which they lived, only the strong lived long enough to have tales written about them and songs sung about the campfires retelling their deeds. Taurus was still young, only sixteen; he had not been exposed to the world that existed outside of Aquilonia.

Taurus’ position as the king’s brother and next in line for the throne had not earned him the easy life that some of his contemporaries had enjoyed; young fops whose fathers owned land and commanded troops who had about them bodyguards and hangers on; he had learned from his brother what Conn and been taught by their father and had been tested through battle in several small skirmishes that had arisen after Conan’s sudden departure, but today had been his first real combat in a major battle. He had accounted himself well; dozens of Picts had fallen under his sword, but the experience had left an impression on him and it came through now in his voice as he talked with his brother. Conn tried to pretend he had not heard it.

“Better to have them dead now then have to fight them again later.”

“As you say.”

Taurus moved to stand beside him. He squatted down and scooped a handful of dirt in his hands, letting it sift through his fingers as he looked out over the field. The vultures had begun to circle and the first had landed to begin the macabre buffet. He shuddered.

“What a waste,” he grunted, disgust in his voice.

“A waste you say, brother? How so?”

“Look about you, Conn,” he said gesturing with a sweeping motion at the scene before them. “These poor bastards had no chance. Twere better they were still naked and squatting in some hut somewhere than be food for the vultures. It sickens me.”

Conn looked down at his younger brother, grim faced and earnest. “I did not attack them, Taurus. It was they that crossed the river and murdered women and children. I feel no pity for these. They got only what they asked for.”

Taurus rose and faced Conn. “I know, brother. I do not fault you. It is Titus who is the real enemy here. It is he who raised this army. He and the witch are responsible for this carnage.” Again, he turned away from his brother and looked out over the field as the last remnants of pink and red were fading away to dusk. “Still, it saddens me that these simple brutes must be the grist for his mill.”

Conn placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You have a good heart, brother, and it serves you well, but know this,” he turned Taurus toward him and looked him in the eyes, “the Picts have been fighting our ancestors since before Atlantis fell, since the time of Kull of Valusia and until they pull themselves from the barbarousness from which they came, they will continue to fight us. It is in their nature; they are taught to hate us. I will not hunt them as long as they do not hunt me, but today was not the end. This was merely Titus and his shaman sizing us up, reconnoitering us. The final battle of this conflict has not yet been fought but when it is, many will die on both sides. War is not a thing which brings happiness, Taurus, but it is a thing that must be done if we want our children and the children of those who look to us for protection to live to have children of their own.”

The two sons of Conan the Conqueror stood silently for a minute, sharing the bond that only one brother can have with another. As they turned and left the little hilltop and headed for their encampment, the sun finally sank below the distant horizon and darkness fell like a shroud over the dead and the living alike.

Chapter Two

Deep in the dank, fetid wilderness, the same darkness fell over a Pictish encampment and the mud huts they used as dwellings. The cooking fires were blazing, casting an orange glow on the surrounding cover of forest that encircled the camp and female Picts, their naked bodies shining blackly in the firelight, moved here and about it preparing the meal for the group of warriors camped there.

Groups of them sat by themselves around smaller fires, talking and gesticulating, describing their prowess in battle and lovemaking or deriding their counterparts’ skills, laughing and yelling at one another as they waited for their repast. They had not been in the previous day’s conflict; none who had still lived. They had been summoned here by Achak, for what they knew not and did not deign to ask. The mysterious holy man was as much an enigma to them as to their foes and they would rather have faced his great saber toothed cat than question his commands. They simply knew that he wanted them there and that was all they cared to know.

Apart from the main camp, another, larger hut was erected, with a high roof and wide doorways. It was coated in a black pitch like mud so that were it not for the torches alight at the entrance, one could have easily stumbled into it before one saw it clearly. At the entrance to this larger building, the great cat lounged, loudly cracking the bone of some prey beast it had between its enormous paws, guarding the entrance to its master’s dwelling.

Languorously it stretched its massive forepaws, the muscles rippling elegantly beneath its tawny hide and yawned, exposing rows of razor sharp teeth and a pair of two-foot long canines that curved out of either side of its giant head. Its stretch completed, the monstrous twenty-foot throwback to another age put the end of the big bone it was cradling back in its mouth and continued extracting the nutrient rich marrow within it. The loud cracking sound of the bone giving way reverberated through the night air.

Inside the hut, a rank fume-like haze hung like a pall in the air. The stench of death permeated the atmosphere and the dirt floor crawled with insects, ants, roaches, spiders and centipedes scurrying underfoot, fighting one another for the detritus that lay strewn about the place.

A fire was lit in the center of the hut and the heat from it turned the stinking atmosphere into a sauna. Behind the fire, cross-legged and naked, sweat seeping from his every pour, sat Achak.

His curly gray hair was long and matted, tendrils of it like the arms of some wooly kraken standing out in all directions. His face, gaunt and haggard in the firelight, was decorated with the ritual scars of his calling and painted white except around the eyes, giving his countenance a skull like aspect. Deep in the recesses of these dark pits, his eyes glowed redly and shone like the slag of hell.

Moaning in a low voice and swaying back and forth, Achak raised his hands over an object placed in front of him before the fire, thumbs together, fingers splayed wide. He began to shake, then, his body twitching, his hands seeming to vibrate over the object and his moaning turned to wailing, a high-pitched keening note that got louder and louder until it no longer resembled a human voice at all but rather the voice of a demon from the pits of the abyss. As it reached its crescendo, a lightning bolt struck from a clear sky outside the hut and the great cat guarding the entrance leaped to its feet and screamed, adding its guttural snarl to its master’s incantation.

Around the cooking fires, the warriors gathered there became deathly silent, the whites of their eyes gleaming, the women trembling with fear. Then all was silent.

Back inside the hut, Achak sat still, his wooly head bowed and his arms limp at his side. Finally, after some minutes, he raised his head and regarded the object at his feet.

It was the severed head of an old Pict, remarkably alike in appearance to Achak himself. It was, in fact, the head of Achak’s own father, Sagayetha, and though dead for three decades, its eyes were open and, impossibly, words issued from its gory mouth.

“What trick is this? Why am I trapped in this place? Who has summoned me into Limbo?”

“It is I father, your son, who summons you.”

The fire flared dangerously and hot as the shriveled ancient head of Old Sagayetha wailed.

 “AIEEEEEEEEEEEE! You have ripped me from my place in Gehenna! You have disturbed my resssssst! Oh, pain and torment! Why have you done this? What do you want of me?”

“I require your sight, O Father, for my enemy is close and I must know where to strike at him next. Look, O Father, through the Great Veil and guide me so that I can revenge you and destroy the house of Conan forever!”

The severed head rolled it eye’s back into their withered sockets and its mouth opened, its tongue protruding blackly like a moldering slug. A worm crawled from it nostrils and back into the black maw as it wailed again.

“AIEEE! Conan! A thousand curses on that barbarian cur! May Father Set eat his liver for a thousand years!”

“Yes, Father, Conan has left these lands and is rumored dead. His heir now sits on the throne of Aquilonia, but he is not his sire. He has not the teeth his father had; he can be beaten. See for me Father, peer through the Veil and tell me where to strike at him!”

The eyes rolled back down and looked into the eyes of Achak, pale orbs in sunken flesh. “I will look, O Son, but you must never use me again in this way! You must never pull me away from my resting place in the pits of Gehenna, for the fires cannot touch me there! Here I burn! I BURN! AIEEEEE!”

“Forgive me, Father, but only through your eyes can I see what needs to be seen.”

“I will look now, O Son. I will peer through the Veil…”

With that the severed head’s eyes glazed white and a blue glow issued from them. For several minutes all was quiet save for the crackling of the fire. Then the glow retreated and once again the head of the ancient shaman spoke.

“I have seen, O Son, I have seen! The force of Aquilonia is gathered in the Bossonian Marches and only a small contingent of guards stays behind in Tarantia. Go there and find the daughter of Conan! Find Radegund! Bring here to the Tree…take her to the Wailing Tree…”

An evil smile etched itself into Achak’s craggy face.

The Wailing Tree was a massive willow that grew far to the east in the darkest section of the forest that was home to the Picts. Shamans from before the time of the First Cataclysm had ensorcelled the tree and imbued it with the power to extract the soul from anyone trapped within its feathery creepers and when the tree was done with its victims, it left them alive yet emptied of life, zombified and enslaved to the shaman who placed them there. Tens of thousands of Picts and their enemies had gone gibbering to satisfy the vampiric willow’s parasitic thirst over the eons and now Achak planned on feeding it the daughter of his greatest foe and in the process lure the seed of Conan of Cimmeria and destroy it for all time!

“RELEASE ME! RELEASE MEEEEEE! I have told you what you need to know! Let me go back into my cairn, away from the fire! RELEASE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Achak placed his hands back where they had been during the incantation and mumbled three words under his breath. With a final howl, his father’s soul ran barking back to Gehenna.

Rising, exhausted, Achak staggered to the door of his hut and called out for his chieftain, Mobutu. Warily, the swarthy Pict chieftain approached the witch’s hut and stammered, “You called, O Master?”

“Bring me food and water,” Achak snapped, “then come inside. We have things to discuss.”

Personally, I try not read a lot when I'm actively writing (which should be WAY more often) so that my voice is distinct while still familiar feeling enough to appeal to my readers.

Having said that, I readily admit to purposefully trying to recreate a certain rhythm and cadence in certain pieces, like the Sons of Conan trilogy, as was deployed by other authors who write in the same genre, including in this case Robert E. Howard, the father of heroic fantasy. That, in my mind at least, is less emulative and more genre specific than say trying to be as horrific and graphic as possible in an effort to be more Kingian, if you will.

What are your thoughts?

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• #AmWriting #AmEditing #AmRevising #Author #Authors #AuthorLife

Personally, I try not read a lot when I'm actively writing (which should be WAY more often) so that my voice is distinct while still familiar feeling enough to appeal to my readers.

Having said that, I readily admit to purposefully trying to recreate a certain rhythm and cadence in certain pieces, like the Sons of Conan trilogy, as was deployed by other authors who write in the same genre, including in this case Robert E. Howard, the father of heroic fantasy. That, in my mind at least, is less emulative and more genre specific than say trying to be as horrific and graphic as possible in an effort to be more Kingian, if you will.

What are your thoughts?

http://amzn.to/RQn6ZZ

http://amzn.to/1ogN86n

• #AmWriting #AmEditing #AmRevising #Author #Authors #AuthorLife

There were no longer nights or days.

The sun, which now dominated the skies overhead, was a constant and overpowering presence, bombarding the rapidly depleting ozone with a cosmic tidal wave of lethal radiation, bathing the barren landscape of the ruined earth in a dark purple the color of bruised flesh. The life giving light that had once supplied the green things of the planet with the necessary nutrients to grow and flourish had long since scorched the land dry, had long since evaporated every drop of moisture from the oceans and rivers and streams, had long since burned away any signs that the earth had ever been inhabited by even the lowliest of creatures. Even the microbes had perished.

There were no people now to bear witness to the final hours of the planet they so arrogantly claimed as their own. They had perished hundreds of years earlier, wiped out by a devastating and especially virulent disease that sprang up from nowhere and swept around the globe in less than six months, killing billions. The few thousands that survived in enclaves around the world either died from the famine and drought that followed or killed one another when their own animal natures took them over, preying on each other in a futile attempt to gather unto themselves what the dead had left behind, the relics of a time awash in greed and avarice, useless flotsam on a dead sea. They had all died, their piteous cries unheeded by the Gods they had created to placate their consciences and justify their actions toward their fellows. All of them - save one.

Danny Ashton, or what was left of him, crouched clutching his bony knees to his skeletal frame with near fleshless arms, naked in the mouth of the only shelter available, a cave in the side of a mountain in what was once Colorado one hundred fifty years earlier. He squinted through watery eyes at the bloated sun and tears streaked the dust that plastered his face in a permanent mask. The cave reached deep into the earth, how far Danny did not know for he had not the strength left to explore it, but it mattered little. He knew that soon the tattered remains of the ozone would burn away completely as the sun expanded even further, morphing into its red giant phase on its way to its own final death throes, eventually to become nothing more than another cold, dark lump of matter floating in the vast panorama of space. Danny hoped it would end soon.

He shifted and moved back further into the cave, sliding on his haunches until the exertion drained the little energy he could muster in his diminished state and then collapsed against the wall of the cave, heedless of the burns caused by the overheated rock. Pain was not a concern for Danny Ashton. Not anymore. He had endured pain before, more pain than any other being that had ever lived on this dying earth had ever endured, more pain than the fevered mind of man could imagine in their worst imaginings. Pain was second nature to Danny, like breathing, an automatic reflex that he had long ago learned to accept as inevitable and unavoidable. The pain kept him going, kept him alive, reminded him that he was, ultimately, the last living creature on Earth and for that reason alone he hated it.

Danny closed his eyes against the stinging hot dust the solar winds drove into the cave and as he rested against the burning rock, his thoughts drifted back to another time in his past, another time when he felt the heat and sand stinging his flesh, a time he wished with all of his heart he could go back and change, a time nearly two thousand years gone. As he breathed the acrid fumes that were all that was left of the once oxygen rich air around him, he let his mind remember the days before he had drunk the Water of Life and cursed himself into oblivion.

Kimberly Holly’s life had changed for the better.

Her mother’s body had finally succumbed to the abuses of alcohol and tobacco, and she had died under hospice care from complications due to emphysema and liver cancer. Her final days, though grim, had become cathartic and once she had made her peace with her husband and her only child, she simply passed, quietly, in the middle of one August morning the year after Kimberly’s abduction and near death. The insurance coverage paid for the funeral and burial, and as the local Catholic priest who worked the Hospice presided over her, Kimberly could not help feeling a guilty twinge of relief. She was ashamed of it, appropriately, then forgave herself and moved on with her life, something she could not have done before her ordeal. It was funny in an ironic sort of way that she should come out of the trauma of her recent past stronger than she had ever been before it, that she should live despite her fear rather than be bound by it. Death, she had discovered, was by no means the worst fate imaginable.

So she had taken her father from the nursing home and moved him in with her, using his social security and pension along with her income earned working at Presbyterian Hospital (a job Indira Singh had set her up with after her mother’s death) to support them both. Her father had settled in immediately; their neighbors saw him daily walking their little Boston terrier down to the corner pharmacy to get the Charlotte Observer and kibitz with the other elderly men in the neighborhood who always eventually ended up there. Kimberly worked from eight in the morning until six o’clock, then came home and made them both dinner before sitting with her father to watch Jeopardy, a favorite of Clark Holly’s, and Kimberly was pleasantly surprised to find her father’s mind still sharp and she marveled at his knowledge of trivia. She threatened to make him audition for the show quite often and beamed at the look of pride on his face that she had believed would never blossom there again. Life was indeed changing for the better.

She had even begun dating. She met a man who worked at the hospital, an orderly named Michael Speight, and he treated her well. She told him immediately about her last “boyfriend”, about her abduction and the events surrounding it, with the obvious exception of how Walter Cavanaugh had actually been the embodiment of evil an alien reincarnated on Earth. Even now, the idea of boat rocking, especially boat rocking that painted the rocker as a paranoid delusional, seemed imprudent to Kimberly. Besides, she told herself, she wasn’t really sure if she actually believed that what had happened to her was as real as she remembered. Her therapist told her that her trauma had triggered her imagination to create the fantasy of good versus evil as a defense mechanism for her psyche, that aliens and gods and demons and evil were all byproducts of her depleted mental state caused by the stress of Claire’s murder and her own kidnapping and torture. She was ready and willing to accept this diagnosis, despite Indira Singh’s insistence that she accept the truth instead. It eventually led to a conflict between the two and Kimberly’s last meeting with the Bangladeshi mystic had ended in an argument. The two had quit speaking, though Indira had tried many times to bridge the gap. Kimberly’s therapist had instructed her to cut all ties with the people who had saved her life that day in a filthy Washington, D.C. apartment, who had pulled her emaciated body and satiated mind back from the rim of Hell and set her back on her feet again and she had agreed, telling Indira over the phone not to call her or approach her again, to leave her and her father alone. That was two years ago.

So now, three years after the events in Washington, Kimberly Holly felt that her life was once again back on track. She had even decided to open herself to the idea of making love to Michael, a huge step for her. Michael, for his part, hadn’t pushed her and that scored points with Kimberly. Being pushed was not something she was about to allow anyone to do to her ever again. So she had set the date and when the time came, she gave herself to him completely, ready in her own mind to make that step, to trust, and it had been the most satisfying experience of her adult life. Everything about it had gone perfectly to plan, from the dinner before at Blue, to the movie afterward, all the way to the surprise at the end when she told him she was ready. It was the proverbial storybook ending. All that was left was living happily ever after.

She is driving home now after another assignation with her lover. It is four o’clock in the morning and she knows her father will still be up waiting for her, though she had told him she would be home later than usual. It was a Saturday morning and she did not have work; she would go home, put Clark to bed, then sleep until twelve, a luxury she rarely indulged in. But, she mused, she deserved it. She slid into the turn lane for the onramp to I-77 north and, picking up speed, got onto the highway headed home.

The interstate was empty in both directions and as she accelerated, she pushed the CD button on her car stereo. Usher began singing “Burn”, a song about love gone bad and she quickly pushed the advance button until “Take Your Hand” cued up, then turned the volume high. This was more like it. She felt her cell phone vibrate in the holder on her belt. Keeping one diligent eye on the road, she unholstered the phone and flipped it open. She glanced down to see that Michael had sent her a text message and pressed the button with her thumb to open it.

-I luv u-

She grinned and began thumbing in her reply, taking her eyes from the road for just a moment. As she typed in the final y-o-u, she looked back up. She had barely enough time to scream.

A Honda Prelude coming the wrong way down the interstate was in her lane and looming very large. For the briefest of moments she caught the look of bleary-eyed shock on the intoxicated driver’s face. In a desperate act of self-preservation she jerked the wheel to the left and stabbed at the brake pedal. The sound of the brakes squealing was muffled as the two cars collided head on, the Prelude striking Kimberly’s Volvo right of center, ripping the passenger side open to the back seat and tearing through the engine compartment.

The impact sent Kimberly’s car flying, spinning in the air and rolling over twice before finally coming to rest in a smoking ruin against the center concrete median, pinning her inside the wreckage. The airbag had deployed but did not prevent her from slamming first into the steering wheel and then up into the roof. The seatbelt had cinched, crushing her into the bucket seat and as the hissing sounds of both cars’ radiators grew louder in the aftermath, Kimberly Holly lay bleeding and broken amid the twisted metal and shattered glass, her face and scalp badly lacerated, her ribs and back broken. The rear view mirror hung down, suspended by the wires that gave power to the heads up display inside it and before she passed out she caught a glimpse of her face, covered in blood, a huge gash opened in her forehead above her left eyebrow exposing bone and pouring blood and as she slipped the bonds of reality into the nether regions of her mind her last thoughts were of her father, waiting patiently at home.

Here is the second offering from my short story collection available on The Eerie Digest...please take the time to leave a review if you enjoy it....

http://www.eeriedigest.com/wordpress/2011/06/the-darkness-by-guest-author-william-fripp/

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This week I will be posting links to my short stories published in the Eerie Digest, The Arts and Entertainment Magazine!

The first offering is a tale of love lost and the shadows we carry with us through our lives. It's called Happy Anniversary.

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Whoever had the bright idea that resulted in the automated phone answering systems for companies is probably very proud of him or herself, but I must protest; there is nothing quite as annoying as being led through a minefield of meaningless suggestions and prompts by a disembodied voice pretending to know why I'm calling and failing miserably at a task it can't possibly perform.

A recording, as intuitive as it may be in anticipating your needs, simply CAN NOT react as quickly as all but the slowest of human synapses and, invariably, the reason for my call is far down the list of frequently asked questions the company receives from its customers, so by the time my question is relevant my blood pressure has spiked, my voice has risen to a near inaudible screech and the veins on my neck are bulging like Schwartzenegger's forearms.

I'm sure that when the idea was presented at some smoky board room meeting that the powers that were though it quite the moneymaking idea; automate the secretarial task of answering phones and cut back on manpower, saving the company money. Those ladies should be home raising babies anyway, right?

But when the human touch is foregone in favor of the monotone repetition of platitudinous prerecorded pablum that sounds as though it were written with illiterate idiots in mind, then the company is basically saying, "We really don't care enough about whatever issue you have to bother greeting you when you call with the friendly voice of a well trained and helpful HUMAN, so, hopefully, you will eventually just become confused and hang up or have a massive stroke and plotz."

And what does it say about the service that the company provides that it has so many calls from customers either complaining or confused about it that they must have a COMPUTER handle the volume? And why do they have so many options to choose from? Maybe I should reconsider being a customer...but wait! I don't have choice! Only one power company in this area! Only one cable service! And yes, I know I could get a dish, but I want to be able to watch television at any time, not just when there happens to be an absence of clouds and solar flares. But I digress.

So, the next time you get a prerecorded computerized greeting from the phone company or cable company when you call them for help, just start pressing the "zero" button on your phone and keep pressing in rapid succession for, let's say, twenty seconds. Usually that gets you to an agent and bypasses the automated system and if THAT doesn't work, take the time to drive down to the office and get in front of someone who HAS to listen to you explain why automated telephone answering systems MUST DIE!

But, please, be polite. No need to be rude.

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#kindle #amazon #bookdaily #goodreads

In the last few minutes before consciousness returned to Susan Murrow, she dreamed.

She was shopping; she watched herself move from store to store in the mall making purchases, stopping at several kiosks, buying an Orange Julius. She saw herself visit the mall restroom and hover over the commode rather than allow her skin to make contact with the billions of germs she imagined were there, remnants of every customer more daring and therefore less sanitary than she.

Now she is in the parking lot, looking for her car. She carries her packages in one hand by the straps of all five bags, her keys in the other hand as she thumbs the unlock button of her keyless remote . She had parked in the lot next to Sears, she was sure of it and then she spots her silver Volvo only one row over. Pretty close, she thinks and finally makes it to her space. She presses the button on the remote and-nothing!

“Damn it!”, she says aloud, and shakes the keys on her Snoopy keychain to try and fish up the one for the door, abstractedly trying to assist herself with her over burdened right hand. She barely registers another vehicle, a white panel van, as it slides into the space beside her. Susan has to move closer to her car to avoid it.

A violet colored lace bra falls from her Victoria’s Secret parcel onto the dusty pavement and kneeling down to retrieve it she dumps the remaining personal items from the bag onto the parking lot. In her momentary rage, she does not heed the metallic sliding sound of the van door opening behind her and as she squats in the narrow space between the van and the Volvo to gather her belongings, she curses the driver.

“Cuttin’ it pretty goddamned close aren’t you?”

She hears a man’s voice admonish, “Such language!” the sound of a blunt instrument cutting the air and then the world turns black.

The first of the five senses to return to Susan was that of smell; pungent, acrid and cloying, the smell of urine and rotted vegetation. This was accompanied by a dull, throbbing buzz in her skull that vibrated from the marrow outward, an incessant, pounding roar that washed over her and made her shudder.

She started violently and found her limbs stopped short. Her fevered brain flashed the image of a dog reaching the end of its chain. She tried to open her eyes and was blinded by an intense white light. She blinked furiously, tears flowing, her vision a field of red.

She tried each of her limbs experimentally and confirmed that she was indeed bound, naked and lying on her back and as the truth of her predicament dawned she panicked. She tried to scream but through the greasy rag that gagged her was able to manage only a distressed croaking, a hoarse grunting that succeeded only in frightening her all the more. She began to thrash, to assail the binds that held her with the blind frenzy of sheer hysteria. She felt the table she was on move half a foot to the left, heard the screech of the metal sliders on the legs as they scraped over the floor. She continued convulsing and croaking until her convulsions caused her to bruise her coccyx and then she lay sobbing in pain and an agony of fear. Then a new sound made her catch her breath and listen, like a feral kitten in a rainstorm.

A door opened and closed; the sound of someone descending a flight of stairs, coming nearer; another door opening and closing. There is a new odor too, a body odor like nothing she had ever experienced, like a hundred unwashed bodies wallowing in sewage. Her revulsion triggered her gag reflex, but some survival instinct warned not to offend whoever this was, that doing so might be fatal and she desperately wanted this not to be fatal.

The smell traveled from one end of the table to another , following footsteps around and up the other side to where Susan’s head was turned. The gag was removed from her mouth. She tried again to open her eyes.

Silhouetted against the backdrop of her tear blurred and red spotted vision she was able to determine that her captor was tall, impossibly thin and quite naked, his ribs showing under a mat of greasy black hair and his manhood standing unimpressively erect in mock salute. As her vision cleared, she found his face and in his eyes Susan Murrow recognized her doom leering out from under bushy brows, grinning stupidly.

She screamed at him to let her go and he screamed back, mocking her and dancing back and forth, “LET ME GOOOO! LET ME GOOOOO”, laughing cruelly, taunting her. Abruptly he stopped and pointing one skeletal, black nailed talon, he growled at her like a rabid dog. “You ain’t goin nowhere, bitch. Scream all the fuck you want.”

Incensed and ashamed, all thoughts of appeasing this half ape went out the window. Her bruised and swollen features twisting in fury, she spat, “You go and fuck yourself you smelly little TURD!”

The smile vanished from his face. He drew back one bony arm and slapped her resoundingly, the impact slamming her head back painfully against the unyielding table. Stars swam before her eyes, and tears of shame and rage choked her as she sobbed. He leaned close to her, close enough that she could smell his breath on her cheek, sour and reeking of rotted food. He snaked out his tongue and licked her cheek, causing her to retch.

He whispered in her ear, “Shhhhhhh…you just hush now… you just keep reaaaallll still and quiet. We wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you because of your filthy mouth, would we? Noooo.. you were meant for something better and soon… very soon, you’re gonna do your part... very soon”

He stood and walked back down and around the table, checking Susan’s bindings as he went.

“Yes, little girl, you are special. I’ve been looking for you for weeks and then bang! You just show up at the mall, just like you were meant to be there right then. Right at that precise fuckin time. Just like you had been sent!”

Satisfied that Susan was securely tied, the smelly little man replaced her gag and sat down at a card table that held a computer monitor and keyboard and hit the space bar. A flying Windows screen saver flashed briefly then gave way to the desktop.

Susan , useless without her glasses, squinted and strained her already swollen eyes to try and focus on the background image on the desktop and after a few tense minutes made out the outlines of a calendar, large squares with numbers and days and at the top in large red letters she read the word February.

She scanned the rest of the squares, the numbers and days coming in and out of focus, the strain on her eyes making her head ache. She saw one day, the last day, highlighted red with something notated in black writing she couldn’t make out. Her captor superimposed a clock over the calendar and pushed himself away from the table. For a second, he blocked the screen, and then as he moved again, Susan could see the seconds ticking by on the clock and next to it the day on the calendar in red, with black writing. Desperately she focused her bloodshot eyes and read the date: the 29th. February 29th. Leap Day.

Today.

The clock was counting down to zero. Thirty seconds to go. The man was standing over her now, and Susan could see him clearly, looming over her like some insane scarecrow werewolf. Clutched between both hands he held a butcher’s knife directly over her heart, and straining, Susan could read the countdown from the glow of the computer monitor mirrored in the stainless steel.

Fifteen seconds to zero.

Susan began to struggle again, straining every muscle against her bonds, her eyes pleading with him, but the smelly man was somewhere else, his eyes focused outside of this plane. A drop of drool dripped from his grinning mouth and he giggled dementedly just as the countdown ended. The alarm sounded.

As the blade fell, the last thing Susan Murrow ever saw were the words on the computer’s calendar written in black on a blood red background:

AWAKENING…


#williamfripp #adinfinitum #amazon #kindle

Good and evil exist, locked in an eternal struggle over the fate of all life in the multiverse...and now the fight has come to Earth... read Ad Infinitum, the first novel by Bookdaily.com emerging author William Fripp...available for only $3.99 on Amazon!

The sequel to Ad Infinitum is about halfway finished. Here is a sample:

Aaron was standing in a field of tall yellow flowers with stems as thick as his thumb, with long, spiny leaves and a bright lemon yellow blossom that sported numerous, long, thin petals not unlike a sunflower, with a deep saffron center disc nearly two inches in diameter.

While no botanist, he knew that these flowers, though beautiful, were alien in origin and that he was, therefore, not in his version of the world. A strong wind swirled across the field, the strange sunflowers bending and twisting in its thrall, as though some colossus brushed them with its fingertips. Aaron’s clothes were pressed back against him and his hair was flattened back as the current of air swept across the field and over him like the breath of God. He felt refreshed by it, cleansed of the stress that had been building in him since he first had the dream in which a dead priest had summoned him to a dangerous task he in no way wanted any part of, but that he could not, in good conscience, shy away from, a task that would plunge him headlong back into a place in his centuries old line of incarnations that each time frightened him worst than the last.

He had seen those other places, felt them full force as though he, Aaron, had actually been there, though he knew he hadn’t. Not physically, at least. It had been during his training with first Indira and then with Father Declund Coe, when he was being instructed on how to enter the slipstream at will, and, more importantly, how to anchor himself in the waking world and find his way back out of the world of dreams and nightmares. In the beginning, with Father Coe there to steady him, Aaron had intuitively picked right up on the instructions he was being given, had found the transitioning between dimensions a simple thing. Then, without warning, Father Coe had been blasted out of existence, obliterated by a power so terrible and so strong that Aaron himself barely escaped with a whole skin. He knew in the secret place in his mind that he kept from all others, that place where no lie could live, that it was the aged priest who had saved him in the impenetrable dark of the Void, been his tether to the world he knew and had anchored him there.

And now, if Indira Singh was right (which he knew she was) the Other had been set free, and Aaron’s heart trembled at the prospect of facing it without the aid of Declund Coe because he knew, in that secret place, that he would not survive it.

The wind had passed, and now the flowers waved languidly on their stalks, beckoning to him, inviting him into the field; all was serenity and light in the field and, overcome by the harmony they offered, Aaron staggered forward, a willing zombie in thrall to the song of the sunflowers as they brushed together, whispering to him that all was quiet and still there with them there in the field, that peace of mind was his for the taking, all he need do was give himself up to the wondrous peace they offered.

Aaron walked slowly, hands out to either side, caressing each brilliant yellow flower that he passed, and he passed, each flower he touched emitted from its center a fine mist of pollen, puffed outward and into the air, and where each flower's seed landed, another flower, full and intact, sprang up and crowded into the space behind him, unnoticed by Aaron, who, under the influence of the siren sunflowers, was oblivious to all except the overwhelming need to touch each and flower in the vast field.

He smiled as the perfume from the alien plants began to overcome his senses. He was oblivious to what was befalling him, had no other care, no desire other than lying down in the vast field of pretty yellow flowers and soaking in all they had to give him. His arms had turned yellow with dusty pollen; his face was caked with it. He could push no further through the field, so thick had grown the plants, so he leaned heavily against the foremost group and they gently gave under his weight.

As he lay down on the loamy earth, the flowers spewed forth a thick cloud of pollen that obscured him from view completely, a vague goldenrod lump on the ground. As content as he had ever dreamed he could be, he breathed deeply and became one with the instrument of his demise.

More to come later...

Guess what? Ad Infinitum is now on Goodreads!

I am very excited to announce that Ad Infinitum has just been accepted for inclusion on the Goodreads website! Let's see if we can that Amazon rank down LOWWW!

My book, Ad Infinitum, has been for sale on Amazon.com since January 30th and since then my Amazon sales rank has fluctuated from a high of 450,000 to a low of 77,000. Not surprisingly, my blood pressure and heart rate have been tracking right along beside these peaks and valleys, but what really does an Amazon sales rank measure?

According to my research, my sales rank numbers are based on an algorithm that Sheldon Cooper would find challenging and said algorithm is as closely guarded by Amazon as the gold in Fort Knox making it nearly impossible to gauge with any accuracy how many actual sales the ranking numbers represent. It could be twenty; it could be five.

Amazon considers the genre, the traffic to the Amazon page where the book is listed for sale, the total number of books available for sale in your genre and the entire Amazon web site, how many fingers you have on your hand and whether or not you mumbled the right incantation while swinging a dead cat over your head in a graveyard at midnight. The result is thousands of authors hovering like vultures near their computers, constantly refreshing the page in order to see where in the vast Amazonian jungle their book rests on an hourly basis. I know that this happens. I am living proof.

Right now my Amazon rank is 222,000...if you need me, I'll be in the jungle.

Ad Perpetuam.                                   the follow up to Ad Infinitum

The Sons of Conan                            a three part heroic fantasy based on

                                                           Robert E. Howard's legendary barbarian

Elixir                                                    an end-of-the-world novel about an

                                                           archaeologist  who digs up more than he

                                                           bargained for

Zachary Steele                                   a serial western about a reclusive and damaged

                                                           mountain man and his revenge on a     

                                                           gold rush era railroad town

Lots to do, so little time....

www.amazon.com/Ad-Infinitum-William-Fripp-ebook/dp/B00I2W991E

As of this posting nearly SEVENTEEN THOUSAND people have emailed the sample chapter of Ad Infinitum from the BOOKDAILY.com website! 

I cannot begin to describe how that feels, but I can tell you how appreciative I am to everyone who has supported me in this adventure. I love you all...

Watching Jurassic Park:The Lost World...

...the great novels these movies were derived from were written by the late Micheal Crichton. one of my favorite authors ever. Crichton's attention to detail and exhaustive research into his subject matter made him one of the most influential writers of his time, inspiring many blockbuster movies including Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere, The Great Train Robbery and The 13th Warrior as well as  the smash hit television series, ER.

If you've never read a Micheal Crichton novel, Jurassic Park and The Lost World are great ones to start with. I guarantee after reading these two remarkable novels you will see the movies in a different light.

www.amazon.com/dp/B00I2W991E/