The Devil's Folly (Ramblings of the Damned book two) picks up where The Devil's Serum left off.
Christian is determined to live or die on his own terms and will go to extraordinary lengths to prove it. Christian has walked away from the love of his life, Corinne, and set out to destroy himself and anyone that happens to get in his way. Can anything bring peace to his tortured soul or is he damned to walk this earth forever? Never before has the gift of immortality been received with the convictions of a suicide bomber. The Devil's Folly is book two of The Ramblings of the Damned series.
Excerpt
It seems like a million years have passed since I’ve looked at these pages, but I must admit that I rather enjoyed for the first time putting my thoughts to the page. It’s amusing to me how the thoughts of a shattered mind actually seem to find cohesion between the rigid lines of a college rule ledger pad. I was asked once to “journal” and attempt to explain myself. “What makes me tick”? It will be beneficial to the doctors, they said. Whether anybody truly benefitted from my writing any more than I, I couldn’t tell you. The fact is that I found the experience quite cathartic and so I’ve decided to put the pen to paper, yet again.
I guess I should start at the beginning, though the beginning really is subjective at best. I began once as a screaming, bloody infant born to parents that could barely afford to pay attention. I was born yet again when I drank from a found flask containing a hellish concoction of which I still can’t be too sure of its contents. What I am sure of more than the cause is the effect. Suddenly a word came into my vocabulary that had very little meaning previous to that particular nightcap. I learned of Immortality.
The word still sounds pretentious and grandiose to me, but until they re-write the language or I learn another, I guess it will have to do. Please allow me to introduce myself; I’m a man …who will liberally quote Mick Jagger given the opportunity and more than that only Keith Richards has given me a run for my money at longevity.
My name is Christian, though my actions haven’t always carried such theological misgivings. I’ve used a dozen surnames over my century of life, perhaps more.
If the need of formality suits you, then feel free to add a name of your choosing. I’ve been called many things in my life and accused of many more. Some of these accusations were merited, while others were as fictitious as the mighty beast of Loch Ness. Such is the life of a living legend I suppose…oddly, the legend outweighs the living by a substantial margin.
You know that feeling you get in an adrenalized moment, where everything slows down and your senses sharpen to finely-honed? I can’t recall that other opposite feeling. The one where you share the environment with others and everyone is essentially functioning with the same set of tools. Writing somehow brings me back just for a bit. The pen in hand is one of the few instruments that can in fact keep up with my thoughts and follow as random as they may become.
I think I may have killed my mother. See, you weren’t expecting that confession, but the pen in hand anticipated every stroke and never asked me to slow down or explain. The pen in hand has never stared at me accusatory or feared my grip. She’s never questioned my intentions or died without saying goodbye. She’s never grown up and moved away or started a life of her own that had no room for me. She’s never stole my money or taken a lover while I was away. The pen in hand is quite simply true. She does obey my commands though there is nothing to assure her that I can be truthful in return, much less true.
The truth is that I can deceive like Judas or forgive like Christ. Or is either of that really the truth at all? In the end does it matter what you know or what you believe? Countless masses have lived and died for truths that they could never prove.
Seeing as how I can neither live, nor die, it’s pompous to think I would subject myself to any such standards. I am every bit as real as you want me to be…or perhaps not at all. Whether man made God or God made man, is all in what you believe. No one is yet to come back and prove that they were in fact correct about Heaven, Hell, or the lack of either one.
What I am confident in stating as fact is that regardless of what you believe at some point you and everyone you love will die. I however, with true pen in hand will go on like the weather, changing course as I go. Unless of course, dear reader you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me either had I not had the misfortune of being there for every step and misstep along the way.
In a lot of ways my life has been made up of moments that make as much sense as dreams, but without the fleeting memory or rampant disassociation. I know what happened, and sometimes I can even tell you why it happened, but still I can’t always believe what happened. I realize as I read that last line back how little sense it seems to make while being exactly what I was trying to say. I guess I can try to explain some of these moments in a little more detail and see if that lends a definition to the absurd.
When I first came to the realization that I was no longer the man that I had grown accustomed to being for nearly forty years, I began to try to understand who this man was that I had become. The mirror still recognized me, but I was having trouble recognizing the mirror.
As it turns out I was no longer a man at all but something different…something more.
The Butcher's Boy
- 2011 Readers Favorite Award Silver Medal Winner in Horror - Fiction
A Paranormal/Chiller by Michael Robb
Thirty-one years ago, Buxly the Butcher went to trial for killing h
Grab those side-irons, saddle up and join former Civil War sharpshooter Luther Henry for a ride into pure terror, western-style…think ‘Wild Wild West’ meets ‘The X-Files’.
WEIRD RHODY is a short story collection featuring five strange tales all set in Rhode Island and written by five Rhode Island authors. The anthology is a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, the Ocean State's famed author of pulp horror.
