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dreadmojo posted:This is canon, fyi I am very much a black David Bowie. I am also in ya loving weirdos. Give me a sin.
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Oct 16, 2018 19:44
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 10:18 |
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I'm the mute, disfigured servant who bears silent witness to my employers' many sins until, at last, the time for my revenge comes. By which I mean I'm judging!
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Oct 16, 2018 20:19
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My knees are shaking with fear
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Oct 16, 2018 20:51
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Yoruichi posted:My knees are shaking with fear
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Oct 16, 2018 22:14
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Nevermind I was given one. I think.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:37
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in 
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Oct 16, 2018 22:37
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Spooky scary sekeletin.
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Oct 16, 2018 22:56
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sin in me
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Oct 17, 2018 02:52
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You lay in bed, slick with sweat, telling yourself that you just needed one more day Anomalous Blowout posted:Spooky scary sekeletin. The noises outside stopped too early tonight; you grabbed your flashlight The Saddest Rhino posted:sin in me Your friends knew the risks, and you can only blame them for what happened next
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Oct 17, 2018 03:35
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Too many things due to join, but if you need a third judge I can help.
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Oct 17, 2018 03:40
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Mercedes posted:Nevermind I was given one. I think. if only you could find the source of that dripping, everything would be alright
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Oct 17, 2018 06:01
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I am dem-in!
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Oct 17, 2018 09:27
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NotGordian posted:I am dem-in!
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Oct 17, 2018 22:08
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As soon as I read the prompt I knew I wanted IN.
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Oct 18, 2018 18:48
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AllNewJonasSalk posted:As soon as I read the prompt I knew I wanted IN.
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Oct 19, 2018 07:10
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Signups closed. Get writing, you pack of shriveled ghouls now haunting the house where you can't believe you once said "I do"
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Oct 20, 2018 08:43
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The hour draws near, and yet I hear nothing – no wails from the stairwell, no whispers in the hall. You had all best be locked in the attic, furiously scribbling.
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Oct 21, 2018 21:53
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Less than half a day remains.
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Oct 21, 2018 21:53
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Less than half a day remains. Nothing is spookier than 23 failures
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Oct 21, 2018 21:59
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nobody wants to be the first one to post
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Oct 21, 2018 22:11
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Tyrannosaurus posted:Nothing is spookier than 23 failures ghost stories?
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Oct 21, 2018 22:31
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House Rules you were never allowed to touch the dolls' house, and yet you did 1,050 words Read it at the archive. Staggy fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jan 3, 2019 |
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Oct 21, 2018 23:09
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Veyesion 1498 spoopy words if only you could find the source of that dripping, everything would be alright I raised my naked wrist to eye level and a watch blinked into existence, overlayed over my arm. I’m right on time. Things were looking up. I’m usually kissing rear end all day long just for a chance of picking up a new client; but this is by far the largest whale I’ve ever hooked and they came to me. Didn’t even have to do a drat thing but go where my assistant told me to go. Movement caught my eye and I watched a strangely familiar woman enter the room holding a tablet in her left hand. I rose to my feet, buttoned my suit in a practiced manner, and proffered my hand. She studied me for a moment, hesitating for a fraction before taking it. “Mr. Murphy, a pleasure to meet you,” she sounded anything but. Her voice was terse. “The pleasure is all mine, Ms…” I trailed off. I know her from somewhere. Tip of my tongue. “Ashton.” I inhaled sharply as the memories flooded in. Oh poo poo. I felt a pang of deep shame, but I tried not to let it show. “Chrissa Ashton? Class of 2083 right? Wow…” I added lamely, “Y-you look great!” I nervously drummed my fingers against the side of my leg. Chrissa’s lips quirked upward in a parody of a smile. A long awkward pause followed. Anger clouded her face and she huffed. She broke eye contact, jabbed at her tablet, and then turned to looked back at me. A pressure pulsed behind my eyes, forcing me to squeeze them shut. The pain left as quickly as it came and I rapidly blinked until she came back into focus. Chrissa looked at me with concern. “You’re alright? The altitude here in Colorado can really mess with visitors, or so I’m told.” She smiled, her demeanor doing a complete one-eighty. “And yes James; Class of 2083, go Polar Bears!” She awkwardly pumped her fist in the air. How endearing. I can hardly believe what a colossal dick I was to her in high school. She ran a finger through her hair, playing with the ends. “You look great as well! Also, you’ve been very successful. I’m impressed.” Well I’ll be damned. Maybe highschool wasn’t a big deal? She was flirting with me. Not that I blame her. I’m James loving Murphy. I exhaled loudly through my nose. “Me? Come on now, I’m small potatoes compared to you. You created Veysion!” I rubbed at the base of my neck where I had the biotech implanted earlier this summer. “The stuff is mind blowing! I never knew you were this smart and talented!” Her smile widened and a blush crept on her cheeks. “Oh, you have no idea,” she said. “Well, enough flattery, you charmer. I brought you here for a reason.” I couldn’t help but stare at her beautiful face. Ugly duckling transformed into a swan indeed. I’m gonna have to see if I can get me some of that after this job’s done. I cleared my throat. “You need my firm to do some consulting for you.” “That’s right,” she said, swiping a finger across her tablet. “I only want to deal with you and only you. I’m certain that won’t be a problem, James?” The pain behind my eyes was back again, but it didn’t hurt as much as the first time. I rubbed at my temple with a finger and shook my head, going for the nonchalant playboy. Nailed it. “Good. I just sent over the contract via email and you can look over it on your own time.” She lifted her head to face me and I saw the briefest flicker on her face, like a video picture tearing where the Vsync is disabled. I creased my eyebrows in confusion. I almost blurted out a question asking what the hell was wrong with her face. “James, are you alright?” Chrissa walked up to me and knelt, looking up into my face wearing a concerned look. She placed a hand on my knee. Warmth spread up my leg and I swear I forgot what I was thinking about. “Hey come on,” she said, pulling me up to my feet. “Follow me to my office. I got something that’ll get you nice and relaxed.” She had a very mischievous grin. Alright girl, I’m picking up what you’re putting down. Today cannot get any better. I let her lead the way. There’s something about a woman wearing a pencil skirt that really does it for me. It’s definitely how it enuciantes the shape of their hips. I was so intent on catching glimpses of her inner thigh as she walked, that I almost missed her secretary walking past. Our eyes met and I winked at her. She smiled, kept walked down the hall and my eyes kept following. Pencil skirts, man. I need to work here. I was going to turn my head to watch where I was walking when I noticed that flicker again. The secretary’s head twitched randomly and her walking uncanningly reminded me of a person with cerebral palsy. I was transfixed. The farther she walked away, the more pronounced her movements became. The blonde abruptly stopped. In an instant her head snapped around to face me with an audible crack that froze my blood. She scuttled backward toward me at a dead sprint. Black weeping holes where her eyes should have been and two pinpricks of red light focused on me. As she gained on us, her mouth stretched open into a gaping abyss. “James?” I screamed, jumping and flailing, feeling as if each of my limbs wanted to go in a different direction. My head whipped around to Chrissa, my eyes wide with terror. Chrissa’ eyebrows were furrowed in confusion. I grabbed her wrist, turned and pointed to at the nightmare coming straight at us, ready to shout at her to run; only to have the word ‘run’ trail off into a pathetic whisper as I stared unbelieving at an empty hallway. “What is going on with you?” Chrissa asked, holding on to my forearm. My heart thundered in my chest and my hands shook uncontrollably. It was so real. I know I saw it. “Come on,” Her voice sounded so far away in comparison to the thunderous rush of blood in my ears, “I need to get you a drink.” I stumbled into her office, rubbing my temples. The adrenaline had me on edge and I fidgeted trying to burn off this excess energy. The headache was back again. “Have a seat, I’ll be right back,” Chryssa said, leaving the way we came. This has to be the weirdest loving day I’ve ever had. As soon as Chrissa left the room, my headache immediately stopped and the office changed into a cramped, squared, and damp room. There was a steady drip drip drip from a large pipe in ceiling. Right in front of me, was a bloated body sprawled on the ground, face up, soaking wet. I saw his face. I couldn’t not not see his face. My stomach fell into a bottomless pit as I recognized who it was. drip drip drip “That was Sam Trenton.” Chrissa’s voice crackled through invisible speakers. “In case I mistook that dumb look on your face for confusion.” I whirled around and I saw her, smiling at me warmly from behind a see through door. I watched her lift that small tablet she’s been fussing with all day and pressed on it with her finger. With a flicker, her warm, smiling visage was replaced with a cold, hard face with a naked hatred plainly written across her features. I unconsciously stepped back from her, almost tripping over the corpse of my friend. “Four years of hell you and that piece of poo poo put me through,” She snarled at me. “And now the roles are reversed. I’ll be kinder to you than you were to me and keep your torture brief.” Chrissa slowly dragged a finger across her tablet and above, the pipe leaked more water. dripdripdrip “Waitwaitwait!” I blurted out. “I’m sorry for the way I acted in highschool! I really am! I was only a teenager Chrissa! If I could take it-” “I would apologize for the previous discomfort you experienced earlier, but I don’t give a poo poo,” Chrissa talked over me, the speaker drowning out my voice. “Creating an entire environment for you is taxing on the optical nerve-” “Let me out you crazy bitch!” I demanded, rushing at the door and desperately throwing my entire weight behind my thick shoulders. Nothing but a painful jolt up my arm for my efforts. Chrissa pursed her lips. “I’m afraid that’s not in the cards for you tonight James.” She swiped and poked at the tablet. dripdripdrip WHOOOOSH
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Oct 21, 2018 23:14
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Carrier Crawlies 1,496 words "there is a leatherbound trunk beneath the stairs, and you know what it holds" I feel them writhing underneath the plastic. As my face drains of blood, my nearby sisters-in-law, Jacky and Elaine, begin discussing their portion of the inheritance a bit too loudly; they must think that I expected more and are taking this opportunity to gloat. After years of avoiding both of them I am still unsurprised at their ghoulishness, even inside their now-deceased mother’s house. I don’t want more inheritance; in fact, all I want is to leave this house without the vacuum-sealed clothes in my lap or the ancient, leather-bound trunk or the worms. I had only reluctantly come to the reading of my mother-in-law’s will, knowing I would have to suffer Emily’s sisters . I say nothing so as to not delay this tedious obligation. Besides, the clothes had been Emily’s from when she was a child, Maggie was about the right age to wear them, and the two sisters had no children. The trunk surprises me since it’s one of their family heirlooms; true, it had been Emily’s before she died, but I had left it behind with her mother when Maggie and I hurried to move out of this very house. No matter how much I had cleaned the trunk it would keep attracting those worms, which would also end up on Emily and her clothes. Finally able to leave, I drive home with the clothes-filled trunk in the back of my rusty, but reliable, minivan. I do my best to seal the trunk with a new Master Lock and cram it underneath our basement stairs. Maggie is a sweet, inquisitive, and highly observant seven-year-old, so despite my hiding the trunk under our stash of half-broken holiday decorations she asked about it the next day. “Isn’t that Mom’s? Why is it locked?” she asks. I say that I locked it up because it contains dangerous things. “Dangerous things like what?” I say it is full of dangerous and super gross worms, but not to worry as I put a bunch in her backpack for lunch today. “Ew, no you didn’t!” she said, scrunching her face. Laughing, I pretend her bag is extra squishy as I help her put it on, then send her off to the bus stop. A month later Maggie came out to eat breakfast wearing a wrinkled, faded New Kids on the Block t-shirt. It was one of Emily’s. My heart pounding, but trying to stay calm, I ask her where she got it. “Out of Mom’s box in the basement,” she says sheepishly. “But there weren’t any worms! I didn’t see anything through the crack, so I thought they all shriveled up and it was safe open. Plus the combination was right on the lock!” I left the code sticker on the back like a dumbass. I tell Maggie that she needs to change by saying that the shirt is too wrinkled to wear. She pouts a bit but changes before taking off for school. I scoop the shirt off her floor and inspect it, every piece of lint making my blood race. There are no worms, thank god. I throw it into the washer anyway alongside my own sweat-soaked shirt.In the basement, however, I do find a few of the slimy bastards hiding underneath the lid of the wide-open trunk. “What’s with the worms in here?” I ask Emily. We are in the middle of unpacking our moving boxes when I come upon the trunk. A dozen of worms wriggle about inside, little pill capsules of translucent green with black ruffled innards. Emily makes a face and says, “Gross. They must have gotten in there while it was at Mother’s as she’s been complaining of worms lately. Clean it outside so they don’t get all over the house!” I dump the clothes from the trunk into the washer then spray the trunk down, making sure they all go down the drain in the cement floor. I close, latch, and lock the trunk before hammering off the dial face of the lock. Later, a little before the holidays, Maggie walks into the house after school looking exhausted. Helping her out of her shoes, I see a dark-smudged worm making its way down her hair. I peel it off without Maggie noticing and rinse it down the kitchen sink. She protests when I begin checking her over for more, so I tell her I am looking for lice like that time during her first year at school. Just the one worm. Still, I shake a bit as I heat up canned tomato soup for dinner, of which Maggie eats a few spoonfuls before needing to go to bed. I tuck her in with a few extra blankets since the house is chilly tonight. Downstairs the trunk remains locked, but I need to give the lid a push to seal up a small opening likely caused by the cold. Maggie continues to have reduced energy and appetite through the holidays; the school psychologist tells me not to be overly concerned. “Does she often ask about her mother? Have you discussed with her about why you have no family?” She says Maggie probably feels disconnected from classmates, especially at this time of the year. Hygiene isn’t brought up, so I must be doing well removing the worms from her before she leaves in the morning. Early that following year Maggie has her first seizure. The doctors say that the blood tests show negative for clotting issues, so she isn’t at risk for strokes. I know why they address this, though Emily had passed away too quickly after her stroke for the hospital to determine its cause. I decline their offer for a longer inpatient observation of Maggie as I worry about the cost: paying off Emily’s medical bills alone had used most of our savings from the life insurance award. I didn’t fill the anticonvulsant prescription as the medicine had never helped Emily, so there was no sense in wasting the money on it. Months pass and Maggie is increasingly lethargic; after her second seizure I pull her out of school entirely. Days like today she keeps a decent amount of food down, though her stomach still rumbles so menacingly that I can hear it through the several blankets covering her. I gently pluck the worms off of Maggie’s head so as to not pull her thinning hair out with them. I then adjust her small frame on the bed to scoop the squirming layer of worms trying to hide beneath her. My vision is always blurry, but rubbing my eyes only succeeds in making them more painfully swollen. The sudden shift from cold to hot, humid weather has made the trunk warp drastically, mangling its metal latch and resulting in a crack in the lid that refuses to close. Now the area underneath the stairs requires meticulous cleaning as it is perpetually infested with blackhearted worms. Taking care of Maggie and the house requires every minute of my day just as it had with Emily. My mother-in-law had claimed I didn’t do enough for Emily, that my laziness and apathy were to blame for her death. Daily condemnation was the price I paid for moving Maggie and myself into her house after Emily passed away, and why we moved into this low-end house as soon as we could. After my mother-in-law’s fatal heart attack and will reading, I do not see Jacky or Elaine again until Maggie’s funeral service. It has an open casket as I was bullied out of cremation by the two sisters. Despite my fears I do not see a single worm on Maggie. She looks exactly as if I had just tucked her into bed, at least on those nights before we inherited the leather-bound trunk. Later, Jacky and Elaine lament loudly that the family house they inherited from their mother, where they both now live, has nothing to remember Maggie or Emily by. They tell me that I had taken everything of Emily’s along with the trunk, which they also claim, as a family heirloom and all things considered, I didn’t have the right to it anymore. So I gave them the damned trunk. I had put some of Maggie’s and Emily’s belongings inside the gaping trunk since the wellspring of worms had dried up. The sisters scoff as they scrounge through it, complaining about the musty smell; eventually, Jacky and Elaine leave the house with the trunk in tow. I think nothing more of the two until hearing about the house fire a few years later. Arson is the cause and correlated to Jacky’s diagnosis of hallucinogenic dementia only weeks before. Neither sister survives the fire and nothing in the house is salvageable. The news conjures up an image of the old trunk, every inch covered in a sickening, undulating mass of worms, now nothing more than a pile of ash underneath the ruins of the family home. It fills me with sadness and relief.
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Oct 22, 2018 01:25
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:
not there 1490 words removed derp fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Jan 1, 2019 |
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Oct 22, 2018 02:09
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Frozen Hanes 504 Words it is pathological, you know; it does not become a virtue by being orderly. Five degrees below zero and somehow I still feel the numbing heat of the heroin as I mainline it into the thickest vein on my right arm. I'm tired and I'm sick. It will get better soon. Eventually. Within minutes. Maybe. Or, maybe, it'll get worse. I still can't feel my left arm. I look down at it to make sure it's still there. It is. As black as it was a day ago. The veins are all shot out from missed shots. You know how they say you miss every shot you don’t take? Seems to me like I miss every shot. Even the ones I let other people aim for me. Been plunging dope with a syringe for ten years and I still have trouble hitting the poo poo right. My last dope partner said it was because I had very small veins. She seemed to take pride every time she was able to connect that needle without raising a blister bump. I missed her. Sometimes. Death is inevitable but with the right questions it can be avoided. Questions like “Is this a bag of heroin or a bag of fentanyl?” Or “Please, please can you call an ambulance? I promise I won't say anything about where I got the poo poo.” These days I spend too much time selling laced bags of heroin to cash strapped junkies looking for a cheaper high. Wow. I already feel it. There's this feeling you get when you hit a bag of particularly strong dog food. It's like kissing God while he sucks your dick clean off. Seriously. I'm cumming my pants right now. I wonder if it'll freeze to my underwear. # I wonder if my mother is happy. Five years since I last saw her. Bad blood there. Most of it pouring out of her gut. It was an accident. She and I both know it. Walking through the kitchen with a butter knife right before God wrapped his ruby red lips around my penis and I sorta stumbled and tripped over. The knife sunk deep into her stomach. The police had a hard time believing that but it was the truth. Scout's honor. No charges were pressed but I was banned from her presence. # It feels like there's a frog hopping around my throat. No. That's wrong. It feels like there's a frog trying to hop out of my throat. It can't though because of the skin and the muscle. After a few minutes of this the frog settles right over my air supply. Now God's sucking my dick again. No. Now he's trying to bite it clean off. And I'm trying to push him away but I can't because my arms won't move. That frog is moving though. Moving and transforming. He's a bear now and he's finally ripped through my throat to drop his rear end on my chest. It's getting harder to breathe. Five degrees below zero. Did I shoot the wrong bag? Will the cum freeze to my underwear?
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Oct 22, 2018 02:48
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Stachybotrys 1,399 words the local cats took special interest in the old cellar, and you worried Ever since Marc was small, and his father had come home from the coal mines with a hacking, persistent cough, Marc had been having the same dream. He’d be kneeling over his father, grasping a paper towel with a surgically-gloved hand, and he’d stick his whole arm into his father’s mouth, down his windpipe, and deep into his lungs. He’d swab the cavities out -- in the dream, even when he was old enough to know better, they were always hollow cavities -- and then pull the paper towel back up, glance at the soot-laden thing with a sense of satisfaction, and then go back for more. Thirty years later, he was awakened from the same dream by a tortured cat cowl outside the window. He could still feel the phantom slime on his arm as he slid the covers off, careful not to disturb Miriam, and peered out the blinds. Below the condemned house across the street, a stray tabby was squeezing its way out of a rotted hole in a wooden cellar door. Again. The neighborhood cats couldn’t resist the place, apparently. It was probably a smorgasbord of mice, voles, and rats down there. “Everything okay?” Miriam asked, her voice leaden with sleep. “Just fine,” Marc said, although his mind was whirring with terrible possibilities. It was a real vector for disease, wasn’t it? Those cats were probably tracking hantavirus all over town. “I’m going to do something about… about next door.” Miriam murmured something that could have been “don’t,” then turned over, as if she didn’t want to get trapped under the tide of his fixation. She’d heard enough of his fretting over the house. His poorly-controlled frustration at animal control, at the county’s public health department, for not noticing the dire nature of the threat -- she’d let him vent, had professed understanding, but Marc knew she’d been humoring him. He felt guilty, ashamed at the obsession, even as he suited up into his thickest work pants and three layers on top. He grabbed his father’s old toolbox from the garage along with some leftover wood from his DIY bathroom shelving project. He’d already opened the toolbox to start work when he heard an animal cry from inside the cellar. Well, poo poo. He couldn’t just board an animal up into the place. He should have just waited for the county to do their job, but he was so sick of dreading the cellar, of looking at it from his window, of wondering what the cats were tracking over the place. He just wanted this done. And his father’s toolbox even contained a silica mask. He’d be fine, going down there for a second, yanking the cat out, and sealing things up for good. The animal cried again, and Marc shined the light of his cell phone flashlight into the hole in the cellar door. He couldn’t see much: just the descent of some stone steps, a rotted wooden handrail, and a small pool of standing water at the bottom. No sign of an animal. Breathing hard through the silica mask, he lifted up the door to let some light in -- the padlock had rotted through long ago -- and then the contents of the cellar suddenly changed. Where he’d seen only stone steps before, there was now a thick carpet of stringy, dark mold, and even through the mask Marc detected an unearthly stench. The water, which looked still under the light of the camera, now stirred under the light of day, and then the animal sound came through again, too loud and low to be feline. Then, at the bottom of the stairwell, appeared a man-sized amorphous shadow and a long, grassy tentacle. Marc staggered back, sending the rotted door slamming into the ground, letting loose a dark-green cloud into the air. Marc froze. This was it. He was done. Why did he think he could have trusted the mask when that same mask had done nothing to stop his father from choking to death on coal dust? But this was worse, because whatever noxious mold had colonized the cellar was colonizing him, too. What else could explain that monstrous figure drifting about in the basement? A hand landed on his shoulder, and Marc twitched and spun around. Oh no. Miriam, made up and dressed, smiled up at him. Through his mask, she looked so exposed, vulnerable, pure lungs no match for the haze of spores airborne around them. He couldn’t voice the panic, or it wouldn’t stop coming out. So instead he wrapped her in an embrace and wrestled her to the ground. “What the gently caress, Marc?” The mold-cloud wasn’t as visible anymore, its spores probably radiating out into the atmosphere, coming to rest on the sticky feet of insects, the far-flung wings of birds, but if she kept low, she might minimize her exposure to what he’d unleashed into the air. Like stopping and dropping during a fire, he’d thought. “Particulate matter,” he said. It came out incomprehensible through the silica mask. “Now I have to change, and I’m going to be late for work,” she said, although she allowed him to escort her in a hunch back into their home. Once they were back in relative safety, she took a deep breath -- don’t, thought Marc -- and clasped her hands together. “I’m sure you had a good reason for… whatever that was. And I know you probably can’t find the words for it right now. I’m just hoping you’ll have them tonight, because I’m… I’m not happy right now.” Marc finally peeled off the mask. He’d forgotten the toolbox in his panic, so he just held the mask in his hand while he tried to find words. “Mold,” he said. “Right,” Miriam said, looking from left to right without really looking, like a jaded adult trying to set a good example for a child crossing the street. She shrugged in exasperation and made the way up to the bedroom. But although Marc hadn’t seen it when he said the word, he realized that the kitchen was full of mold. Had it always been? Where the walls met the ceiling, little black dots lined above the refrigerator. And right below the dishwasher -- that greenish discoloration, that couldn’t have been there yesterday. He started breathing harder. He needed something to focus on, something concrete and real, and thought about splashing some water in his face from the kitchen sink. But when he got there, he didn’t even need to see the discoloration to know that the pipes were all stuffed full of mold in waiting, hiding there to ambush him. This was insane. He knew Miriam had to be thinking that, and that whatever patience she professed, it couldn’t weather this. But she hadn’t gone to medical school. She hadn’t understood that mold was just like tar, just like coal dust, but even more insidious because it set down roots, it made more of itself, and it would never, ever leave until everything was contaminated. He darted into his safe place -- the bathroom he’d remade himself, the place that was always sparkling clean and that always smelled faintly of bleach. If anything was growing there, he’d know he was hosed. He turned the doorknob, and-- He was hosed. Most of it was fine. The sink, the floors, the toilet gleamed. The outside of the tub shined like it had just been deep cleaned yesterday. (It had.) But the back wall of the tub, where he’d re-done the wall, was covered -- from ceiling to the seam where it met the tub -- with that carpeted black mold from the cellar. In the fluorescent whiteness of the bathroom, the strands of mold seemed to pulse and oscillate. A wave of nausea gripped him, and he threw up into the toilet. He shut his eyes tight, kneeling on the floor. He couldn’t breathe. Better get used to that, something said in his head, and Marc didn’t know if it was his own panic or something else. He heard, though he couldn’t tell how far away, the slam of the door, and then some sort of animal noise. Still kneeling, his breath thick, he seized a handful of toilet paper, wadding it up in his fist. The roll spun, spooling onto the floor. Then Marc opened his mouth and stuck his fist down his throat.
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Oct 22, 2018 03:01
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Prompt: You lay in bed, slick with sweat, telling yourself that you just needed one more day words: 1352 The Buried are Waiting It was a summer of death. My great aunt Nana passed away on the summer solstice. Me and my momma couldn’t make it out to her funeral, because of the fact Momma was dying too, waiting for Papa to come back. When I was six, my papa left us. Even when I was younger, I hated calling him Papa. He would pick me up in school in a beat up SUV, dirty garden tools piled up in the trunk. He’d open up the passenger side door, and the only thing he’d say is, “Get in.” The car drives were quiet, with me staring out the window at the brown-grassed farms. The house was loud with shouts. Then, he up and left one day. That’s the way Momma described it, ‘cause he did it while I was at school. Just grabbed some bags, and walked out the door, and Momma said she never waited for him to come back. Said we never waited. “We keep living,” she said. “Even if no one wants us to.” And, that summer, Momma was waiting. We were waiting. She had me send out messages to all the family, telling them about the cancer. Started out in the breast, but it metastasized and went all the way to her lungs. She could barely breathe, let alone talk. But she told me this was important, write these letters and send them out. Then she handed an envelope, with an address and my papa’s name on it. She stared at me, wrapped my fingers around the letter, and didn’t say a word about it. I mailed it for her. We got a lot of messages back, from aunts and uncles and family friends, but none could come see us. We were in Merced, far from the rest of the family in New England. Papa moved us down here for work, and we never left. Couldn’t leave, not with Momma’s money. I checked the mail every day, even on the days the post service wasn’t running. I made a habit of it, collecting letters. I’d save them up, so I could read at least one of them for her a day. So she had something to look forward to. A week before Momma passed, I leafed through the daily mail, tossing out ads and bills. And, in the middle of the stack, was our scrawled address. Addressed to Diana Christina. Her maiden name. I tore it open. In it, was a folded piece of paper. I fidgetted my fingers around the edges of it, as if opening it would somehow open the gates of hell. I didn’t look in it though. It wasn’t for me. So I took it to Momma, laying down in her bed. I handed it to her, didn’t say a thing. She looked at me. I read most of the letters to her now, but I didn’t, couldn’t, read this one. She grabbed it out of my hand, unfolded it, and read it. Then she closed it up, placed it on the nightstand next to her, and asked me to leave. “Momma,” I said. “It’s a lot,” she said. “Is it too much?” I asked. She shook her head. “Nothing’s too much. I just, I’m tired.” “Is he coming?” She nodded. “I need to sleep. There’s a lot.” The next few of days, she didn’t talk. Her eyes were tired, and she slept most times. When I came in to give her dinner, she didn’t eat a thing. I’d sit by her bedside and read her letters. Each day, I’d read more and more letters. So she wouldn’t miss any of them. The day before she passed, she said, “I’m sorry.” The first thing she said in three days. “Don’t say that,” I said. “Ain’t nothing to be sorry about.” “I shouldn’t have, I should’ve sent it earlier.” I stabbed my fork into the chicken I made for her and offered it to her. She waved it away. “It’s okay,” I said. “He’s not coming anyways.” She looked down for a moment, at her feet. “I ain’t letting him in this house, even if he does.” “He’s your papa,” she said. “You should eat,” I said, scooping out some mashed potatoes. “Get your strength.” “Tell him,” she said, pausing. “Tell him I wish I knew what to say.” “Stop,” I said. “Eat. Please.” She shook her head, and rested her head on the pillow, eyes up towards the ceiling. I sighed, grabbed the plate, and walked towards the room. # He came two days after Momma passed. She just didn’t wake up one day. The ambulance came and they took her body to the morgue. I gathered up all the letters and addresses and was writing down all their addresses. To send the news. He came in the middle of the night. The house was quiet. The air conditioner was always off, always saving money. He knocked on the door, then ringed the doorbell. I knew it was him, even before I opened it up. He looked like me. He had black hair, a serious glare, an Oakland Raiders hat. He didn’t smile when he saw me. He just looked up through me, into the house he had to have called home once. “Where is she?” he asked. “Why are you here?” “She asked for me.” I looked him in the eyes and I tried to be strong. I tried to not cry, not shout, not scream, try to keep my mind here in the house. Try to keep my mind on my mother. “Can I come in?” “She’s not here.” “Where is she?” “Where do you think?” He looked down at the ground and sighed. “gently caress.” He stood at the doorway for a while, eyes down. I don’t know what he was thinking, but all I could think about was his face. How his eyes were so low, so tired, like they were close to crying. I wanted to rip that hat off of his head. I wanted to close the door. But I waited. For Momma, I told myself. This is for her. “Can I, at least, come in?” he asked. “Why’d she ask you to come?” He looked away for a moment. “She said, she wanted me to see you. And that she wanted to forgive me. That’s what she said, but I don’t know if she meant it.” I clenched my fist. I said, “Shut up.” He looked up at me and stared. Then he said, “It’s what she said, I swear.” “I don’t care,” I said. “Leave.” Then I closed the door. I stood next to the door for a while, waiting. Waiting for him to knock or scream or something. Instead, he said something from the other side, muffled, and I couldn’t hear it. Or didn’t want to. I looked out the window, and he was gone. I imagined him in that old van, with the same old dirty gardening tools, sitting in the driveway, thinking about what he did, what I said. Maybe he was crying. Crying because of Momma, or maybe me. But he wasn’t my Papa. He died before I was born. I went into the house and went into Momma’s room. I grabbed up her clothes, and put them in garbage bags. I pulled down the photos and anything that reminded me of her, and placed them in boxes. The house was empty, except for the furniture. And me. I found Papa’s letter to Momma in one of the drawers. It was folded up all neat, like a handkerchief. I wanted to open it up, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to see what my father said. I ripped it up and threw it in the trash. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I stared into my eyes, the same eyes of my father. The same hair as my father. The same face as my father. The same man who left my mother behind. But no matter how much I stared, I couldn’t see my Momma in me.
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Oct 22, 2018 04:27
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The Truth 962 words The music of the club around me forms a wall of sound. The lights flash in unison with the rhythm, creating a synchronous blur of purples, blues and reds. All around me are people smiling, holding drinks and dancing easily. I take a sip of my drink, and lean back in the couch, enjoying the kaleidoscopic lights. My friend seems to be enjoying himself as well; he has a pleasant smile and his head is bouncing along with the beat. I notice something is wrong when the lights won't switch from red. Everyone in the club appears to be lit from below in a crimson shade that is not sanguine, but sickly. My breath catches when I see the dancers on the floor. They are no longer light on their feet, instead they are thrashing, their jerky movements describing irregular circles and spirals. Their pallid, wasted limbs knock against each other as if a crude puppeteer is imitating the motion of a human body. I can feel nausea roil in my belly, and it begins to rise. Just when I am about to retch, I hear it. A scream that wails above the bass pouring from the speakers. It does not sound as if it could be made by a human, it is shrill enough to rattle my bones and deep enough to twist my gut. The contours of the scream, the peaks and valleys of the waveform, drill into my skull and writhe inside my head like a worm in rot. My friend does not react, he only sits in place and maintains his rhythm. I twist around in my seat, trying to find the source of the shriek, but I can find no source. The only figures I can see are the wretched dancers or else the people sitting in the couches, limp like sacks of salt and tallow. If the screamer is still here, they must be hidden, cowering in a dark corner. For a moment, I want to answer that scream with a shout of my own, if only to let the other person know they are not alone. But I think the better of it, and stay silent. The music begins to twist, the DJ choosing a track that sounds like a drowning, painful death. It is a complement to the scream that has only just begun to fade; the club is rippling now with a song that must have bloodied the throats of those who produced it. The DJ screams as well, and I can see tears running down his face. I can scarcely imagine the pain he must be in, to be elevated above the red club and see the horrors below. He lifts his hands in a questioning gesture, and the dancers pause their frenetic thumping to respond with screams of their own. Each person in the packed room joins in, until the multitude of voices form a unearthly chorus, wrung from hundreds of ragged throats. Every person is howling in pain. Every person save one. I look at my friend, who is just the same as he was moments ago: grinning and bobbing his head. Only now can I see what is really happening. The grin is frozen in place, a dead rictus of a smile, and the bobbing is a tic caused by suppressed pain. I look into his too-wide eyes and see the truth: he would scream if he could. Again, I stifle a shout of my own, but this time it is because I cannot let myself make the din any louder. The truth comes to me in a flash. All of these people must have been screaming when I first walked into the club. My friend must have been yearning to scream the ten years that I have known him. Every person that I have ever met has always been screaming, and I was too stupid to realize it. I startle backward at this realization, scrambling over the back of the couch and knocking over a low table at the booth behind me. Half-full drinks are knocked to the ground and the shattering sound that they produce adds another discordant scream to the mix. It is one that a human could never make, but it sounds just like any broken glass I've ever heard. I trip over the table and sprawl on the floor, amidst discarded cocktail napkins and other refuse. Every napkin has a face delicately painted on it, but each one is heaving in undiluted fear. I see more twisted visages in scuff marks left on the ground and in the shadows cast by the gawking dancers. I know that if I were to look at the particles in the air, I would find oxygen, nitrogen and argon each keening their own pain. If I were to continue further, to the electrons and the quarks, I would only find deeper terror. Screaming is fundamental to my world, my universe, and a surety arises in me that it always has been so. It was this way before I was born, and it will be this way after I die. I relent, and add my own voice to the mix, and this is when the wave of sound coalesces into a thought beating inside my brain. It is the truth of the universe speaking to me, whispering a quiet shout. You were deluded before, but now are woefully sane. I have pulled the filters from your brain so that you can see reality, the only reality. I think that I will run out of breath, but my screaming doesn't stop. It doesn't stop when they form a circle around me, and it doesn't stop when the red-eyed paramedics arrive, coated in the death and stink of their other patients. ---- You never heard the screams, but how?
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Oct 22, 2018 04:28
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Oh God. I didn't read anyone's yet because I won't post if I do. This is called Doge, and it's 1499 words. # “Isn’t it weird that there aren’t any dogs here?” Justin always did this. “It sure is,” I said, curling my finger under a glossy page of an old conspiracy rag. “How’d you notice that?” He rolled his computer chair back and faced his bed, leaning toward me. “So my mom said that someone was going to open up a pet shop right next to her café, but that they dropped out of the lease.” “So?” I snorted. “No one stays in business for long here. Especially in that plaza. Parking’s a nightmare.” The next story in De-Classified 51 showed some gory picture of a reptilian-looking baby; I went on, paying attention to the ads more than to Justin. “But I was reading on this forum about epicenters, where the dimensions rub together, right?” I laughed. “That’s your problem, man! You’re always reading this poo poo.” I flipped the cover over my finger, where the lizard baby stared crookedly up at the camera. “Normal people don’t obsess over this, dude.” Justin stared at me straight on; he does this at school too, when Jake Perry takes his manga, and Jake isn’t altogether wrong when he teases him for trying to Jedi-mind-trick him into giving it back—Justin updates me frequently on his progressing psychic abilities. He drew back, rolled his chair over to his desk, and shut down his laptop, snapping it shut. “I don’t want anyone to hear this,” he said, leaning over me and pulling the blinds. “Dude! My mom will think we’re doing stuff.” “I can’t let anyone know what I’ve been tapping into lately.” I sat up on my knees and began picking at a callus from field hockey. “You’re not going to convince me, Justin. This is a stupid idea.” “No.” He closed his door, and he came to the foot of the bed and sat across from me. “I want to know if I can trust you.” I rolled my eyes. “I haven’t told anyone any of your secrets before, and I don’t believe in this, so who would I tell?” “Blake, come on.” “Go ’head, dude.” Sometimes he just needed to be listened to; he had four younger brothers and his parents both worked, so. Justin stared at me for a while again, and I was just about to get up and leave when he began; apparently he’d been dreaming about a shaman from the tribe that used to control this area. The shaman’s face was in all our schoolbooks, because there was a statue of him in the park next to the courthouse; Justin told the dreams like he was privy to some secret. Actually that’s just how he always spoke. “The shaman is frightened,” Justin went on, intently watching the dream again, using more collegiate words to prove how enlightened and serious he was. “He’s always just watching me with these guilty eyes, right, and he doesn’t blink. And I knew he wanted to tell me something, but I kept waking up because I’d realize it was a dream.” I shrugged, letting one of my legs go off the side of the bed in case I had to jump up and run home. Not that I was scared; just the blinds were still down and I had actually told my mom Justin was gay, so I couldn’t have her thinking anything was going on. “So all you have to do is dream it again and go up to him,” I said, just following the logic to its obvious end. It was always easier to leave if I gave him some kind of distraction, like a mission. “I have homework, man. I’ll see you tomorrow.” “Don’t be dumb.” Justin pulled me back down by my sleeve. “I already did that.” “Uh huh. So what did he say? Flying Eagle wasn’t exactly great at English.” “He doesn’t say anything. He opens his mouth, and—” Justin’s eyes filled; it was getting dark in there, but the streetlamp outside made the blinds glow orange, and I could see that he was scared. “It’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard.” I swallowed, not wanting him embarrassed or to regret being vulnerable with me. “What is it?” Justin moistened his lips, tried to say something, and then gave a half smile, looking kind of behind me. “You can’t hear it when you’re awake. It’s only when you’re tapped into the other world. My brother can hear it, I think, because he wakes up every night the same time I do.” “You mean his crying wakes you up.” He shook his head. “The other three didn’t. And I wake up first, then a little bit later, he starts crying. The shaman is pressing his mouth against me, putting the sound in me. I get away, though. I think he holds Tyler for longer.” “That’s your baby brother, dude.” “It doesn’t matter, Blake. That sound is the barriers breaking. There aren’t any animals here anymore, because they’re tapped into the spirit world. They can hear what’s coming, so they left.” I rubbed my face. “So what’s coming? Some big, catastrophic crash? Monsters? Zombies?” Tears were streaming down Justin’s cheeks. “It’s so much worse than that. He’s so scared. He was a general, Blake. He’s seen famine and fighting and every kind of death. And since he died, he’s seen so much more. And now that’s all coming for us.” “We were all gonna die anyway.” I was just opening his door again when he slammed it from behind me. “Dude—” “I thought I could trust you with this,” he sobbed into my shoulder. “I’m so scared, Blake. I can’t tell anyone. They’ll just put me in the facility again, and we can’t have psychic warriors in a ward. We need every little help we can get. Don’t you get it?” I stroked his hair like he liked and snuck a kiss onto his forehead. “You get yourself worked up over nothing, Justin. I promise. You know I do.” “The puppies they brought in,” he began, then began having a panic attack. I took him to his chair and did breathing exercises with him, which calmed him, but made my heartbeat pound in my head. “Don’t think about it anymore, okay? It’s getting late.” “They wouldn’t stop howling,” he murmured. “And it wasn’t like…no. It was like they were being skinned alive or something.” “You didn’t even hear it, dude.” “I hear them every night. I heard them coming. Tyler hears it. He cries out of nowhere and, like…” He put his hand sloppily up to his ear, as a baby would. “Like he can’t make it stop.” “But you said you can’t hear it waking.” “Babies are tapped into the spirit—” I just kind of blew up on him, then. And I shouldn’t have, I know. But he keeps going into this rabbit hole of paranoia, and it’s just totally unfounded. His parents don’t like dealing with his mood swings, so they check him into Behavioral Health for a month, and he comes back worse, but better at hiding it. If interdimensional beings were coming, if the world were ending…wouldn’t the shamans already in the spirit world, like, choose people who didn’t have a file in every mental hospital in the county? He interrupted me about the drat dogs. “Dude!” I said, my voice breaking. “I had a dog before you moved here. Scooter. He died right before you came, okay? And it really sucked, because we had him for just a couple of years. He wasn’t old,” I said, before he interjected again, “he was four I think. And he didn’t run away. He was hit by a car.” Justin took my hand and kissed it. “Thanks,” I said, calming a little as he brushed his lips over my callus. “The people driving said they laid on the horn. He never was any good about listening. But hey, he didn’t leave.” Justin kissed up my arm and I felt myself getting all hot, and I was saying we shouldn’t, and his mouth was on my lips, my cheek, my chin, my neck, and then he stretched his lips over my ear, and there was static coming from his throat, and he jerked away or maybe I pushed him, and he began to throw up. I fumbled for the door and ran out of his house and back over to mine. My mom was in the kitchen squinting over some package by the stove. That was normal. Okay. Breathe. If I’m freaked out, she’ll wonder. “Hi, honey,” she said idly. “Ready to eat?” The microwave beeped, and I jumped, making her laugh and then get mad. “Blake, are you high or something?” I couldn’t breathe. “Is the microwave still running? I can hear it.” It wasn’t humming I heard, though; it was whispering. And I kept seeing Scooter, but I heard Justin through it all. He was gagging and saying one thing over and over: Deaf! Deaf!
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Oct 22, 2018 04:55
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A Place of Scant Light 1173 words we absolutely cannot renovate: the house would not like it This story has been moved. apophenium fucked around with this message at 03:39 on Jan 1, 2019 |
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Oct 22, 2018 05:07
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Living in a Box 1,445 words in time, the bird learns to love the cage REMOVED Solitair fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Dec 31, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 05:55
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prompt: though the strange rot filled the walls, you did not one thing about it wordcount: 1469 Black mold OK, let's do the the getting to know you thing. Religion? Lapsed everything, you? I think there's either nothing after death or it's stranger than we can imagine, so there's no point in worrying about it. I ran home from the bus after nearly daydreaming past my stop. Rain beat down like a whipping as I wheezed my way down three long streets of misery. Water soaked right through my no-longer fitting suit, through my unpressed shirt, right to my skin. The light I had carelessly left on in my living room became an attainable haven of warmth and dryness. But as I climbed the front porch stairs, I could see signs of black mold creeping up the side of the house. Days of humid wetness had done their job. "I'm home," I said to the empty kitchen. Some habits die harder than others, even after months. I kicked off my wet shoes, then, after a tentative toe wiggle, followed with my wet socks. I filled the kettle, pipes thumping above me even after I turned off the tap. Opening the fridge revealed a can of something half-eaten and possibly pasta-ish. I grabbed it, closed the fridge and this time saw the photos still magnetically pinned to the door. Us at the top of some mountain. Us attending a music festival. Her hugging me in her cap and gown after she got her degree as a returning adult science student. My hand went to trace her image, but I realised my fingers were still wet, so my hand hung there, untouching. Her face, eyes closed, in a casket. She'd never look me in the eye again and tell me what we were doing. I couldn't eat at all at her funeral reception. Finger sandwiches and hors d'oeuvres just seemed wrong, when her life had been all about ripping the meat off the bones of life and then sucking the very marrow from them. Shaking the memories away, I made my way down the hall to the living room, attracted by the distracting sounds of a cooking reality show on TV. I'd left both that and the heater on, and could feel the warmth of the room as soon as I opened the door. Swapping the can from hand to hand, I maneuvered myself out of my jacket and sank into the sofa. Someone in TV was having a terrible time with their souffle. The kettle made insistent boiling noises from down the hall. Dammit, I had forgotten about it. I put down my can and retraced my steps. The countertop where the cup-tree lived was spotted with black mold. Half of the wall above it was too - even the gaudy pink splashback with antibacterial properties she'd chosen just months ago. It smelled like chicken that had been left in the sun. For a moment I contemplated cleaning it. I thought about pouring bleach into the boiling water and scrubbing away at it with steel wool until the slimy spore-heads fell away. But only for a moment. gently caress it, I thought. Another time. You can get people for that. I left the kettle unpoured and went back to the TV, where souffle disaster had apparently been averted somehow. I shoved cold, canned pasta-stuff into my mouth. And there I sat, for a long time, trying not to think of anything at all and failing. You wanna do something? I cannot be arsed. A day with nothing done is a day wasted - you sure you got enough to waste, boy? It was growing dark outside when my body forced me to stir. I might have been dozing a little, but the stabbing pain in my gut told me I had some business to take care of, and the sooner the better. I went down the hall, to the toilet. Black mold festooned the bathroom. It had never had particularly good ventilation and now the moisture that seemed to live there permanently on the walls had transformed into rivulets and blooms of fungi. But the worst thing was the smell. It stank like what I'd always imagined a corpse-flower would stink. Like a pile of bodies left rotting in the the kind of mud cows have lived on. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, still in my work shirt and dress pants, my pale, lazily unshaven face half hidden behind lines and splotches of mold. The toilet itself was entirely covered in a different way from the walls. They were patchy but it was lumpy, the mold growing in three dimensions, as if forming the basis for some strange, alien sculpture. The toilet lid was closed. I did not want to open it. I decided that, gut pains or not, I could wait a little longer. By the time I reached the embrace of the sofa I had convinced myself I was experiencing stress. Maybe I should miss work again. Just a few days. Maybe a couple of weeks. They'd understand. On TV, someone was house-flipping, or trying to, being constantly thwarted by incompetent builders, painters and family members. I briefly wondered if they ever had to deal with cleaning up this amount of mold. Towards the end of the show, when the selling price was about to be revealed, I felt my eyes start to droop. Lovely service. I'm so sorry for your loss. Please ring if we can do anything. You've got the number. Do you want us to call around after? I was startled awake by the blare of closing credits music, the word "no" a half-scream forming in my mouth. I needed to rest properly. It will all look better in the morning, I told myself. Less insurmountable. The bedroom was just off the living room, but I have to admit, it was with some trepidation that I opened the door and peered around it. The room itself was black with mold from floor to ceiling, and the fetid smell hit me like a tumbling wall of vomit and rot. I gagged and choked, seeing through watering eyes the queen sized bed in the center of the room. The mold had completely encapsulated it, and it was moving, twisting, almost swirling, so that your gaze would slide off if you tried to stare at just one point. The sheets themselves undulated in slow waves, but worse, there were figures, made entirely of mold, on the bed, rolling and seething in a pile of limbs that made it hard to determine where one figure ended and another began. Even so, it was clear that there were too many limbs, because there was only one head, tossing and writhing on pillows of black mold. The door squeaked on its hinges as I leant on it, retching. The head bent its neck, lifting its face toward me. Even though it was black, on a black bed, in a black room, it glistened, a featureless orb until it opened its eyes. Her eyes. Judging. I shut the door, wiped my mouth, and returned to the sofa. From there I could see the hall, already covered from wall to wall with black mold, glinting wetly in the dim lighting. The living room carpet was black now, too. I lifted my feet, to tuck them up onto the small sofa, away from everything, but my bare toes were covered black mold, and I realised I couldn't feel them anymore. Nor my feet. Nor my legs. It's funny what you think of, when you think you're about to die. I thought about science, about learning that fungi, and therefore molds, were a third kingdom of life, completely separate from plants and animals. She'd taught me that. I missed her, teaching me things. So what have you been up to? Heaps. Organised your funeral, watched some reality shows, ate a lot of canned pasta. You're a loving fun-sucking vampire sometimes, boy. Hey, give me a break. There was a death in the family. That was a long time ago. I don't know what would have happened if my friends hadn't turned up. They told me I'd rung them, ranting like a freak about how the house and my dead wife was trying to mold me or something and how I needed to get the hell out right now. They found me, sweating and screaming on the sofa. I don't remember any of that, but I'm out of that house now, and I'm putting it on the market. I do remember the conversation, though. The one that couldn't have happened. The one where she told me I had to keep on living, actually, really living. Or she'd be back. I just don't know if I can do that without you. Of course you can. It'll just be a different kind of life.
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Oct 22, 2018 06:07
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Pieces of <1500 words Your friends knew the risks, and you can only blame them for what happened next E: https://thunderdome.cc/?story=6925&title=Pieces+of The Saddest Rhino fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Dec 31, 2018 |
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Oct 22, 2018 06:48
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Prompt: Mother died with nothing, but you couldn't even leave her that could you? Don’t Go 595 words On her deathbed I begged my mother not to leave me. I sobbed and ranted, told her I hated her for getting sick, that I was afraid of being alone. I wanted to hurt her, to punish her for going. I was so selfish. Now I think she killed my dog. When I got home from her funeral Jack’s kennel was empty and she was standing in my kitchen. Her pale skin had turned blotchy and purple. The smart dress the funeral home gave her - much nicer than anything she’d ever owned - was covered in blood. She turned to face me and I vomited into my shaking hands. Her eyes were blank yellow-white like rotten milk and her blackened lips were twisted in an ugly snarl. “Mother?” I said, gasping for breath around the bile in my throat and nose. Her milky eyes met mine and she lurched towards me, arms outstretched and bloodied fingers hooked like claws. I slammed the kitchen door and fled into the living room. There were photos spread on the coffee table; my high school friends and I. Tony too, one arm draped protectively around my shoulders. We’d been happy, then. All the photos were damaged. Tony’s eyes, his face, and that big stupid grin I used to love so much had been gouged out, like someone had attacked the shiny surface with their fingernails. Behind me I heard the kitchen door click and the scrape-thump of mother’s approaching footsteps. “Why did you do this?” I said, trembling. Her jaw slackened and her hideous mouth dropped open. Air hissed from her and the stink of putrefaction filled the room. There was dog fur on her clothes; glued on with dried blood. “What did you do to Jack?” I said, my voice rising to a high-pitched wail. She moaned and picked at the fur, letting it drift to the floor in bloodied clumps. I ran, stumbled up the stairs and locked my bedroom door behind me. Then I noticed the dolls. And the stuffed animals. Childhood toys, all arranged around my bedroom as if waiting for me to play with them. On my dresser a bald rabbit and a faded pink pony faced each other across a chipped plastic tea set. A doll was tucked into my bed, its rigid arms pointing sightlessly towards me. The sheets were neatly folded back, just like how she used to make my bed when I was a child. Except there was a smear of blood and a torn piece grey flesh on my pillowcase. From the hallway I heard scrape-thump, scrape-thump, then the sound of fingernails scratching against the door. “Helen…” mother moaned. Her voice was low and guttural; a death rattle. “I didn’t mean it,” I said, sinking down against the door and curling my knees to my chest. “I’m sorry, you can go. Please.” The scratching became thumps, and the door flexed and cracked against my back as I leant against it, sobbing. In my pocket my phone buzzed. It was Tony. He had refused to come to the funeral, even when I begged him. Said my mother had always been a bitch so why should he have to pretend to be sad that she was gone. Bastard. I heaved my phone, still buzzing, at the window. The glass smashed and sharp fragments crashed amongst the plastic tea cups. The roar of blood rushing in my ears drowned out all other sounds as I reached for the doorknob and turned it. There was nothing there. Outside, I heard a dog barking.
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Oct 22, 2018 07:18
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His Voice 1136 words prompt:father only set one rule, but it was one rule too many “Your father is a weird guy, you know,” said Jermaine. I didn't take offense. It was objectively true. “He was reading the Farmer's Almanac during dinner,” added Chip. We weren't farmers. We didn't even keep a garden out back. I peeked over his shoulder as he scanned back and forth with his good eye over tables of civil and nautical twilight for months long past. It was weird, but also typical. “Dare you to go see what he’s got in the study.” he added. I tried to shut this down. Dad had only one rule. When he was in that room he was not to be disturbed in any way. When he wasn’t, it was still off limits. He was in there, while we did our overnight, which was absolutely not a slumber party, slumber parties being the domain of girls, who were still utterly mysterious annoyances to all of us. I tried to shut it down, but it grew a life of its own. Jermaine refused. Chip accused him of cowardice, and with honor on the line, he could not back down. I heard father’s voice, but not what he said. Not his normal voice. Not his angry voice, which only very rarely emerged. His controlled voice, just a few volume levels higher than conversational, a voice that does not allow debate. The voice that made service workers and government officials know they were not fulfilling their side of the contract. I’ve never seen anyone not give in to that voice. He mostly deployed it on my behalf. Jermaine returned to the bedroom looking pale and terrified. He didn’t tell us what he saw, not then, and not later. He drifted away from the two of us, spending less time, never accepting invitations to the house again. The next year he started running track, and go a whole new set of track friends, and the year after that his family moved out to New Mexico. He had a going away party, and we were still close enough to get invited along with almost everyone else. I cornered him, asking him one more time. “Gavin,” he said, “You’re a jerk. Go find out for yourself if you really want to know so badly.” I apologized, let the subject drop. We talked about Albuquerque and who Chip was crushing on this month and which of the X-men was the second fastest runner, until it was time to say goodbye. “Wait,” he said, just before I turned to leave. “Don’t try to find out. I hope you never see what I did.” I nodded. We tried to shake hands but ended up hugging. * * * I have nightmares. As long as I can remember. Ever since the accident, where dad lost an eye and a wife and I just lost a mother. I was four years old at the time. I can’t remember the real thing, but I remember every second of the nightmare. I’m trapped, pinned by metal, and whatever else happens eventually the bird comes. It’s a grackle, and it perches on the highway barrier and stares at me for an eternity. Then it takes flight, directly at me. Its pearlescent feathers shift from green to blue to jet black as the angle between beak and eye narrows. If I’m lucky, I wake up just before I feel the sharp pressure against my right cornea. * * * “Your father is weird,” said Melissa. The same lack of rules made my house a better final destination for a date than most parents’ houses. He was being weirder than usual during that year. He spent evenings on eBay, bidding on videotapes of game shows, mostly The Price is Right and The Joker’s Wild, then watching them intently, commercials and all, on a VCR that required multiple switches to connect to our television. “You’ve got to wonder,” she said, “What’s in that study.” We had to walk past it to the bedroom. The was a smell of lightly burnt engine oil mixed with cinnamon. There was the sound of sawing wood and voices played in reverse. As always, I felt his eye on me through the blue-painted wood. “No!” I said. I tried to use father’s voice. As usual, I failed. She insisted. I grabbed her hand, a little too hard. She relented, but the moment was dead. We talked a bit more, and after an hour she left what should have been a nearly-sure thing third date without as much as a kiss. * * * “Your father is dead.” It was Aunt Ellen who gave me the bad news, over the phone. A heart attack, she explained. Sudden, very little pain. There was apparently quite a lot of money involved, as well. I never knew exactly what he did for a living. Some kind of accounting, moving money around in arcane ways. He was, everyone I talked to from his firm, very good at it. I knew he had made plenty of it himself, enough to send me to college and med school with no debt. I was beginning to realize I didn’t know how much. I didn’t need it, would struggle to find a way to do good with it. I made arrangements to take time off at the hospital and flew in that afternoon. I didn’t head straight for the study when I got to the house. I paced. I lingered in my old room. But eventually, the magnetic pull of the secret drew me to it. I put my hand on the knob. I turned it. I pulled it outward. The room was empty, unfurnished. The only thing inside was a small bird. A grackle. The grackle. It spoke. It said “No, no, no, not yet, no.” In my father’s voice. * * * I ran, out to the car and then drove, still running. I didn’t realize where I was going until I got there. The funeral home. The director was still there. I talked him into letting me see the body, sealed in a bag of death-smells, ready for cremation in the morning. I talked him into leaving me alone with it, for a moment. I never mastered father’s voice, but the M.D. comes with its own voice of authority. I opened the bag and saw him. No incision marks; he had been dead before doctors reached the scene and there had been no autopsy. I grabbed the mortician’s scalpel from a table and cut. His ribcage was empty. No heart, no organs, just bony perches and a muscle wall just above the hip, spattered lightly with bird droppings. I drove to my hotel, then changed my mind in the parking lot and went back to the house. It was near dark. I went in, went to the study. The door was still ajar. The bird was still inside. “Was I a good father?” he said, and I had no idea how to answer.
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Oct 22, 2018 07:25
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Beneath 1498 words The noises outside stopped too early tonight; you grabbed your flashlight Can be found in the archive. Anomalous Blowout fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Jan 1, 2019 |
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Oct 22, 2018 07:35
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Tennis Elbow Foot 515 words sebmojo fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jan 2, 2019 |
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Oct 22, 2018 07:57
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You were given extra time, but now the clock strikes the strange hour and submissions are closed.
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Oct 22, 2018 08:57
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 10:18 |
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WEEK 323 CRITS Epilogue Gallery - M. Propagandalf The protagonist here is kind of a blank, as are the other characters. I think the idea of an author, after their death, meeting their beloved characters is a good one, but the protagonist and Lauralyn are kind of blanks. It’s hard for me to grasp the love and affection the protagonist has for Lauralyn when all we’re really told about her is that she’s good at swordfighting. And while I appreciate the twist of the kind gentle godlike figure being the protagonist’s own author, the setup to that twist involves the protagonist being confused, noticing that they aren’t feeling feelings, which is both confusing and makes the character harder to connect to. (It’s also very transparent foreshadowing.) The protagonist’s confusion about their author is the only hint of conflict here, and that means the effect of this story is that the protagonist just waits to have things explained to them, which really saps the story of momentum. I think there’s a lot you can do with this concept, but the execution needs a shot of adrenaline, or at least a sense of doubt that things aren’t going to work out. Dedicated To - Fleta Mcgurn There are some great sentences in here, and I love the specific details, like the kinds of videos kids make when they get a camera for the first time. My issue here is that this story distances itself from its emotion; I think the omniscent point of view is a mistake. This whole story should be from the POV of Daniel, and beginning with the perspective of “the boys,” even dipping into what the teachers were thinking, robs the ending, which is based entirely on Daniel’s emotions and decisions, from its impact. We need to understand Daniel actually loves making movies, not just that he and Eric have silly fun making them. You could easily read it as something that’s a lark for the two of them, not something he loves independently of his friend. But the ending of the story turns on this fact, of us feeling that Daniel giving up film school because of grief would be a serious loss for him, and the story as a whole doesn’t sell us that. Red Letter Day - SurreptitiousMuffin This piece stood out this week for the coherency of its vision. I love how the light, almost twee tone of the elf makes the reality of the boy’s depression more visceral in relief. And it’s important for portraying who this boy is -- he’s still got some childlike hope in him, even though he’s getting older and it’s rapidly disappearing. The worldbuilding around the frivolous stuff the elf usually does helps sell the unexpected seriousness of being asked to erase the kid. And if the dialogue between the boy and the elf is a little bit maudlin, I don’t think it goes overboard. The ending lands as just the right amount of sweet. Leaving a Friend in Paradise - NotGordian I’ve read this story three or four times and I’m still not sure exactly what’s happening. I get that Raza has decided to live forever in this magical library, and that he’s leaving Houzi the captain to do so, but I’m not sure how they ended up there -- since Raza says he “would have liked to make the rendezvous,” I’m guessing this wasn’t their intended destination, and since the AI says he decided to let Raza in, I guess this is an invitation only thing, so I’m not sure why Houzi’s there. More importantly, though, the story doesn’t tell us much about Raza and Houzi’s friendship, so the sadness of their parting is only in theory. The end of a friendship is sad, yeah, but if you don’t give us an idea of what Houzi will miss about having Raza around, what they won’t be able to do anymore, the quirks of his personality he’ll miss, it doesn’t land emotionally at all. (Apparently one of the other judges disagrees.) But this story seems more interested in telling us how cool the library is, how passionate the AI is, and while all that is nice, it makes the story feel unfocused and harder to understand. Dance of the Moon Jellies - Antivehicular I would have HMed this, personally -- the prose is gorgeous and leaden with emotion. For the most part, the blocking of this wrestling of otherworldly creatures is handled well, although the ambiguity of “protoplasm” makes things a little confusing (e.g., “scrape protoplasm from my flesh” makes me pause and wonder where protoplasm ends and flesh begins for these creatures.) But the point isn’t the fighting slash lovemaking, the point is the sense of longing, the loneliness, which is reinforced by the ending, when we learn they’re repopulating a lost population. I think the absence of an arc or clear stakes makes this feel like more of a minor entry, but I think it achieves what it sets out to do with a flurry of some really pretty words. Hitchhiker - Thranguy The sense of the loneliness of very long periods of time animates this story, and while I think the story leans a little too hard on heady ideas over character to really wow me, the riffs on this AI meeting its social needs against the backdrop of eternity are striking. The image of the ice-flower is a nice idea, a solid unifying image, but I found it hard to visualize, and that took away from its poignancy. More touching, I think, is their pact to limit their reproduction to the long timetable, and to find companionship together in that time. Sons of Hróðvitnir - Lippincott The way this story seems to work is by making us ask “what’s going on here?” That’s why we’re only told that this is a wolf-god over halfway through the story. Personally, I found that pretty frustrating, especially because the first two scenes aren’t that interesting. I like the “brother” exchange at the end of the first section, but I’m not really sure what the second section does for this story, other than slow down the pace of things and let us know how not to pronounce Hati’s name. That means that everything interesting here happens in that last section, and while it’s well-written on the sentence level, it’s not enough to make up for the lack of momentum. It doesn’t feel satsifying. Advent of the Star People - sebmojo There’s definitely a charm to these twee space people descending on a bar and just having a good time, mixing with the patrons. I just found myself wishing for more cohesion. The protagonist is pretty close to a total blank, stumbling through the story with no direction or purpose, although I wonder if that’s the point -- otherwise you couldn’t convey the way these people transmit that sense of cosmic serenity without getting things muddled up. More frustrating is the lack of focus, like Dando showing up at the end for no discernible reason.
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Oct 22, 2018 14:26
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