Nightmare Fuel 2021 - Day the Third

Three days of this! Here's a vignette about what you do when you reach an edge of the world. 

The world's topology is complicated - it has many, many edges.

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"Come here. You've got to see what I found!"

It's Maddy, of course. She's always the reckless one, the mad one. The one sneaking through neighbor's yards, who found the tree you could climb to hop over to the roof of the school. 

You're all out together, in the kind of early fall day you when you can still pretend it's summer. The kind our parents still call "Indian Summer" no matter how many times we tell them not to, then awkwardly joke that it's "Native American Summer" or some other such silliness. 

It's Maddy who always gets you all into trouble.

Mike looks skeptical, like he always does. "What is it this time? Are we gonna get in trouble again?" Mike was the last one down from the school roof. The principal caught him and made him spend an hour carrying books to  different classrooms. He didn't turn the rest of us in, but he still never forgave Maddy.

"Nothing like that. Look, this'll be great. You've just got to see it. But you have to hurry. It doesn't stay there for long."

You follow, not open for long being a magic phrase. After all, we don't want to miss out on something that isn't there for long, do we?

This adventure leads you on bikes down the busy street and to the sculpture garden behind the tiny art museum our parents drag us to sometimes. Past the lake, to the wide grassy hills nobody ever wanders past. Not because there's anything to stop us, but because there's nothing there. Just well-manicured grass and perfectly straight hedges.

Before long we get there, to a perfectly straight row of hedges with a perfectly round hole through the middle. The sunlight, from straight overhead, leaves the hole perfectly dark. This must be the "it doesn't stay for long" Maddy was talking about. Her eyes are bright. 

"It's a gateway. To another world."

"Another world?" Mike looks at the hole. The gateway. He doesn't step closer, doesn't shy away. "What's this other world like?"

"It looks like this one, but EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT." Her eyes are wide, bright. Mike shakes his head. "Except for when you guys talk me into trouble, I LIKE this world. It's where I keep all my stuff."

Maddy shakes her head. "Well, I want to explore." 

You find yourself between Mike and Maddy, as he edges back towards the hole and she steps forward.

Maddy walks through the hole and vanishes.

You follow. Darkness washes over you, as the world vanishes for just a moment. Then step out into the light, on the other side of the hedge. Maddy smiles at you. "I knew you'd come. We can't go back through, or we'd end up back in the same world." The back of the hedgerow is less even, less finely cared for. You smell damp earth, something a bit wild. You walk along the hedge together for a bit, her hand in yours. Then you find a thin spot between hedges and slip through, branches tearing at your skin. You walk back along the hedges until you find this world's version of Mike, with this world's version of the bicycles another you and another Maddy had left behind when they went exploring, off to a different world.

Or you don't follow. Maddy gives the two of you a look of disappointment, disappearing into the darkness as she steps through the hole. You and Mike share a look of resignation. Minutes later another world's Maddy appears from a gap in the hedges a ways down. Not a portal, not a tunnel, just a gap. Neither of you stop her from taking your Maddy's bike to ride home in silence, her disappointment hanging in the air between you.

You glance back once, knowing that your choice matters. That now everything is the different.

Or everything is the same. 

Nightmare Fuel 2021 - Day the Second

 

The Long Way Home

You take the long way home from school, along the backroads. You always told your mother that it was because the noise of the busier street bothers you, and she always pretends to believe you.

The truth is that you don't know who will be home today. Which monster.

The first time was weeks ago. You remember standing out in the yard, kicking a soccer ball against the house. The tall grass of the lawn worn to dirt patches where you stood, twelve yards from the side of the house. You'd paced it, to be sure. Your mother's voice through the kitchen window "You've lost your goddam mind". 

You stopped kicking. He'd lost his mind? Was your father a zombie, a shambling undead creature with no thoughts, feeding on brains? You stayed out until darkness had fallen, until you could barely see the ball. 

When you finally came in to dinner at the kitchen table (the dining room was only for Sundays or holidays) his mind was indeed gone - he ate with an absent-minded, glassy-eyed stare. Didn't say anything. Spent the last part of the meal scaping a line of crumbs out of the table's central joint with the tiny pocket screwdriver he always carried. He didn't say good night when you excused yourself to bed.

Then there was the time he'd lost his senses. That was worse. His eyes were glassy, he barely picked at his dinner. He must have lost his sense of taste as well. 

"Are you going to eat your food or just stare at it?" You almost reflexively answer "I'm eating", but she wasn't looking at you. There was not a word the rest of the meal, but that's what it's like when you someone loses their senses.

So today, you take the long way home. You don't want to see the mind-numbed zombie or the deaf-mute senseless drone. 

Your mother is standing outside the front steps as you approach, "You'd better hurry in. Your father's going to lose his head if you make me keep dinner waiting any longer."

Lose ... his head? A real monster this time, all shoulders and body and appetite and anger? Arms even longer, able to reach you from even farther? What was the head but the wobbly bit on the top? The place he kept his mind and senses? Without his head, it's just the monster.

You hear heavy steps down the stairs. You see his feet, the long arms, the mouth. It's hard to know without a face, but he looks angry.

Resigned to your fate, you step inside. 

If you get another chance, you'll never take the long way again.

Nightmare Fuel 2021 , Day the First

 Good morning friends, if anyone is still here.

These pages have remained empty for a long time, and I skipped this whole exercise last year as pandemic brain kind of melted me. The game is the same - one piece of flash fiction per day, written one day late in the early morning. Just little sketches here to get the brain moving and put us in the October mood.

Project is courtesy of Andrea Trask, sometimes known as Bliss Morgan. If you want to play along, prompts are here on the Tumblr. She also has a Patreon for those who wish to patreonise her. 

Now, on with it.

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There are whispers of a place, isolated but not too isolated, where the anonymous acolyte of worth holds a book. If you find him - and it isn't as hard as one would think - you'll be shown a single page.

On it is be written the greatest day of your life. The only price is that you need to look, and you'll always  carry that knowledge that on one shining day - perhaps in the future, perhaps lost in your past - you had your best moment. And none before or since would measure up.

Nobody ever asks what "greatest" means. Not that the acolytes would ever tell.

I arrive on a chill October day, accompanied by a youth. They laugh nervously as we travel the tree-lined ghost-walk to the weathered stone temple of worth. "You're almost fifty. Whatever your time is, it's in the past. Why bother?"

I smile. "Maybe I just need a reminder. But we're here for you."

We step in. The acolyte is where we'd been told, covered in heavy robes. Impossible to tell who it was, male or female. They were holding a black-leatherbound book, as worn with the ravages of time as the building around us. They look first at the youth, beckon with one crooked finger. He steps forward, the book is held up to him and opened. 

"October 31, 2036. You tell the truth to yourself." That's how it was written - always in the present tense, as if it is always unfolding. Right now.

 2036. Fifteen years from now. 

The youth steps back. "but.. I never lie for myself. It'll take fifteen years? For just that?"

The figure is silent. It always was. 

I stepped forward to complete the ritual, but I already know.

"November 27, 2001. You go where you need to be."

The youth laughs, again nervously. "That's it? You went where you need to go twenty years ago? Some life, eh? You must be disappointed. What's left to live for?"

I barely hear. Because it's the date I knew. I remember the shoes I was wearing, the brown rockports with the frayed lace on one side, because I was tying them when I got the phone call. She was scared. She didn't think the doctors were paying her enough attention. She knew it was time for work, but she needed me.

I remembered she was wearing her glasses because I was left clutching them as a nurse ushered me away from the others who'd answered my calls for help.

The same nurse - or maybe a different one - asks me if she was wearing a watch. I say I don't know, and then she hands it to me. Stupidly, absurdly, I'll always wonder why she asked that.

Then I'm standing in a tiny, anonymous office built for painful conversations, staring at that watch, not even seeing what time it showed, as I'm handed a phone. "Do you need to call her family? Anyone?" I hold the receiver in my hand for a long time before I realize that I don't know what I'd even say to them. I set it down and say something. I don't remember what.

The rest is a blur from of fear, anger, frustration. The fear fades slowly over the next days, weeks, months. The sense of "not out of the woods" and "could happen again" that lingered like the scent of something long departed until, without fanfare, it is gone. Almost. There will be reminders later, over the years. Nothing is ever over.

I smile at the youth. "What I have to live for is the same reason I skipped work that day. It could have been the worst day of my life. It WAS one of the worst days. But also the greatest. I know if given the choice, you'd do the same"

We leave that place, having learned nothing. 

Nightmare Fuel 2019, Day the Sixth - Batteries

Still two days behind, but that's better than three days behind. 

Perchance I'll catch up soon.

Other things I love? Witches and bad decisions. Image from the BotanyShitPosts Tumblr

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Batteries

He had that look in his eyes. The look that says he has an idea, a brilliant idea. The look that says he can’t believe that he didn’t think of it before, but he knows exactly why none of the rest of us did.

We are, after all, not nearly as smart as he is.

It wasn’t the look that hooked you; you’ve seen that look lots of times. It was the closet door. The one in the back of his apartment, the one with the steel hasp and the shiny steel padlock. The one you’ve never seen open, the one he’d only smile about if you asked one of those nights you slept over with him.

That door.

Was open.

Not only that, it seemed to be … glowing. That’s impossible. Who puts a light in a closet? Unless he’s growing weed in there, but there’d be no need to keep THAT a secret from you.

“This’ll be great.” You took a seat on the bed as he paced the short length of the bedroom, your eyes constantly drawn to that open door. He was all jangly limbs and frenetic energy and piercing blue eyes, dressed in a threadbare band-logo T-shirt and a pair of hundred-dollar jeans. Yeah, Mike was Mike and this was shaping up to be a classic Mike type of evening.

“Look, most of this happened before I met you and I didn’t know if it was real or it would work, but couple years ago I got a real apprenticeship with a real witch.”

The hinges on your jaw loosen as you try to formulate a response. “A… witch?” That was a response. You feel dumb, the way he always makes you feel dumb. One of these days you’ll be quick enough to keep up with him. Today was not the day.

“Yeah, they’re still around. They mostly only take other women, but, well, you have to know how to talk to them. About balance and harmony and all that. And find the right one who’se old enough and alone enough and fears the things she knows will die with her if she can’t pass them on. It takes some looking, but you know me. I’ve always been good at looking. And good looking.”

You smile weakly. The joke may be wearing thin, but part of you will always remember the awkward confidence with which he made it the first time. There’s an eager little boy in there somewhere, one both proud of himself and eager to please and quick as lightning. You fell in love with that little boy, even if the same old jokes are starting to run thin.

And now, the moment .He steps in to the closet, comes out with several two-liter bottles, with some kind of plant growing in each. Deep emerald-green leaves, rich brown roots. Strange sigils are etched onto each bottlecap in what appears to be black sharpie. “Watch this!” he says, then mutters a few words under his breath. The air in the apartment suddenly feels clearer, healthier. Even a bit brighter. Certainly cooler and less humid. “See? Environmental control. Temperature, humidity, spirit. We’ve been cooling our air with clunky nineteenth century technology for too long, compressing gasses and letting them decompress. IT’s time to move to the future!”

You are genuinely amazed, your head feels clearer. Clear enough that something here seems wrong. “What did your witch say about this plan?”

He waves a hand dismissively. “You know witches. Always playing it safe. Too meddlesome. To big a risk. Too harmful.”

As he talks the bottleplant fades before your eyes, from a lush green to a muted tan. He sees your looking. “They always do that, but it’s fine. We can always recharge them, take a little from the world outside. Even from the ocean. Nobody’ll miss it.”

“Nobody?” You stand up and look him in the eye. “You sure about that?”

He smiles, nods equally. “Nobody. Just take a little energy, release a bit of psychic waste. Maybe into the ocean. What’s a nightmare or two to a fish? And we’ll all get to be happy and comfortable.” He pauses. “I’m gonna need investors.  Capital. We’re going to be rich!”.

You take a deep breath of the cool, dry, spiritually cleansed air. To be rich with him would be good, right? And worth putting up with the same old jokes for a few more years.

Maybe this time he got it right.

In the closet, the remaining plants fade to grey.

Nightmare Fuel Day the Fifth - WIsh

I love wishes. I love deals with genies and the devil and any supernatural being with the ability to give us the very worst thing it possibly could - exactly what we want.

At the very least, we get lovely little puzzle stories of humans trying to outsmart a virtual god. Here's a quick tale of someone who thought he won the wishing game.
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The Third Wish

 “Your wish is my command, and very well-phrased, if I do say.”

I’ll admit that I was pleased with myself. Yes, I know I wasn’t the first to wish for immortality, but I’ve read enough stories to know that wishing was a fool’s game, unless you’re clever and careful. I studied first. I read up on contract law. On fairy tales. On myths.

I was going to get this right, and carefully so. Avoid disease or senescence or an eternity of pain. And this was just one wish, carefully worded. I’d keep the other two in reserve, as an emergency measure.

Image by Andrea Trask

“It’s just… well, nevermind. I’m sure you’ve thought of all of it.”

It doesn’t matter how I found the genie or bound him to do my bidding, but that I did. And this one was clearly impressed, and respectful. I’m not so arrogant as to not listen; after all, I DID still have two wishes left, and haven’t even created myself a fortune.

Yet.

“It’s just that the wish was perfectly worded for all natural or supernatural illnesses, all age related failings physical and mental, all germs, diseases, curses, afflictions.”

I nodded, impatient. “Yes, Genie. I know I what I wished for. It’s very careful and very much ironclad.”

“Only… did you not think of accidents? A fire? A car crash? Lightning?”

“I thought those fell under aflictions?”

“No… you’re not protected from misadventure or disasters.”

“OK.. so for my next wish, I wish to be protected…” I continued very carefuly and quickly, modifying the language from my anti-illness wish to include all natural and man-made disasters, accidents, misadventures, and acts of god. It’s good to be smart, and to have earned the respect of the genie.

Ten years later I’d still not used that last wish. I had a house, a wife, a baby, a car. The secret is to find a way to live comfortably, with the security that you’re taken car of and it’ll all work out. It isn’t hard to win the wishing-game if you aren’t greedy.

The fire alarm didn’t wake me at first, but that’s OK. After all, I was protected, and protected well. The smoke smelled like a campfire, the flames a gentle warmth. I smiled until I heard the screaming from my daughter’s room, then jumped out of bed in a panic, running through the smoke-filled rooms. It didn’t even sting my eyes, but obscured my vision.

You don’t need to hear the rest. I found them, my wife and the baby, in the nursery. Ran them outside, but it was too late, much too late. Cradling my baby’s lifeless body, I looked up at the house. The protection had held, with even the siding around my bedroom window clean and unmarked.

“Oh… I wish it had been me.”

Those are the last words I ever spoke. As the world faded away I heard the baby’s laughter and realized something.

I’d won the wishing game after all.

Nightmare Fuel 2019 Day the Fourth - Grave

I've fallen behind, but might do some two-a-days to catch up.  Image is in the public domain, source unknown.

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Grave

“You gotta see this!”

Calvin would admit, it wasn’t that first thing he’d have expected. They’d only turned off the wooded trail behind the school a few minutes ago, but this space was hidden by thick underbrush and a low rise in the soft earth. Somehow, here in the trackless woods, someone had brought a casket, its finish long faded to a mottled rorshach of mold, but the lid and tapered sides still appearing solid and whole.

 

“It’s… a coffin”. Moments like this never find Cal at his brightest. Neither does time with Bruce, truth be told. He always seems to be thinking a step ahead of everyone. In class. On the track team. Out here noplace. “uh… why?” IT seemed a good question. They might not be quite old enough to drink or even vote, but they were past the age at which the mere sight of a coffin should mean that much.

Not that either had yet seen death.

“I’m gonna take her out here.”

“Take who out here? And… why? Won’t the coffin gross her out? Whoever it is?”

Bruce laughed. “Does it matter who? And it’s perfect.” He tapped the top of the casket with the back of his hand. “Solid. And the way it’s propped up here, it’s the perfect height to bend her over it. And get this..” he paused. “It’s a grave for her virginity.” He gave that cocky grin of his that always made Cal either want to punch him or to be him. Sometimes both.

Bruce coaxed Diana to the spot on the very next day. It felt right to him, her dark hair and affected black-painted nails and dark lipstick the color of old blood. That’s the kind of girl you fuck on the creepy coffin in the middle of the woods. Certainly not platinum-blond Lana from the cheerleading and the debate team. No, this was a place for the pale-skinned wisp with her darklined eyes and bad poetry. She didn’t gasp in shock when she saw it, didn’t even have a catch in her breath. Bruce glanced sideways at her, saw her biting her lip thoughtfully. Maybe this wasn’t right? Maybe Lana or Diana or someone else would be appropriately spooked and give in more eagerly. Maybe he’d gotten too much into the looks of the thing.

No matter. He sat boldly on the macabre bit of woodland furniture, patted the faded hardwood top next to him. “Join me?”

She laughed. Not an unpleasant or cruel laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. “Do you know,” she said, “that Mary Shelley was said to have lost her virginity on a grave?” She paused. “On her mothers’s grave.”

“That’s.. very interesting.” She’d still not sat down; Bruce wasn’t sure he was doing this right. Wasn’t sure why she was the one standing and him sitting. But.. .she was talking about losing virginity. That’s a good sign, right?

“And you know…” she leaned in close to him, traced his jawline with one of those red-painted nails. Up close he could see that the polish was chipped at one end. That little imperfection drew his eye, “You know… nobody remembers the name of the guy she lost it with. Just hers.”

Her eyes flick down almost imperceptibly to his lap, then back to the head of the casket. “So you need to ask… whose story is this? And whose grave are we about to defile?”

Two weeks later the search was winding down; they’d keep looking, of course, but it was winding down to the rote performance of those who know they’d never find who they were looking for. Cal returned to the clearing for what felt like the hundredth time; off the path into the trackless woods, over the low earthen hill and… to nothing. No coffin, no half-dug grave. Just a gentle depression in the soft earth.

Nothing more.

Nightmare Fuel 2019 - Day the Second. A Guide to the NYC Subway

Less narrative for day two, I'm not sure what this is. A pose poem? A meditation? Random words on a page?

Regardless, it's atmospheric (I think)

Anubis in Hakone, by Joanna Karowicz

The Adventurer’s Guide to the New York City Subway

Go to City Hall station. When the attendant in the booth is distracted, duck under the yellow caution tape, into the old part of the station. The part that’s not been refurbished. To the old place, with character and memory.

Count the third steel door, the battered beige paint flaking off. You’ll need to push hard to force it open; no matter how many come through it always sticks. That’s just the way.

Hope that nobody heard the scrape of rusty old steel on stone.

Find the old turnstyle, one of the last to still take tokens.

Consider paying with the old-style token you found at the museum shop. The shape of a thing becomes the thing.

Consider paying with the genuine antique token you found at the estate sale last week. A dead man’s coin to enter a dead realm.

Consider jumping the turnstyle. After all, you broke a rule to be here. What’s one more?

Make your choice.

Take a moment to study the mosaics on the wall while you await the train. See that the tiles are arranged shapes of gloves, posed as if worn by invisible people. White opera gloves, dirty grey work gloves, childs’ mittens, their once cheerful colors muted by layers of grime.

Ponder your hands, and wonder what gloves you’d wear.

Now the train is here. An old one, with the genuine leather straps overhead. The car empty save for Anubis, who never remembers his stop, always rides until the end of the line, sometimes back again.

Stand clear of the closing doors.

Don’t sit to close to him; gods of death need their space, as, honestly, do you. You’re past the end of the line anyway, the last stop two streets or two decades or a thousand years behind.

Ride past the glorious old City Hall station, the one you came here to see, the one with the vaulted ceiling and gilt columns and a glorious smell of decay.

Ride until the tracks end and even Anubis has gotten off.

Ride until a stranger boards, having bought or stolen his way onto the train, meets your eye across the old car wondering just what god you are.

Leave something behind when you disembark, checking the station map for a clue as to where you are as the train rattles onward, farther past the end of the line.

Nightmare Fuel 2019, Day the First - At the Loom

Wow, it's been a long time since I've written here.

Greetings, again, I'll try to not neglect this space.

It's October, and for the better part of the past decade that's meant Andrea Trask's annual "Nightmare Fuel" project, in which anyone moved to do so writes little horror stories based on a daily image prompt. I like this as a bit of a daily writing exercise, but sometimes fade out if my pieces start feeling too much alike.

So it begins, for this year. Enjoy, and thanks for listening.

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The day after her death you tore your clothes, as was the custom. The cry of rent fabric echoed your own in a way that dulled the pain, dimmed it if even for a moment. You fell onto the bed where she took her last breath, your hands falling to the heavy woven blanket. Your tore and pulled and unraveled until your hands ached, until the threads cut into soft fingers unused to this violence, as her absence cut into the soft parts of your heart.

You tore and tore and tore.

A month after her death you gathered up the tangled threads, straightened them, unknotted them. Wound them onto spools. Untangling them tangled something deep in your gut as the touch worried against the raw callouses on your fingers.

You wound, wound, and stored.

A month after her death you purchased a loom, you learned to weave. You bought yarns of different colors, different thickness, different feel. Natural, artificial. You watched instructional videos, you learned of warp and weft and counts and other arcane secrets.

You practiced.

A year after her death your hands were calloused, strong, no longer smooth and soft like your heart. You wove blankets and tapestries and throw-rugs. You wove geometric patterns, you wove landscapes, you wove tromp l’oeil effects designed to look like windows. You’d hang them on a bare wall, imagine them real windows. Imagine her standing outside, just out of your view. If the loom were wider you’d be able to see her. You took some pieces to local craft fairs, you opened a little online store. Mostly you wove.

You wove and you dreamed.

Ten years after her death you’d mastered the tromp l’oeil, the window to nowhere. Windows into cloudscapes and pastoral landscapes and heavens and dark underworlds, but no matter how wide you wove she’d always be just out of sight, just unreachable. Your home became full of them, walls hung with dizzying patchworks of faux windows and archways.

You wove, and you searched.

Twenty years after her death, you took those long-forgotten threads from the closet. The ones that had been her blanket. You unspooled the long-faded yarn, slowly, reverently. Died it in blacks and browns, the color of the earth to which she’d returned.

And you wove.

Your final piece, a simple throw-rug. Too narrow, because there was only but so much thread from that old blanket. In the warp and weave a shape formed – a simple wooden staircase, downward.

You wove your way to the underworld, an Orpheus of the loom, descending on the stairs of your art to again meet her.

Nightmare Fuel 2018, Day the eighth - The Mirror

Eight stories in eight days. 

All caught up. We might try something different stylistically or thematically tomorrow, depending on the prompt. 

The Mirror

There is a world in which dwelled much ill in this world, much that gives despair. A world in which even dreams are too dear for most, in which few joys are open to most.

Few paths to joy save the pilgrimage to the mirror.

The mirror.

A crystal lake as clear as daylight, as still as a newborn robin, huddled in its nest.

Perhaps as fragile.

The mirror reflects the land around it perfectly, the trees, the sky, the ancient fortress built in times forgotten. For as long as that fortress stood, so too did the tales of the mirror. That the world we see through those stillclear waters is not a reflection of our world, but of its opposite.

A world in which the fortress, hear long abandoned, teams with life.

A world ruled by a lineage of successions of benevolent matriarchs. A world in which that famous travelling scientist had a beard.

A world other than this one.

Few go. It’s remote, it’s isolated, it is, to be honest, a bit underwhelming. You can’t see into this mirror world, merely gaze and know that it’s there.

For some, that is enough.

They return to their homes and their lives with a sense of acceptance, if not peace.

For some that is enough.

For others a glance into the mirror is not enough. Each year some take the pilgrimage, fill their pockets with stones, and step into the stillness of the mirror. What they find on the other side we’ll never know, but we can hope that they’ve found peace.

If you see them come to your world, wherever you are, show kindness to them.

Nightmare Fuel 2018, Day the Seventh

Seven days of this. This time I'm a day late because Sunday is a day for family (as well as long twitter chats about the world of commercial AV technology, but that's another topic). Perhaps I'll catch up soon.

Some Trees

The three dandelions grew less than a foot apart, in the ragged grass. The first had nine visible leaves. The second –

                      ---"Lucas! The ball!”

Lucas’s examination of the field was cut short by his father’s strident yell, above the voices of his coach, teammates, their parents. Not the coach’s parents. That would be silly. Lucas’s head jerked upward at the sound of their voices, only to see the ball sail past him, a blue-shirted opponent behind. He turned to follow a moment too late, helplessly watched from behind the fake, the shot, the goal.

Three to nothing.

“Heads UP Lucas! Stop watching the dandelions and start watching the game.”

He did put his head up, looked over the grass, through the goalposts to the woods behind. The first row of trees were dead. That’s what he always noticed; stick-figure trees, bare of leaves all year long. Trees like giant people with no clothes or faces or leaves.

Creepy trees that would eat the coach and the families and his dad.

Another kid had told Lucas that kids used to vanish into the woods, never to be seen again. Maybe the trees got them?

Maybe the trees were people, the vanished kids all grow up and watching the soccer game.

The ball didn’t come near Lucas again until his two mandatory quarters had been played and coach pulled him out. Improbably, they scored four goals in the second half to win it, 4-3.

Lucas watched the trees as coach gathered the team to the middle of the field to congratulate them on a hard-fought win, tell him he was proud of them. Were the trees closer?

Would they take him next, away from the false congratulations for a game he didn’t help win?

Lucas watched them draw closer as the coach slapped the backs and shook the hands of his teammates.

Nightmare Fuel 2018, day the sixth

Today is an experiment in process rather than style; this was written over the course of 35 minutes and 42 seconds on an exercise bike at the gym on my phone. 

I'm not sure if that made it make less sense or more; it is a different experience, and a change in the level of focus.

Too Few for a Coven

Three is too few for a coven.

You all  knew that.

Oh, three would have been fine were they mother and maiden and crone, but Jane wasn't quite a maiden anymore, Becky not much closer. They took pains to avoid motherhood, and even their mothers weren't crones. Not by far.

Still, Mary and you and Becky were all that they had, here in the bedroom community where Becky and Mary's dad slept after a day's work and Jane's mother did what single suburban mothers did.

She survived.

You are too few for a coven,  but they needed to be something. The three amigos and three musketeers are all men and boys, and they'd had enough of men and boys.

Especially Jane.

So a coven you'd be. The White Pines Conclave, named for the coniferous wood and not the abandoned 1950s mental hospital alongside it. The people of White Pines had an unspoken deal with the restless dead of many decades ago - each side would pretend the other didn't exist.

It went well.

The world works by unspoken bargains of this sort. You don't talk about the creepy ruins. Don't ask your neighbor how he can afford a new BMW all of a sudden. Don't ask the woman across the street why she's wearing so much make-up in a Sunday morning.

You don't ask what happened at homecoming.

You know, but you don't ask.

Instead you take your two best friends and call yourself a coven even though you aren't. You gather twigs and feathers and pretty rocks with magic powerz, even though your family is lapsed Catholics except your grandmother who still kept trying to get you to say the rosary, until the day she died.

You still keep her beads in your purse because she'd have wanted it, though they mean nothing to you.

You all know the irony of Mary being named for the Virgin, but you make that joke. You did once, and knew it was a mistake. Now you think it sometimes when meet her eyes as you say the name, in your secret space where the hospital washroom was, by the ancient stone washbasin.

Sometimes in this space you finger your grandmother's beads, think of the other Mary, who was a whore.

Beloved by Jesus.

You think all these things as you three sit in the stone space, once the home of those suffering hysteria were once sequestered.

Maybe someday you'll sacrifice a goat or a squirrel or a young virgin boy, summon a demon to this place, raze the sleepy little town to the ground, like they deserve.

Maybe someday.

For now, you're too few for a coven, but you'll be one anyway.

Nightmare Fuel 2018, Day the Fifth - A Winter Vacation

Day the Fifth. Let's head south, for a winter vacation.

No, it's not you; I think these are getting stranger as the month goes along. This is only day 5, so I'm not sure where we'll end up.

Winter Vacation

Inana came to the great terminal, at the port at the edge of the air.

She awaited her turn, approached the first of the guardians of the air,

Was asked to remove her shoes, her sparkling bejeweled belt and her jacket, crafted from the leather of an ancient and long extinct beast adorned with bright brass buttons.
.
The shoes and jacket were returned to her, but he belt buckle was sharp-edged, needed to be surrendered before she could ride to the skies.

She descended to the south, disembarked from another port, this one named for a sacred forest. She considered this a good omen.

She stepped into the oppressive heat, surrendering the jacket she'd reclaimed from the guardians in the north.

She traveled on, first by hired car (leaving her bag behind) then on foot.

Which each garment, each accoutrement she left behind she felt a bit weaker, a bit lighter, but certain she was on the right path. After all, she'd done this before. This was far from her first descent to a place too hot, too far, too much stinking of death and decay.

She left a single shoe behind in the grass, limped along a mile before discarding the other at the side of the road. She should have saved them for last, but the locals in places like this get strange around too much bared flesh.

Still, her clothes she discarded only blocks later as she neared the gates.

Of course there were gates.

These were faux-wrought iron, set in stucco towerettes with faux-tile roofs.

No sentry save an outdoor-rated dome camera and an RFID sensor.

No matter; there was form to such things. Inana removed the rest of her clothing, her body bared to the unblinking gaze of the camera as she slipped through the gates and into the community.

She strode past identical Spanish-style ranch homes,  shedding her skin at the base of a palm tree, leaving her bones piled up aside the next.


At last at her destination, she enters his home and settles in, alongside him, and waits.

That what this is for, after all.

Image by Hilary Truman

Perhaps when the waiting is over she'll recollect her bones
and her flesh
and her clothes
and that discarded shoe
and the jacket
and her favorite belt

and return North for the coming Spring.

After.

Nightmare Fuel 2018, Day the Fourth - Minutes from the Early October Meeting of the Coven

Day four. The days I don't commute are harder because I don't have the time on the train for writing.

Some days are dialog, some days stories, some days odd little experiments. This is that kind of day.

Minutes from the Early October Meeting of the Coven

Old Business

• Renew binding spells on current leadership
• Enjoin against the doing of harm
• Add to list of focus ingredients 
• Beer to enjoin against harm done through drunken debauchery
• A baby rattle to enjoin against harm done to children and other youth
• A coin to enjoin against continued theft of resources.

• Review the possibility of curses against current leadership
• Discussion -- will this make us "as bad as they are?"
• Redirect energies to healing?
• "Save what we love" vs "destroy what we hate"
• This is understood to be a quote from a movie. It still fits us
• To be revisited next full moon.

New Business

• Robes ordered - should be available before moonlit nights get too cold.
• Candles are traditional, but damage to the ceiling is getting out of hand. We need to do a better job of cleaning up after ourselves.

Nightmare Fuel 2018, Day the Third - Remembrance of Reconstruction

This one is nakedly topical, drawn heavily on current events for the last year. Also a ghost story, because October is the time for ghosts.

So... boo!

Remembrance of Reconstruction

You never fired a gun, barely held one. You remember that, barely.

Memories are always hazy,  from before your death. They all get tangled up by how the living look back at you, where you're memorialized, the passing of time.


You must have for a time posed as a soldier, because that's who you are, here in the hereafter. That's what people see when they look.

You don't remember anger from your life either, but you feel that. It's nearly the first thing you remember from the years after your death - a seething resentment. You feel spread out, losing your sense of space.

You're in a meadow.

At the edge of a forest.

Outside a courthouse.

In a public park.

You're many places. The further you stretch, the less you remember yourself. You lose your hometown, your first kiss, your job.

You forget your name.


You remember hatred, anger.

Grass grows short and scraggly around your markers, trees grow stunted. Autumn comes a bit earlier, spring a bit later. You are winter. You are death, or death's cousin.

Then, slowly, perhaps, the world changes. Your awareness of the courthouses and the parks and the town squares fade. Still you are hatred, you are bitter anger, but your world is shrinking.

Finally, there's nearly nothing more. Just a quiet, dark place near the edge of the cemetery, beneath an oak tree too old and too strong to care for your anger.

Finally, not even a memory remains.

Nightmare Fuel 2018, Day the Second - The Vigil

Day two. The round window felt reminiscent of an eye. That and the rude, unmade bed made me think of a sad, solitary watcher. Who was he watching? For what end? Come join us for the vigil.

The Vigil 

I never use the lamp.

I brought it up to the attic, of course,  for the possibility of reading. By day the great window gives enough light to read by and by night… well, we know the problems of lighting a lamp by night. It would mean that they could see in, that I couldn’t see out.

That you could see in, that I could not see you.

You don’t know to keep your lamps out. Don’t know or don’t care, it’s all the same. While your windows aren’t as grand as mine, they are broad enough and tall enough and covered only by the thinnest, gauziest of shades. Pinprick shades, some call them. Not enough to keep you safe, to keep your lamplight from spilling outside to where they can see you.

You likely don’t even think about them.

That’s OK. I do. And I watch.

It’s lonely, this vigil from the attic with no company save the empty bottle and the sounds of crickets. No company save for the lonely, hard men outside. The ones who walk with their eyes up, hoping to peek through those pinprick shades for a glance at the swell of your breasts, the curve of your hip, the delicate lines of your neck. From up here I see all of them.

If any tried anything, I’d be there in a flash.

You don’t know it, but you’re safe. I keep you safe, through the lonely, dark nights. In the daylight I leave, my attic bed unmade, my window gazing at yours, my home’s eye to your home’s eye, my home’s soul to yours.

In the night I return to my vigil. I never use the lamp. 

Nightmare Fuel 2018 - Day the First!

It's that time again! Daily Flash Fiction through the month of October, sometimes dark, sometimes creepy. The estimable Bliss Morgan as usual hosts it here, on the Google+ social network. Yes, Google+ is still a thing.

Here's my first, as I start getting into it. We'll see how many we get this year.

Like a Japanese Girl

"Draw me like one of your Japanese girls."

She knew it was a corny line, but knew his type. The kind of guy who insisted that he read manga, not comic books. The kind who went to Aikido class three days a week, who insisted he knew what "ki" is. The guy whose prize possession is that Yoshitako Amano book he got the author to sign. Yeah, that book by the mainstream western author.

That type of guy.

Image from Lustige Blätter,circa 1899

She also knew that, as easily mistaken for a white-bread suburban American as she was, she fit the type. Straight black hair. Fair skin. What else did he really need? She knew his type, she could smell desperation.  To be fair, she could fit quite a few types.

So he went home, studied his manga-not-comics, scoured the web for drawings.

On the first day, he came to her studio apartment. He drew her as a schoolgirl, starched white blouse, pleated skirt, maryjanes. Her hair playful bound in pigtails, a playful smile on her face. Smooth penstrokes, her face youthful and vulnerable. She shook her head. '

"I'm not that kind of Japanese girl," she giggled. She kissed his cheek, invited him back the next day.

So he went home, took the book of court photos from his bookcase and studied.

On the second day he came to her studio apartment. He drew her as a geisha, her kimono poorly tied with a too-long obi. He never did get the hang of drawing knots. Her eyes narrow, her hair done up high. His penstrokes were long and languid, with flourishes meant to hint at whatever design the kimono would have; he wasn't sure on that either. She shook her head,

"no, no, no. I'm not that kind of Japanese girl either. You get one more try." She sighed sadly, kissed him lightly on the lips, bade him return the next day.

So he went home, one more time. He studied reproduction woodblock prints of demons and devils.

On the third day he came to her studio apartment. He drew her as a monster, her nude body hidden behind a mound of skulls, her eyes a touch mad. His pen skipped across her face, barely outlining it, but lingering over the skulls. He drew her hair down, weaving between the mound of skulls like a river. She shook her head,

"I suppose I'm not a Japanese girl after all." she whispered as she lead him to her bed, silently. The next words she spoke - as if the time between hadn't passed at all - were barely a whisper, all breath and no voice, "but I am a monster."

Truth be told, he wasn't a meal worth savoring, but was a meal nonetheless. She briefly considered keeping his skull, but she had enough already.

Nightmare Fuel Day the Thirty-First - The Door

Welcome to the end of October. This is the "official" 30th prompt, but I added an extra one AND a prologue, so this marks the thirty-second day of daily flash fiction.

We'll end in the woods, at the door. Thanks for reading along with me.

The Door

It was the eighteenth day that that Billy came to see me. That I remember.

I remember everything since the first day. Or, I guess, the last one.

God, I hope it wasn't the last one.

He was never my favorite of Justin's friends, but he was the one who came to my front door on the eighteenth day. None of the others came near. And, I have to give credit, looked me in the eye, as hard as that must have been.

"Mary..." He trailed off. I swallowed my annoyance; back when I was twelve years old I'd never have called a friend's parent by her first name. Especially if that friend had been missing for eighteen days. "Mary... there's something I never told you. About ... about Justin."

I looked down at him. He was pale, his face drawn. Still, his eyes stayed on mine. "It's just... this is crazy, but the last place I saw him...it was at the mystery door." the last bit came rushed, almost in a single breath. Now it was my turn to stare.

"The mystery door? Where's that? And why the hell didn't you tell anyone?"

"It's in the woods. It sounds crazy, but... can I show you?"

I was still numb. You'd know the feeling if your son was gone for eighteen days, but I hope to god you never do.

I didn't get dressed, didn't even lock the door. Just closed it behind me and followed him, still in my housecoat.

We didn't speak as he lead me around the corner to the block. Through the small park, through the hole in the fence behind it, to the woods.

Justin wasn't supposed to play in the woods. Still I said nothing. After a time, he said, "I'm sorry it's so long. I wanted to wait 'til it was just you. You know, Justin was afraid of..." he trailed off again, his ears red. I knew. And, mad as I was, I understood.

I was afraid of him too.

The only sound was the crunch of dry leaves beneath our feet until we came to a clearing. I don't know what I expected when he said "mystery door", but nothing this literal: a simple wooden door with peeling white paint, standing alone in its frame with no visible support or purpose.

He looked up at me. "Justin ran ahead, and.. I heard the door slam. Then I didn't hear nothing. He was gone."

I approached the door. It was battered and weathered, not handing quite true in its frame. I thought along the side I could see some light, brighter than  it should have been. As if the other side of it was a well-lit room and not, as we could see, simply more forest.

This is crazy, but I tried the doorknob, even though behind the door was clearly nothing. You do crazy things after eighteen days. The knob turned with some difficulty, but the door was stuck. I slammed on the wooden panels again and again with my hand, the drumbeat of flesh on wood echoing through the woods until I left bloody palmprints on the door. Still it didnt budge.

At some point I sat on the forest floor, leaned back against the door and wept. At some point Billy touched my shoulder, made what was meant as a comforting noise, and left.

At some point a raven landed atop the doorframe, bringing with it ill omens.

At some point we passed from the eighteenth day to the nineteenth, and beyond.

I'll wait. At some point this damn door will open.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Thirtieth - The Tree Surgeon

I'm not an ordinary tree surgeon. I'm the kind who knows the forest and all the things which grow in it.

Yes, many of them are just trees. Most, to tell the truth. Just like most people are just people and not vampires or werewolves or something.

Oh, you thought those were just myths? You can go right on believing that. It's fine with me.

Anyway, the one sort of tree every red-blooded man cares about is the dryad tree. Part tree, part magic woman creature. Even more magical than normal women, and more beautiful. Really, it's true. I ain't never seen a dryad that wasn't drop-dead gorgeous, a bit exotic. Skin the color of old teak or mahogany, those leaf-green eyes, a voice like wind through branches. Oh, those dryad girls are special alright. Some think that the fairywoman thing lives in the tree, but a smart guy knows they're really the same. Take care of the tree and you're taking care of the woman.

They're also shy, also tricky. They'll magic you into a deep sleep, set forest creatures on you, get you lost or choked to death by the very living vines. Maybe get to forest to lead you around in circles until you get yourself drowned in a naiad pool. Even someone like me, a guy who really cares about trees and wants them healthy - even a guy like me can be a victim. You gotta earn their trust first.

How? I earn it the old fashioned way, with some iron spikes and a hammer. Oh, not too many. They are fairyfolk, and you know cold iron's bad for 'em. But one spike, deep into the trunk just above the rootline, that's usually enough. You can feel the whole wood tremble sometimes as you drive the spike in, the blunted tip penetrating old, strong wood. Pounding in a single spike is all it takes.

Usually.

Yeah, the last one screamed at first, but I know she was grateful when I shimmied up the trunk with my climbing belt, a sturdy saw hanging from it. Cold iron blade, of course. I felt her eyes on me as I found the dead branches, one by one. Cut each one off. Cut the one the woodpecker had been worrying at, that would soon die itself. I could see the pain in her eyes, know that she needed me.

I know it hurts her, but it's for the good in the long term. Always for the good.

And yes, the sap does have medicinal properties and yes, I did collect some. You know that's not why I do it.

So I climbed back down, my work done. The girlpart of the dryad was pale and shaken from the ordeal, mute like they always are.

I took my reward, gathered my tools and left the wood, the coldiron spike still in place, binding her to me.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Twenty-Ninth - In the Gallery

I'm calling this one 29 after a diversion yesterday to use a photo taken by my lovely bride Dr Karine Suskin. IT's interesting that even when we see the same things, her pictures show that she seems them a bit differently than I do. There's probably a metaphor there.


The image came late, so the only other response we get today is from the stalwart Samantha Dunaway Bryant who has, to this point, written a response to each and every one of these.

In the Gallery

The changeling's human parents took her to a museum.

Oh, they didn't know that she was a changeling. That would have been common sense a century ago, but we don't live a century ago, now do we? We live today, in a world where everything is neatly boxed and measured, where the gap in a hedgerow leads to the other side of the hedgerow, where inside a wardrobe is naught but clothes. Where a child who suddenly becomes a bit wild is "precocious" or, perhaps diagnosed as something or other. That's the world in which we live.

These are good parents of the modern world, parents who'd tame their wild child and bring her to museums, to concerts, to whatever hidden delights they could find. In days of old a changeling would be beaten with sticks or burned with fire, perhaps it's better to tame them with money and culture.

This changeling - this Child - was a wild thing. She never could explain how the well-manicured lawns made her itch, how seeing the neatly shaped bushes made her feel constrained, as if bound in irons. So moments of despondent silence would punctuate wild running and dancing barefoot through the lawn, ruining the bottom of her skirts with mud grass stains.

THe museum was different.

Quiet, dark rooms seemed, to the child, alive with energy. Awake. If the lawn cried out because it longed to grow ragged, this was a place that was what it meant to be. She felt at peace here, so ran wild, ahead of the parents. Rapid footfalls on marble floors, echoing over the hushed voices of the other grownups.

The parents let her run ahead. They knew that it was best for children to run wild a bit, even if they didn't know what wildness lived within their tiny girl's heart. They also knew that this gallery was a dead-end, that they'd soon corner their little moppet and laugh and buy her an icecream.

She came to a painting of a wild scene, with a stern and giant creature. It saw her through the painting, she saw it.

On the other side of the painting, wildness. Perhaps the hunt someday. Flowers that grew where they will, not where they were forced to. On this side, her parents who always listened and brought her to these places so that she might run wild. The wild creature reached out, through the painting and offered to her a flower, a single glittering yellow thing. It shone bright in the dim exhibit hall, its deep yellow petals haloed in a bright glow as they flaked off into the air.

Scarlet Table, by vv nan
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9aEnW

The parents rounded the bend, past that creepy tentacled sculpture. The one that didn't fit any known period ant that the museum was SO wrong for keeping. The next gallery was the deadend, where they'd find their daughter.

They turned the corner.

Did they see their changeling daughter, her eyes upturned as she gazed on a scene of wonder? Or did they find themselves alone, barely noticing the few spilled petals the only sign that anyone was ever here?

Nightmare Fuel, Day the Twenty-Eighth - Manifesto

No image prompt today, so I chose my own. Just a few short rantings of a madman.

Because really, aren't we all a bit mad?

Manifesto

It has been written that the most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. That we live in ignorance a part we play of the awesome grandeur which is  the cosmic cycle. There are times men see beyond the veil, men we call mad, but they see something.

What it is that they see is always just beyond their ken, horrors they could imagine, horrors they couldn't resist. Just horrors.

So we read of the mad scientist creating a man of of elecricity and spare body parts.

Seamonsters, attacking sailing ships should they draw near the edge of the world.

Of the unholy terror drinking blood, resisted only by the holy power of church. Not so close.

Of the thing at sea, larger than the greatest whale, brought down by a great steamship. Closer. The guy who wrote that one really gets it.

Each story is of survival, even if not hope. We always vanquish the monsters. At least the best of us are. Sometimes someone from Africa or Israel or Poland has some kind of ancestral knowledge, but it's always the scientist who vanquishes them. The one who studies. The smart, civilized one with the books.

Civilized I am, and smart. I can make connections. The stories have lasted a long, long time. I've read all of them. About the thin places, about the elder ones from beyond. And one thing I know - they're always stronger than we are, but just barely. Beyond our ken, but not too far.

Today we'll learn more about what lies beyond, and what is beyond our ken today.

On, it doesn't matter where it came from. Say it's an old book, or an inscription on a relic in the museum. You know, one of the ones they keep in the back where the patrons don't get to see. It doesn't matter.

What matters is that I know.

What matters is that I'm tired of being laughed at.

I know things. I know that what's beyond our ken today is far and away beyond what was beyond our ken a decade ago.

Let's see what's on the other side of this veil. Just like some humans are better than others, some monsters are better.

This monster will be the right one to let in.

I can tell because it's white.