Nightmare Fuel 2016 - Day the Sixth "Spex"

I'm a day late with this one, but promise to catch up.

This is a simple fable for the digital age, given a prompt which really didn't much speak to me.


"Spex"

It was the first day in a long time you'd been outside without your spex. You'd been advised against it, of course, but part of you wanted to see the world unaugmented, the way too few left ever have. The city seemed greyer, muted without the RealSenseColour Enhancement, sounds muddied through your bare ears.

You remember when their were still newspaper kiosks outside the train stations, the feel of newsprint in your hand and the black inkstains left on your fingers. You of course remember that long in-between-time when print shared the job with newly minted digital technologies. Now print is as dead as the buggy whip, the fountain pen, the nine-to-five job.

Nowadays, with everyone seeing through spex or implanz there's no need to press ink onto the carcasses of trees. Centuries later, Mr. Guttenberg's invention has finally reached obsolesence.

So anyway, you notice that everything is greyer than usual, unsaturated. And you notice something else. The peace mural is gone. Every day you looked up and, through your spex colour enhancement, gazed on an oversized image of The Cardinal Hilltom Rohny - once the first female Cardinal, before abdicating to  successfully run for the presidency - planting a tree in the Amazon rainforest. She was drawn as the kind of impossible giant only America could imagine in an act of kindness only a modern American could conceive.

At least that's what you usually saw.

Today, the mural's title was gone, the wall blank. A passerby sees you gawking at the empty space, glances up over your shoulder.

"Yeah, love it to. Really shows 'em what we're about, don't it?" You strain to make out his words; in addition to translating, your spex served as hearing aids, boosting the high frequencies that your ears couldn’t quite make out anymore.


You shake your head. "It's gone. Can't you see that?"

The stranger smiles, "Spex are down? They sharpen your vision. I can't see much without 'em on. Here, take a look."

He takes his spex off and hands them to you. Worldessly, you put them on and look.

The mural is back, but Cardinal Rohny isn't there anymore. Instead, the image - which the spex helpfully tell you is titled "The Damp Lord John Nut" shows Rohny's challenger from the last election, in equally giant stature, grinding dozens of South American aboriginal figures unter a continent-wide bootheel.

Your stomach drops. "What… what the hell happened? Where's President Cardinal Rohny?"

The stranger glares, snatches his spex back. "Are you some kind of nutter? Rohny got her fat ass handed to her in the election. As she should have."

He settles the spex back onto his face, nestling the earpieces into his ear as you answer, "Are YOU crazy? Rohny won. Easily. The crazies backing John Nut were just that - crazies. Nuts, if you will."

He smiles. "Funny. You had me going for a minute. But you're right. Nut's a great leader."

Realization dawining, you turn on your heels and sprint back to the train station, your head low. Avoiding eye contact with anyone, avoiding looking at anything.

You order your meals in, not again leaving your home until after the new spex have arrived, bringing with them a world you understand.

Nightmare Fuel, Day the fifth - Invitation

Day 6 out of 5 in daily Flash Fiction for October

"Invitation"

"Not all old wives' tales are false. Yes, I know that isn't the politically correct way of saying it, but really, so what?  You and I both know who spreads gossip and rumors the way bees spread pollen, buzzing about all day and not getting all that much done. Not that there are any bees around here, but there used to be. Long ago, before this scrap of city rose, tumbled again, started to half-rise before staggering along. It's as good a place as any to learn."

I nodded, listening to him hear himself talk. My mentor. My fellow monster. This wasn't the part of the city where I'd have gone, ever. Certainly not long past sundown, with not even the yellow sodium glare of old streetlights to guide our way.

Not that he and I needed much light. Not anymore. I nodded, he continued. 

"Like I was saying, the old wives' tales aren't all wrong. The bit about invitations especially. Oh, you can feed without being invited, but it's a struggle more than it's worth. The can have power over you. If you're not invited."

"So we should ask? Doesn't that go against the first thing you told me? Yesterday's lesson?"

His voice was low, measured, "No, don't be stupid. Please. Eternity is a long time, and I don't want a halfwit hanging around me that long. I really don't." 

I know it didn't happen this way for me anymore, but out of habbit I could feel the heat rising to me ears, feel something tighten in my chest. I took a deep breath that I didn't need - force of habit again - and forced my voice to be calm, to match his, "then what the fuck do you mean? How do we get permission if we can't ask for it? Sir."

He chuckled. "You have so, so very much to learn. Really. The trick isn't to ask for an invitation, the trick is to see invitations when they're offered."

He paused a moment. "Take that window."

I looked. It was an ordinary window. A bit cleaner than some around it, with plain white curtains half-drawn. I said as much, then asked what he saw. That's always a good way to keep him talking.

"You're exactly right. The glass is clean - cleaner than the neighbors'. And the curtains aren't tightly-drawn, but at three quarters. It's a window open to a bit of the night. To us."

He paused dramatically. A big part of getting along with him is  knowing the dramatic pauses from the times he just stops talking.

He continued. "It's an invitation. Definitely".

I knew the thousand ways that this was wrong, but we'd been out a long time already and the hunger was growing in me. The window didn't seal tightly so for those, like us, who could travel as mist it was no barrier.

We accepted the invitation, and began to feed.

Window by Daniele Marzocchi

:http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=7108725

Nightmare Fuel 2016, Day the Fourth - "So Easy"

The 2016 iteration of the Nightmare Fuel project continues with another take on an American classic. Yesterday was the Headless Horseman, today we're revisiting
another character who you may or may not recognize.


"So Easy"


It's so very easy, at least to start. There's even a little DIY kit in the mail, with a medical-grade ax and an insulated box with some dry-ice. And you do so badly need the money. Really, who doesn't? After all, it isn't even as if you'd miss your left foot.

The ax is almost supernaturally sharp, and the replacement foot that comes with the kit is almost as good as new. Some kind of plasticky stuff, slightly yielding to the touch, in a sickly white color. Some people try to decorate them, but they don't take paint all that well. Still, it isn't a bad deal. You ship it back, and the money gets you and your date a really nice evening out, with a limo and all that.


It's so very easy. So you try again later. After all, the replacement foot works out. Even if you miss the feel of grass between your toes, it isn't as if you can afford to live anyplace with actual grass. So, the other foot goes, neatly sealed in the box they gave you. You can still walk, you'd still be able to dance, if you knew how. And the money pays the rent for the next few months.

It's so very easy. The ad is still there, not that you need it. You can order another kit online, don't even need to admit to anyone that you'll be selling another little bit of yourself. Just a little bit.

The hands go next. First the left. This seems a far bigger deal than the feet. It's smooth and featureless, like those feet. You notice more on the hands. The scar from the back of your hand when you slipped with a knife and cut yourself. That scar was just part of what you saw, everytime you looked down at yourself. Now it's gone, but the new hand is strong and you needed rent money. They money, in fact, is getting better. One more hand and you can put a down payment on a car.

It's so very easy, and almost looks unreal afterwards; the two brand-new plasticsmooth hands resting on the steering wheel of your new car. They - the hands and the car - don't even feel like yours. But they are. They're yours. Nothing can change that.

It's still easy. You'd think it's over, but it isn't. The next transactions are, to be fair, trickier, but not too much so. After all, you've given up your foot, why not the rest of the leg? And the new foot looks better against the new leg anyway. Your friends laugh a bit uneasily when you show it to them, but on the subway you see lots of people with shinynew limbs, and more.

No need to drag this out, once you sold one leg you knew you'd sell the other, and the arms beside. After all, it's easy. At least so far.

The next part isn't easy, but there's another baby on the way, or the landlord is raising the rent again, or the MTA just jacked the fair and you can't make it to work without a little help. It's a heartless world.

Heartless, yeah. That's funny.

So, you do it.  This time the box is bigger, like one of those coolers you take to the beach. Big enough for your body. You can get used to it.

You can get used to anything.

The money is really good this time, enough to last months, but it isn't enough. It's never, after all, enough.

You've taken good care of the medical-grade ax, and you know it's sufficient for the task. Just one final cut, and it will be over. This is for the best, really. After all, the new parts are working out great. Even that left foot you replaced so long ago is still just perfect.

You wonder for a moment what they do with the parts you shipped back; if somewhere somebody is walking on your old feet, if someone is looking down at their hands, seeing an old scar without knowing the story behind it. You wonder. If someone hears the beating-hard sound you've long since given up. You still miss that part.

You wonder these things and more as you look down at the final box, brand new eyes looking at your old face, looking up at you as you say farewell to what had once been your head.

It had been so easy. And the money was good.

Image by !Mediengruppe Bitnik https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/r/

Nightmare Fuel 2016, Day the Third - "The Other Half of the Story

For each story, there's another,  secret half which nobody knows. Today we'll take in an American classic.



"The Other Half of the Story"

As we near Hallows Eve, it amused my Katrina to rename our home The Boneyard, after that old nickname of mine. It's not a bad thing to indulge the little lady, but this one bugs me. Not so much the name, but the winking not at how we got together, about how I got rid of him. Everyone's guessed at the story, everyone's in on the joke.

I love this time of the year, love sharing the joke with the rest of the town. What the schoolteacher doesn't get is that my winning means we won. All of us. It's our down, not his. The seasons have since turned, brown leaves covering the grounds as the air grows chill.

Image from Rosaarvensis
http://rosaarvensis.deviantart.com/art/Pile-of-leaves-monster-491796368

Deep in the leaves I saw another one. A cpumpkin, half-buried in the leaves, carved into a mocking face. Looking up at me. I swiftly stomped it, the orange flesh of the shattered gourd spattering across my black boot.

Somebody here knows the real story.

Everyone thinks they know what happened that night. Hell, I never out and said it, but gave 'em enough of a nod and a wink that even the folks here could put two and two together. It's not like it's hard. For all his booksmarts, the schoolmasterer has the wrong kind of booksmarts, the kind without the common sense to know what's real, what's the word of the lord, what's just old wives' tales. They all know we told him the one about the Hessian. Folk like the the schoolmaster, they think we're the simple oneAdd captions because we don't read as many books. We put one over on him though.

That's what everyone thinks.

I've never told the truth of that night. Not like I'm telling it today.

Most of it is just like you thought. He left the party late, I followed. I can handle a horse. Everyone knows that. Riding with my coat up past my head, with one hand on the reigns so the other could hold a head-sized pumpkin? That's easy. Even keeping a riding cap on top of that stupid pumpkin. That's also easy for me.

Everyone guessed at all that.

It was growing dark, and a light mist obscured vision just enough for my purposes. It's true that as I crossed the bridge I held the faux-head aloft, that I even called his name.

It's true that his eyes were wide with terror.


What nobody's guessed, what I've never even hinted at, is that those terror-struck eyes were fixated on a spot behind me, over my shoulder.

I'm a good enough rider to see behind me, with one hand on the reigns.  Easy enough to see over my head the mounted figure, the severed head in its hands still wearing a tall iron helmet. Easy to see its half-century old armor open, the bit of spine peaking up from the severed neck.

I'm a good enough rider to outride a rider who keeps his eyes in his hand, good enough to get back quickly and with my horse appearing fresh.


The schoolmaster was never really one of us. It's easy for everyone to think I'd driven him off. Somedays I even think that myself.

But as I rode away I know I saw, over my shoulder, the headless rider examining the pumpkin I'd left behind before its horsehoof shattered it.

A pumpkin that bore the same face as the one I found on the grounds.

But that will remain my secret.

Nightmare Fuel 2016, Day the Second - "The Greedy Trees"

Double-post today, and I'm caught up. This is a bit of a fable, not at all inspired by the hours I spent yesterday replacing a toilet.



"The Greedy Trees"

They don't tell you everything in the stories about the discovery of the New World. Part of it, of course, is shame. Shame at what we did to them (and it always does seem to be us telling the story, doesn't it? You've never heard the story the way they tell it. You probably never even realized that). Part of it is entropy; whatever really happened is long, long lost in the sands of time. No cameras, no film, nothing to create a record save scribblings in journals from those who could write, a centuries-long game of telephone beginning with those who couldn't.

No telephones either, for that matter.

There are, of course, other stories. Stories about secret native lore, about how those who were already here knew things that we don't, how they lived in harmony with the land and the white man blundered in and suffered for his hubris.

This isn't that one of those stories.

We can start with the explorer. His name doesn't matter, wouldn't mean anything to you anyway. Let's imagine him with his hooded lantern, casting beams of light into the dark woods in a place for which we didn't yet have a name.

Imagine him finding the hungry trees, each with its victim. Some newly captured, enchained with vines and creepers and spidersilk. Some old, their vital humours drained by the hungry trees, no longer really men. The explorer would see them as demon-like things, serving only the forest.

There's a story somewhere of the explorer getting his comeuppance (for those in the future, quibbling about gendered-pronouns, of course it's a he. Back then most women had more sense than to run into the forbidden forest with nothing but their wits and their thieves' lantern. Perhaps a witch, but this isn't a story about a witch. We'll talk of them later). Of his last moments as the tree-addled victim he tried to save wraps no-longer-human fingers around the explorer's throat, drags him into bark and wood, and demonic sap flows over his eyes, obscuring his vision forever.

This isn't one of those stories either.

Image from tsonline:
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Creepy-forest-441469282

Perhaps this explorer had read stories older still, learned from them. Evil forests in Europe might not be the same as evil forests in America, but it's still an evil forest. The only way to deal with it is to not care about the rare and valuable woods in the ancient trees, to wait until dawn and take torch and pitch and dried kindling, to set it ablaze.

To watch it burn, so no humans will be chained forever to the trees. So those who came across the ocean to this place can be at peace and free, not chained to the ancient land.

Centuries past, the explorer was forgotten. The burned out forest lay fallow, charred stumps all that was left of the greedy trees.

A city grew nearby, but not too near. Slowly it spread tendrils, the way cities do. Little tracts of homes on postage-stamp squares of land, some of them where the hungry forest had once stood, but did no longer. The space remained uncursed and empty, free for men and women to ride horses and cars and rail to the heart of the city, return home to tend their lawns, fix their roofs, tinker with the plumbing. Unbound by the greedy trees which would drink their lives.

Nightmare Fuel 2016 Day the First - What We Deserve

A trifle to start the Nightmare Fuel project proper, a dialog-heavy piece. This wasn't the type of prompt that really speaks to me, nor is tomorrows; graveyards and foreboding forests are too much classic horror staple for my usual taste.


What We Deserve


"Reunited at last, beyond the veil".

Those are the first words he said on arriving, after shrugging off his mortal coil and re-awakening after his remains were interred in the family crypt with his late bride.

"You left the crypt door open." Those were his second words. Warmth spread across the bare stone floor as the lovers touched, reunited after all these years, here in the comfort of the grave.


"Sorry, love. It's easy to get into sloppy habits, it being just me. You still being alive and all that."

"Well, it isn't just you anymore. You're my wife again."

A ghostly chuckle. "I thought it was till death do us part? We are dead."

The air cooled. "That isn't funny. And it isn't how it works." He paused.  "You always left the door open when we were alive too. I see death hasn't made you any more responsible."

"Not this again. You're here one moment and already complaining?" If she still had breath, she'd have sighed.  "How did you die?"

"My heart, like everyone who strives too hard and does too much. The way men usually go. Not a dumb accident."

"Please don't start on that again. I've had years to think about it. I still don't have peace with it."

"You will. Peace is all we have now. The peace of the grave."

If possible, the darkness in the already sealed crypt deepened, to something beyond darkness. After a pause, she spoke again, "Is this what you imagined? How it would be?"


"It was always one possibility. There's been much written about the spirit, about it's connection to the body. I should have told you more about it when we were alive. I used to read about it quite a lot. You really should keep the crypt door closed. This is our home now. We need to treat it that way."


They paused for a moment, in the silence of the grave. Her voice - if you can call it a voice - was quiet, calm. "It already is my home. It has been for twelve years now."

"No. It was your resting place. It's not a home without a family. We're a family again. And... home".

"Yes, we are. I'll close the door."

With the memory of muscle stronger than actual muscle had been, her spirit had been able to move the heavy stone from the crypt entrance easily. Now, it was sluggish. Stuck.

"I'll get it." The stone rolled back, sealing the crypt in darkness.

"So... now what. What have you been up to these years?"

"I've been here. Mostly alone. The other dead are boring."

"Maybe we can make some friends together now that I'm here."

"Really, it's a waste. I've tried, they all either cry, or mutter to themselves, or sit quietly. One of them said that we all get what we deserve. That's just a few. Most of the graves seem empty."

"It will be different for you, now that I'm here. We'll make friends. You'll see.

But please, stop forgetting to close the door."


A hundred years later the stone seal has long since shattered, but, if you stand in just the right place by the crumbling stone walls, you can still sometimes hear his voice, muttering, "close the damn door".

We all get what we deserve.

Image by Mark Krawec

Nightmare Fuel 2016, Day the Zeroth: "Not That Kind of Monster"

Write horrible things with me.

With these words, Andrea Trask began the annual "Nightmare Fuel" project, in which every day of October,  whomever chooses to do so writes a story inspired by the same image prompt. It's a tradition which now enters is fourth consecutive year. It's a tradition which began as a way for Andrea to deal with ill dreams which plagued her as the calendar turns towards All Hallows Eve and a tradition which I've continued sporadically.

This year I'm writing before the prompt was prompted, so I'll open with a brief poem inspired by one from last year that I didn't get to. We'll see how we round out the year.

So come, listen, join in.

Write horrible things with me.


These will all be potentially unsettling, but this one comes with a trigger-warning for street harassment.
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"Not That Kind of Monster"

Date night. Not long planned, just a guy from Tindr.
Though moon is full, no hair grows on my face,
no howl escapes from my throat.
My legs are as smooth as a razor can get them, no pack awaits me.
I'm not that kind of monster.

He's cute, in a geeky kind of way.
Dinner,  a small table for two, he leans forward as I talk,
catching every word, or catching a peek down my blouse? No matter.
 My voice, though fair, doesn't hypnotize him,
                                                      doesn't steal his thoughts,
                                                                    doesn't curse him to follow me to his doom.
I'm not that kind of monster.


The movie ends sometime past midnight.
On the darkened streets, my teeth don't stretch into fangs.
I don't sensuously lick my lips before sinking my teeth into his neck
before drinking my fill
and leaving his drained husk behind.
I'm not that kind of monster.

When the men at the corner call out,
when they yell, "Hey sexy"
                    and "nice ass"
                      and "wanna share her, bro?"
I don't grow claws, don't break their bones
don't devour their flesh.
I'm not that kind of monster.

I do see him, my date, puff up with something like pride
even as their comments become more lewd
even as one starts to approach.
He speaks once to them,
                                   "she's mine".
I know that even if I take him home,
even after we fuck,
there will be no second date. No happily ever after.
I'll not kill him, tear his skin from his body, and wear it as a suit.
I'm disappointed in him, but
I'm not that kind of monster.


In the dark of the next morning I'll take the knife.
Again.
I'm practiced at this now. Two slices, and they're gone.
I string them up with the others as blood runs down the side of my head.
Knowing that it's useless.
Knowing that they'll only grow back again.
Knowing that I'll still hear the next time anyway.
But noticing that each time they seem to grow back slower.
That's the kind of monster I am.
One who is slowly
inevitably
one ear at a time
being killed.

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I lied in the intro; this poem IS inspired by the attached image, but also by a real life event. Last month, the aforementioned Andrea Trask was subject to a nasty and frightening bit of street harassment. While she was not injured in body, the circumstance and actions [a late night, an empty street, drunk sports fans in a car] were deeply unsettling and left her rattled for quite some time after.

Thus the opener, and this year's theme: Harm. The ways in which we harm each other, the ways in which we harm ourselves, the ways in which we allow harms to come to pass.