Writing Challenge ~ October 2013

[Britwitch]

WRITING CHALLENGE ~ OCTOBER 2013​

Here are this month’s prompts...all with something of a Hallowe’en twist...a few things to hopefully stimulate your imagination.

”Masquerade!
Paper faces on parade.
Masquerade! Hide your face so the world will never find you.
Masquerade! Every face a different shade.
Masquerade! Look around, there's another mask behind you..”

​

You can involve the prompts themselves in your piece and make your links to the prompts as obvious or as subtle as you like or use them simply as inspiration for something else. You can use part of the prompts, just one aspect of one image, or use them in their entirety.

The word limit for this month’s challenge is 2,500 words and your submission can take whatever form you desire – poetry or prose, complete story or a vignette. Erotic or not, serious or light hearted, it’s whatever you want it to be!!

It’s your writing, your challenge. You write whatever you’re inspired to write! Be it one piece or several!

Post only your submissions in this thread, constructive comments and reviews are to be posted in the appropriately named – Writing Challenge Comments and Review Thread

The deadline for this month’s challenge is Hallowe’en - Thursday 31st October 2013, with November’s challenge ‘going live’ on Friday 1st!

Previous challenges and reviews can be found here.

Happy writing!

(Oh and a little something for the readers to bear in mind…the pageview counts for this thread are always pretty healthy so there are definitely people reading what’s posted but the amount of feedback is generally pretty low. Even if it’s just a few words, please let the writers know how their writing was received. Thank you! )

 

[thestruggle]

That time, any time after midnight – we always called it the witching hour as kids. Staying up late, punchy and giggly with lack of sleep at our grandparents' house. The ghost stories would run until everyone had fallen asleep, their breathing slow and even in the room with the lamp left on. It burned away the vestiges of those stories and soothed us into sleep. Well, them. Not me. Never me.

Those nighttime silences with the old clock ticking and ticking. The heavy green curtains. The too-hot comforters with the prickly faux satin, polyester itching. My cousins tucked into the two double beds, all of us girls together. And then me, blankets clutched to my chest in a fist, eyes wide and tracking the shadows on the wall.

What I thought would happen, I have never been able to say. All I can remember is the feeling of my heart in my throat and the dry clicking of my eyes – eyes tired from watching too long, from keeping vigil. I would try to summon my mother's voice in my head, but it was like a gate lowered whenever her face entered my mind. A house devoid of noise, out in the country. A blanket of summer silence. Dawn seemed like it was miles ahead.

When it came, it was always with an overwhelming feeling of relief. I would hear my grandmother move down the hall to start coffee in the kitchen, my grandfather not far behind her. I always waited until my cousins were awake before I escaped from my nightly bower. To do anything otherwise would have exposed me to the height of mockery – to be cool, you had to sleep in. We would all stretch, exchange sleepily desultory morning talk about what low-fat cereal Grandma would have for breakfast, and then leave the room without making the beds.

I would look back through the doorway then, every time. I would see the tangle of sheets and rumpled pillows, maybe a stuffed animal or two. And as morning light crept through the curtains, with my cousins' laughter echoing behind me, I would feel that room swell in front of me with that same wrongness that had kept me up all night. In all that benign female clutter, something looked out with a perception that laid me out to the core. I looked back at that room, and it knew me.

I would always slam the door shut before I ran down the hall.

-----​

The more time went by, the less my cousins and I saw of my grandparents. With all of the chaos of teenage angst, we never repeated the summers where we tore around their country house with impunity. No more bragging about boys at individual schools, no more countless horror movies – one after another. The older I got, the more I tried to convince myself that the sleeplessness of my nights in that room had been caused by Linda Blair's voice in The Exorcist. David Naughton's face in An American Werewolf in London. Slashers, gorefests, even the endless tapes of Dark Shadows that my uncle had recorded obsessively. Anything, anything at all. Anything to say that the anxiety that had been born of a hundred of those nights, that it was childhood exposure to a healthy dollop of inadequate supervision. In the light of day, I had all the recklessness and self-absorption of any girl in her teens. At night, however, I had none of that bravado.

Most nights I would watch the shadows play on the walls, with the lamp always on.

-----​

After my thirteenth year, I never stayed at my grandparents' house again. Family differences and a consummate teenage attitude kept me home. I had a vague sense of my grandparents and my cousins, out there living lives. A dim sense that I missed them, that I loved them. Social media kept me in contact with my cousins, at any rate. My grandmother attempted to communicate in the same manner but gave it up as a bad job after she couldn't figure out how to make question marks. Time passed.

I graduated from high school.
I moved out of state.
And then one day, I got the phone call from my mother, who said that my grandfather had committed suicide.

“Oh, my God. What happened?” I asked, feebly, feeling that my reaction was blunted and dull. Wasn't I supposed to feel more than this?

“Sweetie, you really don't – you don't need to know that, I don't want you to know that.”

I swallowed. No, I really didn't. But something tickled at the back of my mind, just insistently enough. I couldn't -

“Please, Mom. Please, I can't stand not knowing.”

She sighed, a long and painful sound. I knew it was bad. It was bad enough that my father hadn't called to tell me, about his own dad's death.

“He... Eleanor, he stabbed himself in the heart.”

-----​

The funeral was held in the small town that my grandparents lived in. I had been at the same funeral home for the services of my great-grandmother and a friend of my father's from high school. It seemed the same, even down to the arrangements of lilies around his casket. The only thing that looked different was the display of pictures that my aunts had gathered to show my grandfather's life. It was bizarre, a parade of memories, with an ending so horrifying that it bordered on hysterical. I had always known that my grandparents would die one day – it wasn't exactly a mystery – but I thought it would be cancer. Old age. Heart attack. In their sleep.

In their sleep.

That was the part about it that was most unsettling. My grandmother had told my aunt Laura that Grandpa had gotten up from bed without a word at three o'clock in the morning. She thought maybe he was just going to the bathroom, but she heard him rummaging around in the closet before he left the room. He never came back to bed. By the time she registered that it had been some time since he had left, he had already bled out from the severance of his aorta. The weapon had been a newly purchased Bowie knife that my grandmother had never seen before.

They said it took several hours to get my grandmother to stop screaming after she called the ambulance.

“Just awful,” my cousin Meri whispered with a sniffle. Everyone's face was red and blotched except for mine. My cousin Connie had told me I looked like a ghost. “It's just so strange. He was always so happy and loud, always made us laugh.”

“Grandma said he had been having a lot of trouble sleeping. Restlessness. Usually he would come back to bed and read but she said that lately he had just been awake. Poor Grandpa. Why didn't he tell anyone?” This was from Julia, the oldest of us.

I crossed my arms. We were heading outside, after the service. The casket had been open, with my grandfather restored to some semblance of his looks in life. I thought he had looked deflated, not a man at all. I had not lingered to look at him. My father stood by the hearse with the other pallbearers, reaching his arms out to hug his brother Julian. My mother was waiting by the car for me.

“Where did she... where did she find him?” I asked. It was the first thing I had said in awhile and my three cousins looked at me.

It was Julia who spoke up. She said, “In the spring room. You know, where we used to sleep when we stayed out there.”

In their sleep.
Not sleeping.

I stumbled as we went down the steps at the entrance. “Nellie, are you okay?” came in a chorus.

“Fine. Fine,” I mumbled. Anything. I righted myself and brushed my legs off with trembling hands.

“If you're sure... We'll see you at the graveside, and then the house, okay?” Meri said sympathetically.

“Yeah. You – I'll see you there.” I was suddenly desperate to be away from them.

I reached my mother at the car, who squeezed my hand as we drove away.

“Grandma said that Grandpa hadn't been sleeping,” I blurted out.

“Oh, Nellie. I know you girls talk but what good does it do? What good? Please don't go to your father with that. There's nothing that we can do now.”

Nothing at all, I thought.

-----​

Throughout the burial and the drive back to my grandparents' house, my mind was tearing through every memory I could remember of that room and those nights. I couldn't understand why everything I had collated about that particular place was crystal clear in my mind. The walls always looked the same, my breathing sounded the same. The escalation of my heartbeat and the parched feeling in my mouth. It was like a film on loop, over and over. Why? Why is that all I can see?

Something had shifted inside of me. For years, it had felt like I was half-dead. I had gone through life in a cloud of expected decisions and little protest. Even the news of my grandfather's horrible end had done nothing to rock me. It was only this small detail, this reminder – of the last time that I had felt anything more than a thread of emotion. Even my insomnia in young adulthood had been nothing compared to that consuming alertness. Without explanation, frightfully, I longed for it.

I wanted it back.

When my mother pulled into the long gravel driveway of my grandparents' property, I unbuckled my seat-belt and pushed out of the door. I felt like I was burning up, that the energy inside of me would churn until I understood. Why had my life spun around this place? I wanted to know. I didn't want to know. It terrified me, it left me feeling sick to my stomach. As my mother took my hand, I fought to appear normal. I wanted more than ever to run back to the car and speed back to my normal apartment, my normal college atmosphere. Where I can be safe.

And dead inside.

I shook myself. We passed the threshold into the house. Most of the party had arrived before us, and my mother went to go find my father. I dutifully kissed and embraced my grandmother, whose skin felt like powdered rubber gloves. Fighting the urge to shudder, I turned from her and faced the hallway that led to the bedroom wing of the house. I was surprised that the sliding door hadn't been shut, blocking it from view. At the direct end of that hallway, before it veered off to the right, was the spring room. There were no windows in the hallway – only in the bedrooms. It was dark down there.

Why was I so cold? Why hadn't I stood and talked to my grandmother? The turbulence inside pinged off of every piece of me, I could feel it. My fingers tingled, my face felt flushed. Just check. Just check and see. Maybe it'll stop.

I moved into the hallway. The carpet beneath my flats felt worn, familiar. The pictures along the walls of my smiling aunts and uncles were stair-stepped through their school years. Everyone had their place. I reached the section of wall where my cousins were arranged, with toothless grade-school portraits being the dominant feature. The door loomed beyond me, but I still stopped to take in my pictures as a kind of talisman. A reassurance, to show who I had been. What I had become.

My pictures were missing from the wall.

My arms crossed and tightened around my mid-section. I moved my lips, to protest or to scream – I have never known which – but as I did so, my shock at finding my reassurance missing was exchanged for something else.

The door to the spring room opened.

I hiccuped with fear, my feet sliding backwards over the carpet – what is it what is it – trying to escape and deal with the surge of emotion that had run through me as the creak sounded through the hall. It was need. It was wanting. Not lust, not desire. I just felt. It made me sob aloud as I finally turned to bolt back down the hall to the now deserted entryway. I realized as I did so that someone had finally closed the sliding door. The light that showed me the way now came from behind me. It came from that room.

Run, Nellie. Like a kiss blown back from whatever depths he had embraced, my grandfather sent this to me, as clearly as anything I had ever felt or understood. I reached my hand out to push the door clear. Oh, run. But as my fingers touched the wood, every single new part of me that had only moments ago felt electrified -

“Like you're dead. Like you're dying. Like you're fueled by formaldehyde.”

Right behind me, right in my ear. My teeth began to chatter.

“You can't run forever, you know. It would have been so much easier if you would have just fallen asleep. Sometimes... Sometimes I hit people that way. Like they have that nagging voice in their head that tells them to take a card or stay.”

It was a sweet voice. It was a loving voice. The words that came out of the air behind me lapped my spine, relaxed my muscles.

“But you, most of all. Not once did you ever give in. Those pretty eyes of yours, don't you ever get tired?”

And suddenly I was tired. My fingers could barely hold their grip on the door. But no matter how soothing, I did not want to turn around. Oh god I don't want to turn around I don't want to see it -

“Eleanor, don't you want to see what I can show you? Don't you want to see what I've chosen for you? I've waited so long in this house, this place. This side. I've waited for you.”

For me.

“For you. Your grandfather could tell, too. He wanted to take your place. But he... wasn't satisfactory.”

Satisfactory.

“Didn't you ever wonder why the nights were all the same? Why you remember them - “

The same.

“Yes,” it breathed. “Every night, when he came, I waited for you to close your eyes. And you never did. So instead, I... I took little pieces of you. I took little pieces, so those pieces wouldn't forget.”

“Oh, m-m-my G-god.”

My teeth were about to chatter out of my head. I needed to hold myself, not believe it, vomit, openthisfuckingdoorrightnow -

“I have them for you. I have... all of you.”

I wanted to weep. More than anything, I wanted to weep, and it wasn't allowed. I wasn't allowed. My life had never begun. He -

“Robbed you? Yes. But I only ever borrowed. Let me pay your price in full.”

He talked to me, he warned me.

“Maybe. But then again, you can't believe everything you hear. Especially from the dead.”

“But you're dead, too!” I gasped.

There was a silence, before a ringing peal of laughter.

“Oh, Eleanor. I am Death. And Death never forgets a bargain.”

The moments ticked. I sensed an infinite patience.

“And I won't be dead anymore?”

I could feel the smile. “Let's just say... you'll have unlimited possibilities.”

“What do I have to do?”

Cold lips brushed against my earlobe as the voice whispered, melting through my bloodstream, “The only thing you've ever had to do. Close your eyes.”

I let go of the door.

I complied.

 

[DeliciousMaiden]

Masquerade

They dance attendance, masks firmly in place. They are familiar people, beloved and yet unidentifiable beneath the façade they hide behind. Movement, quips, laughter, a festive atmosphere you might think; but the masks are flawed. And as I watch them circle and change places, grouping to speak amongst themselves, their voices, like everything else, is staged and designed to be overheard by the rest of the party and especially by me… But inevitably the cracks in these performances begin to grow and threaten to release reality at any moment.

Like a stone thrown at a damaged pane of glass, just one object hurled against that fragile surface would shatter it. The masquerade is threatened on all sides: Will it be the white-coated maestros whose repertoire of expression evidence that they have walked this road before and will do so many times in the future? Will it be the blue-uniformed staff who slip silently between beds ensuring that for the duration of that visiting time at least, the myth of merriment is upheld?

No. Impossibly it is myself, who stifled by the pretence of the protagonists present call time on this posturing. As welcome as the Phantom at the New Year’s revel, my voice carries over that of those assembled, suspending them in shock, their merry masks slipping to shatter upon the ground. I take control and order them from me. Yet I am not spared that which I dreaded; the sight of their guilt and hurt and grief and helplessness, raw upon each exposed face.

But the silence they leave in their wake is more terrifying than the tension of the pretence before.
I am forced to face my demons, the inevitability of the sentence this sickness has dealt to me, I am filled with despair…

“You shouldn’t have done that … ”

My conscience accuses me, but as I look up, impossibly there is the one face I need to see at that moment, the one who has dared to return to reproach me.

”I know.”

I acknowledge as a hand takes mine, the touch speaking where words fail.

Our eyes meet and I comment ironically;

”But, you can’t believe everything you’re told, especially from the dead.”

We both flinch at the stark reality, the bitter pill sweetened by the mask of mirth.
This is a first step, our first acknowledgement, our first attempt to deal with the inevitable ...

(Word count - 402)

 

[saysalice]

There was much of the beautiful,
much of the wanton,
much of the bizarre,
something of the terrible,
and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH - Edgar Allan Poe​

It was a charity thing. A fundraiser for music and arts programs in the public schools, hosted every year at this time by a different benevolent benefactor in the community. At a hundred bucks a ticket, it was pretty rich for our blood, but it was for a worthy cause - one we were both personally invested in - and it promised to be quite the grandiose affair, if accounts of past years were to be believed. Never mind that it was October, and I hadn't had a proper excuse to dress up in a long time.

As it was to be a dress-up affair - a masked ball. This year's patron, in his love of the bizarre, had set the theme as Poe's Masque of the Red Death, and invitees were instructed to present in full period costume, complete with Venetian masks - to be removed at the stroke of midnight, and not before! - or risk being turned away at the door. To be fair, she had me at those three little words: "full period costume".

We got out of the cab in front of the mansion, giggling as we angled to squeeze with our skirts out onto the lawn and huffed up the candlelit walk in our tightly-drawn corsets.

"Wow," she panted shallowly behind her mask, eyes reflecting the colored light emanating from the windows, "He really went all out, didn't he?"

My smile was of course lost in my own disguise, and my answering: "Hmm," was noncommittal, at best. As older sister, a certain pecking order had been firmly established. I couldn't afford to be too heartily approving, even of her better ideas.

The host stood in the doorway, fully in character as the doomed Prince Prospero, ready to greet each attendee personally - classy, I thought - until he drew back and flicked each of us with red paint. Our blank, fixed expressions belied our surprise and irritation as he explained:

"Stage blood. Just setting the tone, ladies! Fear not, my friends - you have my word that it will fade without a trace of residue by tomorrow morning. Good news for those of you who have rented your lovely costumes for tonight's gala! Thank you all so much for coming - the School Board Association sincerely appreciates this show of support ..."

Amber grumbled as we passed with the throng through the foyer, but I shrugged.

"It fits, though - the Red Death was a plague that made you bleed from your pores." I caught her shudder from the corner of my eye. "And it fits the character - Prospero's dark, macabre sense of humor. Anyway, if doesn't come out, we know he can afford the drycleaning bill."

I was delighted to see that he had committed to the theme throughout. While he could not have altered the floor plan, he had gone out of his way to clear out seven rooms for this party, and had dressed each room in a separate color to correspond with the chambers of Prince Prospero's abbey. We were in the blue room, and I marveled at the lengths he had gone to: the curtains and all the decor were furnished in a brilliant peacock blue. The lights had been switched out for blue bulbs, and even the cocktails served in this room were a sparkling azure.

I loved it. Taking my sister's hand, I pulled her through the crowds, passing from one room to the next: now purple, now green, now orange...I had to see the black room, the red room - he would not have missed that for the world, surely.

In each room, too, there was some form of elaborate entertainment. Contortionists in blue leotard defied the laws of gravity and anatomy in the first room; a man with a bright red mohawk doused flaming skewers on his tongue in the orange room; in white, a wiry bearded fellow dressed as a knight slid a sword down his throat to the hilt.

I could hear the clock's ponderous tick before I reached the seventh room, and experienced a thrill akin to sexual arousal - I did so love this story, I did so love this pageantry. My sister's little kitten heels clattered to a halt an arm's breadth behind me, and she wheezed in her confusion. "Seriously, what - is the rush?"

Black curtains were drawn across the doorway, but we could see the red glow and hear the steady tick of the clock within. For just a moment, I was hesitant - struck with a giddy fear of haunted houses, ghosts and witches I hadn't felt since childhood. What if some gruesome mime, a personification of the grisly Red Death, waited just inside to terrorize unsuspecting partygoers? I grinned behind my mask, and a gleeful malice born of old sibling rivalries swelled in my chest. Amber had never read the story. Tightening my grip on her hand, I pushed the curtain aside and pulled her along.

As our eyes adjusted to the weird light and dark furnishings of the room, a little table emerged from the shadows, as did the little woman who sat perched behind it. She was dressed in typical gypsy garb, and a crystal ball sat in the center of the table.

I rolled my eyes as she intoned on cue, "Good evening. I am Madame Zora. You have only to cross my palm with silver, and I will consult the spirit world on any question you would have answered!"

She gestured at a mayonnaise jar in the corner of the table, labeled in a juvenile hand: THE A.S.B.A. THANKS YOU FOR YOUR DONATIONS! I frowned, bitterly disappointed as I turned away, muttering, "Wow. Hokey..."

But my sister hung back. Her voice was soft behind the mask, barely audible over the ticking of the ebony grandfather clock. "I want to do it. Maybe...maybe she can talk to Mom for us."

My lips tightened. She couldn't see it. It had been four years since we lost our mother. We hadn't been brought up to believe in ghosts, angels - anything invisible, really - but it was hard to quash those longings - the desire to believe she was still with us, in any form. We still missed her every day in so many little ways. There were so many things left unsaid.

I dragged the curtain closed behind us and nodded resignedly as Amber took a seat across the table from the fortune teller, dropping a couple of bills into the jar. It couldn't hurt anything. I pulled my mask off, and at once felt the waft of the cool air against my damp face. It wasn't midnight yet, but I fixed Madame Zora with the stink eye as I sat down, defying her to rat me out.

My sister spoke up timidly. "We'd like to try to contact our mother, if you can."

Madame Zora nodded sagely, passing a hand halfheartedly over her crystal ball as she peered into it intently. "Ah, yes... Tell me your mother's name, and I will attempt to make contact."

It was all I could do, to keep from snorting. "Aren't you psychic?" I muttered. "Shouldn't you know - ow!"

Amber stomped my foot under the table and slid out of her mask to grin at me over clenched teeth. "Stahp," she hissed.

I shook my head, but kept my mouth shut as my sister smiled apologetically and answered, "Miriam. Campbell. Her maiden name was Brown."

Another wave of a hand, waggling fingers, and the Madame murmured, "Oh yes, she is here. She is with you always."

Of course she is, I thought. For a $20 donation, she had better be here! But I folded my arms across my chest, leaned back in the chair and said nothing.

Madame Zora hemmed and hawed for several seconds, then looked up at us sharply. "Which one of you has the baby?"

My sister gasped, but I remained unimpressed. This time last year, I was already huge with child. Dozens of these patrons had seen me around town, before and after the birth. Any one of them could have been slipping notes to the fortune teller.

I lifted my fingers in acknowledgement, cocking my head at an angle as I waited to hear what great revelation would come out of her mouth. It's a boy!, perhaps.

"She wishes she had lived to know him," the gypsy muttered.

I nodded as my sister murmured in sympathy beside me, pressing a hand to her heart. Cheap shot.

"She watches over him," she continued, predictably. "He is beautiful. He looks like his father, she says."

I exhaled. Losing patience. "He does - both male, you know - "

She cut me off abruptly. "His green eyes...they are his father's..."

I stopped. Sat up a little straighter. Cleared my throat to correct her, very clearly, "Brown eyes. He has his father's brown eyes. They started off blue, but they're turning deep brown -"

"Green, like his father..." Her head was bowed over the ball, she stared into it at nothing, as if in a trance. "She says he should know his father..."

This wasn't funny anymore. Amber turned her head slightly to gape at me, but I narrowed my eyes at this gypsy bitch and replied evenly, "He knows his father. His father sees him every day - "

She spoke over me, getting louder. I glanced over my shoulder at the flimsy black curtain as my sister protested confusedly. I could feel myself beginning to sweat. And still, she continued insistently:

"You must take him to meet his father, she says - it is her wish...family - family is so important...I see a man in a black hat...he has a key, but it is not his home - "

My chair crashed to the floor behind me as I bolted upright and grabbed the crystal ball in both hands, heedless of my sister's startled cry, bringing it down hard on the scarf twisted in the woman's hair. As she fell, I bashed her again, and then again as she slumped over the table and was finally silent.

I could breathe again as I panted over at her. In the eerie red light, her blood was black. I was spattered with it - but, I realized, as I looked at my sister - so was everyone else.

My sister's face was twisted in horror, but she sat frozen in her seat. I still held the heavy crystal ball in both hands. I swiped sweaty bangs off my forehead, leaving a smear, and tried to return my voice to conversational tones.

"Really. Tacky. That's the sort of vicious rumor that can ruin reputations - ruin lives."

She was trembling as she stared up at me in horror, but she nodded. Loyally. "Anyway," I continued, letting the ball drop to the floor with a crunch, "You can't believe everything you hear...especially from the dead."

I indicated Madame, now bleeding across the tablecloth. Amber made a small strangled noise in agreement, and I sighed. "I told you this was all bullshit."

She nodded again readily, and stammered, "Yes, y-you told me."

The clock struck ten o'clock, and the deafening chimes rang out in the small room, unbearably loud. Only ten o'clock. I sighed again.

"I really don't think I'm going to make it until midnight, hun. You wanna bail? I should really get home, anyway. Steve's never had to take the baby overnight - he's probably tearing his hair out."

"I'm - I'm ready to go," she replied, standing shakily.

"Put your face back on," I reminded her absently as I tugged at my blood-soaked gloves and pushed my face back into the stuffy mask.

I let her precede me out of the room, and drew the curtains closed without a second glance back. We wound our way swiftly through the rooms, passing silent and dreamlike through the surreal tableaux. In the brightly-lit white room, the stains on my bodice screamed in stark contrast, and a hand touched my elbow as a muffled voice reached my ears: "Whoa. Someone got carried away!"

I paused to glance back, pulling my arm away. "Excuse me?"

The porcelain face staring back at me was frozen in a wide laughing jeer. He spoke again: "Prince Prospero, or whatever he's calling himself - he loves that stage blood, doesn't he? A little over-the-top, if you ask me."

I nodded. My sister, having stopped, was beginning to tremble. I put my hand into hers and squeezed, feeling the squish that was not stage blood. "A bit tasteless, really. Excuse us please, we're just leaving."

Taxis were idling all along the driveway, and we stepped up to the nearest one and slid into the back seat. My sister gave the address as I fished a tissue out of my purse and dabbed at my corset, wincing in dismay and muttering, "I am never going to get my deposit back."

I called home. Steve was doing just fine - the baby had gone to bed without any trouble, and he was watching a movie. I told him I would be home sooner than expected, and hung up and passed the phone to my sister.

"Hold this for a sec, will you?" I asked as I pulled my purse back onto my lap and rooted around for my house keys.

Amber looked at the picture I had saved as my background.

"Is this the latest?"

I nodded, eyes darting to her as she studied it, smiling.

"Beautiful - such beautiful big brown eyes...I swear, he - he looks more and more like Steve, all the time."

I turned to her and beamed sunnily. "Doesn't he? I tell him that, every day!"

Mama didn't raise no fools.




Very quick and dirty. Needed it out of my head. Could use a million edits, but I just don't have the time.

Also, I'm not really a violent person. Really. Not.

And, if my husband happens to check in - this is pure fiction, my love. I'll go on Maury any ole time you say.

 

[fr33ks33k]

They do the dance of death as though they'll live forever. They masquerade as saints though sin would suit them better. They cloak their features deftly but even costumed to the letter they cannot hide from truth.

They do the dance of death though they've long since ceased their living. They masquerade as virtue when vice is all they're giving. They cloak their falseness deftly but even decorated in their brightest, gaudy garb they cannot hide the proof.

They do the dance of death over and again. They masquerade like phantoms, jack-o-lanterns; grinning ear to ear, bringing joy and dread. They whisper lies and promises of pleasure but...you can't believe everything you hear, especially from the dead.

 

[Scuttle Buttin']

Dolls and dolls and dolls. So many dolls. They were clustered tightly on shelves, some seeming to have fallen off long ago and lay now in a pile by the baseboards. Forgotten, slipped off the shelves in her mind too, apparently. They were black and tan and brown and some made of burlap, and a few even seemed to be made of the dirty material that fought in vain to dim the light that poured through them like hot water through a tea bag. So many dolls.

How he had ended up here... it all seemed so fucking stupid now. A dumb way to die, if that's what was actually going to happen to him. Cut up in her bathtub, blood down the drain, young flesh for her dinner, slurp. But she, of strangely indeterminate age and stringy gray hair, easily passing for a terrible looking 50 or a not-so-bad 70, and why did she take her time? Pawing through stacks of fabric, unspooling lengths of thread, eying... what? Thickness? Color? Why did she sniff some of them?

And why. Why in the fuck couldn't he move?

An old witch lives there, they said. She's blind, they said. Walls lined with dolls, they said. Steal one, they said. What are you, they said, chicken?, they said.

Fuck them, he said now. Did she just lick a button, he asked now.

Except he didn't, because talking seemed to be another arrow taken from his quiver. Breathing and blinking and rolling his eyeballs around stupidly and uselessly, no problem. He could even lick his lips, if he focused, concentrated really really hard, but when he tried to make sounds it was like his mind had forgotten how. Suddenly he couldn't quite remember what his voice sounded like. He'd settle for a squeak right now. Progress was progress, right?

No luck.

She turned, then, turned and looked at him, then, and stepped towards him, then. His eyes widened (no, they didn't). His body tensed as she stood over him (no, it didn't), leering with a strange glint and clarity in eyes that otherwise seemed milky and almost sightless. Was she really blind? Maybe she

That's a needle in her hand, why does she have a needle in her hand, why is she showing me the needle in her hand, what are you going to do with the

Fucking bitch stabbed me with the needle in her hand. Fuck.

He flinched (no), he winced (no), he hissed in a breath (no) as she pricked his skin, and the pair of them, now taking this journey together, each observers seemingly outside of his body, watched as a bead of blood bubbled up on his arm, bright red in the dim and dank weak-tea light. His eyes followed the tip of the needle as it lifted from his arm, lifted into the air, lifted to her mouth, and she licked the tip of it with a tongue that probably looked more forked in it's extended state than it actually was. Or maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him.

Down and down and down, and the needle, freshly licked now, broke through the surface tension of the little bead, and now his blood was on the needle, joined together with the sharp point and whatever was left behind from her maybe-forked tongue.

Why couldn't he move?

She tottered out of view, floorboards creaking as she moved, and his eyes rolled uselessly again, trying to see as much as he could from the deep chair he was slumped in. The doll he had grabbed, the thing he'd planned to steal, the last action he remembered being able to take of his own volition, lay near his feet. He could just make out a lone button eye staring blankly up at him, dead and cold and not really an eye at all now, was it?

Terrible curtains, the woman clearly never washed, and walls that had seen better years and were probably put together before his grandparents were born, and so many dolls. Why all the dolls?

Behind him she moved, lumbered, heavy footsteps and the unknowable sound of things being moved, and he expected the end to come at any moment. The needle thing, the licking, the blood, it was all forgotten even as the bead had turned to a drop and walked-ran it's way down his arm, leaving footprints behind so it could find it's way back again later. But he was so calm, so curiously calm, and his wait seemed to do nothing to change that. He waited as if for a bus, as if for the end of a commercial, as if for sleep, as if for the cold embrace of nothingness, he waited and looked and waited more.

Perhaps it was just harder to panic when you couldn't really move.

Thomp and thomp and thomp and she was back in view, this time her hands filled, thin cotton cloth and white thread and black yarn that seemed nearly to match the color of his hair, and in her palm, unseen and yet somehow he knew they were in there, two brown buttons. His eyes in her hand.

She stopped next to his chair, stopped and looked at him, stopped and considered him, stopped and measured him, and then stopped looking and considering and measuring and moved on, thomp and thomp and thomp. Papers and loose bits of fabric and empty spools fulfilled of their use now that the thread was gone tumbled and fluttered and rolled as she pushed clear a space on the table. A chair squeaked as she sat in it, creaked under her weight, and he watched the thin and old muscles in her back as she began to work, elbows and hands moving.

Needle threaded. Fabric selected.

Pierce. Pull. Terror.

Pain filled him, overfilled him, the dam that had held back his fear cracked, broke, disintegrated, and he wanted to cry, wanted to cry out, wanted to say no no no no please no.

But instead all he said was .

She began to conduct a symphony, arms moving swiftly back and forth, smoothly back and forth, thread and needle, fabric and needle, fabric and thread. Sew sew, old lady, sew sew.

His eyes were wide (no), he screamed as she worked (silence in the library, good children), and this was his end, he knew and didn't know, he was dying and he couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't ever know how.

A plastic whisper across wood, a button caught between fingers, lifted and held to fabric, sew sew sew.

His vision grew darker, the weak-tea light steeped and blotting out the light, sew sew sew.

Confusion reigned, fear it's prince, and his mind struggled to understand what he saw. One eye rolling, drab drapes and dolls and dolls and dolls, the other fixed and staring and there she was above him, sew sew sew.

She grinned down at him, horribly grinned at him, terrible yellow teeth with black spaces like the break between words, a grin that said

welcome to your hell
discover eternity in it

and her hands just kept working, ten and ten with a mind of their own.

Whisper of plastic, button held in place, with a dirty and calloused thumb, vision dimming, darkening, and then he stared up at her.

He stared unblinking.

And she grinned and sewed, sewed and grinned, welcome to your eternity, sew sew sew.

Under him, he could still feel the shape of the chair, the slope of his spine as he slumped in it, but his eyes were pointless spheres now, and it was as the pain moved when the needle did that he began to truly understand.

She worked for what felt hours, old bones and bent fingers moving tirelessly, as if dancing to the music they were destined for, and soon the small point of pain in his arm was gone, soon the shape of the chair was gone, soon there was just her hand gripping him, and the table under him, and all too soon he was gone, oh he was gone...

Dolls and dolls and dolls and him.

"There we are now, isn't that better?" It was the first time he'd heard her voice, and it was impossibly clear and strong for the hunched frame and wrinkled skin and purple lips that it leaked out of. "No more pain. You're safe now, dear."

She grinned welcome to your hell welcome to your eternity.

He was off the table, in her hands, staring at the water-stained ceiling and the dirty curtains and the scuffed boards of the floor as she swung him.

Legs folded, placed carefully down, button eyes staring at the window he'd climbed through.

"They told you I was a witch, didn't they dear?"

Her face consumed his field of view, and he could look away but oh, with ever fiber and stitch did he want to.

"You can't believe everything you hear, you know."

That clear and awful voice was a whisper as she moved away from him, let him see the window again.

"Especially from the dead, dear..."

Dingy curtains moved, shifted, and a sneaker came into view, toe extended, searching for the ground.

He realized he recognized the sneaker, recognized the leg extending up from it.

An old witch lives there, they'd told his little brother. She's blind, they said. Walls lined with dolls, they said. Steal one, they said. What are you, they said, chicken?, they said.

Eyes he recognized as looking nearly like his own settled on him, and smiled in triumph. Small and quiet steps taken towards him, arm reaching, fingers outstretched.

No! he didn't yell, Stop! he didn't scream, Don't! he didn't cry out.

He was lifted into those hands.

Held up to that face.

Uselessly he fell to the floor.

Uselessly he fell to the floor.

 

[Miss_Vivi]

The biggest party of the year, the annual Halloween Masquerade. A quiet affair with financially powerful men and their soft womanly counterparts, where the local politicians posed and prattled about platforms. Clean cut lines and perfect costumes, at least it had been. Until they showed up.

Dirty Daddy and his Diamond girls.

He ruled the town with an iron fist and his two deadly ladies were his right and left hand in the shady underworld of this rainy two horse town. He smiled and oozed his way enigmatically through the room, the less powerful, and above board citizens clearing out of his way with hushed whispers and glares that he would dare to show his face here. At their party, he was a gangster and a bad man, and they all knew it, even if he was shaking the hand of the mayor right now. In their shallow minds he shouldn’t be here.

His mask only covered part of his face; it was daringly obvious enough that he was playing a villain. It was almost laughable in it's audacity. He always loved fucking with those smaller minds. Still, I sat and watched them quietly, the cigar puffs from my lips being freed into the now polarized room. Not that he noticed. They did, though, his girls. He employed a private army of men and never needed them when they were on his arms.

They called her the Devil. All red hair flames and fire and sweet soft kisses while she bled you free from your tenuous grasp of life. Not that many men or women could resist either of them, this one was pure evil and you were never sure if you were going to be alive past that first press of full red lips to yours. Many succumbed right there. It’s how he controlled the suits in the financial district, one visit from the Devil and men suddenly weren’t plummeting from windows, but dropping to their knees behind her, happily handing over the buckets of money and controls that kept him in power. She prowled the room restlessly awaiting a glance or a word from him that would free her from his barely held control of her. Still, it wasn’t like many could stop themselves from easily falling into her arms when she beckoned them, daring to dance with fire and not get burned.

Where one clicked over marble floors in stilettos the other padded in bare feet. Sweetie, they called her. Those beguiling blue eyes that bedeviled even the strongest of men; it was her who enticed the whispered confessions of wrong doing, who seduced sweet loving words from his enemies. She was as deadly as her sister, but they never mentioned that, they only saw her cloying smile, enchanted and sold by her even more saccharine words, and sold into his service by her honeyed promises. To the Devil they fell, to Sweetie they crawled.

He, he controlled both of them. Daddy, though no one but the two of them dared to call him that, at least to his face, to do so was to risk death. A dare I’d taken once before, and barely escaped.

The ice in my glass clinked as I finished it, ready to leave this ballroom and their games behind me. I noticed the sudden quiet at my table, as if death had arrived. I expected to set down my glass and see the Devil next to me, it wasn’t her.
Sweetie climbed into my lap and smiled.

“Oh, he is going to love that you’re here.” She ran her finger down the scar on my face lovingly. The same scar her sister had so tenderly bestowed many years ago.

“Let me go, Sweetie.”

“You know that won’t happen, you know he wants to see you, you know that you’re not supposed to be here. Even if I love you…” she leaned closer, entwining her body around mine, I shifted uneasily under her, my body reacting quickly to her nearness, “… oodles and oodles.” That accent, those words, and her voice snaked its way down my spine and landed somewhere that longed for her viscerally.

“Mm… wait till I tell Daddy.” She whispered.

My head was pulled roughly back and I knew the Devil had found me, I looked up into those hazel eyes and knew I’d die soon.

“Look, what sis found Daddy. Something we lost, long ago. Something that was dead to us. I’m so glad to see it’s return. Aren’t you sis?” The devil giggled and was joined by her sister, the sound which was replaced by a soft chuckle.

This one turned my blood to ice.
This isn’t what I had wanted being here.
I should’ve left earlier.
Seeing them was too tempting.

Sweetie slipped from my lap and into the arms of her sister and there they watched passively while he came to us.

“You knew.” He whispered.

I heard the gunshot and the loud civilian screams before I realized that the gun was in my hands. Before I saw the stain of red bloom on his side, he fell to his knees. He fell to his knees at the same time I hit mine. I felt the warmth of my blood weep down my legs and turned to meet their eyes. Two deadly Diamonds, they were supposed to be mine.

Never his.

Red liquid mingled into red on the white floor and I blindly met the eyes of the two girls that I had loved. The two girls who had taken my life, the two who were freed. Free and Deadly. I thought they loved me, but my last breath saw them in his arms and not mine.

Dirty Daddy and his Diamond girls.

 

[Britwitch]

Trick or treat?

“Trick or treat! Trick or treat!
Give us something good to eat!”

Masks and capes and blood so red,
Make the living look undead.

Costumes make it hard to tell,
Those from heaven and those from hell.

Ghosts and ghouls and spectres rare,
You may see dancing in the air.

On this dark October night,
You will laugh and squeal with fright.

Pumpkins carved and glowing bright,
Light the dark with eerie light.

Halloween comes but once a year,
Playing on our deepest fears.

No one you meet is what they seem,
Some come from nightmare, some from dream.

Children happily gorge on sweets,
True monsters prefer other treats

Trick or treat, fun and feast,
Careful not to wake the beast.

Beware the shadows and the dark,
For Halloween may leave its mark.

Hidden in the shadows black,
Are things that might not give you back.

Don’t go alone and don’t you linger,
Or evil will beckon with bony finger.

Entice you into a house of fun,
Where the wickedness has just begun.

Trick or treat, they don’t care how.
But nobody can save you now.

Once they have you in their sights,
This may well be the last of your nights.

You’ll fade from sight and disappear,
Some may remember seeing you here.

Trapped in myth and story you’ll be.
A fable for all eternity.

A warning, a story, something to scare,
Next time Halloween is in the air.

So beware those charming fiends who would befriend,
Their embrace may mean your end.

So, stay with others, do not stray,
And you may yet see the light of day.

“Trick or treat! Trick or treat!
Give us something good to eat!”
​

 

[DarkEmpress]

Hatred smouldered in the witch’s dark eyes as she levelled them on me. Every part of my being cringed away from her, but I stood my ground.
“Leave this place,” she commanded in an ominously quiet voice.
“No,” I answered.

She tilted her head to the side and regarded me with an expression that made my blood run cold. “Very well,” she decreed, before she started to roll a ball of light in her hands that appeared out of nowhere. The sky grew dark and lightning tore through the black clouds as the wind shrieked around us.

“The mask that you wear will be your only link to life,” she said, and I felt my heart scream with debilitating fear.
“Please, don’t do this,” I begged.
“Upon this day, your body will take form-“
“Please stop!” I cried.
“Until you can find redemption-“
“You can’t, I have done nothing wrong,” I implored her.
“You will be … no … more.”

~~~~***~~~~​

Every year on Old Hallow’s Eve my body takes form, and I find myself at the mercy of wherever the mask has drifted. One year I landed up in a brothel and it turned out to be one of the most entertaining evenings I ever had. Another day I found myself in a desolate town with no living being in sight. Yet another, I found myself in the company of a lonely little girl who enjoyed having someone to talk to as much as I did.

The years became a blur, so many of them. The people I once loved are now long gone and the world around me is changing at a dizzying pace, I hardly recognise it anymore. Big extravagant parties are the order of the day these days and I invariably land up floundering about, desperately searching for the person that could free me from the curse.

He came in many guises, always an echo of my beloved Richard somewhere in his voice, his appearance, his personality. It was just enough to torture my soul and kill my spirit a little bit more, plunging a knife into my heart and slowly twisting it … every year. One day was never enough time. It never had enough hours, minutes or seconds in it to try and make a connection, to find redemption … whatever the hell that meant!

The clock struck 0:00 am on the morning of 31 October. The mask lies on an ornate chest in the living room of a lavish home. A soft and swirling mist surrounds it and my body slowly takes form. I am wearing a black evening gown that I found last year with raven hair draped loosely around my shoulders, reaching the small of my back.

Voices - a few voices - reach my ears from a room next door. Panic flares through my mind. I never quite know how to explain my presence. One year, someone actually shot at me and I really didn’t want a repeat of that event. The mask hides my features as I peer around the corner, looking for an escape, a door, a window … anything.

“Well hello,” a sublimely male voice says behind me, an eerily familiar one. “You must be one of Heather’s friends?” the voice enquires.

I turn and my breath catches in my throat. “Richard…” I gasp. He is the splitting image of him. Tall, dark hair, steel grey eyes. He is dressed in faded denims and a casual t-shirt that contrasts my evening attire completely and hilariously.

“Oh please, it’s Rick,” he says, sweeping my hand up from my side and chivalrously planting a kiss on top of it. “My mother is the only one who calls me Richard, and it normally implies that I have done something outlandish,” he says with a devastating smile.

I feel my pulse rate leap to life. “Rick,” I say stupidly, all the words in the world completely leaving me in that moment.

He takes a step back and lets his eyes meander up and down my body, “Did Heather not tell you that the party is tomorrow?” he asks, before glancing at his watch and correcting himself, “I mean tonight?”
“N-no,” I stutter.

“Well then, let’s get you comfortable,” he says as he takes a step closer. Mesmerised, I watch, as if in slow motion, as he lifts his hands to the mask, touching the delicate porcelain surface of it, his fingers grazing the side of my cheeks. I can feel electricity crackle between us as he touches me … and his hands still. Did he feel it too?

A frown creases his brow as he quickly sweeps the mask off my face and it is his turn to look astounded. “I –“ he stammers, disbelief flashing in his eyes. We both just stare at each other for the longest moment. I know why I am staring, but I have no idea why he is looking at me like that.

Taking a deep breath, I summon the courage to try my voice. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I could swear -,” he says, tilting his head to the side, his gaze becoming probing, “that I’ve seen you before.”
“I get that a lot,” I smile, trying to make light of his comment, though the smile doesn't quite reach my eyes. Is this my redemption? Is this Richard incarnate?
“You are going to think this is strange -,” he says, lifting a hand and letting it gently sweep across my brow, “But you have been haunting my dreams … for months,” the last two words a whisper of disbelief, as if the months tortured him.

The air escapes from my lungs and I can’t quite make a sound. This time I’m the one with the incredulous expression. “You … you have?”
“Yes,’ he affirms. “I feel like I know you, somehow,” he adds as his brow furrows into a frown.

“What have you been dreaming?” I ask, my eyes never leaving his, hope flaring in their depths.
“I always dream that we are desperately in love,” he says as he places his hands on my waste, tentatively, before he pulls me into his arms, as if he is sizing me up, his hands remembering what it feels like to touch me. I close my eyes, the feel of him against me absolutely heavenly, it has been so long. “Mmmm,” the sound hums on my lips.

“I dreamt that fate dealt us an unjust blow,” he says, as he gently places his head against mine, breathing in the scent of me.
“What happens then?” I ask, tears shimmering in my eyes.
“We are torn apart,” he says, pain in his voice.
“Lost in time,” I whisper against his lips.
“Victoria,” he says my name, and I shut my eyes tightly, the tears streaming down my cheeks.
“Oh Richard,” I breathe.

The mask slowly cracks … the surface splintering … before it shatters into a million pieces.

I’m free…

 

[IvoryTigress]

Death is a one way journey. I never understood the notion that it’s a natural part of life. It isn’t. It’s the end of life. Finality. There is no going back. There is no glorious ascension to a pretty place with golden gates and white clouds. For that matter, there are no fiery dungeons of pain and hopelessness, either. Death isn’t complicated or mysterious. It is…vast…nothingness.

How you die doesn’t make a difference. Slowly fading in dreams. Accidents. Murder. Stupidity. They all result in the same thing. No breath. No pulse. No emotion or pain. No thought. Despite the cause, death is exactly what it appears to be. Empty eyes and decayed, rotten flesh. It is absolute.

Except for me. For some reason, I didn’t just get to stop existing. I’ll admit it. I was bitter. Something went wrong. I’ll probably never know what it was. But I didn’t just…end. I should have. No mind was ever meant to be here.

I don’t even know where ‘here’ is. I’ve only been able to reason that I’m somewhere in between. This place isn’t empty, but nothing lives here. I’ve been wandering for a long time, which I find funny because I have no body to wander with and I’ve never felt like I’ve gone anywhere. And yet, I know I’ve traveled. Nowhere and everywhere. It all looks the same but feels different...All of which is, again, amusing since I neither see nor feel. At least, not in the sense you’re probably thinking.

It’s strange how entire worlds are built solely upon language. If there are no words to describe an event or object or place, not many have encountered it. If not many have encountered it, it becomes myth, legend, supernatural. It is placed into the category of ‘unexplainable’ and forgotten. The only vocabulary I have is the one I died with, which is another inaccurate word. I didn’t die, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. My vocabulary is…frustratingly insufficient. It’s almost as frustrating as existing when you shouldn’t. The rules are not supposed to break. Not all laws are meant to be broken. So, why did it this time? Why me?

I don’t know why I still ask questions. It’s not like answers are going to miraculously appear. Even if they did, it wouldn’t change anything. They wouldn’t send me back…or forward. I’m not even sure I’d want to. I’ve been through the fear and the guilt. I’ve pushed through the stubborn hope and the anger that follows. I’ve endured the loneliness. Since time is a construct of man, it doesn’t exist here. Again, vocabulary. I couldn’t tell you when I moved into acceptance…to apathy. Questions and answers are meaningless here, and yet, I can’t stop myself from asking, from seeking. I guess there is still some humanity left in me.

Questions only ever lead to discontent. Questions are asked because a being isn’t satisfied with the world it exists in. Something doesn’t fit and answers are supposed to make it better. But that isn’t the purpose of an answer. Answers do nothing more than provide information. Truth.Lies. The type of answer doesn’t matter, as long as it served its purpose. They don’t solve discontent. They add to it. If I’m still asking questions, I must not be as apathetic as I thought. It’s not for a lack of trying, though.

Perhaps my apparent discontent does not stem from being…more dead than the living and less dead than the dead. Perhaps because I was once human, I can’t accept an existence that is nothing more than that. I can’t have a purpose. I can’t grow. I can’t change. I can’t succeed or fail. I reside in a place filled with things that are nothing, things I cannot influence. It’s like…this place is filled with energy, but it’s all aimless. All of it is as intangible as me.

So, where does all of that leave me? I have been over all of this time and again. Logic has taken me down so many different paths, and they all lead me to that same question. How can I find contentment in an existence that was a mistake? How can I just…do nothing? How…why…where…Always questions…questions…questions…


_____________________


Catalina laid in bed, listening to words spoken by a voice that belonged to no one. Her bedroom was empty, as silent as the grave. The voice echoed in her mind and everything she had tried to shut it out had failed. It had been a long time since she found comfort in the little stuffed dog she loved when she was younger, but she clung to it now. She tried to understand what the voice was speaking of, but her young mind didn’t quite grasp the concepts.

She shivered. It wasn’t that she was afraid of the voice itself. It didn’t seem to want to harm her. It was just talking. Catalina was frightened because the voice that spoke wasn’t the voice she was supposed to be hearing. It wasn’t the voice she had called. What was supposed to be a comfort amplified her anxiety.

“I warned ya, girl. Now, ya be payin’ da price a trifflin’ wid magics ya don’ understand.”

Catalina jumped, a surprised yip escaping her lips. She sat straight up and saw an old woman leaning against the wall across from her. Her skin was so dark it melted into the shadows of the night. The lines of her face were hard, carved by years of hard won experience and wisdom. Catalina bit her bottom lip. She hadn’t heard the old woman come in. It wasn’t surprising. The old woman came and went as she pleased, however she pleased. Catalina could tell by her tone that she was disappointed. Her mouth went dry, and she began to feel the wet Louisiana heat. A fresh wave of fear washed over her.

“I’m sorry, Grandmother. I just…I just wanted to hear her…”

“Ya made youself a conduit, girl. Ya can’t pick out just one to hear. What ya done cannot be undone, ya understand?”

Ashamed, Catalina lowered her gaze and pressed the worn stuffed puppy to her chest. “No, Grandmother.”

The old woman pushed off the wall and made her way to Catalina’s bed. Her movements were slow, pained, and marked by the heavy thump of a cane. With the creaking of old bones, the woman sat on Catalina’s bed, still supporting herself on the knotted wooden pole. With the moonlight creeping through the bedroom windows, her eyes looked almost golden. Catalina hated the way they turned on her with disgust.

“There be no goin’ back for ya, girl. Never again will ya enjoy silence. It’s gonna get worse. It’ll grow an’ grow ‘till all ya can hear is da dead. Not all a dem will be as confused and harmless as da poor man ya been listenin’ to all night.”

The implied meaning drove cold fear even further into Catalina’s heart. “What do I do?”

“Ya learn to be less stupid, child. Ya first lesson is ya can’t believe everything ya hear, especially from da dead. Ya are a gateway now, girl…Dey will be comin’ for ya…by da thousands…Ya are death’s voice now. Ya fate is no longer ya own..”

The old woman rose from the bed and slowly left Catalina, shutting the bedroom door firmly behind her. Catalina sat for a long time. The voice had finally stopped talking, but her grandmother’s words haunted her. A tear slipped down her cheek, but soon sleep began to override her fear. She rested back against the bed and curled around the stuffed puppy. Her eyes slowly closed…

_________________________

Hello there, little girl. My name is Todd. Do you know I have a puppy that looks just like that?