mirymom

[mirymom]

Day 24093 This is my house. I won’t allow anyone to harm it. There should have been no more intruders after the last one. I do not want these people here. They will leave-

Day 24095 They are siblings. They are loud. Always singing and talking and stomping. As if they must be louder than anything else.

Day 24106 There are bolts on the door now. Bolts and hideous, gaudy new locks. How dare they-

Night 24112 I was going to fill the night with terrors. But he woke up screaming before I began. She came running from the other room. They sleep right across the hall from each other, with the doors on a crack. …they are young, are they not, to be living on their own. Was I ever so young?

Day 24114 She has fixed the squeak in the door at the top of the stairs. It never squeaked when I still lived.

Day 24121 The noise of the doorbell scares them. But they get so many deliveries. It is a good bell. It has worked all these years- I can see one of the men coming now with his packages, trudging up to the door. …perhaps if I knock before he is here, they will come and look before he can sound the bell.

Day 24129 He is planting flowers in boxes on my windowsills. I always wished I could have some flowers.

Night 24137 She is afraid of the dark. I could see it in her eyes when she got out of bed. …I lit the lamps for her.

Day 24142 They have moved the couch to the sun spot a little to the right of the window. That is where I used to have my armchair. It is the only sensible place for it.

Day 24163 Sometimes the noises of the world are suddenly too much for him. He winces and tries not to sway his head. This is my house. …I can keep it calm and quiet for a while.

Day 24178 She just got a phone call and now they are both laughing. Laughter is a good sound, isn’t it. They said this house has been good luck…

Night 24205 They are singing in our kitchen. He found my cookbook in the gap at the back of the kitchen cabinet and now they are trying to cook. They wanted to start with the soufflé. They don’t even know how to make béchamel! I turned the page to the casserole instead.

Day 24236 This is my house. These are my boarders. I won’t allow anyone to harm them.

[mirymom]

It’s easy to get distracted by the teeth. In a face with no eyes or nose, the mouth naturally takes the focus and her mouth housed long, sharp teeth, stained gray either from rot or from what she had consumed. 

But I couldn’t help but notice the other face--the painted wooden mask that rested at the center of her chest, over the spot where one might find a heart, if creatures of this kind had hearts. Streaks of the soft wood beneath could be seen where the paint had chipped and faded, giving the impression that something beneath struggled to find its way forward, past the banal open-mouthed smile and empty eyes tilted as if caught laughing.

I drew near and the creature hissed in surprise, dipping to one side to evade me. I was fast, though, as well as cagey. I blocked her path and closed the gap between us in a single step. Ignoring the teeth snapping at me, I reached out a hand and tugged the mask free. In an instant, the creature had disappeared, leaving only a diaphanous black shawl drifting slowly to the ground. 

I caught it in my hand, noting only then the transformation. My broad, strong fingers had paled and lengthened, the knuckle bones protruding through papery flesh. I tried to drop the mask, but found it had affixed itself to my chest. At last I understood the notation in the diary: Take the face for your own and she will be free. 

It had been a trade. My life for hers. I would have wept if I still had eyes.

Nightmare Fuel Project 2020

This project is rooted in several autumns nearly a decade ago where, for anywhere from several nights to several weeks, I could not sleep without having nightmares. One year, anticipating the come time in which my own brain would torture me so that I would wake constantly or lapse into insomnia rather than suffering my own mind, I conceived of trying to get the yuck out by writing some horror every day and posting it on GooglePlus. People dug the idea, so I started sharing prompt images for folks to join in.

Thus, the Nightmare Fuel Project was born.

The Rules:

1. Nobody is required to participate at all, let alone every day, except myself. There is no failing or falling behind.

2. I post a prompt image every morning (or sometimes late the night before).

3. I will reblog the prompt and post what I have written each evening.

3a. When possible I will reblog other people’s doings as well. If you don’t want me to reblog your response tag it “no reblog” or simular, please.

4. My focus is largely on horror and the prompts are geared toward that - but whatever the image inspires in you to write, write it. The constraints I apply to myself are for myself. Feel free to follow them if you wish.

5. This is the biggie that I tend to fall down on....which is posting what I’ve written every day. It doesn’t need to be good. It doesn’t need to be complete. It just needs to exists. Outside of my head. So I can sleep.

[mirymom]

My take: 

It used to be our house. I know it isn’t ours anymore, but somehow I can’t leave. She’s gone, of course. She left long before I did. I lingered in the home we’d made together, haunting it even before I died.

The new people remind me of us, when we were young and happy together, when the future stretched out in front of us like an endless shore I believed we would walk hand in hand. She’s small, but fierce, just like she was. He is perhaps not so much like me, but I recognize the possessive glint in his eye when he gazes on her beauty. 

I wonder if someday he and I will haunt this house together, he and I, both pining for what once was and unwilling to leap into the void and see what might be. It would be nice to have company.

Nightmare Fuel Project 2020

This project is rooted in several autumns nearly a decade ago where, for anywhere from several nights to several weeks, I could not sleep without having nightmares. One year, anticipating the come time in which my own brain would torture me so that I would wake constantly or lapse into insomnia rather than suffering my own mind, I conceived of trying to get the yuck out by writing some horror every day and posting it on GooglePlus. People dug the idea, so I started sharing prompt images for folks to join in.

Thus, the Nightmare Fuel Project was born.

The Rules:

1. Nobody is required to participate at all, let alone every day, except myself. There is no failing or falling behind.

2. I post a prompt image every morning (or sometimes late the night before).

3. I will reblog the prompt and post what I have written each evening.

3a. When possible I will reblog other people’s doings as well. If you don’t want me to reblog your response tag it “no reblog” or simular, please.

4. My focus is largely on horror and the prompts are geared toward that - but whatever the image inspires in you to write, write it. The constraints I apply to myself are for myself. Feel free to follow them if you wish.

5. This is the biggie that I tend to fall down on....which is posting what I’ve written every day. It doesn’t need to be good. It doesn’t need to be complete. It just needs to exists. Outside of my head. So I can sleep.

[mirymom]

The man always seemed to be standing in his doorway when Shawn came home, always in some state of undress, shirt unbuttoned, wearing boxers but no pants, or shirtless in jeans. Never any shoes, his hairy toes always visible.

The man never left his doorway to approach Shawn. He seldom said anything at all, usually simply bobbing his chin in greeting. But his mere presence unnerved the younger man. 

Shawn kept to himself. It was safer that way. “Keep your head down, boy” had been the mantra of his childhood and it had served him well enough, keeping him from attracting attention--a blessing and a curse all at once. Lonely but safe. 

Why his neighbor took an interest, Shawn couldn’t have said. In fact, he couldn’t even say for sure that the man was interested in him. It could be a mere coincidence of schedule. The man could be waiting for someone else or just feeling claustrophobic in his tiny apartment and wanting to expand his world at least as far as the hallway. 

Most of the time, Shawn didn’t acknowledge the man at all. Just walked up to his own door and jiggled the key, then entered his apartment as quickly as he could bolting the locks behind him. 

Tuesday night, Shawn got home at the usual time and his neighbor was not standing in the doorway. The door was left slightly ajar, something Shawn would never have done in the city, but what his neighbor did was his own business. 

Wednesday morning, the door was still ajar. Wednesday evening, the same. Shawn ignored it. “None of your business,” he told himself. “Keep your head down.” 

By Thursday morning, he was feeling a little concerned, in spite of himself. He knocked on the building manager’s door. The man answered, still rubbing his eyes, and nodded when Shawn stammered through an explanation of why he had knocked, then closed the door without saying anything. Shawn didn’t know if the man was going to check on things or not. He went to work. 

Thursday night, nothing had changed--the door still ajar, no neighbor in the doorway. Shawn had taken the precaution of reading the name on his neighbor’s mail slot. Raymond. He’d noted, at the same time, that the mailbox was jam-packed, like the mail hadn’t been picked up in a few days. 

Still telling himself it was none of his business, Shawn tapped on the door with the handle of his umbrella. “Raymond?” he called out. “Are you all right?” No one answered, so he tapped again, a little harder. The tapping pushed the door open a little wider. “Raymond?” Nothing. 

Taking a deep breath, Shawn gave the door a gentle kick with his foot, so that it opened the rest of the way. Beyond he could see a small apartment, not that different from his own. A sofa facing the windows that looked across a narrow alley into the next building, probably a kitchenette off one direction and a bedroom off the other. 

On the sofa, Shawn could make out the outline of a person, sitting in the dark, facing the TV which was turned too low for Shawn to hear. “Sorry, man,” Shawn said and pulled the door closed, going back to his own apartment. The man was probably just depressed. He told himself again it was not his business. 

The next day, he met the building manager on the stairs and asked if he had heard from Raymond since they had last talked. “Raymond?” The man looked puzzled.

“Yes. Raymond. The man who lives across the hall from me?”

“You must be mistaken. No one has lived there since last fall.” The man leaned in conspiratorially. “The last one offed himself, you know. Left a note about the loneliness.”

Disturbed, Shawn walked up the stairs and opened his apartment door. He stood there a long moment, looking inside. Some small sound made him turn around. The door across the hall was open, street lights shining onto an entirely empty floor. No sofa. No TV. Empty. 

This time after he secured the lock behind him, Shawn picked up the phone. Somehow, he didn’t want to be alone anymore.

Nightmare Fuel Project, Day 27

Write something horrible. And then share it.

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Image source: "October 2, 2013" by osseous is licensed under CC BY 2.0

[mirymom]

All his life, Jimmy had trouble with his right arm. In childhood, he’d complain of numbness or shooting pains or tingling. His mother ran him back and forth to the pediatrician and various specialists for years, but no one could find a physical cause for his pain, and eventually they stopped trying. They said it was just in his mind and left it at that. 

Jimmy adapted. He trained himself to write and operate tools with his left hand with reasonable dexterity. But his phantom pains never went away. 

The pain wasn’t the only ghost haunting Jimmy’s life. There were also the dreams. Strangely fully realized scenes with the quality of memories, but of times long before his birth. 

He toiled on a farm, with a bright, glaring sun making sweat roll into his eyes. He wiped it away with a kerchief. 

A woman stood in the doorway of a small house, her hand pressed over her mouth, sadness bending her. Himself on a dusty road, a rucksack on his back. He turned and walked away, knowing he’d never see his mother again. 

Those were the good ones. The bad ones had more blood, bayonets, and gunfire. he woke from them gasping. 

Over the years, he’d picked out enough details to figure out that his dreams were Civil War era. It became a sort of hobby, reading books and taking trips to visit sites. He never told anyone where his interest began. 

Then one winter, his travels took him to Shiloh National Military Park. He had a weird feeling of deja vu at every turn. The park was nearly deserted at the unpopular time of year, and Jimmy took shelter in the museum proper, hoping to defrost his fingers and toes before taking the rest of the walking tour. His arm ached as it had not in years, bone deep, a horrible hollow feeling. He held it cradled against his chest, rubbing the elbow. 

He hadn’t yet explored the exhibit, so, holding his sore arm against his belly, he wandered the small museum, peering at the displayed weaponry, uniforms, and letters. At the back of the hall, was a photo exhibit. Something pulled at Jimmy, making him ignore three entire rows of glass cases and stampede straight for the frames hanging on the back wall. There were a few portraits of famous men of the era, mostly prints of photographs he’d seen elsewhere or in books. But further across the row were portraits of regular foot soldiers from both sides. Again, Jimmy felt himself drawn to skip ahead, like there was something special at the end that he couldn’t wait to see. It didn’t make any sense, since he had no idea what was exhibited here, but the tug was compelling and he obeyed. 

A few steps later, Jimmy stood in front of a portrait of a young man dressed in his simple blue uniform, no rank or medals to display. He looked straight into the camera with quiet dignity, or maybe just trying to hold still for the photographer. The man’s arm was wrapped, strapped to his own belly in just the position Jimmy now held. 

A plaque beneath read, “Union soldier. Broken arm with shrapnel.” An explanatory sentence or two offered the tidbit that many soldiers lived with embedded shrapnel in their bodies the rest of their days, which could cause pain, numbness, or tingling. 

A chill settled in Jimmy’s gut. He took a step backwards, standing as far away from the painting as he could before he lifted his eyes to look into the photographed face. Part of him knew what he was going to see, but he still gasped when his suspicions were verified. 

Jimmy stood looking, impossibly, into his own face, dead some hundred or so years before he’d even been born. 

Nightmare Fuel, Day 19

Write something inspired by this image, and reblog with your result.

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Image source: "Emergency Sling Demonstration (AMM 721) National Museum of Health and Medicine" by medicalmuseum is licensed under CC BY 2.0

[mirymom]

Jean was still holding the bat when she reappeared. She stood there for a long moment, a fierce jawline disguising her quaking knees and wildly fluttering heart. She didn’t expect to win the fight, but damned if she would let them take her down without taking damage. 

Then, suddenly, she was . . .here. 

Letting the bat slip to her side, she turned to take in the unfamiliar city street. A light changed and she scrambled for the curb, clinging to a brick edifice while she caught her breath. 

She raised a hand to her cheek. It didn’t hurt that badly yet, but it would--Brad hadn’t pulled any punches when he punched her. It was quite the contradiction--he was mad because she turned out to be a girl, even though she was dressed like a boy, but that didn’t make him treat her like a girl. Unless treating someone like a girl meant beating them bloody. 

She’d managed to get out from under him, snag the baseball bat and get enough distance to get firmly on her feet. She’d screamed inside her mind, something not quite coherent about going home, and then she’d landed here, wherever here was. 

She wasn’t even sure what city she was in. She whipped her head around wildly, looking for anything in the least familiar and finding nothing. She crouched down, yanking her short hair back from her forehead and trying to force deep breaths into her lungs. Panic wasn’t going to help. 

“Jean?”

A person stood in front of her, dressed in a natty suit with a fedora, hands shoved into deep pockets. Jean didn’t recognize them, but she didn’t know what else to do, so she stood, dipping her chin in acknowledgement. 

“It was today, then? It happened for the first time, right? After Brad jumped you near the rec center?”

Jean pushed back into the wall, freaked out. 

“It’s all right, Jean. I won’t hurt you. It would hardly make sense.” The person removed the hat, a lock of gray hair that still held onto a bit of sandy blonde fell over one eye. They smiled, and Jean gasped, recognizing the gap between the front teeth as the mirror of her own. The person replaced the hat and reached out a hand. “After all, why would I want to hurt myself? Come on. Let’s go home.”

Nightmare Fuel Project, Day 18

Write something inspired by this image and then reblog with what you have wrought.

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"Diane Arbus Photography" by thefoxling is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

[mirymom]

Odd. 

Hailey squatted to examine the box more closely. Oblong, metal, something shiny--maybe aluminum? Large enough to hold a child for a game of hide and seek. Strangest of all, it was bungee-corded to the wall, like it might hop away. 

Mrs. Moreno hadn’t said anything about this in her directions. Hailey had been hired to clean out the apartment, gathering the now-deceased tenant’s belongings and throwing them out or arranging for donation to appropriate charities. “Just use your own discretion, dear,” Mrs. Moreno had said. “I trust your judgment about what is and isn’t valuable. I just want to get it ready to rent to someone new.” 

Mostly, the man who’d lived and died here didn’t have anything all that interesting, but Hailey didn’t know what to make of the box. She gave it a shove with her hand, knocking it against the wall. Metal on metal echoed in the utility room, but didn’t offer a clue about what be inside or how heavy it would be. 

Hailey stood and took her phone in her hand, considering whether to bother her employer or just make a decision herself. As she stood there, thinking, the box suddenly lurched, seeming to fling itself sideways. It was caught by the bungee cord and pulled back against the wall. This time, Hailey thought she heard sloshing. Was there something liquid in there? That could make a mess, depending on what it was. Might even be hazardous. 

Cautiously, Hailey reached out a blue-gloved hand to touch the lid. She felt around the top for a latch or handle and didn’t find one. Kneeling again, she examined the edges and and saw they were welded shut. Whatever was in there, the dead man intended for it to remain forever. Still considering what to do, Hailey rapped her fingers on the lid, drumming them in a cycle. 

She turned to go back into the main rooms, seeing if there were anything else left she could handle while she made her decision. Just before she crossed the threshold, a rapping came--answering drumming finger noises, echoing those she’d just made. Hailey leaned against the doorframe, eyes now wide with surprise and fear. 

Mrs. Moreno said her former tenant had been a secretive fellow. “Reliable for his rent and no one complained, but no one knew him either. Such weird funeral requests, too. His will asked that he not be embalmed, but simply placed into the earth directly.” The woman had shaken her head. “The city wouldn’t allow that, of course. Not sanitary. We had him cremated.”

The box moved again. This time there was no question. The box itself originated the movement. Hailey hadn’t done anything to shift it. “What the hell?” A prayer she hadn’t recited since childhood sprang to her lips. Since when was she superstitious? 

The box shifted again, bouncing up on one side like a car driving on two wheels, then falling flat onto the floor again. That sloshing sound came again, like waves on a muddy shore. Squelching, sucking thumps came slowly, steadily. Hailey stood frozen, her eyes trained on the box. A pounding came and two small dents appeared in the outer casing, looking for all the world like someone had punched the box, from the inside. It happened two more times before she ran. 

Hailey didn’t stop running until she was in the street below, staring up at the apartment. An orange light filled the window. Fire? She dialed 911 on the phone still clasped in her hand, her gaze focused on the windows above, gave the address and claimed to have seen the orange light from the street below. The woman asked if anyone was inside. At the same moment a shadow crossed in front of the window, something dark and oily. A scaled hand rested on the window for a moment and Hailey felt certain that dark eyes watched her through the glass. “No,” she told the operator. “Nothing human, anyway.”

Nightmare Fuel Project, Day 20

Write something inspired by this image and then reblog with what you have wrought.

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Source Image by DiamondBack Truck Covers is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

[mirymom]

Dad halted in the seashell hunt. “Isn’t this where you built your sandcastle yesterday?” 

Daniel nodded. They both looked down at the sculpture of a woman’s head that seemed to be sprouting up from the sand. Dark holes for her eyes and a lipless jagged slash for her mouth, long hair of cascading sand falling back to the earth. 

“She kind of looks like Mom, doesn’t she?” Sadness choked his voice, like it always did when they talked about Mom.

Daniel forced himself to breathe. If he told it wouldn’t happen. 

“Weird, huh?” he started to run out into the waves, knowing his father would have to follow him. It worked. After an hour or so of splashing around, his dad had entire forgotten the sand woman and Daniel led them back to the beach house on a wide curve that missed the spot. 

Later in the day, they came back down to the water. Dad fell asleep with his book over his face and Daniel ran down the beach to check on his creation. It had grown. It had a torso and arms now, though the hands were still buried in the earth below. He could still peer down into her face. Details were appearing in the face: eyebrows, a better defined nose, but still the eyes were dark, lightless holes. 

By midnight, certainly. 

That night, Daniel pretended to fall asleep on the sofa. As he’d hoped, Dad put a blanket over him and left him there to rest. He listened to the surf and wind, hoping against hope to hear something else. 

Somewhere in his waiting, he slept. His dreams were strange, with voices calling to him from the sea. He woke with a start when the early rays of morning were streaking across the sky and through the windows, piercing. 

He started from the sofa and flung open the deck door. Sandy footprints glowed in the orange light, long, slender women’s feet coming across the sidewalk and up the stairs, but his sand-mother was nowhere to be seen. “Mama?” he called out softly. 

Daniel went back into the house, downstairs to his father’s room. He creaked open the door and shuddered a little against the morning air. Dad liked to sleep with the windows open at the beach, so his room was always cold in the morning. Daniel sat on the edge of the bed, trying to decide if he should wake his father or just crawl into bed with him. His hand on the bed plunged into sand, thick and damp. Sandcastle sand. 

Daniel jumped up and pulled aside the curtains to let in the light. His father was curled up in the bed, lying on on side, his arm curled as if holding something. The other side of the bed was covered in sand. 

Nightmare Fuel Project, Day 21

Write something inspired by this post and then reblog.

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Image source: "Treasure Island 2013" by merfam is licensed under CC BY 2.0

[mirymom]

Sunlight blinded me. I’d been so long in the dark that the light, rather than bringing relief, brought pain. I grunted and pushed against the soft sod wall. 

I knew I ought to call out, to ask for succor, for help, for mercy. But my tongue was thick in my parched mouth and could not form even the simplest words. 

I heard nothing, and eventually I dared to look toward the light again. It hurt less this time and if I shielded my eyes with my hands, I could make out the shape of a man, someone tall and lean, standing in the doorway. I crawled toward him, dragging my broken, misshapen leg behind me. Maybe there was yet hope. 

The man knelt, and there was pity in his eyes. He knelt and reached out his hands to me, placing one on each side of my matted hair. Looking into my eyes, he whispered, “I’ll learn that boy yet. We do not play with our food!” 

He snapped my neck. 

Nightmare Fuel Project, Day 22

Have you been having trouble sleeping? Find inspiration in this image and write out what plagues you.

Reblog with what you have written

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Image source: "Duch Hela :)" by Honza Soukup is licensed under CC BY 2.0

[mirymom]

There had always been rumors about the woods and what was in them. Julie paid them little mind. The woods were a solace from the horrors inside her house--the drunken fights, the belt, the pillows soaked in tears. 

The woods were better. They didn’t lie about what they were. If you respected their dangers, they let you be. 

The summer she was twelve, Julie began to stay out later and later into the night, crawling in through her bedroom window by moonlight, long after her parents had passed out. 

No one knows if she was there the night the house caught fire. Her body wasn’t found. People say they see her from time to time, wandering in the woods, or perched in the branches of a tree, still as an owl. now she’s a rumor about what’s in the woods.

Nightmare Fuel Project, Day 23

What little threadling fears wriggle in your brain to keep you awake at night? If any of them are caught by this image, write it out and reblog with your result.

[mirymom]

Out in the middle of the woods, where there has never even been a house, there is a slide where there has never been a playground. 

Though there is no wind, the metal creaks as if someone is climbing the stairs over and over again, the lonely circuit of a child playing alone. 

If you stand there too long, you will hear the sound of cloth sliding across aluminum. The bottom edge will bounce and footprints appear where there are no feet. 

And if you haven’t run away yet, a cold hand will tug on yours and a whisper rasp against your ear, asking if you want to play. They say, if you say yes, no one will ever see you again. 

Nightmare Fuel Project, Day 24

Write the story this picture sparks for you.

[mirymom]

I'm a few days behind on #nightmarefuel #horror #writingprompts Here's Number 17: The Inheritance:

Long estranged Aunt Maureen had been a jewelry woman, clearly. One with rather ostentatious, even gaudy taste. It went with the house, the car, and the white baby grand in the living room. The woman had enjoyed herself.

Trish, the surprise inheritor of the worldly belongings of an great-aunt she hadn’t known she had, pulled case after case of jewelry out of the walk-in closet all day, sorting them into things she might want, things she might sell, and things she might donate somewhere. The pile of items to donate was threatening to slide off the table. Jewelry doesn’t stack well. Lots of Aunt Maureen’s pieces were too showy for Trish’s comfort.

Diving back into the closet, Trish found an old fashioned train case upholstered in a reddish velveteen that made her think of dollhouse furniture. She rested it on a chair and scooped piles of broaches, bracelets, bangles, and baubles into it by the handful.

A pin jabbed into the palm of her hand, and Trish drew back to find one of the broaches sticking out of her hand--an elaborate viney piece, too bright to be real gold. “I hope that was clean,” she sighed, pulling out the offending trinket and pressing a tissue to the wound. The tissue reddened quickly so she hurried down the hall to the bathroom where she could clean it properly and maybe find a bandaid or something. She hoped she wasn’t going to get tetanus or anything.

Blood washed down the drain, along with soap and disinfectant she’d found in the medicine chest. Trish poked at the wound gingerly. It didn’t hurt much. Maybe that was a good sign. In fact, it had already stopped bleeding. She closed the medicine chest, then stopped cold. The face that looked back at her from the mirror wasn’t hers.

Well, obviously, it was hers. But it also wasn’t. Those were her eyes, her freckles, her rounded cheeks, but she had never worn her hair high and elaborate on her head. She looked glamorous, sophisticated, and so unlike herself. Trish raised a hand to pat the hairdo and felt only the smooth long locks she always wore. When she looked back at the mirror, the hallucination ended.

Unnerved, Trish returned to the piles of jewelry on the table, wondering if she should get in a jeweler to examine the pile and make sure she wasn’t overlooking valuable pieces. It might all seem ugly and old fashioned to her, but that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t worth something. Not that she’d be wanting for funds. Sorting through the woman’s belongings had Trish more and more curious about this aunt her mother had never told her about. There had to be a secret of some kind. People didn’t just have rich aunts who died and left them everything. Not people like her.

The pin that had stabbed her hand lay separate of the rest. Trish picked it up and held it under the light. Golden metalwork swirled around a stone--not a gem, but a stone, like a river rock. Something whitish-pink and sparkling, with blue veins running through it, lumpy and uneven in a pleasantly natural way. It reminded her of a brain. She ran a finger over the stone, which glowed warm against her skin. Odd.

Some hours later, Trish woke, lying in the giant canopied bed in her aunt’s room, the pin still clasped in her hand. She sat up with a gasp, and gasped again, catching sight of herself in the mirror above the bureau. In her reflection, she wore a silken nightgown, bejeweled like something out of old Hollywood. Looking down, she saw she wore her simple soft blue sweater and leggings, just like she had earlier. Another glance up still showed the gown in her reflection.

She stood and walked over to the mirror. Her walk seemed different. More of a sashay. She raised a hand to her neck and the broach in her hand scratched against her skin. She looked down at it, remembering.

Her aunt’s will had said that she was leaving all her wealth to her niece Trish, who needed to learn to get more fun out of life. Her mother didn’t teach her enough magic, but it never too late to learn. Trish grinned, and the glamorous richly dressed version of her in the mirror grinned back. She couldn’t wait to see what her aunt had really meant.

Nightmare Fuel Project, Day 17

Write something inspired by this image, possibly even with this object in it. Reblog with what you have written.

[mirymom]

Bryan edged open the door to Alisha’s bedroom. He didn’t mean any harm. Just wanted to sneak a peek at the place where the girl of his dreams slept. Maybe he could learn something about her. She was so mysterious. Her secretiveness both attracted him to her, and drove him crazy. 

When she’d asked him to come to dinner with her parents, he’d leaped at the chance. He was good with parents. They tended to like him, find him clean-cut and polite, just the kind of boy their daughter should spend time with. If he could make a good impression on Mom and Dad, maybe Alisha would trust him a little more, let him in a little. 

He’d brought flowers and Alisha’s mother had thanked him prettily, placing the white daisies in a blue glass vase which she left on the table during dinner. Alisha had hinted that her father was a sports fan, so Bryan had worked in a mention of his position on the basketball team and his summer work coaching younger boys at the YMCA. The man was hard to read, but he thought it was going well when he excused himself and was directed to the “second door on the left, just past Alisha’s room.” 

Alisha’s room was not how he had imagined it. He’d been in a few girls’ rooms and they were usually cluttered with photographs and stuffed animals, remembrances of childhood and gifts from girlfriends. He’d thought Alisha’s might have more books and more interesting art, but he hadn’t expected a darkly wooded room that felt as much like a monk’s cell as a bedroom. 

If not for the lush velvety bedding piled high on a four-poster bed, he might have thought he’d found a storage room instead of his girlfriend’s bedroom. He stepped inside so he could peek behind the door, but there was nothing else to see. 

As he turned to leave, a rug on the floor caught his eye. One of those three-D effect pieces, where it looked as though you could walk down the staircase imprinted on the surface. He hadn’t known she was into optical illusions. Maybe he could get her an Escher print for her birthday, the one with the stairs winding around themselves or the hands drawing each other. He liked those himself. 

The rug was really well done. It really looked like a set of stairs disappearing into darkness. He kicked at the white tassels on the rug, disconcerted. When they folded onto the surface, he’d have sworn they now hung downward, as if falling into the opening. Crazy. 

Laughing at himself, he knelt and reached a hand out to touch the rug. 

He stopped laughing when his hand dipped below the moment it should have made contact with the floor, flailing in cold air. He snatched back his hand. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a quarter, balanced it on his thumb and flicked it at the rug, sure it would land on the black yawning opening, dispelling the illusion. Instead, it fell through, making a pinging sound as it apparently bounced downstairs. He heard three distinct pings before the coin stopped moving. 

Bryan fell back onto his butt, huffing out a breath of surprise. This simply couldn’t be. Scooting forward, he stretched his legs out over the rug, then lowered them, fully expecting to make contact with the floor and feel like a complete idiot. Instead, his legs fell into empty space. He stretched down, and his sneakered foot made contact with a stairstep. It creaked under his foot. 

Downstairs, three sets of eyes looked up at the ceiling. Alisha looked down at her dinner plate. Her mother and father exchanged a knowing look, and her mother took her hand. “I’m sorry sweetie. Maybe the next one will have more sense.” 

Alisha wiped away the tear that had spilled down her cheek, then glared at the ceiling, where even now, her boyfriend was descending a staircase from which there was no return. “I thought he was smarter than that.” 

Nightmare Fuel Project, Day 1

Write a flash fiction inspired by this image.

It does not need to be perfect; it need only get whatever little spark of fear this inspires out of your head and onto the page.

Reblog with what you have written.

[mirymom]

Jimmy’s room wasn’t really a room, it was more like a partition. His mother had found some smoky plexiglass somewhere and used it to divide the space into two tiny bedrooms, each barely big enough for the bed and a narrow chest of drawers that was also the desk and the nightstand. It wasn’t much, but it gave him and his brother a little illusion of privacy, something that mattered more now that his brother was older. 

Jimmy had to pretend he didn’t hear a lot of things these days, especially if Mom wasn’t home. He’d never tell, of course. Brothers didn’t rat on each other, even if the girls were mean or the smoke smelled weird. 

But he missed the nights when Jack would turn a light on the plexiglass wall and make shadowpuppets for him or press his face against the wall smooshing it comically and getting them both in trouble for wild laughter. 

Laying on his bed drawing, Jimmy heard a tap on the glass. He jumped. He hadn’t thought Jack was home. He looked over his shoulder and saw a hand laying against the glass. He laid his own over it on his side of the wall and Jack spread his fingers wide so Jimmy could compare the size of his hand to his brother’s. Jack was almost ten years older than Jimmy, so catching up was taking a long time, but he felt sure his hand was bigger than it had been the last time. Pleased he knocked three times, their secret signal for happiness. Jack didn’t respond. 

The hand moved away and Jimmy went back to his drawing. The cat-man he had invented was having an undersea adventure this time and Jimmy was having a hard time getting the bubble helmet to look the way he wanted to. After a few tries, he threw the wadded up paper at the wall in frustration. 

There were two hands on the wall now, pressed flat enough that Jimmy could trace the lines in the palms. Jack was pushing hard, like he wanted to come through the plexiglass wall instead of climbing over his bed to get to the narrow hallway like a normal person. The makeshift wall scraped against the ceiling, groaning like a train car. “Stop it Jack! You’ll get in trouble if you break it.” 

The pressure released. Jack could be crazy sometimes, but Jimmy could usually get him to stop before it got too bad. Just as he was thinking about picking up his drawing again, the hands were back, clenched into fists this time and pounding against the wall, making it scrape and groan and shake ominously. Jimmy yelled “Stop it Jack! Stop it!” 

At the foot of his bed, the door opened. “Stop what, Squirt?” Jack leaned in, still wearing his fast-food tee shirt. 

“J-J-Jack?” Jimmy pointed at the wall behind him, wordlessly. The Other Jack still pounded the surface again and again and when Jimmy turned to look, he thought the fists might be bleeding. His mouth went completely dry. 

Suddenly, Jack had him by the armpits and was pulling him out of the trailer into the chilly night, barefoot. The two of them got into the car and Jack was backing away, driving before Jimmy had even put on the seatbelt. “Where are we going?” 

Jack didn’t answer him. He was on the phone, talking fast to someone, He said their address and said there was an intruder. He said he didn’t know where their mother was. He said other stuff, too, but Jimmy couldn’t understand--it was hard to hear over the squealing inside his head. Then, his brother was shaking him, telling him it was okay. 

There were blue lights flashing and a woman with a flashlight and a clipboard. There was yelling and a loud bang. An ambulance that took away someone. Jimmy wasn’t allowed to see. Jack held him too tightly, kept Jimmy’s head pressed against his chest. 

It was years before Jack got the full story of the night his mother died and he almost died, too. They told him his mother was a hero, that he was lucky. She’d trapped the man in Jack’s room with her. If Jack hadn’t gotten home when he did . . .

Nightmare Fuel, Day 3

Write something inspired by this image.

It does not need to be perfect, it need not be on the day the prompt posts to the project; it need only get whatever little spark of fear this inspires out of your head and onto the page.

Reblog with what you have made.

(Original image source unknown; earliest trackback is to several iPad wallpaper sites)

[mirymom]

“Well, it’s not good.” Jasper smacked his lips, like he did whenever something wasn’t sitting right with him. 

“What?” It was dangerous to ask, but he was probably going to tell me anyway. Might as well get it over with. 

“Found a coffin.” 

“A what?”

“A coffin, well, really more of a sarcophagus. Stone, you know? With like etchings on it.” 

I wouldn’t have guessed the man knew words like “sarcophagus,” but I kept my surprise to myself and followed him back to the golf cart so he could drive me out to the right part of the site. Five minutes bumpy ride through overgrown paths and low hanging branches and we got out. 

Sure enough, there it was, laying there on top of the dirt. A small gray-stone casket, inscribed with swirling symbols. Symbols I knew all too well. 

I looked around at the workmen. None of them seemed especially worked up. They leaned against the backhoe and sat in the wagon, nonchalantly smoking or poking at their telephones. Did any of them know how bad this really was? 

I turned to Jasper. “Who dug it up?”

Another man stood up, an older gent who leaned into a hoe for support when he eased onto his feet. “That’s be me.”

Jasper told me that “our Mr. Williams” had been running the digger when it hit something hard. He climbed down to investigate and them him and some of the younger fellas pulled it out. I asked Jasper to gather all the men that had a hand in removing the casket and keep them right here. Everyone else was to be sent home for the day. Then I hopped in the golf cart and drove like a wild man, hoping I could outrun tragedy. 

Dr. Leopold answered on the second ring, and within a few sentences understood what we’d run into. I gave him directions and hung up the phone, already making contingency plans for what to do next if Dr. Leopold was too late. 

The man arrived thirty minutes later, his half-untucked shirt and wildly flailing hair a testament to his hurry. I hoped he’d brought all the right materials. I radioed to let Jasper know we were coming, but couldn’t raise him. I drove as fast as the golf cart could go, hoping against hope that the interference was natural and nothing more sinister. 

“Are they all here?” I shouted as I jumped from the cart, barely waiting for it to stop. Dr. Leopold followed me a few steps behind, lugging an old-fashioned traveling case. 

Jasper shook his head sadly. “We haven’t found Tony yet.”

I turned to Freddy, the tall thin man standing beside Jasper. “Your brother was here today?”

“He was, sir. Best as I can figure, he’s gone off into the woods. We’ve called and called him, but so far he hasn’t answered.” 

I turned to Dr. Leopold. “Go,” he said. “I’ll start while you find him.” 

I ran back to the golf cart and pulled the shotgun out of the storage bin in the back. It was hot in my hand from riding around in the sealed metal box all day. The afternoon light was already beginning to fade, so I grabbed a flashlight, too. With one last look back at the men, now circled around the sarcophagus listening to Dr. Leopold’s direction, I took off. 

I was pretty sure I knew where our lost man would go. An earlier survey had found a small graveyard some half mile-west. The path was too overrun for the golf cart. I’d have to cover the ground on foot. I didn’t relish the prospect, but I also didn’t relish trying to put generations of the Winston family dead back to rest. I started to jog as fast as the path allowed. 

My suspicions were confirmed when I found a man standing in the center of the small family plot, his attention zeroed in on a particular grave. I raised my weapon, making sure it was ready to fire. “Tony? Is that you?”

The man raised his head, eyes glowing green and a thin white mist rising up around his feet. Nope. Not Tony anymore. Shit. 

“I’m sorry Tony,” I said, and fired. He took the shot to the chest and hit the ground like a sandbag. I grabbed the man’s ankles and started to pull. It was full dark by the time I made it back to the site of the desecration. I left Tony’s body at the edge of the woods, wanting to keep Freddy from knowing what had happened as long as possible. 

I answered the question Dr. Leopold didn’t ask aloud with a jerk of my shoulder and a shake of my head. The workmen had replaced the sarcophagus, doing their level best to make the site the same as it had been before the backhoe had been brought in. I sent Jasper to take a walk with Freddy and got two of the men to help haul poor Tony’s corpse to the site. 

More than one of them gasped, but no one hesitated to assist. They’d seen enough on this job to know. When Tony was laid to rest next to the sarcophagus, Dr. Leopold leaned in to paint the ritual symbols on his face and hands. We filled the hole and said our goodnights, the men spreading to the winds. 

Dr. Leopold and I climbed back into the golfcart, and I let my head rest against the steering wheel for a long moment before I turned the machine on and began to drive us back down the bouncing path to the office. Doc put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “It wasn’t on any of the maps, my boy. You couldn’t have known.” 

I nodded and he withdrew his hand. Both of us knew that didn’t make it any better. 

Nightmare Fuel, Day 4

Write something inspired by this image.

It does not need to be perfect, it need not be on the day the prompt posts to the project; it need only get whatever little spark of fear this inspires out of your head and onto the page.

Reblog with what you have made.

(Original image is public domain, found on Flickr)

[mirymom]

It was quiet on the elevated train mid morning. There were few daylighters left in the city now and any that remained steered well clear of Anubis. Even those who didn’t know his history--after all, this was not the land of his birth--understood instinctively the air of danger that surrounded him. He preferred solitude, which was just as well. 

All the Underworld gods walked this city now. Izanami had called them to her aid. The work was too much for any of them alone. When the dead wander lost and afraid, they are less picky about their mythologies. They will take aid from any hand that offers. Even one with the head of a jackal. 

Anubis had walked long during the night and now sat quietly, watching the sun spike against the windows and glitter on the oblong, rectangular buildings favored on this island. He found the rocking and clacking of the train restful. He had no need for sleep, but restful meditation was welcome. 

The hearts of the dead were heavy in this place. In his own homeland, they might have been judged unworthy, but Anubis understood tragedy and judged lost spirits on a sliding scale. No heart could remain feather light in the face of loss, deprivation, and fear like the daylighters who remained faced. His own heart ached as it never had before, watching them, wishing they could lay down their fight and sleep. 

But they would struggle until they lost, one by one. All he could do was point them to the next stop in the journey and hope they find peace there.

Nightmare Fuel Project, Day 2

Write a flash fiction inspired by this image.

It does not need to be perfect, it need not be on the day the prompt posts to the project; it need only get whatever little spark of fear this inspires out of your head and onto the page.

Reblog with what you have written.

(Image: Anubis in Hakone I, Joanna Karpowicz)

[mirymom]

Helen tried to tell him. For days, she’d been in a sweat. Even standing under a cold shower stream, she’d still felt hot enough to steam up the bathroom. 

She wasn’t ill--no other symptoms plagued her. No fever,  nausea, double vision, or dizziness. Just a constant personal summer radiating from within. She was miserable. 

Oddly, no one else seemed to be able to feel the heat. The doctor’s cool hand on her forehead had not blistered and flayed and the thermometer had not boiled over. The wallpaper didn’t peel from the bedroom walls. 

Eventually her husband decided it was all in her head. He stopped trying to help and left her to her own devices. “You’ll snap out of it eventually,” he offered, like it was that easy. His simple belief that time would cure all ills drove her crazy. He never engaged with anything. So hands-off he was practically inert. 

It was part of why she’d taken to hitting out of town bars and going home with strange men on the weekends. Sure, her lovers didn’t love her either, but at least she held their interest for the hours they spent together. 

Now, Helen lay naked atop the Egyptian sheet in the guest bedroom, ceiling fan paddling as fast it could manage above her. She grabbed ice cubes out of the bowl on the nightstand table and let them melt on her bare flesh, sucked on them to try to cool herself from within. Nothing made any difference. It went on for days. 

Then, one morning, she woke to the sound of the smoke alarm going off. She sat up in bed calling out to her husband. No one answered. It wasn’t until she sat up and put her feet on the floor that she noticed that the bed was on fire. Flames swept up the walls and licked against the windows. 

Helen knew she should have been frightened, but she saw only the beauty of the dancing light, so much like the strange glow in her latest lover’s eyes, the one with the strange accent and enticing cologne. What had his name been? 

She didn’t remember, but she remembered the passion of their lovemaking and the strange promise he had made when he dropped her back off at her car. “My heat will stay with you until the new moon.” 

She’d laughed, and he’d shaken his head at her sadly, but said no more. She’d thought it a failed attempt at poetry and hadn’t thought about it again. Until now. 

Helen picked up the thin white silken robe and slipped it around her shoulders. 

She walked down the stairs, and out the front door. Firemen ran around shouting directions at one another. She found her husband standing on the lawn, staring up at the flames. She walked up and slipped her hand into his, but her gaze went higher, to the sliver of a new moon winking above the house. 

She shivered, and her husband wrapped his arm her shoulders. “Cold?”

“Yes,” she said. “Finally.”

Nightmare Fuel - Day 5

Make some bit of fiction or art inspired by this picture. It need not be perfect - it need only winnow put whatever little spark of fear it alights, and put it on the page.

Reblog with what you have made.

(Image source: photo taken by OP)