Here's a snippet from a WIP I haven't touched in a couple years:
Back in the bedroom, I zip up the suitcase and place it next to the wardrobe, turn off the light, then clamber up onto the top bunk to settle for the night in my new blue sleeping bag. There is no way I’m getting under those miserable sheets so darned they are more off-white patches than original superhero fabric. At least she had fixed them. One kindness at least.
I lay curled up in the fetal position to fit on the child sized mattress. The smell of cleaners still lingers in the air, punctuated by the musty creaks of a settling house. Darkness settles over the room like a wet cloth. Damp and cloying. I’m breathing in shadows and exhaling nightmares.
Keep it together.
Nathan. Nathan.
My eyes snap open. Had I actually fallen asleep? Back to the wall, I look to the edge of the bed and see little fingers wrapped around the wood board. The dirty fingers of a child. One by one they let go, retracting back underneath.
Stomach cramped, hair on end and lungs spasming, I fight to control my ragged breathing. A dream! It was just a dream! There’s no one under the bed! No one on the first bunk, where I used to sleep, alone, afraid. Huddle away in the corner where the insulated walls meet to block out the screams from the master bedroom.
Muscle memory takes over. I roll over, face to the wall and squish myself in to the corner as much as my adult body will allow. The blue puffy sleeping bag engulfs me, hiding me from whatever is lurking. If there’s anything lurking. It was probably a dream. I’m the only one left with keys to get in. The cleaning crews had all returned their copies a week ago.
You asked for scary. I think the deliberate actions of the gangsters are more disturbing than the cliche psychopathic monster slasher, or the malevolent ghost. Remember the dentist chair scene from Marathon Man?
Here in Greenwich Village, Saint Luke's in the Fields was built before the Civil War on Hudson St. when it was fashionable to include a graveyard next to a church. Trinity Church and Saint Marks in the Bowery have retained their adjoining cemeteries - - but the burial vaults at Saint Luke's began to be emptied out, the remains transferred elsewhere. WHAT IF . . .? What if disturbing the dead caused spectral villainy? And what if those hauntings had been kept secret for fear of lowering real estate values? What if I wrote this freaky horror story, pretending it happened? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Listen: "Exploring the Hudson St. Hauntings" set on Christopher & Hudson ... ➡️ at the 11:15 mark 👻⛪️ https://youtu.be/YWrp50qWE3k?si=NHYdvZxl6RhPW-5n
Such creepy details... The grimy handprints on the bedsheets (and that final line) made me shudder! Love a spooky story based on real life (or potentially real) events.
Thanks very much, Jo. Since Edgar Allan Poe once lived right here in Greenwich Village, I am wondering if there might be a "WHAT IF?" story angle that has not been done to death.
Doing my best to follow Jo's instructions with my scary snippets so I'm not just dropping links, but (hopefully) sparking a conversation. So, this flash was published in "Crow & Cross Keys", & writing it fused a few obsessions: Eastern European & Scandavanian folklore (and its eerie, but also poetic aesthetic), the practice of ekphrasis (writing from art), and the idea of nature as sentient (also often explored by obsession #1).
It wasn't published with the painting that seeded the story ("Mother Mushroom with her Children" by Polish artist Edward Okun), an encouraging affirmation to me that the lit mag's editor felt the story could stand alone.
"The Dream of Fly Agaric" ended up being my first attempt at a genre sometimes called "body horror" as well as being fabulist in style. Additionally, I set myself the challenge of evoking body horror within a poetic aesthetic - not easy! More comments follow after the link.
The idea of the markings on the birch trees being "eyes" was the first "eerie image" impression that leapt out of the painting, and so I explored that metaphor, making the birch trees weep, watch, and bear witness to events.
My first challenge was to evoke the forest's silence, yet also to make it active and sentient through almost-invisible activity (ants, roots, seeping sap) and absences (creatures that had just left the "scene", wind that had ceased). The next, to give each element of nature a sense of "character", even backstory, as in Mother Mushroom's case.
Next, to evoke the interconnectedness of the forest, so the human character who enters in the 2nd part is perceived by the reader as an intruder. My research on toadstools (fly agaric) revealed they have a symbiotic relationship with birch trees, so I wanted to try and incorporate that idea.
Initially, I resisted the idea of the artist being completely possessed by the spores as "too freaky", something my inner censor loudly protested against attempting. In fact, my 1st published version of this story on The Ekphrastic Review's fortnightly challenge stops just short of this transformation from man to mushroom. So, with writing horror, I think this can often be a challenge - to bypass one's inner censor. Do others find that? Yet when you do, that's where (I believe) your originality and power hides as a writer of horror. We have to find the courage to open the door to our own inner "bloody chamber", and write what we see there. I found that this was also the case for key scenes and plot points for my WIP novella, a dark reimagined fairytale. Those scenes have been the hardest, but also often the most rewarding to write - yet I'm stilll resisting a few of them!
Oof this is so gloriously terrifying. Crow & Cross Keys is one of my favourite spooky mags, too. Those birch eyes are such a great anchoring image for the theme of witnessing/watching/observing in this piece — and that static/frozen sense of helplessness of the mourning mother, and the artist as he's seeing himself transform... Wonderfully done.
Thanks so much for the positive feedback, Jo. I really appreciate you taking the time to read it. :) It's funny - once I said "go away" to my inner censor, I revelled in writing the "scary transmogrifaction" scene. Hoping I can find my way back to the page soon ...
I've been struggling with severe creative burnout - haven't written a thing for almost a year now. In the past, I've sometimes found re-visiting an older piece of writing & revising it can be a small step to creative recovery. This post coaxed me to pick something & revise it. I often use italics for flash, and couldn't seem to do it here, so I've used [it.] in a few places where italics are important for sense. Also, double dashes for em dashes.
This may not be the scariest thing I ever wrote, but this flash fictionalizes one of the scariest dreams I've ever had, spending a night in a creepy house with my then-boyfriend. It was important the dream be foreshadowed / framed by the eerie atmosphere in the house, & I tried to create that (often disorienting, sometimes frightening) sense of rapidly-layered images and sensations of a dream with attention to pace, repetition of key words, and sentence fragments that create / reveal the images like a fractured mosaic. The double meaning of the dream has haunted me ever since. And have you ever noticed how double meanings, (like doppelgangers, or evil twins) are one of those themes that often crop up in scary stories? Here goes:
"The Unwelcome Guest":
You were always pulling me into situations that didn't feel right. Like eating burnt toast, or hearing a song sung off-tune.
I disliked that house before I'd even walked through the door. Its squat box shape sat -- lurked [it.] -- in the bare yard. It looked like a house that wanted trees to hide in , but there were none in that meager garden. The roof -- completely flat, like some giant monster had trodden on it.
You were house-sitting for a landscaping client for two months. Conveniently (you said) just around the corner from my place. You'd even moved in your bed from storage. Strange to think of all the sex we'd had, but I'd never actually been in your bed.
Inside, even with the lights on, everything looked murky, like the rooms were immersed in dirty dishwater. It smelled like regret and cheap air freshener. I tried not to look at the photographs on the mantlepiece. You told me it was owned by an older woman -- Jewish, and a recent widow. The old lady had gone away to visit her daughter.
We get wine and pizza. I leave more than I eat, the light draining my appetite. You joke about the woman coming back and catching us having sex. I can't laugh -- the roof feels too close to my head.
You pull me down into the bed against your skin -- the only place that ever feels right, and I try to forget the feeling that the windows are watching us. Try to lose myself in your touch. Wondering yet again, if this could be a new beginning . A song sung in tune.
---
Hours later, I wake to use the bathroom. As I cross the hallway, I feel someone move -- fast -- through the hall behind me, creating cold air at my neck. The living-room light is on again. Strange. You're lying on your side on the floor, fully dressed, turned away from me.
"Brendan, are you alright?" My voice, too loud in the still, still room.
And you turn to face me -- but it's not your face. Not your face on your body, but the face of an old woman, wrinkles caked over with thick white make-up -- lips painted a garish red. The red bleeding into all the lines around her mouth. Lines like chasms full of red liquid. Why is her mouth so close? She'll swallow me into that open mouth -- mouth like the bottom of a grave, black inside, like absence, and she says:
"He doesn't want you here ..."
I feel the presence behind me again, moving like a furious wind. Her mouth cracks open into a smile as she stares right through me to whoever -- whatever[it] -- is behind me. And somehow I know it's her husband. I feel the force of his orthodox, patriarchal judgement on me, on the sex we had in their bedroom.
And I'm wide awake in the glaring dark of that room in that house that doesn't want me there and I fall out of bed, grabbing at my clothes, scrambling for the light switch - which I can't -- fucking -- find. You wake. I'm incoherent, stumbling to locate my shoes with only the light from my phone.
"There's something not right about this house, Brendan. They - he - doesn't want me here. I have to go."
Wearily, you try to calm me, in that half-hearted way of yours, like it's an effort to respond to my distress.
"Stay, or come. I don't care. I'm out of here."
I run through the streets in the chill of 4am silence. Heart pounding in my eardrums, the danger of the dream still biting at my heels.
Up the stairs to my apartment, I fumble for the key, fall inside, slam the door shut behind me. Safe. I'm safe.
I'm still frightened as I try to fall asleep. You don't arrive to comfort me.
When I walk down that street now, I cross to the opposite side of the road. Stay on the safe side[it.], I tell myself. Some cliches exist for a reason.
---
If I'd really heeded the danger of the dream -- I'd have left you then, instead of later. Left you behind in those places that never felt right. My dream of love with you, curdled over time. Into a nightmare of control. Into careless absences. Into casual threats of violence. Dangers of a different dream.
Maybe that's what the old woman was trying to tell me.
He doesn't want you here. [it]
---
Thanks for reading, & if anyone wants to reply with their exploration of nightmares, haunted houses, or "eerie doubles" of any kind, I'd love to read it! Revising it, I can see I've also got another double in there - the weird replica of my boyfriend / not-my-boyfriend in the living room.
So glad this prompted you to do some redrafting. And this draws out so many effective scary elements that play on our 'spidey senses'...
You create a real sense of feeling trapped (literally and figuratively): "I can't laugh -- the roof feels too close to my head." And cleverly develop that idea into the relationship, too. Sometimes our dreams really are trying to warn us, right?!
Juliet looked around the room. A light illuminated a dark corner. A man was just visible--tied to a chair, naked except for his undershorts.
"Romeo!" Juliet exclaimed.
He had been severely beaten. His face and torso were covered with cuts and bruises.
Mr. Big spoke for the first time: "Juliet. I believe that you know this miscreant. He has stolen some valuable items from my establishment, the Green Dahlia, and he refuses to tell me where they are."
Tony walked over to Romeo and pulled his head up by his hair.
Romeo looked across the room, recognised Juliet. His distress was evident on his face. Now he was in even deeper trouble.
"Perhaps, young lady", said Mr. Big, "you could persuade him to be more cooperative."
"But I know nothing about what he might have done."
"I know, but he may be more concerned about saving your skin that about saving his own."
Romeo moaned, realising what Mr. Big had in mind.
"Tony take her away and prepare her. When Romeo sees what we have in mind for her, he might think twice about his obstinacy."
Juliet realised that her sense of foreboding had been well-founded. She fainted.
Excerpt 2
From my “novel”. Spies Tony and Sarah find themselves in a bit of a pickle.
“Tie him to the chair. Tight.” He looked at Tony: “I think that I will have a little chat with your wife.”
"She is not my wife. That’s just her legend. So don't think that you can get at me that way. Besides, she knows even less than I do. She’s just along for the ride to pad out my cover."
"We will see. We will see.”
“I thought that you weren’t going to molest her. Military discipline and all that.”
“I’m not going to molest her. I’m just going to ask her a few questions. Firmly. I will speak loudly. The walls of these thatch huts are very thin. You should be able to hear everything.”
Tony bit his tongue as his arms were tied behind him and then to the chair and his legs were pulled back and tied to the back legs of the chair. He cursed inwardly. He was not going to be able to undo those knots. He just hoped that the Captain would not be too hard to satisfy.
#
Sarah was sitting alone in the hut, naked, when the Captain entered followed by two of his men.
“Stand up.”
“I will do know such thing.” She turned her back on him. “I want my clothes back. This is an outrage.”
“So write a letter to The Times. This isn't a Sunday school picnic. You two came here looking for me; not the other way round. Now you have to convince me that you are genuine. And you’re not doing a very good job of it. So stand up."
Reluctantly Sarah stood up, covering herself in the classic manner.
“May I please have my clothes?”
“No. Now who sent you here?”
“We already told you that. A group of British businessmen...”
“Who? What are their names? What are the companies?”
“I don't know. We dealt with a middleman. The businessmen did not want their identities known.”
“I don't believe you. I’ll ask you one more time. Who sent you?”
“I told you. I don't know. I can't tell you what I don't know.”
“I still don't believe you.” He turned to his men. “Put her over the table.”
The two men grabbed Sarah and hauled her over to the small table.
She was too stunned to struggle as her ankles were tied to the table legs and the men took an arm each and bent her over the table top.
“Last chance. Who sent you?”
Sarah shook her head in despair. “I don't know,” she repeated in a small voice.
Excerpt 3
Francesca woke slowly as if coming round from an anaesthetic. Disoriented. It took her a while to appreciate her surroundings. She was not in her pretty pink bedroom. The room was small and dark, lit only by a nightlight, furnished only with a metal bed and a thin mattress. There was no window. Water dripped gently into a corner next to the bed. She tried to get up only to discover that she was handcuffed to the bed frame. She could not get to the door. Disorientation began to morph into panic.
There's definitely something universally terrifying about this kind of power imbalance, and how it can play out in different ways through manipulation, threats, blackmail etc. All the tools of a truly scary villain.
No otherworldly monsters, just gangsters in 1949 here...
Eddie stepped up to Hernandez to take a closer look. "You work for Pasquale?"
Hernandez stared back, his dark brown eyes edgy, but he didn't say a thing.
Eddie snapped his fingers. "Jimmy, I'm gonna need your help to loosen his tongue."
Jimmy stepped in front of Hernandez and pulled a switchblade from his pocket. He thumbed the button and smiled as the blade leapt open with a clean snick. "Where do you want to start?"
"Anyplace." Eddie shrugged.
"He's the trigger man?" Leo asked Mandy.
"Yep." Mandy stepped back to give Jimmy room to work.
"Jimmy, take your time." Leo pulled out a chair and dusted it off with his handkerchief. "He's going to tell us everything."
Jimmy leaned over Hernandez like a barber and examined him as if he were looking for a good place to begin. "Let's start with the easy stuff." He pointed to a stain on Hernandez's shirt with the tip of the switchblade. "You take a potshot at my good friend Bob here?"
Hernandez looked at the blade and said nothing.
Jimmy touched the blade to his shirt and began tracing lines, the blade leaving only an indentation in the cloth.
"I'm talkin' to you, and I want to know if you was the one who took a coupla shots at Bob." Jimmy’s wrist made the knife turn like a figure skater.
Hernandez watched the blade and said nothing.
"If you're deaf and dumb, you're a dead man." Jimmy cracked a smile and continued tracing lines, this time with more pressure. The fabric of Hernandez's shirt visibly creased under the blade, then it began to part under the blade. "Just move your head up and down to say yes."
Hernandez did nothing.
Murphy watched Jimmy with wide eyes as the switchblade sliced Hernandez's shirt open.
"Don't make me mad." Jimmy eyed Hernandez as he sliced a strip of cloth from the shirt and dropped it to the floor. The exposed skin showed little more than scratch marks. "I get mad, no tellin' what I'll do."
Jimmy traced the blade on a reverse course. This time it left a widening trail of blood as he sliced through skin. He cut a line across the man's chest from left to right as Hernandez watched, then he paused.
"He can hear, can't he?" Mandy asked Murphy.
Murphy nodded. "Sure."
"How about I carve my initials in your chest?" Jimmy sliced across Hernandez, this time on a diagonal. "Or just a Z like the Zorro movies?"
Hernandez moved his lips without making any noise as he watched blood soak into his shirt.
"Maybe that didn't hurt enough." Jimmy sliced again like he was portioning out a Thanksgiving turkey. The blade paused in its tack across Hernandez's chest to twitch under Jimmy's guiding fingers.
Hernandez struggled against the ropes holding him to his chair and sweat beaded on his forehead.
"Felt that, didn't you?" Jimmy chuckled and worked the blade into the man's flesh. "I already know I can make you dance, so how 'bout you talk instead?"
By now much of his shirt shined slick with blood under the single light, and this didn't look like fun any more. Slapping a man around to make him talk was one thing, but Jimmy's knifework was beginning to look like the kind of stuff the Nazis did. Hernandez struggled again against the ropes.
"Jimmy rested the tip of his knife on the center of Hernandez's chest. "You know I could cut a couple tendons here and fix you good. You'll never do another push-up for the rest of your life." He pulled the blade away and grabbed Hernandez by the chin. "I got a better idea." He flashed a smile over his shoulder at Eddie and Leo. "If you ain't gonna loosen them lips, then maybe you don't need 'em." He touched the blade to the man's face. "Hope you didn't have your heart set on growing a mustache." Jimmy's teeth gleamed sharp and white under the single lamp.
A groan rose from the bound man's throat.
Jimmy's eyes widened and he tipped the blade away. "You changing your mind about bein' a clam?" He waited a second or two, then touched the blade to Hernandez's upper lip. A drop of blood welled up in the skin as it sunk under the blade's pressure. "Better talk now or this lip's comin' off."
Johnny stepped behind Hernandez and clamped hands on his head. "Cut him."
Hernandez made a loud grunt through clenched teeth.
Jimmy held the knife motionless. "You say somethin'?"
"Sí." Hernandez's eyes locked on Jimmy's. He tried to speak without moving the lip under the blade.
Jimmy looked at the knife. "You want me to put this away?"
"Sí."
Jimmy smiled over his shoulder at Eddie and Leo again. "I think he wants to talk now."
Mandy leaned over the bound man. "You pulled the trigger in tonight's little stunt, right?"
"Right." Hernandez's voice sounded hoarse and strained.
"You gonna tell us the rest of the story, or is Jimmy gonna have to make you look like a Jack o'lantern?"
"I talk." Hernandez barely moved his jaw. From the sounds of his accent, he must have grown up east of Havana.
Mandy nodded at Johnny, and the big man let go. Jimmy pulled his knife away and stood straight.
"Who sent you?" Eddie asked. "And give me the straight dope. I know you weren't here running errands for Pasquale's rackets because he's dead."
"You and Murphy partners?" Leo asked.
"Yeah, partners." Hernandez spoke through his teeth, jaw and lips hardly moving.
"So who sent you here to my part of town?" Leo's eyes hardened. "Novak?"
"The shipper, Ryan, and his lawyer." Hernandez licked a spot of blood off his upper lip.
Leo glanced at me. "I'm going to tell Jimmy to get his knife out again. The cops rounded up Miller this afternoon."
"We got the job two weeks ago." Hernandez licked more blood off his lip.
"Jimmy." Leo kept his eyes on the prisoner.
Snick. "Where you want me to start this time?"
Hernandez's eyes cut toward Jimmy. "He pay us to follow him." He nodded at me. "Tell us to rough him up and scare him away. Keep him away. Two days ago they tell us to find him and kill him instead." He swallowed. "He been hanging around with a cop all the time, so we waited." Hernandez looked at me, then at Leo, waiting to see if that started any trouble.
Leo stood up, his eyes flashing. "I'm insulted. My friend's with a cop and you back off, but when he's with me you got a license to turn my neighborhood into a shooting gallery?" He glared at Hernandez, his face flushed hot and offended.
Mandy punched Hernandez. "Shitbird."
"Don't you know who I am?" Leo stepped up to Hernandez and put his hands on his hips. "You got any idea how stupid you are?" He looked at both Hernandez and Murphy like a couple of cockroaches and he was trying to decide which one to step on first.
"I didn' see you." Hernandez's voice came out as a mutter.
Leo shot his arm out and grabbed the bound man's chin, fingers digging into his cheeks, puckering his lips. "You see me now?" He stared a couple of holes into Hernandez's face.
"Yes."
"Who you working for now?" Mandy leveled his eyes on Hernandez. "When you ain't killing people for Ryan and his lawyer."
Hernandez shifted his eyes to Mandy and said nothing.
"You'd look pretty good hanging from a meat hook." Mandy smiled like a junkyard dog ready to rip a chunk out of somebody.
Leo shook the man's head by the jaw. "What are you doing in my part of town?"
Hernandez stayed silent.
Mandy shook his head and turned around. He nodded at Jimmy and poked a thumb at Hernandez. "Scalp him."
Jimmy took off his jacket and began rolling up his sleeves. "He's gonna bleed like hell."
"Too bad." Eddie lit a cigarette and shook the match out. He squinted through smoke at Hernandez. "Johnny, give him a hand."
Leo stepped back and crossed his arms as Johnny shed his coat and rolled his sleeves up.
Jimmy stepped behind Hernandez, holding his switchblade the same way a conductor holds a baton. "The headlock, please."
Johnny chuckled and wrapped his arm around Hernandez's neck, clamping his head in place.
Jimmy grabbed a fistful of hair at Hernandez's forehead and ran the knife across his hairline as he pulled. He worked the blade under the flap of skin he made as he pulled and cut. "If I knew I'd be doing this, I'd'a brought a fillet knife."
Blood ran into Hernandez's eyes and he began to scream. I turned my head away.
Eddie leaned to get a better look. "Slow down or he'll pass out."
"Sure." Jimmy had worked loose an inch deep flap.
I watched the floor instead of Jimmy and his switchblade. All I wanted to know was what they had to do with murdering Javier and Miss Dahlia. Jimmy and Johnny's antics reminded me too much of the horror stories we heard about what the Nazis did to POWs. Walking out and going home looked like a good idea, except I needed more information, and Murphy looked like the guy who had it.
Eddie raised his hand. "Whoa, his lights are out."
Hernandez had fainted, body gone slack against the ropes. Jimmy stopped cutting and pushed the loose flap of scalp back. He had cut close to four inches and his hands shined slick and grimy with blood.
"Take a cigarette break." Mandy tossed Jimmy a deck of Chesterfields.
Leo paced in front of the unconscious Hernandez. "He's got to break sooner or later."
Jimmy took a light from Eddie and dropped the pack on the table. The cellophane wrapper bore bright red fingerprints. "We still got Murphy."
Ayyyyyyy yeesh this made me grimace as I read it. I think what's most effective is the little details like: "Leo pulled out a chair and dusted it off with his handkerchief" and the way he "considers him like a barber". And the contrast between the kind of casualness of the torturers compared to what they're enacting. Ack.
Here's a snippet from a WIP I haven't touched in a couple years:
Back in the bedroom, I zip up the suitcase and place it next to the wardrobe, turn off the light, then clamber up onto the top bunk to settle for the night in my new blue sleeping bag. There is no way I’m getting under those miserable sheets so darned they are more off-white patches than original superhero fabric. At least she had fixed them. One kindness at least.
I lay curled up in the fetal position to fit on the child sized mattress. The smell of cleaners still lingers in the air, punctuated by the musty creaks of a settling house. Darkness settles over the room like a wet cloth. Damp and cloying. I’m breathing in shadows and exhaling nightmares.
Keep it together.
Nathan. Nathan.
My eyes snap open. Had I actually fallen asleep? Back to the wall, I look to the edge of the bed and see little fingers wrapped around the wood board. The dirty fingers of a child. One by one they let go, retracting back underneath.
Stomach cramped, hair on end and lungs spasming, I fight to control my ragged breathing. A dream! It was just a dream! There’s no one under the bed! No one on the first bunk, where I used to sleep, alone, afraid. Huddle away in the corner where the insulated walls meet to block out the screams from the master bedroom.
Muscle memory takes over. I roll over, face to the wall and squish myself in to the corner as much as my adult body will allow. The blue puffy sleeping bag engulfs me, hiding me from whatever is lurking. If there’s anything lurking. It was probably a dream. I’m the only one left with keys to get in. The cleaning crews had all returned their copies a week ago.
You asked for scary. I think the deliberate actions of the gangsters are more disturbing than the cliche psychopathic monster slasher, or the malevolent ghost. Remember the dentist chair scene from Marathon Man?
Here in Greenwich Village, Saint Luke's in the Fields was built before the Civil War on Hudson St. when it was fashionable to include a graveyard next to a church. Trinity Church and Saint Marks in the Bowery have retained their adjoining cemeteries - - but the burial vaults at Saint Luke's began to be emptied out, the remains transferred elsewhere. WHAT IF . . .? What if disturbing the dead caused spectral villainy? And what if those hauntings had been kept secret for fear of lowering real estate values? What if I wrote this freaky horror story, pretending it happened? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Listen: "Exploring the Hudson St. Hauntings" set on Christopher & Hudson ... ➡️ at the 11:15 mark 👻⛪️ https://youtu.be/YWrp50qWE3k?si=NHYdvZxl6RhPW-5n
Such creepy details... The grimy handprints on the bedsheets (and that final line) made me shudder! Love a spooky story based on real life (or potentially real) events.
Thanks very much, Jo. Since Edgar Allan Poe once lived right here in Greenwich Village, I am wondering if there might be a "WHAT IF?" story angle that has not been done to death.
Doing my best to follow Jo's instructions with my scary snippets so I'm not just dropping links, but (hopefully) sparking a conversation. So, this flash was published in "Crow & Cross Keys", & writing it fused a few obsessions: Eastern European & Scandavanian folklore (and its eerie, but also poetic aesthetic), the practice of ekphrasis (writing from art), and the idea of nature as sentient (also often explored by obsession #1).
It wasn't published with the painting that seeded the story ("Mother Mushroom with her Children" by Polish artist Edward Okun), an encouraging affirmation to me that the lit mag's editor felt the story could stand alone.
"The Dream of Fly Agaric" ended up being my first attempt at a genre sometimes called "body horror" as well as being fabulist in style. Additionally, I set myself the challenge of evoking body horror within a poetic aesthetic - not easy! More comments follow after the link.
https://crowcrosskeys.com/2024/04/03/the-dream-of-fly-agaric-melissa-coffey/
The idea of the markings on the birch trees being "eyes" was the first "eerie image" impression that leapt out of the painting, and so I explored that metaphor, making the birch trees weep, watch, and bear witness to events.
My first challenge was to evoke the forest's silence, yet also to make it active and sentient through almost-invisible activity (ants, roots, seeping sap) and absences (creatures that had just left the "scene", wind that had ceased). The next, to give each element of nature a sense of "character", even backstory, as in Mother Mushroom's case.
Next, to evoke the interconnectedness of the forest, so the human character who enters in the 2nd part is perceived by the reader as an intruder. My research on toadstools (fly agaric) revealed they have a symbiotic relationship with birch trees, so I wanted to try and incorporate that idea.
Initially, I resisted the idea of the artist being completely possessed by the spores as "too freaky", something my inner censor loudly protested against attempting. In fact, my 1st published version of this story on The Ekphrastic Review's fortnightly challenge stops just short of this transformation from man to mushroom. So, with writing horror, I think this can often be a challenge - to bypass one's inner censor. Do others find that? Yet when you do, that's where (I believe) your originality and power hides as a writer of horror. We have to find the courage to open the door to our own inner "bloody chamber", and write what we see there. I found that this was also the case for key scenes and plot points for my WIP novella, a dark reimagined fairytale. Those scenes have been the hardest, but also often the most rewarding to write - yet I'm stilll resisting a few of them!
Oof this is so gloriously terrifying. Crow & Cross Keys is one of my favourite spooky mags, too. Those birch eyes are such a great anchoring image for the theme of witnessing/watching/observing in this piece — and that static/frozen sense of helplessness of the mourning mother, and the artist as he's seeing himself transform... Wonderfully done.
Thanks so much for the positive feedback, Jo. I really appreciate you taking the time to read it. :) It's funny - once I said "go away" to my inner censor, I revelled in writing the "scary transmogrifaction" scene. Hoping I can find my way back to the page soon ...
I was the 13th person to like this post, Jo. Is that of spooky significance, do you think? I better look out for black cats crossing my path today. :D
I think YOU'RE the scary one people should be looking out for lol
Bah-ha-ha! (Slow turn to camera with my best jack-o-lantern grin)
I've been struggling with severe creative burnout - haven't written a thing for almost a year now. In the past, I've sometimes found re-visiting an older piece of writing & revising it can be a small step to creative recovery. This post coaxed me to pick something & revise it. I often use italics for flash, and couldn't seem to do it here, so I've used [it.] in a few places where italics are important for sense. Also, double dashes for em dashes.
This may not be the scariest thing I ever wrote, but this flash fictionalizes one of the scariest dreams I've ever had, spending a night in a creepy house with my then-boyfriend. It was important the dream be foreshadowed / framed by the eerie atmosphere in the house, & I tried to create that (often disorienting, sometimes frightening) sense of rapidly-layered images and sensations of a dream with attention to pace, repetition of key words, and sentence fragments that create / reveal the images like a fractured mosaic. The double meaning of the dream has haunted me ever since. And have you ever noticed how double meanings, (like doppelgangers, or evil twins) are one of those themes that often crop up in scary stories? Here goes:
"The Unwelcome Guest":
You were always pulling me into situations that didn't feel right. Like eating burnt toast, or hearing a song sung off-tune.
I disliked that house before I'd even walked through the door. Its squat box shape sat -- lurked [it.] -- in the bare yard. It looked like a house that wanted trees to hide in , but there were none in that meager garden. The roof -- completely flat, like some giant monster had trodden on it.
You were house-sitting for a landscaping client for two months. Conveniently (you said) just around the corner from my place. You'd even moved in your bed from storage. Strange to think of all the sex we'd had, but I'd never actually been in your bed.
Inside, even with the lights on, everything looked murky, like the rooms were immersed in dirty dishwater. It smelled like regret and cheap air freshener. I tried not to look at the photographs on the mantlepiece. You told me it was owned by an older woman -- Jewish, and a recent widow. The old lady had gone away to visit her daughter.
We get wine and pizza. I leave more than I eat, the light draining my appetite. You joke about the woman coming back and catching us having sex. I can't laugh -- the roof feels too close to my head.
You pull me down into the bed against your skin -- the only place that ever feels right, and I try to forget the feeling that the windows are watching us. Try to lose myself in your touch. Wondering yet again, if this could be a new beginning . A song sung in tune.
---
Hours later, I wake to use the bathroom. As I cross the hallway, I feel someone move -- fast -- through the hall behind me, creating cold air at my neck. The living-room light is on again. Strange. You're lying on your side on the floor, fully dressed, turned away from me.
"Brendan, are you alright?" My voice, too loud in the still, still room.
And you turn to face me -- but it's not your face. Not your face on your body, but the face of an old woman, wrinkles caked over with thick white make-up -- lips painted a garish red. The red bleeding into all the lines around her mouth. Lines like chasms full of red liquid. Why is her mouth so close? She'll swallow me into that open mouth -- mouth like the bottom of a grave, black inside, like absence, and she says:
"He doesn't want you here ..."
I feel the presence behind me again, moving like a furious wind. Her mouth cracks open into a smile as she stares right through me to whoever -- whatever[it] -- is behind me. And somehow I know it's her husband. I feel the force of his orthodox, patriarchal judgement on me, on the sex we had in their bedroom.
And I'm wide awake in the glaring dark of that room in that house that doesn't want me there and I fall out of bed, grabbing at my clothes, scrambling for the light switch - which I can't -- fucking -- find. You wake. I'm incoherent, stumbling to locate my shoes with only the light from my phone.
"There's something not right about this house, Brendan. They - he - doesn't want me here. I have to go."
Wearily, you try to calm me, in that half-hearted way of yours, like it's an effort to respond to my distress.
"Stay, or come. I don't care. I'm out of here."
I run through the streets in the chill of 4am silence. Heart pounding in my eardrums, the danger of the dream still biting at my heels.
Up the stairs to my apartment, I fumble for the key, fall inside, slam the door shut behind me. Safe. I'm safe.
I'm still frightened as I try to fall asleep. You don't arrive to comfort me.
When I walk down that street now, I cross to the opposite side of the road. Stay on the safe side[it.], I tell myself. Some cliches exist for a reason.
---
If I'd really heeded the danger of the dream -- I'd have left you then, instead of later. Left you behind in those places that never felt right. My dream of love with you, curdled over time. Into a nightmare of control. Into careless absences. Into casual threats of violence. Dangers of a different dream.
Maybe that's what the old woman was trying to tell me.
He doesn't want you here. [it]
---
Thanks for reading, & if anyone wants to reply with their exploration of nightmares, haunted houses, or "eerie doubles" of any kind, I'd love to read it! Revising it, I can see I've also got another double in there - the weird replica of my boyfriend / not-my-boyfriend in the living room.
So glad this prompted you to do some redrafting. And this draws out so many effective scary elements that play on our 'spidey senses'...
You create a real sense of feeling trapped (literally and figuratively): "I can't laugh -- the roof feels too close to my head." And cleverly develop that idea into the relationship, too. Sometimes our dreams really are trying to warn us, right?!
Three Scary Excerpts by Peter Leslie Watson
Excerpt 1
Juliet looked around the room. A light illuminated a dark corner. A man was just visible--tied to a chair, naked except for his undershorts.
"Romeo!" Juliet exclaimed.
He had been severely beaten. His face and torso were covered with cuts and bruises.
Mr. Big spoke for the first time: "Juliet. I believe that you know this miscreant. He has stolen some valuable items from my establishment, the Green Dahlia, and he refuses to tell me where they are."
Tony walked over to Romeo and pulled his head up by his hair.
Romeo looked across the room, recognised Juliet. His distress was evident on his face. Now he was in even deeper trouble.
"Perhaps, young lady", said Mr. Big, "you could persuade him to be more cooperative."
"But I know nothing about what he might have done."
"I know, but he may be more concerned about saving your skin that about saving his own."
Romeo moaned, realising what Mr. Big had in mind.
"Tony take her away and prepare her. When Romeo sees what we have in mind for her, he might think twice about his obstinacy."
Juliet realised that her sense of foreboding had been well-founded. She fainted.
Excerpt 2
From my “novel”. Spies Tony and Sarah find themselves in a bit of a pickle.
“Tie him to the chair. Tight.” He looked at Tony: “I think that I will have a little chat with your wife.”
"She is not my wife. That’s just her legend. So don't think that you can get at me that way. Besides, she knows even less than I do. She’s just along for the ride to pad out my cover."
"We will see. We will see.”
“I thought that you weren’t going to molest her. Military discipline and all that.”
“I’m not going to molest her. I’m just going to ask her a few questions. Firmly. I will speak loudly. The walls of these thatch huts are very thin. You should be able to hear everything.”
Tony bit his tongue as his arms were tied behind him and then to the chair and his legs were pulled back and tied to the back legs of the chair. He cursed inwardly. He was not going to be able to undo those knots. He just hoped that the Captain would not be too hard to satisfy.
#
Sarah was sitting alone in the hut, naked, when the Captain entered followed by two of his men.
“Stand up.”
“I will do know such thing.” She turned her back on him. “I want my clothes back. This is an outrage.”
“So write a letter to The Times. This isn't a Sunday school picnic. You two came here looking for me; not the other way round. Now you have to convince me that you are genuine. And you’re not doing a very good job of it. So stand up."
Reluctantly Sarah stood up, covering herself in the classic manner.
“May I please have my clothes?”
“No. Now who sent you here?”
“We already told you that. A group of British businessmen...”
“Who? What are their names? What are the companies?”
“I don't know. We dealt with a middleman. The businessmen did not want their identities known.”
“I don't believe you. I’ll ask you one more time. Who sent you?”
“I told you. I don't know. I can't tell you what I don't know.”
“I still don't believe you.” He turned to his men. “Put her over the table.”
The two men grabbed Sarah and hauled her over to the small table.
She was too stunned to struggle as her ankles were tied to the table legs and the men took an arm each and bent her over the table top.
“Last chance. Who sent you?”
Sarah shook her head in despair. “I don't know,” she repeated in a small voice.
Excerpt 3
Francesca woke slowly as if coming round from an anaesthetic. Disoriented. It took her a while to appreciate her surroundings. She was not in her pretty pink bedroom. The room was small and dark, lit only by a nightlight, furnished only with a metal bed and a thin mattress. There was no window. Water dripped gently into a corner next to the bed. She tried to get up only to discover that she was handcuffed to the bed frame. She could not get to the door. Disorientation began to morph into panic.
There's definitely something universally terrifying about this kind of power imbalance, and how it can play out in different ways through manipulation, threats, blackmail etc. All the tools of a truly scary villain.
Thanks!
Peter
No otherworldly monsters, just gangsters in 1949 here...
Eddie stepped up to Hernandez to take a closer look. "You work for Pasquale?"
Hernandez stared back, his dark brown eyes edgy, but he didn't say a thing.
Eddie snapped his fingers. "Jimmy, I'm gonna need your help to loosen his tongue."
Jimmy stepped in front of Hernandez and pulled a switchblade from his pocket. He thumbed the button and smiled as the blade leapt open with a clean snick. "Where do you want to start?"
"Anyplace." Eddie shrugged.
"He's the trigger man?" Leo asked Mandy.
"Yep." Mandy stepped back to give Jimmy room to work.
"Jimmy, take your time." Leo pulled out a chair and dusted it off with his handkerchief. "He's going to tell us everything."
Jimmy leaned over Hernandez like a barber and examined him as if he were looking for a good place to begin. "Let's start with the easy stuff." He pointed to a stain on Hernandez's shirt with the tip of the switchblade. "You take a potshot at my good friend Bob here?"
Hernandez looked at the blade and said nothing.
Jimmy touched the blade to his shirt and began tracing lines, the blade leaving only an indentation in the cloth.
"I'm talkin' to you, and I want to know if you was the one who took a coupla shots at Bob." Jimmy’s wrist made the knife turn like a figure skater.
Hernandez watched the blade and said nothing.
"If you're deaf and dumb, you're a dead man." Jimmy cracked a smile and continued tracing lines, this time with more pressure. The fabric of Hernandez's shirt visibly creased under the blade, then it began to part under the blade. "Just move your head up and down to say yes."
Hernandez did nothing.
Murphy watched Jimmy with wide eyes as the switchblade sliced Hernandez's shirt open.
"Don't make me mad." Jimmy eyed Hernandez as he sliced a strip of cloth from the shirt and dropped it to the floor. The exposed skin showed little more than scratch marks. "I get mad, no tellin' what I'll do."
Jimmy traced the blade on a reverse course. This time it left a widening trail of blood as he sliced through skin. He cut a line across the man's chest from left to right as Hernandez watched, then he paused.
"He can hear, can't he?" Mandy asked Murphy.
Murphy nodded. "Sure."
"How about I carve my initials in your chest?" Jimmy sliced across Hernandez, this time on a diagonal. "Or just a Z like the Zorro movies?"
Hernandez moved his lips without making any noise as he watched blood soak into his shirt.
"Maybe that didn't hurt enough." Jimmy sliced again like he was portioning out a Thanksgiving turkey. The blade paused in its tack across Hernandez's chest to twitch under Jimmy's guiding fingers.
Hernandez struggled against the ropes holding him to his chair and sweat beaded on his forehead.
"Felt that, didn't you?" Jimmy chuckled and worked the blade into the man's flesh. "I already know I can make you dance, so how 'bout you talk instead?"
By now much of his shirt shined slick with blood under the single light, and this didn't look like fun any more. Slapping a man around to make him talk was one thing, but Jimmy's knifework was beginning to look like the kind of stuff the Nazis did. Hernandez struggled again against the ropes.
"Jimmy rested the tip of his knife on the center of Hernandez's chest. "You know I could cut a couple tendons here and fix you good. You'll never do another push-up for the rest of your life." He pulled the blade away and grabbed Hernandez by the chin. "I got a better idea." He flashed a smile over his shoulder at Eddie and Leo. "If you ain't gonna loosen them lips, then maybe you don't need 'em." He touched the blade to the man's face. "Hope you didn't have your heart set on growing a mustache." Jimmy's teeth gleamed sharp and white under the single lamp.
A groan rose from the bound man's throat.
Jimmy's eyes widened and he tipped the blade away. "You changing your mind about bein' a clam?" He waited a second or two, then touched the blade to Hernandez's upper lip. A drop of blood welled up in the skin as it sunk under the blade's pressure. "Better talk now or this lip's comin' off."
Johnny stepped behind Hernandez and clamped hands on his head. "Cut him."
Hernandez made a loud grunt through clenched teeth.
Jimmy held the knife motionless. "You say somethin'?"
"Sí." Hernandez's eyes locked on Jimmy's. He tried to speak without moving the lip under the blade.
Jimmy looked at the knife. "You want me to put this away?"
"Sí."
Jimmy smiled over his shoulder at Eddie and Leo again. "I think he wants to talk now."
Mandy leaned over the bound man. "You pulled the trigger in tonight's little stunt, right?"
"Right." Hernandez's voice sounded hoarse and strained.
"You gonna tell us the rest of the story, or is Jimmy gonna have to make you look like a Jack o'lantern?"
"I talk." Hernandez barely moved his jaw. From the sounds of his accent, he must have grown up east of Havana.
Mandy nodded at Johnny, and the big man let go. Jimmy pulled his knife away and stood straight.
"Who sent you?" Eddie asked. "And give me the straight dope. I know you weren't here running errands for Pasquale's rackets because he's dead."
"You and Murphy partners?" Leo asked.
"Yeah, partners." Hernandez spoke through his teeth, jaw and lips hardly moving.
"So who sent you here to my part of town?" Leo's eyes hardened. "Novak?"
"The shipper, Ryan, and his lawyer." Hernandez licked a spot of blood off his upper lip.
Leo glanced at me. "I'm going to tell Jimmy to get his knife out again. The cops rounded up Miller this afternoon."
"We got the job two weeks ago." Hernandez licked more blood off his lip.
"Jimmy." Leo kept his eyes on the prisoner.
Snick. "Where you want me to start this time?"
Hernandez's eyes cut toward Jimmy. "He pay us to follow him." He nodded at me. "Tell us to rough him up and scare him away. Keep him away. Two days ago they tell us to find him and kill him instead." He swallowed. "He been hanging around with a cop all the time, so we waited." Hernandez looked at me, then at Leo, waiting to see if that started any trouble.
Leo stood up, his eyes flashing. "I'm insulted. My friend's with a cop and you back off, but when he's with me you got a license to turn my neighborhood into a shooting gallery?" He glared at Hernandez, his face flushed hot and offended.
Mandy punched Hernandez. "Shitbird."
"Don't you know who I am?" Leo stepped up to Hernandez and put his hands on his hips. "You got any idea how stupid you are?" He looked at both Hernandez and Murphy like a couple of cockroaches and he was trying to decide which one to step on first.
"I didn' see you." Hernandez's voice came out as a mutter.
Leo shot his arm out and grabbed the bound man's chin, fingers digging into his cheeks, puckering his lips. "You see me now?" He stared a couple of holes into Hernandez's face.
"Yes."
"Who you working for now?" Mandy leveled his eyes on Hernandez. "When you ain't killing people for Ryan and his lawyer."
Hernandez shifted his eyes to Mandy and said nothing.
"You'd look pretty good hanging from a meat hook." Mandy smiled like a junkyard dog ready to rip a chunk out of somebody.
Leo shook the man's head by the jaw. "What are you doing in my part of town?"
Hernandez stayed silent.
Mandy shook his head and turned around. He nodded at Jimmy and poked a thumb at Hernandez. "Scalp him."
Jimmy took off his jacket and began rolling up his sleeves. "He's gonna bleed like hell."
"Too bad." Eddie lit a cigarette and shook the match out. He squinted through smoke at Hernandez. "Johnny, give him a hand."
Leo stepped back and crossed his arms as Johnny shed his coat and rolled his sleeves up.
Jimmy stepped behind Hernandez, holding his switchblade the same way a conductor holds a baton. "The headlock, please."
Johnny chuckled and wrapped his arm around Hernandez's neck, clamping his head in place.
Jimmy grabbed a fistful of hair at Hernandez's forehead and ran the knife across his hairline as he pulled. He worked the blade under the flap of skin he made as he pulled and cut. "If I knew I'd be doing this, I'd'a brought a fillet knife."
Blood ran into Hernandez's eyes and he began to scream. I turned my head away.
Eddie leaned to get a better look. "Slow down or he'll pass out."
"Sure." Jimmy had worked loose an inch deep flap.
I watched the floor instead of Jimmy and his switchblade. All I wanted to know was what they had to do with murdering Javier and Miss Dahlia. Jimmy and Johnny's antics reminded me too much of the horror stories we heard about what the Nazis did to POWs. Walking out and going home looked like a good idea, except I needed more information, and Murphy looked like the guy who had it.
Eddie raised his hand. "Whoa, his lights are out."
Hernandez had fainted, body gone slack against the ropes. Jimmy stopped cutting and pushed the loose flap of scalp back. He had cut close to four inches and his hands shined slick and grimy with blood.
"Take a cigarette break." Mandy tossed Jimmy a deck of Chesterfields.
Leo paced in front of the unconscious Hernandez. "He's got to break sooner or later."
Jimmy took a light from Eddie and dropped the pack on the table. The cellophane wrapper bore bright red fingerprints. "We still got Murphy."
Ayyyyyyy yeesh this made me grimace as I read it. I think what's most effective is the little details like: "Leo pulled out a chair and dusted it off with his handkerchief" and the way he "considers him like a barber". And the contrast between the kind of casualness of the torturers compared to what they're enacting. Ack.