The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Safe as Houses 
by Elaine Pascale 

The mini-houses bloomed with the hint of psychosis as fertilization. One would pop up, fully formed, yet substantially smaller than a human home. It would stake its territory in a designated yard, surveilling those sharing its plot. It knew what went on inside the main house—seeing without eyes, hearing without ears, knowing in the most primitive way of knowing.

The mini-houses, like the families inside the main houses, would start off sturdy enough. Over time, the mini-houses would lose shingles, or some shutters, mirroring the lack of stability of the family it watched. Each piece of debris equaled an ounce of sanity lost.  A house on the verge of collapse depicted complete toxicity radiating from the family within—no matter how impeccable their home appeared to bystanders on the street.

Passersby could not know what truly happened behind closed doors. Nor could they know how the mini-houses pulled the strings of sadness like demented puppet masters.

Once intel was collected, the hairy, tentacled creatures would crawl from the mini-houses, slithering across the yards and into the main homes. They preferred access via pet doors, but they could find their way through locked doors and past alarm systems.

Inside the main house, they would squirm up the sleeping homeowners’ noses and wriggle into their ear canals. The people would wake with migraines and blame it on pollen or too much caffeine or a lack of caffeine or excessive screentime.

Then, the voices would start.

The hairy, tentacled creatures were masters of language. Their stakeouts taught them how to speak to the homeowners and just what verbiage to use. The creatures were experts at pushing buttons, savants at launching triggering phrases.

The creatures made the homeowners believe the words were coming from their own brains. The homeowners convinced themselves they were the ones concocting devious plans.

The voices brought the homeowners to the brink, to the point of no return. After listening to the voices, the homeowners reasoned there was no other way. They accepted there was no hope.

The news trucks would arrive and the reporters would interview bystanders, asking if they had any indication that something so horrible would happen in their neighborhood.

“I never would have suspected,” someone would answer.

“We had no clue,” another would concur.

“It’s hard to imagine,” the neighbors would say in unison. And no one could imagine…

Until a mini-house bloomed in their yard.

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Fiction © Copyright Elaine Pascale
Image Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose

More from Elaine Pascale:

The Solstice

Love is risky in the days of the Solstice.

Love, happiness, and hope are only available to those wearing red bands and taking Solidox pills. Solidox ends the pain of aging and returns the consumers to youthful health. Solidox tastes like the greatest comfort food imaginable, or even goodnight kisses. It also causes a hunger that can only be satisfied by human flesh.

When a hurricane decimates the only bridge on the island, the trapped residents must find ways to survive against those wearing red bands who have begun hunting them. There are rules attached to the hunt, but the rules favor the hunters. Amongst the debris and garbage that remain after the storm, a virus spreads, causing long-term memory loss leading to a war of attrition between the Red Bands and their prey.

Participants of the Solstice must use ingenuity to avoid being killed; nonparticipants are executed on sight. With the rules being arbitrary yet inflexible, is there a way to survive the Solstice?

Available on Amazon!