The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Papa’s Chair by Rie Sheridan Rose
“No! Don’t sit there.”
“Why not?”
“That’s Papa’s chair. He wouldn’t like it.”
“I thought your dad was dead?”
“He is. He still wouldn’t like it.”
I stared at her a moment. She sounded insane.
“Where should I sit then? That table is way too flimsy for my weight.”
“Anywhere you want except Papa’s chair. You don’t want to make Papa angry.”
I looked around the single room of the cabin. Kind of a dump actually. There were holes in several of the walls. Odd holes. “What happened here?” I asked, putting a finger through one of the holes.
“A misunderstanding.”
“Some misunderstanding,” I breathed, unconsciously sinking down in “Papa’s” chair.
She whirled, a pistol in hand. “I told you not to sit in that chair!”
I jumped to my feet hands out. “Whoa! I got up.”
Breathing heavily, she leveled the pistol at me. “I told Papa sitting in that chair twenty-four seven was a bad idea. That he needed to care about me. That he needed to work for a living. That I couldn’t do it all on my own.” She cocked the hammer. “He laughed at me.”
I dropped back into the chair instinctively. “Wait a minute here!”
“Papa’s chair.” She pulled the trigger.
I felt the slug go straight through me…into Papa’s chair. And now, I knew where the holes came from…she’d become a better shot…
Poems exploring hell and damnation. Tales of sorrow, vengeance, betrayal, and redemption. Ghosts, ghouls, and demons stalk these pages. Don’t read in a lonely house…in a darkened room by a single candle…
…unless you like the touch of an icy finger up your spine.
The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Bolt from the Blue
by Elaine Pascale
They sat in a circle beneath the tree. Katelyn, who spoke often of her Celtic roots, had claimed the tree was magical and brimming with spirits.
“Remember when I got Jimmy to kiss me at the party?” Katelyn passed around the honey mead to the girls, intentionally neglecting Colleen who was seated at her left. “That was magic. I put a love spell on him.”
“He kissed three girls that night, and a dog,” Molly interjected.
“Three is an important number to Druids, and dogs represent loyalty. My ancestors were assuring Jimmy’s loyalty to me,” Katelyn announced proudly. “And that fox I conjured,” she continued.
“That was a dog,” Diana said, offering Colleen some of her mead, “It just happened to be walking by.”
“Dogs represent courage—”
“—You said loyalty.”
“They are both. Remember, Druids like threes.”
“Loyalty and courage are two.” Molly nudged Colleen who was chanting beneath her breath.
The sky was cloudless, but the girls’ minds were overcast with annoyance for Katelyn.
“These stones are enchanted,” Katelyn announced, distributing a handful to everyone but Colleen, yet somehow the girl’s hands were full of alabaster stones.
“Where did you get—?” Diana asked but Colleen placed a finger to her lips for silence.
“And remember the time I levitated, right in the middle of class?”
“You did not do that.”
“If I am lying, let me be struck by—”
Molly and Diana watched in horror as the lightning bolt ran down the bark of the tree and lit up the Celtic-descendant in front of them. Katelyn’s hair burned, her skin bubbled, and a black tar escaped her lips faster than the lies had.
Colleen remained calm and shuffled the stones in front of her. “I am Druid, too,” she said with a smile.
Jezzie Mitchell is in anguish; with her brother’s murder still on her mind, she’s noticed strange behavior among the girls in the residential treatment center where she works. Is there a connection between the contagion on Cape Cod and the deadly Bahamas vacation that changed her life?
Jezzie reaches out to former lover Lou Collins, a scholar who has chased proof of the lights for decades. Will he be able to solve the mystery of the lights in time?
Intensely competitive, reporter Bridgette Collins knows the lights are a way to secure fame in her career. And while it’ll put the final nail into the coffin of her ex-husband’s career, she vows to know the secrets of the lights. Even if it means unleashing a world-wide epidemic…
The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
The Unkept One
by Michelle Joy Gallagher
Brena stoked the fire again reflexively. She’d been the tender for as long as she could recall, taking the mantel from her mother at age 7 as was tradition. She scanned the horizon for movement, breathing shallowly. The shadows cast by the fire danced around her in an almost sentient way. She made herself very still and focused on the mountains to the east. There, in a small hollow, was a cave that was home to the Unkept One.
The Unkept one was a myth they’d all learned from the time they were very small, to ward them off of traveling past the dry riverbed. They’d been warned it was dangerous. The Unkept One had supernatural abilities, could sense movement, and harvested the blood of the young.
Even now as a grown woman the myth stuck with her, which is why her gaze kept landing on the place where the Unkept One was said to be.
She’d watched the place a thousand times, maybe more, first as a wary young girl collecting clay from the riverbed. Never had she seen any signs of life at all.
Warmed by the fire, she felt a bit silly, suddenly laughing at herself under her breath. When she leveled her sight at the cave again, a momentary flash reminded her of a distant campfire. One perhaps obscured by trees and rocks. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes hard. The smoke and the light from her own fire must be playing tricks on her. She stood from her post and walked around the fire, the light and heat now behind her, and focused on the cave again.
There was an unmistakable flickering, faint but definitely real, almost a pinpoint from this distance. It was then she made a choice. It was practically unheard of to leave the night watch post, but wasn’t she also duty bound to investigate what could be a threat? She gathered her sack and her flint knife and headed toward the distant light at a jog. If she kept a good pace she could get there quickly and get back before sunrise.
As she approached the dry riverbed, she found the same fear in the pit of her stomach that she had as a young girl, making her feel slightly dizzy. She’d never been beyond the far bank. The myth had done it’s job well.
In spite of the fear, she crossed that invisible line without much hesitation at all, focused instead on the strange flickering light, now much closer and more intense.
As she neared the opening to the cave, she could see the walls inside lit up with a supernatural light. It was a quality and color she had never seen. And shadows stirring. More than one being was inside, there had to be dozens. The Unkept One must be manifesting ghosts from the blood it had taken.
She tip-toed nearer and could hear voices in a language she couldn’t understand and strange intonations. It was almost musical. It drew her closer and closer. She finally peered inside the cave not knowing what to expect and witnessed a dozen or so men in stark white cloth hustling between great metal stones with strange lights embedded inside them. Suddenly she was grasped from behind by something strong that smelled acrid and sharp, and a long needle bit deeply into her neck. Her vision started to fade and she tried to cry out but couldn’t. She lamented not heeding the warnings about the Unkept One. Too late had she learned the dark magic it possessed was real.
Brena went limp in the Lab tech’s arms. He held her, slumped over, looking sorry. He cast a knowing look to another lab tech near the bank of computers and recording equipment at the far wall. This one spoke into a microphone that jutted out from all the buttons and blinking lights.
More from author Michelle Joy Gallagher: Disremembering Welcome to Blackhawk, Colorado. Blackhawk has always been strange. Natural disasters. Disappearances. Murders. High strangeness is a part of daily life. We can’t hope to explain it, but we can chronicle its past. Learn from it. Fear it. Blackhawk is an experimental fiction series set in a shared universe, written by a variety of talented authors. It is the brainchild of David M Brown (Plague Doctor, Modern Animals) and Carl D Smith (Moleb the Giant, Darkness Out of Carthage). Each story will contribute to an organic, evolving mythology as diverse as the voices behind its tales. For fans of True Detective, Lost Highway, Twilight Zone, and The Terror. This is Volume Two of the series and contains five stories by five different authors, each in tune with the specific strangeness Blackhawk has to offer. NOTE: For fans of Lake Lord Publishing’s prior horror titles, be warned that Blackhawk will contain content that is perhaps more disturbing and mature.
As a lifelong horror fan, I’m used to seeing all kinds of horrors, be it monsters, violence, or otherworldly. Even psychological horrors run amuck (one of my personal favorites). I also find horror therapeutic. After watching a horror film or reading a horror book or story, I feel a sense of release. When I went into recovery for postpartum depression and anxiety, I looked for horror films and fiction that identified with that pain. There weren’t many to be found.
Sure, there’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” But that was written in the late 1800s. I couldn’t find anything more modern. There are lots of horror films that feature mothers in peril or evil babies, or evil/murderous mothers, but that wasn’t quite was I was looking for either. I wanted something that identified the horrors of a new mother’s own mind and showed her triumphant. It seemed that there was an unspoken horror in the genre – and culture at large.
Postpartum depression is not widely talked about, despite being one of the most common birth complications. Recent studies show that between 15-20% of mothers will experience postpartum depression. If left untreated, the condition can worsen, leading to postpartum psychosis. This is, unfortunately, where most media about postpartum depression can be found: true crime. The effects of the illness can be devastating. Research has suggested that there is approximately a 5% suicide rate and a 4% infanticide rate associated with the illness.
As a young mother, I knew plenty of women around my age who had children. I was, seemingly, the only one who had these feelings. So, I set out to write down my story. I would embellish the more horrific moments, of course, but the heart of the story is my truth. The heart of the story is my experience with postpartum depression. We need truth in our fiction. I wanted to show how the best, most rewarding experience of your life can also be the most challenging. I wanted to show the very real, dark thoughts a mother can have. I wanted readers to experience how deeply depraved a mother’s brain can get. I also wanted to show the depths she can bring herself up from. I wanted to show that a mother’s love can conquer all.
We need to speak about these things; we need to break the stigma around them so women can have better access to help and resources.
I have more friends and acquaintances that are mothers than I can count. Yet only one of them was open with her struggles with postpartum depression. When I finished writing The Endless Hallway, I asked her to read the draft. She told me that she was making her husband read it because the story exemplified all the horrible things she felt – and how she rallied against them to stay alive for her family.
That’s all I really want for The Endless Hallway. I want the novella to be a light and a safe space for mothers who live in the darkness. I want mothers who have overcome their demons to see themselves truthfully represented in horror fiction. But most of all, I want the world at large to experience the very real horrors life has to offer.
If you or someone you know is struggling with postpartum depression, help is available. Go to postpartum.net or text HELP to 800-944-4773
The Endless Hallway, by Mary Parker
Molly has it all: a good job, a handsome husband, and a beautiful new baby. Her life is everything she once hoped it would be. But something sinister lurks within the walls of her tiny townhouse.
.
A strange voice echoes from the darkness as Molly rocks her infant to sleep. Lights that were left on suddenly turn off. In the middle of the night, a thin, pale arm reaches over the rails of the crib to grasp for the baby with fierce, jagged claws.
.
Are the visions that haunt Molly a subconscious warning or something far more vicious?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Mary Parker is a horror author and journalist from Southern Illinois. She has worked for examiner.com and horrornews.net. A collection of short stories, Predilection, was published in 2009. Her work can also be found in the anthologies Vampires Aren’t Pretty and Slaughter House: The Serial Killer Edition, Vol. 2. Her story, Sweet Nightmares, placed in the top 100 of Wattpad’s Horror Contest sponsored by TNT. She is a proud contributor to, supporter of, ans past ambassador of Women in Horror Month. Visit her Amazon Author Page at: Mary Parker.
The Endless Hallway is a novella about a young mother’s struggles with postpartum depression and anxiety (PPDA). It is my story.
Well, a fictionalized version of my reality.
While in therapy to recover from PPDA, I spoke with my therapist about the story I was writing. I tend to start everything as a short story – that keeps the pressure off. I was dealing with so much internal pressure already; I didn’t want to add lofty ambitions like novella or novel. We brainstormed and troubleshot the ideas I had. I was stuck on the ending – or, rather, I didn’t know where the story should go. At the time, I wanted Molly to conquer the monster because I desperately needed to conquer my own mental illnesses.
“What would be the benefits of having this monster captive?” my therapist asked me.
I had no answer. I was wrapped up in putting my life on the page, to purge the darkness from my psyche. I desperately wanted life to imitate the art I was creating. But that’s not how life works. I got stuck. Writer’s block for months. My PPDA relapsed.
As I started back up the mountain of recovery, the ending of The Endless Hallway revealed itself to me. I decided to document the two weeks of my life over holiday break in my notes app. I would make little observations of what happened each day and weave the monster into those days.
It was not difficult to toe the line between reality and fiction. In a lot of ways, I am Molly, but not totally. For example, I never felt the urge to harm my daughter. My husband is not Cory (he is much more active in my life than the character is in the story – this is because Molly feels completely isolated). I tried to keep the most intimate details of our life private, but the darkness of PPDA stains the pages of my life and the novella.
In all, I was in recovery for nine months, from the time my daughter was six months old. I wrote the novella during that time, over my lunch breaks at work. I poured my heart into this book. Every dark thought, every depraved dream, I bled onto the page. I also let my love and devotion for my husband and daughter flood the pages. They are, without a doubt, the best things that ever happened to me. They are my everything.
I think that writers put a piece of themselves into everything they write. I think you must to be able to create – there is a truthful base for everything. But for this novella, there was no other way than to put my life, my thoughts, my sickness, into words. Thankfully, my husband approved everything I wrote. It helped him understand what I was going through, like I hope this novella will help the public better understand PPDA. We can create our own destinies, like I created the perfect world to house my monsters.
The Endless Hallway Mary Parker
Molly has it all: a good job, a handsome husband, and a beautiful new baby. Her life is everything she once hoped it would be. But something sinister lurks within the walls of her tiny townhouse.
A strange voice echoes from the darkness as Molly rocks her infant to sleep. Lights that were left on suddenly turn off. In the middle of the night, a thin, pale arm reaches over the rails of the crib to grasp for the baby with fierce, jagged claws.
Are the visions that haunt Molly a subconscious warning or something far more vicious?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Mary Parker is a horror author and journalist from Southern Illinois. She has worked for examiner.com and horrornews.net. A collection of short stories, Predilection, was published in 2009. Her work can also be found in the anthologies Vampires Aren’t Pretty and Slaughter House: The Serial Killer Edition, Vol. 2. Her story, Sweet Nightmares, placed in the top 100 of Wattpad’s Horror Contest sponsored by TNT. She is a proud contributor to, supporter of, ans past ambassador of Women in Horror Month. Visit her Amazon Author Page at: Mary Parker.
The Endless Hallway features a creature that has haunted me since I was a teenager. This vile thing, with disgusting claws, rows of teeth, and black, void-like eyes, has featured in my writings for two decades. As the years go by, its appearance gets worse and worse: a monstrous evolution that personifies my mental illnesses.
My senior year of high school, I went with my parents to spend the weekend at my grandparents’ house. They lived in a small town about 75 minutes away from us. On the drive down, I listened to music, daydreaming as I watched miles of hills and highway pass by. Suddenly it appeared to me: an emaciated human-like creature, completely bald with shiny, slimy skin, no nose, two gaping voids for eyes, mangled claws, and vicious teeth. I imagined the creature standing in front of me, opening its mouth to inhuman levels, and swallowing my head. I didn’t know if this was my depression consuming me or setting me free.
This image stuck with me, and I immediately wrote about it in the composition notebook I always carried with me. Over the next several months I wrote a story featuring this creature, but more in link with a vampire – think of a play on Nosferatu. In this iteration, the monster’s main features were rows of fangs and knotted, gnarly hands with claws, along with the bald head and void-like eyes. Later, I wrote a short story featuring the creature that was a meditation on how depression shapes a person’s growth from adolescence to adulthood. In both stories, the ending was more finite: in the first, the monster is burned to death; in the latter, it swallows the protagonist.
A decade on, I got married and had my daughter. Postpartum depression and anxiety hit me hard. Again, I imagined the creature looming over me, ready to strike. This time it was more disgusting and vicious: now its teeth dripped black ooze and its mangled, jagged claws were ready to take everything from me. As I rocked my daughter to sleep, I vowed I would not let it.
Instead, I wrote it all down. I owned the monster and made it do my bidding. On the page, it couldn’t hurt me. The depression could threaten us, it could lurk around every corner of the life I always wanted, but it would never touch us.
Yet, as I finished The Endless Hallway, I found the ending was more ambiguous. Age had taught me that the depression never really goes away. Instead, we would live with it, like a haunting; deal with it whenever it decided to show its monstrous face. There’s a comfort in that, a comfort in knowing that while we can’t always defeat our demons, we can always overcome them.
Even if we still check the baby monitor for claws creeping through the bars of the crib, and double-check the corners of the baby’s room for dark figures.
Picture of the Creature drawn by the author in 2005. From the author’s writing scrapbook.
Molly has it all – a good job, a handsome husband, a beautiful new baby, and a supportive family. Her life is everything she once prayed it would be. But something sinister is lurking within the walls of her tiny townhouse. A strange voice comes from the darkness as Molly rocks her infant to sleep. Lights that were left on are suddenly turned off. Molly has nightmares in which her husband’s throat is slit. In the middle of the night, a thin, pale arm reaches over the rails of the crib and lunges for the baby with fierce, jagged claws. The voice in the darkness soon seems to be coming from inside Molly’s head.
Are the visions Molly has been haunted by a subconscious warning or something more vicious?
Mary Parker is a horror author and journalist from Southern Illinois. She has worked for examiner.com and horrornews.net. A collection of short stories, Predilection, was published in 2009. Her work can also be found in the anthologies “Vampires Aren’t Pretty” and “Slaughter House: The Serial Killer Edition, Vol. 2.” Her story “Sweet Nightmares” placed in the Top 100 of Wattpad’s Horror Contest sponsored by TNT. She is a proud contributor to, supporter of, and past ambassador of Women in Horror Month.
Sirens Call Publications is pleased to announce its latest release…
The Endless Hallway
by Mary Parker
Molly has it all: a good job, a handsome husband, and a beautiful new baby. Her life is everything she once hoped it would be. But something sinister lurks within the walls of her tiny townhouse.
A strange voice echoes from the darkness as Molly rocks her infant to sleep. Lights that were left on suddenly turn off. In the middle of the night, a thin, pale arm reaches over the rails of the crib to grasp for the baby with fierce, jagged claws.
Are the visions that haunt Molly a subconscious warning or something far more vicious?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Mary Parker is a horror author and journalist from Southern Illinois. She has worked for examiner.com and horrornews.net. A collection of short stories, Predilection, was published in 2009. Her work can also be found in the anthologies Vampires Aren’t Pretty and Slaughter House: The Serial Killer Edition, Vol. 2. Her story, Sweet Nightmares, placed in the top 100 of Wattpad’s Horror Contest sponsored by TNT. She is a proud contributor to, supporter of, ans past ambassador of Women in Horror Month. Visit her Amazon Author Page at: Mary Parker.
The 58th issue of The Sirens Call comes in at whopping 239 pages containing 166 pieces of dark fiction and horror in the form of short stories, flash fiction, micro fiction, and dark poetry with an optional sub-theme of summer horror! This issue also features a new addition – Mike Lera’s Corridor of Horror – which will be an on-going column spotlighting those in the film industry.
Our features this month include artist Jeanette Andromeda who has shared 11 pieces of her artwork along with her beautifully crafted tale, Alice and the Toy Maker; a spotlight feature for the charity anthology, Dancing in the Shadows: A tribute to Anne Rice, which focuses on the team behind the project; we’ve also been given the opportunity to showcase Rebecca Rowland as our featured author who discusses The Question of Gender in Horror, and also offers us a peek into her newly released book, Shagging the Boss.
Please, grab a copy of the Zine for free, and don’t be shy about sharing it around!
Angela Yuriko Smith is an American poet, author and co-publisher of Space and Time magazine, a publication that has been printing speculative fiction, art and poetry since 1966. Together we build a poem as a community each month. Visit “Exquisite Corpse” at SpaceandTime.net to submit.
Nina D’Arcangela is a quirky horror writer who likes to spin soul rending snippets of despair. She reads anything from splatter matter to dark matter. She's an UrbEx adventurer who suffers from unquenchable wanderlust. She loves to photograph abandoned places, bits of decay and old graveyards.
Nina is co-owner of Sirens Call Publications, co-founder of the horror writer's group 'Pen of the Damned', and if that isn't enough, put a check mark in the box next to owner and resident nut-job of Dark Angel Photography.
More from Author Rie Sheridan Rose:
The Blood Lights
Disremembering
The Endless Hallway, by Mary Parker
