The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
A Mirror Meets a Girl by Angela Yuriko Smith
The reflection, a girl, omnipotent with cause and effect, cold feet, alone, death. She doesn’t work for the meritocracy because inevitability and complacency are for winners. She is the grindstone, a loser forfeiting nothing, a servant of anarchy until…
… she sees her reflection and a voice screams, rough like stone made molten, lava sliding from her ear holes, rising from her throat like an objection, a rejection to escape from her soul, still steaming from giving a little life to another: a small cost here, a hand up there because in giving it’s unfair until the second when the last breath snaps a nerve and that voice is a feast of karma ripping through the veil with discordant sacred symphony to say…
I will fill your empty bowl with a return of nothing and feed it back to you until you burst.
A girl thinks on that and feels her soul untether— her end wreckoning.
Angela Yuriko Smith is a third-generation Ryukyuan-American, award-winning poet, author, and publisher with 20+ years in newspapers. Publisher of Space and Time magazine (est. 1966), two-time Bram Stoker Awards® Winner, and HWA Mentor of the Year, she shares Authortunities, a free weekly calendar of author opportunities at authortunities.substack.com.
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!
The Corridor of Unmaking by Kathleen McCluskey
The corridor yawned bright before me, endless, silent. The stone pillars rose like teeth, tall and pristine, chewing away at my shadow as I staggered forward. My wings are already gone. They had been ripped from my spine at the gates, leaving two raw pits that still oozed molten light. The smell was unbearable. Scorched feathers. Charred marrow. Burning skin.
Shapes flickered along the walls. Those who had fallen before me. Their bodies jittered in and out of existence. Faces tearing and reforming like torn film reels. One dragged itself on hands that had melted into the tiles. Another stumbled on horribly broken legs, bones folding like wet parchment, leaving only a husk crawling on its elbows. Their halos clattered behind them, fractured into shards that sizzled against the stone like hot metal quenched with water.
Then it began on me.
First, my hands unraveled, peeling back in long, wet ribbons, veins collapsing into ash. My arms thinned, bones showing through, then snapping into powder under the weight of the light. I screamed but my voice dissolved before it reached my lips. My legs blurred, toes dripping away like wax from a burning candle. Each step left behind streaks of liquid light.
Still the corridor went on. No end, no mercy, only the slow surgical torture of being undone.
At last the light reached my face. I tried to hold my name on my tongue, to clutch at it, before it too melted away. My thoughts fractured, memories scattered like a moth to a flame. I tried to recall why I had been brought here. What sin could I have committed? Was I doubtful? Did I love too much? Not enough? What could have demanded such punishment?
I searched myself, clawing through memories like a drowning man at the surface. Had I disobeyed? Had I questioned too deeply? Doubted too openly? I remember lifting the prayers with trembling hands. Guiding mortals through their darkest hours. Shielding them with wings now torn from me. Was compassion my sin? Every moment of my life blurred together under the light. Every hymn sung, every vow kept. Yet none of it explained why I walked this corridor. The more I reached for answers, the more my memories crumbled and I feared I would never know.
That perhaps is the deepest cruelty: to be condemned without understanding why.
My halo, once a perfect ring of fire, now cracked apart above me. The shard spun like broken glass before sinking into my flesh, branding my head with wounds the light was eager to investigate.
The light pierced through my skull, not burning but erasing. Every line of touch, every line of memory, every trace of the one I had once been. My soul, once bright and vibrant, turned brittle and thin, until I felt it snapping apart like shattering glass. And when it was gone…I did not die, I did not move on.
I became something else. A shadow, a phantom.
The pillars kept their rhythm, tall, white and endless. The corridor stretched on, not caring. I, what is left of me, flicker along the wall. A hollow silhouette phasing in and out of a jittery existence. A shadow among shadows. A stain of movement with no substance, condemned to walk forever between stone and shadow.
I no longer remember my name. I no longer remember why I had wings or what they had been for. I no longer seek salvation, I just seek an ending. All that remains, all that echoes are the endless shifting of shadow and the pull of the corridor that I keep moving.
Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.
The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Mr. Chuckles by Naching T. Kassa
The sky shone blood-red. As though the day had died around her.
Esther watched the people on the street as she hurried home from school. They passed without acknowledging her, without a smile or a nod. She could have been invisible.
Only one man seemed to see her, an average fellow, one as imperceptible as herself. He stopped and smiled as she walked by. She didn’t return it. She pretended she didn’t see him.
A man selling newspapers stood on the next corner. He shouted the news as pedestrians paused to buy his wares.
“Gene Mark Marston dead!” he cried. “Notorious killer executed!”
Esther peered over her shoulder. The man stood several yards behind her, still smiling.
She ran.
When she reached her apartment building, she glanced up at the second-floor window. A man in a pinstripe suit stood there, watching. She waved, but he didn’t wave back.
Moments later, she reached the second-floor landing. The man still stood at the window, his back toward her.
“Hello, Mr. Chuckles,” she said.
“That isn’t my name, Esther,” he replied in his strange, hollow tone.
“I know.”
“Why do you call me by a name I don’t own?”
“I told you. It fits you. It’s one of those funny names. You know, like when you call a person who moves slowly, Speedy.”
He regarded her, a frown on his face. She smiled back.
“Why do you come up here, Esther?” he asked, returning to the window.
“Because you’re my friend.”
“I’m no one’s friend. Shouldn’t you be home with your mother?”
“She isn’t home. She had to work.”
“And, as usual, there’s no one to watch you.”
“I’m 12. I don’t need watching.” Esther peered out the window. The man from the street stood on the walk below. He stared up at the window. She caught his eye and stepped away, heart pounding.
“Can I stay up here with you, Mr. Chuckles?” she asked.
“You know you can’t. I don’t want you here.”
“Please?”
Mr. Chuckles faced her, scowling. “I’ve told you many times. I don’t want you here.”
“But—”
“I DON’T WANT YOU HERE!”
Esther hurried down the stairs and away. Her apartment lay just past the front doors, and she rushed to it. Once inside, she locked the deadbolt and the chain, even though she knew it was useless.
A footstep sounded in the hall.
She glanced up at the too-high windows. Mr. Bambury, the landlord, had installed bars over them so no one could get in. He hadn’t thought of including a way for someone to get out.
Another footstep.
The useless phone hung on the wall. They hadn’t had enough money to pay the bill. And even if she did call someone, who would believe her? Screaming wouldn’t help. Even if someone heard her, they couldn’t get to her first-floor apartment fast enough.
“Esther,” a familiar voice said. “Esther, I wanna to talk to you.”
As quietly as she could, Esther rushed to her mother’s bedroom and the small closet. She shut the door and burrowed into her mother’s dresses and winter coats.
“Help me,” she murmured. “Please, somebody, help me!”
Silence followed.
She never heard the door open. Never heard his footsteps. The only thing she did hear was his voice. Beside her. In the dark.
“Bet you didn’t think you’d ever see me again,” he whispered.
This time, she did scream.
He dragged her out of the closet and threw her across the bed, into the wall. She lay, gasping on the floor.
Cold swirled about her, a bitter, deathly cold.
“You little, shit! I told you I’d come back to kill you! I told you not even death could keep me away!”
He lifted her into the air.
“You ratted me out! You and your bitch of a mother. I’m going to tear you limb from limb! And when you return, I’ll do it again! Again and again for all eternity!”
“You’ll do what?” a strange, hollow voice asked.
Gene Mark Marston turned to the doorway where a man in a pinstripe suit stood. “Who the hell are you?”
“What did you say?” “If you must know, I said I’d tear her limb from limb.”
Mr. Chuckles strode across the floor. “That’s what I thought you said.”
He grasped hold of Marston’s head and tore it from its body. When he went for the arm, Esther turned away and covered her ears.
The dead leave no blood. When Esther faced the room once more, she found it empty.
She hurried from the apartment and up the stairs. Mr. Chuckles stood on the landing. It seemed as though he had never left.
Esther wanted, more than anything, to take his hand. But when she reached out, she couldn’t find anything more substantial than a shadow.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Mr. Chuckles doesn’t fit you.”
“You said it did.”
“That was…before.”
He smiled. It was the first time she’d ever seen him do so.
Sherlock Holmes and The Arcana of Madness: A Horror Mystery
Discover the untold mysteries of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson in Sherlock Holmes and the Arcana of Madness, a trilogy that unveils three captivating cases intertwined with the mystical allure of tarot cards, designed by the renowned, yet infamous artist, Richard Dadd.
A collection of manuscripts, meticulously penned by John H. Watson M.D., is unearthed in 2019 amidst the restoration of Broadmoor Hospital, found inexplicably in the grave of Richard Dadd. The manuscripts’ concealed journey and their remaining unpublished raise a myriad of questions, enveloping them in a veil of mystery.
The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Fury by Elizabeth H. Smith
She’d not known sleep for so long, the longing for it had become a faded memory. She watched the walls of the cavern drip, each drop of water making its way through the upper layers, carrying with it the minerals she needed to survive. Each tiny portion of sustenance she caught with her dry tongue, less satisfying than the last. No amount of liquid could whet her thirst. That desire was unrelenting, unforgiving, and unending.
She vaguely remembered her humanity, so long ago it left behind the husk she now carried as her body. This new form she embraced, for she had no choice if she wanted to go on. Else the roots that grew down there would surely have replaced every vessel. When she finally worked up the will to move from her place of rest, she pulled many with her, for they were already intertwined throughout. They’d attached to her bones like muscle, held her together like twine.
Her once long coat served as a reminder to what once was. She clutched it many times, felt the soft fabric, reminisced about how it looked ages ago. She held onto that red remembrance, for if she let it go, only a monster would she have become. Even still, the monster had become her better half. It kept her going, let her stay alive through the years of which she’d lost count.
She knew that one day it would be time to leave that place and emerge back into the world above. The time would come for her to see the sun again. But she wondered if she’d see it the same way. Or would the seething hatred cloud her vision into a mangled perspective of everything she’d once known?
She reasoned it mattered not, that only her wrath would join her on the outside. She’d leave that dusty cave born anew, something different than what she once was. She’d find her place among humanity not as one of them, but as something else entirely. And within that something rage had taken hold. It filled every part of her being. And the only peace she’d ever know would be the release of that fury, and the matching crimson letting of blood from any who crossed her path.
More About Elizabeth H. Smith: Elizabeth H. Smith is a storyteller who writes while trying to keep her cat, Luna off the keyboard. The musical group, Rasputina is her muse. She was born in the state of New York and would never feel at home anywhere else.
The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
The Gravedigger and the Dancer by Elaine Pascale
The gravedigger dug at night as no one wanted the visible reminder that they, too, would be swallowed by the earth. He enjoyed his nocturnal toils. There was something peaceful about the sound of the shovel scraping the earth’s surface, turning over the dirt to see the nutrient-rich beauty beneath. Working at night was serene and quiet…until she appeared.
She danced in a shiny dress with a pleated hem. Her white skin and white dress glimmered in the moonlight.
He paused digging to watch her. At first, he was not sure what he was seeing.
As she pirouetted, she said, “You should have seen how I danced when I was alive.”
“I’m sure you were lovely,” he replied. While her inflated ego believed he was charmed, he found her annoying. He wanted to continue with his digging. Despite others believing his work morbid, he considered his labor meaningful. He helped the dead to rest.
He continued to dig while she danced and he found her accompaniment frustrating. Even more frustrating when she returned night after night. The village had been plagued by influenza and he had more plots to dig than normal; he longed for solitude during his work.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said after weeks of dancing. He was sure that she didn’t, which was confirmed when she offered, “How could someone as vibrant as me dance in a graveyard?”
“I bet you would look even lovelier by the pond,” he suggested.
“Can’t.” She twirled in time to the scratching of his shovel, dropping her feet as he inched deeper into the earth. “I can’t leave here. I mean this place.”
“And why is that?”
She shrugged. “Something about my death. I don’t know what…just something.”
He knew the answer. He had heard the whispers of the villagers. The night she first appeared he had been digging a plot for her husband, the man who had killed her. She had haunted him both in life and in death. The more she danced in the night, the more the gravedigger felt sympathy for that man.
But she wouldn’t remember her husband’s anger, as it was a thought that cast her in a negative light. All she could recall was her beauty and grace.
He continued to dig and she continued to dance, peppering her performance with derision toward him. She refused to entertain the idea that he was anything less than captivated by her. Everyone always loved her (there was a nagging inkling that she had fallen out of favor with someone, somewhere, but she quickly discarded that thought). Surely this sweating laborer, trying to beat sunrise, was enamored with her.
When the school caught fire and he was faced with a multitude of burials, he decided to take action. He was no scholar, nor a man of the cloth, yet he knew what he had to do.
He dropped his shovel and faced her. “Your husband failed to establish boundaries with you. Instead, your presence drove him to kill. And then, your haunting him probably killed him. I have too much respect for the living and the dead to allow you to bring me to that same resolution. I am going to do my job and put you to rest.”
“You love my dancing,” she insisted. “You need to see me here, to brighten your meaningless existence.”
“No,” he said assertively but calmly. “I do not find you beautiful, I do not find you exceptional. I do not love your dancing…I love…the dirt.”
Hearing this, the dancer burst into flames, a charred remnant of her dress coming loose and landing in the junction of the branches of a graveyard tree.
The gravedigger paused for moment, listening to the encompassing silence, before returning to his peaceful digging.
The women of Cape Cod have a story that is dying to be told. If only they could live long enough to tell it.
When Fiona Walker is contracted to write about a party attended by her social circle, her friends begin dying. She captures the competition and misery of the women around her through three different stories.
In Wishes, Melanie Voss discovers a Time Between Time where nothing that happens counts. Initially, Time Between Time is a welcome escape from a life spent watching the clock while doing chores for her family. But something sinister is in the Time Between Time and it is headed straight for Melanie.
Death and Taxes tells the story of Nashville DeCota, the Cape Capo. Nash swears that she is not the Island Impaler, nor the Tooth Snatcher, but she has just as many skeletons in her closet. When her husband, Derrick, is kidnapped, she has to come clean about her crimes if she ever wants to see him again.
Fiona tells her own story in Hazing, where she finds that the real source of evil behind the deaths of her friends is worse than she could have ever imagined.
The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Modus Operando by Marge Simon
On this night, you are out for an evening stroll when suddenly you find yourself standing in the foyer of a strange building. There’s a stairway upstairs to the third floor. At the landing midway, there is a window that opens out above a courtyard. A vampire is waiting for you on the landing, but you don’t notice it until it grabs you around the waist. Its hands are scaley, with long sharp fingernails that press so hard you hear a rib crack. You barely feel its fangs sink into your jugular. When it is sated, it hurls you through the window which shatters, glass splinters striking your eyes. By the time you hit the tiles below and expire, you are totally blind. You couldn’t identify the vampire even if it had allowed you to live, but of course no self-respecting vampire would ever make such a mistake.
Cast from Darkness by Marge Simon and Mary Turzillo
Cast from Darkness is another triumphant collaboration between award-winning Speculative poets, Marge Simon and Mary Turzillo.
The poetry includes themes running the spectrum of the speculative genres and forms ranging from the haiku through many nuances of vere libre to the prose poem.
The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
That Part of Me by Melissa R. Mendelson
There is that part of me that would kill me if it could, but not actually kill. It would destroy what was left of my heart, and then my mind. It arrived the same day that she returned. Something broke inside of me, and that part took control, almost doing something so devastating that there would be no return from it. But I was able to grab back control in that last minute, preventing a horrific tragedy from happening.
I thought that part of me was gone. It has been a long time, but it was sleeping, lying deep beneath detection. Then, it woke up in June, jolted from its slumber. Its thin, cold fingers clawed for control, digging into my mind, filling it with that urge that I almost acted upon once, and I fought back. But in fighting back, I felt sick, so sick inside and out, and that part of me laughed, gaining a foothold. This time, it was not going away.
Now, I am fighting that part of me almost every day. My mind searched itself and found walls that it traced its long, crooked fingers along, looking for a weak spot, and it found it, pushing the walls over. I dug into my resources, my training, struggling to keep it at bay. I could not lose control to that part of me because like I said, there would be no return, no forgiveness, and I even have a hard time forgiving myself for other deeds. But there would be no forgiveness for it wanted from me.
It is quiet right now. I can think again, but I know it’s not gone. All it would take is one trigger, one little thing to let it out, and that can’t happen. Its eyes are closed, pretending to sleep, but when I don’t look at it, make sure that it is contained, it is staring back at me, a small sinister smile playing on its thin, white lips.
That part of me died a long time ago because of what she did. It was too much. No one should have to endure such psychological damage, and there was so much collateral damage. And it came back, twisted, angry, broken, a monster inside of me, and it could take years, if that to maybe recover what that part used to be. I don’t even remember what that part of me used to be.
I used to feel. I used to be alive. I used to be more. These last four years, she especially, stripped me of that, and I hope to get it back. I hope to be whole one day, but that part of me remains. It doesn’t want to go away, and if it could kill my heart, my mind, and destroy what humanity is left inside of me, it would.
I have no choice but to fight it, and I hope that I win in the end.
Melissa R. Mendelson is the author of the Sci-Fi Novella, Waken. She also has a prose poetry collection called, This Will Remain With Us published by Wild Ink Publishing. Her short story collections, Better Off Hereand Name’s Keeper can be found on Amazon/Amazon Kindle.
If you’d like to learn more about Melissa, you can visit her accounts here: www.MelissaMendelson.com
The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Masks by Wynelda Ann Deaver
He comes, a thief in the night, stealing moments. His robe, long enough to brush the forest floor, conceals him from sight. A mask of jaw bone and sinew is removed, placed in the crook of a tree.
He goes to her.
She is tucked in tight and cozy in her cottage. He can feel the pull of her light, dimmed at night, spilling across his skin. In another time and place she would be the witch in the woods. Or perhaps a fairy, sparking magic where ever she landed. In this one she was many things to many people, always loving. Always giving just a little too much of herself away.
He knew her only as his best friend.
He slid into her house, doors and locks mean nothing to him. A television flickers in her room. A cooking show, playing just loud enough to be heard above the hum of her mask.
A machine forces her to breathe. And yet here he is still. He sits on the edge of her bed, pulls her hand in his. He only has twenty seconds every minute, for four to six hours.
Her body remains where it lies on the bed. Her soul perks up and looks for him, peeking out of the shadows in the room. Her light envelopes him in a hug fierce and true. They settle into a stuttering conversation. Those other forty seconds are rudely necessary to keep her alive.
Her family worries and frets about her. He has heard the voicemails and seen texts. He can’t tell them that he won’t come for her until she is ready.
Wynelda Ann Deaver writes in the world of dark and twisty fantasy. She is in her own words a ‘girly girl’ who loves scrapbooking. Wynelda is extremely family oriented – her father is her best friend, and her son is the light of her life. If you’d like to read more about Wynelda, please visit her online at Wynword’s Weblog.
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.
Spreading the Writer's Word 