The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Death Shots
by Alyson Faye

The auctioneer banged his gavel down, fast, ‘SOLD!’ He pointed, ‘To the lady in row H.’

Elsa grabbed her handbag, and brolly, and scooted past the muttering bidders to the corner where you paid your guineas.

She carried the wooden box in front of her, forcing passers-by out of her way on the rain slicked pavements. She drew glances, for she cut a quirky figure with her old-fashioned pillar-box red hat, gloves, and lipstick. Elsa might never see fifty again but by God she was going to go down fighting.

In her minute bedsit, with the pull-down bed in the wall and blackened hob for cooking on, she began to sort through the contents of the box, labelled ‘Mixed photographs, 1920-1950 approx, Rattler’s Photographic Studio.’

Sepia and black and white squares littered the tatty carpet, like confetti. ‘Boring, useless. Where’s the moneymakers?’

Her fingers found the hidden catch; click – the false bottom slid to aside. Beneath nestled a handful of macabre images.

‘Rattler, you bastard, I’ve found your secret cache.’ Elsa swigged red wine from the bottle. Jubilant.

Her mind drifted back thirty years to her first meeting with Rattler, recalling his boozy breath, groping hands, and keenness to part her from her clothes. But damn if he couldn’t make the dead look living with his macabre but profitable sideline, photographing mortuary clients, painting their faces, then propping them up on a chair.

A version of the Victorian’s memento mori photography, repurposed.

‘There are all sorts of creeps in this world,’ Rattler used to say. ‘And happily they’ll pay for this.’

‘Takes one to know one,’ Elsa replied, grabbing two five pound notes; her cut. She was the tip off for Rattler, who worked inside the mortuary offices.

She’d been seeking Rattler’s posthumous portfolio for years, scouring auction halls, flea markets and even the bins behind his studio.

Her plan – blackmail. No fond family member would want these obscenities out in the world. And Elsa never forgot a face, living or dead, and she had a diary filled with names and dates.

‘It’ll be the good life for me,’ she muttered, and cuddling the wine bottle, fell asleep on the sofa.

* * *

Elsa woke with a start, hung over, befuddled. The clock said 2am. Outside the flat door she heard a shuffling, wheezing noise.

‘Piss off, Fred!’ she yelled, assuming it was her randy landlord.

Something grey, sinuous and slimy oozed under the door frame. There was a thud, then silence.

‘Fred?’ Her voice wobbled.

There was a smell filling the bedsit, she couldn’t place it at first, then a memory clicked – that mortuary mix of antiseptic, bleach, and Rattler’s B.O.

Unseen, the grey ooze inched across the floor, closing in on Elsa.

‘Rattler?’ she asked, but thought herself crazy.

The wine bottle dropped to the floor, spilling red droplets onto the photographs. In the grey light the mouths seemed to be bleeding.

Behind the sofa the ooze pooled, shivered, and from its heart a shape rose up. Blurry, with no real form, but growing limbs. The stink worsened. Elsa tried to get up, but discovered her legs were too heavy, her arms too weak, and though her brain told her to move, nothing would obey.

A flicker of movement caught her eye. A man’s grey-skinned face hung above her, eyes black holes, lips black slits, shoulders sunken, the rest of the body hidden. Grey slime swam over the sofa eating Elsa’s feet, then her legs. She tried to scream, no sound came out.

The slitted lips opened. Wheezy, gasping, it said, ‘Lover girl, you weren’t going to cut me out of the deal? No one does that to Rattler.’ A terrible snigger which sent more slime onto her prone body. ‘Come here, darling. Give us a kiss.’

The spectral figure leant down, arms shimmering, flowed over Elsa’s buxom chest and her upturned face.

Suffocated, and drowning, Elsa tipped over into nothingness.

Fiction © Copyright Alyson Faye
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Alyson Faye:

The Lost Girl & Spindleshanks

The Lost Girl
A nailed-up door. An inheritance which comes with a ghost. A missing girl. A fifty-year-old mystery. Parapsychologist Berkley Osgood is hired to investigate. What he uncovers reveals secrets the living want to hide and the dead will never forgive.

Spindleshanks
Adam is having nightmares about a skeletal shadow figure, who he calls Spindleshanks. Soon his whole class are sharing the same nightmare. Adam’s dad, Rob, knows that Spindleshanks can’t be real. But is he? One terrible night Rob has to face his son’s nightmare creature and fight for his son’s life. What would you sacrifice to have your child back safe?

“A decent two-for-one. Alyson Faye brings the engaging and eerie in equal measure.” CC Adams – horror / dark fiction author

Available on Amazon!