Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Mary Ann Peden-Coviello @MAPedenCoviello @Sotet_Angyal #LoH

Posted on August 28, 2019 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Image_02_AugustLOH

A Cat’s Paw
by Mary Ann Peden-Coviello

The moment I saw it in the antiques store, I had to possess it. The statue – in the image of a crouching cat, eighteen inches tall, its bronze surface blackened with age, heavier than it should be for its height – seemed to whisper promises I couldn’t quite comprehend. No matter, though; I needed the statue the way I needed to breathe.
After I arrived home, the statue murmuring its susurrating, sibilant song of seduction in my ears, I cleared a space on the mantle and set the statue on it. The metallic creature crouched on the mantle, its claws seeming to grip the edge as if the cold metal were a living thing. My cat, Elizabeth, entered the room, arched her back at the statue, hissed and spat. She growled in a manner I’d never heard before and retreated, her eyes never leaving the cat statue.
That night, I dreamed. Dreamed of the abyss, of mighty gods who wailed in despair or roared in triumph. It was the first night of many disturbed by those dreams.
Over the next days, I listened to the whisperings of the statue. The fragrance of the incense I burned filled my domicile, the old farmhouse I’d inherited from my grandparents. I forgot to eat, listening to the beguiling, insidious murmurs of the statue. Elizabeth vanished, but I didn’t concern myself with that disappearance. It seemed unimportant.
The thirteenth day dawned grey and humid, thunderclouds looming. The air in my house stank of incense and something indefinable and threatening. I prowled from room to room, the voice of the statue growing louder. More demanding.
I found myself in front of the cat statue, a knife clutched in my right hand. Without conscious thought or will, I slashed my left arm from elbow to wrist. Pain overwhelmed me as my life’s blood flowed down my fingers to the hearth. I howled and fell to the floor.
The statue spoke. “You have sacrificed. You might be spared.”
Overhead, the storm broke, with the crash of thunder and lightning, the shriek of the wind. The cat statue shivered and leaped onto the floor. The face of the cat shifted, fangs bared. A swipe of claws tore my throat.
“Or perhaps not.” The voice of the cat statue hissed at me.
“Arise, Great One,” the statue cried. “Come and take vengeance on the world which has abandoned you!”
From nowhere, Elizabeth leapt, howling like all the demons of hell, onto the back of the statue. The two cats – one living and one metal – rolled and fought across the floor. The house shuddered as Elizabeth ripped and slashed the demon cat. The winds screamed and tore at the roof.
With one final effort, Elizabeth slapped the cat statue, and it fell and shattered. At the moment she struck the statue, the entire house lifted and slammed down. I thought I heard the voice of a god screaming in the wind.
Elizabeth dragged her broken, bleeding body to me. She laid her head on my arm.
All went dark.
DATELINE: Centertown, Oklahoma
A freak tornado struck this remote community yesterday, destroying a 150-year-old farmhouse. The storm lifted the house from its foundation and dragged it a distance of 200 yards. The only fatalities were the 40-year-old homeowner and his cat. Authorities are investigating the peculiar wounds on both bodies. More details to follow.
Fiction © Copyright Mary Ann Peden-Coviello
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

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More from Mary Ann Peden-Coviello:

maryannpedencoviello_frightmareFright Mare-Women Write Horror
Short Story: One Hour Before the Dark

Women write horror and have written it since before Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN. This anthology is to highlight the fact women write great horror and to kill the fallacy that they aren’t in some way up to standard. They are. Read here stories by Elizabeth Massie, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lucy Taylor, and a plethora of other great writers as they work on your nerves, get inside your head, and bang out some of the scariest tales written today. I’m proud to present these women for your consideration, as Rod Serling might say, as I ask you to step into FRIGHT MARE. Lock the door and windows, put on a light, and remember, it’s not real. It’s not real. Midnight awaits, monsters scheme to take you away, the strange and weird wait in the shadows, but it’s not real. Is it?

Edited by Billie Sue Mosiman, the author who brought you the SINISTER-TALES OF DREAD collections and her latest suspense novel, THE GREY MATTER.

Available on Amazon!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Melissa R. Mendelson @melissmendelson @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on August 28, 2019 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Image_01_AgustLOH

If Only We Had Listened
by Melissa R. Mendelson

The buildings were on fire again. I could hear the glass that was left in windows shatter. The brick was already burnt, turning blacker, and debris fell like rain. The smoke claimed the sky, but the stars were already choked silent. And the moon was gone, leaving the bodies in the street in darkness, shadowed by flames.
My rags slipped quietly across my bare feet as I stepped over the sleeping dead. Those unlucky to dream hollow dreams moaned in protest, but their bodies were slender twigs. A bone snapped under one step, and I continued on, moving toward the massive brick hill lying in the distance. So many bodies lying in the street as if never remembering comfort, only a concrete bed, and an old man crouched by a burning barrel, shoveling garbage into his mouth. Did he not remember what good food tasted like, and he snarled at me like a wounded animal.
The flesh on my hands were torn away. I could see bone and vein, but still I climbed. I no longer felt pain. I no longer felt anything, but I did not want to sleep. I did not want to lie down on pavement, wishing to fade away, so I climbed. I reached the top, and I fell down to the other side, snapping one leg the wrong way. But I didn’t care. I had finally found him.
The building was gone, but one brick wall remained. That’s where he lived and watched. He waited for the lost souls to close their eyes one last time, draw in a shuddered breath, and then he would take them. He would lift them up into the air, carry them over the brick hill, and turn them into dust, and he would inhale that dust through his tentacles that hung down like a king’s beard. His purple eyes would shine bright, taking the lost souls not to heaven but to hell.
I gathered up what strength I had left, but I could only hurl one rock at his face. In doing so, I could hear the debris behind me move, and the shadows emerged, taking human form. But their faces were painted skeletal. Hoods covered their heads, and they swiftly moved toward me, lifting my broken frame upward in offering. And his purple eyes shined, and his long tentacles shot forward, penetrating my flesh and bone. I shuddered, slowly turning to dust, but as my body fell away, I held his stare. If only we had listened, but we never did.
Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More from Melissa R. Mendelson:

Better Off Here 

We always look to the greener pastures, thinking our lives would be so much better over there, but if we were over there, what if all we wanted was to go back? Instead, we found ourselves trapped with the darker side to our fears.

Available Here!

 

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Michelle Joy Gallagher @Aphelia @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Image_04_AugustLOH

The Other
by Michelle Joy Gallagher

Ramona knew the other was there. The presence felt cloying, yet fragile. A bank of heavy fog that could dissipate with the sunrise. She’d felt it with her since she was small. A constant looming thing that was hard to describe. She wrote it off as anxiety as she got older. The perpetual coming of a storm.
She saw it only once, by chance. Her tired eyes met her own reflection after a crying jag. Soft focus in the neon lights of the ladies room of the bar she frequented on Saturday nights. With  a tipsy head and a heavy heart she leaned over the sink and looked herself in the eyes.
“Fuck you.” She said softly to her reflection. “You should have known better.”
She had gotten a text from Adam that was meant for another woman. She had suspicions but this confirmed them, and now she was bludgeoning herself as was her ritual when things went sideways.
She let out a defeated sigh and wiped the tears from her eyes. And there … it was. A second set of eyes, ghostly and full of despair looming large over hers. She blinked hard and stumbled backward. The mirror swam in and out of focus but when she regained her balance it was still there.
“No. No, no, no!”
She turned away and flung open the bathroom door. Her sister Amanda waited for her at the bar, staring into a half empty martini glass, toothpick hanging out of her mouth.
“Can we go home, Mandy? I’m fucked up.”
“Told ya not to have that last one.” She said, flipping her iPhone case open so she could order them an Uber. “15 minutes. He’s driving a Volkswagen Golf for fuck’s sake” except it came out “fussake”
“What is this? 1990?”
Ramona stared at her sister for a few beats. That heavy fog, that burgeoning storm pushed to the back of her mind momentarily, and laughed loud enough the bartender looked at her sideways.
The sisters walked arm and arm to the front of the bar and out into the busy downtown strip.
“Keep an eye out for Mr. 1990” Amanda giggled
That was the last part of the night Ramona remembered.
Apparently they continued drinking when they arrived at their shared apartment. She found an empty bottle of Stolichnaya and 2 mini bottles of Crème de Menthe of all things strewn on the coffee table. Bonus finds included torn pictures of her and Adam at the science museum and a new crack in her phone screen. She’d escaped a hangover but she knew it was only barely. What she felt, however, was the return of that fog and her mind snapped back to that second set of otherworldly eyes that drowned her own in her reflection.
“That’s it. I’ve finally snapped.” she thought.
“No.” A second voice murmured. “You’re just finally awake.”
Startled, she dropped the empty vodka bottle and the sound of it clattering off of the coffee table before it hit the floor and shattered came in from far away.
Somehow, seeing that thing the night before had broken down the wall between her and it. No longer a fugue on the periphery it spoke again, this time louder and more insistent.
“You’ve denied it long enough. It’s time to become. It’s time to take, not give.”
Ramona started sobbing, helpless and frightened. Then suddenly an inexplicable calm came over her. She silently got dressed. Fixed her hair and make up, tidied the living room, then sat on the couch stock-still staring at the wall, listening.
Amanda had tried calling her twice while she was at work to see how she was feeling. Ramona was taking this Adam thing hard and she was worried.
Voicemail
Manda Panda
Work Phone
Transcription Beta
“Hey sis, it’s manda… to see how you’re doing. We got a little crazy last night but I think you needed it…be home…around…with some pizza. Call me back when you can. Love you.”
Was this transcription useful or not useful ?
>____________________________________
0:00                                                                    0:30
Speaker         Call Back        Delete
Ramona stared at her phone with cold indifference as the other formulated a plan.
She nodded at the murmuring presence,, less herself every minute. More of it.
Amanda came home and flung open the door, balancing a pizza in her free hand. She held the mail in her mouth.
“Honey!! I’m home!!” She mumbled around the letters and ads. It sounded like “mummy, my mome!”
It would have made Ramona laugh had there been a Ramona left to hear it.
At first, Amanda found nothing amiss. The living room was spotless and she yelled her thanks toward her sister’s door. She was glad to see she hadn’t been in bed all day nursing her broken heart, though she’d have understood if she had been.
“Monaaa?”
She flung her shoes off and pulled a slice of pizza out of the box.
It was with a mouthful of extra pepperoni she noticed the bloodstains. Wall and carpet at the entrance to the hall.
She swallowed the half chewed pizza hard.
“Ramona???”
More and more blood as she went. The hall was dark. A picture had fallen off the wall she stepped on broken glass.
“FUCK. Ramona! Are you alr—-“
Her breath left her and she forgot the pain in her foot as she ran to her sister’s doorway, glass still lodged in her heel.
Ramona’s door was ajar, a woman’s naked torso partially visible.
“Oh my God!!!! Baby, NO!!!!
Ramona lay on the floor naked surrounded by a pool of blood,
In her right hand  was an oyster knife they’d stolen from that Michelin rated restaurant last year on Amanda’s birthday. Her eyes had been gauged out. A mirror spilled out of the left.

 

Through the open window a thick fog settled over everything.
Fiction © Copyright Michelle Joy Gallagher
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More about Michelle Joy Gallagher:

Michelle_Joy_GallagherMichelle Joy Gallagher is a poet from Sacramento, CA. She enjoys mixing poetry with other artistic mediums, and pushing her own artistic comfort zones in the process. Using visceral imagery, and playing with the elasticity of language is where she finds herself happiest. She is the author of poetry chapbooks, A New Mourning and S=K log W, her poetry also makes appearances in The Rejected Volume 1 and The Rejected Volume 2 By Stan Konopka, and her story, The Red Woman, will appear in the soon to be released Café Macabre (Leah Lederman and Source Point Press).

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Suzanne Madron @suzannemadron @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Image_03_AugustLOH

Descent
by Suzanne Madron

The city streets after four in the morning are no place for the faint of heart. The giant heartbeat slows and the omnipresent breathing grinds down to the rumble of occasional and infrequent inhales and exhales of subways and buses. Skyscrapers and brownstones press dark against a brightening sky like a bedhead of concrete and steel. If one is unprepared to look that ugliest of one-night stands in the face during the wee hours, then one has no business living on its asphalt skin like a human tick attempting to burrow in and survive on its lifeblood.
I have business here, though I am merely wandering through on my way to other places. I come to this city in between my assignments to recharge, to drink in the ambient energy of the island. To sing it back to sleep when it jerks from a nightmare. If it were to wake up, we would all be in a world of shit.
Tonight, the city is stirring in its slumber, on the verge of waking, and I must hurry if I am to be successful. I must reach its heart before the sun rises.
The staircase yawns downward before me and I can see there are no homeless people in this particular tunnel, as if they, too, sensed the shift in the air and left for places else. A low, growling moan vibrates the concrete maw and the bulbs flicker like eyelids trying to open. My footfalls echo around me and downward, chasing me into the darkening shadows of the subway platform below and beyond into the darkness of the tunnel.
I sing as I go, softly at first and then louder as I enter the blinking darkness of the train tunnel. Every city – every place – has a heart. This city is no different, except that its heart is so much bigger, so much louder, than others. The earth shudders beneath my feet as I continue on, the sensation easily mistaken for a nearing subway train. I know better.
My song echoes outward and upward as I reach my destination. A dilapidated brick archway is all that adorns this most sacred of places buried deep beneath the layers of civilizations come and gone. Beyond the archway is a cavern lit only by guttering candles arranged in sconces in a circle. In the center of the design is a bed. In the center of the bed sleeps a child of indeterminate gender.
I continue to sing as I replace the dying candles and candles that have already gone out with fresh ones. The new light is brighter and will last longer. The sleeper turns over and breathes evenly, the young brow is no longer furrowed by troubled dreaming and the earth settles into its usual quiet hum as I leave the cavern to travel to the next place. To the next sleeper.
Fiction © Copyright Suzanne Madron
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

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More from Suzanne Madron:

For Sale or Rent

The house across the street seems to go on the market every few months, but this time nothing about the sale is normal, including the new owners. No sooner has the for sale sign come down and the neighborhood is thrown into a Lovecraftian nightmare and the only way to find out is to attend the house warming party.

 

Available on Amazon!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Rie Sheridan Rose @RieSheridanRose @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Image_02_AugustLOH
They Didn’t Listen
by Rie Sheridan Rose

Mattie Lou stood in the doorway to the basement playroom, clutching that ratty old bear of hers under one arm, all four fingers of her other hand in her mouth. She removed the damp appendages long enough to ask, “Whatcha doin’?”
Terrance raised an eyebrow at his little sister. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed, runt? You know you’re not allowed down here. This is my space.”
“It’s scary upstairs. Momma’s at work, and there’s a storm comin’.”
He relented with a smile. “Okay. You can stay down here if you will sit on my bed and be quiet. My friends are coming over, and we’re going to…play a game.”
“Kin I play?”
“Not this time. It’s…a grown-up game.”
“You ain’t growed-up.”
“Just sit on the bed and be quiet.”
Mattie Lou obediently clambered up on to the bed tucked into the corner, and stuck her hand back in her mouth, watching intently as Terrance set up a card table in the center of the floor and put the dining room chairs around it. He covered it with a black cloth with a funny design drawn on it in gold—it looked like a fancy star to Mattie. Then he put candles on the table and lit them.
“We ain’t supposed to play with fire!” she cried anxiously.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m watching them.”
The doorbell sounded upstairs.
“Just sit still—and be quiet,” Terrance cautioned her, flipping off the light as he went to answer the door.
Mattie Lou hugged her teddy to her, blinking back tears as the candles flickered, and the air seemed to grow cold around her. “This ain’t a good game, Terry,” she whispered. “You should play Yahtzee…”
There was an excited clatter on the stairs, voices talking over each other as Terrance and his friends burst into the room.
“This is so cool, Terry,” purred Melissa. “It’s great your mom works nights so we can use the basement.”
Mattie Lou didn’t like Melissa. She fancied herself Terry’s girlfriend. Momma didn’t like her either. She’d be mad if she knew what was going on… Peter and Donna were okay, but they shouldn’t be here either. None of this should be going on!
The teenagers arranged themselves around the table. Melissa pulled a board out of her shoulder bag. “Here’s the Ouija.”
“Cool!” Terrance crowed, dropping a kiss on her proffered cheek. “This will be so awesome.”
“You shouldn’t, Terry! You shouldn’t” Mattie Lou groaned.
“Be quiet, Mattie, or you’re going upstairs.”
She bit back a sob, huddling in the bed with tears flowing down her cheeks. “You shouldn’t,” she whispered.
The teens ignored her, giggling as they put their hands on the planchette in the center of the table.
“Who is here?” Terrance intoned, in a sepulchral voice.
The wind began screaming outside the house, and the windows upstairs rattled like someone was trying to break into the house.
“I said…” Mattie Lou moaned, as the house disintegrated around them.
Fiction © Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More from Author Rie Sheridan Rose:

Skellyman

“I have always preferred the supernatural in tales of horror, the knot between life and death. Rie Sheridan Rose’s Skellyman is cool and creepy. Her first horror novel is a chilling read.” — Charlee Jacob – Stoker winner, Best novel, “Dread in the Beast”

Brenda Barnett is trying to cope with raising her four-year-old daughter all alone after an accident tore her family in half. As she and Daisy go for a much-needed treat, the little girl spots a Skellyman on the corner.

This pivotal encounter leads to a wave of mounting terror as Brenda’s life begins to come undone around her. Who is the Skellyman? Why does he keep appearing? Can the sympathetic policeman Brenda turns to stop the madness before it is too late?

And why does Daisy insist that her dead brother is trying to tell them something important?

Available on Amazon!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author A.F. Stewart @scribe77 @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Image_01_AgustLOHChildhood Nightmares
by A.F. Stewart

Why am I here?
I stared at the thing, like some Eldritch horror or a mutant snuffleupagus on steroids. It smiled at me.
You are here because I brought you at last. And I am not an Eldritch horror; they pale in comparison to me. And I have no idea what a snuffleupagus is.
And the smell… roses mixed with rotting fish and a touch of sulphur. It made me gag.
You don’t smell particularly nice either. All sweat and salt, and… I’m uncertain what but it’s sickening.
I pinched myself, but it didn’t help, it only hurt. I wasn’t dreaming.
Of course you’re not dreaming. You weren’t dreaming as a child either. I’m quite real. I’ve always been real.
It reached out a nose tentacle and stroked my hair. I shuddered. The touch was cold and clammy, and the smell. Why did it smell? I gagged and coughed, choking down bile. It wrapped the tentacle around my body, and then another and another. I choked on the smell, the ever present smell, throwing up as it dragged me in closer. I looked it in the eyes. I should have been afraid. Why wasn’t I afraid? This felt… inevitable.
It is. It always has been. Because we know each other. We are destined. I’ve been with you since you were a child. Waiting until you were ready.
Ready for what?
To be eaten of course.
I finally screamed as I saw his teeth.
I remembered. I had been here before. Done this before.
Then came the pain. And the smell. I remembered the smell. Always the smell. I choked on it as his teeth ground through my bones and ripped my flesh apart, felt it ooze around me as I died. And then nothing…
Why am I here?
I stared at the thing, like some Eldritch horror or a mutant snuffleupagus on steroids.
It smiled at me.
Fiction © Copyright A.F. Stewart
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
 

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More from A.F. Stewart:

HellsEmpire_CoverHell’s Empire: Tales of the Incursion

A unique anthology of two thrones at war as the forces of Hell assault an unsuspecting Victorian Britain.The cry went out to theologians and engineers, to artificers and antiquarians, to every name which could be named. By telegraph where lines were still intact, and by volunteer riders where they were not; smuggled along the coast in fishing smacks, semaphored from hill-tops. It came without royal sanction, issued jointly by the Lords of the Admiralty and Marquess Lansdowne, the new Secretary of State for War:”In God’s name, help us. We are losing.”

Available on Amazon!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Marge Simon @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on August 25, 2019 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Image_04_AugustLOH
Eyes of the Beholder
by Marge Simon

It began with the eyeliner commercial.
Darlene was surfing the internet for beauty tips. The screen dropped down and an attractive young woman appeared. The camera focused on her eyes. How stunning they were, subtle yet sexy as hell!
“Gorgeous!” Darlene whispered.
“Wouldn’t you love to have eyes like mine?” breathed the beautiful woman.
“Oh yes!” Darlene was barely able to contain her excitement.
Until that moment, she had never thought seriously about using liner for her eyes. She was blessed with lustrous thick lashes, and had enjoyed many compliments on them. The vid clip demo made it look so easy. The liner was veggie-based, no animals were killed in the testing. Moreover, it was quite affordable. Darlene knew that once she applied this amazing eyeliner, her face would be transformed. Her eyes would be so enhanced as to bedazzle any guy she chose. When it arrived, she applied it carefully to the top and bottom lids. The effect was immediate. Her eyes were as glamorous as those of the woman in the commercial.
On the next day there was a new commercial about another beauty product starring the same model. “Wouldn’t you love to have skin like mine?”
“Oh yes, yes!” Darlene whispered, rushing a PayPal order for the cream (also veggie based, without harm to animals) that would make her skin “smooth and white as a statue made from Carrara marble.” When it arrived, she hurriedly applied it in front of a mirror. The effect was immediate, unexpected and permanent.
Trying to look on the positive side, Darlene was glad that at least she hadn’t spent money to get that new lipstick product (veggie based, no animals were killed in the testing). What vegetables could possibly have been in the skin lotion, anyway? No matter, a marble statue has no use for cosmetics.
Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More from Marge Simon:

 

Satan’s Sweethearts
by Marge Simon and‎ Mary Turzillo

Satan’s Sweethearts – a collection of poems by Marge Simon and Mary Turzillo featuring the most monstrous, evil women throughout history!

Available on Amazon!

 

 

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Terrie Leigh Relf @TLRelf @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on August 25, 2019 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Image_03_AugustLOHA Safer Place
by Terrie Leigh Relf

Catarina paused at the top of the dark stairwell to catch her breath. She gripped the banister and began to descend the stairs, fighting the urge to turn around. She paused at the next landing, turned her head slightly to listen, her breath a slight echo within the deepening darkness.
Was there another entrance to the hospital’s supposedly abandoned basement? Catarina couldn’t remember, as it had been nearly a year since she’d been down here, nearly a year since her last attempt to escape was thwarted. Dr. Solaza and his team had kept her in solitary for weeks after that . . . and then, the experiments resumed. Her head still felt a bit fuzzy, as they usually kept her sedated and under observation.
Catarina took the last step, turned left into the cloying darkness. It only took a few moments for her eyes to adjust, and she quickened her pace. If the new orderly, Max, had been telling the truth, this hallway would lead to a place where she could hide. “You’ll be safer there until I can take you away from here,” Max had said, pressing his forehead against hers.
There would be a place to sleep, a bathroom and shower, enough food and water for a few days. What other choice did she have?
There were several doors down this corridor, just a few feet ahead, though; wan light seeped from under a door. She listened, eyes closed, extended her inner sight.
The room was definitely empty.
She took a deep breath, exhaled, and then pushed the handle. Once inside, Catarina scanned the small room. Max had been true to his word. She locked the door, and walked over to a table where there was a case of water. She unscrewed the top of a bottle, titled it back. Even though she wasn’t hungry, Catarina opened a pack of trail mix. After eating a few handfuls and drinking another bottle of water, Catarina sat down on an old office chair.
Now all she had to do was wait.
* * *
Catarina awakened to footsteps coming toward the room. She held her breath, expecting Max to come through the door, but whomever it was passed and continued down the corridor. A few minutes later, there were more footsteps, these louder than the last as they passed by the door.
How many people was that? Three? Five? Where were they all going? Was this room still safe? Had it ever been?
Catarina tried the door. It was locked.
Had Max betrayed her? Could she have inadvertently locked the door?
Scanning the room for a place to hide, Catarina saw another door at the back of the room. Utility closet? Exit to another corridor?
She tested the knob, and opened the door into a dark stairwell. Grabbing a few bottles of water and another bag of trail mix, Catarina opened the door again and began to ascend the stairs, one step after another, pausing every few steps to listen. When she reached the top landing, it opened up into an operating amphitheater’s viewing room. As she looked down, bright lights assaulted her vision, but she blinked a few times, looked down again.
There, on the operating table was Max. Unconscious.
“So nice of you to join us, Catarina,” Dr. Solaz said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. The rest of his team was there.
Catarina stepped toward the intercom, turned it on. “What are you doing to him?”
“Well, that depends on you. Come down here, and we’ll forgive your little escapade and allow Max to leave.”
Catarina nodded, rage burning through her body. She managed one of her most pleasant smiles, said, “Which door do I take?”
“The one on the left. You’re doing the right thing, Catarina.”
She opened the door, took the stairs into the operating amphitheater. With each step, her rage increased. With each step, she felt the change quicken in the very marrow of her bones. By the time she shoved open the door and strode to the amphitheater, Dr. Solaz and his team backed up against the wall, their faces paling. Max was still unconscious, which was good. He had no idea what she was, and what she could become.
Catarina took a long look at Dr. Solaz, then at each of his team. Most of these individuals had inflicted some type of horror on her or the others that lived at the lab.
She raised her head, sniffed, tasting their fear on her tongue. Closing her eyes, Catarina called out to the beast that lived within her, the beast that she had promised not to release, the beast that now would be fed.
When Catarina shifted back to her human form, blood and gore clung to the amphitheater walls. Max was sitting up on the table now, a broad smile crinkling his dark eyes.
“I was wondering when you’d let the beast out.” Max slid off the table. “Now let’s get you cleaned up and get out of here.”
“What about everyone else?”
“I have the feeling that once they discover Dr. Solaz and his team are gone, they’ll have no problem escaping—and finding a safer place.”
Fiction © Copyright Terrie Leigh Relf
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More from author Terrie Leigh Relf:

The Sisterhood of the Blood Moon

For thousands of Earth years, the Transgalactic Consortium has had a quiet interest in this planet and its inhabitants, the Haurans. While the Sisterhood of the Blood Moon works together with the Consortium and Haurans to maintain balance in the universe, the Blood Moon is fast approaching. The power of this moon reveals untold secrets . . . including a sacred covenant with the Mora Spiders. There is an ancient pact that needs to be honored—but at what cost and for whose purpose? The world may come to an end. But will there be a chance for a new beginning?

Available for purchase from the Alban Lake Store!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Tiffany Michelle Brown @TiffeBrown @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on August 24, 2019 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Image_02_AugustLOHHell Hath No Fury
by Tiffany Michelle Brown

She’d been clear as a nightingale’s song: if you never betray me, you have nothing to fear. In response, he’d kissed her hard, the kind of kiss that breaks apart the sturdiest walls and lets softness in. Unlike others before him, he’d delighted in the electric currents that sparked from her fingertips and shocked his skin. She held him tighter than she’d held anything in her life. Together, they were incendiary, alive, and indestructible.
Or so she thought.
She decided she’d never try to surprise anyone ever again, because this time, the one time she’d tried to be romantic and spontaneous, the greatest surprise had been her own. As she approached the barn where her beloved worked, she was greeted with the usual smells of sweat, hay, and sunshine. She smiled as she tiptoed carefully through the grass, trying to be as quiet as possible.
Five feet from the barn, a cry from within stopped her cold. If it had been a cry from an animal, she wouldn’t have paused. But this. This sound was decidedly human. And decidedly familiar, too.
She knew what she’d witness when she stooped to peer through a gash in the barn’s façade, but she did it anyway. And there it was. Porcelain skin. An amalgam of limbs. A rhythm she knew too well.
She felt her heart harden as she stalked away, fury mounting in her chest. Her fingertips ignited and burned. She raised her hands to the sky, banished the sun, and coaxed clouds black as silt to gather above her. She ordered them to roil and turn and toss until a funnel burst forth.
She heard the crack of wood as the tornado splintered the barn apart, but even so, the sound of their lovemaking continued to ring in her ears.
Fiction © Copyright Tiffany Michelle Brown
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Lori R. Lopez @LoriRLopez @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction #poem #poetry

Posted on August 24, 2019 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Image_01_AgustLOHCarni-Val
by Lori R. Lopez

A rickety Caravan of growls and creaks, grumbles,
tin-whistle wails, parading common lanes
like a patchwork show contrived to entertain young or old
with an air of derelict shady grandeur . . . a sense of
importance that belies the shabby impression.
Halting on a mudfield, a plain expanse
both moodful and mopey, highly visible, yet away
from scrutiny. Ideal for nefarious deeds.
Thirteen wagons unload, their colors and murals
painted on panels long faded or chipped.
Sinister as the promise in the greasy grin of Fate;
the lips of a Carnival Barker inviting, enticing
an unsuspecting populace to part with their
Piggybanks or final coins, saved up for sealed eyelids
on a rainy unspectacular day, a somber gray future,
a sordid demise that none could predict.
“It’s your funeral!” promises the gruff swarthy
Pitchman as he winks and peels back
a weathered flap to beckon, offering secret access
to the Tent Of No Return. “Enter at your own risk!”
Booming laughter echoes on and on. Lights dim,
spun in circles, strung in spirals surrounding
a Ferris Wheel, a Funhouse, games and rides.
A row of dreary sagging canvas huts.
The Carni-Val awaits, drooling and starved,
gaudy and gay on the surface, rabid and rotting
underneath; between sputters and gutters of illumination,
the strobes of lurid festering gothic appetite.
Welcoming small-towners who flock for miles
to gander an eve of atrocious acts fit only for the bravest,
the most depraved. Here would their nightmares
unfold in the flesh, lovely and bizarre.
But it is what they cannot view from outside that
draws some to gawp in disbelief at a Midnight attraction,
a Late Side-Show of creeps and creatures:
half-person, half-beast. Misshapen combinations of
man or woman and Wolf; of Bear, Elephant, Tiger.
Reptile Boy, Piranha Girl, Arachnid Baby, Crocodile Lady.
The wormlike form of a Human Slug. A pool of
posing Vampire Mermaids. A flock of Bat People.
The Squid-Man is the star, at first a Ringmaster
of the weird, the uncanny and arcane. Transformed to
a monstrous Magician. His booming voice sings Opera
while a tentacle beard dances. Writhing, hypnotic,
burly strands keep the audience enthralled as he performs
a magic feat: vanishing a volunteer. “Step right up,
who will be next?” Mister Squid bids the loneliest soul
to come forth — one who would not be missed.
Then bows to mesmerized mechanical applause . . .
never needing to bring back the disavowed, disenchanted,
the disappeared for approval. Tragic and lost,
these wretched languish till after the festive trappings
dim — their awful cries unheard, pleas and prayers
unheeded — when crowds have dispersed
and only the animal mouths of predatory men and women
remain. A garish company, beast and carnivore,
raptorously feeds.
Fiction © Copyright Lori R. Lopez
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More from Lori R. Lopez:

LoriRLopez_Darkverse Darkverse: The Shadow Hours

A rich gathering of poetry with a dismal twilight atmosphere, a brooding nature, an eerie tone . . . DARKVERSE: THE SHADOW HOURS encompasses such pieces written by Lori R. Lopez between 2009 and 2017, collected in three of her POETIC REFLECTIONS volumes along with humorous and serious verse. This ample compendium allows a more focused reading experience and mood — presenting poems that share speculative themes, flashes of horror, glimpses of madness.

Lori is the author of THE DARK MISTER SNARK, THE STRANGE TAIL OF ODDZILLA, LEERY LANE, MONSTROSITIES, AN ILL WIND BLOWS, and THE FAIRY FLY among other tales. She has been called a storyteller, whether composing verse or prose.

The aim of her Darkverse series is to offer a chilling trek through unlit stretches where all manner of creeps and kooks may lurk; where graveyards and bogs and full-moons abound. The pages of The Shadow Hours illuminate those morbid uncanny perils and dreads that inhabit drab corners, the known and unknown terrors of the night. Vivid and distinct, her voice echoes our worst fears then delves beyond, exposing hitherto unimaginable frights.

Prepare to confront a motley array of ghouls and menaces that might just move under your bed.

DARKVERSE: THE SHADOW HOURS is an Elgin Award Nominee and a 2018 Kindle Book Awards Poetry Finalist. Look for an Illustrated Print Edition with quirky art by the author.

Available on Amazon!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Poetry, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments