The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
A Party to Forget by Nina D’Arcangela
Pushing through the mist, I sauntered into the ballroom; my finery somewhat unrefined, my gait swaying with a slight hitch. I’d often heard tell of Madam de Vere’s elaborate soirées, but had no opportunity to attend—until now. One was not welcome at an after-life party without the requisite stilled breath, else those without take it from you.
I’d imagined a grand reception; privileges granted a seer of my strength and heritage. Surely they’d know I was coming. After all, the world’s loss was the losts’ gain…or so I deluded myself.
Many gathered to greet me, my Great-gran the first. Her eyes bore through me as they drew from head to toe. She pulled me into her chilled embrace, ripped the Cameo from my bosom. I stared in shock. For the lack of life left in me, I couldn’t fathom a reason for the hostility. Her alabaster countenance held the kind gaze I remembered from my youth, but her actions belied the placid façade.
Enamored with her reclaimed broach, she turned away, both distracted and disinterested. A ghoul leaned toward her ear, but before he could speak, she waved a dismissive hand.
“Nonna…” I croaked, distress broadcasting from my entire being.
She pivoted toward me, the semblance of her gentler nature gone. In its place a mask of pain, anguish, and anger. She jerked forward with a ghastly trill. The others took her cue, and descended.
Woken each night by the sounds of screams and twisting metal, Lauren must relive the panic and fear of discovering her brother’s broken body on the asphalt. But each morning, she finds it’s only a dream… One she doesn’t want to keep having.
At what point does a dream become a nightmare, and a nightmare more than a figment of her subconscious?
The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Where the Sad Men Live by Melissa R. Mendelson
My birthday was last night. I turned forty-five. My husband and two kids celebrated me with dinner and a movie. It was a nice night, quiet, and I should have enjoyed it. But I didn’t, and as I lowered down toward my birthday cake with so many bright, sparkling candles, I made a wish. I wished for something to happen to me, something exciting.
The next morning, I awoke to a coldness. It wasn’t the house. The radiators were creaking out the heat, but the soft sheets felt stiff, the covers scratchy. Strange, the material almost felt unfamiliar, and my husband lied close to me. But when I touched him, he flipped over and snapped, “Don’t touch me.”
“Okay. It was my birthday last night,” I said.
“Yeah. We celebrated it. Now, I’m sleeping.”
“Alright, someone is getting off the wrong side of the bed today.” I slipped off the bed, and my feet searched for my warm, soft slippers. They weren’t there. Maybe, I kicked them under the bed, but I didn’t bother to look. Instead, I took a shower, and the water was lukewarm. “Some day after my birthday,” I muttered to myself.
Usually when I went downstairs, the kids would have the television set on and watch something, sometimes something outrageous. They also would have huge bowels full of sugar and milk, and they would chatter away about things that I had no clue about. This morning was different. No television set. No cereal bowels full of sugar and milk. No talking. Instead, they sat pale and stiff at the kitchen table, eating their toast and drinking orange juice. What was going on today?
“Morning, kids.” I noticed sharp stares when I said that. “Too much cake last night?”
“Cake?” My son asked. “Who had cake?”
“Not us,” my daughter muttered. “She must have dreamt it.”
“We had cake last night.” I rustled my son’s hair, and he gave me a panicked look. “What? What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t ask his permission,” my daughter said. “You invaded his space.”
“What? Okay. Are you two and your father playing some kind of joke on me because I was disappointed with my birthday last night?”
“Mother,” my son said. “We had the appropriate meal for your birthday, and we watched the documented news. You were fine last night.” His gaze narrowed. “You are not fine now.”
I pushed away a chill growing at the base of my spine. “I’m fine. Maybe, I’m just confused.”
“You are confused,” my daughter said. “And what are you wearing? Jeans? We don’t wear jeans. We wear pants.”
“Seriously, what is going on?” I reached over to touch my daughter’s hand, but she slapped my hand away.
“Mother, what is wrong with you?”
“I’m just trying to show you some affection.” I smiled at my daughter, but she did not smile back. “You can smile. It’s not illegal to smile.”
“Yes, it is,” my son said. “Only the authorities can be happy. We just accommodate.”
“Accommodate?”
“Dad, something’s wrong with Mother,” my daughter screamed loudly, and a thud was heard from upstairs.
“This isn’t funny.” I listened to my husband hurry down the stairs. I barely recognized him. He was always a little rough on the edges, but I got that soft side to come out more and more over the years. That soft side was not there, and the gaze in his eyes was cold, menacing. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Do not bother the children. If you want to have another one, I’ll gladly take you upstairs, but otherwise, leave them alone. They need to be educated.”
“Educated?” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. None of you were like this last night. You ae all different people.”
A photograph on the wall caught my attention. It was once a colorful, happy image of the four of us. This one was cold, and we were dressed like we were at a funeral not a celebration.
“I have to make a call.” My husband left the room.
I watched him leave and looked at the children. “What is this? 1984?”
“Dad, Mother said a banned word.”
I wish to wake up. I wish to wake up. I wish to wake up, but I was still standing in the kitchen, surrounded by children that were not mine.
“Dad,” my son yelled, but he wasn’t my son.
“They’re on the way. She’ll be educated soon.”
“What is educated?” I asked.
“It is what the authorities deem for you,” my daughter responded, but she was not my daughter.
“What about free will?” I asked.
“Dad, why is Mother saying so many banned words?”
Suddenly, there was a loud knock on the front door. One knock, and they came in, men with pale faces, burrowed brows, and twisted cheeks. They did not say a word but moved like death, only they were missing a scythe, and as they locked onto my arms, pushing me outside, all the warmth screamed from my body. I was numb, surrounded, and my husband and children stood a distance away. But they were not my family.
“I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go…”
One man placed something over my mouth, and a bitter taste raced across my tongue. My jaw slammed shut, and my eyes fluttered. I slipped, but they had me, these sad men that refused to let me go.
Melissa R. Mendelson is a horror, science-fiction and dystopian author and poet. She has two publications with Wild Ink Publishing. One is a prose poetry collection, This Will Remain With Us, and the other is a short story collection, Stories Written On Covid Walls. She also self-published a sci-fi novella, Waken and a small short story collection, Name’s Keeper.
If you’d like to learn more about Melissa, you can visit her accounts here: www.MelissaMendelson.com
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
The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Fatal Reunion by Lee Mitchell
We agreed that our love would endure until the end of time, our souls bound for all eternity by those two simple words, “I do.” For better or for worse. In sickness and in health. ’Til death do us part.
And ’til death do us reunite.
Our love gave me the strength and the will to seek you out from beyond the vastness of infinity, this unending plane where I was meant to rest and pause and know everlasting peace. But how could I be at peace without you by my side?
I defied all odds, transcending time and space, to find you and bring you here. I gathered my new friends, planned a party to mark the occasion, and tore you from that old, tired realm which held you from me. It took nearly all that was left of my being to finish the feat, nearly impossible, but somehow, I managed. Somehow, love prevailed over even death itself.
So now, after all I went through to get you here, why do you do nothing but scream?
Alisha Brown led a mundane life until the day monsters started trying to kill her and random strangers began to shy away from her in awe.
All hell broke loose, quite literally, after Randy Thomas turned right on Main for Honey’s instead of making a left for home and then murdered his beloved wife in an unusually gruesome way. Escaping police and stopping traffic in New York City with a gas-spewing tentacle erupting from his mouth, his fears are confirmed: That one small backslide would serve as the final tipping point for all mankind, inviting in a timeless destructive force that would lead him to the frontlines of the war to end all wars.
A growing population has succumbed to their worst fears, some transforming into dreaded fictional monsters—leaving the streets flooded with vampires, werewolves, spontaneously combusting humans, and other horrors—while others have become angels and demons determined to fight in the holy war they believe is upon them.
Questions soon arise as Randy’s and Alisha’s roles in this bizarre apocalypse become uncertain. One is a professed sinner, the other an asexual virgin. Each has been touched by the hand of fate, and each believes they are humanity’s last hope. But belief can be a funny thing…
The Divine Darkness is the first installment of The Divine Darkness apocalyptic horror trilogy.
The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Moon Orchid by Sheikha A.
It was my claws that first unfurled— rasp singing of an abraded soul— uncommon in the meadow. Fog had eaten everything; pine, moon and every whisper of reflections— whispers— for this is what remained between drifting dawn and dusk. I was both product and outcome; input of hybrid cradling; whisper of utopia; the myriad ambitions budding inside adventurous naivety. Germinated against will, the liquid substances forced my roots, and gradually, with each ending equinox, under persistent permeation— against my will— I could no longer control the spilling; all the whispers inside me forging a new being of its own
melting flower
the frost no more
tugging me under
Spring arrived like an eruption. In full bloom, the hours had begun to strangely thicken. Sky seemed to have embodied water, always hung in a state of precipice; it was as if time had become stuck between seasons. Past clung to present with only just a whisper making it to the future. Much has changed now with not much having chanced. I am eternal bloom— the moon maiden— removed from light; my reproduction burnt. This meadow is only night. All of each bloom that once graced, now just whispers in water— salty, decomposed and immortal. Fog rolls in without truancy; nights black with a new breed of molten starlight; tonight I go uneaten yet again. My petals of claws creak like old bones. Until the next wave in this eternity of blooming, the sky shifts only just. Something is different about the whisper this round; my stem-body receives a shimmer of hope. I can hear the singing within: hoarse hymn of the one left behind, but soon I shall be taken; the fog has dealt a promise to my being, holding sway
Nyctophiliac Confessions:
Poems by Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee
“The night is cold enough to inspire poetry,” says Sheikha A. in her poem, “Reading My Bones.” This is the basis of Nyctophiliac Confessions – poems that are introspective and luminal, poems that require a certain amount of silence and space to be fully formed and appreciated. Reading these poems, I imagined that they were the kind of poems that assert themselves unbidden during a bout of insomnia. (A nyctophiliac being someone who loves the night or loves darkness).
Nyctophiliac Confessions is the 17th installment of Praxis’ chapbook series and contains twenty-six poems written by two poets, Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee, interspersed with abstract paintings by Robert Rhodes.
The Ladies of Horror Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Shame by Elizabeth H. Smith
I haven’t seen her face in so long I can’t remember what she looks like. The mask is all my memory knows. Somewhere behind that fog lies the truth, something raw and unfiltered, visceral and cruel. But I dare not look.
She must forever hide, wearing the mask like a death shroud for her former self. She must remain in the dark, alone, unable to be witnessed. I can’t recall why, what makes her so dangerous… That was buried with the past. But I know there’s something evil behind that plastic face. Some horrific thing that should have been burned to ash long ago.
So she keeps it where it belongs, hidden from the world, covered from sight. She protects the outside from her inside, the wickedness waiting to be released. No one should suffer the agony of viewing the monster within, no one deserves the indignity of her shame. She knows she must endure it in the confines of solitude, never to be known, never to be heard, and never to be seen.
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!
Life Eight Watches Life Nine by Kathleen McCluskey
I noticed it first in the reflection of the microwave door, that cheap, warped mirror that bends everything just enough to make you question your own eyes. It was well past midnight, the house reduced to a low electrical hum and my cat sat on the counter where she knew she didn’t belong. She was too still, her body in a kind of quiet attention that made the air feel heavier. Her eyes reflected the dim light, glowing faintly in the glass. At first nothing seemed to be wrong, until I realized there were too many of the glowing orbs looking back at me.
I leaned closer, my breath fogging the glass, waiting for the image to correct itself. But it didn’t. Two faces pressed into one body stared back at me, fused seamlessly. I might have dismissed it if one hadn’t lagged behind the other. One set of eyes blinked. The second followed a moment later, slower, reluctant, like it was remembering how. A cold weight settled in my chest as I stared, trying to force sense into something that refused it.
When I turned around, there was only one cat on the counter.
She flicked her tail, annoyed and left out a chirp as if I interrupted her. No distortion. No second face. Just her, small and solid. More importantly, singular. I told myself it was the glass, the hour, my own exhaustion playing tricks.
A few nights later, she jumped onto my bed, circling twice before settling in against my legs. The room was dim, lit only by the dull glow of my phone. For a while I barely noticed her. Then her weight shifted, and something about it felt wrong. It wasn’t the natural adjustment of a cat getting comfortable. It was uneven, like two separate pressures trying to occupy the same space.
One side pressed firmly into me, real and warm, while the other lagged behind. Slightly delayed, as though it had to catch up. When I looked down, the shape of her head seemed broader than it should have been, stretched in a way that didn’t align with reality. For one brief, sickening moment, I saw two muzzles sharing the same spine, overlapping like a double exposure. One set of whiskers trembled with breath and the other remained perfectly still.
Then she yawned. Only one mouth opened. The shape collapsed instantly, snapping back to normal. Something safe. But my pulse didn’t follow. My heart raced in my chest. I lay there longer than I should have in the dark staring. Waiting for it to happen again.
After that, I started watching her. Not casually. Not the way you watch a pet. But with a quiet growing fixation. Most of the time she was herself. Quiet. Indifferent. Lazy and draped across furniture like spilled ink. But there were moments where she would freeze, her eyes widening as she stared off into space. When she moved again, there was always a delay, subtle enough to miss if you weren’t looking for it.
I tested it once.
I clapped my hands sharply in the quiet. She flinched immediately, her body reacting in a quick, instinctive jerk. Then a fraction of a second later, she flinched again. The same moment repeated, weaker the second time, like an echo.
The vet told me she was perfectly healthy. He ran his hands along her spine, checked her eyes, and listened to her chest. “Strong heartbeat,” he said, offering a small, practiced smile. But I watched his fingers linger a little too long over her ribs, a pause so slight it could have been nothing. But something in his expression tightened when he pulled away. I chose not to ask. Frankly, I was too scared to hear the answer.
It got worse after that. I began to see the second image clearly when she moved too quickly followed by a blur of something almost identical. Then not. The difference was always the eyes.
One set was alive, tracking every movement. The other was duller, fixed, watching without reacting. Sometimes they blinked out of sync. Sometimes only one set blinked. Once, in the dead stillness of the early morning, I watched one set of eyes closed in sleep and the other wide open, unblinking.
That was when the understanding settled in. Cats don’t live nine lives one right after another, the way we like to say. They overlap. Near the end of one life and the beginning of another, there is a span where they both exist at once, sharing the same body. One fades while the other takes hold.
Most people never notice because the transition is quick.
This one wasn’t.
Tonight, she sits at the foot of my bed, her body outlined by the dim light seeping in through the window.
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.
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!
Green Thumb by Kathryn Ptacek.
I have gardened most of my life, and I just noticed for the first time that many flowers and plants bear some resemblance to humans. Not the entire person. What I am thinking about is body parts.
Yeah. Body parts.
I might have suspected this for a long time, but never sat down to truly think about it. Except now that I have the broken foot and few visitors, I have more “inside” time, more hours to sit and stare at things or ponder this or that.
Like the purple orchid in the plain ceramic pot on the windowsill.
At least, I think it’s an orchid. I’ve had it for several years … a friend was downsizing her indoor plant collection and dropped the pot off on my porch one summer’s eve. I had never grown an orchid or anything remotely exotic, so I saw it as a botanical challenge. And for whatever reason, I kept forgetting to look the flower up on my phone. One of these days, right?
And so far I seemed to be doing the right thing. At least, until recently. A few days ago I noticed some of thin yellow streaks marred the dark green leaves. Too little water? Too much water? The light from the window was the same as always, so that wasn’t the problem, I decided.
Maybe I should take a photo of the plant and text it to a friend. She might know what was wrong. Or not. Not all gardeners know everything, I realized.
Now, though, I grabbed my crutches and hobbled closer and snapped a few shots of the plant from several angles. I thought with the first click of the cell’s camera, I detected a slight movement. Well, the window was open, although there was no breeze. It was like, I thought with a silly grin plastered on my face, the plant had stood a little taller … had preened.
I chuckled aloud. I needed to get out of the house soon, I thought. I have been in the house since the accident, and I must be getting a little stir crazy if I thought the plant moved.
Still.
I touched the lower petal … light purple with dark stripes. It had a velvety feel, like some roses I had grown over the years. I brought my fingers down along the full petal, almost a stroke, and the plant shivered. This time I wasn’t mistaken. I did it again, and the plant vibrated. Again and again. I thought the plant was almost shivering with pleasure, and my chuckle grew louder.
Maybe the plant was in the Venus fly trap family and reacted, in some ways, to touch.
I rested my finger on the petal and noticed the green stems above the flower … almost like a verdant collar. I had never really studied them. I really needed to pay more attention to my plants, I told myself sternly. I guess I always assumed that these would unfurl into more leaves. Except they never did.
As I stroked the flower again, and one of the stems–folded leaves? whatever!–swayed, and one at the other end seemed to bend down close to my finger.
It was then that I realized there were five of these green things … five like fingers, And I spread my hand and placed a finger against each of the stems, and within minutes they stems had curled around my fingers in a soft embrace.
I wasn’t surprised or afraid. I just stared, not sure I could really believe my eyes. And yet there were the twinning stems, wrapping my fingers until I could barely see my skin. I smiled and caressed each one with my other hand and felt a responding shiver.
My hand grew more green as the minutes passed, and the stems inched toward my wrist.
“No,” I said aloud with a shake of my head. “Just the hand.”
The stems’ movement stopped, and they went no further. And I watched as my hand became softer and more green, and the fingers were thick heavy stems.
And I realized now this was what my plant needed: Me.
It wasn’t hurting my hand. There was no wounds, no blood. It was just absorbing, for lack of a better word, my hand, and I didn’t mind at all.
I flexed my hand–our hand–and smiled.
It took most of the night for my hand to become the plant. And at some point as I sat back in my chair, I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, the change was complete. I touched my new hand, flexed my stems, and smiled.
It didn’t bother me, and I was glad, but I knew others–my friends, for instance–wouldn’t understand. Someone might want to cut my transformed hand off. “No,” I said aloud, clutching that hand to my chest. “No.”
Most days I sit in the sun and make sure my fingers receive enough light. I slip a glove on before someone comes to visit, and no one blinks. I always have a handy excuse, as it were.
My new fingers do all that my old ones did, and that pleases me. And I have noticed the little slits in the plant where the five stems once grew. Tiny buds are emerging … soon to be more stems. Wonderful. And maybe just maybe, it was time to pass the plant onto the next friend to see what happens.
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 