Happy October’s Eve!
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Poppy and her sister Cleo stood in front of their old family house on Alderwood Street and Poppy was speechless.
“I thought you said it was run down,” Poppy sputtered. “I thought you said it was a dive.”
” Well – ”
“It’s a shell! It’s absolutely in ruins! I wouldn’t haunt this place if I was a chain-rattling, sheet-wearing ghost,” Poppy cried.
” Get up Poppy. A woman of your age on the ground sobbing like a baby. Honestly. It’s not dignified. ”
” I thought someone would take care of it, I thought arrangements were made. ”
Cleo looked down at her sister. She sighed and then took a seat next to her. She could feel the damp from rotting leaves soaking into her backside.
“You can’t expect anyone to have wanted to do that. Nobody wants anything to do with a house where the entire family was murdered in their beds by an axe-wielding maniac.”
“But Cleo—”
” Face it, Poppy, no matter what state it’s in, this is our home and this is where our hearts are. ”
Cleo stood up and held her hand out to her sister. She thought about the eight hearts that their killer had taken from their family and buried in the side yard after he had made himself lunch and cut himself a slice of the apple pie their mother had made the day before.
“It’s a death trap,” Poppy said sadly.
“Yes, it is, Poppy. It certainly is.”
Photographer Unknown
Darcy Doyle does not like chocolate Darcy Doyle loves chocolate without reservation.
He loves dark chocolate and milk chocolate and hot chocolate. He loves chocolate covered cherries and straweberies, he even loves chocolate covered crickets, grasshoppers and chocolate covered mealworms.
If it’s dipped in chocolate Darcy will gobble it with his eyes closed and in those moments he sighs like a lover getting that long waited for sweet and slow kiss at last.
Sometimes he doesn’t even bother to chew his chocolate. He just cruches it up and and sighs as those swee little bites slide down his throat.
I suppose that Darcy’s love and appreciation of chocolate started with his parents.
Darcy’s Mom and Dad were famous Chocolatiers.
Their bon bons and truffles were displayed on jewel encrusted Étagères: and their chocolate sculptures that could turn ( as their famous Chocolate Ferris Wheel did ) and spin ( like the chocolate ballerinas dancing on a lake ) and of course most famous of all were their Valentine Hearts graced the tables at some of the finest and lavish parties to take place in Seattle.
Hanging from a Valentine tree were lchocolate hearts that beat when you pushed a switch at the base of the tree.
Some people enjoyed seeing pulsating chocolate hearts and others wouldn’t have put one of those hearts into their mouths if their lives depended on it.
Darcy loved watching his parents mold and sculpt the lchocolate hearts.
He loved to eat them too.
They were very sweet.
After his parents passed away ( together in a car crash) Darcy went into their kitchen at their chocolate shoppe ( it was just before Halloween ) and he opened drawers and cabinets without any real sense of purpose.
He found his Mom’s sketch book in a drawer next to the pantry door and he smiled.
He picked it up and leafed through the drawings until he came to the Chocolate Hearts.
He wondered how they made them beat. Like most people he thought the hearts didn’t move, the branches on the tree did and gave the illusion that the hearts were beating.
He flipped to the pages with the hearts and he read the instructions over and over again.
” I’ll be. ” Darcy said ” I’ll be damned. So that’s how they did it. ”
He closed the book and set it down on the counter and then Darcy decided he should think about getting help to pack the kitchen up. He didn’t know what to keep or what to get rid of. He only knew what tasted good.
Darcy took his phone out of his pocket. He opened it, made some notes. He closed it, put it in his back pocket and he grabbed the cookbook with his mother’s name written in fancy gold leaf on the cover:
“Property of Mary S. Frankenstein ” it read.
WP PROMPT: What are five simple exercises to do at home?
Skeleton, Vincent van Gogh, 1886. Source: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
I’m the last person to give advice about exercises- simple or otherwise.
HOWEVER
Here are five signs your house might be haunted and it may need to be exorcised I say ‘may’ because some people don’t mind sharing their home with Ghoulies and Ghosties and Long-Leggedy Beasties.
You know.
Some of us.
Howard Pyle – The Haunted House (c.1904).
There’s a Distinct Smell, and You Can’t Find Its Source
The Temperature Changes Abruptly.
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Your Electronics Are Always on the Verge of Dying
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There Are Mysterious Noises
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You Regularly Feel a Weird Sensation on the Back of Your Neck.
Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle
Arnold Böcklin1872