Halloween Writing challenge 2024

My Dark Room

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Flash Fiction inspired by the Writober Prompt: FEAR OF DARKNESS

Photographer Unknown

I don’t go upstairs to my attic very often. I don’t keep much up there.

By not much, what I mean is, I keep a mirror at the far end of my attic, it’s resting on the floor and it’s face is turned to the wall . Sometimes when it rains water from a crack in the ceiling drips down from the roof and onto it’s back like a zipper sewn onto it’s back by a not so skilled surgeon.

My mirror used to hang at the end of the hallway near my living room.

People used to like to look into it and fix their hair or straighten their ties before we would visit, Everyone loved to use that mirror. I think it had something to do with the lighting, or maybe seeing yourself framed in golden stars and  crowned by the Sun   made you feel prettier- or maybe even a bit God like. It didn’t just feed your ego. It stuffed it to bursting.

Sitting next to my  mirror in my dark attic is a shovel.

The shovel’s step is caked with gray dirt and a fine coat of dust and it’s blade is rusty red.

I don’t know where that shovel came from. It just turned up one day, someone knocked at my door and when I opened it the shovel was leaning under my door bell. I looked up and down my street before I grabbed it and took it inside.

I tried to run upstairs with it, but my legs were shaking and I couldn’t take a deep breath. I felt liked I  drifted in slow motion  up each creaking step. When I got to the landing I tip toed into the attic. I stared at my mirror across the room from me and when I was sure it was in the same exact spot it has always been in, I walked with a little more purpose in my step to the mirror and set the shovel next to it.

My attic is cavernous, but that shovel and the mirror seem to take up every square inch of it.

Photographer Unknown

I took my mirror up to my attic, two days before Halloween- I’m not sure how many years it’s been.

It was late the night I moved it upstairs. I had spent a solid week emptying my attic of old furniture and boxes books and record albums. I moved  trunks of clothes and household items. What I couldn’t fit down into my basement I put into one of my guest rooms.

It was late, like I said when I finished cleaning out my dark room and just when I thought I could not take another step I went to my mirror and took it off of the wall without looking directly into it,

I carried it to the  attic stairs in the dark.

When I got to to my attic, I reached through the doorway and snapped the light off. I walked to the back of the attic- where it was always dark even when the light was on and I put my mirror down.

Then I looked into it.

I saw my face, I saw my shirt covered with dark maroon droplets standing out upon a mist of red.

I saw a smile on my reflection’s mouth, I could see my shovel leaning against the wall behind me.

I whirled around and of course the shovel wasn’t there. It was in a dumpster behind a restaurant  twenty miles from my house. When I turned back and looked down into my mirror for the last time, I saw my face- it was dusty and sweaty, my shirt wasn’t covered in a mist of red it was covered with cobwebs and dirt.

I turned my mirror  away from me, but I will be honest I don’t think it matters.

That face I saw in it, the secret it captured  is still  there staring at my attic wall

 

Photographer Unknown

One Night In The Woods

/ animar64 / 2 Comments

Inspired by The Writober Flash Fiction Prompt Is your character paralyzed by fear of success? 

Artist: Seth Fitts

I saw a wolf

that  looked like a girl

she had dark brown eyes and reddish brown fur

Her teeth were long and white

she was missing a paw

and when I called out and asked

her name

she howled back:

I see a girl that looks like wolf

she has dark brown eyes and reddish brown hair

Her teeth are long and white

she is missing a hand

why is this girl out here in the woods

howling for wolves

and not for other humans instead?

I looked at the Wolf

and she looked into me

and we stood there in the woods

frozen in the moonlight

and nothing around us dared to make a sound

for the rest of the night.

For Real

/ animar64 / 2 Comments

For Experience Writing  Writober Prompt:

Today’s poem: Write a poem about what you would do if you had never known shame. What would you do as a child, that you won’t as an adult because you know it to be shameful?

Feel good

look good

do good

make the world a better place for those who will come after you.

Feel good

look good

do good

               Why is it up to me to make the world better for anybody else?

Feel good

look good

do good

My heart might be dark, but I think it should come first.

Artist Unknown

House Calls

/ animar64 / 5 Comments

I turned the prompt for an exercise from Writober called: Sensory Imagery  into  a flash fiction challenge. I might go back later and follow the directions because it looks like something I would like to build on. But what can I say, sometimes the Muses look at a prompt and say to me, ” you know what would be really cool? ” and I go with it.

amm

ARTIST UNKNOWN

I saw an open window.  It was in the empty house across the street from where I live.

I heard someone call down to me, one day as I walked by  ” why don’t you come up, I’m home. Come in. Step inside ”

I carried my jacket, I carried my purse, I carried a ready smile

I smelled oatmeal cookies  as I crossed the porch.  I rang the bell and then I went inside.

I followed the sound of water, dripping into  a pan, it plunked and sloshed and then drop by drop it died.

The crowded room, the only room that showed any sounds of life was the kitchen- it was painted yellow and  well stocked with cutlery and fine bone china.

The slap of cupboard doors, crept through the air and slithered into my ear. The frosty breath said, ” Come a little closer, step inside. Have some cookies, my dear.”

I tasted those cookies before I took a bite, I couldn’t wait to get them in my mouth

The heat of my cheeks, turned my pale face an unnatural shade of red, I drooled.

I witness, I swear on stack of McCalls Best Cookies for Halloween cook books that when

I touch, I taste oatmeal cookies when I feast in this house and other’s like it. No matter what I find, no matter what  consume.

I taste cookies.