Halloween Writing Prompts

The Party

/ animar64 / 2 Comments

Sometimes when you look at a prompt and just let the first thing that pops into your head as you turn it over in your mind, there’s no telling what you’ll get.

Here is a and image prompt provided by Experience Writing for their October 8th prompt-Connecting The Bones

My takeaway was strange- but fun.

Sometimes you have to get out of the way and let a story tell itself.

 

My Grandmother’s coffin looks shiny and new

even though we dug it up 14 days ago.

As we six drove her home, we wondered aloud,

will her bones smooth and white?

Are her rings still on her fingers, are her nails still painted red?

 

 

Will  her hands still  be clasped

upon her chest

did her wig fall off her head?

Is her mouth opened or closed, we’ve asked each again and again.

 

When we got my Grandmother home

and put her coffin upstairs

we didn’t just pop it open

we knocked on the lid with care.

 

And from inside we heard a tap

then we silently filed downstairs

to wait for Grandmother to join us in the Parlor

for tea

with the curtains drawn on all of our windows

of course.

Monster Monster

/ animar64 / 3 Comments

Experience Writing Prompt: Fear Is A Monster

“Design Committee” by Aaron Jasinski

A dark heart driven to be beat by anger

instead of blood it is feuled by despair

razor sharp teeth,  curled cruel  claws

freed from their prison of flesh and bone

when the Moon is full.

Photo J..M Moscoso

It was raining the night Agatha decided to become  a Vampire.

She was sitting on her porch, perched on a lawn chair covered with slick rotten autumn leaves and bird poo when a bolt of lightning hit the oak tree at the side of her yard and blew one of it’s limb off.

That lightning strike was a sign.

Tonight was the night she would leave the world of shopping on line, waiting  at the same bus stop at the end of her street to get on the bus in the morning that took her to work where one of her co-workers had shaved his head save for a top knot perched on top of his head.

He dyed it pink and it looked like a severed thumb had pushed it’s way out of his skull.

Good by and so long to all of that.

Tonight was the night she would  fly free from this dull colorless world  just  the lightning  charred arm from her oak tree did.

She got up from her seat. She knew what she would tell her husband and her  two teenage children and of course their phones which had  replaced each of them  in this new world that had been createdy for them by their prefered cellphone carrier.

She pushed her living room door open, she strode down the hall to their dining room and she bellowed  as she kicked a fallen chair over on her way into the half lit room

” I’ve decided that tonight I am going to become a monster. Tonight I’m going to become a Vampire, a merciless cold blooded killer. What do you think of that?”

From their places around the table where her family were sitting with their faces in their plates, their breakfast food clotted with vomit and blood leaving half dried  gelatinous  masses haphazardly splattered on the cream colored linen table cloth, had her family been able to say anything, the words ” are you crazy” would not have been among them.

The Dandelion Game

/ animar64 / 6 Comments

Inspired By Oct 6th  image prompt at Experience Writing: https://experiencewriting.com/2023/10/06/oct-6-prompts-in-the-twilight/

 

” What have you done? ” her Mother cried from the doorway,  ” Mina, have you done? ”

Flora pushed her daughter’s bedroom door all the way opened and asked her again: “What have you done? ”

Mina got up from her chair near the window. She held  up her arm and showed her mother a fistful  of dandelions clutched in her hand” We were playing a game.  We were playing the Dandelion  game. Julia lost. ”

Julia was sitting next to Mina’s writing desk. Her back was as straight as a poker and her head was resting on her shoulder at an awkward angle.

Mina stepped away from a curtain less window that was full of moonlight and freshly cast  shadows  and into the candlelight that lit her small dark bedroom and then she sang, just under breath:

” Flora had a bestie and her head popped off. ”

Mina put her thumb under the heads of one of the dandelions and with a face that was expressionless as one of the half dozen porcelain dolls with their mouths sewn shut that sat on her dusty bed, she flicked her thumb up and from  where she sat on the chair next to her little writing desk,  Julia’s head  popped up off of shoulder and landed on the desk.

Flora reached to the hairs on the back of her neck and smoothed them down. She licked her dark red lips and told herself that this wasn’t something she couldn’t handle.

” Give me those dandelions this instant young lady.”

” I like this game Mother. I’m good at it, aren’t I?”

Flora reached out for the weeds in Mina’s hand.  “I wouldn’t say that. Now.  Give those to me. ”

” I want to play it again. ”

” No. You’re to stop right now. I mean it Mina. If you want me to teach you anymore games you will listen when I tell you to do something.”

Mina looked her Mother in the eye and said, ” Mina had a Mommy and-”

” Don’t you dare young lady. ”

”  her head popped off.”

Flora’s head snapped back and  just before it  flew away from her  neck  she caught her head by the hair on top of her head and held it in place.

Her yellow eyes burned, her black forked tongue shot out from between her lips and tore through the air and just before she snapped her jaws shut  the little black eyes that dotted Flora’s tongue shot daggers at Mina and then it slid back into her mouth.

Flora took a breath.

” Fine Mina. That’s just fine. For all of your disobedience tonight, for not coming when I summoned you, for not answering a simple question when I ask you one,  there’s no dinner for you tonight.”

Mina sighed and tried to look remorseful, but she failed.  That didn’t mean that she wasn’t worried though. Mother never made a promise she didn’t keep and she never made a threat that she didn’t enjoy carrying out.

Lucky for Mina  Mother was so mad that Mina  had not only popped the head off of one Flora’s house guests but she was probably even angrier that with all of her work and practice with Mina  it took  Mina two tries instead of one to pop Julia’s head off.

Besides that, Julia knew where all the tasty prey could be found  in the next town over. and to add insult to injury, she had messed up Flora’s hair too.

Flora wasn’t exactly thinking straight at the moment.

Flora swung around and slammed the bedroom door behind her. ” Just wait until your Father gets home.”

The gust of warm air that smelled a little of rotten eggs and sour earth from the door slamming shut caused Julia’s started to roll across the table and before it went over the edge Mina caught it.

She lifted it up and looked into Julia’s slack and sleepy looking face and said ” Guess I won’t be getting my dinner, but at least I’ll have my dessert. ”

Painting “Untitled”  by Monika Mostowik

Chilly Bones

/ animar64 / 1 Comment

My inspiration for ” Chilly Bones ” came from Welcome To October Day 1: Prompts to Put Us In A Spooky Mood  at the Experience Writing Blog

I used a mind map provided in the post and I TRIED to stick to the suggested form The Pantoum,  for my poem, but I’m going to have to practice that ( it looks like fun so I’m looking forward to it)

I’m looking forward to catching up and continuing this months Challenges!

Anita

AI Artwork-Creator Unknown

My dark house is empty

the doors have all been nailed shut

cool wind chills it’s brittle bones

and warms it’s icy heart.

 

There’s a stain on the floor in the kitchen

and another outside my bedroom door

it’s a map left by a traveler,

who sleeps in the basement alone.

 

Sometimes I dream about him

and the rusty knife he held in his hand

and sometimes he has nightmares about me

and what sharp teeth I had.

 

The world outside swirls around us

and sometimes it finds it’s way inside

and if I hear it, if it devours my quiet

I make it wail and cry.

 

My house is dark and empty

all of the doors have been nailed shut

there are no windows, but I keep dead flowers

in a shattered vase near the front steps.