Horrordailies 2023

The Birthday Party

/ animar64 / 2 Comments

From Experience Writing Image Prompt: Oct. 17 Prompts: Phases of the Moon | Experience Writing

My Aunt Jemima’s  middle named was Perses.

The name Perses, if you are curious is derived from the Ancient  Greek word  pertho- that means to sack, to ravage, to destroy.

Our family name is Black.

I thought you should know that before we start this story.

 

When I was in high school Heavy Metal was a big deal and everyone was bleaching their hair blond. Metal Heads were wearing spikes and leather. They drew pentagrams on their book and lockers. They even gave themselves Devil head  tattoos  and 666 with black sharpie pens on the bus ride  to school. And  a lot of the Metal musicians and singers were giving themselves new names- like Nicky or Nikki and of course they were choosing the last name ” Black “.

I was really a Black but nobody cared. I wasn’t anyone’s idea of a Metal Head and I drifted through the halls of my high school like a ghost. I was good at Math and I played the Violin. I had braces and and unruly head of hair.

To sum it up. I was a geek.

 

Just before my birthday  ( I was a Halloween baby- yes for real ) my Aunt Jemima came for a visit.

She lived in Canada in a cabin by a lake called Killjoy and her only  neighbor  was a short man  with a glass eye. Part of his nose was missing and you could see into his face, if you wanted.

” Hey there Aria ” she called to me from the kitchen.

I had just got home from school, I dropped my jacket and my books near the front door and then I pushed the pile under the table that my Mom kept pictures of family members she didn’t like, but didn’t want to insult if they stopped by.

And then I went straight to the kitchen. ” Hey there Aunt Jem. ”

My Aunt was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea.

” Why the sad face Aria? It’s your birthday- tomorrow and your birthday is on Halloween. If I were you I’d be smiling from ear to ear, like this. ”

She smiled her serial killer smile ( that’s what she called it, not me ). ” Come on  Popptet smile. ”

I smiled.

” You can do better then that.”

I copied her serial killer smile and she got up from her seat at the table and hugged me.

 

My Dad worked at nights, so  me and my Aunt’s dinner was his breakfast.

” Good evening family! ” he called on  his way down the backstairs to the dining room.

“Evening.” me and Aunt Jem called back.

” So is that pyscho sister of your Mother’s going to join us for dinner? ”

” Ha. Ha. Ha. “Aunt Jem answered back.

“And a top of the evening to you Jemima The Destroyer. ”

” Same to you- ” my Aunt began to say as my Dad’s form filled the door way. He had to lower his head to make it through the door and even when he did that he had to turn his head sideways so his horns didn’t catch the door frame and scrape the paint off. Mom hated it when he did that. ” O Dark Lord and Master of Hell and all of the souls damned there” my Aunt chanted and then she laughed and the wine she had been drinking shot out of her nose.

” Master my forked tail- I just spent the last hour putting away the laundry for you Sister.  I told her to let it go, but she had a bloody mess to clean up and she was determined to square it all away before dinner.  She was not successful, I’m sorry to say.”

”  Aria, go downstairs and help your Mother out. She over loaded the washer again and there’s  a bit  mess to clean up. Give her a hand will you.”

” Sure Pops. ” I got up and as I passed my Dad he looked down  at me from his seat at the table, ” Aria, she over loaded the washer. I told her not to toss those things in there but she doesn’t listen to me. Nobody in this house listens to me, ”

Aunt Jemima was sitting across from my Dad and when she heard him she said, ” What? ”

” Very funny. ” my Dad said with a laugh. ” Good one Jem.”

 

I went downstairs and my Mom was at the washer. ” Your father says I overloaded it again. ”

” Oh. You know Mom. ” I looked up to my Mom. She had crawled up the wall and was hanging from the ceiling. She only did that when she was upset. ” It’s an old washer. Maybe you should get a new one. ”

I walked carefully through the pool of blood and bleach in front of the washer door and I looked through the little glass window at the lumps and bumps inside. A face was plastered up against the door.

That’s when I remembered to ask. ” Mom. Can I have an angel food instead of chocolate cake for my birthday cake? ”

” Of course you can dear.” she dropped a small bundle wrapped in her best spun silk from the ceiling . I caught it in my hands.  It was warm and a little sticky.” Of course you can. ”

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.

To Be Taken With A Full Glass of Water

/ animar64 / 2 Comments

Word of the Day Challenge: DRINK

During the Victorian Era, when Consumption or Tuberculosis had infect 70-90% of the Urban populations of North America and  Europe and it  had killed 80% of those infected with the ” White Death ”  a morbid  fashion trend began to take place.

By morbid fashion trend,  I don’t mean the  kind of trend where French women and men wore red ribbons tied around their necks, resembling chokers, to stand in silent solidarity for those who had lost  their heads to the guillotine.

I mean that there was a trend to look like somebody who had been infected and was in all likelihood going to die from Tuberculosis

“The Common Lot,” lithograph by J. Bouvier. Wellcome Collection

To achieve this new standard of beauty- pale skin, dilated pupils, red cheeks and red lips and most important of all a skeletal frame ( yeah, anime and avatars on FB have adopted these looks ) it became necessary to ingest and bath in poison- to paint a picture, the same things that were being used to kill rodents were now ‘beauty aides’.

People drank and bathed in arsenic to achieve that  pale ‘ one foot and most of your body in the grave look ‘.  They created eyedrops out of nightshade in order to dilate their pupils. They even created face masks made out of lettuce leaves and dusted with Opium that they washed off  their faces with a splash of water mixed with a  enough arsenic to choke a horse ( I’m guessing )  in the morning.

A sickly young woman sits covered up on a balcony; death (a ghostly skeleton clutching a scythe and an hourglass) is standing next to her; representing tuberculosis. Watercolour by R. Cooper, ca. 1912. Credit: Wellcome Collection

In order to complete this transformation- the most important part of all- was to be thin.

Before I go on, the people who used these ‘potions’ knew they were poison and they did not care. So it should come as no surprise that in order to attain the perfect body- which until this point happened before death or a week later- people were willing to take The Tapeworm Diet.

Despite the skin crawling thought  of purposely ingesting a parasite into your body that would stop most of us from trying this, there  were reported cases or stories that had tried it and that  they had died  trying to swallow the worms live- which is the only way this stomach turning plan would work.

With that being said, those two red flags did  nothing to stop those trying to perfect their bodies who lived ( if they survived their other ‘beauty treatments ) in hope that the tape worm method would work.

I have read that the entire Tape Worm treatment was a myth. Nobody was swallowing live Tape Worms or even trying too.

But the story was out there at the time, it created a demand for the treatment, so someone began manufacturing pills said to contain the worm that were easy to swallow. Of course a dead worm wasn’t going to ‘help’ you so I guess people were being dosed with something that ate  away at their bodies in the same fashion as a tape worm.

Cropped from:
A sickly young woman sits covered up on a balcony; death (a ghostly skeleton clutching a scythe and an hourglass) is standing next to her; representing tuberculosis. Watercolour by R. Cooper, ca. 1912. Credit: Wellcome Collection

Before we close, I want to put it out there that the Victorian Era men and women who poisoned themselves and horribly damaged their bodies or died from their ‘beauty treatments’ didn’t do these things because they were ignorant, that they didn’t understand that arsenic was bad for them.
I want to remind you about a little fad called ” Heroin Chic”
Heroin chic is a style popularized in early-1990s fashion and characterized by pale skin, dark circles underneath the eyes, emaciated features, androgyny and stringy hair—all traits associated with abuse of heroin or other drugs.
Healthy people starved themselves using various methods to acheive that look.
I remember it well because I was young woman in my early twenties when Heroin Chic was a thing and you BET I would look at those images and think, ” I could never be that beautiful. ” The scary thing is, I tried. But at the time I was lifting weights and I didn’t want to  loose my muscle tone. I had to work hard for it. That’s the only reason I didn’t go for it. Plus I liked food- A LOT.
After Heroin Chic passed, I thought nobody would EVER try to do that again. It was stupid and ugly.
But guess what: like a moldering corpse of a Victorian Era TB inspired Fashion Victim returned from the grave to haunt our nightmares, Heroin Chic is back.
I’m not even going to ask why. It’s pointless to ask why.

A model walks the runway during the Annakiki Ready to Wear Spring/Summer 2023 fashion show as part of the Milan Fashion Week

I Said The Cornish Prayer Last Night

/ animar64 / 4 Comments

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

Cornish Prayer

 

When some of us, those of us with a healthy respect for the Supernatural, say  the Cornish Prayer one would assume we are saying it to protect us from the   ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties that look like this:

AI Artwork- Created by Cursejourney

Or maybe this:

AI Artwork- Created by Cursejourney

without having actually seen this creatures legs, I’m assuming they are very long and can move very fast.

AI Artwork- Created by Cursejourney

That’s not why I said the Cornish Prayer last night.

Last night my son sent me these pictures and without even thinking about it, I said the prayer with feeling and conviction.  That’s my fancy way of saying I really meant it.

Photo J.M. Moscoso

Photo J.M., Moscoso

That’s right, I thought it was haunting and scary  to see sweet little deer playing in a cemetery in the middle of the night.

It’s not the macabre or the dark or the things that call it home that give me the chills- I get the chills when the day to day world shows up in an unexpected place,  takes off it’s mask, shows me it’s real face and dares me to ask what is going on. That frightens me more then any ghost, goblin or beastie.

For RDP Wednesday: BEAST