Horror Writing Competition: Voting

Oriphiel · 10-31-2015, 07:10 AM

Happy Halloween, everyone! After I post all of the submissions, vote for your favorite!

Results Archives:

Spoiler for 10/31/2015:

Oriphiel · 10-31-2015, 07:12 AM

Not There

I was not there. There was a sign on the door pointing out my absence. My dwelling was only apparently asleep, not lurking but waiting. The club-footed table was slightly out of focus, as contrasted with the haggard chair‘s razor-sharp outline. The big chest in the corner was abiding, its immense keyhole gazing more alert than ever. The little oven seemed intimidated by the imposing portliness of the cabinet beside it.

On the first day dust, falling in slightly skewed trajectories right out of the air, accumulated itself into irregularly but not randomly distributed heaps which rested on the horizontal surfaces, then flattened, crawled towards each other, merged, not entirely centered, on the floor, becoming a black, at first dull but then, in the further course of the solidification, increasingly shiny sphere, which rolled around, awkwardly at first, then seemed to have made a decision and disappeared with a short electric buzz. Just an elongated, arrow-like stain remained in its spot.

On the second day a non-geometric form resublimated at the tip of the arrow, made out of a worrying, obviously living, but equally obviously non-organic substance. After finishing the phase transition, the form began strutting or crawling or driving around the table, on barely, or at least only shortly existing legs or arms or wheels, inquisitively looking or listening or fumbling around with sensory organs which grew here and there, rapidly sprouting and atrophying again, moving the chair multiple times, its position seemingly causing discomfort, then climbing or flowing or flying onto it, jumping or rolling or mounting onto the table from there. Once on the table, the form finally became geometric, namely cylindrical, and rigidified as a white, porous column the size of a loaf of bread.

On the third day three figures exited the cabinet and positioned themselves around the table, contemplatively gazing at the object in the middle. The woman, her body a zigzag, unstable and pendent, her face distorted by euphoria, withdrew a small knife from a case hanging around her neck, looked at it benevolently, longer than necessary, and then cut into the white cylinder with a single, continuous, infinitely complex movement, so that it inexplicably fell apart into several small, absolutely regular and similar dice. The man, more wide than tall, rectangular but slightly rounded at the corners and ledges, his expression betraying gushing ennui, then placed the pieces on a plate which he seemed to have produced from somewhere behind his back. The child, of uncertain sex, overall uncertain, vague, inchoate, asked first her then him for permission with a glance, exhaled in spurts, for a long time, too long for such a diminutive body, and then devoured its meal, methodical, silent, terrifying, after which all three returned into the cabinet, leaving only the empty plate and a slight metallic odour.

After a while I emerged from the chest, blinked, for the first time in three days, stretched my arms, joggled my legs, made several ungainly steps, stood at length at the table, put my hand on the plate, felt its cold, smooth surface, comprehending that I still wasn’t there and never again would be.

Oriphiel · 10-31-2015, 07:13 AM

In The Cold, Cold Night

You think you know? No. You'll never know, the cold like I did. Just by that disgusting, polluted river, filled with the feces of the feces it feeds, and strewn with the trash, thrown by the trash you can find all around.

I heard a wheezing, the last squawk of an old friend. Found himself within the embrace of plastic remnants of a six pack devoured twice over by now. Strangled to death, until he was nothing but a whisper. But nobody cares. Isn't that the real horror of it all? That no one cares?

I'm Sorry

An I find myself the bait of my own trap. Nothing sinister, just me strumming my guitar in the parking lot of a truly sinister education system. Who am I trapping? Maybe a companion. Thats all they-we-i-you really want. A friend.

Is it so? There she is, walking up smiling, bouncing, happy. She just listens and carries on, leaving me alone again to my strumming. Left to tears in the back of that old pick up.

And I drive and drive

and drive.

She takes the wheel, slams us into a ditch, twisting metal, ripping flesh. Ouch. It's burning. Tssssssssss.....

And I open, not just my eyes, and I see her clawing at my chest and ripping even more flesh from my body, when she pulls out my heart and eats the entire thing right in front of me. That bitch.

And I'm walking through that sinister school, the house of lies, and I see her. And she smiles, and I smile, and its all over then. We talk, we laugh, her names Alice, I think you would really like her.

Whoever you are.

She wore rose colored glasses, not that it matters anymore. And the poor, little thing just needed a ride. So I ask where she wants to go, she says No.

Nowhere? No, there. You know where, you remember. She was right, I did remember. and I turned left, I turned right, repeat the process, brake, blinker, dirt, dirt, DIRT.

Park. The sounds of insects flood my ears, while pollution floods the waters. To her surprise, I pull a knife and slit.

Her poor throat. I knew what she would do to me, I remember. She's not dead yet, just almost, and she looks confused, and I laugh, because she can't trick me.

I hold the brake, shift to neutral, and slit my own wrists. I didn't want to just continue after this, i felt like I was done. And we roll, and roll until we drift into the river, polluting it with the rest of the trash and the feces. Just like she would have wanted.

Oriphiel · 10-31-2015, 07:13 AM

Slow Burn

David adjusted his eyes to the dim light of what appeared to be a sterile, white room. He couldn't lift his arms, but that's ok, they were sore and heavy. He thought only to lay on the cold gurney, sure that a nurse would tend to him soon.

He examined the double sink to his left, staring in wonder at the steel tools laying on a damp drying mat. A sterling clock ticked away on the tiled wall behind him. He couldn't move his neck, but that was ok. A nurse would surely be there soon.

A floral calendar littered with illegible writing lay on the wall in front of him. He strained to read it and realized his glasses were missing. A bedside table was nowhere to be seen, but that was ok. He'd have company shortly, he figured.

Dave wondered how he'd landed himself in this place. He remembered his commute to work that day, merging on to the freeway as he turned up Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" on the radio. What he didn't remember, however, was meeting Susan on the ferry as he did every morning, as she shook her tartan umbrella (the rain has been relentless lately) or the way she laughed at his obviously stupid jokes.

Oh, Susan....

He heard footsteps echoing through the corridor. At last, the nurse!

He was so thirsty, he could hardly breathe, and his skin ached as if he lay on sunlit pavement.

Dave's expression curiously remained indifferent as a man dressed in white entered the room with his intern. The man, wearing a photo badge, was Arthur Collins, M. O.; his assistant remained nameless.

"David R. Peters, aged 49. Time of death. 6:21AM, October 27th, 2015."

"But sir, I'm not..." David thought, unable to even sigh.

"Cause of death", Mr. Collins continued, "trauma following immolation in motor vehicle accident."

David couldn't even gasp.

"Gabriel, please close the patient's eyes."

"Yes, sir", Collins' intern bleakly responded.

"We'll begin by making a Y-incision on the patient's chest, extending well into the abdomen....."

Oriphiel · 10-31-2015, 07:15 AM

Ghosts Aren't Real, But Other Things Are

A haze of cigar smoke filled the cabin, giving it a sickeningly sweet scent, as the men and women throughout the small but lavish compartment continued to talk and laugh heartily. Memories were shared, drinks were spilled, and deals were made, while the rhythmic pattering of raindrops gave the party an audible white noise in the brief moments of silence. In her youth, Claudia had relished the chance to appear at such social gatherings, seeing them as a relaxing break from her work. However, she had realized a long time ago that keeping up appearances is a job in and of itself, one that became pure torment to a disillusioned mind. The laughing, the constant smiling, the lies, the pointless repetition of the dance of self importance, all drained her of the energy that in her youth had seemed naturally endless. And yet, whenever she caught herself mentally groaning at her situation, she couldn't help but smile. "Poor girl," she would mockingly say to herself in the mirror, as she made small white lines on the bathroom sink's counter top. It had been years since she had last felt the grip of true hunger, but even at her parents' lowest descent into poverty, she had always had a roof over her head, and opportunities to make money. Having to attend lavish parties, and now being able to live a life where her every whim was instantly satisfied, complaining was hardly something that she could explore without feeling like a fool that didn't appreciate what she had.

"D!" yelled Mike, her husband, from across the room. She hated when he called her that, and shot him as disinterested of a glance as she could muster. The cigar in his hand glowed as he dragged on it, before exhaling and vigorously waving her over, his face still red from previously laughing at a joke that must have been terribly funny. Though she dreaded the inevitable embarrassment that was to befall her, she eventually forced herself to walk over to his side, preparing herself to fulfill the nightly tradition of slapping him after being insulted. Such is the way of someone who has neither the courage to truly fight their benefactor, nor the cowardice to completely submit to them. "D," he said as set down his cigar, and placed his hand on the small of her back, "we were just talking about the time that you were in that 'car accident'. Remember?" The fervent heat of anger and disgust rising inside her, Claudia restrained herself and nodded apathetically. In her mind, she once again saw the broken man with the clear green eyes. He appeared every time that the story was told, though in a way he was always cast over all of her thoughts, like a thin but boundless shadow. "Well, it was a Friday," Mike continued. "I remember, because I had played golf with Terrence that day, and we've made a habit of playing on Friday since the merger, about ten years ago. Anyway, it was late, very late, just about midnight if I remember correctly. So there I am, watching some show about animals mating, when I get a phone call. It's D, of course. I mean, she's scared and talking so frantically that I barely recognized her, but I could tell it's her, because she asked me for something. She always asks me for something. 'You've got to help me,' she says. So I say, 'Hey, slow down. What's going on?', right? And she tells me that she's on Auxley Road, the stretch next to the cornfields, she's hit something with her car, maybe a deer, and she needs help."

Claudia remembered it all vividly, and every word that came from Mike increased her disgust. Not just disgust at him, but disgust at herself. She tried to subtly back away, but Mike grabbed the back of her dress, keeping her from leaving without struggling and putting on a show for everyone. "So naturally, I was worried, and I got there as fast as I could, and, well..." he stopped to look up at her and smirk, before continuing "It sure as hell wasn't a deer that she had hit." She tried to back away again, this time more forcefully, but his grip tightened. The two people listening to the story were either too drunk to notice her distress, or too set on not spoiling the evening to care. "It was some bum, just lying there in a bloody heap," said Mike, before picking up his cigar with his other hand and taking another drag. The man across from him laughed, and quickly said "That happened to me, back in Florida! They're everywhere in the cities, and they just jump into the street without any caution. Fucking bums. I told you about that, didn't I? I must have." "Yeah," replied Mike, "I think you did, when we had lunch together on Tuesd-" He was cut off as Claudia pulled herself away from him, causing him to fall out of his chair before loosening his grip. "Oh, what's the matter, D?" he asked loudly, as he stood up. "You're disgusting," she replied. Mike laughed, and said "Let me guess, you blame me for it, right? It's all my fault. Everything's my fault. If a fucking meteor fell out of the sky and destroyed the whole damn world, it'd be my fault." "You think I don't know that I fucked up? I do. I think about it every fucking second of every fucking day, trying to come up with some way, some scenario, where it's not my fault. Where it's anyone else's fault. And I can't. I just fucking can't. But what I don't do is turn it into some fucking gag to amuse a bunch of assholes that I desperately want, need, to be my friends, so I can pretend for a moment that I'm not a lonely, vapid insect." "Oh fuck you. You see all of this? All of this glitz and glamour that you 'hate' so much? I earned it, every last piece of it. And guess what? This is just life. It may seem fake compared to your nostalgic little memories of the world, but it's the same shit you'll find anywhere. It's not my fault that you can't handle it. And you really can't, because nothing I could ever do would ever make you happy, would it? Jesus, you had the money and the time to do whatever the hell you wanted to, and you turned yourself into a fucking coke whore. How the fuck am I supposed to react to that?"

In a flash, the nightly tradition was fulfilled. After slapping him, Claudia put on her rain coat and stepped out of the cabin. Mike laughed as he let his anger slip away, putting a cold drink up to the red mark on his cheek, and the party soon resumed as if nothing had happened. As she stepped out onto the deck of the yacht, Claudia was hit with a hot wave of spring humidity, and the rain began to soak her clothing and wash away her makeup. She didn't mind. She found a peculiar type of relaxation in taking a walk in the rain, so long as she wasn't caught in it unintentionally. As she leaned on the deck's railing and stared out at the swelling waves, she couldn't help but think about the broken man with the clear green eyes, and the way he looked up at her as she and Mike buried him in the woods. Though badly wounded, he was still alive when they put him in the ground, as they hadn't had the stomach to put him out of his misery, figuring that he would bleed to death soon anyway. Even after the dirt fell across his face and broke his gaze, he never stopped staring at her, and he never would. After reflecting for a few minutes, Claudia blinked and cleared her nose as he came back to reality. Reaching into her coat's pocket, she found a half-eaten bag of gummy bears. She smiled weakly as she took it out, and popped one into her mouth. She figured that it was a childish habit, and that they were probably horrible for her teeth, but she had loved them for as long as she could remember, and they always seemed to have a strange way of making her dark situations a little brighter.

As she started to chew, she put the bag back into her pocket and leaned on the rail once again, scanning the horizon. Before long, she noticed something moving amidst the waves in the corner of her vision. She took a closer look, trying to make out what it was. As it stretched itself up above the waves, Claudia could see that it was a human, and they slowly began to lift their arms as if signaling to her for help. Claudia ceased chewing, and her heart began to pound. She had never been particularly adept at keeping a clear mind during an emergency, and simply stood there and stared, as if hoping that this was all a daydream that would soon fade away. It didn't, and as the man began to struggle and wave more vigorously, Claudia came to the realization that someone had indeed fallen overboard. Now sure, and with a mind heavy with guilt and desperate for heroics, she jumped over the rail and fell into the water. After all, the yacht was anchored, and the waves hadn't yet become strong enough to sweep her away. Still, she almost immediately regretted her haste. She should have told the others and grabbed a life preserver, just in case, but hadn't thought that far ahead. She had always made fun of people for acting irrationally in action and horror movies, doing things without thinking them through, and now that she herself had been forced to make a decision in a crisis, she could somewhat understand and sympathize with them.

As she swam towards them, a thought suddenly came into her mind. Who was it that had fallen overboard, and how? As far as she knew, nobody had left the cabin during the party, except for her. How could anyone have possibly fallen off of the ship? She also found it odd that they were simply splashing around helplessly in the waves. All of the party goers were perfectly able swimmers, and they easily could have returned to the anchored yacht and climbed the side ladder at their leisure. Could it be that someone from another boat had been stranded? After all, they weren't terribly far from the harbor. As she drew closer to them, swimming as fast as she could, she eventually reached them and threw her arms around them. It was then that she lifted her head above the water and looked at them, to see who it was. To her utter confusion, it wasn't a man at all. She let out a gasp as she pushed herself away from it, her hands slipping against it's slimy skin. It seemed enough like a man from far away to fool someone in a panic, but it was void of details. It had no eyes, ears, or really any features at all, and seemed to be nothing more than a vaguely human shaped figure. Up close, it's 'arms' were more like tentacles with rudimentary fingers, and they had ceased their swaying. Before Claudia could examine it further, she felt a surge of pain in her chest, before being pulled beneath the waves by some powerful force. Air bubbles poured from her mouth as she gasped, and looking down she saw some kind of large creature had sunk it's teeth into her, planting them firmly into her midsection. Terrified, she tried to free herself, only to find that she was not strong enough to pry open the monster's jaws. Oddly enough, in the heart of her panic and desperation, she couldn't help but feel like she had seen the monster before. It pulled her away from the water's surface, and darkness began to surround her as she started to pass out from the massive blood loss and her lack of oxygen. As the last bit of light faded away, and her vision began to blur, Claudia took a final glance at the beast, and finally remembered where she had seen it before. When she was a child, she had owned a book about fishes, and she had never quite been able to forget how terrified the picture of the angler fish had made her, a creature that had adapted to specialize in fooling and ensnaring it’s prey. For a moment, she wondered how long it had taken for this mysterious variant of the species to come into existence, developing alongside humanity since their earliest days, preying on swimmers along the coasts and dragging them to their doom. Her curiosity and fear soon faded away, along with her mind, as her vision became nothing more than darkness.

Pet_Sounds · 10-31-2015, 11:48 AM

"Not There" gets my vote, but I'd like to know if the Collins/Gabriel reference in "Slow Burn" was intentional. As well as the story sharing a name with a Bowie song and the main character being named David.

Well, done, guys/gals.

**Frownland** · 10-31-2015, 11:51 AM

I forgot to submit my story

.

Oriphiel · 10-31-2015, 11:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland

I forgot to submit my story

.

It's not too late. Gimme gimme gimme. I can start a new thread, and ask the mods to delete this one.

**Frownland** · 10-31-2015, 11:59 AM

I think I'm a mod now. Would you like me to just add myself to the poll?

Oriphiel · 10-31-2015, 12:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Frownland

I think I'm a mod now. Would you like me to just add myself to the poll?

Oops, I forgot about your ascension.

Yeah, go for it. Edit the poll, and stick your story somewhere in the thread. You can PM it to me and I can post it, but everyone who saw the thread before the edit will know which one is yours anyway, so I'll just let you decide what to do.

View Poll Results: Which is your favorite?
Not There	1	10.00%
In the Cold, Cold Night	0	0%
Slow Burn	3	30.00%
Ghosts Aren't Real, But Other Things Are	5	50.00%
Unseeing Eye	1	10.00%
Voters: 10. You may not vote on this poll

10-31-2015, 07:10 AM	#1 (permalink)
Oriphiel Ask me how! Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: The States Posts: 5,354	Horror Writing Competition: Voting Happy Halloween, everyone! After I post all of the submissions, vote for your favorite! Results Archives: Spoiler for 10/31/2015: Not There (Grindy) - 1 In The Cold, Cold Night (Rebellious Taco) - 0 Slow Burn (Ladyislingering) - 3 Ghosts Aren't Real, But Other Things Are (Oriphiel) - 5 Unseeing Eye (Frownland) - 0 __________________ ---------------------- \|---Mic's Albums---\| ---------------------- ----------------------------- \|---Deafbox Industries---\| ----------------------------- Last edited by Oriphiel; 07-02-2017 at 11:39 AM.

10-31-2015, 07:12 AM	#2 (permalink)
Oriphiel Ask me how! Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: The States Posts: 5,354	Not There I was not there. There was a sign on the door pointing out my absence. My dwelling was only apparently asleep, not lurking but waiting. The club-footed table was slightly out of focus, as contrasted with the haggard chair‘s razor-sharp outline. The big chest in the corner was abiding, its immense keyhole gazing more alert than ever. The little oven seemed intimidated by the imposing portliness of the cabinet beside it. On the first day dust, falling in slightly skewed trajectories right out of the air, accumulated itself into irregularly but not randomly distributed heaps which rested on the horizontal surfaces, then flattened, crawled towards each other, merged, not entirely centered, on the floor, becoming a black, at first dull but then, in the further course of the solidification, increasingly shiny sphere, which rolled around, awkwardly at first, then seemed to have made a decision and disappeared with a short electric buzz. Just an elongated, arrow-like stain remained in its spot. On the second day a non-geometric form resublimated at the tip of the arrow, made out of a worrying, obviously living, but equally obviously non-organic substance. After finishing the phase transition, the form began strutting or crawling or driving around the table, on barely, or at least only shortly existing legs or arms or wheels, inquisitively looking or listening or fumbling around with sensory organs which grew here and there, rapidly sprouting and atrophying again, moving the chair multiple times, its position seemingly causing discomfort, then climbing or flowing or flying onto it, jumping or rolling or mounting onto the table from there. Once on the table, the form finally became geometric, namely cylindrical, and rigidified as a white, porous column the size of a loaf of bread. On the third day three figures exited the cabinet and positioned themselves around the table, contemplatively gazing at the object in the middle. The woman, her body a zigzag, unstable and pendent, her face distorted by euphoria, withdrew a small knife from a case hanging around her neck, looked at it benevolently, longer than necessary, and then cut into the white cylinder with a single, continuous, infinitely complex movement, so that it inexplicably fell apart into several small, absolutely regular and similar dice. The man, more wide than tall, rectangular but slightly rounded at the corners and ledges, his expression betraying gushing ennui, then placed the pieces on a plate which he seemed to have produced from somewhere behind his back. The child, of uncertain sex, overall uncertain, vague, inchoate, asked first her then him for permission with a glance, exhaled in spurts, for a long time, too long for such a diminutive body, and then devoured its meal, methodical, silent, terrifying, after which all three returned into the cabinet, leaving only the empty plate and a slight metallic odour. After a while I emerged from the chest, blinked, for the first time in three days, stretched my arms, joggled my legs, made several ungainly steps, stood at length at the table, put my hand on the plate, felt its cold, smooth surface, comprehending that I still wasn’t there and never again would be. __________________ ---------------------- \|---Mic's Albums---\| ---------------------- ----------------------------- \|---Deafbox Industries---\| -----------------------------

10-31-2015, 07:13 AM	#3 (permalink)
Oriphiel Ask me how! Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: The States Posts: 5,354	In The Cold, Cold Night You think you know? No. You'll never know, the cold like I did. Just by that disgusting, polluted river, filled with the feces of the feces it feeds, and strewn with the trash, thrown by the trash you can find all around. I heard a wheezing, the last squawk of an old friend. Found himself within the embrace of plastic remnants of a six pack devoured twice over by now. Strangled to death, until he was nothing but a whisper. But nobody cares. Isn't that the real horror of it all? That no one cares? I'm Sorry An I find myself the bait of my own trap. Nothing sinister, just me strumming my guitar in the parking lot of a truly sinister education system. Who am I trapping? Maybe a companion. Thats all they-we-i-you really want. A friend. Is it so? There she is, walking up smiling, bouncing, happy. She just listens and carries on, leaving me alone again to my strumming. Left to tears in the back of that old pick up. And I drive and drive and drive. She takes the wheel, slams us into a ditch, twisting metal, ripping flesh. Ouch. It's burning. Tssssssssss..... And I open, not just my eyes, and I see her clawing at my chest and ripping even more flesh from my body, when she pulls out my heart and eats the entire thing right in front of me. That bitch. And I'm walking through that sinister school, the house of lies, and I see her. And she smiles, and I smile, and its all over then. We talk, we laugh, her names Alice, I think you would really like her. Whoever you are. She wore rose colored glasses, not that it matters anymore. And the poor, little thing just needed a ride. So I ask where she wants to go, she says No. Nowhere? No, there. You know where, you remember. She was right, I did remember. and I turned left, I turned right, repeat the process, brake, blinker, dirt, dirt, DIRT. Park. The sounds of insects flood my ears, while pollution floods the waters. To her surprise, I pull a knife and slit. Her poor throat. I knew what she would do to me, I remember. She's not dead yet, just almost, and she looks confused, and I laugh, because she can't trick me. I hold the brake, shift to neutral, and slit my own wrists. I didn't want to just continue after this, i felt like I was done. And we roll, and roll until we drift into the river, polluting it with the rest of the trash and the feces. Just like she would have wanted. __________________ ---------------------- \|---Mic's Albums---\| ---------------------- ----------------------------- \|---Deafbox Industries---\| -----------------------------

10-31-2015, 07:13 AM	#4 (permalink)
Oriphiel Ask me how! Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: The States Posts: 5,354	Slow Burn David adjusted his eyes to the dim light of what appeared to be a sterile, white room. He couldn't lift his arms, but that's ok, they were sore and heavy. He thought only to lay on the cold gurney, sure that a nurse would tend to him soon. He examined the double sink to his left, staring in wonder at the steel tools laying on a damp drying mat. A sterling clock ticked away on the tiled wall behind him. He couldn't move his neck, but that was ok. A nurse would surely be there soon. A floral calendar littered with illegible writing lay on the wall in front of him. He strained to read it and realized his glasses were missing. A bedside table was nowhere to be seen, but that was ok. He'd have company shortly, he figured. Dave wondered how he'd landed himself in this place. He remembered his commute to work that day, merging on to the freeway as he turned up Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" on the radio. What he didn't remember, however, was meeting Susan on the ferry as he did every morning, as she shook her tartan umbrella (the rain has been relentless lately) or the way she laughed at his obviously stupid jokes. Oh, Susan.... He heard footsteps echoing through the corridor. At last, the nurse! He was so thirsty, he could hardly breathe, and his skin ached as if he lay on sunlit pavement. Dave's expression curiously remained indifferent as a man dressed in white entered the room with his intern. The man, wearing a photo badge, was Arthur Collins, M. O.; his assistant remained nameless. "David R. Peters, aged 49. Time of death. 6:21AM, October 27th, 2015." "But sir, I'm not..." David thought, unable to even sigh. "Cause of death", Mr. Collins continued, "trauma following immolation in motor vehicle accident." David couldn't even gasp. "Gabriel, please close the patient's eyes." "Yes, sir", Collins' intern bleakly responded. "We'll begin by making a Y-incision on the patient's chest, extending well into the abdomen....." __________________ ---------------------- \|---Mic's Albums---\| ---------------------- ----------------------------- \|---Deafbox Industries---\| -----------------------------

10-31-2015, 07:15 AM	#5 (permalink)
Oriphiel Ask me how! Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: The States Posts: 5,354	Ghosts Aren't Real, But Other Things Are A haze of cigar smoke filled the cabin, giving it a sickeningly sweet scent, as the men and women throughout the small but lavish compartment continued to talk and laugh heartily. Memories were shared, drinks were spilled, and deals were made, while the rhythmic pattering of raindrops gave the party an audible white noise in the brief moments of silence. In her youth, Claudia had relished the chance to appear at such social gatherings, seeing them as a relaxing break from her work. However, she had realized a long time ago that keeping up appearances is a job in and of itself, one that became pure torment to a disillusioned mind. The laughing, the constant smiling, the lies, the pointless repetition of the dance of self importance, all drained her of the energy that in her youth had seemed naturally endless. And yet, whenever she caught herself mentally groaning at her situation, she couldn't help but smile. "Poor girl," she would mockingly say to herself in the mirror, as she made small white lines on the bathroom sink's counter top. It had been years since she had last felt the grip of true hunger, but even at her parents' lowest descent into poverty, she had always had a roof over her head, and opportunities to make money. Having to attend lavish parties, and now being able to live a life where her every whim was instantly satisfied, complaining was hardly something that she could explore without feeling like a fool that didn't appreciate what she had. "D!" yelled Mike, her husband, from across the room. She hated when he called her that, and shot him as disinterested of a glance as she could muster. The cigar in his hand glowed as he dragged on it, before exhaling and vigorously waving her over, his face still red from previously laughing at a joke that must have been terribly funny. Though she dreaded the inevitable embarrassment that was to befall her, she eventually forced herself to walk over to his side, preparing herself to fulfill the nightly tradition of slapping him after being insulted. Such is the way of someone who has neither the courage to truly fight their benefactor, nor the cowardice to completely submit to them. "D," he said as set down his cigar, and placed his hand on the small of her back, "we were just talking about the time that you were in that 'car accident'. Remember?" The fervent heat of anger and disgust rising inside her, Claudia restrained herself and nodded apathetically. In her mind, she once again saw the broken man with the clear green eyes. He appeared every time that the story was told, though in a way he was always cast over all of her thoughts, like a thin but boundless shadow. "Well, it was a Friday," Mike continued. "I remember, because I had played golf with Terrence that day, and we've made a habit of playing on Friday since the merger, about ten years ago. Anyway, it was late, very late, just about midnight if I remember correctly. So there I am, watching some show about animals mating, when I get a phone call. It's D, of course. I mean, she's scared and talking so frantically that I barely recognized her, but I could tell it's her, because she asked me for something. She always asks me for something. 'You've got to help me,' she says. So I say, 'Hey, slow down. What's going on?', right? And she tells me that she's on Auxley Road, the stretch next to the cornfields, she's hit something with her car, maybe a deer, and she needs help." Claudia remembered it all vividly, and every word that came from Mike increased her disgust. Not just disgust at him, but disgust at herself. She tried to subtly back away, but Mike grabbed the back of her dress, keeping her from leaving without struggling and putting on a show for everyone. "So naturally, I was worried, and I got there as fast as I could, and, well..." he stopped to look up at her and smirk, before continuing "It sure as hell wasn't a deer that she had hit." She tried to back away again, this time more forcefully, but his grip tightened. The two people listening to the story were either too drunk to notice her distress, or too set on not spoiling the evening to care. "It was some bum, just lying there in a bloody heap," said Mike, before picking up his cigar with his other hand and taking another drag. The man across from him laughed, and quickly said "That happened to me, back in Florida! They're everywhere in the cities, and they just jump into the street without any caution. Fucking bums. I told you about that, didn't I? I must have." "Yeah," replied Mike, "I think you did, when we had lunch together on Tuesd-" He was cut off as Claudia pulled herself away from him, causing him to fall out of his chair before loosening his grip. "Oh, what's the matter, D?" he asked loudly, as he stood up. "You're disgusting," she replied. Mike laughed, and said "Let me guess, you blame me for it, right? It's all my fault. Everything's my fault. If a fucking meteor fell out of the sky and destroyed the whole damn world, it'd be my fault." "You think I don't know that I fucked up? I do. I think about it every fucking second of every fucking day, trying to come up with some way, some scenario, where it's not my fault. Where it's anyone else's fault. And I can't. I just fucking can't. But what I don't do is turn it into some fucking gag to amuse a bunch of assholes that I desperately want, need, to be my friends, so I can pretend for a moment that I'm not a lonely, vapid insect." "Oh fuck you. You see all of this? All of this glitz and glamour that you 'hate' so much? I earned it, every last piece of it. And guess what? This is just life. It may seem fake compared to your nostalgic little memories of the world, but it's the same shit you'll find anywhere. It's not my fault that you can't handle it. And you really can't, because nothing I could ever do would ever make you happy, would it? Jesus, you had the money and the time to do whatever the hell you wanted to, and you turned yourself into a fucking coke whore. How the fuck am I supposed to react to that?" In a flash, the nightly tradition was fulfilled. After slapping him, Claudia put on her rain coat and stepped out of the cabin. Mike laughed as he let his anger slip away, putting a cold drink up to the red mark on his cheek, and the party soon resumed as if nothing had happened. As she stepped out onto the deck of the yacht, Claudia was hit with a hot wave of spring humidity, and the rain began to soak her clothing and wash away her makeup. She didn't mind. She found a peculiar type of relaxation in taking a walk in the rain, so long as she wasn't caught in it unintentionally. As she leaned on the deck's railing and stared out at the swelling waves, she couldn't help but think about the broken man with the clear green eyes, and the way he looked up at her as she and Mike buried him in the woods. Though badly wounded, he was still alive when they put him in the ground, as they hadn't had the stomach to put him out of his misery, figuring that he would bleed to death soon anyway. Even after the dirt fell across his face and broke his gaze, he never stopped staring at her, and he never would. After reflecting for a few minutes, Claudia blinked and cleared her nose as he came back to reality. Reaching into her coat's pocket, she found a half-eaten bag of gummy bears. She smiled weakly as she took it out, and popped one into her mouth. She figured that it was a childish habit, and that they were probably horrible for her teeth, but she had loved them for as long as she could remember, and they always seemed to have a strange way of making her dark situations a little brighter. As she started to chew, she put the bag back into her pocket and leaned on the rail once again, scanning the horizon. Before long, she noticed something moving amidst the waves in the corner of her vision. She took a closer look, trying to make out what it was. As it stretched itself up above the waves, Claudia could see that it was a human, and they slowly began to lift their arms as if signaling to her for help. Claudia ceased chewing, and her heart began to pound. She had never been particularly adept at keeping a clear mind during an emergency, and simply stood there and stared, as if hoping that this was all a daydream that would soon fade away. It didn't, and as the man began to struggle and wave more vigorously, Claudia came to the realization that someone had indeed fallen overboard. Now sure, and with a mind heavy with guilt and desperate for heroics, she jumped over the rail and fell into the water. After all, the yacht was anchored, and the waves hadn't yet become strong enough to sweep her away. Still, she almost immediately regretted her haste. She should have told the others and grabbed a life preserver, just in case, but hadn't thought that far ahead. She had always made fun of people for acting irrationally in action and horror movies, doing things without thinking them through, and now that she herself had been forced to make a decision in a crisis, she could somewhat understand and sympathize with them. As she swam towards them, a thought suddenly came into her mind. Who was it that had fallen overboard, and how? As far as she knew, nobody had left the cabin during the party, except for her. How could anyone have possibly fallen off of the ship? She also found it odd that they were simply splashing around helplessly in the waves. All of the party goers were perfectly able swimmers, and they easily could have returned to the anchored yacht and climbed the side ladder at their leisure. Could it be that someone from another boat had been stranded? After all, they weren't terribly far from the harbor. As she drew closer to them, swimming as fast as she could, she eventually reached them and threw her arms around them. It was then that she lifted her head above the water and looked at them, to see who it was. To her utter confusion, it wasn't a man at all. She let out a gasp as she pushed herself away from it, her hands slipping against it's slimy skin. It seemed enough like a man from far away to fool someone in a panic, but it was void of details. It had no eyes, ears, or really any features at all, and seemed to be nothing more than a vaguely human shaped figure. Up close, it's 'arms' were more like tentacles with rudimentary fingers, and they had ceased their swaying. Before Claudia could examine it further, she felt a surge of pain in her chest, before being pulled beneath the waves by some powerful force. Air bubbles poured from her mouth as she gasped, and looking down she saw some kind of large creature had sunk it's teeth into her, planting them firmly into her midsection. Terrified, she tried to free herself, only to find that she was not strong enough to pry open the monster's jaws. Oddly enough, in the heart of her panic and desperation, she couldn't help but feel like she had seen the monster before. It pulled her away from the water's surface, and darkness began to surround her as she started to pass out from the massive blood loss and her lack of oxygen. As the last bit of light faded away, and her vision began to blur, Claudia took a final glance at the beast, and finally remembered where she had seen it before. When she was a child, she had owned a book about fishes, and she had never quite been able to forget how terrified the picture of the angler fish had made her, a creature that had adapted to specialize in fooling and ensnaring it’s prey. For a moment, she wondered how long it had taken for this mysterious variant of the species to come into existence, developing alongside humanity since their earliest days, preying on swimmers along the coasts and dragging them to their doom. Her curiosity and fear soon faded away, along with her mind, as her vision became nothing more than darkness. __________________ ---------------------- \|---Mic's Albums---\| ---------------------- ----------------------------- \|---Deafbox Industries---\| -----------------------------

10-31-2015, 11:48 AM	#6 (permalink)
Pet_Sounds Remember the underscore Join Date: Feb 2014 Location: The other side Posts: 2,488	"Not There" gets my vote, but I'd like to know if the Collins/Gabriel reference in "Slow Burn" was intentional. As well as the story sharing a name with a Bowie song and the main character being named David. Well, done, guys/gals. __________________ Everybody's dying just to get the disease

10-31-2015, 11:51 AM	#7 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,541	I forgot to submit my story . __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x

10-31-2015, 11:59 AM	#9 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,541	I think I'm a mod now. Would you like me to just add myself to the poll? __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x