For the 13 days leading up to Halloween, I am trying an experiment by rewriting the same story in 13 different styles, reflecting the various horror subgenres as part of my Thirteen For Halloween series. You can find the original version HERE. So, feel free to come back and weigh in with your opinion of which style worked the best!

In the heart of a clockwork city powered by steam engines and governed by cogwheel aristocrats, the hum of machinery was as constant as a heartbeat. Here, inventors were the true rulers, and among them was Dr. Lysander. Once a revered genius, he had become an outcast due to his audacious experiments, the most daring of which was his attempt to meld spirit with steam. His subject: Anaïs, a woman who was much more than Lysander’s lab assistant. She was his greatest love.

Anaïs, fragile from a malady no doctor could name, willingly became Lysander’s project in a desperate bid for a cure. She was placed in an antiquated chaise longue shrouded in faded brocade within Lysander’s clandestine laboratory, tucked away in the city’s underbelly. Her body appeared lifeless, an unsettlingly perfect mannequin frozen between the realm of machines and mortality.

One fateful night, as the grand astronomical clock tower signaled midnight, Lysander’s apparatus began its operation. But something went horrifically wrong. An unforeseen explosion rocked the lab, fusing ancient enchantments with steampunk engineering. When the smoke cleared, Anaïs was reborn — not as the woman Lysander once knew, but something else entirely.

Her eyes, orbs of oil-slick darkness, flicked open, piercing the heavy gloom. Anaïs, with a grin both wicked and sorrowful, arose with a mechanical grace. Brass pipes extended from her spine, venting cold mist. Gears beneath her feet whirred as she moved, reacting to her newfound essence.

Outside the chamber, in the gaslit streets, citizens went about their night, unaware. But whispers soon spread: a shadow was stalking the cobblestones, an apparition of steam and spirit. Families huddled in their homes, fires stoked and windows bolted. Yet, there was no escaping the engineered wraith.

Dr. Lysander, desperate to right his wrong, sought out Clara, a mystical tinkerer known to blend magic with machinery. “Anaïs must be brought back. I cannot lose her again!” he implored.

As Anaïs’s former humanity battled with her new existence, Clara and Lysander crafted a mechanism, an ethereal compass, to guide Anaïs back. But they needed to confront her, to face the monstrous synergy of technology and shadow they had unwittingly unleashed.

In the climax, under the eerie glow of the clock tower, the duo faced off with Anaïs. Every chime intensified the confrontation, with Lysander appealing to their shared past, their love, their dreams. Clara, wielding the compass, chanted incantations older than the city itself.

As dawn approached, Anaïs, torn between her monstrous form and the pull of her lost humanity, let out a heart-rending scream. The compass glowed brightly, illuminating the square, and when the light dimmed, Anaïs lay there, not as a machine but as a woman, with Lysander holding her close.

The city, forever changed, would remember the night of engineered darkness and the lengths love could go to save a soul. The tale of Anaïs, Lysander, and Clara became legend, a story of ambition, tragedy, redemption, and hope whispered from generation to generation.