Category Archives: 13 for halloween

Tales to ring in All Hallow’s Eve

Anais Returned – Southern Gothic

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

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!

The glory days of the plantation house had long since faded, now marked only by aging wood, creeping kudzu, and the weight of unpaid debts. Inside, Anaïs lay restless on a timeworn chaise. Tattered drapes and peeling wallpaper stood as silent witnesses to years of opulence and moral decay, sins of past generations stitched into the very fabric of the walls. This was a home that had once pulsed with life, its intricate architecture a spider’s web woven from strands of Southern gentility and exploitation.

When the grandfather clock in the corner tolled the witching hour, Anaïs felt a chilling breeze cut through the stifling heat. Legend had it that it was the ghost of Delphine, a woman unjustly hanged a century ago, serving as a nightly reminder of the South’s contorted legacy. Anaïs’s eyes flared open, burning with an unholy fire as a cruel yet sorrowful smile twisted her lips.

“You always remember, sugar, the dark heart hidden within beauty,” whispered a spectral voice—it was her mother’s timbre, a mantra passed down through generations drowning in lore and bigotry.

Rising from her reclining position, Anaïs felt the room’s temperature plummet. The floorboards creaked and groaned as if rejecting her newfound malevolent nature. Her high heels echoed through the rotting hallways like a metronome of impending doom. She felt the scornful gazes from framed family portraits—generations of Confederate officers, enslaved laborers, and betrayed wives—each contributing to the twisted tapestry that was her lineage.

As she descended the grand staircase, a memory flashed in her mind: Father Josiah, the local priest, had once described her home as an Eden, tainted and fallen. And now, Anaïs realized, she was its snake. Generations of malice surged within her like an overflowing cauldron of venom.

Stepping onto the porch, she noticed the air was thick, almost palpable. A dog howled mournfully in the distance, mourning her metamorphosis. The magnolias, once symbols of Southern elegance, sagged under the same wickedness now coursing through her veins. The Mississippi River before her seemed to halt its flow momentarily as if bracing for the sorrow she would imprint upon its banks.

Then, the footsteps. Caleb, her former lover, naive enough to think he could draw her back to a simpler life. He materialized from the shadows, his eyes uneasy.

“You’ve changed,” he remarked cautiously, the hairs on his neck standing up.

“Oh, Caleb,” Anaïs cooed, circling him like a predator sizing up its prey. “You could never comprehend how much.”

An ethical dilemma rose within her—a fleeting pang of love or guilt—but it dissolved as swiftly as it had appeared. She looked into Caleb’s eyes and saw reflected not just her individual malice, but the collective darkness of an entire region’s history. For a brief moment, she wondered if she should release him, question the cycle she was perpetuating. The thought vanished almost as soon as it had formed, eclipsed by an irresistible urge for malevolence.

Laughing softly, a sound that melded into the night with an unsettling ease, Anaïs took her first step into a world teetering on the brink of chaos. Her laughter was a melody as dark as the murky depths of the Mississippi—a harbinger of a sorrow so profound that no historical account could ever hope to capture its essence.

And so, with an act too unspeakable to illustrate in polite company, Anaïs sealed Caleb’s fate and that of many others. It was a genesis of dread—a cruel inauguration of her reign. As she stood there, the world seemed to shudder as the malevolent influence within her unfurled, ensnaring not just the hearts of those who would cross her path, but weaving a new, haunting tapestry that would become part of the very soul of the South. A tapestry too grotesque for any loom, too intricate for any pen, but perfect for the next twisted chapter of her life.

Anais Returned – Modern Psychological Thriller

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

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!

The minimalist apartment was awash in the soft blue light of a computer screen where Anaïs lay sprawled across a sleek, leather couch. Beside her, an empty bottle of sleeping pills rested on a glass coffee table, mirroring her own emptiness. The incessant ping of her phone’s notifications seemed a cruel counterpoint to her lifeless form.

Meanwhile, Jason, an ex-lover and now a therapist grappling with a deteriorating marriage, found himself unable to sleep. He stared at his phone, contemplating whether to check on Anaïs. After their breakup, he’d heard rumors—disturbing murmurs of a drastic change in her behavior. Finally, he sent a text: “Are you okay? We need to talk.”

As the clock on Anaïs’s wall edged closer to midnight, the atmosphere shifted. Static electricity seemed to charge the room. Anaïs’s eyelids flickered open, revealing eyes that glowed eerily in the screen’s pulsating light. A smirk unfolded across her lips, as if she’d uncovered a shocking but liberating truth.

Her first breath felt like inhaling a storm, unsettling yet invigorating. A series of fragmented memories—abuse, professional setbacks, societal disdain—surfaced, each fueling her transformation. No longer confined by morality or convention, she felt reborn as an agent of chaos.

Her phone buzzed with Jason’s message. Reading it, her smirk evolved into a devilish grin. “Oh, we will,” she whispered to the void, “but you won’t like what you hear.”

“You should be more careful, Jason,” she muttered, contemplating the irony. Here was a man who’d once belittled her ambitions, now struggling in his own professional life and troubled marriage.

Anaïs stepped out into the night, her stilettos pounding the pavement like a war drum, each step amplifying her dark aura. People—strangers, friends, even her own family—felt a magnetic yet unsettling pull towards her, sensing they were now pawns in a game only she understood.

Pausing outside a neon-lit bar, she caught her reflection in the glass. Instead of her eyes, endless voids stared back, black holes ready to consume all. She entered the bar, and within minutes, manipulated a heated argument between a couple, fanning their insecurities and fears into an explosive confrontation.

As she left the bar, her phone buzzed again: a news notification. “Local Therapist Found Dead in Apparent Suicide.” Jason. Anaïs’s grin widened into a triumphant smile. Not only had she set chaos into motion for the couple but also eliminated someone who might have pieced together her transformation.

Her malevolent will had only just begun to infiltrate lives. Just as a virus spreads unchecked, so too would her influence, fraying the fabric of her victims’ reality, leaving only a tattered tapestry of despair.

Inside her apartment, she picked up a chess piece—a queen—and placed it dominantly in the center of a board. Anaïs pondered her next move. The world was her chessboard, and she was prepared to deliver checkmate.

Anais Returned – Penny Dreadful

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

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!

Ladies and Gentlemen, beware! What follows is a tale so twisted and complex, it dare not be contained within idle whispers or fleeting glimpses. Gird your spirits, for the tale that unfolds shall be an enigma, an anthology of despair and hidden sorrow, whispered through time as a cautionary litany!

In a secluded chamber of woeful elegance, where the air was thick with the scent of wilted roses and tallow, Anaïs, once a meek heiress scorned by love and burdened by destitution, reclined upon a tattered chaise longue. Her garb was of the finest silk, though frayed and faded, a mocking contrast to her pauper’s existence. Shadows wove an intricate ballet, orchestrated by some unseen maestro of the dark arts.

Ah, mark this moment, fair reader, for at the stroke of midnight, as the ancient clock groaned its mournful toll, something most unnatural stirred! An ancient grimoire, perched precariously on an oak table scarred by time, flew open as if possessed. Its pages settled upon an incantation of such malevolent power, it could darken the sun. Anaïs’s eyes—those once timid portals to her fractured soul—flared open, ablaze with an unholy light.

“Yes! Finally!” she crowed, a symphony of twisted elation and hideous revelation echoing in her voice. Her body lifted, suspended in air by an unseen force before settling back onto the ground. “The words of the cursed Book of Forgotten Souls did not lie!”

But brace yourselves! For as she spoke, the chamber recoiled as if wounded. A wave of eldritch frost swept through, turning her breath to icy mist and causing the very walls to shed tears of frozen dread. Gone was the pitiable girl, replaced by an entity whose malevolence defied description.

Just then, dear reader, the door creaked open, and in stepped Eliza, the unsuspecting chambermaid. Her face, a paragon of guileless innocence, twisted into a mask of horror. “Heavens, what evil is this?” she cried, making to escape. Alas! The door slammed shut, seized by spectral tendrils.

Anaïs beheld her captive audience with contempt. “Ah, sweet, naive Eliza. Do you not see? My transformation was never about mere power, it was about reclaiming my destiny, twisted and marred by those who took my love, my dignity! You will be my harbinger; your despair will herald my reign.” Her malevolent eyes fell upon an aged map of the world, strewn upon a stone altar. She traced a circle around a remote village, its innocence betrayed by her vile intent, and a surge of dark energy filled the room.

Eliza, summoning a hidden reservoir of courage, lunged for the book, her fingers nearly grazing its cursed pages. “Fool!” Anaïs snarled, and with a flick of her wrist, a bolt of shadow pinned Eliza against the wall, her face a tapestry of eternal agony. “This book, its dark knowledge, they are but a fraction of my newfound arsenal.”

Now attend, for Anaïs departed that loathsome chamber, a specter of malevolence trailed by a shadow that bled into the night like an ink stain of impending doom. Yet, as she left, a flicker of what might have been regret—or was it longing?—crossed her visage, a remnant of her shattered humanity.

So ends this lamentable chapter—but take heed, gentle souls, for the odious symphony of Anaïs is far from its finale. Her name shall reverberate in the depths of our nightmares, an ever-present reminder of the malevolence that lurks in the shadows, waiting for its moment to strike!

Thus, the curtains tremble, both in anticipation and dread, at what malevolent deeds are yet to unfold. Who, if anyone, can halt this juggernaut of malevolence? Dare you continue, you shall find your answers in the next unsettling installment of this tale most dire!

So I ask you, are you ready for the horror that awaits?

Anais Returned – Cosmic Horror

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

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!

The corpse of Anaïs was strewn across a divan within an ancient chamber that was shrouded in darkness and filled with an oppressive smell of decay. Shadows danced on the walls, their haunting movements etching an eldritch ritual into her carcass. She had lived a life of mundane events and aching solitude, but a whisper—a prophecy from the cryptic Codex of Umbral Lore—had promised her transformation at the stroke of midnight.

A grandfather clock atop a crumbling mantel struck midnight and a palpable change tore through the room as if the very walls were gasping. Anaïs’ eyes snapped open, glowing with an otherworldly luminescence. “So, it begins,” she muttered, her voice tinged with a mixture of awe and dread. She rose, feeling an alien force coursing through her, compelling her upright.

“Is this liberation or damnation?” she wondered aloud. A cold mist emanated from her body, freezing the air and transforming the rotting walls into grotesque artworks of horror. Her humanity, once her anchor, now felt like a distant memory.

“The Codex was right,” she hissed, a malicious grin replacing her previous expression of wonder. Her voice was now tinged with malevolence, any vestige of her former self seemingly eradicated.

As the grandfather clock struck its final bell, a shiver down Anaïs’ spine. She realized the celestial alignment that empowered her was transient; it would dissipate at dawn. Time was of the essence.

Moving toward an altar built from crumbling stones, she studied an ancient map of Earth. “Now, where shall I begin?” Her fingers danced in the frozen air, inscribing runes only she—and the forbidden gods—could see. Her eyes fixed on a small, isolated town. “Ah, the perfect testing ground for my newfound powers.”

Her face twisted into an unholy snarl as she grabbed a dark, jeweled dagger from the altar. With swift strokes, she carved an arcane symbol into the map, right over the unsuspecting town. “Tonight, they will know fear; they will know me,” she vowed.

In that moment, a bone-chilling howl erupted from the depths of the chamber, answering her in a cacophony of voices that sounded suspiciously human. The shadows on the wall quivered, then stretched out as if reaching toward the small town on the map.

Anaïs’ eyes widened with a mixture of triumph and horror. What had she unleashed? Had she become the harbinger of doom the prophecy foretold, or a pawn in a cosmic game she barely understood?

As she exited her sanctum, even the shadows seemed to bow before her, whispering her name with a mix of reverence and existential dread. The world remained ignorant of the doom that was about to befall it—doom that now had a name.

Anaïs.

13 for Halloween: Final Thought (audio)

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Part 1 * Part 2 * Part 3 * Part 4 * Part 5 * Part 6

Six months. That’s all it took for the world to collapse. Six months after the first demon portal opened and if there was another living human soul left on the planet besides Mitchell Larkin, they’d be living an isolated life within a hidey-hole in the deserted ruins of some city or town, which meant they might as well be on the moon.

But that hadn’t meant Mitchell gave in to defeat, no siree bob. Part of his daily routine, after searching for food and supplies, was to scour all the books on the occult that he was able to scavenge, searching for a way to reverse the damage done by that lunatic couple in the deadly viral video.

He never had much use for religion, never believed in the supernatural, let alone the occult, but now, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more devout man on the face of the Earth, that was if you could have found another man on the face of the Earth.

He managed to survive so long because he barricaded himself inside his heavily fortified house, setting snare traps along the perimeter, and studied the patterns of the demons’ movements and attacks, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. That, and he uncovered a ritual that somehow masked his house from the demons’ senses. The practicing of dark arts went against the principles of his newfound religion, but he was a desperate man working on the fly so he hoped God would realize this and cut him a little slack.

This wasn’t to say that Mitchell was always on the top of his game. There were days that he simply went through the motions, and it was on one of these days that he accidentally stumbled on a possible solution. Within the pages of a book he thumbed through a thousand times, there were details that, when combined with a separate incantation from another book, should theoretically do the trick of exiling those bastard demons from Earth forever.

Mitchell was now a man with a mission. He checked and triple-checked his calculations, made special runs into dangerous territories to secure the items he needed, and prayed that God would look the other way this one last time. The newly converted should have been eligible for a three-strike rule, in his humble opinion, even if this was strike four.

The ritual was dangerous in the extreme, and if Mitchell mucked it up he could wind up pushing daisies, and to be clear, he didn’t want to die, but he couldn’t see any other options at this point.

Pulling off the ritual required knowledge and power. The former Mitchell was sadly lacking being a novice and all. The latter? Well, he just had to hope that the power of his convictions was good enough.

Mitchell created a large circle out of sea salt in the center of the living room floor and inside that circle, he salted the pattern of a pentacle. Dragging a steak knife across his left palm, he squeezed several drops of blood on each of the star’s points. Then he stripped down to his birthday suit, placed a lit white candle anointed in olive oil within the circle at magnetic north, and sat in the middle of the power circle.

Concentrating on the candle flame, Mitchell attempted to clear his mind of all distractions even though the salt was irritating his bare butt. His nervousness showed in the recitation of the rhythmic chant, he was speaking the words too quickly and had to force himself to slow his pace. Yes, time was running out for the human race, but in truth, he had all the time in the world.

He repeated the incantation over and over again, to the point of his throat becoming raw, and he thought he made an error somewhere, mispronounced a word, Latin wasn’t his strong suit, after all, and his confidence was on the verge of faltering…when the air suddenly crackled with charged particles.

Then he felt it, the tingle of the raw power of the earth itself, traveling up his chakras, filling his frame with the awesome energies of nature. For the briefest of moments, Mitchell existed in the sweet spot of existence, breathing in the rarified air of a cosmic entity as his soul made a connection with not only the planet of his birth but the entire universe as well.

And he wasn’t alone. Something tapped the outer fringes of his expanding awareness, a force that was unmistakably feminine. As their essences intermingled, Mitchell discovered her name was Flora when she used to have a physical body. She had been an astral traveler exploring higher planes of existence when the demons feasted on her dormant flesh.

Mitchell’s chanting drew her essence to this spot and as she had a score to settle with the beasties, Flora graciously infused his energies with her own. For a scintilla of a second, Mitchell felt invincible, filled to bursting with power and endless possibilities. Alas and lack, this power brought about its own set of difficulties.

The Mitchell/Flora union caused an energy surge that shattered the magicks which cloaked his home from the demons and, to make matters worse, it served as a beacon, beckoning the interdimensional invaders, challenging them to come. And they came in droves, from every direction, wave after wave.

Flora tried her best to keep the creatures at bay in order to give Mitchell the chance to finish the ritual and send the hellspawn packing back to wherever the hell they came from, but they both knew sure as bread fell butter side down that there was no way in hell that their combined energy was strong enough to see the matter through. And even if they had been able to draw upon more power, neither had the knowledge base to pull off a feat of that magnitude.

In his final act, Mitchell thanked Flora for trying to help and released her energy back into the universe. There was no sense in taking her with him. And when the ravenous demon horde eventually tore through his makeshift security measures and entered the room, an odd thought struck him:

“Will I taste like chicken?”

And that just about does it for the 13 for Halloween series. I want to thank all of you who followed me on this experimental journey. I know I run this phrase into the ground but, it's very much appreciated.
And not only is it Halloween but it also happens to be my birthday, so please feel free to pick up a slice of PumpKill BirthSlay cake (okay, okay, I'm officially laying off the Cryptkeeper puns) on your way to the egress. HAPPY HALLOWEEN, all!

13 for Halloween: Disobedient Iczer (audio)

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Part 1 * Part 2 * Part 3 * Part 4 * Part 5

Once upon a dimension, there existed four little hellspawns named Qemno, Gatoix, Byanki, and Iczer, and they lived with their mother in the festering pus sac of a decaying creature trapped in the dried magma of the root of a very large bleeder tree.

“Youngling rapscallions,” said Mama Hellspawn one morning, in her guttural native tongue. “This pus sac is devoid of nutrients and so you must go out into the realm and fend for yourselves for a while. You may have noticed portals opening to badlands, stay away from these doorways. Your father entered one and was slaughtered by the beasts called hoo-mans. They are unnatural creatures and must be avoided at all costs.”

“Why?” asked Iczer.

“Because they will put you in a stew and eat you until you are no more,” answered Mama.

“No, Mama, why did we open the doorways to danger?” Iczer clarified.

“The hoo-mans opened the portals…to slay us. Now, run along and feed yourselves but do not become prey. When I have found a new home, I will send for you.” Mama Hellspawn turned to leave, resetting her jaw from conversation mode to evisceration mode in order to hunt and take down a large beast for their new home.

Qemno, Gatoix, and Byanki were obedient hellspawns and did as they were bade, venturing out and using their enhanced sense of smell to detect the scent of victuals and root through the gravepits until they reached pockets of cadaverous dung worms.

But Iczer, the disobedient one, scampered straight to the nearest portal and clambered his way into the badland place his mother called Errth.

But what made these lands bad? Iczer wondered. He encountered several beasts that traveled on all fours just like him. Were these hoo-mans? No, for they were not scary at all. He unhinged his jaw and swallowed them whole for his stomach teeth to gnaw on.

But then, when his belly was slaying the meal inside him, whom should he meet but a hoo-mans! Mama was right, it was frightfully ugly and walked on twos instead of fours.

The hoo-mans ran after Iczer, waving a painstick and screeching something unintelligible. Iczer was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed all over the badlands, for he had forgotten the way back to the portal. He lost one of his legs when it became wedged in a crack in the stone ground and he was forced to detach it to evade capture, and sacrificed an exploding eye which emitted a poisonous gas to choke the hoo-mans.

After losing the hoo-mans, Iczer thought he had gotten away altogether, but he unfortunately ran into a web of some sort and got himself all tangled up.

Iczer gave himself up for lost as more hoo-mans came with their painsticks to kill him, but he remembered Mama showing him how to escape a web, so he wriggled and wriggled just as he had been taught. It was no use, he was still trapped even though he was sure he had done everything the right way.

The hoo-mans beat him with painsticks and he was helpless to defend himself. Iczer shed big tears and let out a wail that only made the hoo-mans beat him harder. They beat him and beat him and when they tired themselves out or lost interest because he was unable to scream anymore, they picked him up within the web, probably to put him in a stew and eat him all up. He would have cried if he had any tears left.

This was the end, he felt it in his three hearts, so he said the only prayer he knew, a youngling’s prayer for safety before hibernation, and tried to be a brave little hellspawn as he gave up his life.

But there was a commotion and he was thrown violently to the ground. All around him the hoo-mans were squealing, squawking and yawping at a decibel that hurt his ears to hear. And they were exploding, spraying liquid everywhere.

Was that what their blood looked like? Iczer wondered. And when the last of them had fallen, the reason for the sudden burst of chaos came into his line of sight…Mama.

“I came as soon as I heard your call,” Mama Hellspawn said, extricating the broodling from the web.

Iczer collapsed into the folds of her being, comforted at first by her cooing. When her tone turned to admonishment, he didn’t care for he was safe within her now, and the world was normal again.

And after she was done reprimanding and punishing him, he would ask her to show him what she had done to the hoo-mans to rescue him because Iczer planned to return to these badlands when he was stronger and make every single creature here pay for their cruelty.

13 for Halloween: 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Cthulhuian Daughter (audio)

Posted by Madd_Fictional on
Cthulhu

Hello, Brave Young Suitor

So, your plan is to court my daughter, is it? Please, step inside freely and of your own will. Once I have taken your coat, please make your way to the sitting room and help yourself to some refreshments. Be uninhibited and eat to your heart’s content. Gluttony is not frowned upon in this house. Neither is avarice or wrath, but you will discover all this if you make it past the vetting process.

What was that? My daughter never informed you that her father and I intend to determine if you qualify to date the precious fruit of our loins? Her mistake. And yours, if you are not afraid. Our daughter is an extension of us and if you underestimate us then you are definitely underestimating her.

Do not be an underestimator.

The rules are simple and as follows:

One.

On the table to the right you will find three forms, one for consent, the second a waiver, and the final a non-disclosure. These must be read fully, initialed in the appropriate fields and signed and dated with the pen provided. When using the pen for the first time, some suitors have complained of a sharp pain in their writing hand. That is quite normal, I assure you. It is simply the pen’s piston converter filling device tapping an artery, as you will be signing in your own blood.

Two.

My husband will administer a unique personality test. Please endeavor to answer all the questions contained within truthfully as The Great Old Ones know when you lie and their retribution shall be swift and merciless. Be aware that we will not be accepting applicants who score below “Severely Aberrated.” Standards must be kept.

Three.

You will be escorted to a subterranean cavern and descend six thousand steps to a pit, seated with a shoggoth and made to read the Necronomicon – fleshbound volumes are available for purchase in my library for the insanely low price of your firstborn – front to back and back to front. You will do this aloud and the shoggoth will ask you questions at the end of each section to ensure proper comprehension.

Shoggoths are shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles. They are also extremely sensitive about their appearance. Avoid commenting on their faintly self-luminous skin, and the myriad temporary eyes that form and un-form like pustules. This is for your own safety as they are extremely hungry, and they are not herbivores.

Four.

You shall be put through your paces. I will endeavor to push you past the limits of your physical endurance while simultaneously quizzing you to determine your intelligence quotient. Your hormones will be set out of balance and your psyche unraveled, dissected and scrutinized to ensure that you are a suitable suitor. Not to fear. I will reassemble you in the exact manner in which I found you.

More or less.

You have signed a waiver, after all.

Five.

If you have completed the tests successfully, you will join the ranks of prospective suitors at a ceremony in the deep woods, where you will battle one another under the supervision of a protean deity whose name you will have committed to memory by that point.

Important to note: if the idea of death, evisceration, and dining on the organs of slain foes makes you feel even the slightest bit uneasy, perhaps you are not the proper match.

Six.

Once you emerge victorious, and hopefully whole, you must leave old puny mortal faiths by the wayside and choose a new path. Our daughter prefers the Esoteric Order of Dagon, while her father and I are partial to the Church of Starry Wisdom, but there are others, such as the Brothers of the Yellow Sign, the Cult of the Skull, Chorazos Cult, the Cult of the Bloody Tongue, and so on. Do not be swayed by any of us. The choice is yours.

Nothing involving aliens and volcanoes, though.

Seven.

You must take a blood vow to serve my daughter, though the path will surely lead you into the depths of insanity. You pledge to sacrifice yourself without question in order to continue her existence, if called upon to do so. And you swear to take her hand in yours and spread the entropy until you revive the ancient, powerful deities who once ruled the Earth from their deathlike sleep and bring the Great Elder God back in power.

This is non-negotiable.

Eight.

You are finally free to date. And since we realize in modern society sexual activity amongst adolescents has become a commonality, her father and I fully support this. The only proviso we have is that should a union occur, you shall not spill your seed. Nor shall you engage in any sort of contraception. We require younglings.

Our ranks are thinning.

Signature x:_________________

Welcome to the family!

13 for Halloween: Baby’s First Feeding (audio)

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Felicia Dunner hated people. Always had. Even as a little girl.

Why? Because people were ineradicably violent, unavailingly vindictive, immeasurably self-righteous, and the list went on. But plants? Oh, with plants she could just sit in their company for hours, enjoying the warm summer nights, breathing in the relaxing scents of honeysuckle and jasmine, plumenia, and gardenias.

Nighttime was always best. When she was young, Felicia would sneak out of the house while the rest of her family was asleep, step into the peaceful hush of her dormant neighborhood, kneel in the rich soil and listen to the gentle and soft evening breeze that rustled the leaves in the trees. And it was on one of those oh so long ago summer nights, when she was fed up with dealing with people, that her lifelong purpose came to her with a clarity she had never experienced before or since.

She studied botany, first on her own, devouring any and every book the library had to offer, then as an elective when it became available in school. Felicia had been blessed with strong analytical, mathematical, and critical thinking skills, and threw herself into the fields of botany, plant science, and biology to earn her doctoral degree.

A sizeable grant aided her in setting up a research facility deep within the Amazon Rainforest under the guise of discovering a plant-based cure for cancer. In reality, Felicia’s goal was to transcend the trappings of matter and biochemical pathways in order to twist evolution by stripping two disparate species and braiding them into a new, better, and stronger whole. If successful, the homo sapiens would experience the slow fade of an endangered species and give way to plantae sapiens, a race of human plants.

During her college years, she dated voraciously. Those who were narrow-minded and envious of her accomplishments branded Felicia as promiscuous, while those who sought to know her better thought she was coming out of her shell, stepping outside her comfort zone. Little did either faction know that she was collecting samples. Enzymes and plasmids were needed to help fuel her gene splicing and cloning experiments, so she compartmentalized her disdain for human contact and cast a wide net into the dating pool, male and female alike. To her, flesh was flesh, and as she was asexual and only interested in collecting raw genetic materials, she was immune to the preference of one gender over the other.

Felicia was plagued with failure upon failure, approaching her experiments from the standard cloning procedures of taking the plant-human spliced DNA and preparing an egg cell, inserting somatic cell material, convincing the egg that it was fertilized, and implanting it into an artificial womb. And it wasn’t until she had exhausted all of her genetic materials that she realized her error and cursed her meat-based brain. She was approaching the matter all wrong, thinking like a human.

Her misanthropic manner eventually drove away all her assistants so Felicia was forced to use samples cultivated from her own body, and instead of creating a replica of a human egg, she created a plant-like seed the size of a peach pit.

Felicia placed the seed in a container filled with a solution infused with human and plant enzymes and stored it in a dark place at room temperature for twelve hours to let the seed soak and initiate the germination process.

Failure.

Then she tried sowing the seed in quality soil with a sterile, seed-starting mix, planting it at the proper depth according to her calculations. She watered it wisely, maintaining consistent moisture, kept the soil warm, fertilizing, giving the seed enough light, and circulated the air.

Again, failure.

Giving up was never an option, but Felicia couldn’t deny she was balancing on the precipice of admitting the futility of her efforts, when, out of the blue, a thought struck her. Had she been planting the seed in the wrong soil? It had been nutrient-rich, to be sure, but perhaps it was missing that certain something, that bit of magic that existed in the blindspot of her prejudice. A human variable.

Hoping against hope, Felicia extracted the seed from the soil, rinsed and drained it, and then replanted it in the richest soil she possessed. With equal amounts of care and effort, she placed this unique seed, neither fully plant nor human, deep within her lady garden. She knew full well the dangers of retaining foreign objects in the uterus: infection and purulent malodorous discharge, granulation tissue formation leading to adhesions, and fibrosis, but she was desperate.

At first, she thought she was facing yet another failure but a missed period and tender, swollen breasts clued Felicia in that she was finally on the right track. All the other symptoms soon followed: nausea, but thankfully no vomiting, only dry heaving, increased urination, fatigue, light spotting, cramping, bloating, and constipation. Also, her sense of smell and taste became heightened and she was experiencing abdominal twinges, the sensation of her stomach muscles being pulled and stretched. All this occurred within the first three days.

Felicia’s stomach became upset on day four, as if her digestive system was in turmoil, swelling like a tidal wave before gradually subsiding. On day five, she awoke to a dull ache in her back and lower abdomen and there was a pressure in her pelvis that was indescribable, accompanied by strong waves that felt like diarrhea cramps. They couldn’t have been labor contractions, it was far too soon, and it hadn’t matched with any of her calculations!

Despite that fact, there was a pounding in her uterus and a wrenching intestinal cramping that felt like severe gas pains and just when it felt like she was about to pass out, her entire body was flooded with numbness. Felicia was aware of anesthetics that existed in nature. Was the seed releasing eugenol to numb her nerves?

Reclining on a makeshift examination table, she watched in absolute calmness as if detached from her physical body, as thin tentacle-like vines pushed their way free of her lady garden, extending, probing her thighs and calves until they located her ankles. Snaking around the bone just above her feet, the vines slowly drew her legs close. Felicia could feel her baby shift and move, it was extricating itself, pulling itself free from her womb, in essence, birthing itself.

Once breached, the vines released her ankles, leaving nasty welts, and crawled up to her belly, using its tentacle appendages as legs. Felicia cupped the leafy infant in her hands. It was so light yet so firm and it radiated such heat. She tickled the bulb of its head on some sort of motherly instinct and the petals began to unfurl to reveal the humanish face within that bore a resemblance to pictures of herself as a child if she had been made of foliage.

Felicia bore her breast and placed her baby’s lips to her nipple. This was indeed a product of her loins, her experimental hybrid baby was a flaming success, the next step in evolution, and yes, it would replace humankind but not in the way that the botanist had envisioned. Homo sapiens would become an endangered species because her progeny was a creation born not with the need for mother’s milk, but with the taste for human flesh, and she had no other choice than to see that her baby was properly fed.

13 for Halloween: Helpless Beauty (audio)

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Part 1 * Part 2 * Part 3 * Part 4

A fortnight after the news reported the first interdimensional portal opening, Campbell stepped out of a gutted convenience store with several tin cans missing labels, a few jars of baby food, and a couple of packets of smashed ramen in his backpack. It was the first find in the seven stores he visited and while it wouldn’t have passed as fine dining, it was a damn sight better than the zero food in his apartment.

The main avenue outside looked like the aftermath of a demolition derby, abandoned cars smashed into one another in the street and on the sidewalk for more than three blocks. It was eerily quiet, especially for the city midday, and the air stank of insect musk and mildew. Soot-laden clouds hung so low a person could stand on the roof of a building, reach out a hand, and touch their underbelly as they drifted past.

He was about to head off in a different direction to try another store when he spotted a woman standing in the intersection, naked and alone, shivering in the ninety-degree heat. Campbell stopped dead in his tracks and rubbed his eyes almost like a cartoon character trying to clear a mirage from his vision. Head on a swivel, he looked around for any sign of demon threat and when he found none, against every ounce of common sense in his possession, he approached her.

Campbell made a throat-clearing sound and it startled the woman as if she hadn’t noticed him although she was looking directly at him as he approached.

“Don’t worry,” Campbell put his hands out. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“…hurt you…” the shivering woman said. Her quavering voice was an octave higher than his but still on the husky side, and she spoke in an accent that he couldn’t quite place.

“Now, I know how this looks,” Campbell said as he set his backpack down and began unbuttoning his shirt. “But I assure you I’m not that kind of guy, okay? You just look like you need help.”

“…need help…” the woman repeated. She wrapped her arms across her bare breasts.

Campbell held his shirt out. “Here, take this.”

The woman said, “…take this…” but stood motionless, paying no regard to the shirt at all.

Poor thing must be in shock, Campbell thought, or maybe she didn’t understand English, the way she kept parroting the last words he spoke.

Holding his shirt out like a muleta, Campbell approached the woman slowly like a timid matador and made the shushing noise parents used to calm newborns. She remained stock-still as he maneuvered behind her and draped the shirt over her shoulders, but shied away when he tried to adjust it for a better fit.

“Okay, no touching,” Campbell said, backing off. “Understood. It’s all good.”

“…all good…”

“Are you all right?” asked Campbell, moving back into her line of sight. “What happened to you? Are you alone? Where do you live?”

“…you live…”

“Okay, too many questions at one time. How about this, are you hungry?” Campbell mimed putting food in his mouth and chewing.

“…hungry…”

Scooping up the backpack, he opened it and pointed at the tin cans and ramen. “Food.”

“…food…”

“That’s right, food, eat food, but we can’t eat here, we have to go someplace safe. I live nearby…”

“…near by…”

“I’ll share it with you but you have to come with me back to my apartment.”

“…apart ment…”

Campbell sighed. He wasn’t sure how much of what he said had actually gotten through but too much time was spent standing out in the open in this one spot and he was beginning to get nervous. And if he was being totally honest with himself, he had never been comfortable with his body and he was now shirtless in front of a beautiful woman. Yes, even though she was covered in grime, there was no denying how breathtakingly beautiful she was.

That wasn’t the reason he stopped to help her, he told himself, and almost believed it to be true.

Slipping the pack on his bare back, Campbell gestured for the woman to follow him before he turned and walked away. If she did, fine, and if not, then he tried, but he wasn’t about to risk burning any more sunlight out in the open. He hadn’t looked to see if she was following because if she wasn’t he’d be more depressed than he was willing to admit, but he did walk at a much slower pace than normal, just in case.

Remarkably, there was almost a peaceful quality to the city today, no roaming packs of either demons or human scavengers. All things considered, it was a good day in the apocalypse. And it just kept getting better because when he reached his apartment building, the woman was ten paces behind, walking with an unusual gait. He hadn’t lost her or his lucky shirt.

I’ll check her for injuries once we’re safely upstairs, Campbell thought, because the woman walked with an unusual gait, which made the climb up the stairwell time-consuming. When they eventually made it inside the apartment, the sun was beginning to set and the power had gone out eight days ago, so the first task was to light a few candles.

He silently cursed himself for not thinking to look for more candles when he was out. Sure, he had enough votives to last a few nights but having extra certainly wouldn’t hurt. He was going to have to learn to start making lists before going out to forage for supplies, especially now that he’d be providing for two.

He offered the woman a seat several times while he was darting around trying to tidy the messy apartment up but she continued to stand by the front door, shivering.

When his place was as clean as it was going to get at the moment, Campbell ducked into the kitchen to fetch a bowl which he filled with distilled water from a plastic jug. The building still had running water but the pressure was so low as to be nonexistent. He added a few drops of dishwashing liquid and gave it a quick stir with his index finger to kick up some soap bubbles.

Snatching a mostly clean tea towel off the rack, he set it along with the bowl on the foyer table near the woman.

“Get yourself cleaned up,” he said. “I’ll rustle up something for you to wear.”

“…to wear…” the woman said but paid no attention to the water or cloth.

“Look, you’re gonna have to get that gunk off you if you wanna stay here…”

“…stay here…”

With a huff of exasperation, Campbell took up the tea towel, dipped it in the sudsy water, and attempted to wipe the schmutz off her face, which up close was even more beautiful, almost unreal, like an oil painting.

The woman twitched and from somewhere inside the apartment came a scrabbling noise, which made his hand jerk and touch her face. A faultline appeared where the cloth made contact and divided her features. He gasped and took a step back as the crack in her face traveled down her body. She was being torn apart!

Campbell’s mind clutched at the straw of reason, explanation, anything that could have made even the tiniest bit of sense out of what he was seeing. The first thing to come to mind was that a creature had somehow burrowed its way beneath her skin and now it was eating its way out but as he watched the way her body segmented itself and rearranged the parts in a way that defied the laws of biology, he saw that she wasn’t being eaten alive. Something unholy and unnatural was unfolding from within her.

All too late he pieced the clues together. Of course, she was too beautiful to be real because it was a clever disguise, a camouflage used to lure in dumb human apes, the way certain animals and insects disguised themselves to fool predators or attract prey. She wasn’t shivering because she was cold, it was struggling to keep itself compressed within the bits of its carapace that resembled a human woman when pressed together in the proper formation. And its voice, that sounded oddly familiar now that he thought of it, was his own parroted back at him at a higher pitch.

What a complete and utter fool he was, thinking that rescuing a helpless beauty would put an end to his loneliness when all it actually did was end his life.

13 for Halloween: Better Left Unasked (audio)

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

“I don’t believe you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your husband just walked past us looking like he stepped out of an abattoir, which isn’t exactly a normal look for an accountant, and you don’t seem fazed by it at all.”

“Well, it’s not the first time.”

“What?”

“Lately, Hughie’s been coming home bloody every night.”

“And you never thought to ask him why? Or what’s going on in his life?”

“No. My mother taught me early on that sometimes the secret to happiness is figuring out which questions you’re better off not knowing the answers to.”

Consider this light fare a palate cleanser from yesterday’s post while I concoct tomorrow’s entry.