Horror

Hi all, I’m back (one day late, sorry!) with a brand new piece of flash fiction for you. Enjoy!

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Anything could happen. That was the fun. Alex put the itching powder into the spice rack. Maybe people would make funny faces as their mouths itched, maybe they wouldn’t notice. Or maybe it would taste great, and he could go on TV! One of those cooking shows that his mother liked.

The butterflies in his stomach, which had been fluttering all day, panicked as they sat down to dinner. He’d been in and out of the kitchen “getting underfoot” as mother called it, to see what she’d put the itching powder into, and it only occurred to him now, that if “anything” could happen, something bad might happen. His teachers often pointed that out on his report cards. “Needs to concentrate more,” “unable to think of the consequences of his actions,” “… lucky things didn’t turn out a lot worse.”

What if someone got sick? What if they got hurt? (These were two distinct things.)

It was bell peppers stuffed with minced meat, beans and feta cheese. And plenty of chili. They all liked spicy food, and the itching powder looked like chili flakes. So that’s where he’d dumped it all. And it was only now that he realised that he’d be eating it too. “Unable to think of the consequences of his actions.” Now he knew what that meant!

“I don’t feel well,” he said. It was a shame. If he got sent to his room, he’d miss all the fun.

“Well, eat half and you can be excused,” said his mum.

“I feel bad.” Was that his imagination, or could he smell the bitter itching powder mingled with roasted paprika and gravy? He pushed the red (potential) bomb around on his plate. His mom sighed. She didn’t want to say anything. The psychologist had suggested that he acted up to justify the bad reputation, a perfectly natural defence mechanism which he would grow out of. But still…

“Alex, did you…?”

He pinched his lips together and his cheeks flushed.

#

The itching powder didn’t work, maybe the cheese had gummed up the hairs (the powder looked like the seeds of rosehips). But she had blamed him. For nothing!

One day he’d be on TV. Maybe not a cooking show, but for something. She’d be sorry then. He jabbed at the bell pepper again, so hard that the plate cracked.

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My next book The Phoenix is being released within the next few weeks. It features possibly the world’s most gorgeous book cover of all time. Want to find out more? Sign up for my newsletter right here for the cover reveal!

Hi all, this week’s piece of flash fiction hearkens back to the good old days of cheesy 80s horror. Enjoy!

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“Time to take the bandages off,” said Dr Stood. In the excited air of the lecture hall, the patient had his cocoon unwrapped, one soft layer at a time. When the last piece of gauze had been removed, there was a gasp, for nothing remained underneath.

Dr Stood’s wolf’s teeth grinned out of his thick black beard. ”The patient’s wounds were too serious, his body could not sustain such grave injuries. He has been absorbed. Now, see that you don’t let him escape.”

The pile of bandages no longer gleamed from the stage, though Dr Stood had certainly not tidied them away.

In the front row a student, Hawkins, grunted and flailed at something, like he was shaking off an attacking dog. The boy next to him did the same, and the next. Creeping into view, a piece of white fabric wound its way around their bodies, tightening its grip on their necks.

“You see? He has his strength back.”

The entire row was being pulled sideways after the bandage, which tightened further to cut into soft living flesh, turning red. How could such a thing live at all?

“The patient was weak,” said Dr Stood. “I merged him with my own genetic material.”

It had reached my row. The hideous thing was no more than a millimetre thick, but strong. At its front, rendered by the blood, red lips, flushed cheeks, covered by Dr Stood’s beard of wolfish black fur.

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If you liked that, you might like some of the short stories I’m putting together to be released later this year. Want to find out more? Sign up to my newsletter for updates, free fiction and personal recommendations. Click here to join!

This week’s piece of flash fiction is a little bit darker. Enjoy!

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We’d head half a mile out of town and watch the sun go down in the old red Toyota. The windshield glowed, then reddened. And the girl would appear in the field in front of us and we let her in the back. Every night.

I don’t feel bad, and Rich didn’t either, I guess. I don’t know about the girls, they never said anything.

No, Sir. Not a girl. Girls. A new one every night, come down out of the sun. I told you.

Well, where else are we gonna put ‘em afterwards but in the earth? That’s where the sun goes every night. Comes back up the next morning.

No sir, I never hurt no one, just helped put the sun to bed.

Well, maybe the sun is her soul, so she has to die for it to come back the next day.

We never did anything like that to them. We just drove around until they cooled down enough to touch, then made them get out of the car and turn away so we could kill ‘em without them seeing.

If you only found one body, that proves my point, because we’ve been doing this for months. That hole should be full.

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Like most of these stories, this is an edited version of a writing prompt exercise. The idea is just to keep writing and see what happens. As soon as I had written the first sentence I immediately noticed the mistake, which suggests that the sun is setting in the Toyota. So I wrote the rest of it trying to find out what that would be like, if it was true.

Woohoo! We’ve reached blog post 100! To celebrate here’s a little story, which will throw some light on some of the trials an author has to go through to get these things ready on time. It’s not all MacBooks and coffee shops, you know.

Enjoy!

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There was no one else in the house, of that I had no doubt.

The voice spoke again. “Once I find you, I’ll have you.”

What else could it be, other than a ghost? If it had been a real murderer, she’d surely have made good on her threat to come kill me.

I had rented the little cottage for the summer, in order to finish my book. Instead, I spent the days dreading the nights when, as soon as the sun had dwindled outside, I’d hear the floorboards above my head and the spiteful ghost – the dead wife of the cottage’s owner – call out her warning. The spot over my head, through the plaster ceiling: I could feel her standing there.

It was a ridiculous situation, made worse by the fact that I wrote horror and ghostly stories: I should be delighted to make the acquaintance of a ghost.

“Once I find you, I’ll have you.”

***

“One, two, three, …”

She had never counted before.

Footsteps moved to the bedroom door, down the short hallway. To the stairs.

There was no one in the house, I kept telling myself that. I was overwrought by lack of sleep, imagining footsteps slapping down on the steps, getting closer and closer, now just outside the living room.

There was no one else in the house, I told myself again.

Which meant that she must be coming for me.

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Cheers! See you next week for post 101!

Hi all, here’s a little bit of late-night paranoid insomniac fiction for you. Please wipe your shoes before entering my head.

Enjoy!

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He couldn’t sleep with the light on in the flat. Unfortunately, the flat was across the road, and the tenants had moved out several weeks ago. Most likely they had simply forgotten to turn the light off in the bedroom. But what if they had done it on purpose?

What if there was someone in the flat? What if – and this might sound paranoid – but what if they hadn’t moved out at all? Perhaps they had got some kind of opaque adhesive sheets printed with an image of an empty flat, and stuck them on the windows, because they were sick of him staring at them? Perhaps a dark adhesive sheet for during the day, and a bright one for during the night. What if they had scratched off little eye-holes in the sheets, so they could watch him?

He waited at the window to see when they would swap the two sheets, but he never caught them. Perhaps they were blinds. One quick pull to swap day for night. Blink and you’d miss it. As he always did…

They must be watching very closely indeed, if they were able to anticipate his blinks. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and he took a step away from his window, refusing to blink until he was out of sight.

Someone knocked at the door. When he looked through the spy-hole the man on the other side, his face distorted by the lens, looked like the neighbour who had moved out. Or one of the removal men: he definitely looked familiar. He waited for the man to go away, but of course he had a key. There were other men with him. These were the removal men.

It was time to go.

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Hi all,

it’s cold outside, isn’t it? How about a nice cup of tea? But not from that cup, never drink from that cup! Why? Well, sit down, and let me tell you a little story.

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Brent waved farewell to the American tourist who had just bought a set of six English teacups. They’d probably be smashed in the man’s suitcase on the flight home.
Good riddance, thought Brent. The cups were haunted, of course. He had advised the man most urgently to use them as decoration only, not to drink from them.

“And I got these for little Alice,” said Wilbur, unpacking the six dainty cups. “The guy said they shouldn’t be drunk from, but I’m sure it’s okay for doll’s tea parties!”
“Well, aren’t you just the sweetest man on earth!”
“…and the most handsome?” He teased.
“I guess!” She snuggled up to him. “Alice, honey! Look what daddy brought you.”

Alice wished that Wilbur wasn’t her real daddy, so it would be okay that she hated him so much. She particularly hated him when he made Mom laugh and did nice things, like bring her presents. It made her blood boil! But the cups really were cute. And her dolls loved them, even Samantha, who was a bitch most of the time.

For her birthday, they invited her classmates, but Alice slipped away to have a tea party with her real friends. Except for Samantha, who was dangerous since she had started drinking from the tea cups. She was in the attic, Alice could hear her moving around sometimes. The other dolls kept Alice safe, and were under strict instructions to look after Mom too. As for Wilbur. Well, he had bought Samantha, and the cups, so good riddance!

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Now. How about a biscuit? Wait, not that biscuit, never that biscuit? Why? I’ll tell you next week!