#31doh2023

[31-daysofhorror]

Welcome to 31 Days of Horror 2023!

Welcome everyone to the fourth annual 31 Days of Horror writing challenge!

It is wonderful to be back with you all with a brand new list and brand new aesthetic!

For all of those new here wondering what this is, 31 Days of Horror is a horror writing challenge that takes place in October of every year. For each day you take the corresponding word and write a short horror story to go along with it. You can then take your creations and post it with the tag #31DOH2023 so others can see it!

If you want, you can check out previous years creations under the hash tags #31DOH2022 and #31DOH2021

If you have anymore questions please check out the FAQ or send something in the ask box.

Happy writing!

[List ID: 1 Cleave 2 Blank 3 Interred 4 Urban 5 Den 6 Head 7 Crossroad 8 Count 9 Cycle 10 Hotel 11 Devour 12 Cubicle 13 Club 14 Pinch 15 Viral 16 Bleed 17 Penpal 18 Press 19 Scandal 20 Freeze 21 Fragment 22 Track 23 Ward 24 Reign 25 Vessel 26 Crawl 27 Tear 28 Lonely 29 Pray 30 Nail 31 Epilogue]

#31DOH2023 #31 days of horror #writing prompt #31daysofhorror #writing #horror #horror writing #horror fiction #writing challenge

[slothula]

31 Days of Halloween 2023

Day 22: My Bloody Valentine (1981)

#31 days of halloween #31 days of Halloween 2023 #horror #horror movie #Halloween 2023 #movie #31doh #31doh2023 #my bloody valentine #my bloody valentine 1981 #slothula

[witched-kid-writer]

day six of 31 days of horror: Head

TW: Mild gore

It sits on a shelf in some long forgotten prop department. No one touches it, they say it will being anyone bad luck if they do. But like any good theatre, it's just an old horror story passed down from tech crew to tech crew that grew wilder every time it got told. Of course no one is sure why the severed head ended up in the prop department. If it was for some show that no one seemed to be able to remember or if it was brought in for a joke by a crew member and it just never made it's way home. Finding home instead on the dusty shelves in the back of the prop room.

It's face is withered, it's eyes are sunken, and it's lips are pulled back into a gruesome howl. It's far to realistic to have come from any local Halloween shop but with the connections some prop masters end up with it wouldn't surprise any of the crew if it had come from the back of some movie set shot years before. People, the new ones to crew, always seem to want to reach out and touch it, try to figure out what the skin could be made of but they get warned off of that fairly quickly. 

There is, of course, tales that go around of an actor or a new crew member who's curiosity just grew to be too much and snuck in to touch it. The story always ends the same way, the person just happens to never be seen again. Of course there are no such records of that happening there at the theatre or in any theatre scattered across the city. It doesn't stop people from whispering about the rumours though. That doesn't stop the newbies from daring one another to lock themselves in the back of the prop room armed only with a flash light.

More senior members of the cast and crew will always warn them, tell them that they won't like what they'll see if they decide to go through with it. Warnings are never heeded though and they always come out looking a little worse for wear. Eyes wide, skin pale. No one will ever talk about what they saw in there, which only makes the more daring want to go in there more. Until finally enough people have done it, enough people have come out saying the same thing, that no one dares to go in alone. 

#writing prompt #31 days of horror #31doh2023 #horror writing #writing #writing challenge #mild gore #the deep seeded theatre kid in me strikes again! #i was tech tho #probably why i ended up a writer and not an artist tbh

[primewritessmut]

31 - EPILOGUE

I was six the first time I met the monster under the bed.

The one that wrapped me up in swathes of darkness while my parents fought, their voices louder and more aggressive the older I got.

The one that hummed discordant songs in my ear whenever my dad would pause in the hallway, his shadow stretching under the door.

The one that whispered where to find the cleaver, just in case I needed it.

I was still afraid of it, of course I was, it was a monster, but it never hurt me.

I was eleven the first time the monster came out.

Stuck in a situation that I couldn’t escape.

Stuck with a fear that froze my limps cold.

Stuck wanting to destroy someone that was trying to destroy me.

I was still afraid of it, of course I was, it was a monster, but it never hurt me.

I was twenty-six when I figured out that there had never been a monster under the bed all.

Just the realization that no one else was going to save me.

Just a scared kid in a shitty situation with a brain that rests a little bit left of center and a special kind of magic at my fingertips.

Just shadows thick enough to bite and a desire to hurt someone.

I’m not afraid of it anymore.

I don’t know how I became this way or why I hid it from myself for so long but I’ve learned that it runs in the family. On my dad’s side.

Which is kind of ironic when you think about it.

Except, I don’t think about it anymore.

I don’t think about much of anything.

I only feed. Because I'm so fucking hungry.

30 - NAIL || THE END!

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #original story #the monster under the bed #that's all she wrote folks

[witched-kid-writer]

Day five of 31 Days of Horror: Den

TW: Kidnapping

There is a steady ticking of a clock. She cannot see it on any of the walls. But still it echoes loud through the room. A few times she wonders if it is even a clock at all or just the sound of her own heart hammering in her chest but when she covers her ears it fades ever so slightly. So she resigns herself to sit and wait and listen to the ticking of an unseen clock.

She is unsure of how long ago she was lead to this room and told to wait but she is sure, sitting in the heart of this house too large to for any one person, that it has to be an unreasonable amount of time. Her host has to make an appearance soon to be able to uphold the last sense of decorum. Salvage some sort of civility. But all that seems to be want to grace her presence is echoes of a clock.

There is nothing in this sitting room but a couch, two arm chairs, and a fireplace with an empty mantel. She thinks that just above it would be the perfect place to hang a clock but the wall is blank. It doesn't even look like there has ever been anything hanging there ever. Or hanging on any of the walls. There isn't a picture or painting in sight, just the off yellow walls and brown beadboard. 

There has to be a reason her host hasn't shown up yet, some sort of emergency. She would check the time but the invitation had made it very clear to not bring any sort of camera phone with her, claiming some sort of security risk. While she wasn't one to usually honour such requests she couldn't turn down the money, not with rent and bills due so soon, so she left her phone hidden away in the glove box of her car. 

The couch's fabric feels too stiff and scratchy and try as she might she just isn't able to tune out the ticking of the clock. She wonders briefly if this is meant to be some sort of test. If maybe her host is waiting to see how long she will patiently wait for someone to join her, someone to lead her away to a back bedroom. Or if maybe her host was waiting for her to finally get fed up and go search them out herself. She got up, intending to go for the rooms door, and for a moment the ticking stopped. When it did so did she but the moment she was still again the ticking picked back up; as steady as it was before. 

At this point she had to have been there more than an hour, just sitting in the room waiting and she decided that enough was enough. It didn't matter how much she would have gotten paid she wasn't going to stay in this room and wait for nothing. So she headed for the door and twisted it's brass nob only to find it locked. She pushed on the door, pulled on the handle, yanked with all of her might but the thing wouldn't budge.

She called out, thinking maybe someone would hear her, someone would realize their mistake and come let her out, but the only reply she got was the ticking of the unseen clock. There was no other door to this room, there were no windows either. There was no way to signal to anyone she was trapped. Her heart raced, beating faster now than the ticking of the clock. She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled out again, thinking maybe this was some kind of cruel joke, that maybe if she showed herself freaking out enough they would come and open the door. They would point and laugh and shove a camera in her face and post the video to social media for everyone to make fun of her but she would be out. But there was only the ticking of the clock.

And then something shifted outside the door. It was quiet, she almost missed the creaking of the floorboard but it timed just in between two ticks of the clock. She held her breath and pressed her ear against the door and just faintly she could hear someone breathing. Raspy breaths like they had just finished running some great distance.

If someone was there why weren't they letting her out? She leaned against the door a little more and quietly said, "Hello?"

The breathing paused and then an answer, as quiet as a whisper, "Do you think you'll outlast the others?"

#writing prompt #31 days of horror #writing #31doh2023 #horror writing #writing challenge #huh #that is not where i was expecting that to go #okay well i knew it was gonna be a kidnapping thing the whole time #i just don't know how i got there like that #also don't ask me why the clock is there #i don't really know #it was gonna play a more important part but i have a book to read and this needed to be written before i could do that

[primewritessmut]

18 - PRESS

I’m ninety-nine percent certain that it’s illegal to press-gang your minimum wage employees into cleaning up a biohazard slash crime scene. And yet, when I walk into the club, my boss hands me a damp bar rag and a single pair of too-big latex gloves, pointing me toward the back hall.

The dimly lit corridor that I’m so used to walking, leading from the bar to the staff break room, isn’t so dimly lit today. Someone brought in bright orange, caged construction lights on poles and they illuminate every dirty, dusty corner of the hallway. Particularly the thick, dark puddle of dried blood spread across the scratched concrete and the smear going up the wall from floor to ceiling.

It feels familiar and I don’t know if it’s familiar because I walk this hallway a thousand times a night refilling ice buckets or because I was here when the blood was spilled.

Was I here when it was spilled?

I don’t remember it and, as I look at the amount of blood on the floor, it seems like something I should remember. But there was also a bloody watch in my bathroom this morning that would be at home on the wrist of twenty percent of the guys that come in here. A watch that hadn’t been unclasped and was crowned with what looked like the jagged indents of teeth.

I check the corners for the tell-tale gleam of eyes, but the lights have managed to chase away every shadow. I thought maybe that would help me relax, ease my mind, fucking something, instead, I feel nervous.

Maybe I’d rather have a monster sneak up on me then see it coming.

I wonder if the owner of the watch got that courtesy.

“You don’t make money until we open back up,” my boss starts, his loud voice making me jump. “And we can’t open back up until it’s clean.”

He drags out a grey plastic, double-decker rolling cart overflowing with boxes and bottles, gesturing at it with a vague flourish. I think I’m starting to understand how our specifically bougie yet cheap clientèle find their way here.

“The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll finish.”

My boss makes vaguely impressed noises when I start digging through the cleaning supplies he bought and organizing them into piles. Necessary. Possibly helpful. Useless. Most of them are useless. There’s not nearly enough PPE or towels, exactly zero stiff-bristled brushes, and the disinfectant is entirely the wrong kind.

I don’t worry about that too much as I glance over my shoulder at the stain, calculating what else we’ll need to clean it. Dish detergent and water will work in lieu of the disinfectant, for now. There’s probably plenty in the supply closet.

The floor of the hallway is concrete, though, and I don’t know (I don’t remember) how long the blood has spent drying into a scabby puddle. There’s a high likelihood that it will stain and we’ll need enough hydrogen peroxide to cover the entire area and then some.

I make a few notes in the flip-top order book one of the servers left on the bar, chewing my lip as I stare at the list and then double every number. Better safe than sorry. The last thing you want mid-clean-up is to have to leave a blood stain half-there because you didn’t buy enough towels or used warm water and accidentally set the stain deeper.

“What’s this?” my boss asks when I hand him his new shopping list.

“All the things we need to clean this up.”

He looks at me oddly so I press on, not quite sure what’s about to come out of my mouth, both surprised and not surprised by what does.

“Trust me. I’ve done this before.”

17 - PENPAL || 19 - SCANDAL

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #day 18 #original story #the monster under the bed

[primewritessmut]

30 - NAIL

They say that when you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Your boss doesn’t appreciate the skill you bring to the job? A stranger on the street follows you a little too closely? Your psychiatrists ask too many invasive questions too many times?

Pound them flat until they leave you the fuck alone.

Your landlord won’t fix your hot water when you ask? Some club patron thinks they’re entitled to you? Your roommate down the hall keeps taking your things?

Drive them down until you can’t see them anymore.

Your first best friend? That orderly at the place you’re forced to live? Your dad?

Hammer and hammer and hammer until they’re flush with the world and stop snagging at your edges.

The outreach coordinator with a penchant for torture that took you away from your family, that lied to you about whether your mom wanted you, that ran electricity through your body until you were biting down so hard your teeth cracked?

Well, this one you want to remember.

This one you want to take your time on.

Maybe you want to feel her skull crush under your hands.

Maybe you want to shred her skin with a thousand little cuts.

Maybe you want to pluck the pear of anguish off her bookshelf to see how well it works.

Whatever it is, you don’t think you’ll stop until the blood pools across the floor and smears up the walls, finally making the decor match all the carnage this office has actually seen.

After all, when you’re a predator, every problem looks like prey.

And, lucky for you, the room is completely sound-proofed.

29 - PR(E)Y || 31 - EPILOGUE

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #day 30 #original story #the monster under the bed #the switch to 2nd person POV is the real jump scare

[primewritessmut]

29 - PR(E)Y

My outreach coordinator collects medieval torture devices.

And she seems exactly the type.

Most of them are tiny replicas, an aesthetically worn pillory propping up a row of books, a slightly dented Iron Maiden in the corner as a statue, a rack with a wooden drawing mannequin shackled inside. I’ve seen her use it like a Zen garden, idly turning the crank while she puzzles over a problem.

Usually, if you’re sitting in the hard folding chair across the desk from her, you’re the problem.

But there are also smaller, working devices in here. Thumbscrews. A pear of anguish. I wonder sometimes if those are the reason that her office is sound-proofed. Or if she just likes the history of the pieces but is more interested in modern forms of torture for practical reasons.

I imagine it’s hard to hide the evidence if you open the pear of anguish wide enough. With carefully applied electrical shock, that’s less of an issue.

“You’re most recent psychiatrist left town,” she tells me matter-of-factly, in the same tone you’d use to tell a child that their family’s elderly dog was sent to a farm upstate. And, like said child, I know that’s not the whole truth even if I can’t put my finger on why. “An opportunity to open a new practice that he just couldn’t pass up.”

“Oh,” I reply, watching her watching me as she drums her fingers on the smooth lacquered top of her desk before reaching out to tap at the crank of the rack. “He didn’t say anything.”

A lie since he was the only one that ever did say anything. Until the end, of course. But maybe my outreach coordinator doesn’t know about that.

I barely know about that.

“It was quite sudden.” The crank turns with a quiet creak. “We’re reaching out to other practitioners that specialize in… your diagnosis, but it’s a small pool of candidates.”

And getting smaller, if my memories are anything to go by.

She eyes me and the rack continues to creak, every spin of the wheel and every quiet groan setting my nerves further on end.

“Perhaps” — creak — “we should” — creak — “return” — creak — “to known methods.”

Creak.

Known methods.

Creak.

Padded leather restraints.

Creak.

Needles full of unknown liquids.

Creak.

Agony ripping through my veins like fire.

Creak.

Fuck that.

The lights in the office flicker, clicking off with a sound like moths against glass before flaring back to their normal brightness. When the lights go out, in the moment that the office goes pitch black, when the awful fucking memories of this place are more clear than they’ve ever been, I relax.

It doesn’t make any sense.

I’ve cried and screamed and pissed myself in her office.

But I think maybe it isn’t her office anymore.

I think maybe someone else — something else — has laid claim to it.

And, when the lights blink out for good, I know it.

28 - LONELY || 30 - NAIL

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #day 29 #original story #the monster under the bed

[primewritessmut]

28 - LONELY

There’s a degree of loneliness that can only be achieved by not even knowing yourself.

By looking in the mirror and barely recognizing who looks back.

By grasping for connection with hands that don’t seem human anymore and touching nothing.

By calling your psychiatrist and getting no answer.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, phone numbers get changed or reassignments get made, but it feels different. One of those memories that I’d prefer not to put my finger on.

So I’ve decided to talk to my outreach coordinator.

Or, really, I send her an emergency text — I like the Steelers chances — that roughly translates to “I can’t remember shit.” This is the worst it’s ever gotten before I reach out. I really prefer not to reach out.

My phone rings three minutes after I hit send.

“Hello?”

“Are you taking your meds?”

“Yes,” I lie. I counted the pills yesterday and there were exactly thirty. “I just want to make an appointment but my psych isn’t returning my calls.”

There’s a pause. A long pause, interrupted only by street sounds that must be happening around my outreach coordinator. She’s not at the institution, then. Something like excitement sparks in my belly and sizzles out to my limbs.

Everything is so much easier when people are alone.

“What month do you think it is?”

“October. Almost Halloween.”

I don’t tell her that I only know that because of the flier in the lobby of my apartment building.

“And you’re sure you’re taking your meds?”

“Absolutely,” I lie again.

It’s not that I mean to lie, but I get the sense that she won’t meet up with me unless I’m on my meds. And I really want her to meet up with me, so bad I can almost taste it.

“Okay. We can meet at my office tomorrow. It’s safer for me th— um…” she stutters to a stop, then plows forward too quickly like she’s trying to hide the uncertainty. “Sorry. I just meant that we’ll have access to the medical wing in case we need to do any tests.”

Her office. I hate her office.

My blackened fingers flex and I run my tongue over my bottom lip. I decide it doesn’t matter. Her office is in an out-of-the-way corner of the building with a deadbolt mounted to a thick metal door and is sound-proof enough that no one hears the screaming.

Ask me how I know.

Except, I don’t plan on being the one screaming this time.

“See you, tomorrow,” I promise, feeling leagues better than I did five minutes ago.

Turns out I wasn’t lonely, just bored.

27 - TEAR || 29 - PR(E)Y

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #day 28 #original story #the monster under the bed

[primewritessmut]

26 - CRAWL

I was six the first time I met the monster under my bed.

My parents had been arguing. They always argued. But that night it hadn’t just been voices whisper-yelling from the kitchen where they assumed I couldn’t hear. They’d been loud. Screaming. I’d heard things shatter against the peeling linoleum and then thudding, crashing sounds from the living room. They hurled words at each other that they would have beaten my ass for saying, and some I knew were extra bad even if I didn’t know what they meant.

Fuck you.

Hands off.

Pervert.

They stomped down the carpeted hallway, stopping to knock our framed family photos to the ground with the soft snap of cracking glass and the accompanying thump of something heavy hitting the walls. I thought they’d storm past, slamming the door to their bedroom at the end of the hall and doing whatever parents do when they hate each other but can’t show it.

But their steps slowed in front of my door. Stopped in front of my door. Their voices louder than I’d ever heard them, my mom hurling accusations and my dad shutting her up with a hard smacking sound. In hindsight, it’s so clear what they were doing, what they were fighting about, what my mom could only stand in the breach for until she was too weak to stand at all.

As six-year old, though, I only knew I wanted to be as far away from the anger, and fear, and emotions I didn’t even have names for in their voices as possible. Put the distance in between us that was usually kept by them.

So I slipped off the bed to crawl underneath.

And the monster in the darkness was there waiting.

25 - VESSEL || 27 - TEAR

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #original story #the monster under the bed #did i have a two day migraine and lose track? #or am i posting late on purpose to evoke the feeling of not knowing that the narrator experiences? #jk #it's the first one

[31-daysofhorror]

It's Day Twenty-Six of 31 Days of Horror!

Today's prompt is: Crawl

Check out the rest of this month's prompts here!

#31doh2023 #31 days of horror #writing prompt #writing #horror #horror prompt #day twenty-six: crawl #writing challenge

[primewritessmut]

25 - VESSEL

My psychiatrist collects Precious Moments figurines.

My psychiatrist has dead animals on the walls of her office.

My psychiatrist covers every surface in his tiny office with plants that eat meat.

My psychiatrist doesn’t answer her phone.

I try to remember the last time I saw her… him… them and my head vibrates with the sounds of screaming.

But I don’t remember.

The number I call to get my weekly schedule at the club has a recorded message: “Coupe is closed until further notice. Please take care of yourselves and each other.”

I try to remember the last time I was there and my fingers curl into claws, the sense memory of taut flesh giving under sharp talons crouched and snarling in the back of my brain.

But I don’t remember.

The hot water in my apartment doesn’t work and my landlord won’t return my texts.

I try to remember the last time I talked to him or if I ever even reported the problem and a bright, coppery taste blooms across my taste buds.

But I don’t remember.

My restless feet carry me around the city, past the club with the marquee turned off, past the halfway house with a notice of removal stapled to the front door, around the familiar right angle of Aspen Street and First Avenue. Places that are all so familiar but without any memories attached.

I know I worked there.

I know I lived there.

I know I had sessions there.

I just don’t know how or when or why.

I try to remember, digging into the empty vessel of my brain and finding nothing but darkness.

Because I don’t remember.

Until I do.

24 - REIGN || 26 - CRAWL

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #day 25 #original story #the monster under the bed

[primewritessmut]

24 - REIGN

“You’re late.” I ignore my boss as I squeeze around him and into the break room, yanking open a locker to shove my jacket and backpack inside. “The bar is slammed and you’re fucking late.”

I could tell him that I had the strangest dream last night. That I woke up with the electric copper taste of pennies on my tongue. That I had to dig to the back of my closet for a long sleeve shirt that fit dress code and glove to match.

I could tell him that I don’t remember why I need to dress that way or how I got here, that something feels off, wrong, but things always feel off. Like I’m a little more left of center than the rest of the world, spread thin and slid between the cracks of space and time.

But that sounds maudlin and off-putting.

And also, I know he doesn’t give a shit.

He just wants me to do my terrible, minimum wage job so the nepo babies in their thirty thousand dollar watches don’t have to suffer through a lukewarm drink.

I slink past him toward where the five-gallon bucket is tucked into the corner next to the ice machine. It clatters as I approach it, fresh ice dropping into the bottom compartment. The promise of tediousness and monotony pulls at me. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to remember my dream. I don’t want to taste the rich, bright flavor on my tongue.

“Don’t fucking ignore me,” he barks, his big hand clamping onto my upper arm like a vice and yanking me back from the handle of the bucket. “Just because we gave some freak a pity job doesn’t mean you don’t have to work like the rest of us.”

His thick sausage fingers dig painfully into the meat of my bicep and I just wish he would stop fucking touching me.

Every humming fluorescent light in the break room pops at once, plunging the space into pitch black nothingness.

I blink in the sudden darkness and realize that I can see.

He’s pinned against the wall, toes scraping the floor and eyes bulging at the pressure the thing around his neck. Long fingers. Mottled black skin fitted tight to bone. Talons like a bird of prey dimpling the skin of his neck.

I blink and he whimpers.

The shadows rise, coiling and curling around us, wrapping up my arms and prying at his mouth, his nose, his eyes. Trying to find a place to grab hold. Enough leverage to pull him apart.

I blink and lean forward.

He flinches but he can’t pull himself far enough away to avoid the words that hiss into his ear for every corner of the room.

“Look at you.” The words are somehow sibilant even without a single S. “A tiny little man, reigning over a useless little kingdom, just to feel something. I can make you feel something.”

I blink and his mouth opens wide.

Then wider and wider, the shadows hooking eager tendrils over his bottom teeth and pulling down, down, down until the edges of his mouth start to tear, turning his trembling, begging lips into something huge and leering.

I blink and a scream gurgles in the back of his throat.

The talons piercing the dimpling flesh as his tongue lolls out of his mouth at an angle, unused to all the extra space, his thick, sausage fingers scrabbling at the desiccated flesh of the arm attached to those claws.

I blink and bolt upright in bed.

My mouth is still filled with a coating of metal and salt, sticking to my teeth and my tongue and my memory. I flop back onto my too-flat pillow and scrub my hands down my face ignoring the way that one of them scrapes roughly across my jaw.

I haven’t called my psychiatrist for an emergency session in four years but I roll to my side and start patting the bedside table for my phone anyway.

23 - WARD || 25 - VESSEL

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #day 24 #original story #the monster under the bed

[primewritessmut]

23 - WARD

I don't know where I am, I’m covered in blood, and I’m fucking starving.

There’s an aching, twisting, gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach and the stale scent of dried blood isn’t helping.

Some of the blood, a lot of the blood, is mine; I can tell by the smell. It’s caked on one side of my body, over my blackened forearm, along the side of my hoodie, and down the leg of my jeans. I’m sitting in a pool of it, too, dried enough that the surface is cracking like the top of a crème brûlée, but that’s not my blood. The smell is different, and it makes my stomach squeeze and grumble.

I’m surrounded by someone else’s blood, and I’m hungry.

It doesn’t occur to me as I shove to my feet that just a few minutes ago the space, wherever I am, was too dark to even see my own hand in front of my face. But now I can make out a corner three-feet to my left, concrete floor meeting concrete walls, and the lake of blood that pooled beneath me.

I sway dizzily as I stare at it, wondering where I’ve seen that much blood before. Because I have — dad highschoolbestfriend guidancecounselor gerald psychiatrist hank psychiatrist clubpatron psychiatrist landlord stranger stranger stranger — I know I have.

The concrete is cool under my hand where I have to plant it against the wall until the sensation of vertigo that threatens to drop me on my ass again passes. I can’t take my eyes off the blood, even as it disgusts me, even as it excites me, even as my stomach growls.

There’s something about it that fits within the ward of my body, the grooves on the bit of a key that slips right into a lock at the center of my chest and turns. Opening something up with a quiet click. A door that’s been locked for years on a room that’s been waiting to waft musty, disused air out and draw fresh, living air back in.

My stomach squeezes again, wringing itself into a hard line of tissue, twisting tighter and tighter until it’s the only thing I can feel.

I blink and I’m back on my knees again, hands braced against the concrete, feeling the fragile flakes of blood slough of the concrete under my palms. One hand is pale and smooth with blunt, squared-off fingers and stains settled into the cracks of my knuckles and caked into half-crescents under my nails. One hand is black and rough, nearly skeletal, like the meat has been peeled off and the skin is fitting tight to the bone. Those fingers are long and tapered, ending in sharp, dark points like talons. Tips that scar the floor underneath me in long, hungry scratches.

I’m not surprised to see it — sharpenknife cutupthecenter peelitopen sliceitoffinlongwetribbons — although I know I should be. I should run screaming from this cold, dark corner. I should stumble into the ER holding my desiccated arm in my healthy one while I sob. I should care, but I don’t.

Because I’m so goddamn hungry.

And it would be a shame to let any part of an animal go to waste.

The concrete is still cold under my tongue but I barely notice.

22 - TRACK || 24 - REIGN

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #original story #the monster under the bed #oh shit #sometimes you just have to lick blood off the floor #you know?

[primewritessmut]

22 - TRACK

Several thoughts assault me at once when I swim my way back to consciousness. My head feels like a vice is attached at the temples and slowly cranking down tighter and tighter. My throat is dry and my tongue is furry, the taste a combination of sour and rich like I’ve been throwing up expensive steak all night. And fuck does my arm hurt.

My hand isn't cold anymore, which is probably good, but instead it’s on fucking fire, which is probably bad. A roiling wash of heat from the tips of my fingers up to my elbow. A pain searing enough that it distracts me from my headache and the scratchy, furred feeling of my mouth.

The space distracts me, too.

It’s freezing here. The air is so frigid that it hurts my lungs when I suck in a breath, like the ice encasing my arm has transferred to the room somehow.

It’s dark, too. When it occurs to me that my eyes are closed, I pry the lids open with focused effort but it’s still dark. Oppressively so. A darkness that has weight and heft. A black cat settled on my chest trying to shove a claw-tipped paw down my throat.

And I realize that I’ve lost track.

That’s not a necessarily a newsflash; I’ve been misplacing time since maybe even before the monster. I’d wake up one morning thinking it was time for Saturday morning cartoons only to find that it was Wednesday and I had to go to preschool.

It used to only be minutes; I’d flash forward in a conversation and not remember any of it. Then it was hours, blinking alert to realize that I’d been listlessly shoving wooden blocks around while my parents ignored me. Then days. Then months.

Even if losing track of the months is new.

Time is time, though. It moves forward like riding the subway and sometimes I space out between stops. Sometimes I won’t know how I got from here to there but the transition is never jarring, just a door sliding open and letting me walk onto the next platform. Hardly noticeable until I see the date written somewhere or catch sight of a calendar out of the corner of my eye.

I lose track of myself less often. But, every once in a while, I’ll wake up somewhere I’m not supposed to be. Maybe some place that I’ve never even seen before. And everything hurts as though, instead of riding the subway, I threw myself in front of the moving car.

One of my psychiatrists, one I only remember because of the carnivorous plants he had covering every surface, told me to start a tally. To watch the number increase each day and feel confident that I was closer to finding myself than losing everything.

I don’t remember what happened to him.

But I think my tally just started back at zero.

21 - FRAGMENT || 23 - WARD

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #day 22 #original story #the monster under the bed #lucky for you #my real life bullshit didn't infect the story today

[primewritessmut]

21 - FRAGMENT

When your memory exists in fragments, you spend your whole life doing a jigsaw puzzle. Except you never have all the pieces and the ones you do have keep changing shape.

This piece looks like the back hallway at the club but it’s too dark to tell. The edges are jagged and sharp and, if you lean close enough, you might hear screaming.

This piece looks like a psychiatrist’s office. The fluorescent lights are turned off but a stocky, balding man is still there, lying on the floor surrounded by a hundred shattered porcelain figurines.

This piece looks like the bathroom of a studio efficiency apartment. The white of the pedestal sink is streaked with something thick and red. There’s a long, thin lump laying over the rusty drain.

This piece looks like someone’s childhood home burning to the ground.

This piece looks like a halfway house with caution tape still strung across the bolted shut front door.

This piece looks like a street corner.

This piece looks like a stuffed moose head.

This piece is streaked through with black.

This piece is soaked in blood.

This piece is a calendar with all the pages ruffling like a flip book.

This piece was carved out with a knife.

This piece was made from skin peeled straight off the muscle. So slippery it slides out of your fingers and falls into the porcelain bowl with a plop.

When your memory exists in fragments, you never get the entire picture until it’s way too fucking late.

20 - FREEZE || 22 - TRACK

#spooktober 2023 #31doh2023 #day 21 #original story #the monster under the bed