10 Feb 2020
Today’s prompt: “A letter to the editor”
I have always believed in a pluralistic society. When Donald Trump first tried to implement his Muslim ban, I was cheering on the ACLU attorneys who mobilized in the airports to help out the refugees and immigrants from Muslim countries who were caught in the middle. I was horrified when white supremacists murdered people at Jewish centers and black churches. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Jains … it takes all of us to make a world.
But something has got to be done about those Cultists. Worship traditions are one thing, but human sacrifice is quite another. They killed my neighbor [insert-your-name-here] just last night! Your religious rights end where my nose begins.
Janice Torrence, [insert-your-hometown-here]
08 Feb 2020
Today’s prompt: “The way you mistreated a friend”
“Sorry, Bill. Better you than me,” you say, shoving your friend into the pit where the giant betentacled worm Shlithneth waited for sacrificial meals.
As he slid down the embankment to his doom, Bill grabbed the hem of your fashionable yet impractical trenchcoat, pulling you along with him.
Damn your sense of style.
06 Feb 2020
Today’s prompt: “A family (not your own) on the street where you grew up”
The Jamesons moved out first. Mr. Jameson had been offered a job at a new company where he was going to make a lot more money, and he and his family moved out of state.
Word quickly spread that the family that moved into their old house was a little weird. Your friend Emily, who lived two houses down, said she’d heard that the family kills a chicken in their back yard for dinner, cuts it up, and all of the family members eat a piece of it raw, and their creepy son Jeremy eats the head. Your friend Elijah, who lived across the street, said he’d heard the family dances around completely naked in the middle of the night, except their creepy son Jeremy, who wears a pair of mittens and nothing else. Hannah down the block, who liked to hang out with the bigger kids, volunteered that they probably all had cooties.
Your mother, of course, didn’t truck with ridiculous rumors. A few days after the new family moved in, she walked over with a fresh loaf of bread and with you in tow, and introduced herself and you. You stared at the walls as Jeremy’s mom, Mrs. Meyer, introduced you to Jeremy. There was this recurring squid-monster in a lot of the artwork, and a three-eyed bat-thing in others.
You could tell your mom had noticed the weird decor, but was charging ahead in her neighborly way. “I think it’s real interesting what you’ve done with the place,” she said.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Meyer said. “We think it’s important to have reminders of your values in the home.” Your eyes alighted on an embroidery hoop where Mrs. Meyer had cross-stitched the phrase “Cthulhu fhtagn.”
“I suppose we’ll see Jeremy at Washington Elementary?” your mom asked.
“No, we’re home-schooling him,” Mrs. Meyer said.
“Oh, we’ve thought about doing that,” your mom said. “What curriculum do you use?”
“We use Anenok,” Mrs. Meyer said.
“Anenok. I haven’t heard of that one before.”
“It used to be called An Enoch Book. After Enoch Bowen, the founder of the Church of Starry Wisdom.”
“Ah,” your mom said, with a tone you had rarely heard before, one that usually involved you being quickly escorted from a room. “I’ll have to look that up later. I hope you like the bread. Let me know if you want the recipe.” And with that, the two of you walked home. You glanced behind you. Creepy Jeremy was staring at you from the window.
Not long afterward, old Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham agreed to their daughter’s long-time request that they join an assisted living facility. When a new family moved in, the Meyers family helped them with their boxes, excitedly chatting about the church service both families had just been to. The entire neighborhood looked on warily.
A month later, Emily’s family moved away, claiming that with Emily’s baby brother on the way, they would need a bigger house. Elijah’s family moved out a couple months after that, citing a need to help take care of Elijah’s aging grandmother. Hannah’s parents sold their house later the same month. You asked Hannah’s dad why they were leaving and he looked at the family moving into Elijah’s old house – a family whose mother wore necklaces with the same symbols on them as Mrs. Meyers – and mumbled something about “there goes the neighborhood.”
But Hannah’s family never moved out. They never got the chance. They were murdered instead. All three of them. And it looked – what did the policeman say? Ritualistic.
Your mother tried not to look alarmed in front of the neighbors, but inside your house, she was making plans. She called her sister and asked if your family could stay with her. You wouldn’t spend the time moving out. She told you to pack a bag – just a few days of clothes, your schoolbooks and other necessities, nothing more. Your mom locked the house and you and your family walked outside, duffel bags in hand, to the minivan. The minivan that Mrs. Meyers and her friends from around the neighborhood suddenly walked around the other side of, knives and chains in hand.
“Going somewhere, neighbor?” Mrs. Meyer said.
04 Feb 2020
Today’s prompt: “A dream your boss had”
Your boss sits in his Herman Miller Aeron chair, answering his emails. He looks up as you enter his office, a hatchet bisecting your skull, the ring finger of your rotten left hand dropping onto the carpet.
“Here’s that report you wanted,” you say, holding out a three-ring binder to him.
“Uh, thanks,” he says.
He opens the binder and his eyes flit back and forth between you and pages of Times New Roman text on three-hole punched pages. You stand still in the middle of his office.
“Keep up the good work,” he says. You nod and leave his office.
A half hour later, your boss drains the last dregs of his lukewarm coffee and heads for the break room. And there you are, emptying a packet of coffee into a filter for one of the office air pots.
“I was just making a fresh pot of Guatemalan, if you want to wait a couple minutes,” you say. Your right eyeball drops into the coffee grounds.
“I’ll just get some French roast,” he says, holding his mug under another air pot spout and pushing the handle.
Your boss takes his coffee back into his office and shuts his door. He manages to send off a few emails requesting various status reports before deciding he needs some fresh air to clear his head.
Your boss is about to pass the main office printer on his way outside, and there you are, filling the tray with paper. Or trying to. Your boss watches in horror as you attempt to slide the bones of your decaying fingers inside the package flaps of a ream of paper.
“Do … you need help with that?” he says, hardly able to contain his own speech.
“No thanks,” you say. “I got it.” Centipedes crawl out of your nostrils and your one open eye socket, down your arm, and insert themselves in the paper flap.
Your boss jolts awake in a panic. After a few seconds, he deliberately slows his breathing, reminding himself that you are still dead.
02 Feb 2020
Today’s prompt: “Think of an episode from your life that you don’t dare write. Write it.”
Candyman. Bloody Mary. Voldemort. Say their names too many times, possibly in the vicinity of a mirror, and you risk them (or, in the case of He Who Must Not Be Named, some Death Eaters) showing up.
Those characters are the bogeymen of the spoken word, but there’s a less well known personage of the written word: Alice Hendrix. Alice Hendrix was a copy editor for a magazine in the 1870s. They say one of the writers there used “it’s” as a possessive too many times and she snapped. She strangled him with his own typewriter ribbon. Alice Hendrix was put to death in 1883. Legend has it that if you type “Alice Hendrix” five times in the same document, she appears behind you and stabs you to death with a sharp editing pencil.
During NaNoWriMo, you made the unfortunate error of naming your protagonist Alice Hendrix.
31 Jan 2020
Today’s prompt: “Keep a list of words you like, for their sound, for their meaning, or just for their goofy spelling. Pick one of those words and use it in a paragraph.”
I’ll never understand your compulsion for autocannibalism. Did it start with a spiral of self-loathing, or did your tail just look extra tasty one day? Whatever the cause, little snake, I, the narrator of your self-imposed death by devouring, am here to tell you that you have died of being an ouroboros.
29 Jan 2020
Today’s prompt: “What is the sound of silence, and when did you last hear it? What was missing?”
The stillness of an apparently empty room. Tonight. Any indication that a chainsaw-wielding fiend with murder in his eyes was hiding in the coat closet.