For Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge “fog,” I jumped out of bed and was rewarded with a little morning fog on the lake. I love the pareidolia of a giant ghost bat in the trees over that mysterious light in the water.
I love how a photograph through the fog made this house look like a painting. All I did was crop the photo.
OctPoWriMo
Here we are starting our second week already. Today’s prompt didn’t appeal to me (my whole life is either before or after the storm), so I took a look back at 2018. I like the prompt Moments of Madness. I didn’t respond to it in 2018, so now’s my chance.
If I truly surrender to love (of words and sound), will it be in a moment of madness that I glimpse genius: perhaps not genius, but the genuine, truth, my truth, the elusive in which I would choose to surrender forever?
Twine Twirling in the Fog
Flowing fog,
the groggy morning mist
kissing frogs
of lingering madness,
mysteries shrouded
through history fester
with testimony
slogging along with hints,
tinted glints
glimmering lint littering
winter darkness bringer,
but the crazed found ways
through the maze,
a chance to dance
along the fine line
between life and divine
and entwine
the obsessed with the possessed
inner-child and beguiled
within this damned pestilence
of tormented sadness
within a ballet of blessings
where delicious gets messy,
fomenting malicious decisions
for salacious reasons,
or threads of sanity.
Is it sanity clinging
that hinders full progression
to wild recession
reminders in the cinders
that logic, though toxic,
still reigns
in this brain
still clinging to meaning, never
truly trusting surrender?
The twine
though unraveled and taut
twirls between
my fingers never released,
teases the flowing
fog burns
then ceases to be.
Writober
The first story
I named the first story of this Writober “But No One Died This Year.” Here’s an excerpt from the draft:
Rafael had to admit that Reese could even make a boar costume look sexy. The tusks jutting along her high cheekbones had accentuated her smile; the shadow from the snout protruding from her forehead made her brown eyes even bigger; and the spiky, glow-in-the-dark fur stripe down her back drew the eye to her tight, curved tail.
She had traipsed so lightly before she tripped, but her bloodied body curled in the wheelbarrow was heavy. Every rock, rut, and twig unbalanced the dead-weight of muscle and bones. The blade of the rusting shovel mercifully covered her face. Full concentration and determination were the only things that kept him readjusting and pushing forward.
The sound of snorting, snout rooting through dead leaves and underbrush, was all he could hear. He thought it was his guilt, bringing Reese’s costume to life, but then he heard footsteps.
Maria L. Berg 2021
The second story
I’m feeling intrigued by the image and microstory from October 14th last year. The image is by Gregory Crewdson. His cinematic scenes are great for story inspiration. Here’s the microstory I wrote:
He couldn’t stand that scraping sound under the bathroom floor for another day. He chiselled through the tile, and cut through the wood. He gripped the hammer, prepared for something to run out: a mouse, a rat, even a opossum, but nothing came. The scratching continued. He couldn’t see anything in the darkness. He grabbed his flashlight and slowly reached down.
Maria L. Berg 2020
Like last week’s story, this image and microstory present an intriguing image, but leave the real story untold. This week, I’ll attempt to remedy that.
During the first #Writober, I wrote a story about something found in a crawlspace. I’ll give it a read and see if the ideas can combine.
Let’s see. What questions arise when I look at this picture? Why did he dig through the bathroom floor? Is he one of those people who refuses to call a plumber? Did he bury something there in the past and is trying to get it back? Did he find out that someone else buried something there? Is he hoping to find something that someone else buried and thinks it’s there? Is this the spot where a sound or smell is coming from? Maybe the linoleum started bubbling up in that spot, or a tile kept hopping around?
Upon closer look, is he supposed to be reaching down the shower drain and there’s nothing there? And why is the cupboard under the sink open? And what’s up with the medicine cabinet over the sink? And the two white lights in the photo, what are those? I think Pinterest is trying to sell me his shower and medicine cabinet, so that’s just plain meta-weird.
There’s a lot to play with there. I have an obsessive do-it-yourselfer with a scary bathroom. Do I need to do some plumbing research? Maybe. Taking a look at A. M. Moscoso’s Halloween Prompt Challenge I might include:
- A terrifying dark place, such as a basement, attic, or cellar
- Fear of and contact with spiders or snakes
- A repetitive scary noise without any apparent source
and maybe my DIYer could be
- a Weird new neighbours with a secret
- who finds out he had a close relative he knew nothing about that was insane
- or Makes the mistake of stealing from witches
How are your spooky stories coming along?
Experience Writing 