Tourmaline .’s Halloween Challenge

Today’s prompt is “drink.” This made me think of transformative drinks, like potions, or mad-science, like Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Those drinks usually bubble and smoke, and taste foul. Or, of course, there are the terrible things that are put into drinks: poisons, pills, or powders. I think I’m feeling darker this year than I was last year when my drinks were failed cocktails of fruit-juice ice-skulls, vodka, and candy-corn pumpkins.

Today’s Poem

OctPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is Shadow Jumping, moving through our “shadow aspects” by examining our triggers.

dVerse Poets Pub

For today’s Meet the Bar, Laura Bloomsbury challenges us to write a poem in The Roundabout form, a twenty line iambic poem of specific feet and rhyme.

Jump Shadow Jump Shadow Jump

And when I jump from shadow low
to next dark trigger find
a void like night
from blocking light
to next dark trigger find

where painful mem’ries fill my mind
in glaring neon bright
to overcome
vibrations hum
in glaring neon bright

the slant of time that lengthens sight
and pulse a pounding drum
deep waters flow
but change is slow
and pulse a pounding drum

and jumping lifts my dark mood some
as growth no shadow knows
recall refined
is less unkind
as growth no shadow knows

Writober Flash Fiction

I couldn’t find any information about today’s image of two women with pale arms in black ballgowns floating over water’s edge with their heads completely consumed in flames. I tried Artist Ninja (reverse image search), but got nowhere. If anyone has information on the artist and title, please share in the comments. Here’s the beginning of today’s story:

I had planned to rent this one-room cabin for a month, believing a focused retreat without distraction was all I needed to finish my screenplay. My concept was a supernatural mystery, so the isolated boggy setting with no electricity really appealed to me. The first night of writing by candlelight changed my romantic notions right away. I barely wrote half a page before I gave up and started a small fire outside at the water’s edge, and stared at the star-filled sky.
I believed I was the only person for miles, but that night I saw lights flickering along the bank to my right and thought I heard music and laughing. The bugs were thick and irritating even with bug spray. I tired of swatting at the buzzing around my face and ears, so I threw dirt on my fire and tried to sleep. But the night noises startled me, I kept waking to screeches and what sounded like women or children screaming. When I did finally drift off, I awoke in a cold sweat and thought I saw eyes peering in the only window, but I told myself it must have been moonlight reflecting off the water.

Maria L. Berg Writober7 Day 20 2022