What’s Making That Sound?

Writober 2025: Day Two Sounds>Response Post

🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to my responses to each of the challenges
🐦‍⬛This is original work created by Maria L. Berg and this post counts as copyright. All rights reserved.

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Sounds

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 2 of Writober The Scares Are In the Sounds.

OctPoWriMo

Today’s prompt for Meeting The Bar (MTB) at dVerse Poets Pub is to use a perspective we don’t usually use, and or multiple perspectives. I really like this prompt and thought I would combine it with today’s OctPoWriMo prompt.

Without Power the Night Gets In

After the click and dying whine
of the fire alarm
her own breathing and pulsing
heart filled the sudden
silence of her dark room.
ffft-huh, ffft-huh
ba-dum, ba-dum, bump, bump, bump
the roar of blood and air
But then a whisper not her own
turned her spine to splinters
and she held her breath to hear
what the night might say.
rustle, rustle, crunch, snap
It was right outside her window
tap, scratch, tap
scritch, scrape, scrape
Eee. Skree.
It wanted in. Impatient. Insistent.
She pulled her soft blankets over her lips
Leave. Leave. Leave. Leave, she begged
but her silent prayer was met with
clap, clap. bang, bang
the cupboard doors closing in the hall
tink, plunk, tink
it crawled along the piano keys in the lounge
paff, paff, paff, paff
up the stairs
thud, thud, thud, thud
It plodded along overhead.
Now would be the time to run
to hide, to call for help
but she hollowed in the howling
and as a stone shell listened
for the expected shattering
that never came.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

The Revelers

I woke up dew-covered and disoriented. Grass tickled and poked my neck and elbows. The sky above me was full of stars, but they were fading, threatened by approaching morning. I must have dozed off while star-gazing.

I heard a whoop then a low hum, sat up and looked over to the thick line of evergreens. Fff-huhh. Fff-huhhh. A whisper at first and then louder like the whole forest was breathing. The hum rose and fell in waves punctuated by whoops and yelps, howls and chirps, getting louder. 

What was coming toward me? I imagined partying teens, or a group of druids. Was it a full moon? Maybe that was the light behind the trees. An equinox? I had no idea what day it was.

The revelers broke from the trees lit as if from an inner light. They wore elaborate crazy costumes. The moaner in front wore a simplistic version of the sad drama mask, a long robe, and held a primitive baton like a marching band leader but with horns and claws stuck to it. He pranced along the path on thin-ankled hooves. Behind him, yelps and whoops came from small, thin big-eyed lizardmen. Or maybe sea monsters because the giant of the group, coming up in the rear was lined with tentacles along each side of a skeletal body, holding a huge dragonesque head with the teeth of an angler fish. 

They smelled strongly of salt, sand and decay like seaweed drying on a beach. Unless I had taken a very wrong turn, we were nowhere near a beach. A tentacle motioned for me to join them, and I thought, That’s friendly. Why not?

I stood and tried to wipe my hands on my pants, but they were just as sticky and damp. I started dancing to their strange song and marching along. Soon I was in the center of the group and they squished in around me. My feet didn’t feel like they touched the ground. I felt the sounds vibrating from inside each of them and their dancing buoyed me like waves. The tentacle wrapped over my shoulder, squeezing my upper arm felt rough, slimy, and squishy. Not like a costume at all. Green light glowed from within their eyes and out their open mouths. 

Where were we going? My mind raced for some clue to explain what might happen next. Was my fate sealed or would I have a chance for escape? Sunlight hit my eyes. I blinked and sneezed. Birdsong announced the morning. I swirled. My hand went through a tentacle and they were gone.

Halloween Photography Challenge

I had so much fun with today’s photoshoot. Ghosts are ephemeral: flighty glimpses and sounds in the night. When I’ve made shapes of ghosts in the past, they turn out like cartoons of children wearing sheets. The only time I’ve captured something I thought was ghostlike, I used pinhole filters (poked small holes in black paper and placed it over my lens). So this morning I started there. I created two pinhole filters: one with small holes and one with larger holes. I actually created a third because I wanted to try something I had never tried before: I poked holes in a piece of iridescent plastic, but that didn’t do much of anything.

I set my digital camera to Rich Black and White and used movement, either I moved while taking the picture, or I zoomed the lens in or out while taking the picture. Then I did the same using the HDR Painting mode. I put on today’s “music to get us moving” and started dancing while I took the pictures.

My photos didn’t capture ghosts in the traditional spirit from the other side sense: I captured the ghost in the machine!!

For those of you who are new to my photography, these are unaltered photographs (resized in Microsoft Paint, that’s all), These are digital photographs of string lights in a closet that I call my mirrorworld taken with a Sony alpha 58 DSLR. I call the techniques of creative abstract photography I create and develop Light-forming Photography.