Deadly Mischief

Writober 2025: Day Twenty-six Gremlins>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: Gremlins and Goblins

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 26 of Writober: They Muck Things Up

OctPoWriMo

Christmas is Coming

Gremlins are imminent
It’s always after midnight
Find a sharp instrument

Even when vigilant
The cookie sheet ignites
Gremlins are imminent

Each sharp-toothed incident
Shifts width and height
Find a sharp instrument

The Christmas tree’s sibilant
Don’t choke in the lights
Gremlins are imminent

They tinker in engines
Without any insight
Find a sharp instrument

When carolers are dissonant
ignore and sit tight
Gremlins are imminent
Stab, stab sharp instrument

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

The Answer to Everything

The closer Dr. Thorn came to finishing his life’s work, an equation to express his unified theory, the more he believed in gremlins. Yes, his office had come to resemble the aftermath of a tornado touching down, one does collect so many books and papers and other evidence when defining the entire universe, but he had a system that had always worked for him. Recently, this system had been fighting back: pages disappearing when he dared to rest his eyes, people shifting in the wall painting when he glanced away, sections of his equation crossed out or erased if he left the room. He swore he caught rustling, hissing, and scratchy laughing if only for a second when he returned to his huge round table that acted as his desk. It had once been a place of intelligent debate and lofty ideals, now every inch a mound of papers and books. Everyone had drifted away to more lucrative immediate persuits, leaving him alone to explore the most important question. Well, alone with these gremlins. 

Though they had managed to slow him down, they couldn’t stop him. Today was the day. He heard the sibilant snickering, but he knew he had done it. He held his finger over the Enter button on his keyboard imagining some sort of fanfare, some recognition of the weight of this moment, then pushed it, and watched his beautiful equation pour out across the screen. Line after line after line of his decades of research and creative thought coded into this tiny on/off machine, controlling everything and everyone with zeros and ones. 

Dr. Thorn’s head felt light, pulse racing, hairs on end. Here it comes, he thought. Any second now. The culmination of all of this. He started imagining the room empty again with the table empty, surrounded by his peers come to discuss his amazing theory. 

The cursor flashed over a single number. His answer to everything: zero. The room filled with cackling. The gremlins were delighted with the answer, but that didn’t mean it was wrong.

Halloween Photography Challenge

For today’s photos I cut a paper filter of a gremlin. It was fun to see my little monster multiply, and I did not get him wet.