Bigger Than the Sum of Its Parts

Writober 2025: Day Twenty-eight Golems>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: The Monsters We Make

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 28 of Writober: The Monsters We Make

OctPoWriMo

The Poetics prompt at dVerse Poets Pub is to start the poem with a line from a list of lines from horror films. I chose the line from Psycho (1960).

Monster on a Mission

We all go a little mad sometimes

How else could I explain
the monster I made?
I didn’t have any clay
so I started with muck from the drain

then added from gathered recycling
cardboard, glass jars, cans and things
held the body together with fabric and string
then filled it with ire until it could sing

We all go a little mad sometimes

With the magic symbols held in his mouth
he mindlessly stomped all over town
hunting down liars and breakers of vows
finally going around to their house

Where he sat with them silently
making them nervous, denying them privacy
but not being curious. He’d gesture violently
if they tried to leave, and eventually
they didn’t get up from their sleep.

We all go a little mad sometimes
or so Norman says, but it doesn’t
help when a giant garbage monster
messes with your head.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Revenge on a Sleep Walker

Brandon was no stranger to sleep walking. He felt quite helpless when he woke up in just his boxers in his neighbor’s back garden, or on his own front stoop. That’s why he installed alarms on all the doors, and all his locks needed keys even on the inside. So imagine his surprise when he woke up, standing in his living room, surrounded by every glass he had, carefully spaced on the floor, with no furniture in sight except his empty hutch against the wall. How had he not kicked over any of the glasses, stepped on any of them? He felt so lucky and yet, thoroughly confused. 

The room smelled earthy, like silt from a stream. He suddenly remembered he had been dreaming he was playing along a stream, poking a stick at a fish that kept swimming off but coming back. He had seen something sparkle in the water and thought he had found gold. He was sure he was going to be rich, but then the fish swallowed the nugget, so he was about to drop a large stone on the fish when he woke up downstairs in his empty living room, surrounded by glasses.

He had stolen every glass in his house from his neighbors over the years. At first it had been an accident, walking home with someone’s glass, but then he started looking for matching glassware, or something that caught his eye that would look nice with his other glassware.

He squatted down and looked closer at the glasses. There were gray smudges of finger pads, but no fingerprints on every single one. Most of the smudges were along the rims, some on the base of the stems. Who could do this? Then he saw the streak of clay on the wall under the window. He looked around the room, but the crystal goblets were gone. He knew they had been a risk, a family heirloom or something, but they were so sparkly. He had never imagined Rachel would send a golem. 

Halloween Photography Challenge

For today’s photos I wanted to continue trying to build my monster from yesterday’s stone cutting. I had imagined the stone having moss on it, so I played with the Partial Color filter in my camera set to green.