Experience Writing

They Were So Well Preserved

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

🔗Post contains Amazon associate links (shown with Aal in parentheses)
🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to each of the challenges to navigate easily to the prompt of your interest: OctPoWriMo for poetry; Writober Flash Fiction for flash fiction; Halloween Photography Challenge for photography
🐦‍⬛Example poems are copied here for educational purposes.
🖼️I made these banners from my photos and free for commercial use fonts. Feel free to use them in your posts.

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Death Rituals

Ancient Egyptians preserved their dead through dramatic procedures, leaving fascinating mummies for us to find thousands of years later. The dead were so well preserved it lead to stories of them rising and walking the Earth. The Egyptian rituals were meant to prepare their kings for the afterlife and provide them with what they will need in the hereafter.

Every culture has death rituals in which we honor our dead, but these rituals are more for the living than for preparing the dead for the afterlife. The one’s left behind by death are the ones who feel grief from the loss. We need rituals to face death and keep living. Exploring death rituals of different cultures and religious beliefs can show us how people face their deepest fears.

You might find some inspiration in this 360°museum tour of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum.

OctPoWriMo

Rituals help us see death in terms of what it is not: It is not an ending but a passage to something different and new, something better and easier. Though this month is about exploring our deepest fears and for most living things the deepest of our deep fears is death, rituals are how we keep that fear at a distance even when it is in front of us.

Example Poem: “Our Fear” by Zbigniew Herbert from All Poetry

Our Fear

Our fear
does not wear a night shirt
does not have owl’s eyes
does not lift a casket lid
does not extinguish a candle

does not have a dead man’s face either

our fear
is a scrap of paper
found in a pocket
‘warn Wójcik
the place on Dluga Street is hot’

our fear
does not rise on the wings of the tempest
does not sit on a church tower
it is down-to-earth

it has the shape
of a bundle made in haste
with warm clothing
provisions
and arms

our fear
does not have the face of a dead man
the dead are gentle to us
we carry them on our shoulders
sleep under the same blanket

close their eyes
adjust their lips
pick a dry spot
and bury them

not too deep
not too shallow

~Zbigniew Herbert

What does using the inclusive “our” do in this poem?

Prompt: Using rituals and ritualistic actions, describe a fear—a specific fear, or fear in general—in terms of what it is not.

Possible form: Etheree

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Twenty-two Image

Click on the link and take a look at the image. How might this image relate to today’s theme? Write a piece of flash fiction, anything from a six-word story to 999 words. Feel free to bring in the OctPoWriMo prompt and the Photography Challenge prompt, anything that inspires your story.

Halloween Photography Challenge

Thank you so much for joining me for this year’s October challenges. Remember to support each other by visiting and commenting on as many links as you can as we explore our Deepest Fears in anticipation of Halloween.

If you enjoy these posts and the work I do here, please head to my buymeacoffee page and show your support! Thank you so much. Every bit helps keep this site going.

Music to get us moving:

Dragonfire

Writober 2025: Day Twenty-one Dragons>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: Dragons

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 21 of Writober: Guarding the Hoard with Fire

OctPoWriMo

Clear Skies

the sleeping dragon already took all the treasure
nothing is left within the walls that shines in the light
no precious metals, or carved and polished stones
set to be worn to define value or wealth
there’s a sudden equality when

~the sleeping dragon isn’t burning the village~

there is no threat of fire from above
the people in the market are not coughing and choking
from smoke, not screaming and running for shelter
diving into the mote around the castle: the drawbridge is down
because the knights are going to fight the dragon

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Fire Breathing

Derrick hadn’t felt right ever since he went spelunking in Dragon’s Cave. He had found a vent and gone deeper into the cave than anyone had before. The vent opened to an enormous cavern full of bones, stacks of bones, a mountain of bones. Somehow a sulfur wind roared through rattling the bones and making Derrick feel sick. He felt hot, like he was on fire and both the smell and the sound stayed with him as he climbed out of the cavern, and were still with him a week later.

He had had the strangest thoughts since returning home. He had exchanged his savings into gold coins. Poured them onto his bed and slept on them even though it was causing bruising that was hard to explain. He was attracted to anything shiny, rudely grabbing at people’s jewelry on the street and at work. And an infinitely deep ancient voice echoed cavernously in his head at all times saying that it will burn him with his fire. No matter what he ate, he was hungry for more meat, rarer and rarer meat.

Tonight he was so hungry he couldn’t sleep. He smelled sulfur and saw swirling flames behind his lids every time he closed his eyes. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. “What do you want?” he screamed. “You’re killing me.”

“Turns out we dragons don’t live forever. My spirit had been trapped down there ever since they threw all those plague-death bodies into my cave, and I thought they were sacrificial offerings. I had been so interested in protecting my hoard, that I had neglected my fire-breathing duties and the city over my cave had been ravaged by a devastating disease.”

“Are you saying I . . .”

“Need to burn? Yes and I intend to go scorched earth.”

Halloween Photography Challenge

Today I reset my mirrorworld. At first, I tried using two LED light curtains but LED’s alone didn’t create clear enough shapes, so I added some green string-lights. In the paper filter I cut, I tried to capture all of the different aspects of the dragon that represented my deepest fears. I was surprised my final results were more floral and less fear than I intended. But after all my blurry dirty-gray sighting images, it was fun to get back to the pretty lights.

The Dragon’s Hoard by Maria L. Berg 2025

Guarding the Hoard with Fire

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Dragons

What do dragons teach us about writing? Going deeper? Dragons lay on hoards of treasure, they fly, they breathe fire, they are giant lizards with wings. They represent ancient knowledge. In A Dictionary of Symbols_(Aal) by J. E. Cirlot I read, “it _{(the legendary dragon)} is a kind of amalgam of elements taken from various animals that are particularly aggressive and dangerous, such as serpents, crocodiles, lions as well as prehistoric animals.” It is pieces and parts of these animals seen in the dragon that represent the whole.

As writers we have techniques we can use to have a part of something represent the whole:

synecdoche -when a part of something is substituted for the whole, as in “hired hand” representing a worker, or “fin” for shark.
metonymy – the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant, for example suit for business executive, or the track for horse racing
antonomasia – the substitution of an epithet or title for a proper name (e.g., the Bard for Shakespeare)
kennings – compound expressions with metaphorical meaning, like “oar-steed” for ship, or “whale’s road” for sea.

How would you describe a dragon using each of these tools?

Dragons may have represented disease, devastating a population. The fire of fever, and burning bodies. But they also guard hoards of stolen treasure. What would you protect with the vehemence of dragonfire?

You may find some inspiration from these dragons at the Reading Museum

OctPoWriMo

I recently took a screenwriting class during the Gotham open house. The instructor asked us what is everyone’s major want / motivation? Then he concluded that all people, and thus characters, always want happiness. Thus the conflict of every story is what stands in the way of happiness, and the conclusion is whether or not they achieve happiness. Since happiness is abstract and defined differently for each person, this isn’t untrue.

However, since happiness is always the want of the character, doesn’t that tell us that happiness is lost just as quickly as it is achieved? And wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that our motivation is a fear of losing happiness? Even when we are happy, we know it will end, and we fear that loss: there is so much to lose at every moment.

Example Poem: “To Failure” by Philip Larkin from Collected Poems_(Aal)

To Failure

You do not come dramatically, with dragons
That rear up with my life between their paws
And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,
The horses panicking, nor as a clause
Clearly set out to warn what can be lost,
What out-of-pocket charges must be borne,
Expenses met, nor as a draughty ghost
That’s seen, some mornings, running down a lawn

It is these sunless afternoons, I find,
Install you at my elbow like a bore
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I’m
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. You have been here some time.

~Philip Larkin

How does the poet use negation to show what failure is? What does the dragon symbolize in this poem?

Prompt: Write a poem about something you are afraid to lose. Something you would protect with the fierceness of a dragon. Use all of your senses to describe it, then use all your senses to describe its space without it.

Possible form: Puente

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Twenty-one Image

Halloween Photography Challenge

If you enjoy these posts and the work I do here, please head to my buymeacoffee page and show your support! Thank you so much. Every bit helps keep this site going.

Music to move to:

Pretty Fish

Writober 2025: Day Twenty Mermaids>Response Post

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Mer-creatures

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 20 of Writober: Part Man Part Fish

OctPoWriMo

Saltwater Blessings

May the moonlight remind us
the tide has both ebb and flow
that the height of high tide
is the moment the pull
of low tide begins

May the salt not sting
your eyes, dry your skin
or split your lips, but hold
you floating, feeling at one
with the rise and fall.

May the wind carry the sirens’
song far from your ears
and let every desire
be free of danger.

May you delight in the crest
of every wave
and ride it until it dissipates
on warm sands.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

The Lady on the Train

I only meant to rest my eyes for a minute. There was something about the rocking of the train when it went through the tunnels that made my eyes heavy. When I woke up, I didn’t see anyone else in the car. It was disorienting. It appeared I had missed my stop. I had missed all the stops to the end of the line at the beach, and now the train was headed back.

The overhead lights flickered. I smelled salt-air and wet fabric. Then I saw her at the back of the car. She was hard to miss in a poofy pink chiffon full-length dress and a turquoise blue face. Her whole face was bright blue. The lights flickered again and she was four rows closer. She had perfectly painted make-up, sparkly gold eyelids, perfect curls in her deep black hair that glowed blue in the light, but she was dripping water from her dress. A tiny stream came toward me along the aisle. Since we were the only ones in the car, and I was most likely staring, I tried to be friendly and smiled. She did not respond.

The lights flickered and somehow she was sitting across from me on my left. The whole horizontal bench across from me had a sheen as if it had been wiped with a wet sponge. I got a glimpse of a large fish tail before she tucked it under her dress. She pulled a spray bottle from her bag and sprayed her neck and face. She shook like a wet dog, then squealed like a dolphin.

Then she began to sing. She locked eyes with me and I felt like I was in an undertow, pulled under and drowning in her eyes, but wanting to stay swirling in her song. The lights flickered and she was right next to me, dripping on me, smiling with the pointed teeth of a lantern fish. I don’t think she was being friendly.

Halloween Photography Challenge

Continuing this sightings series, I followed yesterday’s process, cut a paper filter of a mermaid’s head and tail fin then added a plastic filter with green and yellow coloring to add color and texture.

Part Man Part Fish

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Mer-creatures

Among the sea monsters swallowing ships are the mer-people, half person, half fish who in some tales lure sailors to their deaths and in other tales rescue them. Some believe these are tales made up by the drowning delusional from hypothermia, rescued by dolphins.

For someone who loves to swim, having your legs turn into a tail fin and growing gills to be able to breathe underwater is a fun fantasy. Much like the werewolf, the mermaid is about transformation. Where the werewolf is about our relationship to the moon’s cycles and our fears of our own animal nature, the mermaid is about our relationship with water (and the moon does control the tides, so maybe moon cycles, too).

We have a complicated relationship with water: our bodies are mostly water, we need to drink water for survival, and yet if we get stuck in water, we drown. The majority of our planet (71%) is water, and yet it can kill us. A very complicated relationship indeed.

As writers, complicated relationships are exactly what we want to create and explore. We have complicated relationships with ourselves and with others like our relationship with the water inside us and around us.

Ways to show these complicated relationships in our writing are to:

Write thoughts that conflict with actions
Describe body language that conflicts with what someone is saying
Show someone obsessively drawn to something that is detrimental to their health or well-being
Write two characters on opposite sides of an issue who are attracted to each other
Write someone who denies their own thoughts and feelings to work with or fit in with a group of people

OctPoWriMo

The saying “actions speak louder than words” says a lot about human nature. We often act against our better judgement, act in ways that contradict our instincts and beliefs. Why do we do that? This is one of those mysteries in life that poetry explores.

Example Poem: Blessing the Boats by Lucille Clifton from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection_(Aal)

BLESSING THE BOATS

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

~Lucille Clifton

How does this poem evoke anxieties about water? Is this poem about sailing, or something else?

Prompt: Write a blessing poem.

Possible form: Loop poetry

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Twenty Image

Halloween Photography Challenge

If you enjoy these posts and the work I do here, please head to my buymeacoffee page and show your support! Thank you so much. Every bit helps keep this site going.

Music to get us moving:

Coming to the Surface

Writober 2025: Day Nineteen Sea Monsters>Response Post

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Sea Monsters

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 19 of Writober: In the Dark Wet Deep

OctPoWriMo

Coming to the Surface

Some days the water is so clear
I can see each rock at the bottom.
Every pattern, texture, and color
blurs slightly as ripples wrinkle
the surface then clarify again.
But today the water is steel-
gray, opaque and threatening
revealing nothing of the dark
wet deep. It’s raining at a slant
but around here that won’t frustrate
the fishermen. Even in thunder
and lightning there is always
a boat on a Sunday with lines
in the water awaiting a bite.
Today’s the perfect day for
a curious shadow to surface
a slight bump under a hull
causing rocking that makes
a man instinctively hold
onto the rail, pull his pole
in tight and wonder how
large a big mouth bass
can get. After a few breaths
a soaking wet boater might
wonder if some rich, bored
kid was playing a prank
with some hugely expensive
new toy and might worry
that if he said anything
he’d be on a viral video
by the time he got home.
Today’s the kind of day
when the wind picks up
to a wave-crashing roar
that makes it easy to imagine
something alive and threatening
hides in the deepest depths
dark and beyond our reach
a monster that rises to the surface
with intermittent curiosity
or every once in a while
when it’s really hungry.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Ignorance Was Bliss

When Edna had suggested this RV road trip to visit the little chapel by the lake where they were married, she thought it would rekindle their romance. She never imagined the soundtrack would be conservative talk radio or her husband’s grunts of, “What do you want from me? I’m trying to drive here.” Nor did she imagine a constant perfume of coffee, beef jerky, and flatulence. After the first night parked at a KOA which turned out to be an overly-lit parking lot surrounded by used car lots and strip malls where Ernie was delighted to hook up to cable TV so he could get the stock report and yell at the “News” all night, Edna felt more alone in her marriage than ever. To Ernie every roadside attraction was a waste of time and money, every scenic outlook was a waste of gas, and any restaurant other than a roadside diner was an attempt to destroy his digestive system. By the third day as they approached the little lakeside chapel where they had sworn to love each other forever, Edna was wearing headphones and listening to the latest in the Trembling Hearts series. She was kind of rooting for the woman to dump the guy. She was getting sick of happy endings. Suddenly the RV stopped. Ernie was pointing out the window and yelling something at her. Edna removed her headphones.

“We’re here,” Ernie said.

“But we can’t be,” said Edna. The place was completely abandoned. The lake where they and their guests had jumped in the water after the ceremony, was gone, leaving only a muddy puddle in front of a delapidated old chapel, crooked on its foundation, white paint chipped and peeling, faded to gray.

“There you have it,” said Ernie. “Not exactly how I remember it.”

“No. Not at all.”

Ernie farted. “Well, might as well get out and stretch our legs.”

Edna had to agree.

As they walked toward the chapel Ernie pointed out some bones in the mud. “Look at that. What in the world do you think that could have been?”

The skull was bigger than both their heads combined. They could have slept curled up in the ribcage. Edna had never seen anything like it.

“Hey, Edna.” Ernie put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. He kissed her temple and said, “Remember after the ceremony and we shluffed off our wedding duds and jumped in that lake all naked and you said you felt something rub up against you, and I joked I was just happy to see you. You think?”

Edna looked at the bones and shivered. “Let’s head home. I’ll even drive so you can rest for a while.”

Ernie eyed her skeptically. “Guess I could take a nap.”

Halloween Photography Challenge

I had so much fun capturing Bigfoot outside, I thought I would try to capture a lake monster sighting. To do that, I cut a paper filter of a surfacing head and body then used tiny feathers for texture. I strung string-lights on the porch and took photos through them at the water. In the past, my attempts to create Sea Monster filters turned out very cartoonish. Today’s results are more what I’ve been trying for: those blurry, shadowy possibilities of the yet known.

The Loch Tapps Monster by Maria L. Berg 2025

In the Dark Wet Deep

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Sea Monsters

On old maps areas that had yet to be explored had paintings of sea monsters with the words “Here there be monsters”. These monsters came in all sorts of forms: giant lobsters, unicorns with fish tails, dragons, giant snakes, etc. At a time when only fifty percent of sea explorers returned, it made sense to those on land that sea monsters were swallowing them up, ships and all.

Like nature that abhors a vacuum, our pattern seeking, short-cut machine survival minds fill up the unknown. We are constantly imagining every possible bad thing that could happen, especially that could result in death, so we will be prepared for all the worst case scenarios. Having these horrible possibilities constantly playing out in our minds, it’s no wonder there’s so much fear of the unknown.

As writers, however, the unknown is our friend. It’s where we can ask deep questions. You may find some inspiration in my Deeper Questions post from earlier this year. One of those questions is What if . . .?

Here’s a quick exercise for exploring the unknown that I presented in my Abstract and Concrete Thinking post in April:

The What if and What If Game

There are many ways to practice abstract thinking. Here’s a quick game to get us started.

Start with something concrete. Find a small object you can hold in your hand. Note its size and shape, it’s color and texture. Does it make a sound? What does it smell like? Can you taste it?
Now, ask yourself a what if question about your object. Something fun like what if this object sprouted legs or wings. Now picture it. Imagine it happening. What would happen next?
Once you have imagined what would happen, ask yourself another what if. For example: When my object is flying around the room, what if it flew up the chimney, or what if it got caught in a spider’s web?

OctPoWriMo

A poem is a great place to explore “what if” scenarios. One stanza or section can be a happy what if and the next a scary what if, the next can be another possibility and wander about exploring the unknown.

Example poem: “The Kraken” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson from Monster Verse_(Aal)

The Kraken

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

~Alfred, Lord Tennyson

What “what ifs” keep this poem moving?

Prompt: Write a poem about what fears lie in the depths. What shines light on them? How do they appear? How are they defeated?

Possible form: Extended metaphor

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Nineteen Image

Halloween Photography Challenge

If you enjoy these posts and the work I do here, please head to my buymeacoffee page and show your support! Thank you so much. Every bit helps keep this site going.

Music to get us moving:

The Blurry Truth

Writober 2025: Day Eighteen Cryptids>Response Post

A blurry image of a figure resembling Bigfoot, captured through leaves in a drizzly Pacific Northwest setting. — Local Sighting by Maria L. Berg 2025

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Cryptids

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 18 of Writober: But They’ve Seen It

OctPoWriMo

How I Got Rid of the Boogeyman

The only childhood monster I can
think of is the Boogeyman under my bed.
I had a tall bed, an antique princess bed;
when I was little I had to run and jump
to get on my bed. There was plenty
of room under there for the Boogeyman.
I think I always feared people. Mean people.
Bad people. Killers. I think I feared men
in hockey masks, and men in other masks.
People who break into people’s houses
and steal children’s piggybanks.

When did I grow out of my nighttime fear?
Was it when I grew tall enough
to jump from the bed, jump far enough
so the the grabbing hand couldn’t reach
an ankle without his head coming out too,
and his giant shoulders getting stuck
under the frame?

No it was Sweden, when they sent me to Sweden.
There was no room under that IKEA bed.
In Sweden there were trolls, but they didn’t
come in the house. I guess I was too busy
learning the language, trying not to embarrass myself
being confused and homesick to worry about the monster.
The Boogeyman lost interest while I was gone.
He didn’t wait around under an empty bed for a year.
I guess that’s how I got over my fear.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Tough Love

Stanley didn’t cry for his parents when he got scared in the night anymore. They were practicing tough love and believed he was just crying for attention. And in a way they were right. He wanted attention. He wanted them to pay attention to the monstrous man whose claws darted out from under his bed. The man-monster had matted smoky long hair and smelled like hot sweat and wet dirty fur. The claws pinched and tickled any bit of Stanley’s skin that escaped from his covers. Then he cried wanting attention when the man-monster came out from under the bed and started crawling up the walls and staring at him from the corner by the ceiling. Tonight, Stanley really would have liked some attention because that shadow man with the very long claws was perched on the headboard of his bed, staring down at him while his head was on the pillows. Stanley really wanted to scream for the rest of the night, maybe the rest of his short life, but his parents wouldn’t come, anyway.

Halloween Photography Challenge

It’s a perfect drizzly Pacific Northwest day for Bigfoot to be out getting a shower au naturel, so I thought it would be fun to capture some Bigfoot in my world. I did my best to cut his furry-bigfootedness in a paper filter then took pictures of the security light across the street through the leaves.

A blurred image showing a silhouette resembling Bigfoot, with green foliage in the foreground. — Bigfoot in the Rain by Maria L. Berg 2025

But They’ve Seen It

Writober 2025: Our Deepest Fears>Prompt Post

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Cryptids

When I was in grade school, I did a presentation on Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. I did a lot of research and found the theory that Nessie was a surviving Plesiosaurus fascinating. Of course, I also played in a ravine that I liked to imagine was a dinosaur path, so a surviving dino wasn’t a huge leap for me.

Most of the creatures studied by cryptozoologists are similarly explained: something thought to be extinct, or something that took a unique evolutionary path and somehow survived by hiding very well and staying away from humans. The majority of these creatures are thought to be impossible, and yet, people keep seeing them.

Being from the Pacific Northwest, I have a definite fondness for Bigfoot (or Sasquatch) the hairy ape man who roams our forests. But I think all tales of cryptids are fun.

OctPoWriMo

Every so often some critic announces that poetry is dead. As if centuries of oral and written traditions had a heart attack and couldn’t be resuscitated. Of course, they’re wrong, but someone will say it again anyway. In a way, poetry is a cryptid: an extinct creature that manages to survive in the wild by hiding from most people. But the people who discover it, are very adamant about its existence.

Example Poem: “Mother Talks Back to the Monster” by Carrie Shipers from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection

Mother Talks Back to the Monster

Tonight, I dressed my son in astronaut pajamas,
kissed his forehead and tucked him in.
I turned on his night-light and looked for you
in the closet and under the bed. I told him
you were nowhere to be found, but I could smell
your breath, your musty fur. I remember
all your tricks: the jagged shadows on the wall,
click of your claws, the hand that hovered
just above my ankles if I left them exposed.
Since I became a parent I see danger everywhere—
unleashed dogs, sudden fevers, cereal
two days out of date. And even worse
than feeling so much fear is keeping it inside,
trying not to let my love become so tangled
with anxiety my son thinks they’re the same.
When he says he’s seen your tail or heard
your heavy step, I insist that you aren’t real.
Soon he’ll feel too old to tell me his bad dreams.
If you get lonely after he’s asleep, you can
always come downstairs. I’ll be sitting
at the kitchen table with the dishes
I should wash, crumbs I should wipe up.
We can drink hot tea and talk about
the future, how hard it is to be outgrown.

~Carrie Shipers

Prompt: Remember your childhood monster. Did it emerge from the closet, or under the bed? What did it look like? What sounds did it make? What did it sound like? When did you grow out of it, or how did you overcome it? What would you talk about if you met it now?

Possible form: A narrative poem

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Day Eighteen Image

Halloween Photography Challenge

If you enjoy these posts and the work I do here, please head to my buymeacoffee page and show your support! Thank you so much. Every bit helps keep this site going.

Music to get us moving:

The Transformation

Writober 2025: Day Seventeen Werewolves>Response Post

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Werewolves

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 17 of Writober: A Howl in the Moonlight

OctPoWriMo

The Spiders of This Lake

Beware the spiders of this lake
I hear they’re drawn to water
like to hide under the leaves
but do not fear or scatter.

Beware the spiders of this lake
They see well when light is low:
their eyes have reflective structure
and reflect a creepy green glow.

Beware the spiders of this lake
I hear they live and hunt alone
but I have never seen just one;
they scare in packs in this home.

Beware the spiders of this lake
They like to sneak inside
seal all your cracks and gaps
or they’ll thrive where you reside.

Beware the spiders of this lake
I hear they grow and hunt and stalk
in the shadows of the moonlight
those giant spiders we call wolf.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

The Disappearance of Forest Ranger Richardson

Ranger Richardson felt responsible for everything that went on in his forest. In the last couple years tent camping had gone way down and campers had stopped requesting backcountry permits altogether. It was about two years ago when he had started hearing stories of aggressive animal behavior especially at night deep in the forest and he had fielded several calls about campers who had not returned home. Then this year he heard some complaints from the campgrounds. But extended field testing showed that there wasn’t a problem with rabies. This weekend, there wasn’t a single tent in the campground closest to the forest.

He had to do something, so Ranger Richardson left his cozy forest ranger lodge and set up a tent in the campground. It was a quiet night. Too quiet. He didn’t even hear the buzz of a mosquito. The light from the full moon lit up the campground and the edge of the forest. The ranger set up a folding chair and stared into the dark trees, waiting. He must have dozed, because a high pitched scream woke him with a start. The scream came again and again like a metronome. Straight ahead in the trees he saw a pair of reflectively glowing eyes. Then another, and another.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Who’s there?”

The shadows moved like smoke, disappearing behind the trees. No one answered. He waited, silently pulling his flashlight from his belt. He heard branches breaking overhead and saw the glowing eyes in the trees. He shined his flashlight. It looked like a very large squirrel. Ranger Richardson laughed. He hadn’t realized how afraid he was until that moment.

He turned toward his tent shaking his head, “Squirrels. Really. They’re all scared of squirrels.” Then he felt the weight on his back. It pushed him into his tent. Something scratched at his back he flailed and rolled. He saw something run out of the flap. He zipped it shut.

“Whoa, they really are aggressive. That was a big-ass squirrel.”

When day broke, he dared to leave his tent and was shocked to see that he was not alone. Several campers had slept naked under the stars and one man that he recognized as one of the backcountry campers who had never checked out of the park, appeared to have a piece of the ranger uniform collar between his front teeth. Ranger Richardson reached behind his head and found the back of his collar torn.

Halloween Photography Challenge

For today’s images I cut a paper filter of a human turning into a wolf, then I used the panoramic setting on my camera to try to capture the transformation over time. The panoramic function really didn’t want to work with this image, so I feel very happy that I got these two pictures.

OctPoWriMo

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Halloween Photography Challenge

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OctPoWriMo

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Halloween Photography Challenge

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OctPoWriMo

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Halloween Photography Challenge

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OctPoWriMo

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Halloween Photography Challenge

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OctPoWriMo

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Halloween Photography Challenge

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OctPoWriMo

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Halloween Photography Challenge

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The What if and What If Game

OctPoWriMo

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Halloween Photography Challenge

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OctPoWriMo

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Halloween Photography Challenge

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OctPoWriMo

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Halloween Photography Challenge

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OctPoWriMo

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

Halloween Photography Challenge

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