Tag: storymatic

One Night

On By MaryIn Prompts, WritingLeave a comment

The prompt cards for this one were “recluse” and “blood.”

Typically my first thought with recluse is spider, and my first thought with blood is sacrifice. I had to sit and think through a few more associations trying to brainstorm a short tale, and I kind of like the result. The ending could be tied together a little better with a stronger line. Also I’m second guessing every comma this time.

Anyhow, the story.

Tara lived alone in the middle of nowhere.

It was hard sometimes. She had once been something of a social butterfly and loved to go to parties and special events hosted by her friends. And she was a wonderful hostess as well. There was nothing quite like the thrill of being the center of attention, being the one drawing all the admiring glances, the one to cause the raucous laughter. Tara had loved the dresses she had worn, the company that she kept.

And now she spent her time alone, far from anyone. She slept her days away and quietly whiled away the nights. She absently thought of happier times as she hunted for herself and attended to the chores and upkeep of her own little abode. The loneliness made time stretch eternal, and she found herself wishing for happier days. But she could never return to that. The world had moved on, turned without her, and it was for the better.

One night, as she sat by the fire, there was a knock at the door. She set her book down, a frown creasing her brow, as she stared apprehensively at the door. Was there really a person so far out here? In the middle of the night? Had she been hearing things?

Now whoever was there pounded on the door, the sound so loud it made her jump. “Please…!” a female voice called, high pitched with desperation and worry.

With a heavy sigh, knowing it was a bad idea, Tara stood and opened the door.

Standing outside was a young woman, her clothes disheveled and torn, her eyes wide with terror. She had leaves in her hair, and scratches on her skin, and she was shivering. Tears streamed down her face. “Please, help me…” she whimpered.

Tara hesitated before stepping back to let the younger woman in. “Is there someone after you?” she asked, as she closed the door.

The young woman looked dazed. She nodded briefly, but then paused and said, “I’m not sure. I got away, but I don’t know if he… he…” and then she burst into a fresh set of sobs.

Tara placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder, feeling desperately sorry for her, for so many reasons. Not just for what had likely happened, but for what was going to happen. Tara stared at a smear of blood along the woman’s jawline, and found her eyes drawn further down to her neck. Already the hunger was starting to take hold…

“I’m sorry,” Tara said simply.

And then she sank her fangs into the young woman’s neck. The woman screamed – not that it mattered out here, in the middle of nowhere, far from anyone that could hear. Likely whoever had brought the poor thing out this far had thought the same – so secluded, there was no help.

Tara would never have chosen to live as a recluse, but when she had been turned, she had found her hunger insatiable. It hadn’t taken long for her vampiric nature to be outed, and for her to be ousted. She had left everything behind and come so far into the woods so she could not be tempted by the sweetness of human blood. She could feel the young woman grip her hair, desperately attempting to pull her head away, but her ordeal had left her weak and Tara enjoyed heightened strength since her turning.

The blood burst salty and then sweet into her mouth, invigorating her. Tara moaned in pleasure at the familiar flavor as she drank deeply. It was the first human she had glutted on in years. After a time, the unfortunate woman stilled in her grasp – her heartbeat slowed, slowed, and then stopped as she was drained of more blood than the body could bear to lose. Tara laid her down on the floor.

She tilted her head, staring down at the woman’s corpse, and then glanced at the time. She made her way to the door, ready to scour the woods in the hopes of finding the man that had been mentioned. She had a few hours to kill before dawn.

Don’t Tell

On By MaryIn Prompts, WritingLeave a comment

I know, I haven’t been keeping up with my storymatic prompts as promised! But here’s a new haphazardly thrown together one!

The cards were “teller of secrets” and “what was that sound?”

          Andrea considered herself a little bit of a real life gossip girl, or maybe a real life Harriet the Spy. It was less of a blog and more of a social media account. And mostly it was pictures – she was just adept enough at stalking and snooping that she always managed to grab the best pics to really get the rumor mill running. It wasn’t a big town, they only had the one high school, but her follower list included nearly every resident of their city excepting the people that didn’t have social media. No one knew it was her, and it made her feel a little important every time people talked about it. She reveled in it, sometimes wishing she could reveal herself, but she knew it was best to never divulge the truth to anyone – she had told so many of her fellow student’s secrets, and everyone would hate her.

          Andrea was currently in the middle of looking into a really fun story she had picked up on – of the most popular couple in school, it was possible the girl was cheating. It might not even be true, but if Andrea could capture an image that suggested it was… and if it did turn out to be true, all the better.

          She was hanging out under the bleachers, half listening to the game and half listening to the girl in question talk to her best friend. But something kept catching her attention. It was almost like a creaking noise. She had heard it a few times and brushed it off as the shifting of the bleachers under the weight of the spectators. But the sound grew louder, loud enough to scare her. She studied the way the bleachers shifted above her and concluded they weren’t the source of the noise.

          But what was it? Ever curious, she followed the sound. At first it got fainter, so she turned back, playing a strange game of hot and cold as she attempted to narrow down where it was coming from. She finally found an especially dark corner, the creaking so fast and persistent that it sounded like a strange purr. She squinted, trying to see if she could spot what was making the noise.

          Something in the shadows shifted, turning. Bright glowing yellow eyes stared at her out of the darkness. The creaking stopped. Andrea drew in a deep breath, but before she could utter a single sound, it had jumped forward – she only had the nightmare visage of teeth glinting in the dim lights, inside of a mouth that came down to cover her head completely.

          For a moment she thought the blackness was death, but then she realized she was still there, alive, somewhere in that darkness. She felt the sudden burning sensation where the many teeth dug through her clothes and into her skin, and she tried to scream, but no sound came out. She tried to struggle but she was held firmly in place. A large, slimy tongue ran over her face, and she felt something like an intense burning pressure within her head…

          The sensation ended suddenly, the humid atmosphere of the creature’s gaping maw withdrawing, and Andrea found herself gasping in a whole lung full of clean, crisp night air. She tried to scream, but no sound came out. She twisted her head, trying to see where the creature was, but the whole of her vision was still a deep black. The world was strangely quiet. She ran blindly…

****

          “What do you think happened?” Andrea’s mother was distraught, looking at her daughter where she lay in the hospital bed.

          The doctor shook his head. “We have no clue. The damage is extensive – her eyes are gone, and all the internal organs of the ear are melted, damaged beyond repair. Her vocal chords are severed. The teeth marks make it look like an animal attack, but the residue left in the eye sockets and the ear canal almost suggests an acid was used. It almost looks like it was done on purpose. Do you know if anyone would have had a grudge against your daughter?”

          Andrea’s mother shook her head, staring absently into space, hardly able to comprehend. “Andrea doesn’t bother anyone. She keeps mostly to herself. What kind of monster would do this to a girl?”

Dinner With the Family

On By MaryIn Prompts, WritingLeave a comment

The prompt cards for this are “dinner with the family” and “butcher.”

I guess trigger warnings for dead babies and cannibalism if that’s a turn off for you.

If it’s a turn on for you, that’s not really good, but… enjoy?

   “You never sit and have a nice meal with your family anymore,” his wife complained often. It was a busy season for him as a butcher, and he welcomed the work. It was how he helped put that dinner on the table. There were the families that bought cows and hired him to cut and ground the meat so that they could freeze and use it through the year. There were hunters that did the same. On top of the usual labor of running his own small retail business, sometimes he came home late and exhausted. Despite how hard working he was, she always complained.

 It had been that way the night before also. He hadn’t really meant for anything to happen, but he was tired, and hardly responsive to her usual complaints, and she had become physical. She had pushed him, actually pushed him, while screaming in his face, and he had angrily pushed her back in retaliation. The baby had been on her hip through all of it, and she full just right to crush the poor thing – there was a brief terrified cry that cut off to an almost sickening silence.

When they both realized what had happened… it was instant grief, and instant blame. Why had she even tried to start a physical altercation when she was holding their child? Why had he even pushed back? He practically saw red as she screamed and wailed and laid the blame solely at his feet, and before he really understood what he was doing, could really stop what was happening… her face had turned a sickly purple as she gasped and fought for oxygen in his grip.

 For a brief moment, he realized he should stop. If he stopped, she’d be able to breathe again, and it’d all be just fine. But the baby was still dead, and nothing would be okay again. Instead, he tightened his grip, held tight to her neck and throttled until she passed out, and for several long moments after that.

 He sat panting at the exertion and adrenaline, staring at both of the bodies as a blind panic overtook him. What was he going to do? How was he going to get rid of them so no one knew?

It was an entire night of very hard work. Luckily, there was little blood splatter at the house – he tossed some of her belongings and some of the child’s things into a suitcase with her wallet and smashed her phone to bits to put in with it as well. He would dispose of those later, some small indication that maybe she had packed and left him. She’d never had her own vehicle because she didn’t like driving, so he didn’t have the headache of hiding a car that could be traced. When her friends and family came looking, all he’d have to do is morosely tell them that she took the kid and left – he vaguely knew that she complained about him constantly. The only thing that would stand out as strange to them was that she hadn’t gone to them… but certainly he could shrug that off and angrily say that he had no clue where or who she had gone to.

He took the bodies in to his shop, and he did the job he knew to do best. The bones might be problematic – he’d have to store those separately and figure out a way to dispose of them discreetly. But that still left all the properly cut and ground meat.

He sat down to dinner the next night, absently poking at the meatballs he had made for his spaghetti, slathered in a homemade meat based sauce, wondering what it would taste like. His stomach turned at the thought, but at the same time he couldn’t leave the evidence for long. He’d have to work through all of it over the next month. Eventually, someone might want to investigate what he had in his freezers, and there could be nothing left by the time they came searching.

He popped a whole meatball into his mouth and chewed, finding it to be surprisingly delicious. A funny thought popped into his head, and he laughed as he continued to eat. He was finally enjoying a nice dinner with his family.

Sugar

On By MaryIn Prompts, WritingLeave a comment

I haven’t done the story prompts in awhile! I’m going to try to ease in with a short silly one off of these prompt cards. The cards were “person with a toothache” and “revenge” and this is the kind of lame, super short result.

Also, I am shifting the prompt writing to Wednesdays owing to things that will conflict with a Tuesday update.

          “We won’t be able to get you in for another month. We’re all booked up,” the receptionist said, her brow creased with feigned empathy.

          Jack glared at her. “But this is an emergency! I’m in pain! Can’t they at least write a prescription for me?”

          She smiled sympathetically and said that she would talk to one of the dentists about a prescription, but that they were all occupied at the moment. “I’ll call you once I have an answer from one of them. And if someone cancels, we’ll make sure to call you about the opening first.”

          “And what do I do in the meantime? This cavity or whatever it is, it feels unbearable.”

          “Maybe lay off the sugar?”

He narrowed his eyes at her and left. The second he got home and entered the kitchen, the sugar dish caught his eye. He fumed, thinking about how long he would have to wait to be treated for the ache in his jaws.

Jack gathered all the sugar in the house and returned to the dentists’ office. It was late enough now that the remaining cars likely only belonged to staff. He poured as much of the sugar as he could into each of the tanks and left. After all, he had to get rid of the sugar somehow.

Last Kiss

On By MaryIn Prompts, WritingLeave a comment

Card prompts were motivational speaker and last, best kiss.

Kind of churned this one out quickly, didn’t care much for it.

          Mark had been a motivational speaker most of his adult life. It had been a surprisingly easy gig to slip into – he’d always been good at talking his way into and out of things, ever since he had learned his first words. Part of it was that the truth never got in the way of a good story or a convincing lie. It wasn’t that the things he was talking about weren’t good and true in and of themselves. He spoke at schools and at corporate events and to drug addicts, helped to encourage people in their lives and their goals and to set an example. And if he needed to seem personally invested to help set that example – to discuss overcoming addiction as though he had once overcome such a debilitation himself, and still struggled valiantly with it daily – well, giving people hope was the crux of the position. They needed the hope more than they needed absolute truths.

          Janet was the opposite. She had always been mousy and quiet, easily ignored or spoken over. Even here and now in the apocalypse, most people ignored her, preferring to listen to Mark. And she had to admit – he was easy to listen to. Easy to believe. She always had a knack for sniffing out the bullshit in the pretty things he said though. Maybe that was why, despite their differences, they had come together. They strangely complemented each other. Janet was practical, a steady presence that kept Mark grounded as he somehow rose to a leadership position in their little group of survivors. And despite the white lies that accompanied Mark’s speeches, Janet could always sense that he truthfully had hope for them. For their survival.

          And it was hope that they especially needed. Civilization wiped out, and the remaining pockets of humanity hunted and destroyed. The creatures that hunted them seemed alien, but no one really knew where they came from or why they were there. They acted like savage animals, but worked together in groups, always seemed to be at least 3 steps ahead. They were relentless. Still, there was hope. There were other groups. Humanity, Mark assured everyone, would persist as it always did.

Then the group had started losing contact with the other known settlements, one after the other. Sometimes it was suggested that maybe the communications equipment was no longer working, but those that knew how these things worked were certain – the equipment was fine. There was no one on the other end to answer. The map in the situation room looked grim – community after community crossed out with x after x. Only their own small group remained on the map now. It was hard to look at and keep hope.

          And the creatures were massing outside.

          Mark wasn’t a soldier – he had never even held a gun until the past year, and he suspected he missed more often than not. They didn’t really have the ammunition or resources to practice regularly. The one thing he could do convincingly was talk – he could stand, and give a speech about persevering, fighting, facing the enemy. He could give hope one last time. He could see the spark of it lighting in the eyes of the people around him – his small found family, his friends. But as he finished his speech before their final battle, he caught Janet’s eye. Janet’s worried frown.

          As always, she had seen right through him.

          He maintained his smile for the others as he stepped down from the boulder he had been speaking from. Janet wrapped her arms around his waist, staring deeply into his eyes. She said nothing. She didn’t want anyone to overhear. But she knew. And he knew.

          They were likely the last humans, and they weren’t surviving the night.

          He leaned in and kissed her, deeply, losing himself in the moment, and she lost herself in him as well – this last, best kiss.