All joy, laughter, sadness, despair, contentment and satisfaction. It was gone.
I felt nothing, an absence of want. Devoid of need. Not even a feeling of emptiness, just blank space where there was once, curiosity?
Sensation had left me. As for warmth? I felt none. Nor cold neither.
The yearn to touch, to be touched, to feel? I could no longer remember what it was, or even if now I miss it.
Because I fell, I had forgotten, everything, even pain and loss. I was forgotten.
This story was originally published to my art blog in 2020 in response to a prompt from @thewritershandbook
I paused in the doorway, reluctant to go further. I reached out hesitantly with my senses, waiting for that familiar prickle, an awareness or sense of…something.
Other than the light falling from the high windows, and the dust motes moving languidly in the air, the room was still, silent, torpid. Like the rest of the house it was derelict, the once ornate decor sadly decayed, the parquet flooring dulled, dry and curling in places like winter leaves.
I moved forward cautiously, my hands held in front of me defensively, despite the emptiness of the room. Not even my careful footfalls, whisper light made an impression, as if the room itself were absorbing any and all movement within it.
I was able to distinguish the only thing that remained in the room, something large at the far end, possibly a piece of furniture. As I drew closer, I was able to make out the shape of a small grand piano. I don’t know why I was so surprised, the room given its size and dimensions had obviously been designed for functions, or parties, it just seemed so incongruous to see it there. I moved slowly over to the piano, which had been left open, seemingly abandoned in mid use. The keys were covered in a fine layer of dust. Without thinking I stretched out my hand over the keyboard, drawn irresistibly to it, and pressed lightly on one of the middle keys. The note rang out clear and surprisingly in tune, I smiled slightly, pleased for some reason, though I don’t know what I was expecting after all. I turned to leave, when the pervasive and heavy silence was broken by the sudden and violent slamming of the door…
This story was originally published to my art blog in 2020 in response to a prompt from @thewritershandbook
For an old and outwardly-gloomy house, there were surprisingly few ghost stories about 17 Grey Avenue. People had died there, yes. That was inevitable when the Smith family had lived there for five generations. Yet as far as anyone knew none of the dead Smiths came back to haunt the living.
Only one place in the house was rumoured to be haunted: the bedroom overlooking the road. It was strange because that room had once been the children’s nursery and no one had ever died in it. It was stranger because the ghost spotted at the window was an adult, not a child. Nor was she one of the family, for her picture never appeared in their photo albums.
People had seen her for over fifty years. Every report was essentially the same. A woman in old-fashioned clothes stood at the window and waved down at them. She didn’t seem angry or upset. She didn’t smile or take any notice of them if they waved back. If they blinked she was gone.
From time to time the neighbours across the road happened to glance over and see her there. She appeared at all times of the day. Some had even spotted her there in the middle of the night, still waving to someone below.
Every morning for the past month they’d heard that weird howl. At first they dismissed it as the wind. Then as someone’s dog, then as some wild animal. Each time they heard it they realised none of their explanations made any sense.
Someone inevitably suggested a werewolf. Everyone laughed at that absurd idea. The sound was always heard in the morning, never at night, and it didn’t come and go with the full moon.
A few brave souls went out into the forest to investigate. They found nothing. No wild animal, no lost dog, not even any tracks. The howling returned every day, and no one knew what was making the noise.
Howl.
Show them who you really are.
Teach them that you are a maelstrom, a collective monster of all the stones they threw at you
Howl.
All those years ago, they sneered and looked down their noses at you
You’d never amount to anything, they said.
You came from nothing, therefore you were destined for nothing
Just like your father before you
And his father before him
Failure runs through your blood
Like the whiskey coursing through your veins
Blood runs cold, for you are different, you see.
They have no idea what they’ve unleashed
Both heaven and hell shrink at the mere mention of your name.
A monster, they called you.
Howl.
Scream.
Shriek.
Cry.
Unleash the full power of the madness they say lies within.
Ever since the quarry closed down parents had warned their children not to go near it. It was too dangerous for children to wander around unsupervised, they said. One of the digging sites had become a pit full of water. Someone might fall in and drown.
In spite of the quarry technically being off-limits for everyone, not just children, adults regularly took their dogs for walks around the place. Sometimes the dog-walkers didn’t come back. The quarry was known to be dangerous, so people reacted with helpless shrugs and putting up more warning signs.
Few bodies were ever recovered. The police shrugged and said the hapless dog-walkers must have fallen into the pit.
No one liked to go too close to the pit. Those who knew about it avoided it like the plague. Something about that place made even sane and healthy people want to jump into it. The closer you got to it, the stronger the feeling grew.
Disguises were very tricky things. Especially when you’re a human -- not a normal human, but still a human -- who needed one to sneak into a vampire’s Halloween party. Then you had to find a very convincing disguise indeed. I wouldn’t survive the night if mine wasn’t convincing enough.
The most common one is a spell that makes you appear to be a vampire for a few hours. It was only safe for those who didn’t intend to stay for long. If it wore off at an inopportune moment...
Another method was to bring along someone else’s blood and, if discovered, trade it for your life. Usually this worked. But I didn’t have access to a blood bank and couldn’t find someone willing to donate most of their blood.
So I had to resort to the third method: not bother with a disguise at all. Or, more accurate, disguise myself as a vampire pretending to be a human. This was a surprisingly popular fad among vampires. I chose the most stereotypically “tourist” costume I could find, added a few fake crucifixes, and sprinkled tomato juice over my clothes. In this costume I was indistinguishable from the twenty or so vampires wearing near-identical ones.
Now I just had to hope no one would see through my disguise before I got into the library. I could easily escape from there if I had to. First I just needed to get through the house’s ground floor. And to sneak past the hundreds of vampires already there.
The last burial in the church crypt had happened over forty years ago. It had been walled up ten years ago for reasons never publicly revealed. The congregation still saw figures disappearing through the wall and heard noises in the crypt.
Someone had once gone into the crypt late at night. The next morning they were found dead. Both of those were undeniable facts backed up with names, dates, and witnesses. That was what finally prompted the pastor to have the crypt walled up.
No one knew why the dead man had ever thought of doing something so stupid. The autopsy found no reason for his death. He had, as far as the doctors could tell, been young and in perfect health when he dropped dead.
Gossip filled in the gaps in the story. The gardener who found the body swore he’d seen bruises on the man’s neck. Finger-shaped bruises. People who lived near the church were sure they’d heard unusual noises that night. And ever since then a new element appeared in stories about the crypt.
If you went too close to the wall blocking it off from the rest of the church, you’d feel a strange pressure around your neck. It would get worse and worse as you got closer. And when you went home, you’d find finger-shaped bruises on your throat.
