I'm back to add a little sumpthin'. This one is for you, Carl!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

White as snow and cold as ice, the creature stalks the night for demented souls to feast on. It creeps up the side of an apartment complex, leaving a trail of frost in its wake, and scrapes open the window of its hapless victim. Releasing a low hiss, it slips through the gap it created, right into Carl Reed's bedroom.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ha, sorry, Carl. Couldn't resist

--edited by Amber J. Wolfe on 9/26/2015, 2:57 PM--

@Amber: Heh-heh! My goodness, I never realized my muse was an albino, frost-waked icicle daimon who scales buildings like some kind of Cthulhu-Mythos-inspired spider-being. Does it have a name, I wonder . . . 

CARL:      "What's your name, daimon?"     

THING:    "Baron von Fuckin' Kold." 

CARL:      "I don't think so.

THING:     "Frosty Long Legs?"

CARL:       "Are you telling me, or asking me?"

THING:     "Chilla Vanilla Killa."

CARL:       "Too street by far."

THING:     "Okay, okay—I'll level with you. Ready?"

CARL:       "I'm all ears."

THING:     "An obvious lie. Nevertheless, my name is—"

CARL:       "You waiting for a drumroll here?"  

THING:     "—Mr. Shivers."

CARL:      "Not bad, but I believe that name has already been taken by a writer named Robert Jackson Bennett for one of his characters."

THING:     "Fine! Fine! All right then. My name is . . . Dr. Reptil' R. Gelid."

CARL:       "What's the 'R' stand for?"

THING:     "Ragnarok."

CARL:       "Of course. And you are . . ."

THING:     "An antediluvian lizardman frost wizard, natural sciences scholar and general practitioner of the necromantic arts, recently unearthed from the Antarctic ice via heat generated by a fallen comet."

CARL:       "A professorial, pre-Neolithic, eight-foot-tall reptile familiar with Norse myths and black magic who lives at the South Pole—just as I suspected. Dr. Gelid, I'm trying to scritch-scribble out a three-sentence weird tale every day between now and Halloween. Can you help?"

THING:      " 'Can I help' the bearded, bespectacled heavy-paunched ape asks me! Does the color purple taste like smoke? Jot this down . . ." 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/22/2015, 10:02 PM--

The coffin lid creaked open; the ancient Ashkenazi vampire peered into the oblong box, reached in and sifted the native soil that stained the cushioning silk of her oldest son's coffin through skeletal fingers. "Such filth, Sid! God forbid you should wash your dirt once in a while."

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/27/2015, 1:45 PM--

Shivering on the rock ledge at 22,000 feet—the dying screams of a half-dozen Sherpas who'd just been punted off Mt. Everest still echoing in his ears—Milton yanked open his coat, pulled up his shirt and bared his pale, lint-speckled belly to the icy wind.

The slavering white-furred beast before him grunted at the sight of the accountant's six-pack abs, then moved on to inspect the bared stomach of the man to his immediate left.

Milton gave silent but fervent thanks to the ex-S.A.S. base camp trainer who'd put him through exhausting sets of crunches, sit-ups and leg raises that summer, the while warning the entire climbing party: "You'd better have the washboard stomachs of battle-hardened Spartans if you hope to see the top of Mt. Everest, lads and ladies; I say again you had better be prepared—on penalty of death!—to survive a surprise fitness inspection from the flab-hating Abdominal Snowman." 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/30/2015, 11:44 PM--

"I abhor political correctness."

"So do I, you ignorant, privileged, smug, willfully-stupid, cruel and idiotic waste of a suppurating brain stem."  

"On second thought . . ."

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/30/2015, 2:59 AM--

They bought the fully-furnished neo-colonial mansion perched atop a wooded hill in the Catskills for less than half its market value, the previous owner having disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The night Bob and Mary moved into their new home a savage nor'easter mantled roof, trees and lawn with twenty inches of snow.

They awoke to the sound of fingernails clawing glass, but the old woman wasn't outside their bedroom window—she silently screamed from the other side of the bureau's mirror.  

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/3/2015, 2:19 AM--

For the Lovecraft crowd:

......................

They think me mad because I hear the bristle-soft scritch-scratch-scritching that goes on after midnight outside my study door; the stealthy, dust-moted shifting and sliding of moldering fibers 'gainst hardwood floor.

I was a callow young man of twenty-two when I accompanied my father's expedition into the Altai mountains of Siberia that gloomy, cold autumn of '35; into the very shadow-haunted heart of the Pazyryk Valley we trekked, to tunnel into the tomb of an ancient Scythian nobleman and loot, amongst treasures bronzed and silvered, the ensorceled remnants of 5th century B.C. Persian carpeting of the kind referenced by Xenophon in his Anabasis.

Now a bent and withered old man of eighty-four winters, liver-spotted hands trembling with frightful ague as I record these last, floridly-scrawled words in my leather-bound journal, write to inform all who might come upon this entry in the morning—I pick up tinder, torch and jug of gasoline to fling wide my study door and sally forth against those animated remnants of Persian carpeting who for so long disturbed my nocturnal reading and nihilistic ruminations with their reptile-like slithering and textile hisses; I stumble—attend, O incredulous witness at secondhand-remove to the antediluvian infernal!—with frazzle-haired berserker fury into one last battle against those hideous, undulating, mats in the hall!    

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/3/2015, 2:21 AM--

"If you keep doing that you'll go blind, Robert Bateman!"

"Mo-om, get out of my bedroom," Robert said, "you're embarrassing me!" 

He turned back to the window, reseated the cardboard box pinhole projector on his head to finish watching the solar eclipse. 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/3/2015, 2:22 AM--

 Carl E. Reed wrote:

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Ha, Carl. Funny

Here's one that I don't think makes much sense. But here goes anyway:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I said I wouldn't do it, but I gotta do it, 'cause if I don't the devil will win; so, to keep the devil from winning, I drew my longsword and with a battle cry charged the demon king--

"Henry," my mom called, jarring me out of my world, "Come down here and do your chores!"

"Yes, mom," I called back under my breath as I sat my controller aside and grabbed the knife under my pillow; she was going to pay for making me lose the battle for humanity.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

That's probably going to make a lot of video gamers angry at me, but I couldn't resist, lol.

Mr. Tompkins kept a gun with bullets in a tin.

Timmy found it; lordy-lord!

We'll miss that Timmy-kins.

A six-sentence weird tale? Doesn't that violate the rules of the form? Well, you see, if arranged in verses of three lines each, then, ah . . . The hell with it. Yes, yes it does break the rules. Rules were made to be broken.  (Note: this intro was penned when the form was strictly limited to but three sentences.)

....................

"But mother dear, I fear our hound's a wolf with red-slit eyes!

If I walk this rabid beast I won't come back alive."

"John Baskerville, I'll hear no more."

So Johnny walked the wolf.

And came back home a bit of gore in doggie's teeth. 

Rolff-rolff!

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/8/2015, 1:31 AM--

 (NOTE: carried over from the starter thread intro: October 5th revision to the rules.) 

I didn't want to start an entirely new thread for this on-going writing exercise, but have decided to broaden the rules re: the number of sentences allowed under this particular form (in case that might be holding some of us back from posting). I didn't want to start an entirely new thread for this on-going writing exercise, but have decided to broaden the rules re: the number of sentences allowed under this particular form (in case that might be holding some of us back from posting). Going forward, let's call this the 3-30 sentence short-short weird tale (or 3-30 SSSWT). Why 3-30 sentences? One or two sentences seems more an aside or quip than a tale, and 30+ sentences would most likely exceed two pages of narrative. So—three-to-thirty sentences it is: no more; no less. Eh? Right, everyone? Hello . . . Anyone there? Peoples?

.........................

 Leo In Natural Habitat

Here lies a wounded beast

eyes of gristle & bone.

There is nothing to hunt

in its carefully sculpted enclosure.

No quicksilver gazelles

bounding through the high, burned grasses of the Savannah.

No loping jackals

piercing night’s starry mantle with feverish cries.

There is absence of rush-flutter birds

startled by stealthy tread

burst upward to an amber-crescent moon.

Round this foreign landscape, the animals

comprise an endless horde of strange-smelling simians

chattering & screeching ’gainst a rocky rim of sky.

This wounded beast

ribs taut against ulcerated skin

flicks a listless, blood-flecked tail.

This wounded beast

eyes of gristle & bone

is starving its way back to Africa.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/8/2015, 1:34 AM--

"I had that terrible dream again; that's why I screamed, Daddy."

"It's time you knew the truth." Sitting on the edge of Billy's bed, the father-thing reached up and removed its false face.

Variation on a theme:

..................

"I had that terrible dream again; that's why I screamed, Daddy."

"I understand, son. But it's time you knew the truth." Sitting on the edge of Billy's bed, the father-thing reached up and removed its false face.

"So I was adopted?" said Billy.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/6/2015, 8:49 PM--

Carl, I can't get into a little three line tale. Wait! I just read your rambling about the stuffed rabbit. Three sentences, sentence defined by a period at the end, three paragraph-length run-on sentences, that I take as a challenge. I'll get on it. Sorry to be so late to the party. I needed an inspiration, and you just provided one.

@Mimi: Welcome to the party! Can't wait to see what you come up with.

And remember—the rules have changed. It's now the 3-10 sentence short-short weird tale challenge/invite.  See below.

...........................

 (NOTE: carried over from the starter thread intro: October 5th revision to the rules.) 

I didn't want to start an entirely new thread for this on-going writing exercise, but have decided to broaden the rules re: the number of sentences allowed under this particular form (in case that might be holding some of us back from posting). Going forward, let's call this the 3-30 sentence short-short weird tale (or 3-30 SSSWT). Why 3-30 sentences? One or two sentences seems more an aside or quip than a tale, and 30+ sentences would most likely exceed two pages of narrative. So—three-to-thirty sentences it is: no more; no less. Eh? Right, everyone? Hello . . . Anyone there?

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/8/2015, 1:28 AM--

The Hitchhiker: (my version)

.....................

He never stopped to pick up hitchhikers. Too many crazies out there; too many knife-and-gun wielding misfit children wandering the highways and byways of America in search of an angry fix. But when he spotted the young woman standing beside the winding two-lane blacktop with her arm thrust out, thumb up—bell-bottom jeans riding low on one hip-shot hip, shivering in the chill mist of an autumn afternoon despite her three-sizes-too-big olive-drab army jacket festooned with Peace-sign and psychedelic butterfly patches—he braked his BMW to a tire-crunching halt in the shoulder gravel beside her. 

John Croft leaned over and opened the front passenger side door while giving her his best I'm-not-a-serial-killer-grin. "Hi! I'm John. Going to a 60s Preservation Society party?"

The young woman slid into the passenger seat, thunked the door closed and settled back with a sigh beside him. She gestured with her hand: forward.

 So. No name, then. 

Croft understood. Even approved. Be well. Be wary. Beware.

The young woman's raven-black hair was styled in a shaggy lob cut; a red bandanna kept it out of her eyes. In dress and style she reminded him of his ex-wife—it was the way Veronica had dressed fifty years ago back in the hey-day of "flower-power" and the "Days of Rage".

He put the smoothly-purring German sedan in gear and picked up speed. "How far you going?"

She gave him a wan smile. "Not far." 

He arched a brow in quizzical bemusement, risked a glance in her direction.

"Each year I get a little farther away," she said softly. "On the anniversary of the crash."

He puzzled over her words but could make no sense of them—until the woman vanished as they passed the cemetery a mile down the road.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/9/2015, 2:54 AM--

I've got a five sentence weird story - six with a footnote - and I'll post it later tonight, after I tweak it some. 

@Mimi: Can't wait! It'll be a doozy, I'm sure. Heh!  

In the meantime, here's my new entry:

.......................

Comic Book Page No. 7:

..................

Ftasssk!

Zssikk!

Ftopp!

Whew! Lasers. Missed me.

THRUMMMM! 

Splat.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/9/2015, 2:40 AM--

I hear them, just outside my window, just above my bed, I hear them now, chirp, chirp - I’m afraid to look - I’ll pretend I don’t know they’re there and calmly consume my hot dog.

.

I used to tease them, eating half and setting the plate with the remainder on my bedside table, under their noses - a hot dog, a slice of meatloaf, a bowl of leftover spaghetti, I hope that’s what they want, I tell myself that’s what they want but, I've noticed, believe me, ketchup on the plate, in the dim, the color of blood, you see, seems to set them off, eliciting sounds of longing.

.

They come night after night, making their little noises, scratching at the screen (how many? - hard to say – one, two, a bunch) I never look and I sure try not to listen, but sometimes I think I catch a snatch of conversation.

.

I tell myself they chirp, but, actually, I believe they chuckle: you’ll slip one night, lady, and leave the window open, screen up, and we’re on you. (My husband does that, though I’ve begged him not to, we have cats who come in and out that route and sometimes, at his instance, I break down and leave a crack for them (we have four presently, down - two pregnant strays taken in – from an all-time high of sixteen.) 

.

Last night, hearing jolts, as if a shoulder or shoulders were jimmying the screen upward, first one side, then the other, I banged the glass pane down, again, not daring to look. I know damn well who and what they are*, but that’s for another time; right now I want to hide under my covers.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*They are raccoons who have learned that they sometimes can enter through my upstairs window, and they know well from previous intrusions that cat food, bowls to be gobbled and big bags to be ripped open, sit downstairs in the kitchen. The critters know by now to be very quiet. I work at night. Eberhard is here in his bed at the other side of the room. One night they came in and got down the stairs silently. He only woke when they made noise down in the kitchen, perhaps alarmed cats, I wasn't here, can't rightly say.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 10/9/2015, 4:50 PM--

@Mimi:   :::applause-applause::::

Nicely done! Dem critters can be right vicious, indeed—as any Marine who's had one crawl into his tent at night while going through boot camp on Paris Island can well attest.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/9/2015, 10:32 PM--

Kurt startled awake when his head was wrenched violently off his field pillow. The nylon sides of the tent rippled as if in a stiff breeze; wan moonlight filtered in. He reached back and fingered the throbbing wetness of his scalp.

What the fuck?!

A half-second later a charnel stench filled Kurt's nostrils and his vision went black as piercing pressure fractured his skull in half-a-dozen places. Dimly, he registered resonant growls and frenzied whuff-chuff-whuffing sounds as he was shaken in his sleeping bag like a  . . . well, like a man with his head caught in a grizzly's mouth . . .

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/22/2015, 9:56 PM--

Sung to the tune of a popular 60s Hanna-Barbera cartoon:

….......................

Rasper, ear-licker ghost 

the ear-lickingest ghost you know 

grownups of all heights 

jolt & jump with fright 

when he invisibly tongues ear holes! 

He whispers a breathy hello. (Hello!) 

& he's really glad to meet'cha. 

Wherever Rasper goes 

he tongues ear wax out of every creature. 

  Grownups don't understand  

why children love him the most. 

But kids all know 

a grand gross-out show. 

He's Rasper Ear-licker Ghost! 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/18/2015, 2:42 PM--

He used to snicker at those who argued the worst fate that could befall a man was to be born.

Having survived childhood abuse, three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, a failed marriage and the utter cynicism and indifference to others' suffering exemplified by the shrill, illiterate brain stems that jostled him on the train five days a week as he commuted to a dead-end telemarketing job in the suburbs, he wasn't laughing anymore. 

The blued steel of the revolver pressed cold against his temple. 

..........................

Note: On average, 22 veterans commit suicide every day in these "United" States. The reasons why are hotly debated.

Perhaps it comes down to this: There's no one to talk to. No one is listening—we're all too busy diddling our smart phones, binge-watching television or immersing ourselves in alternate-reality video game worlds for months at a time to focus on something as elemental and necessary as healing interaction with a person damaged by violence.

How could our war veterans meaningfully communicate with us, anyway? After Ambrose Bierce and Stephen Crane (Crane didn't serve but his writing shows a profound understanding of the combat veteran's experience and psyche), Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Erich Maria Remarque and Tim O'Brien, what more is there left to say? After Dylan and Springsteen, Edwin Starr and CCR, what other songs must be sung? After Kubrick and Klimov, Coppola and Peckinpah, what else could be projected onto a theater screen? But back to words. What vocabulary or combination of grammar and syntax could a person use to communicate to others that (a) real-world violence is horror and gore-spatter shock, not the thrilling balletic kineticism shown in (most) films or comic books, (b) they had thrown off the dulling anesthetic of mindless consumerism and knee-jerk support for empire which obscured hard truths only to discover that (c) the masses hadn't, and finally (d) veterans of such violence—perpetrators and survivors alike—realize they've been used as pawns in the oligarchs' game of military adventurism for endless corporate profit. (See War Is A Racket by Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler.)

They believed, once. Many believed (oh, the young!) in fervent proclamations like "this is the war to end all wars", "never again", and "we had to destroy the village in order to save it". Most recently the sloganeering ran: "freedom's on the march", "we'll be welcomed as liberators", and "mission accomplished". And so our sons and daughters went forth and did their very best for president and country. They always do. 

What did our veterans return home to, circa 2006-15? Robotic recitations of "thank you for your service", averted eyes and the arm's-length pat on the back. ("Good luck with the job search.") An ever-increasing wealth gap between the 1% and the working- and middle-classes of this country. Mass-murders occurring at a faster tempo. Thinking people turning away from the "unctuous smiles" (as Hitchins so perfectly put it) and woefully-inadequate, narcotizing "lie-that-tells-a-truth" dogmas of the organized religions which comforted their elders. (The fastest-growing denomination in the U.S.? "Nones"—as in: none of the above.)

As you read this post another veteran is loading his gun, knotting a noose, carefully studying the label printed on the back of a medicine bottle.

What can we do to help?

That's a large question. So large and difficult a question, in fact, that by this time next week another 154 veterans will be dead by their own hands.

A partial answer: Perhaps we can be more present in each other's lives. Perhaps we can listen—really listen to a war veteran when they recount horrific tales of mental, physical and spiritual savagery without immediately gushing forth all manner of cant and corrective encomiums ("You're a hero!") designed to deflect the existential angst of someone who has walked through the Shadowed Valley and survived—until now. 

Perhaps one could say to such a person struggling to hold on to life: "I know how difficult it is for you to talk about these things. God knows I don't have all the answers. But I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here now, _______. Let's make it through this next minute together, okay? Hang on. Hang on just one more minute. Hour. Day. Tomorrow we'll do something together. That's a promise. You don't have to talk about anything tomorrow if you don't want to. I'm comfortable with silence. The choice to speak—or not—is yours, and yours alone. But know this—I'll be fully present and there for you. Hang on until tomorrow and we'll go bowling/catch a movie/hit the bar/drop into your favorite restaurant or coffee house. Then we'll figure out some small, incremental way of fixing this horrendously fucked-up world and leaving it just a tad better than when we entered it, eh? Like Jim Morrison said: 'No one here gets out alive.' But we're not done yet, bucko. You're not done. There's still work to be accomplished. Tomorrow, you start your second life with eyes wide open. And the knowledge that you are not alone."

POSTSCRIPT: The writer Kurt Vonnegut once remarked to an interviewer (close paraphrase from memory): "I'm older now and guilty of being didactic. What can I say? Being direct saves time; the critics are correct in alleging that I simply say what I mean these days without a lot of monkeying around with plot and theme."

Historically-speaking, the teller of weird tales—whether movie director, lyricist, prose writer or poet—has wrestled with the issue of war and its participants. It is one of the subjects the genre returns to again and again. And despite past efforts by "The Greats" to say all there is to say on the matter, more will be written in the future—war will be with us in the future. "The continuation of diplomacy by other means" (Clausewitz) appears to be a permanent fixture of the human condition. Alas. 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/15/2015, 4:07 AM--

The girl bent over to sweep the limping kitty-cat into her ministering arms, her fingers passing through the hologram as a rumble in the sky above announced the emergence of a flying saucer from the clouds. The alien ship descended to within a couple of hundred feet of the nine-year-old and its tractor beam kicked on—PAHDUMM-THRUMM! 

Melissa Kelly—wide-eyed, mouth opened in a startled 'O' of surprise and awe—found herself cartwheeling head-over-heels into the air—pulled up, up, up—into the gleaming silver belly of the saucer.

A young human female who'd exhibited empathy for another species? A worthy specimen to add to the growing population of the intergalactic zoo housed on Burrdaburrt VII.

The saucer emitted a shrill whine, rotated at hyper-speed about its axis—and blinked out of our dimension.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/16/2015, 8:14 PM--

A Triptych Of Timeless Terrificness [sic] From A Trenchant Trio: 

....................................

We’re developing a new citizenry. 

One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles but won’t be able to think. 

                                                                             —Rod Serling 

We need ghost stories because we, in fact, are the ghosts. 

                                                                            —Stephen King  

 When all else fails, shock them. 

                                                                            —Lord Byron  

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/14/2015, 8:19 PM--

The Clever Predation of X'zotl-mixilplix

.............................................................

The problem: How to ensure a steady supply of distracted, unsuspecting victims who would deliver themselves up for predation night-after-night with clockwork regularity?

After careful consideration of various guises and tactics, X'zotl-mixilplixx, vampiric mimic from a galaxy far, far away, hit upon a promising strategy—it would disguise itself as a drive-through banking ATM.  

 It worked.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/18/2015, 2:27 PM--

Talking Heads Talk or, How Very Droll

.........................

"I think you're insane."

"And you base that opinion on . . ."

"You."

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/16/2015, 8:15 PM--

The Masters Speak (I trust you understand why "Mistresses" would be entirely the wrong word choice here.) 

................................

What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.

                                                                                                                                   —Mary Shelley      

...................................

Anyone who shoots a real gun at you when drunk and angry is simply not husband material, regardless of his taste in literature.

         
                                                                      —Alice B. Sheldon (who oftentimes wrote as James Tiptree Jr.)

...................................

My reputation for writing quickly and effortlessly notwithstanding, I am strongly in favor of intelligent, even fastidious revision, which is, or certainly should be, an art in itself.

                                                                                                                                  —Joyce Carol Oates  

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/18/2015, 12:18 AM--

There's a Severed Head in the Box

.....................................................

"There's a severed head in the box," she said, crossing her legs with a satiny whisper of purple skirt and sheer nylon stockings. "Open it."

Fred laughed. "This box?" he said, poking at the roughly three-square-feet-in-size corrugated cardboard box with a forefinger, effortlessly shifting its position atop the dining room table a couple of inches. "It's clearly empty, dear."

Sheila drew hard on her cigarette, tilted her head back and exhaled burnt tobacco and paper towards the ceiling. "Open the box," she repeated.

Fred laughed again, a bit more uneasily this time. His wife's green, green eyes glittered in the flickering candlelight of the darkened room. Clearly this was some kind of oddball Halloween prank of Sheila's, though he failed to see the humor in such puerile bizarrerie.   

"Okay," he said. "Let's get this over with."

As his fingers fumbled the box flaps open there sounded a silken rustling of the curtain behind him. Fred half-turned when a tickling prickle flared alongside his neck. The scenery revolved crazily as he opened his mouth to scream, though no sound other than a wheezing gasp emerged. 

Fred's head thumped soddenly into the box as his shuddering corpse, fountaining blood and bits of bone marrow from its sword-cloven neck, stagger-stepped to the right and collapsed onto the carpeting, hands twitching twice before freezing into contorted claws. He remained conscious for interminable seconds of shocked horror:  I've been decapitated; MY GOD MY GOD—

Sheila nodded thanks at the assassin, took another drag of her cigarette. Exhaled. Leaned over in her chair to regard her late husband's corpse with the coldest of cold green eyes. "There's a severed head in the box," she said.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/22/2015, 9:49 PM--

@Lucy: Thanks for the link! One-two rabbit punches weirdling and wild.

Today's entry:

......................

Trick or Treat! —scenario 2,415

.......................

"Trick or treat!" they screamed.

"But . . . you're not wearing masks or costumes," Mr. Carson said to the eager-faced children gathered on his front porch. "The spirit and tradition of Halloween involves more than just clomping up and down the block ringing doorbells for candy, you know."

"Trick!" the children shouted. And clawing their false-faces to tatters, the goblin horde pounced upon Mr. Carson like a school of spring-activated piranha, needle-sharp teeth ravaging flesh and shredding clothes. They knocked the bespectacled, sweater-vested octogenarian down and dragged him inside the house to finish feasting.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/23/2015, 12:55 AM--

A Fructus Muscanthropos Melodrama In One Part:

...............................................

Dr. Goldstein looked exceedingly grave and solemn. "I'm afraid your test results confirm our worst fears."

Pedro Lopez paled. His knees buckled but he caught himself; he swayed and threw out a steadying hand to the examination table behind him. Imitating the 1930s film gangsters he watched on late-night Turner Classics Pedro snapped, "Give it to me straight, doc."

"You've been bitten by a were-gnat. More properly, a were-frit fly."

"Madre de dios!" Pedro gasped. "That explains—"

"Your seeming disappearance in front of assembled house guests; the unquenchable, maddening thirst which fuels the urge to sip your wife's lachrymal secretions; the incessant, whiny zoom-NAYIRRRNNN zoom-zoom buzzing Mrs. Lopez experiences in her ears at night."

Maria burst into tears and hurled herself at the doctor's feet, one expertly manicured, red-fingernailed hand clasped to her pounding breast. "O, Dr. Goldstein, I implore thee—whatever must I do to free Pedro from this diabolic curse of the were-gnat?"

"There is but one way to break the curse," spake Dr. Goldstein with grim, implacable sorrow, "only one way to free both your beloved's body and his immortal soul; to ensure his peaceful transition to a higher plane of existence. You must forge a silver micro-BB, have it blessed by a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, send it on to the Forest J. Ackerman Museum of Horror & Science-Fiction for proper authentication, then—the next night Mr. Lopez transforms and you are in possession of this eldritch ammunition—shoot it through his minuscule, preternaturally-buzzing, savage insectile heart."

Maria collapsed in a dead faint.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/21/2015, 7:25 PM--

Overheard At Loyola Press:

...............................................

"Do you know what the theme of Raiders of the Lost Ark is?"

"Sure. Indiana Jones travels to Nepal to retrieve the headpiece of the Staff of Ra from—"

"I didn't ask you to recite the plot of the movie; I asked you what its theme was."

"Uh . . ."

"Don't fuck with Yahweh."

 Bored With Supper: A Cross-species Weltschmerz 

...................................

"Tina! Stop toying with that man and tear his throat out!"

"But Mom-meee . . ."

"Tina!"

Uttering a heartfelt sigh while giving her mother a most dramatic roll of the eyes, Tina Valcheria—beribboned, pink-booted prepubescent werewolf—ripped the cowering greenskeeper's throat out with a back-handed claw swipe and began desultorily nipping at his nose.

"I swear, the way that girl plays with her food . . ." Momma werewolf said to Poppa werewolf. 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/23/2015, 11:24 PM--

Because Yeah I'm Gonna Sneak Another Poem In Here 

......................................................  

How to Write a Poem

To write a poem

paint with flame.

Voyage on solar winds.

Spiral

like a pin-wheel galaxy struck incandescent 

by the laws of physics 

and the glory of matter.

Hang on a bearded lip

a wild, goblin crumb

gone renegade from rich warm bread.

One may also

become a hard, blue-veined cock

maddened by the fires of friction and moisture

into convulsing the Godhead into being.

Haunt graveyards in the company

of Ray Bradbury’s ghost. 

See night moss crawling

on mausoleum stone

               cindered moonlight

reflected from the eyes of granite angels.

Turn corpse and come back, tell us

what pale moths flutter

round the grit of freshly-chiseled tombstones.

Whatever you do, don’t

dance with Bacchus or Bill Gates.

Bad wine and Microsoft word processors

have killed more young poets

than all the sharp-beaked, phony feather-fluffers

flocking to doleful writer’s groups in corporate bookstores.

So you see

being a poet is quite easy.

You just

sit down and crack open

the rind of the mind.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/24/2015, 9:05 AM--

Lovecraft Speaks! (A dozen remarks.)

...............................

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.

What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything!

I couldn't live a week without a private library—indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.

At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.

Do not call up that which you cannot put down.

Life is a hideous thing . . .

Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction.

The thing cannot be described . . .

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'ley wgah'nagl fhtagen!

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/24/2015, 9:33 AM--

Murder Most Hamster or, Crepuscular Cricetinae Devourus Infanticidus (burp!)

.......................................

Pointing to a streaky smear of blood on the glass wall of their aquarium home, then to a gory, gnawed-off foot imperfectly hidden amongst the cedar chips beneath their exercise wheel, Poppa hamster blazed at his mate: "Do you deny it? What other explanation can there be for the disappearance of our babies?! There were four yesterday, now they're nowhere to be found. Admit it—you ate them! You ate them all!" 

Momma hamster averted her eyes from her mate's furious gaze, replied with a snuffling twitch of encrimsoned whiskers: "Fine; I admit it. I ate our babies." Her hands fretfully kneaded her silky chest fur. "I was . . . nervous. Overwrought. We have no privacy here; there's nowhere to hide, Incisor! We don't have enough food. I . . ." She buried her face in her breast; sobbed great, shoulder-heaving sobs of guilt and woe.

"There, there," said Incisor, slipping a consoling arm part-way 'round his mate's prodigious waist. "There, there now, sweet Pouch Cheeks. It is our custom, after all. You were bred young. And there's not enough protein in our diet; you are right about that. So we'll try again, yes? Once the master moves us to a larger tank and we've squirreled away some meat. I'll request a towel be draped over half our glass-walled home to ensure a modicum of privacy to raise our spawnlings."

"Sure," said Pouch Cheeks. "Okay. That sounds better." She swiped at her eyes to dry her tears; managed a weak smile. "Let's try again, in another month or so."

"That's the spirit!" said Incisor with hearty, if rather false-noted keenness. "And next time, when you feel an uncontrollable urge to devour our young . . . try and eat only half the litter, eh?"

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/27/2015, 2:20 AM--

Ten rare titles found on the dollar shelf at my local used bookstore: 

..........................

Blam-blam! Ker-BLAM!: A Revolver's-eye View Of A Year In Chicago 

Being & Nothingness & Iron-bladed Chlorophyll: Existential Lawn Care For The Push-mower Sartre Set

The Young Boy And The Lake 

(Unpublished Hemingway—never finished.) 

Men Who Drank Whiskey At Dawn With Strong Women Who Loved & Laughed & Left 

(More unpublished Hemingway. Introduction by Martha Gellhorn.)

Toward Whom The Smell Rolls 

(Hemingway again. A novel of revolutionary republican flatulence set during the Spanish Civil War.) 

 Odor Mime For Synesthetic Hand Models: An Illustrated Gesticulative Primer of Fetors, Stenches & Reeks

 The Satanic Bible

(Basically, the Bible—with the "thou shalt"s and "thou shalt not"s reversed.)

Disinterment Of The Crawling Whisper: More Tales Of Invisible Whistling Octopi, Meeping Ghouls, Professorial Protagonists & Other Hideous, Unnameable Things 

(Lost tales of H. P. Lovecraft.)  

The Weird Accordion: Two Garps

(John Irving's long-out-of-print pulpish novel of terror-polka, musical instrument/body confusion and split-personality schizophrenic disorder.) 

You'll List Easy

(James Joyce's metafictional masterpiece of clashing ideologies, rambling exploration narrative, pensive adultery, impenetrable asides, Irish nationalism and Dublin pub-crawling. The novel unfolds in the course of a single day in the company of Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom and Molly Bloom—though the reader may feel like they've been trapped in the text for weeks. Months. Years . . .) 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/28/2015, 8:38 AM--

What began as an invitation to post three-sentence weird tales soon expanded to a broader-based invitation to post 3-30 sentence weird tales. I have taken advantage of this loosening of the rules to post entries that varied widely in subject matter, thematic content and tone. In fact, I've gone so far as to post demented nursery rhymes, song parodies, quotes from "The Masters", political commentary, poems and other items interspersed amongst the general fictive weirdness. It has turned into a web-based improvisational column of sorts.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/30/2015, 12:11 AM--

It had been ten years to the day that Andrew lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. There'd been nothing easy about recovery, and from time to time he still felt an overwhelming sense of loss. Each time he took a step, he heard the crunch of sand grinding away in his mechanical ankle, a consequence of trying to take a romantic walk along the beach with his honey. He'd drifted off to sleep remembering the horror of the accident.

Pain slammed him awake.  His eyes flew open just in time to see a boot fly forward, breaking his nose and bringing forth a fountain of blood. As he faded away, he recognized his old boot.

In the morning, the coroner and throng of cops surrounding Andrew's bed could only cluck and shake their heads. Next to the pile of mush that had once been his head lay Andrews withered leg with the bloody boot still attached.

@Raine376:

Ooh, that's a really good one!

How about:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Fangs tore into flesh and bloody juices flowed over saggy chins. Slurps came with belches and indistinct chatter. Steel clanked against glass and words were spoken between mouthfuls.

God, my parents are pigs, Andy thought and plugged in his earphones. He wiped off the chip crumbs from his gravy stained t-shirt.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

There, that's all I got at the moment

Welcome to the party, Raine376! Great ending and nice descriptive detail there re: "the crunch of sand grinding away in his mechanical ankle". 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 10/30/2015, 12:09 AM--

To be appreciated you must be read.

                                   —Edgar Allan Poe     

............................................................

         “Odd group of Christians.” Wotan directed his attention back to Daniel. “Remember me, Christ-man.” His eyes were cold and gray as Arctic seas. “This boon I ask of you.”          

         “What the hell are you talking about? Sit down. Before you get hurt.”

         Allfather prayed: the prayer so many had sent to him through the centuries, voiced now for himself. “Call us, Almighty War-father . . .” He coughed, continued. “To the Raven’s end and Ragnarök. We shall not come haltingly, on lame feet.” A twist of the brass head of the cane—ka-SCHINNNG!—and four feet of naked steel gleamed in his hand. “To victory,”—the discarded scabbard went clattering—“or Valhalla.”     

         Wotan started up the aisle.

                                                               —excerpt from Come Haltingly, On Lame Feet; Carl E. Reed

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 11/3/2015, 8:25 PM--

           Professor Robert Howard Wilson hated children. He hated the nerve-jangling aural assault of piping idiot voices; he abominated the spastic flailing of juvenile locomotion; he abhorred the foul odors of dirt, sweat, urine and sour milk that clung to brightly-garbed hobgoblin bodies. But most of all he detested children because he saw them for what they were: cruel and scheming little savages primed by the calculated barbarisms of nature and culture to fall upon one another at the first sign of oddity or weakness. Homo ignoramus-minisculus, he termed the loathsome genotype.

         The professor bore no especial love for their dull-witted, incurious spawners either. Everywhere, it seemed, the selfish short-sightedness of men and women destabilized the planet, as Earth’s painstakingly evolved and delicately balanced ecosystems were jarred into disequilibrium and swamped beneath a tidal wave of mewling human flesh.

         Professor Wilson, a gray-haired, peripatetic man in his early sixties, had once been asked what he thought of having children. He’d ruminated a moment, brushed his fiance’s cheek with his lips and whispered, “A child, my dear, is the corpse of Eros.”

         The wedding was called off.

                                                          —excerpt from The Strange & Curious Tale of Prof. Robert Howard Wilson; Carl E. Reed

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 11/4/2015, 12:13 AM--