WEP Horrorfest!

Although the WEP group--Write...Edit...Publish--has ceased regular operation, our wonderful leaders brought it back with an October prompt to write about what terrifies us. To see the contributions, check the list on the WEP page.  I've been needing some motivation to write flash fiction, so I'm happy to have this nudge, even if horror isn't my thing.

 

 

We are meant to provide a tag-line for the story, so here's mine: 

On a gloomy wet day, a writer discovers what is truly terrifying in a world that can seem hostile all around.

835 words, full critique acceptable.

True Terror

What terrifies you? What makes you shake in your shoes and go watery at the knees? It may not be what you think.

I’m afraid of heights. Well, not really heights. I like mountain tops. I just don’t like edges. The feeling that I could fall, and can imagine just what it feels like when I hit the bottom. That’s bad enough, but a person can manage it, mostly by staying away from cliffs. And I’m not afraid of ghosts, because I don’t believe in them, and I don’t have to be scared of snakes or spiders because we don’t have any nasty ones here. I’m a little spooked by dark alleys at night, but that’s easy to avoid.

One dark, wet day in October I found out what really terrifies me, and it nearly killed me.

It started as a normal day, rising before daylight (because there really isn’t much daylight late in October when it settles in to rain on Seattle), and heading to the kitchen for breakfast.

 

The low level of tea in the can gave me pause, but there was enough for a pot or two yet. Anyway, if things got desperate, I could make do with tea bags, though I’d be forced to make snide comments about steeped cardboard. I ate my porridge and drank my tea, and more or less convinced myself I was ready to face a long day of revisions on my latest novel.

 

By the time I settled in front of the computer, the sun had forced a little light through the clouds and I could make out shapes in the garden beyond my study window. Some of them looked suspiciously like gnomes or aliens, though I’d put no Halloween decorations in this private garden. I took a good gulp of tea and looked again, and the eerie creatures resumed their proper shapes as shrubs and small trees, plus a ball that had come over the hedge from the neighbors. I’d go out there soon and toss it back; the children would be missing it if the rain ever stopped.

 

Nothing about the day went well from there. A letter from my editor informed me that I had a lot of work still to do on the MS, and two beta-readers said the same thing. I knew that, but who wants to be told they haven’t yet mastered their craft, while trying to get by on a cup of weak tea?

 

Still, I’m a professional. I forged on. I could fix it, and dug in to do so. The rain, which had let up, resumed in earnest just before noon. Lunch turned out to be a banana and three limp carrot sticks, because I should have gone to the grocery store but didn’t because of the rain. That was harder to fix, but I poured another cup of weak tea and got back to work.

 

At three p.m., just as the light was fading from my silent study (silent except for the all-too-infrequent click of the keyboard and those weird random noises it makes when thinking), my computer dinged twice. Two emails. I gave in to temptation, thus precipitating the horror. I looked at my email. Both the new messages came from journals to which I’d submitted stories. A premonitory chill ran up my spine. What were the odds both would respond at the same moment? I don’t like coincidences; they seldom portend joy.

 

This one certainly did not. I opened the first email and was immediately gripped by a fierce chill. When the letter begins with “Although,” you don’t have to read on. The second email, when I cautiously clicked on it, my arm stretched full length while I backed as far away from the mouse as I could get, began with the same word.

 

That was when events spiraled completely out of control.

 

Desperate for something that would remind me I am a worthwhile human being if not a competent writer, I blindly fled the horror on the computer monitor, the demons of doubt that assailed me from all sides, and those aliens in the back garden. I raced for the kitchen, knowing the one thing that could restore perspective, self-worth, and my blood-sugar levels.

 

I needed chocolate, in a life-and-death sort of way.

 

Trembling, near to fainting from the effort of holding myself together in the face of impending doom, I clutched at the cabinet behind which I kept the universal restorative, and my last hope of survival evaporated into the grey clouds swirling ominously outside my windows.

 

There was no chocolate on the shelf.

 

Some evil or feckless creature had stolen the last bar of 85% dark, the chocolate almonds, even the trio of disgusting milk-chocolate eggs left from someone’s misguided Easter gift.

 

As I sank to the floor, my mind crumbling under the weight of horror, my last thought was a terrible realization.

 

The accursed being who’d emptied the chocolate stash was in the house, though no one was there but me.

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©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2024
 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated. 


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