Short Story Strands: Halloween 2012 Edition
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THE POWER OF SPIRIT
by Ch’kara SilverWolf
The young girl lay curled up in the cupboard where her uncle locked her until he was ready to use her to sate his lust.
This had been happening for many months. Her mother had left the family and the children had been sent to different relatives to be cared for. Unfortunately for the girl, she got the worst possible place to be.
Each time he took her she let her spirit drift from her small body and watched from above as he brutalized her. She had always had this ability; only now it helped her to survive.
Suddenly she heard his heavy plodding feet. He was a big bull of a man. She cringed against the wall as the bolt shot back and he opened the door.
“Well little one, I’m ready for you now.” He spoke it as a term of endearment which made her want to vomit.
Something in her snapped and anger coursed through her. She separated her spirit from her body and rose up in front of him like a ghostly spectra.
His eyes bulged and he backed away with terror on his face; he did not recognize the spirit as the girl’s.
“You’ll never touch the girl again, old man! If you come near her again, I and my friends will haunt you for the rest of your days.”
The man turned, and screaming, fled out of the house. The girl’s spirit drifted back into her body; she smiled and stood straight and proud knowing she would never be used like that again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ch’kara SilverWolf’s novel, Daughter of Light & Dark, is the first in a trilogy Prophecy of Nitesh. Ch’kara has always had a love of fantasy and magik, mystical and mythical creatures; they are like old friends who come alive on the pages when she writes.
DOMINIQUE
by Edwin Stark
Dominique Drummond was quite content with having found a nice bed and board in Miss Gallagher’s house. It was cheap, the neighborhood was nice and the food was superb… but Dom was also quite intrigued by the old lady’s suggestion that he should never enter the kitchen’s pantry downstairs.
So, one day when Miss Gallagher went out to run an errand, Dom decided he’d sneak into the kitchen and have a look-see. He opened the door to the pantry with some trepidation, and was greeted by the smell of stuff that had been stored for too long. It was dark in there, so he pulled the cord of a lonesome 60-watt light bulb that hung overhead. It swayed in the air, casting menacing, moving shadows everywhere. Nothing interesting in there: just a lot of canned food, spices and big sacks of flour and grains.
Dom shrugged dismissively and switched off the light. He was about to step out the small storeroom when a hairy, clawed hand grabbed him by the right shoulder and drew him back into the pantry with a violent pull. Before plunging into the darkness, Dom managed to see that, though the arm looked quite withered and ancient, it was well muscled and fully covered with thick white hair. It possessed superhuman strength.
“I told you to never have a peek into the pantry, silly boy,” a snarling, cavernous voice said in a chuckle.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: My name’s Edwin Stark, and I was born in Caracas, Venezuela. So far, I have written four books: AI Rebellion, Eco Station One, a very bizarre and funny satire, Cuentos, and The Clayton Chronicles.
IN SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM
by Lisa Williamson
They tell you in space they can’t hear you scream. Yeah right. Tell that to Joe. Poor guy didn’t pay attention to the rule book. Everybody knows you don’t bring alien vegetation onto a space station but well, he did. He bought some seeds and slipped them into the hydroponics tanks. Now that might have been harmless if the seeds were what he thought they were but, well, he got rooked.
See, he thought he was getting pumpkins. Yeah, those big orange gourds that taste good when cooked. He had a hankering for a pie and nothing from the synthesizers tasted right to him. So he traded some useless chips when he went down world and snuck into where the plants were growing. He hid his precious seeds in the back where they wouldn’t be seen. Little did he know that Earthly soil and water was like insta-grow to his seeds.
They grew almost overnight into these big orange pumpkins. Now if they had just been pumpkins it would have been a fine and tasty treat, but when he went to check on them he got the surprise of his short life. There, eating its way through the other plants, was his pumpkin. Oh it was at first a lovely sight, big and round and firm, but when he reached out to pat it the thing spun about, growled and snapped at him.
Oh my, did he let out a screech. Really, a big man like that screaming like a little girl. I still laugh as I think about it. He fell on his big…oh right kids. Well let’s say it was a good thing that “pumpkin” was rooted. I obviously had to go to his rescue.
When he got it through his head that it couldn’t chase him, he started babbling. Telling me all about where he got the seeds and begging me not to tell the Captain. Now why would I do that? After all, it is just a piece of hungry vegetation.
Once I got him calmed down and out of my hydroponics lab, I turned my attention to the noisy foliage. It was still thrashing and gnashing its teeth and waving its leaves about. I am not the type to be afraid of a plant, so it just made me laugh. I mean really? A plant is a plant, no matter if it has teeth or not. I stood back and looked it over: big, round, firm and fleshy. Other than those teeth, it was the perfect plant.
Well, now out here in space we don’t have the normal calendar like the planet bounds do, but I knew it was near that holiday where things were supposed to get all spooky and scary. I had a thought that made me grin and waved to the plant before putting my plan into action.
What plan you ask? Well I set up a party of course! After all I might be the guy in charge of all those plants, but I had another job: morale officer. Got things together and sent out the call to my buddies to come down to hydroponics that night. The party was great and the look on Joe’s face when he saw his prize pumpkin was hysterical.
Yeah it was still there, a bit different but then setting out those big pies in front of what remained of the thing was perfect. After all, if you’re gonna have a Halloween party you need a jack-o-lantern right?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: I am fascinated by stories where the characters go through changes and develop strength from great trials. I prefer fantasy, science fiction and horror to the general fiction. By placing my characters in fantastical settings I can let them grow and develop in ways that you normally can’t.
SPOILS OF EARTH
by Michael Youngblood
It is day four hundred seventy-five and I am the only one left. To be more accurate, the only victim left. After the biological attack, most were changed in minutes while the more resilient were victims of disbelief and false hypotheses. Much as is human nature, blame was thrown at every enemy nation until the realization came that everyone was overwhelmed with these abominations.
They were first referenced as the walking dead, for lack of a better word, but they weren’t the mindless, lumbering creatures portrayed in fiction. They appear human and yet devolved into a primal rage of animalism. If caught, they rip flesh and break bones to secure their freedom. If wounded, they shrug off crippling pain without a bat of an eye or a slow of step. Yet through all of this, they coordinate hunting parties and exploit our every weakness. Those left called them Scourge.
In my past life, I served as a soldier in a uniformed service with uniformed principles of morality and just cause. In this nightmare, I have debased all that separated man from the Scourge to match the enemies’ animalistic barbarism. I feel lost and suffer more than any human mind should and no religious piety or technological superiority has helped to save my sanity. I am truly alone and yet defeat is still a jagged pill to swallow without their blood to ease its passing.
It became harder knowing this wasn’t God’s wrath or the work of man. They appeared from the sky a month ago and have been hunting the leftovers holed up just trying to survive. I had one hundred souls looking to me for guidance and eve
ry one of them is now dead. I still remember the screams of the children as their flesh was ripped from their bones and their mothers threw themselves at the creatures to only satiate their lust further. That was twenty-eight days ago and when the sun fell, only four of us remained alive: an infant born in this tragedy, her young mother, myself, and my seven-year-old Samantha.
We were forced into the base’s last secure room with no windows, no lights, no source of food, and no escape. The only sound was the relentless gnashing and pounding of our captors on the steel door every hour of every day. The mother, though her love for her daughter was strong, became corrupted to the idea of death, which ultimately won out in her mental struggle to cope. Over the deafening sounds and darkness that surrounded us, Samantha and I were oblivious to their suicide. All I could do was hold my daughter and pray for her deliverance from this hell, but my faith was hollow and undoubtedly unheard. I would be lying if the appeal of death did not have an appeal, and yet the only sanity I had left was held by the small and shivering warmth in my arms.
Yesterday, almost overcome with destitution, the roar stopped and I slowly opened our prison. Still carrying Samantha, I made my way to a window and saw alien ships landing by the thousands. It did not take long to realize this was a purge to claim their spoils of war — our planet. Looking down was the first moment I realized Samantha had passed. Her body was curled and still clung to my jacket. The last shred of my sanity was gone. I write this as I watch alien children playing on the corpse of humanity’s existence, and my new life calls for their blood in recompense…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mr. Youngblood prides himself on original story lines that will take you for a roller coaster ride that rarely returns you to the same place you got on at. Presently, he has finished the first book in his Codex Andromeda Saga but has plenty more original, thought provoking story lines to bring to fruition.
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