Writing | Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

20/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 18

Today’s image makes me shudder every time I see it so I shall link it and not show it here like I usually do. No known source.

http://i.imgur.com/Yd12t.jpg

It starts off as an aperture of the skin here and there, all over the diseased’s body. Feelings of panic and anxiety are normal. You should seek out your doctor immediately for treatment. If not, the apertures will grow long, thin hairs around the edges, and they might expand. At this point, the spread of the parasite is mostly subdermal. Nerves grow over the arm and leg muscles, taking shortcuts through them if they need to, until the nerves have reached the brain. This is accompanied by a feeling of coldness and vast depths near the apertures. Then they blink.

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18/Oct/2012

Plots You Can Have #3 – Futuristic Edition

[Trigger Warning: suicide]

Part 2: https://zombiesintelligently.com/2012/08/26/worldbuilding-3-when-to-let-go-new-stuff/#more-355

Part 1: https://zombiesintelligently.com/2012/08/20/a-few-plots-you-can-have/

This time we’ve got the following genres: existential romance, vigilante fiction, space anti-opera, paranoir, etc (did you know you can just make up genre names?)

Love-(You)-Not

existential romance

Futuristic Megacity. Boy meets girl. Boy splits into million versions of self, only one which dares fall in love with girl. Girl falls in love with boy. Suicide wave strikes city. Media panic. Boy questions own courage. Girl afraid of outside. City crumbles. Boy meets afraid version of himself. Girl confronts re: this; gets wrong version of boy. “You dared go outside.” Girl breaks down. Wrong version of boy convinces girl of double suicide. Right version of boy is too late. Stays there waiting for either of them to wake up again, because boy doesn’t want to Romeo. Fade out.
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17/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 17

Image courtesy of Pat Kight on Google+

The safest place on Earth. Strawhat Nick said that wearing thick gloves and pounding the walls of the red barn like it would stand there forever. I hid there in thunderstorms on the upper floor and tried to calm down the cattle, whispering to them that we’re in the safest place on Earth. Well structured, uninteresting, with lots of hay to live on and lightning conuctors along the sides so we’re untouchable.

I cannot get the images out of my head now; their giant cow pupils shrinking, their jaws opening to moo without getting any sound out, their legs dangling.

There was a crack of thunder and then the rain stopped. That was the wrong way around, I thought, rain should start after the thundercrack.

There was a low hum and then the slits and gaps in the boards glowed. I felt like I was sinking, but upwards, and my breath hitched. For a moment I was weightless. I held onto something.

Tufts of hay fell past me, ceilingwards.

The ceiling was dismantled with ease and the boards laid neatly down outside. The cows were carried up, slowly turning, utterly silent and terrified. Only I could scream and I did.

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17/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 16

Image courtesy of Shelby Goatz at Google+

Chests heave. Knives are dropped. Plates stop spinning on the checkerboard floor. The cellar door bangs shut. As the dust settles from their last fight, Marianne hides where no dust has ever even been stirred. Except, something stirs. There, down between two crates filled with Fragile somethings, something moved. Could have been a trick of the light if there was any light down here. Her pulse quickens. She sticks to the classics.

“Hello?”

Unfortunately for her, so do I.

“Don’t you just wish,” I say, voice sweet and slow and dark like molasses, “that he could understand how it feels?”

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15/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 15

There will be worms, maggots, and eggs in everybody else’s corpse but your body will smell of rosewater with a hint of tangerine and cinnamon. When the others rot, when their skin will iris open everywhere to let the insects and dirt in, your skin will glass and smoothen and you will only grow more beautiful. Every eyelash you lose is a step to perfection; you cannot bruise, blacken, or blister. Your deep green eyes will keep staring unintimidated toward the sky when I dig you up from your grave and this time I will be right; you will last.

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14/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 14

“Why would we be safe in this temple?”

“Because the undead can’t enter there.”

Gilmichael closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. “Right, but what about the ones already here?”

I laughed, nervously. “What are you talking about? This place doesn’t have a graveyard.”

“No, you don’t get it.”

The building rumbled.

He looked up at me from his hands.

“Probably… just thunder. Been a lot of, uh, thunderstorms lately.”

“Everyone is brought back to life. Hell is being evacuated,” he said.

The bones of many, many dead stirred inside the templestones. I felt all heat disappear from my face.

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14/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 13

Twice as long today to make up for having nothing for yesterday’s picture, or something.

There is a TV commercial which no-one else has ever seen. Going for 6 years now. It is about this miracle powder called Pristine. It is a dumb commercial. Completely unrealistic, I tell myself. I’m often shaking when I tell myself that. I am out of sleeping pills now and it seems to happen more often recently. I do not often realize until it is too late to turn the machine off, but even if I try, I stumble, the TV is sluggish, or if I pull the plug it still runs until the commercial’s 45 seconds are all done:

A simple scene, without dialogue.

A home. A soft white mat. A window shatters. Two pairs of boots climb in– everything’s filmed from the floor. They go into the kitchen; a barefoot man is presumably cooking. His yelp’s silenced. He’s dragged into the living room. One of the boot-clad men bends down for a big glass shard and then it’s just boots and trembling feet again. Cloth rips. We hear the slick, sloppy noise of cutting meat. That continues for a good while, until my head falls upside-down in a close-up, and the men who killed me start cleaning up.

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11/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 11

Most of us lived with them. For many years I had a clamper bite into my thigh, deeper each month. Sometimes it walked for me, felling me clumsily. Maggio from Gargoyle Street had a liversphere, leaking poison from him.

One avoided the factory grounds. It was the kind of place where even the dumbest teenagers would not dare each other to go. Only accumulators went there.

Recognized by clampers on their skulls, which bored deep into their eye sockets, extending antennae and radars to the air. Accumulators furtivated there as often they could, trading bone and blood for spare parts.

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10/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 10

Vines litter the walkway, and right before they get to the gates of the castleyard they see a signpost. A vine is wrapped around its base as if holding it up.

DANGER!

it says,

RUSHMERE CASTLE IS A BAANKLIDE

“Baanklide?” the young one asks.

OBSERVE FROM THE BAANKLIDE OBSERVATION TOWER INSTEAD

“Er, a mythical monster from long ago. It can’t stay still but has to try. Looks like beautiful architecture and eats humans for their thoughts. Some say they’re still around.”

WALK THIS WAY

They eventually get to the tower– a stunning building– and the door opens itself for them.

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9/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 9

One boot on the man’s back, wire in her hands. “Red eyes. You know what that means.”

On his knees, hands behind his back, struggling to right himself. “What it means is that I smoked pot a few hours ago and I’m having trouble sleeping. Nothing more.”

“Yeah, right. Your pockets are stuffed with posies. What’s that supposed to mean? You’re a kleptomaniac gardener? Give me a reason to not tighten this strap.”

“Safety measure. Look, I haven’t got no plague alright– watch me not cough or anything. Don’t be paranoid.”

A moment’s hesitation. “Paranoia got me this far, buddy.”

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