flash fiction | Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

27/Oct/2012

Something Goes Wrong in Space, part III & NaNoWriMo Stuff

Okay so obviously I stopped being able to write the horror drabbles. This has mostly to do with me not being able to write on cue, I think. Anyways. EXCITING THINGS!

1. Drakekin is doing NaNoWriMo this year.

You might remember Drakekin as being the person with whom I developed the Something Goes Wrong in Space outline for. What is even more exciting than this thing being novelized is the fact that it will be up on the interwebs so that we can read it there! AND that there actually is a terrifying explanation behind That-Which-Speaks. Drakekin will post the things here, and it will be awesome. AND, I just renoticed, its working title is even more ominous than “Something Goes Wrong in Space”, y’all.

2. I am doing NaNoWriMo this year.

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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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9/Oct/2012

Nightmare Fuel October 2012, Day 8

Suicide by Cop

Lucy was in one of her moods when Clark came home from the office. The house was nearly speckless and dinner was cooking – something sweet. Even the bits of flappy wallpaper had been glued back to the wall. She wore a dress that was all buttons and flowers and an apron over that and she smiled her pearlywhite when Clark walked in through the door.

He struggled out of his jacket and scarf and hat. It was the 1950’s in the house and he tried to remember the rules for leaving shoes on inside the house.

“Shoot any criminals today, hon?” she asked him.

A scoff. “You know I just do paperwork, sugar.”

“But you brought the gun home, yes?” She was on tiptoes to kiss him and let her arms stay behind her back, balancing herself like a ballet dancer.

“Yes, as is regulation.” He rolled his eyes. Hung the jacket and holster on the wooden thing that looked a bit like a tree and had no name as far as he was concerned. Pulled away from the kiss and stepped into the kitchen, “need any help with this?”

There was a strong smell of syrup and it hit him like a sack of meat to the face and watered his eyes.

“No! It’s all me.” She dragged him out into the hall again and slammed the door. “Go do something manly. Watch sports or something.”

“I don’t even like– what is it you’re cooking anyway?”

He waited a bit at the door, shaking his head and opening his eyes carefully. She stood before him again with a silver tray and a smile and a curtsy. On the silver tray were two beer cans. “Drinking beer is manly,” she said.

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Tag: flash fiction