Tag: grimlist2020

#Spooktober2020 Day 30: Plague

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

My mouth was a weapon. One I could aim and fire at anyone. But once. Just once. Too obvious and the authorities would take me down.

Shouldering my way through the crowd, I grinned at the knowing.

So, so many people had gathered for our high school reunion. I hadn’t been invited, but found out about the reunion anyway. All these people who picked on me. Shunned me. They would make a perfect ground zero.

When I got to the middle of the gymnasium, lost in the crush of my peers all around me, I

opened my mouth

and

coughed.

#Spooktober2020 Day 29: Mirror

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Seven mirrors in the house and I smashed every one to pieces when you left me. Seven times seven equals forty-nine years of bad luck. Worth it to never see your face look back at me again.

You wanted to ‘be your own person.’ To ‘do things for yourself for once.’ But what about me? Together from the womb, you and I. My bad luck that you abandoned me.

Crying and gasping amidst the wreckage of the mirrors around me, I grasped the iron crowbar with shaking hands, lifting it one last time. Just one more mirror to destroy.

You.

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#Spooktober2020 Day 28: Nightmare

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

On my way into the kitchen to make breakfast, I tripped over something soft and squishy. When I flipped on the a light, there was a teddy bear, sitting in the doorway. Facing the fridge.

I had no kids and owned no teddy bears.

Following the teddy’s gaze to the fridge, I found words spelled out with my letter magnets. Two words.

‘He’s coming.’

I woke up. I had my dream journal with me in bed. Pen in my hand. Half asleep, I had written two words.

‘He’s coming.’

In the dark morning outside, a tapping started on my window.

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#Spooktober2020 Day 27: Spellbound

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Her influence started small, but she caught you up in her spellbound following early on. You obsessed with her – the pictures, the status updates, the videos. All about her.

You wanted to be her so bad. It didn’t matter that I said you were more than enough.

Coming home one day to find her in the house – you as her look-alike – shouldn’t have surprised me. But it did. Not a trace of you remained in her face.

She didn’t spellbind me the way she did you. The way you did me. You became a stranger to me.

I miss you.

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#Spooktober2020 Day 26: Culling

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

We started sticking together when more and more of us disappeared each night. At first we consoled ourselves with the story that those who went missing had made it off the streets. Reconciled with family. Gotten clean. Begged enough to rent an apartment.

Until seven of the homeless community vanished at once.

Huddled together beneath a bridge, we didn’t realize we had made culling us easier until unmarked white vans pulled up, surrounding us.

Leaving my belongings behind, I scrabbled away before city officials could hem me in. Covering my ears to block out the screams echoing in my wake.

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#Spooktober2020 Day 25: Purge

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

I fought against the tide of people shoving me from behind, pushed forward by indifferent forces funneling us into a featureless corporate building. I had seen creatives, my friends, enter this place and come out the other side wearing business suits and complaining about taxes. I knew what was coming, but I couldn’t escape.

As I stumbled through the door, I wished for the touch of guitar strings under my fingers.

Inside were cubicles as far as I could see. My mind drained of songs about life and happiness. Unresisting, I headed toward my designated cubicle. Purged of all individuality.

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#Spooktober2020 Day 24: Altar

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

Deep in the woods, I built a mound of dirt and twigs and pinecones, an altar upon which to make my sacrifice. Packed together with my bare hands, mud squeezed cool and alive between my fingers, under my nails.

Rain started drizzling through whispering pine needles. I laid my phone down upon a bed of dry leaves on the altar. Fire from my lighter caught on the leaves with a crackle. Plastic and metal began to melt. The glass screen cracked.

Soon the phone melted down to a black lump. All my contacts, all my apps, sacrificed.

For my freedom.

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#Spooktober2020 Day 23: Cauldron

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

The cold had seeped deep into my bones by bath time. Shivering, I lit a fire beneath my oversized cauldron hanging from a metal hook driven deep into the brick above my hearth. Deep enough to hold my weight.

I started to melt the moment I settled into the bubbling water. My skin began to slough off. Floating around on the water’s surface like eerie bits of soup.

Revealing myself for the lizard-person I was.

I would have to reapply a new human skin, but that would come later. For now, basking in hot luxury, I hissed a contented sigh.

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#Spooktober2020 Day 22: Cursed

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

“Smile,” you said. “People will wonder what you’re up to.”

So I smiled. I couldn’t not. Your voice cursed my very bones with an alien desire to make you happy. If you wanted my smile, you could have it. Though inside I seethed with fury.

You never thought to wonder what I was up to, gazing at me in the closet where you had locked me up. Never read the formulas and designs I wrote on the walls. Planning your fall.

Through my smile, I recited my own curse. For your silence.

For your silence, I traded my hated smile.

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#Spooktober2020 Day 21: Vow

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

‘Til death do us part. That was the vow.

I knew that meant, since I died, that you should be free of me. Somehow, I thought you would be happy to see me. That I dug out. Yet as I shambled up our driveway, grave dirt trailing off my heels, I felt unreasoning rage.

Rage at the unfamiliar car in the garage.

Rage at your silhouette through the window, wrapped around someone else.

Rage that my funeral had just happened this morning.

Once I had vowed love. Now, as I opened the front door with rotting hands, I vowed revenge.

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