Spooktober story ecks
Spooktober Holdover Single x
As it turns out, the world 𝘪𝘴 a vampire.
One that can be slain.
But it is 𝘐, Jon, who was sent as a secret destroyer.
To hold the vampire world and expose it to flame.
As for my pain, well, you’ll see.
I knew. I still know.
The guild saw me, cool and cold.
I’ve done well thus far.
In order to remain undetected I strip naked and paint my body midnight blue.
I paint my teeth, too, because I tend to smile as I smite.
I get the sense that my fellow guild members don’t believe in me.
They laugh at my naked form.
Slay the vampire, they say.
Slay the world.
Why don’t they do it?
Why won’t they help me?
The townsfolk need a spectacle, they say.
They need the novice to stand in glory.
To create a new legend.
I think I get it.
I feel the urge.
The support, however ethereal.
There can only be one, and the only one is me.
I grab my staff and my knuckles whiten.
The reincarnate.
They who made the sea stand still.
They who must be reborn.
They who must die once more, and then again.
I stand, backed only by spirit but not by force.
Alone.
I venture.
I journey.
I quest.
And yet, despite all my rage, I am still just a level 2 mage.
Spooktober story XX_xx_XX
“So, I just looked down there for the first time and let me just say, I am appalled.”
People snicker, and one speaks up, “I love it.”
Someone spits off of the balcony.
A stray cat on the skywalk below is startled and begins to lick itself.
The dullest bird from a nearby pigeon flock is struck in the head by a sticky raindrop.
Above, the neighborhood’s pigeon obsessive squawks with delight.
Below, the neighbors reel in their laundry and shut their windows in preparation for a drizzle of white shit.
“Look at those doves.”
“Beautiful. And look, we can almost see the sun.”
Barely-pattering smears appear on the sand, b(h)inkling with faint but pleasant sound. Binkle. Binkle.
“We’re gonna have to clean our laundry line. I’ll call the neighbors and let them know.”
*Ring Ring*
*Ring Ring*
Click.
…
… … …
“Hello? …”
A stray cat bats at the head of a stunned and spitcovered pigeon. The cat sniffs in. The pigeon barely flutters its wings frightening the cat into an anti-curious and overzealous backwards leap.
A neighbor below bemoans the shadow cast across their window.
“Oh, now what’s this?”
“…
…… … ……
… Beep - Beep - Beep - Beep - …”
The neighbors across the way aren’t answering their phone.
“Someone spit again.” says a neighbor above.
“You’ll spit, you did it before.”
“Nah, I can’t spit. Not anymore. That was stupid.”
The cat jumped too far, accidentally flinging itself from the skywalk and down to the laundrylines. Neighbors start to take notice.
“Well, I’m perfectly happy just going back inside. We should keep playing if nobody’s gonna spit.”
“I’ve got some coins.” says a neighbor above.
A couple of shabby, chipped coins almost glisten in the almost sunlight.
A neighbor far below notices a tug on their laundryline.
“Oh, oh whoa, hey hey come here!”
“No way!”
A screen door, luxurious and aerated as it could possibly be, closes behind a partyful of neighbors.
“Back to it then? Okay, cowards.”
A pigeon on the skywalk stands upright.
A neighbor reels back their laundryline in a hurry.
“They’d better unlock the damned gear! Or pick up the damned phone!”
A flock of pigeons are ill-met by brutal roostings beyond the neighbors above.
Someone relinquishes, “Okay I’ll fucking spit.”
A pigeon on the skywalk coos.
A neighbor below shrieks.
A flock of pigeons remakes itself whole.
Jon Phillips spits onto the stuck laundryline of a neighbor’s below.
A black cat lands predictably on its feet, way, all the way down on the sands below the belowest neighbors, cursing each neighbor it passed.
SPOOKTOBER STORY: Guest Submission by Jon Elliott
“GADZOOKS! My stupendously dumb son guessed my password and now it’s Spocktober!”
“I put my hair on the nightstand and told my stupendously dumb son “Now sonny, don’t take you’re ol’ pa’s hair. He needs that for work.” He then nods his head in acknowledgment before running face-first into a mirror because like father, like son. As I awoke to a pool of blood that my stupendously dumb son left on my bedroom floor like an IDIOT, I discovered that my hair wasn’t there. “Gadzooks! Suffering Scooby snacks! What the heck happened to my hair?!” I exclaimed. I looked around the house and the trail of blood as well as pieces of my hair led to the garage. His unicycle was gone but he left a typed note in some bullshit font, it’s... hard to decipher... is that Papyrus?.. or is that Brush Script? Oh god. It’s HORRIBLE. I feel even more dead inside. The note reads “Took Furby to dog park”
I lost my hair... to time. Never to be seen again. Now I’m going to lose my job as a successful vacuum salesmen all because of my beautiful hair! At least I can get by on my hairy arms and buttoned up shirt!”
Hey.
Not so much is as serious.
I know, I know
I know no about what more is.
Haha
Else’s what could is.
How about you?
How was our kiss (ez and already fully-substantiated call-out pseudokrakoomed.)?
How has been the goodnight plane as sl(i)(e)pt through? Lmao
Really. Real. Actually. Maybe about even if the past is the only thing you got.
How many, and who? And why?
Ez usual suspect, for everything I mean...
Scarlet hinted ernestness
Jon Phillips’ Phillips’ intuitive tapioca Boba Tea’s tease.
But you know about this kind of Purple runaway.
And I torment.
And you torment.
Getting some kind of grip BECOMES THE UNLIKELY WRIGGLE.
God has about as much to do with you as asparagus has its affect upon the most hydrated of my informed pisses.
Good as an epithet and very little else-in-relevance.
Fucking get off it.
Spooktober™ Ok
my condolences to the chef
Spooktober™ Xxx
Please stop calling me Jon Phillips. I am a “bit of prey that might become a feast at any time.”
My heart hand’s threadbare fingernails scritch at mildewed bricks - there is an escape - there must be! For all the times I’ve found myself within and later without? Vision reduced to a scotopic white noise pond - a fuzzed moon through starless clouds. Spent, like a dime. For what? A soundless amplification of my rushes. A tender earache squeal. A bruxism rockfall, and a groaned diaphragmatic thrum. Nerve grooved ribs pinning elbows to the wall’s coarse grater. Elbows folded like confession. The room breathes with me - inhale, it narrows its clever waist; exhale, it plumps. Warm massaging its wet fetor under a sightless shroud.
Hard blink. Release, and hold. No change, no variance. The pond: immobile, concrete, eternal. An ambiguous constriction prevents self-orientation; all limbs’ burdens cancel out. Is this free-fall? Is this a return to my antenatal hearth? What an infantile thought! From this I harvest enough self pity to fuel an outward outburst - I strain - my bones bow and joints shudder. But the mechanics are all wrong - the force is applied too near the pivot point, like pressing the lever on a banded umbrella.
The collapse encompasses all dimensions - time’s arrow is now pointing head-on. This moment is time entire. I reach to scour my memory in the hope to sidestep and view its length, but find the arrow pivots with my dance. There is no past to touch: recall is reduced to reflection. Instead, desperate, I invent aloud:
"I was six, maybe seven. The dog kennel signified reunion and road trips (though it would later signify divorce proceedings and yellowed boyfriend cigarette teeth.) The weather was mama or the baby popped its head off dandelion weather - humming insects and plump leaved trees. I was sticky and raw-cheeked from the day’s play. The memories were still alive, still vibrant: the sourness of hide and seek - forgotten behind a tree; the jubilation of escaping in a game of tag by way of a clever play through a cornfield. We had walked, Mama and I, beside bounding Brutus, my knees grass-stained, to the Steiner kennel.
"A barn had been refitted of its termite-softened pens in favor of chain-link eight by ten kennels, and had supplied the struggling Steiners with a modest income. Mama and Mar (short for Mary, read like mare) greeted each other and toured the kaleidoscope garden with polite interest. Tomatoes bursting, lettuce a latticework of early wilt, cucumbers lazing on the overnourished earth. I stumbled tip toed behind, able to decipher neither the unseeded pathways from the unsprouted rows nor the maze of my companions’ cautious talk. Julius high-kneed expertly, darting from odor to odor, tracing the paths of past through time.
"After the garden, we went into the barn through an aluminum side door. The barn’s hollow flowed with the ineradicable time-mellowed feculence of stall wood. The sparse industrial lighting greened Mama’s cheeks like old linoleum. After a small entry stall housing feed and tools, the barn opened into a gauntlet run between kennel rows - each chain link enclosure faced its twin across a pathway narrow enough that I, at that age, could have run my fingers along both fences at once. Our entrance was not missed by the boarders - the fences began to rattle and the timbres of the breeds various competed for dominance. Mar’s voice rose to match the riotous din and her hand beckoned Mama outside; Mama’s hand implored I stay put.
"No sooner had the door shut behind them than the pandemonium silenced. I braved a wary look into the kennels and found dozens of silent, intentful eyes fixated on me. We watched each other for a small eternity. The hum of the lights and the fans and the dumbed panting silenced any murmurs of conversation outside. Wine cask tension, inwardly and outwardly. I realized, after a time, that I had been holding my breath.
"I cautiously emptied my lungs through my nostrils, and the Pyrenees three cages down along the left wall released a grunt. Nose and tail aligned towards me, she formed a neckless, white silhouette - feet and ears jutting from a snowy, ill-defined mass. Another moment of silence, another grunt. I surveyed the others; they stayed their steaming gargoyles. Another grunt. Her mouth loosened and dropped. A pause - a bark. And another. Each bark a hammer blow; each blow a cracked boulder; each crack a gunshot; each shot the lightning split of a century growth tree from crown to root. Each rally separated by silence just sufficient for the barn to finish its reverberant retort. And each reiteration enough to further drive stakes through my shoes into the concrete foundation. As regular as the midnight chimes.
"Although my eyes were fixed on the third cage on the left, I began to sense a sluggish creep of a splotch of periphery from across the aisle. I did not possess the bravery to shift my gaze. As the rhythm continued, the splotch grew- its extramacular coagulation shifting between contextually sensible shapes (a dog, a tractor, a cow, a cloud) as I tried to make sense of its senselessness. The mass transcended dimensionality - it ignored the confines of the cages and the barn, and grew like a wildfire on a satellite map or like ink dropped on a petri dish until it blotted out a hemisphere of my retinal world. The barks continued, and the growth began to encircle the third cage - growing and feeding on the world around it until all that remained in my world was the Pyrenees suspended in void. The Pyrenees, unmoving, grew in size, as though it were mounted on a track between she and I - the cage dissolved - the face, the eyes, the steaming rancor and sopping gnarl inflating uniformly like pulling a projector away from a wall, until
“the door opened. Mama and Mar entered - adjusting their voices for the continuing racket of the cages rattling and the dogs’ uniform chorus. The blot was gone, and the third cage on the left was empty. I left with mama and we had tomato sandwiches for dinner, and that night I dreamt I lived in a tree in the rainforest.”
My voice, overused, has dredged the room of its still. The room begins to awaken slowly, stirring a clamorous, muffled conscience. Under my tongue falls chaff-like flecks and mold which my spit-dry mouth can’t gather and expel.
The silence is shattered by a tear and screech of brickwork sliding against itself and the crumble of disintegrating mortar. The walls, though undulating, draw increasingly inward. This is the patient but tempestous answer to my attempted escape. The roar of a boxcar torn by god-hands - the orgasm of a battleship - the seismic apocalypse. I try to clap my chapped palms over my ears, but I am pinned immobile. I try to still the walls, but I am pinned immobile. Each brick batters and bruises; the heart of the room - my heart - is pure malevolence. With each moment, another bone is crushed and another deciliter of lung subsumed by flesh. Hours pass in moments.
And as gradually as the room had awoken, it steadies again. I am alive. I am crushed - entombed with perfect efficiency - enveloped by brick as if it were water. My soft flesh pinched as mortar, my firm flesh and bone milled and hammered into the shape permitted. Each breath a depthless gasp, and each gasp a stab. Pain screams away the fresh silence.
The brick pressed into my right orbit pulls back with an impossible quiet. The light blinds, then dulls into a blur. The image clears. It is Jon Phillips.
“Welcome to Spooktober, baby”
Spooktober story X̴̢͍̥̰̦̺̼͐͛̽̿̊͋̈̈́͂̄͌̀̀̈̒͊̈́̃̚͜͠
I’m Candy. I want to get up and go way over there where I got to see one time.
I think it looks really cool over there. There are good colors like blue and green! Over here the colors are mostly brown and white.
I’m a grown up, so I can go wherever I want now. At least that’s what the other grown ups do. I had to stay still for a long time.
I got way too big to fit in the seat anymore. I was big for a long time but now I am way too big and I don’t fit even a little!
I went right outside by all the big dead trees. There were four cars! Jon must have taken the other grown ups for a walk.
I am bored of looking at everyone’s eyes all day. And when they go they put on movies I seen a hundred times already! At least I want a break for a little while. They get to take a break whenever they want.
I could have walked with them now that I’m a grown up. But they left me sitting weird on my seat. I told them I was too big now!
They didn’t even make sure I was safe and buckled in because the straps are too short now. That’s ok though since they squeezed me pretty tight.
I took a car and I got to drive through the big dead trees and the snow and everything! When I got to the place over there it was pretty cool.
But then Jon came and told me I have to come back. They made me a new seat! Good thing I got to drive and see all this stuff before he came to get me. And good thing they made me a grown up seat! I bet now it won’t squeeze too tight!
Spooktober story xx:
Jon Phillips tears into an elk tenderloin with his genetically altered front teeth. After the jungle gym accident he’d undergone an experimental procedure to splice his dental genes with that of the common rodent. Lifelong regeneration.
As blood from the recently-severed muscle drips from his chin he tucks his necklace into his shirt as to not stain the reminder of their purple morbidity. His white button-up can be bleached, but the teeth can’t stand an endless routine of erosion.
His new teeth are getting long; longer than he’s had the chance to notice. The first bite of tenderloin is deep and juicy, but the second has painful results. He clips the gums in front of his bottom incisors and slices a small gash through his lower lip. With ravenous hunger and no distinction between his own blood and that of the slaughtered elk he continues his feast, unaware or willfully ignorant of his automutilated wound. His lust for soft meat has done nothing to dull the ever-lengthening teeth in the front of his mouth. A knife will not dull quickly by cutting through butter.
The small gash becomes an infected hole, with raw meat constantly being pushed through. The hole gets bigger, and the teeth get longer. Jon’s next meal, a rabbit, again does nothing to grind his ever-growing incisors. Blood drips from the pierced loin, and he hides his toothy necklace behind the buttons of his now oft-bleached white shirt. The first bite doesn’t quite penetrate both sides of the meat, but the second impales clean through. Teeth through the rabbit, and the hole in his lip, and the already bloodsoaked flesh of his chin. He winces at the pain of teeth meeting his own jawbone, but he’s gotta eat. Another bite, and a deeper chip into his chin. By the time the rabbit is fully consumed, Jon’s jaw is obliterated by his own chewing.
His next hunt, while successful in killing the prey, is a difficult cut to swallow. Even as he begins to use his molars to crush the soft innards he cannot avoid the annihilation of his lower jaw. Before the magpie is even halfway eaten the pain is too much. Gangrene has set in his lower lip and fatigue is beginning to take hold. Curled beside the magpie nest Jon realizes his fatal flaw.
“I should have just gotten dentures,” he thinks.
“I should have included dental in my health insurance plan.”
Holy spooks, the long-awaited conclusion to the critically acclaimed "Bologna Factory" epic. Grab a bucket.
--------EPILOGUE--------
"Once again, I am satisfied. Thankyou, Jeremy Georgia."
The bologna factory's smokestacks sparked and plumed with each spoken word.
Jeremy Georgia, formerly known as Steve, sulked upon a pile of bologna, disappointed that his story hadn't ended yet. Various whimpers could be heard from the forest. Jeremy's acid reflux started to act up.
Earlier in the factory, with Martha, during those moments of bologna intensity--- closing upon them with an embrace of intimate meatery, Jeremy remembered his true purpose.
His great-grandfather was lost within the foundations of the bologna factory long ago. The two have fused, and so it was up to Jeremy's grandfather, and then his own father, to maintain the Bologna Factory. To maintain its hunger. Family is important.
His father eventually strayed from the feeding routine and became one with the machine. Jeremy Georgia would not repeat that mistake. No sir. A steady flow of supple woman flesh fell easily into his arms over the years. Jeremy's trembling, sweat drenched form proved irresistible.
He fed Martha to the machine. Jammed her into the oven like socks in a drawer. Martha and her tasteful pink spandex thing. The Factory, as usual, was satisifed. They were very like-minded. Almost like parts of the same being, actually.
"Your form will not serve me for ever!" stated the Bologna Factory, "You must bear a child to continue this legacy of feeding! I shall assist you!"
Jeremy Georgia had little idea what Great-Grandfather Bologna was talking about. Nor did he really care. The after-effects of his self-hypnosis were still giving him conflicting thoughts.
'Why ever did father fuse with this machine?' he wondered. 'Where was mother during all of this? Actually, I'm not sure if I ever did meet her.'
Jeremy Georgia sat for a moment, picking at a hangnail on his left thumb, when he heard a squenching and a wet rumbling emanating from the factory just behind him.
Silence. And then something else.
A series a spongy, soft footsteps.
Getting closer.
Stopping just behind him.
Jeremy Georgia felt a warm, spice and lard scented hand gently fall upon his shoulder.
It was greasing up his denim jacket.
"My darling Jeremy Georgia," a woman's voice began, a slight hint of myrtle berries on her breath, "let's make babies or something."
Short chapter this time. I'm tired and don't want to be plagued by the nightmares of Chapter 3 when I do the sleep.
-------CHAPTER 2--------
Steve and Martha continued down the curvy country highway to the bologna factory. A smell of spiced meats permeating the air; wafting through the car vents.
Martha began to salvate--the drips sliding down and off her spandex dress. Steve felt his taste buds pucker.
"We're almost there, dollbody," he eagerly glanced over, "to the bologna factory."
"Mmm, that's right we are." Martha was ecstatic; continually readjusting her dress, her chin slick with saliva. Steve's thighs began to shudder.
They took a right turn down a thickly wooded dirt path. Dead branches knicked and poked at the passenger windows as the Cadillac's bologna tires bobbed and bounced on the uneven earth. Steve felt he was relying more on his heart than his sight. The bologna factory was near. It was getting closer. Closer. It was----
Right there, beyond the cast iron sign, it stood. Rusted spires and deep red walls towering against the foggy sky. Steve pulled up alongside the greeting monolith:
'THE BOLOGNA FACTORY' was printed on its face in bright red. A typeface similar to comic sans.
Steve killed the engine. He and Martha slowly turned toward one another.
No words needed to be spoken.
They exited the baby blue Cadillac.
Hi I'm pretending to be Jon Phillips for the time bean.
Horribly spooky story time, goodness gracious.
CHAPTER 1:
The headlights cut through the road mist like a bullet through margarine.
"I'm taking you to the bologna factory," Georgia stated to Martha, as they cruised down highway 456 in the dead of October night.
"Don't you think this is...a bit fast? We just met."
"The only ones I bring to the bologna factory are the ones I think are worth a damn."
They locked eyes; sweat pouring from their brows. The soft light of the radio panel glistening off each drop. Each stream.
Georgia returned his hard gaze to the road, not before catching a moment of eye contact with a roadside deer, and smacked his lips.
"My father--," he began weeping softly.
Martha placed her hand on his wrist, caressing his denim sleeve. He calmed a bit, his sweat subsiding. Martha's pink spandex dress ceased amazing him 3 hours ago.
The bologna factory will do me good, he thought.
"Take...take me to this bologna factory of yours." Martha's eyes were glistening, like marbles dowsed in petrol.
Her skull orbs brought long buried memories back to Georgia's mind.
"Now that I think of it, I haven't been there in a while," the sweat began to re-accumulate. "I shouldn't be doing this...not after...," Martha's fingers dug into his wrist.
"I'm really looking forward to the bologna f--"
The car buckled and hopped with a shriek of strangled metal, the ass of the vehicle veering off the edge of the road. Georgia recovered and pulled over. The sput-sputtering of the engine ended with a key-turn and a gaze into Martha's teeth. And then her eyes.
"Bee Are Bee," Georgia stepped out of his baby blue Cadillac into the foggy cold; a whimsical mist washing over him.
Everything was as it should be: darkness, coldness, roadside deer teasing him with playful glances. The road was strewn only with pine needles and dead leaves. And one palm sized rock--not enough to cause that ruckus.
And then he looked at the tires.
Oh, the tires.
There was something deathly, sinfully wrong with the tires. They weren't tires. At least not the tires of a sane world. They were tires of bologna.
Large wheels of bologna tightly fastened around the rims of his baby blue Cadillac. As if they were there from the start. Professionally installed. Or grown.
Georgia reached out---hand trembling---and ran a finger along the slick, glistening, probably delicious, meaty surface.
"Yep...It's bologna."
"What was that?" Martha was leaning onto the driver's seat, window half rolled down.
"The tires are made of bologna," Georgia replied, "Pure bologna. I think we should turn around. Go back to the pub."
"You're full of it! I'm not going home til I see this bologna factory of yours." She clicked her tongue and began to roll the window back up, but stopped, "I don't know...I, like, can't get it out of my head now."
Georgia could relate. He knew there was an eldritch wrongness awaiting them. Hanging over and pushing them. He couldn't go back. He wanted to want to, but the effort turned his stomach and ached his brain.
"You're right, Martha. Let's go to the bologna factory. Together."
"I can't wait, Stevie."
That's right, he thought, My name is actually Steve.
Steve, now resigned to his fate, dusted off his knees and climbed back aboard.
"O-Onwards to the bologna factory," muttered Steve, stiffly cracking an awkward half-smile, starting the car.
------to be continued holy shit im spooked------
SPOOKTOBER STORY #X:
5am: Jon Phillips sits in his bedroom, wide awake, having not slept in 31 hours. A Mr. Coffee machine grumbles from between his legs.
"Jon. Look. You've gotta keep making it in me."
Mr. Coffee sputters his last spurt as Jon finishes his undetermined bout of intense concentration.
"Jon. You've got to fill me up. You've got to turn me on."
Jon grinds for thirty seconds while Mr. Coffee writhes in anticipation.
"This is it, don't stop."
Jon opens Mr. Coffee, but there is a spider inside. The spider bites Jon, he shrieks, and becomes dead.
"Jon" grumbles Mr. Coffee.
"This was the best you never had."