Behold, a Revenant Revelation

--C.D. Tolliver



Zora,


Once a


Maiden was


Buried alive, though thought


In


Extremis. She


Awoke


Perplexed. And came


Out of the


Crypt, confused, barely


Ambulatory, where she had


Lain twenty


Years,


Paralyzed,


Sleeping. The


End

Stay Dead!

NO! Not again!

Those fools, playing with nature.
The dead are supposed to stay dead!
This poor woman, mindless and naked.
She never knew what she was getting into.
Just let them die!

--By Swirls

Something Wicked

Reluctantly, Elle had agreed to go to this new club. Sydney had been begging for weeks, but it wasn't really Elle's scene. She was more into pencil skirts, stockings and 5 inch heels. But Sydney always came out with Elle to her clubs, so it was time to grunge it up a bit, break out the fishnets and smudge the eyeliner.

There was a slight line outside when they arrived, obviously Goth inspired, just up Sydney's alley. At the office, Sydney dressed like everyone else, just a bit heavier on the eyeliner and mascara. But after hours, she let loose and played by her own rules. Elle looked up to Sydney for her sense of freedom and not letting anyone tell her what to do. Yet as Sydney was fearless, Elle was disciplined and together, they made a good team.

They shuffled through the line and finally made it to the entrance. The bouncer at the door checked their IDs and scowled them through. After stopping to pay the cover charge, at an old fashioned ticket booth to a man with a studded collar, they were finally in.

They took a few steps and felt a slight dip in the floor. At the same time, a cloud of smoke, almost like fog, engulfed them in it's mist. Sputtering and coughing, they stumbled through to collapse into a couple of chairs by the bar. When they caught their breath, Elle looked at Sydney and saw she was covered in a fine glitter. "Am I covered in glitter too?" Elle asked. "Yeah!", Sydney giggled.

Elle looked out around the club and saw a girl she was standing in line behind, who was also covered in the strange glitter. Only, she didn't look quite right. Her face looked distorted and sinister. Looking around, she saw that everyone was starting to look like that. Elle turned to ask Sydney, only to find the same look on her too. What was this place?

Famous Fears and False Phobias

--C.D. Tolliver

Sinister sinusoidal slitherers:

Odious ophidiophobia.

Barking baleful beasts:

Syncopated cynophobia.

Mewling maniacal menaces:

Awful ailurophobia.

Fiendish finny phantasms:

Icky ichthyphobia.

Scorpizophobia:

Scary scatterings or scorpions?

Platypodophobia:

Fatal philosophical flat-footedness?

Pantophobia:

Dangerous denim dungarees?

Stranger in the Attic (The Piano Man)

--C.D. Tolliver

The piano sat, undusted, in the corner of the room. Everything else was meticulously spotless. There was something dark in the mahogany – a vague feeling of unease that deflected the casual viewer and terrified the cleaning staff.

Tammy stared at it. There was a black man in the wood, surrounded by shadow dressed in the darkness of night. Light fled his presence. Tammy was 3 years old. She had watched as her parents burned to death in their car after the accident, helpless. She wasn’t afraid of anything except white-tailed deer on the road on rainy nights – and Sponge Bob, of course.

It was a bright day and Tammy was mesmerized by the black figure, cloaked in dread, staring at her from the wood through the film, with dust bunnies at his feet. He looked, she decided, like a combination of Wally Cox and Jim Parsons, only taller, with ebony hair and anthracite skin, and eyes like raccoons when a car’s lights hit them at night, bright and red.

“You’re not my imaginary friend,” she said with certainty. After all, the black man wasn’t pale blue, and he didn’t have fangs so much as rows of slate shark teeth. “I’ll get a rag.” She left the room and came back with furniture polish and an old t-shirt. She carefully dusted the piano so she could see him, but not a millimeter more, because she wasn’t a servant. “That’s better,” she said. “Do you hunt deer?”

The black man flowed out of the piano like a genie and stared at her. “Generally, I eat maids,” he admitted with a smile, which would have been disturbing to Tammy’s parents, if they still lived.

“I think you are a good demon, like Socrates’, not a bad ghost," Tammy replied. Three is such an awkward age to know things. “Will you be my friend and bring me the heads of the deer that killed Mommy and Daddy?” “Of course, I will. We’re going to be good friends.”

C.D. Tolliver

On the count of three...
You run out there and draw the aliens’ attention, while we throw balloons full of salt water and Head and Shoulders at them. It’ll destroy them. I saw it in a movie once.
--C.D. Tolliver

Swirls

"On the count of three..."

"Three!"
"Wait, what happened to one and two?"
"Why wait?'
"Because waiting can be fun"
"Not always"
"No, but it's the anticipation"
"I've waited long enough!"
"Yes, now let us change that!"

by Swirls

C.D. Tolliver

--C.D. Tolliver
Nicodemus and Zebedee found the pale-green horse in the family plot, eating the day lilies and their grandmother’s prize Rose of Sharon. “I wonder where she came from,” mused Nicodemus. The horse shied away from them as they approached and neighed at them, stomping her iron-shod feet on the grave of their father. Things had changed since the grey man had moved into town with his red-eared snowy-white hounds. “We should just close the gate and call Ma,” said Zebedee seeing the gate was firmly locked. “Yeah … call Ma,” echoed Nicodemus noticing his brother’s stare.

“Ma! There’s a peculiar green horse in the cemetery!” they called upon reaching the house. It was decorated for Halloween with bed-sheet ghosts and macramé spider webs. Kittens were climbing the webs like so many spiders, except spiders don’t usually hiss and get their toes caught in the webs.

“What’s all this ruckus about?” called the twin’s mother. The gray man had come to call once when she was tending the ravens, but departed disappointed. “What’s this about a green horse?” She approached and squinted at cemetery.

“Oh. It’s just her. He must be early,” she said, turning back toward the kitchen.

“Who’s he and why’s he early?” the boys asked in unison.

“He’s the one that came for your father, and that batch of pups the delinquents killed.” Seeing the boys’ incomprehension, she added, “There’s a time for reaping the harvest. The grey man came last month to find the evil doers and now he’s come to collect the chosen few.” She pointed out the window as a black-robed skeletal figure jumped from the gate house and crossed over to the locked gate.

“Death is usually unexpected, but he appears to have been summoned early.” Their mother raised her hands and a flock of ravens joined Death as he mounted the pale horse. “It’s not our business tonight, boys,” she said, as Death’s scythe caught the last ray of sunlight and the first terrors of night.

Thomas MacInnes

This is my first crack at your contest. Hopefully, I don’t embarass myself too badly. Be gentle, good folks.

Deep within this gnarled and knotted paradise reside the souls of every child who, when released for recess play, were told that the joy of childhood comes rooted in the safety of grass.

Editor's Note: This submission came into our possession just a touch too late to be included in this weekend's linkup.

Matthew Lowe

And the boxes were stacked in a haphazard fashion like the plot of the film Batman Forever featuring Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, and also starring Nicole Kidman and Chris O'Donnell.

Lions and Minors and Bears, Oh my!

Lions and Minors and Bears, Oh my!
--C.D. Tolliver

The puma gave a thunderous silent purr. The girl kept opening the bear can for candy, and the bears were watching. The girl would be easy pickings next time, when the bears charged.

It's Debatable

by Matthew Lowe

“I hate them. That's all. I'm not scared of them. I just find them... “

“Find them what? Do you really think that they do not feel the same discomfort around you that you feel around them? Hate is a strong word. That's all I'm saying.”

“Strong, maybe, but not unwarranted. Look at what they've done to us. Look at what they have the potential to do. Should we just sit here and let it happen when we both know what they are and what they could do? They have power..”

“Power? What power? They have whatever power you give them. No more. No less. You have demonized them to the point that you believe your own rhetoric. It is difficult to talk to someone who is so bent on fear-mongering that they will not listen to reason.”

“You are one to talk about reason. You speak from sheer emotion. I speak from thought and reason.”

“Only to the degree that you allow yourself to think and reason. You only look at facts that suit your needs. Not the...”

“Could I at least finish a sentence. It's not easy to talk to you. As I said, 'thought and reason.' You support neither. You don't look at the facts. You see them as people. That's your problem! They are not people! They are less than us. I've known you forever. You can't believe they are equal to us because they aren't!”

“I'm not in disagreement that they are different and that there are issues that need to be addressed. But some of these plans for dealing with them... I just can't support them. I am uncomfortable being part of a group that would even suggest such strategies. You say you know me? I thought I knew you, I just...”

“Don't worry. We'll get through it. We always do.”

“We will? With what?”

“An uneasy hand shake and an awkward pat on the back.”