It’s my favorite time of year: spooky movie season. I troll the Lifetime network and the Chiller channel obsessively from October 1 through Halloween, hoping to happen upon a cheesy, ghosty, scary show I can tuck into with full abandon.
Even better is when I’m in bed, the lights are off, and everyone is asleep. Spooky goodness galore!
As I do every year with the October PROMPTuesday I’m asking for a scary story. This can be something that really happened (I love those!) or a tale you make up in your head. I’m posting a horrible thing I wrote many years ago, but it fits the theme: cheesy. (Was that the theme?)
Nevertheless, keep in mind that PROMPTuesday is all about just writing something off the top of your head to get the juices going. It doesn’t have to be edited, or finessed or polished. Raw is best. Pick at the raw nuggets later to extract the good stuff, but for now, there is no pressure to write a masterpiece.
Meanwhile:
Add your post/comment/prompt answer below in the comments or write a post of your own and include the link for us to read!
To bone up on PROMPTuesdays, read a bit about it here.
Or, catch up on the PROMPTuesdays archive here.
So: what scary thing has happened to you?
DARK RISING
Susannah heard the sound after it was gone. What it was, she couldn’t say. But her subconscious had registered it and woke her with a jolt.
Her eyelashes snapped against her lids as she lay, prone, listening. Her heart beat that deep, ragged, thumping way it does when you think your plane is going to crash.
But she wasn’t in the air, she was in some guy’s bed, wondering where the hell he was, as her peripheral vision caught the emptiness beside her.
Some guy…Ron? That was it. Out with friends for happy hour, she’d ended up with Ron after a heartfelt discussion of life, love, and all that other stuff you talk about three martinis later.
She knew she shouldn’t have followed him to his place. She was, after all, in the middle of a three-year relationship, but she allowed herself this irrational act for no good reason whatsoever.
She kept her eyes on the ceiling. A sound loud enough to wake her up, the stranger beside her gone, a complete eerie silence…this wasn’t good. The air felt heavy, and pawed at her. In her deepest self, she knew something was very wrong (the plane was losing altitude…).
But no more noises…just movement. A swath of shadow cut across a small corner of the ceiling dimly lit by the glow of a nightlight. Susannah followed the circle of light down to a dresser on the right side of the bed.
Ron sat crouched on top of the dresser.
His face was expressionless as he threw a book at the nightlight, knocking it out of the wall, plunging the room in darkness.
She lay there, feeling like she would hit bottom any minute, and wanting to, because anything was better then waiting in the dark for something to find you. She strained to hear anything, some sound that would give away his next movement, but Susannah couldn’t hear a thing but the rumbling echo of her own heartbeat.
Should she roll over the side of the bed and get on the floor? Maybe under the bed? What then?
Any movement would creak the bed frame or rustle the sheets. She couldn’t change her position without her pursuer knowing about it. But, dammit, she couldn’t stay there.
She had to do something now. Her mind clung to option after option, but nothing stuck and Susannah ended up immobilized. Suddenly, a dot of light flickered. Then, another, and another, randomly. It was like, it was…fireflies? In here? She hadn’t seen the bugs since her Chicago childhood. She lived in the city now, and nearly forgot the things existed. With each flash, and resulting glow, she caught all-too-brief glimpses of the room. And with a lurch, she saw the top of the dresser now bare.
Why couldn’t she hear him? Her precious fleeting light afforded no comfort, especially when it disappeared altogether. She lay there, blood rushing, as a pile of crushed fireflies fell upon her face.
Photo: http://mrg.bz/gNsxm3
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