October Prompts

In 2021 and 2022, I did my best to write daily fiction during spooky season. In 2021 I used prompts scavenged from a variety of sources; in 2022 I made my own prompts, which I shared under the hashtag #EmptyOctober.

Cocoon & Bloodbath

Each layer went on easier than the last, cloying red salvation closing over your bare skin, burying you deeper and deeper. At first the brush’s rough hairs hurt, tore your skin and sent your own red welling up, but by the third coat you could hardly feel a thing.

The pain brought to mind her warnings, that she would not be gentle and that this would hurt–that your claustrophobia might make this process unpalpable, that if you broke the cocoon she would not be able to wrap it around you a second time. Hurt filled you with fear.

Read on … ( ~5 Min.)

The Lake In Your Basement

She hears the water dripping, deep below, just at the edge of her senses. The rhythmic tapping of something that’s not rain, not an unquiet faucet, down where there should only be silence and the low wooden sounds of the house rearranging.

If only she could stay asleep.

The door to the basement sticks, doesn’t want to open, wood swollen by damp and grown willful with disuse, but she still makes it open.

Read on … ( ~2 Min.)

Ritual, Parasite, Eyes

You welcomed it in, eagerly brought it into your body; all that foggy liquid that flowed from nothing into your chalice, hardly contained by the force of your bindings, the strength of your spells.

It shone so brightly in the sputtering candlelight.

You hardly waited for the last of the spell to fade before you brought it to your lips, gulped it down in a single mass; it tasted so right flowing down your throat, thick and rich and savory, the chalice never seeming to empty.

Read on … ( ~2 Min.)

Candles, Abyss, Insects

The chittering chaos of countless insects rises from the emptiness before you, the grating noise of chitinous limb against shell, of mandibles gnashing and antenna curling in anticipation–

“No, that’s not it at all. Look again.”

Nine candles ring the pit, eight pinning the world into place and the last opening it up, each burning with the power of the turning year; inside the circle the hardwood gives way to churning void, to vast things moving beneath, strange crustaceans shifting by candlelight–

Read on … ( ~3 Min.)

In The Air & Candy Gore

Each slash of the knife, each thrust of the blade, sends great gouts of sweet red goo splattering across the floor, pouring down to fill the punch bowl below; celebrants clamber up on unsteady chairs, dirty shoes tearing at the paper tablecloth, to reach inside–

Eager hands press inside deeper than seems possible, tear at tender tissue, come out sticky-red and full of treats–individually wrapped candies and plastic toys, squishy organs making such silly noises as they deflate on the ground, the spurting mass of a sugary heart–

Read on … ( ~1 Min.)

Incense, Red Veil, Plants

The willows’ leaves hang heavy and low, a cascade of crimson tears soaking up the lake’s polluted water, planted by some long-ago witch to decorate a pathway through her estate; but she is long gone now, and her gardens have dwindled to be nothing more than a park.

It is a good park, mind, sometimes called one of the city’s shining jewels (though only by poets and brochures); on most days it’s full of picnickers and joggers, stray students playing games on the lawns and witchlings praying for luck at the tomb hidden on the north bank.

Read on … ( ~3 Min.)

Ghost, Empty Shoes, Living Curiosities

This week the witch is living in a half-destroyed warehouse right on the edge of one of the impact craters, close enough that your phone won’t stop interrupting your conversation with alerts about impending exposure. She says it’s fine, though, so you just swipe them away.

The city is always a bit too aggressive about geofencing their alerts, so it’s not like you’re unused to being told to ignore them by people who really should know.

Read on … ( ~4 Min.)