"Jeez, OK, kid, here you are!" Verble says, slapping some pages on the top of the counter. "These are all my writings for Horrorprompt for 2019."
"The kid wants 2020 as well," says the Barista.
"I need a nap," says Verble, leaving the pages there and walking away.
The
Horrorprompts of Verble Gherulous
Book One:
2019
May 28, 2019
For 15 long
years he had sneered at her for everything.
For her
cooking.
For going back
to school.
For how she
performed in bed.
Now that answer
had been erased by her kitchen scissors.
She would not
miss that sneer.
May 29, 2019
#horrorprompt
284: tiny eggs
This lovely
enigma in Raybans and a purse-lipped smile had flirted with him all afternoon
at the poolside bar.
Back at her
room, she unlocked the door, pulled off the sunglasses, exposing eyes like tiny
eggs.
Mouth opened:
pincers.
She lunged.
May 30, 2019
#horrorprompt
182: sealed inside
Smiling wide,
he encouraged the prospective home buyers to knock on the walls that he had
framed, sheet-rocked, and painted himself.
"The
insulation," he said proudly, "is the best that humans can
make."
Because that's
what was sealed inside.
June 3, 2019
#horrorprompt
286: wrapped.
Wrapped in
chains, he sank in the water.
Struggling, he
suddenly realized: No escape!
He would drown!
Frantic, he
wondered why the faces outside the glass tank did nothing to save him.
Damn! he
thought, They think this is just part of the show!
June 6, 2019
#horrorprompt
287: benevolent love.
The monks always
welcomed strangers who wandered in from the road. Such folk were always very welcomed at
dinner.
And with
benevolent love, the monks always ensured the wayfarers went to sleep
peacefully before being prepared for the feast.
June 10,
2019
#horrorprompt
272 last sunrise
In the early
evening hour,
they turned to
see the last sunrise
rise in the
east.
This final
dawning, crowned
in a mushroom
cloud,
beautiful,
glorious,
sent waves of
heat
roaring over
them,
turning flesh
to ash,
setting their souls
free.
June 12,
2019
#horrorprompt
288 Last Word
After 53 years
of his verbal abuse, Grace now watched Roy struggle with his last breaths.
"You never
let me speak, all these years," she said, "but I get the last word:
it's what I put in your nightly tea."
She leaned in
and whispered, "Cyanide."
June 18,
2019
#horrorprompt
289 Kill for Me
"Who would
you kill for me?" she asked.
"Anyone,"
he said.
"Liar,"
she said. "You wouldn't kill your
daughter for me."
He stammered a
bit.
"It's
OK," she told him, leaning in close to kiss him. "I've made sure you won't have to."
June 20,
2019
#horrorprompt
290: Skinned Alive
She was so
happy to work for this director, who was known for intense realism.
But when he
readied the actors to shoot the scene where they would be skinned alive, she
understood too late that, this time, when he said, "CUT!" he meant
... BEGIN!
June 24,
2019
#horrorprompt
291 Layers of Silt
Running along
the riverbank with his friends, Benny’s foot sank through several layers of
silt. Something grabbed his ankle. Pulling up, he saw the hand. The dead hand.
Benny screamed.
The nightly
news told of the girl, missing for 15 years.
July 7, 2019
#horrorprompt
Two Drops
The old
librarian told me, "Back in those days, any man who went to the gallows
never wanted the hangman to be 'Two-Drops' Callaghan."
"Why's
that?" I asked.
"Because
the sadistic prick would drop you once, then pull you back up and drop you
again!"
July 11,
2019
#horrorprompt
294 emaciated remains
They were
nothing but emaciated remains of what once were human beings.
My fellow GI's
and I watched in silence as they lumbered out of the camp toward the medics'
trucks.
I looked up at
the sign above the gate.
It read ARBEIT
MACHT FREI
July 13,
2019
#horrorprompt
295 stranded
After the
firefight and his squad was pushed back, Frankie was stranded behind enemy
lines.
He tried to
hide under a burned out jeep but he saw their boots &heard their laughter
and he didn't know their language but he knew "die amerikaner ist
tod"
July 31,2019
#horrorprompt
297 Unending Scar
When they came,
when the aliens
finally came,
we knew
immediately we had nothing
that could stop
them.
The roar of
their engines flattened the trees,
and their
weapons ripped the night sky into
an unending
scar.
July 31,
2019
#horrorprompt
298: Greasy Hair
It wasn’t the
matted, greasy hair or the dirty fingernails or the feral eyes, or even the way
the boy was hunched over, rocking slowly back and forth….
it was his
smile, eeking out around the half-eaten rat that was sandwiched between his
teeth.
August 2,
2019
#horrorprompt
299: Sweltering Heat
San Salvador
1982
The girl walked
to school in the morning, backpack slung over one shoulder.
In the sweltering
heat, soldiers burned the bodies of dead protesters and revolutionaries.
The smoke rose
to the sky.
And permeated
everything.
August 6,
2019
#horrorprompt
300 End Times
"Welcome
to the End Times café," our host said with a sweep of his arm.
We stood amazed
by the wood decor & plush velvet curtains.
The room was
thick with the smell of gasoline.
Then, we heard
a chain locking the door... & the click of his lighter.
August 12,
2019
#horrorprompt
301 Glorious Agony
The masochist
had foregone the safe word.
The crank was
turned and the screws twisted him into paroxyms of glorious agony.
Glorious, yes,
until the sadist, inexperienced at this machine, turned the crank one rotation
too far.
August 20,
2019
#horrorprompt
302 - Obliterated
What if I could
indeed feel the plaque as it wraps around the synapses of my brain?
Would it make
sense of all this?
Or do I just
stay numb to the knowledge that in my brain the recognition of my dear wife's
face will one day be obliterated?
August 27,
2019
#horrorprompt
303 Left to Wilt
What was it
about the flowers, she wondered, left to wilt in the vase on the table?
She ran the
blade of the pruning shears across her lips, tasting
the faint tinge
of the blood of the suitor, who will never come to call no more.
September 5,
2019
#horrorprompt
304 Eviscerated Entrails
The Amazonians
hung the anthropologist from a tree & eviscerated him.
As his entrails
spilled on the forest floor & the members began to feast, he thought,
"Ha! The bacteria in my intestines will decimate your tribe!"
He died
smiling.
September
17, 2019
#horrorprompt
306 Natural Causes
Midnight, small
town, speed trap.
The sheriff
blinded me with his flashlight as he looked over my license, saying "You
city boys shouldn't race through here like y'all do. You likely to get
shot. 'Round here we call that dyin' a
natural causes"
September
27, 2019
#horrorprompt
307 Peachy
Kevin always
had a feeling that we would die gruesomely, in great pain.
So, when the
car stalled underneath the bridge just as the 18 wheeler overturned on the
overpass and came careening down on him, he murmured "Well isn't that just
peachy."
October 1,
2019
#horrorprompt
308 Let Me Show You
We'd been
dating a month.
I said,
"You're the sweetest kindest person ever!"
She said,
"You don't know me."
I said,
"Yes I do."
She said,
"Let me show you," as her hand grabbed the skin under her jaw line
and she began to pull her skin...
October 8,
2019
#horrorprompt
309 Behind the Mask
My dad's new
wife smiled sweetly, always, and always told us she loved us and was glad to
get to know us.
I knew at the
reading of the will would be the moment we got to see what was behind the mask.
October 16,
2019
#horrorprompt
310 Weakening Grip
Raul awoke at
the Hyatt Centric to find bombs strapped to his chest & his hand clasping a
dead man's switch. He knew he had to run: throw himself into the Hudson.
Hand cramping,
grip weakening, he rounded Times Square, bumping into Naked Cowboy
October 22,
2019
#horrorprompt
311 Thinning Old Guard
The thinning
old guard of vampire hunters went looking for some new recruits.
Finding some,
at the start of the interview, they asked, "What interests you about this
opportunity."
The recruits
bared their fangs and said, "Your blood!"
November 8,
2019
#horrorprompt
Plague Doctor
Our village was
a peaceful one, nestled high in the Pyrenees.
We had never
known want, nor disease. We lived on
fresh produce and clean air. We had not
need of a physic ... until that cursed day when, into town
came the Plague
Doctor.
November 21,
2019
#horrorprompt
315 Permafrost
A millennia.
Maybe ... two.
I have
forgotten Time.
But I have not
forgotten how much I love
to feast on
fleshlings, those sacks of blood and water and
bone ... oh
yes,
and now, I can
feel the permafrost
thawing, &
I shall soon
be
disinterred.
December 8,
2019
#horrorprompt
317 The End
11:59pm
Our host raises
his glass for a toast.
We all raise
ours.
"To THE
END!" he says triumphantly, then he drinks; then, we drink.
I lean to my
spouse. "Does he mean 'of this year'?"
"Wait ...
what's in this drink?" she asks.
December 27,
2019
#Horrorprompt
318 Suicide King
His name was
Jesús. We called him "Suicide King."
He always drew
fire from us so that we could take cover.
He always was
first to clear the houses.
He said he did
it so we didn't have to.
Fittingly, it
was on a Good Friday when he hit that IED.
