Round 4 - Some Shine and Some Don't (Sensar vs Injin)

[Kaez]

For this round, you must write a horror story in less than 750 words. The deadline is the 26th at 11:59pm PST.

[Injin]

The End

Final.

That feeling when there’s little remaining but feelings of eternity beckoning. For years, Will Cousins had been the embodiment of finality. An enforcer for the mob in our part of town, Cousins had been the man most feared beyond any. Threaten a shopkeeper that paid for protection? Get your teeth kicked in. Talk to one of his working girls funny? Hope you like being a eunuch.

And now he was dead.

That didn’t stop his shadow from still being there. Will had been a smallish man while alive, but the feelings he left behind loomed large on the community he pushed around. The mob was still around, but something was different about the way they operated. Fear guided them. Will had been an aura of finality itself, but he had also been a fixture of the community. There was no filling that gap and he probably counted on that.

The first corpse was his boss. Hook through his neck, a message that things were changing. When the body finally hit the ground, it was like a signal to the world that this neighborhood no longer belonged to the living. Five days later, twenty-three more were dead. Mobsters, small players, pushers, busboys, children, no one was safe. Something unleashed by the fear of Cousins’ death had come to roost and the cock’s claws had sunk itself into the flesh that was our daily lives.

Streets were empty past midnight by then. No longer would you see teenagers smoking in alleys, prostitutes on corners. Chalk outlines and bloodstains numbered our dead as the numbers entered triple digits by week three. A war of attrition against the forces that had been unleashed, against the unfeeling void left behind. Will Cousins may have been dead, but he was rapidly being joined by a legion at his side in the afterlife, hollowed eyes and shriveled bodies floating in the aether of finality that he had always been the avatar of.

They say he killed himself. They found him, noose around his neck and slits along his palm to forearm. His blood soaked into the rope from where his wrists touched hemp, but who doesn’t have a change of heart after trying to kill yourself?

A month out and the toll reached a thousand. Entire families gone with a blink of the eye and the flick of a thumb. The Cousins’ Curse they’d started calling it by then. There weren’t many people who talked about it out loud by that point. People had already begun leaving as of week three, but rumors crawled back that leaving didn’t stop the Curse from finding you.

My own parents were dead by week five. Dad drank and drank until he was more bourbon than man and Mom leapt for the stars and never found them. Yet the same despair, the same desperate need to die didn’t seem to come for me. I’d already tried once. Weeks before Cousins’ self-inflicted demise I had jumped off the bridge connecting our part of the city and the great wilderness that might as well be beyond.

All the things I could’ve done instead flooded my mind until the blackness took me. A dark ebon glow licked at me for a time I cannot remember before the sterile white of a hospital room ceiling greeted my eyes upon awakening.

I can feel the specter of death behind me whenever I walk. I can’t seem to sleep these days, not after seeing what has happened to this town. I used to think that, despite everything he stood for, Cousins was a man of conviction. A man of raw feeling.

Now everything feels empty. Anything I can grab is mine and what few of us are left have the same story. Once, we each felt like the world could be left behind so that we could journey into the great unknown that was death. Now, instead we are met with an empty shell of life.

Cousins, in death, taunts our dreams. A few of us, despite not being affected by his words, have still killed themselves at the terror of emptiness that has invaded their families. There aren’t many of us left.

In life, he was finality. In death he is a ghastly echo demanding that we die. He asks we complete his transformation. I’m not sure how much longer we can live in this empty expanse of asphalt, but we won’t give him the satisfaction. We’ll survive this curse.

Somehow.

[Sensar]

Call of Nature

It appeared to be some sort of crack in the mountain. I frowned at it and zipped up my trousers. The bright sun at my back licked at the edges of the gloom, but failed to penetrate it. It wasn’t far off the hiking trail, only the chance call of nature brought me behind the trees. But there it was, a black wound in the rock. It was fascinating—how did deep was it? I stepped closer.

Nearer the opening I could feel the faint tingle of breeze brush my face, a cold and wet smell, cutting sharply through the musky heat of the woods. I tried to peer in. I could hear, so faint, the brush of air, the trickling of water.

Just what was this place? The opening was wide enough to squeeze through, if I left my pack. Curiosity gripped me like a vice. I had a flashlight, batteries fresh. I could store my pack up in a tree.

I battled with my indecision. This sort of adventure was why I was here. A month in the wild, in nature. Now that I was on my way back to civilization, I couldn’t just let this slip by.

Next thing I knew I pressed into the mountain. The initial quiet and cool was a welcome change from the heat outside, but it quickly gave way to worry. The cool stone at my back was coarse, tugging at my clothes. My nose occasionally ground against the stone in front of me. All the while, the light of the sun outside grew farther and farther away. My light was dim on the floor next to me. I kept my head twisted, eyes down for any sudden drop.

Water began trickling onto my head. I flinched instinctively. Where was it coming from? It was cool, certainly, but not enough that I would expect any sort of condensation. My hair was getting damp, uncomfortable. I twisted my head back towards the entrance. The light of the sun was only a thin sliver in the distance, a gash of white light in the darkness.

I continued forward, but the passageway remained unchanged. Long, narrow, low, enough to compress but not enough to crush. It was getting colder. Water was creeping down my neck, now, and lacing itself through my fingers pressed against the wall. Refreshment turned to annoyance. Curiosity continued to drive me. The tunnel was making less and less sense. It hadn’t changed at all. I looked back at the sun-lit entrance, that star twinkling far away in the vast inky dark around me.

The water clung to clothes, filled my boots. I could feel it dripping off my sodden hair and onto my lips. My tongue tentatively tasted it, and I almost immediately retched. My head jerked forward and smacked against the stone. Blood dripped down my nose. The water was putrid, though it didn’t smell.

That was enough for me. I started shuffling the other way, but the weight of the water slowed me. I could swear, too, now that I was attempting to go back the way I came, that I was traveling up a slope. Had I been going downwards?

My light was growing dimmer, was water getting in? My heart was beginning to beat in my throat. My breath was coming up against the rock, bouncing back, and furling hotly over my drenched face. I tried to move faster, but the soles of my boots began squeaking in protest, refusing to hold purchase on the wet ground.

Breath. I wasn’t the only one breathing. Suddenly the sound of it was coming from all directions. Something thick, something, something cold, something hard caressed my hair. It sunk itself through the strands and slid like sludge over my scalp and down my forehead. The goo reached my eyes and a sharp pin went through. I was screaming, screaming, screaming. My hands were beating at the carapace with all my might, but they bounced off and cracked onto the stone. I could feel them cut, bruise, break. It writhed, it hissed, it dug itself into my eyes.

I frowned and zipped up my trousers. My left eye was itching like mad. I rubbed it with the back of my wrist. The setting sun licked at my back, and the woods were getting quiet. It was time to move on, try to get some distance before making bed. The trail called, and beyond it, civilization.

[Kaez]

Injin

Something unleashed by the fear of Cousins’ death had come to roost and the cock’s claws had sunk itself into the flesh that was our daily lives.

That's not perfect. That could be better. But that's an ambitious attempt at using language in a creative way, and I applaud you for it. This story builds on your last. Your writing is more ambitious, but it's tamed. It's thoughtful. You're not going back to your old mistakes. By half-way through this story, it's still a mystery as to what's happening. That's AWESOME.

Dad drank and drank until he was more bourbon than man and Mom leapt for the stars and never found them.

You could NEVER have written that sentence a year ago. That's amazing and, here it comes, I'M PROUD OF YOU.

Ahem.

All that out of the way: the main plot here is lacking. This guy who was kind of an authoritarian asshole in life has cursed this town and its people permanently, and they've all died for... reasons we never really understand. Why him? What's the nature of the curse? Why that character? Why this town? This story really only works as the beginning of a longer story, as a prologue, but as flash it should be self-contained. And the explanations are just not here. The mysteries are only mysteries when something makes sense about them, and nothing really makes sense about these. There needs to be some rationality, some explanation, some grounding. You missed that this time. But your writing here is probably better than it's ever been.

***

Sensar

Man, this is the hardest kind of story to review. The kind that I don't understand. I feel like you did something here. Something clever or creative and that it just went right over my head. And I'm so sorry if that's the case but... I didn't -get it-.

You did a good job building suspense. I'm a bit claustrophobic, personally, so a story about crawling into a narrow cave is definitely the kind of thing that gets me spooked. You could've done a little more work painting the scene, I think, but given that it's flash that's very forgivable. But still, the water, the fading light, "I wasn't the only one breathing" - that's great, classic horror stuff. But then... what happens?

He zips up his pants. He rubs his eyes, that a sentence ago had been being penetrated by some writhing cave evil. And... then he continues on his way. I don't get it. Is it a metaphor? Did he never go in the cave at all? Did he just manage to get out? It's a well-written story, it really is, but... I just completely failed to grok this one. And I'm really sorry about that.

EDIT: James has pointed out to me that it's possible that the creature has possessed the protagonist and is going to head toward town to find more victims. That seems like a better interpretation that the ones I had, but if that's the case, it could've been SO much more clear.

***

Both of these stories are well-written and both of them have plot problems. That makes it really hard to judge. Both of them did a good job in capturing the horror prompt, and both of them ended on a disappointing note. But Injin's didn't leave me confused. And that's the one, tiny, very very minor thing that just ever-so-slightly pushes it over the edge.