30 Monday Jun 2014
Posted in Poetry
Anger’s clothes are woven tight
in red and bruising purple
Knuckles clenched, bleached bone-white
as frustration arcs and fury bites
until the ice of anger melts
His slackened features then redress
in an inconsequential masquerade
of hollowed out regret
28 Saturday Jun 2014
Posted in Horror, Short Stories
Tags
The challenge on Writer’s Carnival this week was to use the prompt ‘GETTING INKED’. Write a story of 750 words or less, ending in the sentence ‘And that’s how I got the tattoo’. At just over 1,100 words, I failed… hey ho.
*WARNING – MATURE CONTENT – STRONG LANGUAGE*
I rested my elbow on the bar and let my attention slide around the nightclub.
With one hip hitched up onto a barstool, my bare legs looked about a mile long and I knew it. Shit, where is he? Scanning faces was proving to be a pointless exercise in the shadow cluttered basement. The bass of the music vibrated the floor beneath my stiletto, and breathing clean air seemed to be a thing of the past, the odour of salty sweat so strong I could taste it. The decision to arrange my thick hair into a pleated up-do was a blessing in the cloying heat.
“You don’t have to do this.”
I dragged my attention away from the sea of gyrating bodies and looked into Ryan’s frowning face. “Yes, I do.”
Running his meaty hand over the back of his neck knotted his bicep. “Let me take care of the prick.” His fingers were warm as they reached for mine. I didn’t resist as he drew my hand forward, extending my arm. My pale skin glowed in the glare of the bar’s backlighting. Ryan’s finger stroked over the crook of my elbow where my tattoo of a metal needle appeared to extrude from my vein, the ascending shaft becoming a green stem bearing leaves, which twisted around my upper arm. Sprouting small flowers as it crossed my shoulder blade, it reappeared over my shoulder, meandering down and disappearing beneath the fabric of my tight dress.
“This was a bad idea,” Ryan muttered.
Raising a brow, I pointedly looked over the tattooed sleeves on both his arms featuring snakes and demonic faces.
His voice roughened as he said, “You know what I mean, being bait.”
I gently disengaged the fingers he had woven through mine. “Please, don’t worry.” I smiled. “You’d never get to him. They call them ‘bodyguards’ for a reason.”
Straightening and tugging the bar cloth from his shoulder, he picked up a glass and began polishing it. “You’re right.”
“Just get Sampson to hit the light show when you see him. I’ll take it from there.”
Easing down from the stool, my swaying stride took up the beat of the music as I crossed the room and moved on to the dance floor. The heavy thrum vibrated through my chest as I picked up the pounding rhythm. Raising my arms above my head, my hips followed the circling flow of my body. The lifted hemline of my dress bared acres of silk smooth leg, exposing the tattooed stem spiralling down around my thigh, ending in a rosebud behind my knee. Letting my head drop back, I pretended to zone out.
I registered the flow of figures moving between the scattering of round tables beyond. With my stomach churning, I waited. Suddenly, the tempo of the light show changed, a rainbow of harsh color bursting into life. He’s here.
My skin crawled, damp heat chilling my flesh when I caught sight of him. The tightness in my chest felt as though the tattooed stem was real and applying choking pressure to my body and limbs.
Fluid grace deserted me as the flashing colored lights passing around the room picked out his features. Lounging back, with an arm extended along the padded backrest of a curved bench, he was just as I remembered. Shit, this is it. Deliberately leaving my dress riding high, the shadow darker between my thighs, I crossed the room. His eyes glittered as they stared at my crotch and I knew he was wondering what, if anything, I wore underneath.
My hips rolled as I slowly walked over. Sliding my knee down into the space between his spread legs until it rested on the seat cushion, I pulled on his tie, leaning in and whispering, “I’m not a fan of underwear.”
He grinned as his hand closed on the back of my thigh.
“Not here.” I eased smoothly away from his stroking fingers, my sensual appraisal promising excitement.
His breath hissed as, turning around, I gave him a tantalising glimpse of my barely covered ass and it took all my willpower not to look back as I sauntered away. Glittering sparks erupted behind my eyes and I realized I’d forgotten to breath. Pull yourself together.
The metal bar of the fire exit chilled my palms as I shoved the door open. The evening air tightened my skin into goosebumps, and I shuddered as I felt his warm hand slide round my midriff. The heat of his body smothered my back. I swallowed the bile in my throat and turned in his arms. His hand gripped my backside as I shuffled him sideways, out into the alley, letting the heavy door thump shut.
“Outdoor girl, then. Thought so, by the flower tattoos. Nice.”
His wet mouth sucked my neck as I pushed him back against the wall.
“You haven’t seen the best part,” I whispered.
He stopped clutching at my body, his hands dropping to his side as he leaned back into the wall. His voice catching in a tight throat, he said, “Show me.”
My fingers closed over the zipper tab sitting in the deep V between my breasts. I stared into his face as I slowly pulled it down, enjoying the moment when the tight mask of lust faltered.
“What the fuck.”
Stroking my hand up over his tense shoulder, my sharply manicured nails dug into his flesh.
“Shit,” he hissed, his hand gripping my wrist, the force making me wince. “What are you? A psycho bitch? No one would want to touch that.”
I took a step closer. “But you did, once.”
He finally looked into my face and his slack jaw dropped open. I slipped the four-inch metal spike from my hair, letting the weight of it tumble down. In a smooth fast action, I drove the needle-sharp point into the side of his neck, using the heel of my hand to ram it home. The blood sprayed like water from a blocked faucet, the splatters cold against my flushed skin.
Stefan Ashworth, Internet site developer, psychopath, and tattoo fetishist, slid down the brickwork, the rough edges grating over his body until he came to rest sitting on the ground. His head flopped over, and, if it weren’t for the claret waterfall staining his shirtfront, a passer-by would think he’d passed out, drunk.
I smiled as my fingertip smeared through the wet droplets scattered over my bare torso. The stem running down over my shoulder ended in a cluster of dew drenched rosebuds. The centre point of each one framed a puckered scar dug into my flesh where, the first and last time I had met Stefan, he buried a blade in my chest five times and left me for dead.
Pulling up the zipper, I turned on my heel and repaid the compliment. And that’s how I got the tattoo.
26 Thursday Jun 2014
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Okay, this is a bit ‘out there’. Is it a poem?
I’m usually knotted up with concepts of rhyme and meter, and I have very little knowledge of either. I’ve been reading some ‘free verse’ poetry over the last couple of days.
I wrote a review response to a poem, and wondered if it could actually become a poem in itself. It set me thinking… Here is the result of my impulse to try out that theory.
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Initially, I see that moment when words are swords, and smiles, a forced facade… brittle.
The parry of politeness stems from ‘being civilized about us’.
Things ended badly, but we’re big enough to forgive, if not forget.
For one, the smiles are the ‘I know I can still hurt you’ calibre of weaponry.
The other, mind reeling, seeing too much, pretends their armor is ‘up to the job’.
I look around the coffee shop, my eyes needing refuge from your image.
The interior hums with those acting out and acting up.
The pulled shirt collars, men constrained in tongue-tied splendor — I love that image, that truth…
that a suit is a chosen projection, but the unconscious gestures,
those stemming from ‘pretending the suit is comfortable’, tell us the wearer’s secrets.
Clothes can’t hide who we are… can’t make us who we want to be, either.
‘Comfortable in our skin’ is never clearer than when we are not.
The coffee shop ordeal becomes an aromatic Hell as nostalgia unfurls,
creating a fabric woven in ragged regret and hope.
The subtle shift, from a battleground revisited, from where casualties walked away,
to ‘the moment was never right to be all we could have been’…
but, at least, that leaves us with the dreams of possibilities still intact,
even though those hot tendrils of thought evaporate in the rarified atmosphere of trepidation.
Not risking, not pushing that boundary anew, leaves us suspended in a sense of wistful desire,
Bittersweet and unchallenged.
Okay… my rambling thoughts are over… the interesting thing?
If I met you for coffee this time tomorrow, will I gain the same impressions?
There’s the thing, you can never recapture that ‘first see’ experience,
I hadn’t seen your face for years, and now, the moment carves another mark in the rock of us.
And you, you will see it all so differently.
But, I will never know.
25 Wednesday Jun 2014
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Personal prompt challenge from Doug Langille on Writer’s Carnival: Write a flash fiction piece or a poem, and you MUST include the words: simulation, stimulation, fibrillation
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A monster is born, blue veined pallid skin,
gel covers the sutures that bind him tight.
Electricity arcs, strobes, lightning blind,
banish death in simulation of life.
A stimulation of an empty soul,
the doctor striving to prove God is wrong.
Staring to starlit skies, he shouts out loud,
“Smite my monster so that he can be born.”
The arcing, ionizing, crackle breathes
a fibrillation of flesh, too long dried.
Frankenstein, face tight with triumph aglow
seeing sinews twitch, swells with parent’s pride.
25 Wednesday Jun 2014
Posted in Blog: Non Fiction
by Karen Payton Holt (AKA KPHVampireWriter)
When you are writing a story and setting the scene, because you want the reader to ‘see’ what you are seeing, it is very easy to fall into one of two traps.
1/ ‘An information dump’ – where the writer’s head appears above the parapet and the detail the reader ‘needs to know’ is dumped in to their lap. If the story is halted for too long then picking up the action again is more difficult.
2/ Descriptive opening paragraphs written in passive voice, which can be dull.
‘The man entered the bar. There were tables scattered around the room. The lighting was dim. There were four men sat huddled in a corner, and one guy was wearing a hat…’
You get the picture. However, introducing a new setting is far more interesting if the voice is active.
Consider, ‘The tavern door was heavier…
View original post 420 more words
22 Sunday Jun 2014
Posted in Flash Fiction, Horror
Tags
In light of it being Friday the 13th AND a full moon, and the fact that it won’t happen again until 2049, Writers Carnival celebrated by throwing a midnight challenge to post a SCARY story using NO MORE than 750 words.
*WARNING : ELEMENTS OF HORROR – but this is ‘scary pants’, Friday 13th BADGE entry!* (Word count 590)
The desk lamp cast a pool of light over the black laquered surface of the desk. The nape of my neck prickled and, slowly turning my chair on its spindle, I gazed out over the muted city lights. Shit, it’s late. Pink blood-like streaks stretched across the dark grey canvas of an evening sky.
Leaning back and clasping my hands behind my head, I eased out my neck muscles, frowning at the tightness which pulled them back into knots. With a sudden explosion of movement, I stood up. Yanking my jacket from the back of my chair, without tidying away the spread of papers scattered over the desk, I headed for the door.
As I left the office, I scanned the open plan workspace beyond, relieved to find there were only two halos of lemon light glowing above the partitions of distant cubicles. Okay, I can get out of here. I walked carefully out to the deserted reception area, the measured stride of my footfalls echoing on the solid wood floor. A rush of heat made me sweat, and, running my finger around the inside of my collar, I cursed under my breath because it was tighter than it had been this morning.
The thin cotton of my shirt felt like sandpaper against my skin. I shifted my shoulders, grumbling gently as I stopped at the elevator.
With the side of a clenched fist, I hit the call button. The boldprint black ‘G’ became ghost grey as the safety glass fractured. I closed my eyes, listening to the whine and swish of the straining cables which, on a normal day, I could not hear, and began chanting. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.
A musical chiming sound announced the arrival of the elevator, and I snapped my eyes open once more. For a moment, I stared into blood red eyes shining back at me from the mirror finish of the polished steel doors.
Glancing quickly over my shoulder as the elevator doors parted with a sigh, I strode swiftly forward into the brushed steel box. Letting my jacket drop onto the plush ruby red carpet at my feet, I leaned against the back wall, my unsheathed claws scraping over the metal panel. The doors swished as they began to close, smoothly narrowing the gap.
“Wait.”
Jerking into movement, I reached for the button displaying the ‘door close’ symbol, my lip folding back on my distorted features, a muzzle unleashing a rumbling growl.
A manicured hand slipped between the doors. “Wait. Please.”
I recognised the red nail varnish. I backed away. “Catch the next one, Kate.”
Her arm pushed into the car first, swiftly followed by a sidestepping body dressed in a cream silk blouse and tight black skirt.
“Pheww, that was close. Jason, why didn’t you hold the…”
She turned to look at me, the blond curtain of her hair swinging back. Her features froze in sudden terror and she jolted back against the sealed elevator door.
I killed the scream in her throat as my canines punctured her windpipe. My arms closed around her, holding her close in a macabre dance as her blood flowed down between our clamped bodies. When her flesh was cold, I lifted my chin and howled at the full-moon, which I felt like the burn of ash stroking over my skin, even though I could not see it. A tear lay a damp trail over the fur covering my cheek as the human mind trapped inside me screamed.
14 Saturday Jun 2014
Posted in Flash Fiction, Horror
I was challenged to answer the MYSTERY CAVE prose prompt on Writer’s Carnival.
Write a story, no more than 500 words, that tells about finding something in a cave. What is it and how did it get there?
This is what I came up with… bending the rule a little? I don’t think so, no one said who ‘finds’ whom. (Word Count 495)
<><><><><><><> WARNING: HORROR CONTENT <><><><><><><>
The noise of crumbling stone snapped my head around. My clawed grip on the rock lined ceiling of the cavern held me secure as my body swung gently, the jerking action tensing my muscles. The coal dust atmosphere billowed as I eased my eyes open, but it was the sound that made the walls of the cave come to life. Like a disrupted signal from my sonar, it bounced around the space and mapped it in my mind.
The membrane cocooning me felt tight, and the dehydrated skin crackled as I eased the tight embrace I had wrapped around my body. I felt the cold dank air of the cave whisper over my outstretched limbs.
The scraping grew louder, the pitch hurting my ears when an avalanche of dust and rock fragments erupted into the air. I recognised the sound. It had the same jarring resonance I heard when I became sealed inside this rock encrusted space. The grit I had breathed in still lined my nose. Survival instincts taking over, I resorted to preserved my energy by hibernating.
“Give it another shove, Riggs. We’re nearly in.”
The creature’s screeching call grated like splintered glass through my head. I detected the waft of a familiar salt-laden scent. It flavored the smooth skin on my food source, which slept at night. They were easy to feed from when asleep. My long tongue flicked out, tasting the air.
“Well if you’d give me a hand, we’d be in there a lot quicker. Bloody storm is coming.”
“Can’t we find another cave?”
“Don’t be so soft. We’ve only got to shift a few lumps of rock, they’ve hardly even settled. Just put your back into it.”
“Ouch.”
The smell of blood plumed into the darkness as the rocks shifted and a glittering shaft of light, like a blade of silver, illuminated the packed mud floor. Empty drink cartons and a rusted oil lamp were all that waited for the scavengers when they finally broke in.
“For God’s sake Pete, wrap something round it and stop whining. It’s just a graze.”
The air inside the cave suddenly tasted of dirt as the currents inside whipped into frenzy. The silver light faded to the dullness of molten lead and stones clattered… no, not stones, rainwater splattering, pummelling the rocks.
“Quick, I’m getting soaked, get inside, get in.”
The creature, it’s succulent pink skin gleaming, fell through the hole. It crawled across the ground, the blood staining its hand making my mouth water. The crinkling sensation of spreading dry wings grated through my muscles. I released my grip on the rough hewn ceiling, and dropped like a stone. The rushing torrent of falling rain drowned out the animal’s gargling scream when I buried my fangs in its neck.
The ruptured throat bubbled, and its spluttering mouth oozed blood which ran down its body.
“Be careful in there, Pete. I hear there are some bloody huge bats living in some of these caves.”
08 Sunday Jun 2014
Posted in Blog: Non Fiction
By Karen Payton Holt (AKA KPHVampireWriter)
Here is a burning question: Should you have all three written before you publish Book One?
As the writer of the vampire/horror genre series of novels ‘Fire and Ice’, I have an evolved personal view on this topic. In short, the answer is ‘yes’, if you can, then you should.
Is it essential to write the entire series before the first book leaves the nest? There are two considerations to this argument; commercial and creative.
View original post 540 more words
08 Sunday Jun 2014
Posted in Flash Fiction
Morrigan’s Curse is my first attempt at ‘fantasy’ genre fiction.
The prompt demanded I use the words : stagger, lake trout, conflict, success. Maximum word count : 500. This came in at 496.
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The Swordlord staggered up the bank, his grip on the hilt of his weapon turning his knuckles white. The wet leather tunic pulled tight across his muscular shoulders as he gasped for breath. Reaching for the support of a nearby tree, he twisted around.
Pushing wet hanks of hair back from his face, ignoring the water running down over his cramped features, his gray gaze scanned the water’s surface where the sun scattered a carpet of glittering diamonds.
Daring to look away, he dug his fingers into the holes torn in the leather at his shoulder. They came out smeared with blood. Damn, Athlean, he almost had me. He took a steadying breath, his eyes glowing as the fizz of anger heated his blood. The capillaries in his skin glistened like threads of copper wire. The water on his skin boiled.
At the sudden sound of rushing water, his head jerked around. His jaw twitched as he raised his sword, feet braced ready for conflict.
From the churning water, the creature reared, towering above the Swordlord. The pallid membrane covering it’s bulk glistened, the distinctive lake trout speckled marking on its flesh bore witness to its fate.
“You took my life, cursed me.” Strings of slime-like saliva hung from the gaping mouth, his rage spraying the words. “You hoped for success, Gharient, but now…” The pearl-sheened eyes gleamed. “The potion runs through your blood, too.”
The Swordlord raised his blade. “You failed, Athlean.” He stamped his boot. “Here, on land, you are nothing. You sealed your fate when you drowned my daughter.” Gharient took a step closer, his glare discharging a lightning strike which cut through the air between him and his enemy. The fish eyes blinked rapidly and then were welded open as the jagged blaze bored into his mind. The flaccid lips twisted as the scene of Morrigan’s death burned into his retina. “Never forget, if she had died by flame I would condemn you to Hell.” He spat on the ground. “The lake is your prison for eternity.”
The ice-white blaze of his glare dimmed as Gharient grinned. “You live with what you did, and know this, my warriors slayed your brethren. There is nothing of your bloodline left to avenge you. You are nothing.”
“And yet, you could not stay away.” Athlean bared the ridged blade of his jaw, blood staining the white-bone spines on either side of the cavernous bite.
Gharient laughed. “I have what I came for. Morrigan lives inside your head now, as her suffering has long screamed through mine.” He turned away, the sword slipping from his grasp. Bending to retrieve it, he stopped. Straightening, spreading his fingers, he stared at the webbed membrane clinging to them. “No…”
Harsh laughter behind him faded into the spluttering gush of water. Turning back, ripples racing across the lake’s silver skin were all he saw as his flesh began to chill his bones and breathing air began to lacerated his throat.
Karen Payton Holt 