During the month of October, we at Danse Macabre have created special treats to be served for to enjoy at your leisure.
Three Words.
One Picture.
What do you see?
A story? A poem? A memory from Halloween Past or Present?
Use the words, twist the words, dress them up and make them yours!
Pingback here and let us know how it went.
We’re dying to see what you’ve created!
ps
included is a music clip that I hope will inspire you!
amm
Pantry
Missing
Doll
Let’s shake it up a bit!
I have posted this clip- here’s a description: ATMOSPHERIC GOTHIC HORROR READING MUSIC | H.P Lovecraft, Stephen King, Edgar Allen Poe
I let it play and then I wrote the first thing that popped into my head.
I went for turns of phrase and tried to capture little images too.
What will you see?
The Next Chapter
by
A.M. Moscoso
Hand to page
from
word to eye
the writer’s nightmare
is mine tonight.
Will I wake
will it end
will I ever sleep again?
The Writer’s Nightmare
is inside of my head
and it will feast on my fear
until I am cold and dead.
Am I gone
am I a ghost
am I just a neglected
and forgotten corpse?
Book in hand
trapped in a scream
am I bound to be
the Writer’s Next Dream?
amm
During the month of October, we at Danse Macabre have created special treats to be served for to enjoy at your leisure.
Three Words.
One Picture.
What do you see?
A story? A poem? A memory from Halloween Past or Present?
Use the words, twist the words, dress them up and make them yours!
Pingback here and let us know how it went.
We’re dying to see what you’ve created!
Snow
Footprints
Dog
I’ve gone ahead and played along and here is my response to the three word prompt- what will yours be?
Footprints
by
A.M. Moscoso
In the dark and cold kitchen in the last house on La Pierre Drive, crammed into a corner behind the swinging door, Ivy Plum is listening to her family, her Father, her Mother and her two sisters dying in their bedrooms.
They are coughing and wheezing and gurgling like raging creeks during a spring flood and her Father is calling out in agony for his dog Prince that he had when he was just a little boy.
She clasps her phone to her chest and try as she might, she cannot open her hands, they are locked over her phone and they will not open no matter how hard she tries
Her family is dying above her head and Ivy Plum is too terrified to move, to scream or to push herself out of the corner to the backdoor across the kitchen that is open and is inviting her, it is begging her, to run.
Ivy Plum is trapped in the Hell inside of her head where all she can here is her Father crying out in fear for his dog to help him, to come right now and help them all.
“Come on Prince, come on boy!” Ivy hears her Father is begging his long dead dog, his first and always best friend. ” Good boy. Come on boy.”
She tries to unfold her hands and as she pushes them against her chest she takes a breath and she falls forward. Her hands fall away from each other. One hand is still clutching her phone. She nearly cries out in relief but remembers to not make a sound. All that matters now is- she moved!
Ivy braces he shoulder against the wall and holds herself up, she pushes the door away with her free hand and she walks slowly because she is dizzy and everytime she turns she sees stars but she takes one step and another and another and she is halfway across the kitchen to the backdoor when she hears a thump on the stairs.
It’s a gentle thump, soft, padded.
Someone is coming down the stairs, someone is trying now to take each step slowly because, Ivy knows-
someone is looking for her.
Ivy looks at the back door and the phone in her hand and she keeps moving until she reaches the door and the cold icy air hits her in the face and she takes a long deep breath and tries to scream for help and then she see it all
this terrible night is going to show her everything.
It shows her the tracks in the snow that lead into the kitchen and she turns her head slowly and sees the puddles of water, the melted snow go through the kitchen and out the kitchen door into the hallway and then
she sees the bloody footprints coming into the kitchen and her eyes obediently follow them into the corner behind the kitchen door.
She goes to the counter and she looks out of the kitchen window above it and into the dark and endless snowy night.
Still looking out the window, she lets the phone fall from her grasp into the sink so that she could wash her bloody hands.
She picks up the bloody knife that is sitting in the bottom of the sink next to her phone and she washes it too…
because she has too, because she always does.
Ivy hears the kitchen door whisper open and she hears the clicking of dog paws behind her. Prince growls and she can’t hear it as much a she can feel it and she waits from him to close in on her.
Sometimes it seems to take years before he jumps and sinks his teeth into the back her skull and bites down and begins to tear her apart.
She wonders, as she always does, if every night in her Hell will be like this.
In the end, she thinks, it probably will be.
Here’s a different kind of challenge for you to try!
I ran across a prompt that was a bit macabre, so I gave it a try.
A man wakes up in an electric chair ( you can sub a grave, a body bag or in the gallows )
In case you’re curious I’ve posted my response here- and as you will see I put my own spin on the prompt
and you should feel free to do the same.
amm
The Chair
by
A.M. Moscoso
Maybe, sixteen year old Thomas Gilder thought when his heart slowed down enough for him to think clearly, if I just relax and close my eyes I can figure how I got here and how I can get out because if I got into this I can get out too- that’s logical, or science or something like that right?
His hands, were clammy and sweaty and cold and they grasped the smooth arms of the chair with less force then he realized because he was very close to passing out. He bit his lips to keep from calling for his Mother. She’d be so disappointed in him if she knew where he was. He could not- would not do that to her. He would not call for her like he did when he was a little kid waking up terrified from a nightmare.
At least not right now.
Thomas turned his head and looked at the little window with the pale blue curtain drawn across it that was to his left
and he wondered why the room was painted pale green and why it didn’t really match the curtains in the window and why
he was sitting in this electric chair and how long it was going to be before the Executioner realized he was here .
Thomas looked up at the clock and watched the second hand crawl from one number to the next- not that he could read the clock. Most kids his age can’t but it gave him something to think about and when his thoughts got back on the Tommy Gilder train he made himself remember the walk down here, the instructions, and the RULES.
Maybe that was the key. If he could remember the short walk that brought him here maybe he could avoid the long walk ahead.
What ever he came up with, he had to snap himself out of this nightmare before the face appeared in the little window and saw him.
It was all over for him at that point, wasn’t it? Or maybe it really ended for him when he decided to heck with it and decided to not follow the RULES.
Thomas wasn’t bad kid, well- he knew if he had made a few better life choices he wouldn’t be here waiting for that curtain to be moved to the side and for Hell to rain down on him.
There had to be something he could do, maybe say he was sorry and that he’d never screw off and he’d promise on a stack of bibles to follow THE RULES but before he could put his thoughts into order and choose one of those flimsy options his out of control brain had come up with, the curtain in the small window opened and then the face of the Executioner appeared and it was indeed the face of his doom and a painful molten rain of words did indeed fall down upon him.
” Son of a bitch! Take your kid to work day. What can go wrong they said. You only work for the State. None of the dumbasses that nagged me to do this asked me what I do for the state.”
She took a breath which meant she was nowhere near finished yelling.
“What did I tell you about wandering off? This isn’t a playground. I work here. I told you what the RULES were. So tell me. How the Hell did you get in there?
Chin to his chest, Thomas held up his Mothers keycard.
” Forget asking me for the car or for the password to WiFi at home which I am changing and NEVER going to give you. Forget ever hoping that I will forget this stunt. Get over to the door NOW.”
Thomas got up from the electric chair, he bowed his head and he walked slowly to the door.
When the door opened and he saw the Executioner- (or as she was known at home ” Mom” ) standing there with how miserable his fate was going to be written all over hear face, he knew his punishment would indeed be a fate worse then death.
Please tell me that wasn’t you
I saw at the cemetery that day
sneaking out of your crypt in your finest
Sunday clothes.
Please tell me that wasn’t you
I heard singing in the cemetery that day
a dark little waltz
sung sweetly off key
Please tell me that wasn’t you
I saw in the cemetery that day
calling me to join you
in my finest Sunday Clothes.
During the month of October, we at Danse Macabre have created special treats to be served daily for to enjoy at your leisure.
Three Words.
One Picture.
What do you see?
A story? A poem? A memory from Halloween Past or Present?
Use the words, twist the words, dress them up and make them yours!
Pingback here and let us know how it went.
We’re dying to see what you’ve created!
Dance
Whisper
Key
During the month of October, we at Danse Macabre have created special treats to be served daily for to enjoy at your leisure.
Three Words.
One Picture.
What do you see?
A story? A poem? A memory from Halloween Past or Present?
Use the words, twist the words, dress them up and make them yours!
Pingback here and let us know how it went.
We’re dying to see what you’ve created!
Werewolf
Candy
Music
” Cupcakes are a funny thing to serve at a Funeral. I mean I get serving them at the Wake, ” Tovia Sims said to her co-worker at View Ridge Lane Funeral Home and Cemetery Sheena Ainsley ” but during the Funeral itself?”
Sheena handed a cupcake to an elderly woman in a long fur trimmed coat,” Everyone is going to be munching on cupcakes and getting crumbs all over everything during the entire service. And do you know who is going to have to vacuum this all up?”
They continued to somberly hand out more cupcakes out as the family and friends of the recently departed entered the chapel in a long quiet line.
Tovia placed her empty box under the table where the guest book was was and she pulled out another. ” Uh. The Groundskeepers?”
” Guess again.”
” I did not go to Mortuary College to end up serving freaking cupcakes at a funeral and then having to hoover the mess up after the service. Jesus. Who’s idea was this anyway?”
” It was Lilly’s.” Sheena pointed to the portrait sitting on the table next to the guest book.
Tovia nodded. ” She was warped.”
” She was rich. These cupcakes are trimmed with edible gold and I kid you not, and flavored with vanilla beans that only grow on one island in the entire world. These things are like a thousand dollars each. And they were baked by Lilly’s favorite baker in Lilly’s own kitchen which is also stocked with foods from the most remote places on the planet. People have died bringing fruits to Lilly’s that ended up in her morning bowl of oatmeal.”
” Thousand Dollar cupcakes.” Tovia pushed the last empty box under the table with her foot.
” Yep.”
When they heard the music in the chapel start ,they checked the doors, the halls and then quietly and carefully closed the doors to the chapel.
” She must have loved her family a lot to do this for them.” Tovia whispered. ” Feeding them thousand dollar cupcakes and probably leaving them a boat load of cash.”
” I heard she left it all to her cat.” Sheena said
” Oh sure. Like that’s going to happen. ”
” She really loved that cat. I saw it when went to her house to do the removal. It’s the coolest cat you’v ever seen. It has two faces, he’s an honest to goodness Janus cat named Kolchak and he’s almost 20 years old. She was offered millions for it, more then once, but she turned it down.”
” I’ll bet they find a way to get Kolchak’s money and more cupcakes” Tovia shook her head.
Did I tell you her cat had it’s own Nanny? Her name is Mavis. She speaks three languages” Sheena whispered.
The two Funeral Directors stared at the picture of Lilly- it wasn’t an old picture. It was a new picture. Lilly was standing in front of a large shelf filled with bottles- they were in all shapes and if you looked very closely you could see the labels.
” Hey. Look at these…” Sheena tapped on the picture.
The two women looked from the pictures to the cupcake boxes and then they practically knocked each other over as they ran and pulled the chapel doors open.
Lilly’s guests turned and with their mouths full of Lilly’s special cupcakes mixed with vanilla beans that only grow on one island in the entire world, decorated with edible gold and frosted with the finest purest butter cream frosting ever made by human hands and full arsenic from Lilly’s special little bottles.
” How did you get so good at carving pumpkins? “
” Practice.” Enid told her Granddaughter as she delicately put the tip of her butcher’s knife against the side pumpkin’s blank face. ” Lots and lots of practice.”
She pushed the knife into he pumpkin’s flesh and as she broke the skin she told Aubrey, ” I love that smell.”
” That pumpkin smell?”
Enid looked over the pumpkin and said, ” That what?”
” That pumpkin smell.”
Enid shrugged and then pulled the knife up and dropped it down into the pumpkin in one clean motion after another.
Instead of answering her Aubrey, Enid hummed.
When she was finished she put her knife down and wrapped her fingers around the pumpkins stem. She took a breath, closed her eyes and smiled as lifted and heard the pop and rip as the top of the pumpkin’s skull came away in her hand.
Enid opened her eyes and sighed and then she answered her Granddaughter. ” No. I don’t mean that smell. I mean that other smell.”
” I can’t smell anything except for Pumpkin.”
” Really?” Enid said, ” You can’t smell that?”
Enid set the top of the pumpkin’s head down and she reached for a large wooden spoon and plunged into the pumpkin and began to scrape it out.
” Go ahead. Take a sniff. You really can’t smell that?”
Aubrey leaned over the pumpkin and sniffed.
” What is it? What should I be able to smell?”
As Enid stood up she picked the knife up off the table and said to the back of her Granddaughter’s neck:
” Why. The Fear of course.”
I made this e-card at Spookathon.Com
This was a fun site and I’d say give it a whirl because it was easy to navigate and in the end the picture I created was the Bee’s Knees.
PS. To save the picture I had to go all the way through and create the card- and if you want there are other options for your artwork, like creating games and puzzles.
I hope you enjoyed the treat today…now on to the next part.
bwahahahahh
amm
During the month of October, we at Danse Macabre have created special treats to be served for to enjoy at your leisure.
Three Words.
One Picture.
What do you see?
A story? A poem? A memory from Halloween Past or Present?
Use the words, twist the words, dress them up and make them yours!
Pingback here and let us know how it went.
We’re dying to see what you’ve created!
VEIL
TEA
PORTRAIT
Danse Macabre 