The Din from the Garbage Bin

Copyright-Kent Bonham

While walking home, Anne heard the disturbing din from the garbage bin.

At the back of her apartment building were oversize rats gnawing at something.

Tampons lay there like small gutted animals. Week-old blood and cottony innards spilled across the pavement, filling greedy snouts and thick hairy tongues.

Disgusted, Anne tried to shoo the freak rodents away.

The vampiric vermin hissed at her, their eyes crimson coals of hatred burning through the darkness.

She ran up to her apartment and bolted the door.

Her fingers failed to reach the switch as the glowing red eyes came rushing towards her thighs.

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The Immigrants

PHOTO PROMPT Copyright – Marie Gail Stratford

The ships burned cigarette holes into the blanket of blue satin sky.

The people gazed skyward, displaying digits tattooed into their hyper-extended necks.

The numbers meant that they’ve been chosen, that they’ve killed to earn their limited tickets to salvation.

They’ve trimmed the population down to half for the chance to dwell in the new world created by superior species.

The chosen’s bodies lifted into the air. The earth spun like a giant baggage carousel.

In every corner, screams pierced the air in innumerable shades of intensity, as each extraterrestrial immigrant scanned the digits and claimed their designated flesh suits.

Hitchhiker

PHOTO PROMPT -Copyright-Roger Bultot

Hitchhiker

“Ran away?” the driver asked.

I wanted to tell him to fuck off but he was kind enough to give me a ride.

I nodded.

“Have you found salvation?” he asked. The speedometer quivered to ninety-five.

“What the fuck…” I reached for the door but his heavy fist collided with my jaw.

“It’s alright, son.” His eyes were vulturine, burning with zeal as he blabbered something about the Lord and lost sheep. “I’ve come to take you home…”

Then I noticed the rosary made of fine hair and deciduous teeth and a shiny plastic crucifix dangling from the rearview mirror.

 

Words and Whispers

PHOTO PROMPT -Copyright – Jan Wayne Fields

He rarely left that desk.

For years, he ensorcelled the public with haunting stories spawned from his imagination yet refused to bask in the brilliance of his fame.

Some dismissed it as cheap tactic, speculating that there was no single mysterious author but a group of ghost writers.

Fans camped outside his fortress. The media met only with agents of glib tongues and swollen pockets.

They said he answered to disembodied whispers.

His last words were jumbled letters carved into the ancient desk, engraved into emaciated flesh…

Indecipherable, except for the words: “Free us” penned shakily in sick, diluted blood.

Visitors

PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright-Björn Rudberg

Beneath the aching moon, she sighs
as I read the poetry of her thighs…
Fingernail tracing syllables,
I tap on her fragile spot
and the veins beneath her skin become visible
like cracks on glass.
Once severed, they’re like moist lips, gaping, sputtering…
as if dying to say something.

I peel her body from the floor.
Her head adorns the door
like a grotesque knocker,
mouth agape in a perpetual roar,
as if to ward off visitors.

Still, they come pouring in,
intrigued by my chalk-white skin
and the euphoric sting…
Lonely, desperate souls
gutting the night with their screams.

If Wishes Came True

PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright – Kelly Sands

Curdled clouds came… hovering, descending…
ingesting everything in their way.
The world was painted in black, white and gray.
I opened my mouth and out poured a soundless scream
as if we existed in a silent film.
Then people started floating…
Their bodies bloating,
Fat limbs flailing,
Dancing in an eerie pantomime…
Intent on leaving me behind.
I cried after the corpse balloons as they flew towards the ashen sky,
gazing down at me with pupilless eyes.
Their decaying mouths opened and closed in an inaudible song.
Then I remembered my last birthday wish…
For everyone to leave me alone.

Hi! Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes last week. I’m really sorry that I was unable to return some of the visits. I’ll read as many stories as I can this week. xox ❤

The Voice

PHOTO PROMPT
Copyright – Douglas M. MacIlroy

I was taking a dump when god spoke to me.

The sky tore open and a spear thudded onto the ground.

He ordered me to sacrifice my father to him.

It was the same god who ordered me to slaughter my sister… the same god who provided the spoon that I buried into her soft skull.

I was born and raised in this hellhole… old enough to know that god is everywhere.

God sees everything.

There’s nowhere to run… or hide.

God said something about ratings going up.

And that only one of us will get off this island alive.

Hi FF family. I’m soooo late, I know! 🙂 But I promise to read a few stories over the weekend. BRB xo

Invisible

Copyright -Jennifer Pendergast

I’ve always wanted to be the popular girl.

But not this way.

They talk about me, forever and ever…

How I got pregnant…

Molested by the janitor…

Had an abortion…

The lies accumulate… every schoolyear.

In a roomful of giggling, gossiping girls,

I feel more invisible than ever.

Even as they talk about me…

How I cut my wrists in the toilet…

Hanged myself from a tree…

Then haunted my tormentors.

Lies.

My tormentors grew up fine.

They probably became your parents.

You cry at the rooftop.

Like I used to…

I whisper soothingly in your ear:

Just one step…

Homecoming

PHOTO PROMPT Copyright – Erin Leary

Hi everyone! I missed a few FF challenges but I’m happy that I’m able to participate this week! Thank you to those who helped spread the news about the release of my book, 100 Nightmares. Support and even positive reviews came from people that I least expected it from so that was such a pleasant surprise. Thank you so much, you know who you are. 🙂 The book is actually doing fine, great reviews from horror sites and everything, so yay! 🙂 Now to my story…

Homecoming

My earliest memory was that of my father disappearing into the silver fog.
I cried out his name… first word I ever spoke… but he just kept walking.
Then his replacement came.
A silent semi-man…
He’d lock the doors and mother’s screams would splinter the air… They were of unexplainable pleasure… and pain.
“Hithh thill your father…” mother said as her teeth clattered onto the floor.

That was history.

Then the mist called me…

When I return, I hope my wife would remember what I told her.
To aim straight for the head… and to never look into my eyes…

Guitar Girl

Copyright – Björn Rudberg

Guitar Girl

He sits me on his lap. He clutches my neck.

His fingers strum my ribs.

My body shivers and sings, spurred into life by his sorrow.

I tell myself I’m his instrument… bought, kept… the sounds that I make—of pleasure and pain—fine-tuned to his every mood.

He tugs at my damaged strings and inside my hollow chest, my stifled screams echo for as long as we’ve been together.

His hands tighten around my throat while he convulses in sadistic satisfaction.

Sometimes, I dream of black body bags… of finding reprieve when he zips the world away from me.

I’m late! Sooo late. But I have a legit reason for that. I’ve just released an eBook! yep. 100 Nightmares is now live at Amazon.com, Lulu.com and Smashwords. I created a blog post yesterday, right here A reblog of that post would be wonderful 🙂

Thank you so much to those who supported me from the very start of this project. If you like horror/ my writing, it would be awesome if you could grab a copy and leave a review. 🙂 A fair warning though, most of the stories in the book are way darker than the ones I usually write for FF. (less than 20% of the stories there were from FF– the rest, all new) 🙂

Thanks again! xo K.Z. ❤