Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group argues over. These are my entries.
SPOOKTOBER DAY #4 — Alternate Dimensions
TITLE: The Choking Game
PREMISE: I admit, I come up with a prompt for the AI that vaguely fits the idea, then come up with the story to match. Lotte and Calvin are middle school kids that get into the classic kid’s dare of choking yourself or your friends unconscious. Yeah, bad idea kids. But the world seems to change when they’re out of breath, and as they share what they saw, they realize they’re seeing the same thing. Are they getting access to a different realm of existence? Anything is better than where they live, right?
Lotte starts to see a golden-eyed man in a bowtie, who never looks at her, just looks to the sky and rambles endlessly in some broken version of the Book of Psalms. What does it all mean, Lotte? Keep looking, keep listening. Never mind what your hands are doing to Calvin’s throat.
HORROR ELEMENT: It’s not easy having a good time. How do you decide where to stop? What if it’s too late?
Poster by AI, modified with photoshop.
Again, a bit OT. I’m enjoying the seasonal stories – was inspired to have a crack at my own! Apologies if you’ve already done something like this before, but just an idea:
Title: The Howlers
Premise: A young, bisexual, US student is a first year undergrad at a remote UK university. After a one-night-stand of passion, she wakes up with a few lovebites, an empty bed, and a sudden craving to tighten immigration regulations. Weird things keep happening (e.g. she sees a donation to the Log Cabin Republicans in her name – and when she angrily calls the credit card company they claim she made it!). A little while later, during the day before the full moon, she blacks out – waking up the next day in an ill-fitting suit, with a Young Conservative’s Club membership card in her hand! Even worse, she later sees a youtube clip of herself giving an awful speech (“the poor of the UK have had it too good for too long”, “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, “reward innovation, and let the free market work”, etc.) …in an upper-class English accent (everyone knows those sound the most sinister). She looked like she was in a zombie-like trance, but because it was a conservative meeting she just blended in with everyone else.
Later, when she spots her one-night-stand wearing a blue rosette, the terrible truth is revealed – the bites she took as an act of passion are now transforming her into a were-tory!
She then has to team up with a cute enby mythology student in order to try to break the curse (“So…we should stake them in the heart?” “one, that’s vampires; two, good luck finding a tory’s heart …[pause]… also, three, possibly illegal?”). But it’s coming up to pride – will they be able to make it in time, or will one night of ill-judged passion cause her to be doomed to make a complete fool of herself in front of the nascent village LGBTQ+ community – thus ruining dating prospects forever (or at least until graduation)…?
Horror element: loss of self-control; that feeling of looming dread when you wake up after a night of hard partying and can’t remember what you said or did but have a terrible suspicion it was horrifically embarrassing x 1000.
Notes: It should be in the style of “An American Werewolf in London” (sort of cheesy horror-comedy?); the transformation scenes will be all 1980s practical effects – e.g. her hair rearranges itself from fashionable to young-conservative, her mouth becomes a rictus grin as she stares into the mirror; “awwwoooo, awwwwwsterity economics; trickle down!! Firm leadership! Reward job creators! AHhhhh, what’s happening to me?”, accent changes from US to English as she’s speaking; the full works. Can be played for comedy when, as it gets closer to the next full moon, it starts slipping out again – e.g. patronising casual racisms slip out in an English accent (“and where are you from?” “er..two streets down?” “no, but where are you from originally”, “my mum’s house, two streets down…?”), snaps out of a trance and realises she’s accidentally written a treatise on the benefit of freemarket economics, which she then has to hide before her professor sees it, etc. etc.
that is fucking excellent. you win, haha.