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 #13 — Folk Horror
TITLE: See to Thy Soul
PREMISE: Colette is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and her wealthy family is only good for one thing – giving her enough money to run away from time to time. She’s wondering if she’s missed something in spurning christianity and reads a travel story about an isolated English village that has adopted radical christian beliefs. They talk about caring for the soul as if it was a distinct creature within you, that can be coaxed out, talked with, groomed for heaven. She gives it a go.
At first she is shocked by the visions, the ability to see a soul as if it’s physically present in their rituals. When she doesn’t feel any closer to god over the experiences, she begins to wonder what the ghostly manifestations are. They look like the person they are attached to, but somewhat liquid, not at all transparent or glowing.
HORROR ELEMENT: The village sits over a deposit of oil-like mineral containing many alien entities. They can extrude the oil like ectoplasm to take a human-like form, as long as they remain near the human. The aliens want different things – have personal agendas – but are generally allied to each other, realizing they’re alone in the world. Through enough of the cultist rites, they can ultimately enter the bodies of said cultists or tourists, and spread beyond the oil pit as a slimy conspiracy. Will Colette survive?
Poster by AI, modified with photoshop.
Sorta, kinda, vaguely reminds me of something I think I saw in a comic once, but have been perpetually too lazy to look it up…
Maybe something by Grant Morrison like Doom Patrol or The Invisibles? but there was some malicious entity that was basically sentient crude oil or something.
Every now and then I am reminded of it, and can never remember what it’s from, but am usually too lazy too actually find out.
Anyways, interesting prompt
I can think of a few other sentient oils – the blob boy that killed tasha yar in star trek: the next generation, the mongolian death worm in phantoms. Maybe people that are into essential oils should switch to sentient oils, make life more interesting.