SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #24 — FOLK HORROR
(× Mountain or Odd Couple or Dark Magic)

TITLE:  The Alpine’s Bumpin’

PREMISE:  I’m gettin’ good grip from the fifty series tires; the alpine’s bumpin’ but I need the volume higher…  So quoth Sir Mixalot.  I know folk horror is usually about a summery rural cult torturing some squares to death but I don’t love the genre so I’m going with the idea this category could include faerie tales.  So.

Jakeem and Bernard are an odd couple (Odd Couple), wherein Jakeem is the low-key nerd, and Bernard is the vision-questing Jim Morrisonesque tripping man.  He must drag his personal Ray Manzarek (Jakeem) to the ends of the earth, and this time it’s up a mountain (Mountain).  They went to a ski resort with the idea they’d meet some cool people and learn how to snowboard, but the resort is all but abandoned.  The weather report said skiing too dangerous, slopes closed, but the resort itself was still technically open, which is how they ended up with tickets while everybody else was staying home.

The skeleton crew of a staff warns them to stay inside, enjoy the cocoa by the fireplace, take in the view from the grand lodge, whatever.  But Bernard ensorcels Jakeem to follow him off a cliff, in his usual way.  The dudes end up high literally and figuratively in snowy dangerous places.  The mountain paths rely on consensus reality to stay moored in the mortal realm.  Without two hundred snowbunnies thinking it’s just a ski slope, it becomes a path to the impossible.  The guys find themselves in an ice castle, subject to palace intrigue between some talking ravens, dwarven servants, and a wicked ice witch (Folk Horror).

HORROR ELEMENT:  At first it’s all fun and games.  Jakeem teaches the ravens to smoke weed, Bernard wheedles the witch about the nature of reality, maaan.  But things take a turn for the real when the witch bites back with vindictive curses and spells (Dark Magic), leading to grim shit like raven cannibalism and horrible transformations.  All psyche stripped to the bone, what’s left of our gentlemen?  Will they ever get back to college?

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