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.

🎃 HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 🎃  By now I have finished all 31, but I’m posting these all queued a few days behind, to get bloge content out of it.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #28 — GOTHIC
(× Geezer Teaser/Psycho Biddy or Silence or Insects)

TITLE:  House of Flies

PREMISE:  Seema fled from a cruel home life that almost killed her.  Unwilling to return, starving, lost, she took a job caring for an old woman of British descent who lived in a foreboding mansion at the top of the hill (Gothic).  The job wasn’t too weird at first, aside from being required to stay silent (Silence) at all times, so she can hear distant cries for assistance at the top of the stairs.

She became hypervigilant, attuned to all the noises of the creaky old house, but still had trouble distinguishing between the sounds of Georgina, the hum of electricity, and whatever these buzzing insects (Insects) were.  But in the moments when she got to leave the house for groceries, she met a nice dude and began a courtship.  Life could be worse.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Life got worse.  Georgina formed a presence in Seema’s mind that seemed to transcend the physical.  Was Seema going paranoid, losing her sense of decency and empathy toward a disabled old gal, or was the haunting buzz real?  Georgina (Psycho Biddy) figured out that Seema was seeing a dude and messed with their relationship, and messed with Seema’s head until things went all Edgar Allan Poe.

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