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 #30 — UNDEAD
(× Reptiles or Stranded/Desert Island or Extreme Weather)

TITLE:  Charles Darwin vs the Imps of Darkness

PREMISE:  Guess who’s back?  It’s ya boy Chaz, and he survived the mutated brain-sucking finches.  With all the finches back to normal or wiped out with shotgun blasts, they’ve left Darwin alone on San Cristóbal (Stranded) with the bodies of the rest of the Beagle‘s crew, all hollowed out skulls and drifts of down.  In his sorrow he talks with the dead, moving among them to scavenge supplies.  A mysterious fog descends, so thick nothing can be seen (Extreme Weather), and he falls into a tide pool sobbing.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Marine Iguana druids (Reptiles) come to land when the fog is thick, and behold the mournful man.  He wants to see his friends live.  Undead is close enough, right?  They raise the crew as horrid zombies (Undead) that shamble and do strange things with what’s left of their bodies.  Darwin is even more traumatized, and goes to war against the “Imps of Darkness.”  Will he defeat his reptilian would-be benefactors?  Well, IRL Darwin is dead and marine iguanas aren’t extinct yet, so…

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