It has been long, so long, these days and hours and months and years and I still sit here, in my tattered slip among the stones, waiting and waiting and waiting while the night spins and the sun falls from the sky —

Oh, the beetle! Listen — he is coming — do you hear him? His little feet, ticking away as he creeps between the rocks. Soon he will be closer, and he will push through the cracks to this place where I am—

Oh, it has been so long, each and every second ticking into eternity like the footsteps of my beetle echoing between these stones, stretching as far as my ears can hear into the faint sigh of wind. She moans and whispers, and her voice trembles to reach me in this sheltered place —

My beetle comes, his fragile black legs poking out into the open air until he falls with a plop to the earth below, and slips toward my outstretched hand. My beetle comes, and brings me tidings.

We negotiated, he and I.

You brought me here with your sweet looks and your gentle fingers and your subtle words. With your two hands, you dug for me this house, promising forever with your pleading eyes and your warm lips and rough cheeks. My gown was for my wedding, littered with pearls collected from the time I was born. I wore it for you, proudly; through some miracle, I was arranged to be your bride.

We met here on the eve of our beginning. An exchange of gifts, a luxurious feast, poetry. You could not wait, you said. I was beautiful and wanted and ready. You needed me, you soothed. What did I know of these things? Only this smoldering want, bursting into sheets of flame. Only these tears of wanton desire. Why should I deny you? You sang to me of love —

You escaped on horseback while I slept, leaving me desolate, desecrated, abandoned, exposed for my brothers to find. My respectable family did as they must, filling in the spaces that you left behind.

The beetle found me. He was my comfort, tickling my ears with tales of your world in this life: the beautiful woman to whom you were betrothed; the shining ceremony, lit by blessings and love; the children she bore you.

My beetle, he told me. He tells me, still —

He told me of her death, this bride you loved; and he should know it — he fed her the poison. After she was buried, he brought you her ring, over and over again until you were mad with grief. He placed the burrs under your sons’ saddles, hissed endless nightmares into your daughters’ rooms. My loyal creature, he has made a mark for me, on your life: The dowry you stole has grown into a kingdom, but it has festered as I starved. Your zenith is marked and remarked with some inexplicable, malignant bloom.

He chitters to me that you are to marry again, while I am but a pile of rags and bones, mortared into some forgotten cell. It is time, he whispers.

It is time.

We have traded promises, over the years, my beetle and I. He lets me keep the pearl you left behind — a light for my darkness. Instead he gives me a story, first for this eye, then for that one. My pretty ears are bartered for wisdom. I gain information for the knuckles of my toes.

So many pieces of me, exchanged, for pieces of you.

And now, the greatest promise of all: his brothers flood the room behind him like a great, black tide. They set to work, polishing the drift of my forgotten bones. He brings me at last an army, my beetle. To tear your kingdom down.

I will not be without you, after all.

The Beetle was originally published in The Mad River on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There is a loud, blaring screech from the intercom system. A sound of heavy breathing permeates the building, reducing Saturday to sleepy giggles, elsewhere. A patient, mechanical winding sound accompanies a tuneless hum, soon followed by a ticking noise and the soft clunk of an object being gently placed upon a wooden surface — presumably the desk upon which the intercom system is situated.

“Three… two… one…” echoes out of the dangling speakers and through the facility. They all wait, quietly, fingers crossed. Even Wednesday, with her pillow over her head, is wishing fervently for a successful endeavor.

Nothing happens. A great and humble sigh drifts out and across their ears, followed by the sound of metallic things being poked and a scraping of something being pushed around.

“Oh. I see.” A click, repeated. A winding. Another click. A wooden-surface-clunk. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick —

“Three… two… one…”

The shrieking alarm-bells of a wind-up clock batter them from very nearly every direction. Tuesday screams.

“Good Morning, Everyone,” speaks Thursday dolorously through the intercom, “This is your Thursday speaking.”

There is a great pause.

“Coffee will probably help,” says Thursday. The course rumble of a throat being cleared is punctuated by the sharp and painful screech of the intercom being turned off.

Friday winks at Lissa in the break room.

“I don’t think Thursday has a lot to say for itself, but it does show up.”

“Yes,” Lissa agrees, thoughtfully. “Every week.”

With special thanks to my friend L. Miranda, who puts up with my silly texts.

It begins as a seed, planted in the mind.

A simple process, really — just present an image, an idea, a fragment to some unsuspecting soul, and then walk away. Will it take root? It might not; some minds are impervious. But in others, well… it will fester, burrowing down to fade silently into the soft places, to put down tiny tendrils that creep.

Into your thoughts they go…

The tantalizing, slow corruption of a completely ordinary object — the fruit of our labor as it were — Eve and the Apple, Persephone and the Pomegranate — there might be a pattern here, women and temptation, irresistible secrets, the command of “No,” — Bluebeard’s wife, anyone? Have you seen her key?

It wears the weather well, doesn’t it? Of course, it only had the one purpose — to taunt and woo her into opening that one… last… door…

Into your thoughts they grow…

They gain power, these everyday things. They unfold into stories, beginning with the most innocent moments and tilting, slowly, under the weight of suggestion (and a little tint of shadow, I suppose) and feverish curiosity, until one day, it is more than just a key, more than just a door, more than just the house on the corner.

Take this dress, for example. It was a perfectly lovely wedding, wasn’t it? (Though… perhaps not for Miss Havisham?). The feast there was not to be believed! Did the photographer know his camera was haunted? It could be ominous, if the image is in the right eye (or if the pen is in the right hand!). The mind turns inward and finds a garden, mottled now with age. What have those roots accomplished? Let us revisit the apple:

It has withered there, surrounded by beauty and hidden in the most obvious places, until we stop to look; shuddering, we return to our world of pretend. All is well, we think. Repeating a mantra. All is well, all is well, all is… until we are bound by the thread of imagination.

What next, we wonder, as some sparkling gem flits by and we are ripe with jealousy, absolutely, enviously filled to the overbrimming green, and here it rolls around again, that little apple, bruised now and a bit warped under the weight of our constant coveting, greed for things to which we do not belong, until we are small, bug-eyed fish-eaters in the deep dark, searching for a flash of gold and waiting.

Take up your pen and show to us the dark forest inside your heart, planted there forever ago by what seed only you will know…

How these roots have grown!

Submissions

If you use this prompt, please copy its link to the bottom of your story so the editors know you found it inspirational.

— Should be 2,500 words or less (if your story is extraordinary, we might accept longer)

— Can be Poetry, Flash Fiction, Short Story, and Experimental forms

— May be genres: Horror, Magical Realism, Scifi, Weird, New Weird, Fantasy, Romance, etc., but should match the dark & weird theme in some way.

— Entries will be published between October 19th-31st. Submissions accepted through October 22nd.

For more details on submission, visit our announcement page, and utilize the Submission form found there.

13 More Days (and nights) of Dark & Weird

Corruption was originally published in The Mad River on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The chitter of beetles in shadow,
whose glittering shells sweep the dim;
their undulant tide is the darkness — 
a writhing that heralds the Grim…

They are present in all the small and hidden places, these creatures, indomitable and ready to serve up a reminder of our own mortality: how lovely are these shells that we are wearing, and what impermanent vessels they prove to be.

They are team players, batting cleanup, scrubbing clean the anonymous remains of some poor lost soul in a dry and dusty tank in the back rooms of the morgue or museum. In through the eye-hole and then out the ear again, leaving their little beetle trails with their little beetle feet…

Some are quite extravagant. Otherworldly, even. They clack their little feet and plod along (with bursts of scurry) as they go about their business, whether carrying a message from the Gremlin Lords to the Mouse King, or creeping up the finger of some great, one-eyed witch, traipsing along her milk-white flesh to her knobby shoulder and the waiting bridge of her tangled hair — there to nimbly cling and softly chatter what tidings into her expectant ear.

Or to bite her. We don’t really know, do we? No one has written it, yet. It climbs and climbs across the skin stretched taut over her emaciated frame, little hooked toes bringing it up and up, and — well, you’ll have to decide.

It could be a letter from Uncle Earnest in the family crypt, circa 1871, delivered by Beetle Express because paper tends to end up stained with Earnest’s personal process of fermentation — which beetles are also required to witness. Not my cup of tea, exactly, but in my head just the same. The treasure map from his jacket pocket still bears the faint stench of his first fifty years in the land of the unliving, and is nigh on unreadable as a result. Try taking that to Inheritance Court and see what it gets you…

It doesn’t have to be a beetle, mind —

There are also centipedes…

Submissions

If you use this prompt, please copy its link to the bottom of your story so the editors know you found it inspirational.

— Should be 2,500 words or less (if your story is extraordinary, we might accept longer)

— Can be Poetry, Flash Fiction, Short Story, and Experimental forms

— May be genres: Horror, Magical Realism, Scifi, Weird, New Weird, Fantasy, Romance, etc., but should match the dark & weird theme in some way.

— Entries will be published between October 19th-31st. Submissions accepted through October 22nd.

For more details on submission, visit our announcement page, and utilize the Submission form found there.

• 13 More Days (and nights) of Dark & Weird
• Join us for “13 Days of Dark & Weird” Stories…again!

Want a different prompt?

The Prompts

Skitter was originally published in The Mad River on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

(alpha-numeric)

• 10 Things You (Probably) Don’t Know About Me
• 14
• all the words in the world
• Australia
• Awakenings
• Because You Asked Me

This haiku is actually titled “break” — I accidentally posted it without the title, and editing will not change it.

• a haiku
• The Crawlspace
• Distance
• Dragon and Butterfly
• fade
• Fingers v Toes
• floats
• flutter
• The Good List
• Happy Birthday
• i am a shepherd
• i am feeling silent today
• Impulse
• Indigo Moon
• Innocence Lost
• journey
• Letters From the Woolly Gentleman
• Lightning
• Midnight Sails
• The Monday Ogre
• newsflash
• Oyster
• Pillar
• Pixies by Evening
• Poking the Bear
• saturday
• Sonora
• Sleeping Green
• submission
• tether
• this old dog
• Three Sisters
• Thursday, Revisited
• The Trouble With Thursday
• The unfamiliar
• this old dog
• unsung
• Waiting
• winter
• Winter
• The Woolly Gentleman — I
• The Woolly Gentleman — II
• The Woolly Gentleman — III
• You are

index: free-to-read was originally published in edh lamport: index on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.