Loup

It’s 3 A.M. It’s always 3 A.M. That heart-racing shadow time between first sleep and ragged consciousness. It starts by the stairs, announcing itself with a quiet scrape-scrape-scape like something in the walls. And then it rests, takes in the air around it. Scrape drag-scrape drag, closer, louder now. The creaking railing and floorboards mark its progress toward me. Eyes scrunched closed and pillow over my head I burrow deeper into the covers, wishing stillness, invisibility. But the blanket at the foot of the bed tugs back. Then that strangely soft brush of fur against my ankle right before the bite.

Inspired by All Work and No Play. Image of Tala by the author.

All Work and No Play

I remember the houses that never gave out treats, They stood alone, foreboding and yet alluring. Our eyes peered, searching for life, ready to act when the attic light started flickering. We expected a silhouette of a man unshaven, grinning and beckoning us with his bloody axe.

Fast forward 40 years, I rush home from work still to get a pumpkin and carve it. I’m too late for the candy and buy a box of regular size O’Henrys. The tots are beginning to arrive in their bunny costumes. And I wonder after all if Wendy and Jack were just tired.

Inspired by the Spooky Season. Photo from the Bettmann Archive.

A Break in Her Morning Routine

She woke reluctantly to the unpleasant sound of eggs and bacon coming in from the kitchen.

     She’d heard that taste before, but didn’t think to inform the superintendent until it was too late, until she’d gotten up to find the breakfast engine dispensing the morning traffic report instead of her coffee and the grim news that followed, a foul stream of information flowing over the countertop and down to a growing pool on the floor, swirling around the tiny drain to the recycling system, overwhelmed, and backing up quickly.

     The door, hearing nothing unusual in her frantic greens, stayed shut.

Inspired by Cocooned. Image by DALL·E.

Cocooned

Saturday. Jane’s condo door was stuck. The Super wasn’t picking up, so she busied herself with chores until he’d answer. Sunday. She awoke to a bedroom door, left open but now locked from the outside. Hours of shouting and pounding the walls. Her dying cell unable to reach neighbours, friends, even 911. Hoping a reset from this waking nightmare, she forced her anxious mind, her hungry body and bruised and bloody hands to bed. But Monday’s Reaper clawed at her racing heart and breathed on her neck. She couldn’t lift her head. She was boxed in on all four sides.

Inspired by Kazimir Melvich’s Black Suprematic Square (1915).

The Fall Cometh

When I see ancient ruins, I'm struck by the ephemeral nature of the societies that built them. Mycenae was a powerful empire, it traded widely, it was a central antagonist (with Sparta) in the Trojan War. And then it was sacked and burnt, no one knows by whom. It fell and never recovered. Other city states and empires rose and took its place—until they collapsed in their turn. All their impregnable fortresses were breached, their eternal tombs robbed, their people thrown into chaos, often for generations. What is history telling us?
        Looking for a scary Halloween? Ponder that thought.

Inspired by the Exquisite Corpse’s recent Halloween theme and a visit to Mycenae this week. Photo by Sergii Figurnyi.

Young Atomic Drivers

young atomic drivers
bend round the highway curve
all the way
to an electric LED night
they love the smell of an ozone fog
the way it irradiates as their headlights shine through

dashing boys and girls
working to be equal amongst equals
new climate babes
born to the tune of celebrities’ calls
howling at wifi satellites streaking across their night sky

they study the brand new truth:
things will get worse before they get worse
so they hold the world up and kiss it goodbye
then eat the billionaires’ flesh, sun-dried russet, shriveled-chewy on the asphalt in the heat

Inspired by the Spooky Season. Illustration by Fred Ni.

Original Haunt

I was alone in the house with my younger brother. We were emptying our pillowcases of candy and doing the usual trade offs between Caramels and Tootsie Rolls hoping for a surprise Popeye Cigarettes’ box. An old woman in ragged clothes howling like Regan’s exorcism suddenly appeared at the window. I was utterly terrified. I threw my brother on the back of my bike and raced away like he was E.T.  Turns out, it was my cousin playing a prank. It was the kind of scare that stirred me and still does. An original. Unlike the latest and greatest inflatable. 

Inspired by the Spooky Season and Monday Bloody Monday. Image from from The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World by William Makepeace Thackeray.

Monday Bloody Monday

All this just happened, the stories passing quickly through the schoolyard, all the way down to the first-grade kids: A twelve-year-old taken away in handcuffs, a bunch of kids expelled for something they’d done in the old warehouse. Another broke his leg in a challenge on the stairs. Someone found blood there later, then blood on a newspaper outside, then someone else said the hallways were haunted, maybe even a vampire in the cafeteria. 

So, today, powerless against this spectre of delinquents and bullies, we sent our boy back to school, but with a clove of garlic in his pocket.

Inspired by the Spooky Season. Image by AtlasStudio.

The Habs and the Hab-Nots

As mobile homes went, ours was rather swishy. We had three bedrooms and four televisions. This material aggrandizement was less middle-class preening and more Hockey Night in Canada. Good luck trying to sneak in a Saturday episode of M*A*S*H on the “Big TV.”

Banished, I’d sulk to my room to wrestle with the rabbit-eared 16″ Zenith. Mom would just sew. But Dad, a cable-TV pirate, jerry-rigged all the trailer’s electrics. So, when the Singer ran it killed the TV reception. At any moment, Dave Hodge’s voice could be dashing through the frizzling snow.

     And—ho, ho, ho—we knew it.

Inspired by Single on a Double. Image by Roy Schulze.

Single on a Double

It’s 1989. We meet in a sports bar for a Talk. I haven’t been a very good boyfriend. It’s crowded, Jays and A’s, Game 3, and the Jays have dropped the first two games. We haven’t seen each other, and the conversation is stilted. Finally she gets to the point: I haven’t been a very good boyfriend. And then, Tony Fernandez cracks a double, and the place goes wild. She’s talking, but I cheer along with everyone else, and she gets mad, and I know for certain that it’s over, that I’m more invested in this game than this relationship.

Inspired by What You Remember. Image from Eater on Pinterest.