Goretober 2021

The following is a series of short stories I started writing in October 2021 based on a list of prompts made by DeviantArt user crisis-arts. These stories include graphic descriptions and suggestive themes, and may not be appropriate for young or easily disturbed audiences.

I lost the motivation to complete this list when I suffered from food poisoning, but every now and then I come back to this list and write for another prompt.

1. Stabbed
2. Fungi
3. Pins
4. On a platter
5. Bites
6. Cannibalism
7. Candy gore
8. Glitch
9. Insects
10. Burning
11. Experiment
12. Parasite
13. Crystals
14. Decapitation
15. Shattered
16. Plants
17. Nosebleed
18. Neon gore
19. Transformation
20. Poisoned
21. Hanahaki disease
22. Amputation
23. Stitches
24. Freakshow
25. Melting
26. Possession
27. Bandages
28. Impaled
29. Bisection
30. Bruises
31. Bones

Stabbed

The music was loud in the nightclub. Verbose exchanges had long drowned under the alcohol and synthesized brass. Mischievous teens threw jabs at their friends throwing up. Canines shone under the UV lamps, outlining the batty nature of the crowd.

The music was loud in the streets. It could be heard even from under the station’s floodlights, where wanderers stopped to catch their breath and nicotine. The waves followed like predators the ones seeking shelter from their migraine. It is there, in a pool of sawtooth and blood, that they found his body.

Although the pain muffled the melody, he could still feel the synth through the makeshift blade. A stab on every bar. The mercilessness of the sharp notes as the key opened his thorax, guitar shreds pouring his blood under the neon lights.

A siren emerged from the darkness, but the Eurobeat kept playing as a police car drifted towards the castaway’s wet corpse.

Fungi

She scrubbed some gunk out of the corner of her eye and looked at her smartphone. 2PM. She’d overslept again, not that it mattered much. Saturdays are supposed to be days off, right? She pretended to laugh at her own joke then got out of bed, coughing a little to clear her throat.

She dragged her body to the bathroom, lifting her feet only to avoid stepping on the clothes scattered about. She sat down on the toilet, careful not to displace its broken plastic seat. While waiting for her sphincters to relax, she inspected her toes. The skin between some of them had peeled off, but the ointment she’d been applying seemed to be doing its thing. She emptied her bowels while counting the black stains on the ceiling, then flushed the toilet. She looked at the mirror. Her reflection glared back, its right eye bloated from infection, again. She let out a sigh and washed her hands, paying little attention to the algae in the sink.

She dislodged a plate from the pile of dirty dishes melded with the kitchen table, then grabbed a barely moldy sponge by the sink. She applied soap to the plate, then proceeded to scrub the mycelium off the ceramic. She rinsed it in a hurry, then took a slice of monday’s pizza from the fridge. She walked up to her desk. As she let herself fall into her seat, the cushiony chair spread dust into the air like a puffball.

She took a bite. The pizza was cold and chewy and just how she liked it. With extra mushrooms.

Pins

Claire peeked into the hallway one more time. She’d spent the whole week preparing for this but was now having second thoughts. What if someone caught her? She didn’t really feel guilty about it, but others had been suspended for lesser offenses. The elf adjusted her invisibility cloak and stepped back into the room. Truth be told, the risks made the adventure that much more exciting.

She walked straight to her friend’s bed, for she already knew where to look. From under it, she pulled a rigid suitcase decorated with simple runes. This was amateur work, but probably the best a second-year student could afford. Especially after spending a little fortune on its contents. Claire took out her wand and bypassed the magical seal without saying a word. Inside the box layed a simple linen doll and a magical mirror, the kind used by lovers to see each other over long distances.

Despite what the mundane folk seemed to believe, so-called voodoo dolls were rarely used with bad intent. One could easily track the curse back to the puppeteer. Besides, such enchantments could only transmit sensations, not cause actual harm. No, the true potential of these effigies lied elsewhere. After all, what could be more romantic than offering someone a doll bound to yourself? It was the ultimate proof of trust! Knowing Mel, this doll could belong to pretty much anyone. Claire’s friend was somewhat known for being generous in her affections.

The witch took a square of red silk from her bag and unfurled it on the floor besides the bed. The cloth was marked with complex patterns that had surely taken hours to transcribe. She then used her wand to lift the doll without laying a hand on it, carefully placing it on the piece of fabric. With the claw of her right thumb, she pierced the palm of her other hand and let a few drops of blood fall on the puppet. It was too late to go back now.

With barely contained anxiety, she pointed her wand at the doll and spoke the formula she’d memorized: mi wile pilin e pilin sina a! tenpo kama la ilo ni li ilo pi mi tu. She held her breath, fearing the worse, until she noticed that the blood had vanished from the linen.

Did it work? There was only one way to find out. With hesitation, Claire poked the doll with the tip of her finger. She squeaked in surprise as she felt something prod her chest. That doll was way more sensitive than she’d expected! Let’s hope Mel’s partner didn’t feel that, whoever they are. Claire used another levitation spell to delicately put the doll back where it belonged. She was about to get up and leave when she heard footsteps down the hallway.

!!!

False alarm. The sounds were moving away. With a sigh of relief, Claire swiftly fled the scene, certain that she’d left no proof of her mischief behind.

The anticipation kept Claire awake at night. She was startled by any unexpected sensation on her skin, be it the tickle of a soft blanket or the goosebumps brought by autumnal nights. Surely Mel will use it soon, she kept thinking. It’s only a matter of time before I feel her grab that doll. Her imagination was running wild, especially whenever they’d exchange kinky jokes and Mel would brag about her sins. She’s clearly into some freaky stuff. She’s bound to do something with it soon. But the evenings came and went without any noteworthy event. Claire’d even gone back to poke the doll once more and make sure the spell was still active. Everything was working like it should, Mel simply hadn’t touched the doll.

Were Mel’s jokes really just that, jokes? Did she actually have a boring intimate life? Or was the doll given to her by a prude lover? That would make Claire the bigger sinner, not only projecting her own lust on her friend but going as far as to invade her privacy with a spell. Yes, she had gone too far. She had to undo it.

But the next time she went to her friend’s room, Claire was surprised by what she found. Under the bed were now two boxes, the new one sealed with a much more potent hex. And in the one which previously held the doll, there was now nothing but scraps of cloth and sowing needles.

Claire was about to snuff her bedside candle when she felt a sudden pain in her breast. Something was pinching her right nipple! Could it be? Arousal sent shivers through her whole body. She smiled, but only for an instant.

Mere seconds went by before the elf felt another, deeper jab, this time in the middle of her chest. Claire tried to scream but the pain had cut her breath short. She recognized the coldness of metal as something made its way through her thorax, rubbing against her bones. Claire opened her mouth and eyes wide as she fell on her back, still trying to comprehend what was happening.

Mel, you monster. The pain moved to the left side of her body. She felt something come out of her chest and through her abdomen, out of her hip and through her thigh. Her body twisted in agony, Claire reflexively clawed at her leg to pull the metal out of it. All her fingers met was her own intact flesh.

In her bedroom, Mel was enjoying some much deserved time off. After spending the whole month studying, she could finally get back to her pet project. There, all done. On her desk was the linen doll, with a black dress fleshly sown onto it.

Mel frowned. Something seemed off about it. I might have been a bit modest in the chest area. It doesn’t look like her. She considered for a moment spying on her friend through her magical mirror. Better not. At this time of the day, she might not even be dressed. No, Mel would have to work without a visual aid for now. Resigned, she took a pair of scissors from her sewing kit and went back to work.

On a platter

Bites

I woke up pretty late that day, and since all I had in my cupboard was oatmeal, I figured I would order a bite to eat online. I tried writing another short story while waiting, but I wasn’t inspired by the prompt.

I ate half of the sandwich I’d ordered when it arrived and the other half later in the afternoon. Then I suffered a pretty bad case of food poisoning, and after spending 12h emptying myself from both ends, I called an ambulance and spent a day at the hospital.

Cannibalism

Once upon a time there dwelt on the outskirts of a large forest a poor woodcutter with his wife and two children; the boy was called ██████ and the girl ██████. He had always little enough to live on, and once, when there was a great famine in the land, he couldn’t even provide them with daily bread.

One night, as he was tossing about in bed, full of cares and worry, he sighed and said to his wife: ‘What’s to become of us? how are we to support our poor children, now that we have nothing more for ourselves?’

At daybreak, even before the sun was up, the woman came and woke the two children: ‘Get up, you lie-abeds, we’re all going to the forest to fetch wood.’

When they had reached the middle of the forest the father said: ‘I’ll light a fire that you mayn’t feel cold.’ The brushwood was set fire to, and when the flames leaped high the woman said: ‘Now lie down at the fire, children, and rest yourselves: we are going into the forest to cut down wood; when we’ve finished we’ll come back and fetch you.’

██████ and ███████ sat down beside the fire, and when they had sat for a long time their eyes closed with fatigue, and they fell fast asleep.

When they awoke at last it was pitch-dark. ███████ began to cry, and said: ‘How are we ever to get out of the wood?’

But ██████ comforted her. ‘Wait a bit,’ he said, ‘till the moon is up, and then we’ll find our way sure enough.’

But all the same they did not.

They wandered about the whole night, and the next day, from morning till evening, but they could not find a path out of the wood. They were very hungry, too, for they had nothing to eat but a few berries they found growing on the ground. And at last they were so tired that their legs refused to carry them any longer, so they lay down under a tree and fell fast asleep.

On the third morning after they had left their father’s house they set about their wandering again, but only got deeper and deeper into the wood, and now they felt that if help did not come to them soon they must perish. At midday they saw a █████████ ██████ ██████████ ████ ███████ ██ █ ███████ █████ ████ ██ ███████ ████ ████ ███████ █████ ███ ████████ ██ ███

‘Now we’ll set to,’ said ██████, ‘and have a regular blow-out. I’ll eat a bit of the ████, and you, ███████, can eat some of the ██████, which you’ll find a sweet morsel.’ ██████ stretched up his hand and broke off a little bit of the ████ to see what it was like, and ███████ went to the ████████ and began to nibble at it.

The children went on eating, without putting themselves about. ██████, who thoroughly appreciated the ████, tore down a big bit of it, while ███████ pushed out a whole round ███████████, and sat down the better to enjoy it. Suddenly the ████ opened, and a ██████ ██ ███ ██ ███ █████ ███ ███████ ██ █ ███████ came creeping out.

██████ ███ ███████ ████ ██ █████████ ████ ████ ███ ████ ████ ███ ██ █████ █████ █████ ███ ███ ███ █████ █████ ███ ████ ███ █████ ████ ███ ███ ████ █████████ ███ ███ ███ █████ ████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ████ ███ ██ ███ █████ ██████ ████ ███ ████ ████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ███ ███ ████ ████ ███ ██████ ███ ████ █ ████ █████████ ██████ ██████ ████ milk and sugared pancakes, with apples and nuts. █████ ████ ███ █████████ ███ █████████ ██████ █████ ████ ████ ████████ ███ █████ ███ ████ ██████ ███ ███████ ███ ████ ██ ████ they felt as if they had got into heaven.

███ ███ █████ ███ ████████ ██ ██ ████ █████████ ███ ███ ███ ██████ ██ ███ █████ ███ ███ ███████ ███ █████████ ███ ███ ████ █████ ███ ██████ █████ █████ ██ █████ ██ ████ ████ ███ ████ ██████ ████ ████ ███ █████ ███ ███████ ███████ ███ ███ ████ ███ ████ █ ███████ █████████ ███ ███ █████████ ███ ███████ ████ ███ █████ ███ ██████ ███ ████ ████ like beasts, they have a keen sense of smell, and know when human beings pass by. ████ ██████ ███ ███████ ████ ████ ███ █████ ███ ███████ ████████████ ███ ████ ██████████ █████ ███ ████ ████ ████ ██████ ██████ ████ █████ ██ ███ ████████ ██████ ███ ████████ ████ ██████ ███ ████ ███ ███ ████ ███ ███ ████ ████ ████████ ██ ███████████ ████ █████ █████ ████ ███████ ███ ████████ ██ ████████ ████████ ██ █ ██████ ██████ ████ ███ ██████ ██████ ████ ███ ████ ████ ███ ███████ ███ ████ █ ██████ ███████ ███ ██████ ███ ████ ██ ████ ██ █████ ██████ ██ ████ ██ ██ ██████ ██ ███ ███ ██ █████ ████ ███ ████ ██ ████████ █████ ███ ████ ███ ██████ ███ ██████ ████ ███ ███ ███████████ █████ █████ ███ ████ █████████ ███ ████ ████████ ████ ████ ███ ████ ███ ███ ████ ███████ █████ ██ ███ █████████ ███ ██ ███ ██ ██ ████ ███ ███ ██ ██ ████ ███ ██████ █████ ████ ████

So the best food was cooked for poor ██████, but ███████ got nothing but ████████████ █████ ███████ ███ ███ █████ ███████ ███ ██ ███ ██████ ███ ██████ ████████ ███ ███ ████ ███████ ████ █ ███ ████ ██ you are getting fat██ ███ ██████ ██████ █████████ ███ █ █████ ███ ███ ███ █████ █████ ████ ████ ████ ████████ ███ ███ ███ ████████ ██████ ██ ███ ████████ ███████ wondered why he fattened so slowly. When four weeks passed and ██████ still remained thin, she lost patience and determined to wait no longer.

████ █████████ ███ ██████ ██ ███ █████ ███ █████ ███ ███ ████ ██████ ██████ ███ ██ ███ ██ █████ ███ █████ ██ ████ ███ █████████ ███ ████ █████ ███ ███ the poor little sister sobbed as she carried the ██████ ███ ███ ███ tears rolled down her cheeks █████ ██████ ████ ██ █████ she cried;

‘if only the wild beasts in the wood had eaten us, then at least we should have died together.’