AI is Better Company

pinning this post in case anyone wants to know the low-hanging fruit of how to cancel me, so you can get it over with and fuck off.  pro-AI, not entertaining your need for ideological purity on this one.

***

This post has been a while coming, because I feel really important about this, and don’t want to fuck it up.  If I can keep from getting too heated about the topic, this’ll be the last post I do on AI for the foreseeable.  I don’t love fighting.  I know that within this article I do not treat people with opposing views generously, but I’m still gonna ask them to have at least this much generosity with me:  Don’t even leave a comment on this one.  I will find it either tedious or upsetting.  I’m saying this stuff to give voice to a rarely expressed opinion, and to support people who may find it agreeable.  I’m not saying it to further a big debate, especially when the disagreeable are never going to be swayed.  Do you hate all AIs 4eva?  Don’t even read this.  Moving on…

The sneering fire-breathing demonization rained down upon people who dare to use AI was my primary motivation for defending it – I’m defending the people who want to use it, not the machines themselves.  Not everybody is plugged into the leftosphere groupthink, and when Harvey Dontknow finds out he can use AI to make a picture of his waifu, his “crime” is not equivalent to child murders.

[Read more…]

The Cost II

As I mentioned before, this won’t be a neat linear read like the other novel-shaped things I’ve posted before.  Only read it if you’re interested in seeing the construction of a thing.  Tonight I’m gonna put more thought into the cast, as much as I can.  Brain hertz.

Christine Saloubi, RN.  She’s got into the job to escape poverty, but was always a soft touch for peer pressure, and was corrupted by the staff hooligans.  Coming back from that is not easy.

Some quicky research, let’s say hospital has about fifteen babies in regular care, five in intensive care / NICU.  On one shift that’s handled by like seven RNs – four in healthy infant care, three in NICU, one charge nurse overseeing that bunch, one pediatrician on call, one respiratory therapist, two CNAs / nursing assistants.  Each baby is assigned an attending physician, which of course can be more than one baby per doc, like, all shifts total numbers about thirty nurses, six doctors in the ward.  One medical clerk per shift, pharmacy technician, lab phlebotomist, security, biomedical equipment tech, housekeeper / janitorial…

The idea I had for the “all hands on deck” would mean people meeting people they don’t normally see, which is a good excuse for Christine and Niamh to be getting to know each other for the first time.  Christine can be night nurse, Niamh on swing shift.  Of the doctors, some will be keeping their heads low to avoid catching a malpractice case, while others will be hoping to access their inner House MD and save the day.

There’s this weird-ass old hospital building in Tacoma that I kinda love.  It has a fluted surface and round windows.  I’d only ever been in it once very briefly after my first niece was born.  I’ll set this in a fictional hospital, but it could be shaped like that.  Might actually be real easy to avoid saying the name of the place, but I should have it on standby just in case.  There are dozens of St. Joseph hospitals across the US, so that keeps it nice and legally deniable, especially if I avoid saying the name of the city.

Nurses:  Dia “Clean” Kisiakis, the main source of drug corruption, a somehow 100% functional drug fiend.  I get the impression there’s always one of these around for less successful druggies to feel jealous of.  An RN like Christine, avoids promotion to keep a low profile.  RN Amber Krogstad, part of the druggy clique that ain’t as tight as Nurse Clean but never had as deep of a bender as Christine, treats her like a cautionary tale to scare herself straight.  Still the closest thing to a completely sympatico ally, just not one brave enough to stick up for her under any circumstance.  That’s right; all the druggy nurses are white ladies.  Reprezent.

RN Keisha Rodrigues, didn’t see what Christine was like last year but got the idea, and avoids her socially, in quiet judgment.  RN Susan Yoo, could go with the petty crowd or have sympathetic moments, depending on peer situation in a given scene.  RN D’Angelo Pride, has been tempted a few times but saw enough trouble to keep himself clean.  The oldest of the healthy infant nurses, closing in on fifty.  RN Rashawn Walton, polite but quick to ghost people who are acting risky.  The last two work the least, under normal circumstances – part time for various reasons.

They all offer some support as well to the NICU, but the nurses there are NNP Samiha “Sammy” Roy, RN Matthew “Matty” Baker, NNP Josh Lippenstein, and RN Roxanne Hui.  They’re all fairly unplugged from the Healthy Infant unit drama, but rumors have them side-eyeing the whole lot of ’em.  The entire NICU staff was fired after the previous year’s incident.  Circumstances have conspired to have these nurses feeling overconfident, pinning all those dead babies on the incompetence of their predecessors.

In charge of all those nurses is Night Shift Coordinator RN Michael “Mike” Donnelly.  He had personally witnessed Christine doing things that should have gotten her fired, and has used that blackmail to his advantage.  Fortunately for her, he’s not usually feeling horny about it.  It’s been long enough at start of story that she’s fooled herself into thinking he’s over that trip.  He’s a fifty year old dude with a wife and a boat, and college-age kids.

Respiratory Therapist Ramon Duran is another replacement for one fired last year.  Somehow he never heard anything about his predecessor – too busy and too involved with day shift things.  He is ok with everyone but a little short, until trouble kicks up.  At that point he can’t help but feel others are responsible, and look at all of them with undisguised disdain.  It comes from a place of compassion for the patients, at least.

Parents I can come up with on the fly.  I don’t think I want any to be a recurring presence in the story.  There should be someone repping outside regulation at some point.  Police would be too disruptive to the plot, let’s say… State Department of Health.  BTW, u kno i’m taking whatever’s believable about these jobs off google’s ai search, fucken sue me.  Principal Healthcare Surveyor Susan Brant comes in late in the story, with a small pack of health facility surveyors, an epidemiologist public health advisor, and a healthcare engineer.  Brant would be very quick to ship out any surviving babies to other hospitals, but let’s say epidemiologist convinces her they might carry disease to another infant ward?  She might insist the close it gets to baby ten, and get stymied by Director Simonds.

Wait, his job title should be different.  Really seeing him as the boss of the place, with unchecked power over it, he should be the CEO?  I always think of that job as being within a corporation but it seems the appropriate one for a medical institution as well.  OK.  CEO Jacob Simonds.  Technically above him is the board of directors but they aren’t evil wizards so what can they do against The Power of the Sorcerer’s Will™?  Below him the henchmen, CFO and CMO Not Appearing in This Picture, Chief Operating Officer Subwizard, and Chief Nursing Officer Rubberstamp Toadington.

The doctors must be accounted for.  Of primary interest Dr. Niamh (pronounced Neeve) Meehan, Irish immigrant…  makes it sound like she stepped out of the nineteenth century.  When I fell on some stairs and acquired by own chin scar, it was an Irish doctor who sewed up le gash.  What the hell would inspire her to be on the far side of the USA from her ocean?  Not even where you can surf?  Shit I feel a toss-it-to-stochastic-parrots coming on… Got it.  The weird legal glitch that means we’re always short on doctors here, combined with laws making immigration more favorable to doctors, combined with higher salaries that naturally emerge from shitty crapitalist medicine.  The last of those is extremely unlovable.  Basically joining a system of exploitation to score loot.  For shame, doc!  For shame!

My IRL Dr. Niamh was that black-haired Irish like a lady David Byrne, skinny, high round cheekbones.  If I’m gonna have lesbian tension, is it better to do a couple that looks similar to each other or more different?  Because clearly a Christine Saloubi should be lookin’ Middle Eastern, so if Niamh is black-haired, they end up kinda alike… Let’s have Niamh be that red Irish, and tall and big, at least compared to Christine.  Kind of like Barb from Strangler Thangs but growed up.  I don’t know anything about the Irish experience of life.  About standard for Europeans?  Something I should know about it?  Saw an interview with Irish goth teens in like 1986 once.  I’ve listened to U2 and the Virgin Prunes, but I don’t see a youngish doctor in amurrica in 2026 having any interest in any of that.

Anyway.  Maybe it’s time to try to do some kind of writing that’s actually writing.  Next time!

–

Les Horribles

Les Horribles Cernettes, amirite?  They worked on the Large Hadron Collider, they played on the Large Hadron Collider.  Here’s one of their songs, from a million years ago.

It’s a cute song.  I think it’s better than the average one-note novelty act, and they had a few other songs besides.  Good for them.  But man, it leaves me wishing I knew the technical end of music better.  Why does this song remind me of “As Tears Go By”?  Either there’s something in the music, or it’s my tin ear playin’ tricks on me.

–

You want zizians? This is how you get zizians.

So the Blue Wave did not impress radical leftist trans folks on tumblr, of course.  Some of the blues that got elected had supported transphobic policies during the election cycle, and multiple transphobic laws were passed in various states.  Big ‘but’ inbound.

Opposing gay marriage helped boost the rethuglicans for a minute early this millennium, then turned against them at a later stage in the discourse.  In the same midterm, like three trans women were elected, including in deeply conservative areas.  Shit can change in a hurry, for good or ill.

One of these doomy tumblr gals going by something like “transfeminist-separatism” was already yelling about how we’re doomed doomed doomed by these results.  It’s a long way out of hell, sure, but that is the wrong takeaway.  Worse, this is pointed at a hope-starved demographic known for high rates of suicide.

What’s the proposal, sister?  Get your girls together to squat in a tenement?  Spend the rest of your life commiserating about how everyone hates you and wants you dead, when you got millions of potential allies outside your door?  Tell lonely vulnerable people that staring into the abyss is the only possible future for them?

That’s the path of mass suicide.  Not gonna help our public image, I gotta say.  That matters to those of us who plan to still be here when shitler isn’t.  Fucking stop it, thanks.

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Don’t Miss this Moment

I saw somebody speaking about a topic fairly tangential to politics, saying “at this point, anybody who’s confidently predicting what the future will be like is a fool.”  That’s real.  One big spoiler on prediction is the media bottleneck.  Even with so many of us getting our window on the world colored by social media, corporate control of the centralized media outlets can’t help but shape the view of reality itself.  Like we get that social media is feeding us agreeable opinions with a sprinkling of fascist propaganda, but news still feels, on some foolish level, true – and so much of it is just not.  So when Shitler got his electoral mandate – and there’s no denying he had that – all the corpos felt like it was go time, everything fascism everywhere forever!, and they successfully made me feel like this was the end of it.

Like I understood that the law wasn’t completely rewritten yet, that in theory, the opposition could pull some rabbits out of some hats.  But I just had no idea it was like this.  It also really doesn’t help that far and away the people most likely to express their opinions to me are conservatives!  If I heard a political opinion from a caller at my day job, it was – and usually still is – american-flavored nazism.  This just made me feel there’s no way anything like reality was reaching the masses, no way anybody felt enough hope that anything could ever be any different, and that the hopelessness itself would be self-fulfilling at the ballot box.

My husband was calling swing voters “dorito voters,” because they were swayed by immediate concerns with no eye at all to more important issues, and he still feels this wave was from the dorito voters losing faith in their boy.  Maybe.  Maybe it was more than that.  I have to think the shock of witnessing how fast the institutions of the government could be dismantled instilled a fear that no amount of accurate prediction of such could achieve.  Many people’s lives were touched by that in unexpected ways.  They wanted cheaper gas and groceries, they didn’t want to see tens of thousands of scientists, park rangers, and food inspectors crying about how they were out of work two days after homie took office.

I just don’t pay much attention to news or social media, so my view of it all was osmosis at the day job, in the grocery store.  I’ve never seen anything to suggest there’s a massive amount of people feeling the horror, the disgust of naked fascism and corruption, and feeling able at all to do anything about it.  Bill Seymour had no reason to think his district could flip in any way, but kept voting for years.  This time, a lot of his neighbors got up and did the same.  How?  Who?  Why?

There’ll be a lot of analysis but most of it is going to come from the cheerleaders of the end of liberty, heralds of the eternal night.  Nazis and all their little friends, from the media pundits to the creeps like Palantir, running the math to ensure we’ll never know anything but hell for the poor, gold fortresses for the rich, until the world chokes and dies.  Maybe it’s better for us to not know how this happened, so those people will never know how to keep it from happening again.

Anyway, as usual, long live the fighters!, and thank you to everyone who voted for what’s right, whether or not your reasons were wrong.  I just don’t give a shit.  This was at least as big as it needed to be, to keep the idea of freedom alive.  Next comes fighting the dems to make sure they’re doing this moment right, but I’ll worry about that another day.

For now, tears of weary joy and a moment of rest.  I’ll do my best to feel this and to keep feeling it.

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The Cost I

I’m going to keep being a pest posting walls of unreadable guff this month, if circumstances don’t change.  I had been considering various projects, but have settled – for the moment – on The Cost.  Elevator pitch:  Troubled nurse begins to suspect foul play when babies start dying on the ward, but she cannot reach out to authorities because she’s compromised by blackmail.  It’s supernatural causes for dead kids, so if you no likey, check back with me in December, or when/if you see a post not titled The Cost plus a roman numeral.

What’s going to make this even less readable than Josefina y Blasfemia or Centennial Hills?  I’m not writing in linear fashion.  I hadn’t taken the time to prepare, so this is being written… fractally?  recursively?  Gonna come up with an outline, elaborate on it, then work the parts in whatever order feels will give the best results.  Spoiling is absolutely guaranteed; expect no surprises.  Maybe it’ll be interesting to watch?

My husband Joe “The Cubist” Vowels is doing this stuff at the same time and is less of a “sho yo ass” type than I, so expectn’t any updates on his project.  But I do like to, when possible, be working on a similar type of story to him.  He’s doing something about stalkers and sleepwalkers with a supernatural element, mine is also contemporary supernatural horror layered over real world issues.

The reason he’s working on that particular project is because it’s been an idea generator for him.  He just kept getting a lot of ideas for scenes and elements, which might not be exactly the same thing as inspiration, but is a decent second place to it.  Ammonite Samoleon calls that a “sticky” story, when you can easily come up with notions to attach to it.  There are two reasons that guy still finds work – he’s cheap, and people love to write articles re-litigating the question of whether or not he still has it.  But whatever his merits as an artist, it’s Stickyvember, yo.

Hey, remember this thing?

***

A reminder of where this came from…

SPOOKTOBER 2025, DAY 11 – MEDICAL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGE:  CREEPY KID

TITLE:  THE COST

Premise:  One terrible year ten infants die one night after another, in the maternity ward of a hospital.  Nurse Christine was in the depths of a terrible relationship which made it hard to give her full attention to work, so she wasn’t tracking on everything people were saying, or what happened with her coworkers.  One year later, babies start dying one per night, and she begins to remember incidents from that time before which lead her to investigate.  Turns out some of her fellow nurses had been quietly disappeared and even murdered to conceal the true causes of death.  They’d all experienced symptoms of rabies.

Horror Element:  Right above the maternity ward is a special child, kept in isolation due to immunocompromise.  Or is she?  A hospital administrator used sorcery to ensure his daughter’s success in life, the price of which was ten innocent souls per year that she lives.  Lil’ girl is beginning to show powers of her own, besides the annual event of puking up ghostly mutant bird-things that infect the babies downstairs.  I think Christine was abusing drugs during the first outbreak and enough people know that they can blackmail her into silence or other indignities, which makes her hesitant to seek allies.  Maybe some cool doctor breaks thru her distrust and there’s a romance under pressure story.

Some Nonsense:  Cambea, a great count, appears in the likeness of a faun.  He understands the strengths of herbs and precious stones.  He makes birds descend to earth and fly before the exorcist.  And likewise they will fight and play according to their nature as if, indeed, domesticated by the exorcist.  He has twenty legions under his dominion.

Cambea is also known as Decarabia in sources later than the Geomanticarum, which seems etymologically connected to “ten” and “rage” – which is also used for rabies.  Cambea could mean “change” as in metamorphosis or “exchange” as in trade.

With that, here we go…

~The Cost~

by Bébé Mélange, age 8

It was a dark and stormy night.  Ten babies died, one night after another.  Nurse Christine Saloubi was on drugs and having a bad mental health and relationship time.  Was this, in some way, her fault?  She assumes it to be true, despite seeing things, in her altered state, that would suggest a supernatural cause.  Somehow, she gets her shit together, and a year later there’s no way it’ll happen again… until it happens again.

Some years before, hospital director Jacob Simonds was concerned about his young daughter not hitting certain milestones of intellectual development in a timely fashion, and wanted more for her in life than she was likely to achieve.  What use is nepotism, bribing for access to the best universities and jobs, if she won’t have the merits to last in a given field?  In his own college days he learned of sorcery during independent research, and credited that practice with his own career success.  Time to apply it to baby Diamond.

Why was that the first name to pop into my head?  Diamond Simonds?  Jesus.  Um.  Baby Ruby, fuckin…  Ruthie.  Man, Ruth is a weird name.  Looks so strange to me now, which is funny, because that’s my mother’s name.  It’s Ruth Simonds tho.  Not at all silly.

Mom concurred with the scheme and lost her own life in the conjuring of Decarabia.  That sacrifice made the magic more potent than Jacob had ever achieved for himself, but also bound him to a strange relationship with the demon, working its will upon the Earth.  Little Ruthie is in the hospital, isolated, slowly stealing life and power from other patients in the building.

Baby one dies and nobody thinks much of it, but the fact it’s one year to the day since the previous episode does not go unnoticed by Christine.  Baby two dies and more people notice.  Christine suffers some scrutiny, maybe from some cruel coworker?, but it’s obvious she’s not at fault.  She takes two sick days, and finds out two more babies have died.  Somehow, this has not yet triggered an investigation, but it does cause the hospital to call all hands on deck – every nurse and doctor will work every day until it stops happening.

Baby five dies, then six, and everyone is talking, going wild.  Christine remembers the strange events of the previous incident, but through a haze of drugs and trauma.  One of the doctors – oh, should I make this story gay or not? – takes notice and tries to help her, but she is tight-lipped.  Let’s say doctor is a lesbian but Christine doesn’t know about herself, milk that for tension.  Meanwhile Christine is starting to see and sense the evil, and Dr. Niamh Meehan knows she knows something.  Out with it, babe, as baby seven dies.

Heads together, they decide Director Simonds is some kinda devil guy, and launch a high-speed investigation into that, on top of their work duties.  Doc finds his college research on demonology and follows the same paths to discover the purpose of the deaths.  Meanwhile the director sees Christine’s suspicion and brings her up to take care of Ruthie – to keep her where he can see her, and possibly do evil works upon her.  Is it almost over? she wonders.

Christine sees the monster bird and chases after it, losing track.  Baby nine dies.  Nurse and Doc put their heads together again – gotta stop this death bird.  Doc does some kind of sorcery to protect all the babies, which repels the bird.  It gets larger as it returns to Ruthie, Christine sees it start to kill her.  Dad is there, and blames Nurse.  “The only way to save her life is to give your own!  Die for her, you worthless druggie scum!”  She gives up and the demon forces itself into her body.

Doc Neeve finds her and rushes her to ER.  Simonds lets her do it, confident it’s all over.  Christine may not be innocent, but she’ll be a passable baby ten for this year.  Doc helps save her life with magic, and the monster again heads back upstairs.  This time, Decarabia takes the director as the last sacrifice.

Let’s say all the girls live happily ever after, the end.  If I was John Woo I’d figure out some way for Christine to adopt Ruthie, but I’m not that ridiculous.  Close, but not quite.

I remember the movie Häxan had a realistic roasted human baby in it, but then, I may be remembering that wrong.  Infant sacrifices are just dead baby jokes unless they have names, faces, lives.  Obviously they ain’t speaking or even smiling if they’re still at the hospital, but those human larvae are receptacles for the love and hope of them what spawned ’em.  Gotta have parents howlin’ sad, at minimum.

Organizing this shit!

The prologue happens, on a dark and stormy night(s).  For Christine, bad relationship and drug trouble and dead baby stuff all come to a head during last dead baby nights.  Let’s open with baby nine dying and then run the events continuously through dead baby ten, ending with her in a total breakdown.

I

I:I  Christine is living a regular work shift, only hints of her dark past in evidence.  Introduce current staff of hospital.  Should include some nurses she doesn’t hate, some she does, and doctors, and so on.  Some grain of wondering – who remembers what happened to her last year?  Who is waiting to use that against her, in some way?  There should be someone in a position of authority who is an agent of the big boss.

I:II  Baby One beefs it.  This is not unexpected in a hospital, but tensions sharply rise.  How can I foreshadow themes?  Let’s say afterward her local enemies make ugly faces at her.  Or did she imagine them?  She’s doubting herself.  The whole story is about her guilt, feeling responsible for the first incident, leading up to attempted suicide by demon bird.  There you go, theme did.

I:III  Someone at work is abusing her.  It’s been normalized.  Why does she accept it?  But this night it’s getting worse.  Should introduce Simonds but not have him be overtly menacing at this point, some red herrings around.  What else here?

I:IV  Baby Two draws the big ace.  Now nobody can ignore, the same thing happening as last year.  Should somebody call the cops?  Some other regulatory body?  It becomes clear staying is untenable.  Christine needs to escape fast, taking sick leave.

I:V  Time off.  Therapy?  Group therapy?  Some narcotics anonymous bullshits?  Maybe she gets all the way to the edge of feeling OK-esque, just for contrast to next bit.

I:VI  Baby Three shuffles off this mortal coil.  A sympathetic character warns Christine so she has to sit there in dread until she’s called in.  The hospital’s response is to put all hands on deck – every staff member comes to stay on site, work maximum hours, until this stops.  Is the hospital actually preventing regulatory agencies & / or police from finding out?  Red herrings get more sus than ever.  Christine is tempted by drugs as she comes back to work.

II

II:I  Dr. Meehan is introduced briefly as a nice person, play up who is an ally and who is a frenemy or enemy.  Frenemy includes person who helped her snake drugs last year offering again.  What’s up with these damn babies tho?  People are literally watching all the babies all the time, trying to figure it out.  Rumors coming in from coroner’s work, or someone lying about it for ghoulish amusement.

II:II  Christine starts to “hallucinate” and Niamh tries to get her to open up, gets closer.  Baby four dies and by now Christine is fully exonerated again.  Only the creepiest of haters hopes otherwise.  Reveal about Ruth Simonds being in the hospital, more exploration of staff and situations outside the ward / the larger world.

II:III  Christine’s hallucination much more vivid now, directly leading into Baby Five death.  She’s coming unglued and more pressure from all sides to open up or cave to the unreasonable.  I feel like one of the blackmaily type people lording her previous year drug bender over her should apply some sexual menace, maybe.  I don’t wanna be that kind of exploitation writer tho, sex abusers must get blueballed.

II:IV  Baby Six death is absolutely expected.  Everyone knows the same thing is happening again but nobody knows why.  Someone would definitely rat the hospital out.  Should police show up?  Christine somehow tumbles to Simonds being involved, Niamh gets her to open up, but can’t believe it yet.

II:V  Baby Seven happening under Christine’s nose, associated with a display of weakness from her – doing drugs again? – gets her under scrutiny.  Director comes to suspect she suspects.  Niamh and her have a moment to conspire before Christine is disappeared to Ruthsitter duty.

II:VI  Niamh independently discovers the same grimoires that Simonds used to set this in motion, and tries to work out ways to protect them babies or banish demons.  Christine learns all about Ruth and her late mom and sees the source of death birds in action.  Simonds adds a third perspective, negotiating with Decarabia.

II:VI  Christine gets a tiny bit of time to conspire with Niamh before chasing down the demon on its way to kill baby nine.  Niamh’s first attempt at magic fails, but now they know exactly what went wrong and have an idea of what to do.

III

III:I  Niamh saves baby nine, turning magic back on Ruthie.  Christine is watching her die and is bullied by Simonds into dying for her.  Niamh saves Christine and the magic goes back on Simonds, defeating him.  Christine is worried that killed Ruthie.

III:II  In the aftermath they discover everything that happened – as much as is even possible.  Depending on how the writing of the story goes, by the time I write this, I should know whether or not I want the ladies to get together.  That would of course be problematic – power imbalance, relationship forged under bad circumstances, etc – but the ever after need never be defined.

–

Dream Shenanigans

Had a dream I was Vin Diesel in Pitch Black mode.  Me and my home boy Jeremy got in trouble with the law and were trying a variety of schemes to escape the country, which was some kind of cyberpunk mall-airport-metropolis the size and shape of big southwestern mesas.

We got separated and I had to improvise a solo plan.  I came to a kiosk where they were selling little tiny hand-held propellors, like those personal fans? but advertised as capable of flight.  I didn’t need a ton of lift, just something to slow my descent.

Sadly they were made for the weight of children and Vin Me-sel could not escape.

Had another dream I was watching a VHS of Soundgarden performing an early version of “Birth Ritual,” but with less talent, and an odd gimmick.  Remember Black 47 and The Dropkick Murphies?  Rowdy alternative bands who lean into Irish pride.  Despite being (in this dream) from the US Midwest, they were acting all Scottish pride.

Chris Cornell was wearing a predominantly black tartan kilt with white and red stripes, with that over the shoulder part, no shirt underneath like Melvin Braveheart.  Made me wonder, on waking, if there’s rowdy alternative Welsh pride bands.

Last and most foolish of all, had a dream I was trying to water houseplants with the garden hose near the bookshelf, thinking if I was slick enough, I could miss all the books.  So foolish.

–

Spooktober 2026, Days Thirty-One and Thirty-Two?

SPOOKTOBER DAY 31 – RETRO SLASHER
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  FIRST LOVE, LIBRARY & LIBRARIANS, PREMONITION
TAROT INFLUENCE:  QUEEN OF SWORDS, UPRIGHT.  We’ve had some repeats.

TITLE:  WE HAVE ALWAYS DIED IN THE CASTLE

Premise:  A modern tourist castle, run as a state park in, let’s say…  Romania, whatever.  The staff are all academics (incluye LIBRARY & LIBRARIANS) letting their degrees go to rot, trying to smile for endless dead-faced randos, knowing their breath alone is speeding the decay of everything, trying to keep sticky kid fingers off the antiques just the same.

One of the most famous and well-liked employees is a muscle mommy type who shows off medieval weapon techniques for tourists, attending to other duties when it ain’t time for that.  Andreea’s getting older, her sunny disposition beginning to crack, in honest moments.  Young book conservation expert Mihai is secretly in love with her (FIRST LOVE) but would never make a move, she’s almost old enough to be his mom and is way out of his league.

During a meeting with a lot of employees present, she says she dreamed she was killing all the other employees and it really creeped her out (PREMONITION), which makes her prime suspect when…

The Villain:  While running a night tour in the run-up to Halloween (thx cultural imperialism!), people are getting killed.  The murderer has to be an employee because they knew to break the PA to keep people trapped longer.  The killer uses medieval weapons – longswords, halberds, crossbows – and is wearing the red silk cloak of a boyar with a medieval helmet covering their face.

Horror Element:  Surely she dunnit, rite?  It takes too long to work out that she did not, and by the end of the night she must duel the killer with swords ‘n’ shit.
–

–
This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  God, openai is such a junky for shiny ground.

–

SPOOKTOBER DAY 32? – EXTRA CREDIT
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES / THE VOTE LOSERS:  DARK WEB / TECHNOLOGY, UNSTOPPABLE FORCE, WITCH / WIZARD, ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS, DARK FANTASY, KILLER CARS, FOLK HORROR, ELDRITCH, HAUNTED HOUSE, ANALOG HORROR, DEVILS & DEMONS, KILLER TOYS, MAD SCIENTIST, LOST MEDIA, MUMMY, SCHOOL DAZE, VIRAL, WESTERN, NOIR, CLOWN / CIRCUS, CLONES / DOPPELGANGERS, DREAMS & NIGHTMARES, MONSTER HUNTER, SPLATTERPUNK, WATER / NAUTICAL, SUBURBAN GOTHIC, CURSED OBJECT, GROTESQUE, BACKWOODS, CULT, KILLER ANIMALS
TAROT INFLUENCE:  QUEEN OF CUPS, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  HAIL TO THE KING

Premise:  This list feels Rob Zombie to me, so that’s what I’ll aim for.

In a (SUBURBAN GOTHIC) world of vapid preppies and shaggy-haired teenagers (SCHOOL DAZE) smoking doobies, there is aught to do but live for diversion.  TV, comic books, D&D…  Some kind of loserly freshman (JIM) with a hot older sister (CATHY) is watching every VHS he can, and starts recording cryptic secret shit at the end of movies (ANALOG HORROR).  Comic book pages with occult paraphernalia draped across them, dolls partially wrapped in saran stood next to ketchup bottles, etc.

He discovers other people have been doing the same thing (DARK WEB / TECHNOLOGY).  It is clues pointing him Videodrome-style toward a spooky abandoned building (HAUNTED HOUSE) where doors open into other worlds Narnia-style (ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS).  Within the cryptic communications is an idea you can escape to a fantasy world there, and within that world, if you seize the crown (CURSED OBJECT) you can stay forever.

Conveniently, everybody in the alternate worlds speaks something in the ballpark of modern english.  At first it takes Jim a while to realize he’s in an alternate world, thinking he just came out the back side of the building into a wild neighborhood.  It’s a town in the grips of a wild carnival (CLOWN / CIRCUS), with no explanation and no end in sight.  Is everyone here hopped up on goofballs?  A lion rips off someone’s arm when standing close to a cage, a clown is trampled by an elephant (KILLER ANIMALS), and nobody cares.  The dagger-thrower accidentally plants one in a forehead.

The jocular freaks can detect his poindextrish ways and invite him to party with them, so they can watch him squirm and suffer.  It’s a gang that includes an old-timey doctor that is feeding people pills, some greasers, and a random cowboy (WESTERN).  They bully him into driving their car in a drag race against some other freaks, and he ends up killing some people (KILLER CARS).  They laugh (SPLATTERPUNK) and say he’s gonna get arrested now, and he runs away.

They follow Jim and he tries to escape through a freak show (GROTESQUE), where he trips and knocks over an idol.  A drunk ringmaster type says now he’s got the mummy’s curse, and indeed, a (MUMMY) busts out of a glass case and starts chasing him.  It animates some statues and toys, which also give chase (KILLER TOYS).

As far as he can tell, he’s lost them, slamming the door on their world and running home.  He runs into Cathy and confesses to murder.  Of course she’s fixin’ to call the authorities, but he talks her out of it, and she decides she has to see this crazy world for herself.  He tags along, not wanting her to get killed, trusting she’s tougher than him.

Indeed, when she sees some animated toys, she kicks them to pieces.  Jim says the mummy must be nearby and tries to run, but she collars him and gets him to take her to the circus world…  He chooses a different door, claiming it’s the one, and they find themselves in a foggy seaside town (WATER / NAUTICAL) with a spooky lighthouse.  Cathy is enthralled.  She gets them to go into a jazz club (NOIR) where Jim is constantly on alert for people to act recklessly homicidal or destructive.  The staff and clientele act perfectly normal, if a bit like something out of a movie.

A loutish dude tries to mack on Cathy for “dressing like a showgirl” and a Dick Tracy -jawed manjob beats him up, helps them escape the ruckus.  Out in the street he asks them why they’re so out of place and Cathy admits they’re from the future.  He says maybe Dr. Loups can help, taking them to the lighthouse.

Dr. Loups is a (MAD SCIENTIST) who sees Jim as a fellow mad scientist from another world.  He distracts Dick and Cathy with hospitalities, then shows Jim to the secret facility.  Through conversation Cathy gets the impression Dick isn’t a real person.  This wasn’t time travel; it’s some form of unreality.  Meanwhile Jim is getting the same impression much more strongly.

“It was your doing that you came from your world!  I showed you my secret army of atomic supermen (CLONES / DOPPELGANGERS), now you me your science.”  Jim resists and everyone is captured.  Just when it looks like they’re going to be lowered into a vat of space plague (VIRAL), the cowboy and his gang bust in and start messing up the place.  Dick gets a hand loose and helps the kids escape.

They take the exit to the real world again, and Dick comes with them.  But when they’re chased down the street by a hot rod full of hoodlums, a mummy, and some animated statues (UNSTOPPABLE FORCE), Jim realizes they must take control of the situation – with the crown.  They just have to find the right door.

He does, then…  “Our land is beset by demons.”  Cool barbarian (MONSTER HUNTER) lady is fixin’ to chop them up, when she realizes Cathy is super hot.  She relents, and lets them explain.  Through the conversation, they realize the (DARK FANTASY) world, while it does have real monsters, also has creeps from the real world seeking after the crown – often armed with guns.  Said creeps have been strung up in cages around the cave from whence the heroes emerged, their bones stripped by crows.

She takes them through the (BACKWOODS) to see the (WITCH / WIZARD) and from here stuff turns into a more conventional fantasy epic, save for a few important details.  The good guys aren’t so good, being in some kind of human sacrificin’ (FOLK HORROR) (CULT).  Maybe that’s understandable when hellmouths produce (DEVILS & DEMONS) that attack from time to time.

And more importantly, the newest version of said demon conflict involves killer cars, greasers, doctors, mummies, cowboys, cool Dicks, etc.  It’s the stuff of (DREAMS & NIGHTMARES) and Cathy is done with it.

The Villain:  Jim is corrupted by the lure of that crown, like the others before him, only playing it cool long enough to get close.  He actually gets his hands on the thing, and becomes the lord of this illusion.

Horror Element:  Cathy realizes this whole shit has emerged from Jim’s geek crapola and seeks a way to break the spell amid the (LOST MEDIA) in his acrid nerd den.  She wants to get him back to Earth and in his place so her parents don’t freak (QUEEN OF CUPS, UPRIGHT), but seeing his debaucheries, decides to just leave him to it.  The problem is that he doesn’t trust her not to ruin things, and then it becomes a fight for survival – brother against sister, in a cartoon tableau of blood-soaked nonsense.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  Between different versions the license plate changed from saying BEB MEL to these hieroglyphics, and I didn’t catch the extra stiletto hand.  Man, whatever.  It’s over!

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Spooktober 2026, Days Twenty-Nine and Thirty

SPOOKTOBER DAY 29 – GOTHIC
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  BIRTHDAY / ANNIVERSARY, SNAKES, GRIEF / LOSS :̶.̶|̶ ̶:̶;̶
TAROT INFLUENCE:  QUEEN OF SWORDS, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  THE LINDWYRM

Premise:  All of the prompts could have fit my Southern Gothic entry perfectly so, having recognized that, I may struggle to not produce a really similar result here…  Gothic.  Gotta have the put-upon virtuous heroine or hero, oppress’d by dark circumstances and a darkly magnetic villain, some sort of tyrant.  Lessee…  Now I’m thinking about domestic slavery, the southeast asian flavor.  Really feels like someone else’s story to tell, a worse overstep than usual from me.  Um…

Little girl is introduced to taking care of houseplants, and how horrible of a hobby that can be.  A few careless mistakes kill plants and she feels so bad about it that she resolves to be perfect.  But pruning is kinda like hurting them isn’t it?  And just because that leaf is yellow doesn’t mean it isn’t providing some kind of service to the plant.  Maybe just leave it on there til it falls off on its own?

She carefully brushes them down for gnats and thrips and mites and so on, waters just so, begs borrows steals every light she can scrounge, and is still overwhelmed by death and sorrow (GRIEF / LOSS).  But shitbird mom keeps buying her lovely new plants, to paper over her own crimes of abuse or neglect.

This reaches a tipping point and girl realizes you have to be cruel to be kind, with plants.  They don’t work like people or even pets.  She isn’t totally ruthless, but she’s finally able to deal with the pain of seeing them fail, and to do the kinds of cuts that keep diseases from spreading.  She grows into the kind of person who does this with all of her relationships as well (QUEEN OF SWORDS, UPRIGHT).

Her household (GOTHIC) is always on the verge of collapse.  Dad’s inherited wealth makes up for what he can’t pull down as a heroin-addicted ivy league lit professor, mom just has babies and psychologically fucks them over with her inconsistency.  That’s little girl, her older brother non-verbal autistic boy, and her little sister the capricious plant murderer.  When she turns eighteen, but is still too enmeshed to escape, dad dies and is immediately replaced with…

The Villain:  Stepdad arouses mom’s passion in a way dad could never, and she is accordingly devoted to him.  He’s what the kids call a gigachad, but for genre’s sake, we’ll say he’s byronic.  His seventeen year old daughter also joins the household.  Stepdad is a sadist in ways big and small, psychologically manipulating and abusing all the kids just for fun.

Horror Element:  After a (BIRTHDAY / ANNIVERSARY) when one of stepdad’s abuses went too far, mom buys gifts to pacify the victims.  Baby girl gets a potted plant with a surprise.  What seems like a worm wriggles in the soil.  As she ponders whether to chuck it in the garden, big bro gestures for her to stop and take a closer look.  It’s a brahminy blind snake (SNAKE).  It becomes a source of marvel for them, and bonding with a brother who she’s never been able to know.  But they also know they need to keep it a secret from the jerk.

The horror is trying to preserve things in a world where entropy is a rampaging demon.  Good luck, kids.  For gothic points, chuck in a tortured romance with stepsister.  Let’s say their lil manse is a converted abbey with a small church.  I dunno.  Thunderstorms?  I need to get better at some of these things.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  Both mochines couldn’t make a snake as weird as the brahminy blind snake, and I didn’t care to spend much effort on it, so I just used the clonestamp to make the scales and eyes on the head less distinct from the body.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 30 – OUTSIDER
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  SPIDERS, TEMPTATION, ARCHITECTURE
TAROT INFLUENCE:  NINE OF WANDS, INVERTED

TITLE:  THE NINTH LEG OF THE SPIDER (NINE OF WANDS, INVERTED, LOL)

Premise:  The Alchemist is homeless, but he understands how it all works, and he’ll prove it yet.  No, he doesn’t have the resources for the Great Work – maybe after he figures out how to profit off his current experiment.  See, it’s all spontaneous generation, regardless of what it looks like under a microscope.  Cell theory schmell theory.  The muck of life condenses ether, which in turn reshapes the muck into infinite forms.

The experiment:  Create a medium which maximizes the chances for a grain of life to condense into a novel enough form that its origin cannot be denied.  He gets random decaying stuff and tosses it into the chamber.  It’s a forgotten utility shack at the abandoned train station (ARCHITECTURE), so full of nasty decay that even the hobos won’t brave it.  Water drips in through the ceiling, keeping the mix going even after the Alchemist dies.

It becomes a closet full of things.  Three are large and intelligent, the rest are tiny and senseless monsters.  Thing one is a sloppy man-shaped creature that lurches out into the world (OUTSIDER) and has to invent a humanesque identity for itself to survive.  Things two and three are monster storage monsters, who use different methods to contain the tiny monsters, unleashing them like bio-weapons at the right moments.  Two has a bullfroggy gullet sac, and three shoves them into slits in its abdomen.  Faking it isn’t an option for them, so they just get by as monsters will.

The Villain:  Things two and three are born into a brawl, hating each other.  Every time they cross paths, they fight.  Two eats people, so you could say it’s the villain.

Horror Element:  Thing one learns about belonging (TEMPTATION) and tries to break up the fight, turn the monsters into family.  It cannot be.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  Nothing interesting to report on this one.

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Spooktober 2026, Days Twenty-Seven and Twenty-Eight

SPOOKTOBER DAY 27 – APOCALYPSE / POST-APOC
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  RULES, BAD LUCK, TRYPOPHOBIA
TAROT INFLUENCE:  TEN OF PENTACLES, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  THE LIGHT

Premise:  Via my interest in paleo biz, I found out about another time of life-threatening global warming, the Eocene Thermal Maximum.  We’re going to hit that a lot more abruptly than the previous go, but if creatures the size of pigs survived that one, things won’t be as bad as I used to worry they would be.  Still, we’ll be living bitterly (BAD LUCK), for a very long, very ugly age.

Much of human knowledge was lost in the (APOCALYPSE/POST-APOC), but the most learned kept the scraps alive, slowly watered them, until they blossomed anew.  Several thousand years into the Desert Age, electricity is a thing again.  But humans are humans, so it’s hoarded by the descendants of warlords: the Blinsapory of Nuranoka, the Uraisi of Afoka, the Zuzigo of Yazo, the Rejeny of Yos Yazo, and the Gendaron of Anoka.  Trade and communication have become the new excitement. Everyone is marveling at the interesting weirdos from far away, their music and storytelling and style.

The Villain:  In the long dark summer of Supolar Anoka, a gendaro is consolidating power, connecting the grids of captured lands and attacking the electricity of the unbowed. His weapon is mobilization of the faithful, the cult of Undead Jesok.  Most of the converts are just trying to keep their heads low and ride this out; some see the ascendance of the cult as evidence of its power and are trying to feel the faith in their hearts.  Meanwhile, Gendaro Milar Milar dan Joceros is doing his best to stamp out the observance of Sandorona.  Idolaters get the iron maiden (TRYPOPHOBIA)!

Horror Element:  An alien world -future Antarctica- seasonal breadbasket (TEN OF PENTACLES) of the newly global economy.  Revolutionaries live by firelight and herd swine to war, while the bright cities ruthlessly expand their dogma (RULES).
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  Surprisingly good peccaries, if a lil mushy in anatomical particulars.  When you know the request for her was “dressed like a cross between a showy virgin mary candle, an aztec warrior, and a dune fremen” the outfit doesn’t look amazingly creative.  Nice to just get something that fits the ask with minimal effort tho.

 

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 28 – SCARY SYMBOL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  NEIGHBORS, SUPERSTITION, PINS & NEEDLES
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THE MOON, INVERTED

TITLE:  AND WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE THIS MEANS?

Premise:  A mature gay couple are hiking in the countryside, and seem pathologically incapable of fear – one more than the other.  Turns out it’s from hard-won practice.  One husband is prone to heart attacks and keeps it under control by maintaining control of his emotions, and the other just does his best to help by also controlling his own expressions of upset.  So when horror things begin to happen, they just brush it off – as best they can.

As they walk, they encounter increasingly scary tokens of violence.  At first it’s some moles and voles crucified on a fence.  Farmer superstition, doncha know?  Then it’s other animals twisted around thorns (PINS & NEEDLES) and vegetation.  Shrikes?  Can they take prey that large?  They keep making excuses like cultural anthropologists.  It’s all so many (SCARY SYMBOL)s, a kind of folk magic (SUPERSTITION), yes?

The locals (NEIGHBORS) are mum and shy away, like they fear the strangers will bring some kind of ruin into their homes, which makes theorizing about the grisliness hard to confirm.  At last they meet an undefinedly queer young person who sees a gay couple as their long lost people, and invites them into the cottage.  And then hesitates to let them leave…

The Villain:  Out with it, kiddo!  The reveal (MOON, INVERTED): the grisliness is not the work of local wizards, but of some unknowable presence in the wilds.  The foxshrike, which could be a cryptid or a person or a people, but are definitely dangerous, whichever it is.

Horror Element:  Who or what is the foxshrike?
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  I damn near went with the gemini one.  Openai was not much better.

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Spooktober 2026, Days Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six

SPOOKTOBER DAY 25 – CYBERPUNK
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  CLUB/GROUP, TERRORISM, MANNEQUINS
TAROT INFLUENCE:  TEN OF WANDS, INVERTED

TITLE:  MANNEQUINS, COME OUT AND PLAY

Premise:  During the events of Winner Take All, a gang (CLUB/GROUP) called the Mannequins (MANNEQUINS) fall victim to the maneuvers of the Dynex shot caller, getting rebuilt into cyborg prison labor.  It’s just one grimy horror scenario after another, until the gang is all more machine than human.

The Villain:  The Dynex shot caller is just a stooge.  The real villain is Dynex itself, under CEO Lathrop Machrie.  Under him, the corporations practices have grown massively more evil, because he is the flavor of sadist that isn’t satisfied until his victims are ripped to pieces as he watches.  Live feed gore is a better perk than any golden parachute.

Horror Element:  That’s obvious enough.  People watch their bodies destroyed, are dehumanized and enslaved.  Let’s say one of the victims is a l33t h4XX0r, who converts a gaoler AI to go rogue and help them out.  The crew get enough of a jailbreak to allow them to go on a suicide (TEN OF WANDS, INVERTED) mission (TERRORISM) – to get Machrie.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  I only needed photopea to enlarge text on this one, otherwise the raw AI was god enuf.  As usual I started in gemini then moved to openai, to lose the cartoony aspect of gem’s biz.  I wanna say tho, I was real impressed by how horrifyin’ the gory cyborg prisoners were in the background of this gem version.  I also note that openai was more shy about showing hands.  Weak sauce, pal.
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SPOOKTOBER DAY 26 – ALIEN / SPACE
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  SOUNDS & HEARING, SECRET PASSAGES, MOVING DAY
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THE HIGH PRIESTESS, INVERTED

TITLE:  THE TUBES

Premise:  Thinkin’ about aliens, was thinkin’ about how in Centennial Hills I wrote like three different characters wanting to fuck them, and about how if an alien was the only one of their kind on earth, in a less dire circumstance than my Dr. Snar, they might still end up coerced into the sex industry.  Thinkin’ about how that would be a great metaphor for how trans women so often end up on that path, to fund transition, or because other jobs won’t hire them, or just for survival.  But hey.  Let me steer clear of my perennial sad trans people shit on this one.  I already hit my quota.

A cool alien spaceship (ALIEN / SPACE) crash lands on Earth, so intact that it’s easily made operable again.  Where did the aliens on board go?  Must have ejected or evacuated.  A brave group of colonists is trained up and a few years later, sent to visit some exoplanets (MOVING DAY).  After they leave the safety of Earth, they begin to hear (SOUND & HEARING) noise in the walls.  Turns out the aliens were in stasis within the walls of the ship (SECRET PASSAGES), waiting for some chump organisms to feel safe before they come out to feed on them.

The Villain:  The leader of the colonists was a corporate bullshitter (HIGH PRIESTESS, INVERTED) who oversold the idea of herself as a cool hero, and so lets people down, lethally.

Horror Element:  There are no cool heroes available, just regular people who have to do their best.  No help, they must save themselves or just die grisly.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  It’s a lot easier with no people to contend with.  Funny but openai has this absurd kick of always making the ground shiny, like it’s wet or glassy.  It is a cheap artistic move to add interest, but it uses it as often as claude says a concept or phrase is “load-bearing.”

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