Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group argues over.  These are my entries.

SPOOKTOBER DAY #2 — Cursed Object

TITLE:  Sweden

PREMISE:  I had no idea for this one.  Fucked around with AI way too long to get some images to composite.  The title is just what I was able to tease out of some cool-looking gibberish characters.  But David Lynch once made a whole-ass movie with no script and less than half an idea, so…

“Great Count Acar appears in the likeness of a cicada, and upon taking human form, speaks with a raucous voice.  He is the prince of flies and locusts, and, should the summoner so desire, may confer upon him the power to bind cicadas and the like.  The summoner must fashion an image of him in bronze or another metal, to secure said power.  Acar rules love between men and women, gives true responses to questions of present, past, and future, and has twenty legions under his power.”

Roberta found this label on a yellowed parchment tucked within a strange artifact – a metal statuette of a cicada perched on a box with open faces, so encrusted with oxidation as to seem like a chunk of black stone.  It was embedded in the basement stones of her rented cottage in a small English suburb.  Occult antiquities could be valuable, but she was too busy with life to polish it up and make inquiries.

All around her, relationships were falling apart.  Her friends were getting divorces, or splitting up.  At last her own boyfriend said they should break up so he could take a job in Sweden.  Is there no love in this world?  No romance?  Must all passion fade before practical things?  As she pondered this, drunk on wine, the empty box of the artifact flickered to life with a golden ring of light.  Her eyes locked on the light and she knew she was understood.

Her friends all started getting back together.  Acar rules love between men and women.  But they were all too passionate, too freaky.  Worst, the more passionate they became, the more they were swarmed with all manner of insects.  Only Roberta could see them, not the lovers or any bystanders, but they alarmed her quite powerfully.

At last her own man returned from Sweden, in a grand romantic gesture.  There were no bugs around, but Roberta had a very bad feeling, could sense vibrations like a million insect wings in the air.  Still, he had her.  They began to disrobe right inside the front door of the cottage, barely letting the door shut.  Kiss, kiss, caress.  But when she touched his side it cracked apart like an eggshell.  Underneath pulsed the segmented flesh of a giant insect.

HORROR ELEMENT:  I hate any bug one inch or larger in size.  I tolerate them outdoors, but if I see them in a house, you can bet I’m flying across the room in a panic.  Y tu?

Poster by AI, modified with photoshop.