SPOOKTOBER 2024!

Spooktober is a 31 day event of coming up with original horror ideas based on prompts my writing group voted on.  Carrying forward from last year we’re having optional sub-themes and I’m trying to do them all like Debbie do Dallas.  Book covers made with midjourney and photopea.

CONTENT WARNINGS:  Capitalist Exploitation, Despair, Suicide

SPOOKTOBER DAY #9 — NOIR
(× Hypnotism or Industrial or Scopophobia)

TITLE:  Falling Forever

PREMISE:  Henry Combs has to work at General Industries giant gloomy (noir) “everything” factory (Industrial), joining the other child laborers and victims producing endless random springs and gadgets.  The floor bosses monitor every tiny hand ruthlessly for inefficiency (Scopophobia) which leads to freakouts and despair.  But management has a solution.  A combination of drugs in the cafeteria and soothing musics (Hypnotism) keep the suicide rates in check, though the program has to be continually tweaked to maintain the balance and reduce bloody machine accidents in the wraithly young proles.

HORROR ELEMENT:  Henry is sure grateful for the drugs in his lunch.  Makes the day run nice and smooth, makes you want to show up for work.  You get mighty nauseous if you don’t.  But the hints and whispers about the reason for the drug program – the plague of suicides, people jumping off the roofs – maybe it’s planted a suggestion in his head that has him seeing ghosts.  Or maybe the ghosts are real?