SPOOKTOBER DAY 21 – EVIL CORPORATION
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  INTERVIEW, CONSTRUCTION & DEMOLITION, BRAINWASHING
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THE BOGEYMAN (V), from a non-Rider-Waite deck.

TITLE:  LOW COST

Premise:  This prompt reminds me of the bit at the end of shitty Hellraiser III when there’s a corporate building constructed with designs from Lemarchand’s box.  The movie was so bad but that part was quite cool…  Also reminded of the secret source of microchips in Halloween III: Season of the Witch lol.  I want everyone to see that movie so no spoilers from me.  And on the destruction side of things, I randomly thought of Quatermass and the Pit…

Cornpone country millionaire makes good, thru ministry and real estate tax hijinks (EVIL CORPORATION), and celebrates reaching billionaire status by investing in a quest for noah’s ark.  No, for real this time!  He has a vision that it actually came to land in the new world, no explanation for how the survivors got from there back to the middle east, but he’s got the money to make this pseudoarchaeology happen.

When his appalachian mine strikes …gold?… he quietly drops the original quest in favor of a new one.  He is going to build low-income housing with the stone from the mines.  Jesus told him to do it, and when jesus says, we does.

The Villain:  Tiberius Simon Watterman III is a man possessed by the holy spirit (BRAINWASHING).  The stone coming out of the mine is remarkable – light but sturdy, material properties that make it a top quality replacement for concrete – but to his eyes it literally glows.  Build a castle for the meek (CONSTRUCTION & DEMOLITION), to glorify His name.

Horror Element:  He’s tapped into the abyss, unsealing the end times.  Buildings made of the material transform the residents to bug monsters, the mine itself fucks up the miners, and at the bottom of it all?  A biographer (INTERVIEW) comes to see Watterman as a horror that must be stopped (BOGEYMAN).
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  This one was mercifully easy, and well it should be, since there are no people to mess up.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 22 – SOUTHERN GOTHIC
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  GRANDPARENTS, SÉANCE, CAMERAS & PHOTOS
TAROT INFLUENCE:  EIGHT OF WANDS, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  MY BEREAVEMENT

Premise:  The obvious thang to do when grandparents are on the table in horror is to indulge in ageism, and in honor of hitting the average age of a first-time grandparent, I resist this.  Grandparents should be humanized and central, like, the main characters.  Fuck them kids, as the saying goes.

No family holds it together over time.  The progress of the human species is in the population, individual lineages wax and wane.  The Dodges used to have it all, despite the best of them being an interracial couple in a time when that was intensely controversial.  Velma and Wayne (GRANDPARENTS) were smart and resourceful and plucky (EIGHT OF WANDS, UPRIGHT), and fortune favored every move they made, back in working days.  The fruit fell a little far from the tree, and farther still, into some truly unpleasant characters.

The Villain:  God love ’em but the brood hold no small amount of villainy in their hearts.  Each generation after Ma & Pa ranges from well-intentioned but weak to full-on scum.  Junior is a cop and Wayne the Third is on some hitler youth bullshit.  There are villains, but only one was evil enough to murder Wayne.  Who dun it?

Horror Element:  It’s eighty-year-old Velma versus her own flesh & blood, and in moments she has to wonder, who the fuck are all these white people?  Being (SOUTHERN GOTHIC) this must involve content as steamy and disturbing as a rafflesia flower full of used condoms and switchblades.  But u kno Velma’s gonna beat those whippersnappers.

Maybe it can culminate with her holding a séance (SÉANCE) as a ruse to smoke out the killer.  And, like, the reveal can have something to do with somebody showing up in the background of a photo (CAMERAS & PHOTOS) where they weren’t supposed to be.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  This one was mercifully easy.  You’ll notice the style is a bit different.  It ended up more gemini than openai, because I was out of free use on the latter.

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