SPOOKTOBER DAY 23 – ONE NIGHT / SURVIVAL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  RIOT, NEWS & REPORTERS, PROM / SCHOOL DANCE
TAROT INFLUENCE:  FOUR OF CUPS, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  THAT DRESS IS WEARING YOU

Premise:  Small rural town in Washington has had all local businesses gobbled up by malwart (FOUR OF CUPS, UPRIGHT) …except for those that are so oriented toward immigrants that they don’t bother to hablar el inglés.  For a while the town was racist enough that stayed the case, but a few more loving generations integrated the populace and resulted in a real spanglish town.  This was great for the small businesses, which had become unassailable cultural institutions during the language-limited times, but now had a broader clientele.

Prom (PROM / SCHOOL DANCE) season comes around and all the debutantes go to Lilia’s Quinceañera Boutique for bespoke dresses.  But old school business practices make for old school problems.  The few girls unfortunate enough to be wearing malwart might get turbomesothelioma from bangladeshi cesium glitter, but the rest of the girls get magical cursed fabric, that old Lilia got a hot deal on.  It was once the silk cord yoroi of a Heian warlord who was cut into a thousand pieces by ninjas, rewoven into cursed ninja garments empowered by his undying hatred, then rewoven into a bolt of primo clothing fabric by an enterprising artisan after the clan got chopped up, held as a treasure and passed via a descendant to amurrica, then sold off the back of a government truck during the Japanese internment, finding its way from there to Lilia via an estate sale.  Shit is infused with ninja power.

The Villain:  These kids aren’t as loving as their parents.  They are mired in petty rivalries and hatred, amped to a million by the curse.  The prom queen is the warlord, the others be ninjas, and they all have to use magically summoned weapons to do each other in.

Horror Element:  It’s a ninja riot (RIOT) and who will survive (ONE NIGHT / SURVIVAL)?  Possibly not the local news crew, live broadcasting the events (NEWS & REPORTERS).
–

–
This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  This one was ruff and crappy to make, but the scary dress in the background is a funny element the ai came up with, and I liked that.

–

SPOOKTOBER DAY 24 – CRYPTID
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  SCREAMS, SUMMER, GOODBYES
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THE HIEROPHANT, INVERTED

TITLE:  MORTAL RED

Premise:  My husband won’t allow me to do a joke entry, but come on.  The cryptid here?  The boys of summer, from that Don Henley video, jumping shirtless behind the chain link fence.  They make you say goodbyes to that lady with the wayfarers on, then you’re screamin’ about nostalgia.  True horror.

Anyway, um…  Most of the time when you’re dying and there’s nothing you can do about it, you’ll reach a point where you go psychically numb to the horror.  This can happen quite quickly, or not at all.  When a person dies without reaching that state, that close cousin to acceptance, their horror outlives their body, their (SCREAMS) can reverberate through the ages.

At a lake of (SUMMER) residences owned by a motley assortment of upper middle class families, a haunting form (CRYPTID) makes itself known.  Whenever someone screams in fear, even the mild yelp of a prank victim, there’s a chance its scream will join in, and hang in the air, making everyone’s blood run cold.  If the scream is loud or genuine enough, the screamer can become visible – a blood red and thrashing figure, leaving claw marks and bite marks in its wake.

The Villain:  Abusive parents have one of the random tweens on the lake (THE HIEROPHANT, INVERTED) feeling suicidal.  Some other kids see a weakness to exploit and are shitty as well, a rare few try to help that child.  The abuse ebbs and flows, lulls only making the peaks feel worse.

Horror Element:  The suicidal tween causes screams and makes a few screams of their own.  Eventually, on the day people begin to say their annual (GOODBYES), they sustain a scream long enough to make the cryptid fully manifest – the ghost of a woman who was eaten alive by a bear, and whose manifest form can do similar damage to the innocent…
–

–
This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  At first this one was very frustrating, but even with a pretty bullshitty and informal prompt, openai pulled it out at the end.

–