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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