SPOOKTOBER DAY 31 – RETRO SLASHER
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  FIRST LOVE, LIBRARY & LIBRARIANS, PREMONITION
TAROT INFLUENCE:  QUEEN OF SWORDS, UPRIGHT.  We’ve had some repeats.

TITLE:  WE HAVE ALWAYS DIED IN THE CASTLE

Premise:  A modern tourist castle, run as a state park in, let’s say…  Romania, whatever.  The staff are all academics (incluye LIBRARY & LIBRARIANS) letting their degrees go to rot, trying to smile for endless dead-faced randos, knowing their breath alone is speeding the decay of everything, trying to keep sticky kid fingers off the antiques just the same.

One of the most famous and well-liked employees is a muscle mommy type who shows off medieval weapon techniques for tourists, attending to other duties when it ain’t time for that.  Andreea’s getting older, her sunny disposition beginning to crack, in honest moments.  Young book conservation expert Mihai is secretly in love with her (FIRST LOVE) but would never make a move, she’s almost old enough to be his mom and is way out of his league.

During a meeting with a lot of employees present, she says she dreamed she was killing all the other employees and it really creeped her out (PREMONITION), which makes her prime suspect when…

The Villain:  While running a night tour in the run-up to Halloween (thx cultural imperialism!), people are getting killed.  The murderer has to be an employee because they knew to break the PA to keep people trapped longer.  The killer uses medieval weapons – longswords, halberds, crossbows – and is wearing the red silk cloak of a boyar with a medieval helmet covering their face.

Horror Element:  Surely she dunnit, rite?  It takes too long to work out that she did not, and by the end of the night she must duel the killer with swords ‘n’ shit.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  God, openai is such a junky for shiny ground.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 32? – EXTRA CREDIT
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES / THE VOTE LOSERS:  DARK WEB / TECHNOLOGY, UNSTOPPABLE FORCE, WITCH / WIZARD, ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS, DARK FANTASY, KILLER CARS, FOLK HORROR, ELDRITCH, HAUNTED HOUSE, ANALOG HORROR, DEVILS & DEMONS, KILLER TOYS, MAD SCIENTIST, LOST MEDIA, MUMMY, SCHOOL DAZE, VIRAL, WESTERN, NOIR, CLOWN / CIRCUS, CLONES / DOPPELGANGERS, DREAMS & NIGHTMARES, MONSTER HUNTER, SPLATTERPUNK, WATER / NAUTICAL, SUBURBAN GOTHIC, CURSED OBJECT, GROTESQUE, BACKWOODS, CULT, KILLER ANIMALS
TAROT INFLUENCE:  QUEEN OF CUPS, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  HAIL TO THE KING

Premise:  This list feels Rob Zombie to me, so that’s what I’ll aim for.

In a (SUBURBAN GOTHIC) world of vapid preppies and shaggy-haired teenagers (SCHOOL DAZE) smoking doobies, there is aught to do but live for diversion.  TV, comic books, D&D…  Some kind of loserly freshman (JIM) with a hot older sister (CATHY) is watching every VHS he can, and starts recording cryptic secret shit at the end of movies (ANALOG HORROR).  Comic book pages with occult paraphernalia draped across them, dolls partially wrapped in saran stood next to ketchup bottles, etc.

He discovers other people have been doing the same thing (DARK WEB / TECHNOLOGY).  It is clues pointing him Videodrome-style toward a spooky abandoned building (HAUNTED HOUSE) where doors open into other worlds Narnia-style (ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS).  Within the cryptic communications is an idea you can escape to a fantasy world there, and within that world, if you seize the crown (CURSED OBJECT) you can stay forever.

Conveniently, everybody in the alternate worlds speaks something in the ballpark of modern english.  At first it takes Jim a while to realize he’s in an alternate world, thinking he just came out the back side of the building into a wild neighborhood.  It’s a town in the grips of a wild carnival (CLOWN / CIRCUS), with no explanation and no end in sight.  Is everyone here hopped up on goofballs?  A lion rips off someone’s arm when standing close to a cage, a clown is trampled by an elephant (KILLER ANIMALS), and nobody cares.  The dagger-thrower accidentally plants one in a forehead.

The jocular freaks can detect his poindextrish ways and invite him to party with them, so they can watch him squirm and suffer.  It’s a gang that includes an old-timey doctor that is feeding people pills, some greasers, and a random cowboy (WESTERN).  They bully him into driving their car in a drag race against some other freaks, and he ends up killing some people (KILLER CARS).  They laugh (SPLATTERPUNK) and say he’s gonna get arrested now, and he runs away.

They follow Jim and he tries to escape through a freak show (GROTESQUE), where he trips and knocks over an idol.  A drunk ringmaster type says now he’s got the mummy’s curse, and indeed, a (MUMMY) busts out of a glass case and starts chasing him.  It animates some statues and toys, which also give chase (KILLER TOYS).

As far as he can tell, he’s lost them, slamming the door on their world and running home.  He runs into Cathy and confesses to murder.  Of course she’s fixin’ to call the authorities, but he talks her out of it, and she decides she has to see this crazy world for herself.  He tags along, not wanting her to get killed, trusting she’s tougher than him.

Indeed, when she sees some animated toys, she kicks them to pieces.  Jim says the mummy must be nearby and tries to run, but she collars him and gets him to take her to the circus world…  He chooses a different door, claiming it’s the one, and they find themselves in a foggy seaside town (WATER / NAUTICAL) with a spooky lighthouse.  Cathy is enthralled.  She gets them to go into a jazz club (NOIR) where Jim is constantly on alert for people to act recklessly homicidal or destructive.  The staff and clientele act perfectly normal, if a bit like something out of a movie.

A loutish dude tries to mack on Cathy for “dressing like a showgirl” and a Dick Tracy -jawed manjob beats him up, helps them escape the ruckus.  Out in the street he asks them why they’re so out of place and Cathy admits they’re from the future.  He says maybe Dr. Loups can help, taking them to the lighthouse.

Dr. Loups is a (MAD SCIENTIST) who sees Jim as a fellow mad scientist from another world.  He distracts Dick and Cathy with hospitalities, then shows Jim to the secret facility.  Through conversation Cathy gets the impression Dick isn’t a real person.  This wasn’t time travel; it’s some form of unreality.  Meanwhile Jim is getting the same impression much more strongly.

“It was your doing that you came from your world!  I showed you my secret army of atomic supermen (CLONES / DOPPELGANGERS), now you me your science.”  Jim resists and everyone is captured.  Just when it looks like they’re going to be lowered into a vat of space plague (VIRAL), the cowboy and his gang bust in and start messing up the place.  Dick gets a hand loose and helps the kids escape.

They take the exit to the real world again, and Dick comes with them.  But when they’re chased down the street by a hot rod full of hoodlums, a mummy, and some animated statues (UNSTOPPABLE FORCE), Jim realizes they must take control of the situation – with the crown.  They just have to find the right door.

He does, then…  “Our land is beset by demons.”  Cool barbarian (MONSTER HUNTER) lady is fixin’ to chop them up, when she realizes Cathy is super hot.  She relents, and lets them explain.  Through the conversation, they realize the (DARK FANTASY) world, while it does have real monsters, also has creeps from the real world seeking after the crown – often armed with guns.  Said creeps have been strung up in cages around the cave from whence the heroes emerged, their bones stripped by crows.

She takes them through the (BACKWOODS) to see the (WITCH / WIZARD) and from here stuff turns into a more conventional fantasy epic, save for a few important details.  The good guys aren’t so good, being in some kind of human sacrificin’ (FOLK HORROR) (CULT).  Maybe that’s understandable when hellmouths produce (DEVILS & DEMONS) that attack from time to time.

And more importantly, the newest version of said demon conflict involves killer cars, greasers, doctors, mummies, cowboys, cool Dicks, etc.  It’s the stuff of (DREAMS & NIGHTMARES) and Cathy is done with it.

The Villain:  Jim is corrupted by the lure of that crown, like the others before him, only playing it cool long enough to get close.  He actually gets his hands on the thing, and becomes the lord of this illusion.

Horror Element:  Cathy realizes this whole shit has emerged from Jim’s geek crapola and seeks a way to break the spell amid the (LOST MEDIA) in his acrid nerd den.  She wants to get him back to Earth and in his place so her parents don’t freak (QUEEN OF CUPS, UPRIGHT), but seeing his debaucheries, decides to just leave him to it.  The problem is that he doesn’t trust her not to ruin things, and then it becomes a fight for survival – brother against sister, in a cartoon tableau of blood-soaked nonsense.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  Between different versions the license plate changed from saying BEB MEL to these hieroglyphics, and I didn’t catch the extra stiletto hand.  Man, whatever.  It’s over!

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