SPOOKTOBER DAY 13 – INVESTIGATION
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  THRIFT STORE & HAND-ME-DOWNS, BODY SNATCHER, STRANGER IN TOWN
TAROT INFLUENCE:  KNIGHT OF CUPS, INVERTED

TITLE:  THE HEADBANGER

Premise:  A young woman appears in 1988 small town Washington (STRANGER IN TOWN) naked and with amnesia, totally messed up.  A drunk?  How did she get there?  Prevailing theory is she got in a car and wandered into town, which leads to an abortive search for the car – no luck.  Everybody privy to the situation wants to help and she’s soon clad in granny clothes (HAND-ME-DOWNS).  She learns that she likes hard rock music and may indeed be an alcoholic (KNIGHT OF CUPS, INVERTED).  Strangely, she’s afraid of isopods and anything resembling them.

Pretty soon people begin acting strangely, and turning up dead with their brains missing.  The police and locals go from friendly to deadly serious as they try to figure out if she’s the killer and who she is (INVESTIGATION).

The Villain:  Partway through the story a biker shows up and says he knows her, and that she can’t be trusted.  An abusive ex?  Former partner in crime, double-crossed?  That ain’t the villain tho.  The villain is an alien bug-thing that was released from its aeternal slumber by eruption of Mount St. Helens.  It eats brains and puppets the body (BODY SNATCHERS) to make it trick other people into position for a cheeky brainhop.

Horror Element:  It wasn’t able to eat her brain but was able to puppet her body, and used it to kill off the other people in her biker gang.  The sole survivor besides her was an abusive ex, so he’s both.  Why can’t it eat her brain?  Mmm… let’s say it was something in her hairdo, lol.  Anyway, it was able to pilot her as far as the lil town and fall off, to kill again.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  This one had rough draft by gemini, two followups by gpt, not even a lil photopea required.  Nice.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 12 – SPOOPY / PUMPKINCORE
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  ROLE MODEL, CANDYLAND, HOME INVASION
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THE SUN, INVERTED

TITLE:  A SKELETON DANCE

Premise:  My husband Joe Cubes challenged me this year to make stories less jokey, more actually horror / scary.  Reflecting on this in the current genre, well, I gotta make somethin’ kid-ish but still out-to-getcha -styled.  And resist the urge to do something about the Lollipop Guild…

The sleepy little town of Pwyllfudd is known for making candy (CANDYLAND) and not much else, decorating all the buildings and lampposts downtown with candy elements.  But you know, there are spooky tales that the dead dance in the hills and you should never watch, because they might take you away to join them forevaaa.

The Villain:  A band of skellingtons (SPOOPY) are glimpsed dancing in the fog.  Absurd!  Halloween nonsense.  Their leader has a small crown on his skull, but they’re otherwise all the same in death – buncha white bones, right?  Still, this doesn’t seem like some random haunting.  They move with intelligence.

Keith looks up to his older brother Dafydd a lot (ROLE MODEL), and that faith is rewarded when their home is invaded (HOME INVASION) by the skeleton band.  Dafydd starts busting up some bones.

Horror Element:  Surprise.  The monsters from this were the bloodthirsty slashedy revelers from The Merry Revel, but having their flesh burned off made them look like lighthearted halloween skellies.  Is actually dark and terrible, да?  The crown skeleton makes it clear that he’s going to take Dafydd away, to remove all his flesh and come back in another hundred six years for more.  But Keith is given a choice, and because he’s too weak to allow the monsters to abscond with bro, they end up taking mom instead.  Dafydd never forgives him and everyone is sad forever, the end.  (SUN INVERTED)
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  Don’t look too closely at the anatomy on these skelly arms.  Just kinda don’t look at all, heh.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 11 – WEREWOLVES & BEASTS
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  APOCALYPSE, ESCAPE, STARS & SUN
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THE MAGICIAN, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  LIGHTFALL

Premise:  Prequel to this dark fantasy epic I squeezed out of a bunch of writing prompts, as yet and possibly never to be written.  In the time before the light, each tiny kingdom was a thin bulwark against an endless wilderness, and the chaotic beings (WEREWOLVES & BEASTS) within them.  They couldn’t unify, couldn’t manifest the strength to beat back the darkness.

Stars (STARS & SUN) begin to fall, peppering the woods and hills with glowing craters.  The beasts are repelled by the light, which enterprising boyars learn can be used to fight them.  A weapon from god, to finally save man from the power of nature?  Not so much.

The Villain:  Mirroring the human kingdoms, there are beast tribes that rule the woods.  Not all beasts are so civilized, but the ones who are realize the light poses a threat that needs to be quashed.  Any human kingdom found to be using the light is marked for destruction.  A genocidal war begins (APOCALYPSE), the forces of chaos led by um… a fucken villain.  hm.  Carniseax the Blighted or somethin.  Sauron-mode monster man and his posse.

Horror Element:  The later stories paint the servants of light as fascists who must be deposed.  This one is more sympathetic, showing the chaos side as full of monsters, showing the humans as fighting for survival (ESCAPE).  My first notion is to have them all saved by the deus ex machina of the biggest star yet falling on the bad guy forces, but that kind of plot device is notorious.  Maybe that kills some guys but the humans are still in trouble, until a cool gandalf-assed fucko (THE MAGICIAN, UPRIGHT) does big magic with it.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  I actually sketched out the original art super roughly here…
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My gandalf was inspired by the Gandalf Big Naturals meme and by this one, heh…

Apparently that is from a comedy sleaze movie called Sexbomb.  Thanks for the inspiration, gals.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 10 – UNDEAD
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  ROYALTY, DANSE MACABRE, OBSESSION
TAROT INFLUENCE:  ACE OF PENTACLES, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  THE MERRY REVEL

Premise:  A rustic patch of marshy woods in Wales have been subject to killing sprees once every one hundred and six years.  It’s almost too rare to be noticed as a pattern, but the communities interested in murder and the occult respectively had increased in number lately to where the pieces all fell in place.  Now the truly dedicated creeps can go there in anticipation.

Several intrepid (ACE OF PENTACLES, UPRIGHT) documentarians have descended, ranging from vloggers to influencers to tabloid journalists, and their respective entourages bring numbers into the dozens.  They mingle with each other and with locals, figuring out who’s who and what they’re about.  Some are mildly morbid gloryhounds, some are casual pervs for death, fewer are actual wannabe murderers, and fewer still are true scholars, with their own dark motives.

Very few are truly expecting anything to happen, the vloggers ready to make themselves scared about night animals and imagined shadows.  Of course, they don’t have to play that game for long.

The Villain:  The killers are possibly vampires, some kind of aeternal undead (UNDEAD).  They’ve added to their band over the years, drawing mainly from those who would be out late at night – mummers (DANSE MACABRE), drunkards, itinerant peoples, and more.  Still, there aren’t many.  Let’s say they’re the size of a shitty 2010s hipster band like Arcade Fire, when they let the tambourine dude out of his cage.  And of course, they have a super spooky and powerful lead ghoul who is rarely seen (ROYALTY).

Horror Element:  One of the scholars is convinced they are vampires and wants to join up (OBSESSION), her version of beating the reaper.  No dice, kid.  They only pick one special loser per one-oh-six.  Who will it be?  There is a deeper darkness to the crew, an evil so ancient and powerful that the modern revelers look like mayflies in comparison.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  Didn’t have time to make the art for the basis of this one, which helps results look less generic.  That said, this one turned out pretty ok.  Used gemini to make the initial composition, openai to put some breughel stank on it, and shifted some stuff around a little in photopea.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 8 – DEATH ITSELF
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  LIVE FEED, WRONG PLACE / WRONG TIME, MYSTERIOUS VOICE
TAROT INFLUENCE:  TEN OF SWORDS, REVERSED

TITLE:  OBSERVE

Premise:  I got an idea, but it’s not something I’d actually like to write, and I’d really prefer these all be ideas I’d be willing to write.  I’ll just get it off my chest.  Guy is in some altered state when turned into a zombie and gets locked-in syndrome while his body is doing zombie things – turning his girlfriend, eating his neighbors.  Try to have it be a metaphor for the way many of us feel the loss of control over our bodies as we’re dying.  It’s just too much of a nightmare for the main character, not something I want to imagine enough to spell it all out.

Ambiguously gendered person is in an endless series of low-key nightmares, using weak guns against buff werewolves, running from implacable killers, trying to hide after showing up for class naked (WRONG PLACE/TIME), etc.  The dreams have that end of the night feeling, when your narratives are consumed by the need to draw things to a close – to wake you up – but this just leads to waking up in different dreams, that subsequently get worse, fall apart, etc.  Through this all there is a sense of this being observed in third person (LIVE FEED), a narrator (MYSTERIOUS VOICE) who identifies closely with the main character, whose consciousness can sometimes be felt by them.

The Villain:  Gradually a sense emerges that there is another force in the dreams – a villain behind the buff werewolves and misfortunes.  Can the dreamer remember enough from one dream into the next to piece together the identity of the mysterious malefactor, and to beat them?

Horror Element:  Yes.  The narrator lives on another level of reality, watching all these dreams in third person, and knows the dreamer is both hero and villain in every scenario.  But the dreams get more intimate with them, until they realize it’s their own dreams they’re looking at – they’re every character that’s been seen thus far in the story.

This leads to a pause in torment (TEN OF SWORDS, REVERSED) when they turn off the monitors.  Are they actually waking up now?  No, but as they realize monitor world is just another dream, they meet a very sad woman who they sense is actually another real person.  They ask sad woman, “I know it all now; I know this is a dream.  What can I do?”

She says, “Just be glad you have a chance to try again.”  Implication: the choice is this perdition or nonexistence – they’re in a state akin to (DEATH ITSELF).
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  Didn’t have time to make the art for the basis of this one, or fuss over this at all.  I used gemini to get the composition and openai to make it more convincing.  Making the source art, no matter how crude, really does help make these more distinctive.  I hope to do more drawings for them soon.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 7 – COSMIC HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  ADDICTION, SECRET CODE / PUZZLE, WASTELAND
TAROT INFLUENCE:  TWO OF WANDS, UPRIGHT, from a card including image of Janus

TITLE:  SEVEN STARS

Premise:  I’ve often said the thing that worked best for me about j’brahms cinematic ouvarie is the grand apocalyptic visuals that hearken to dreams I’ve had of seeing multiple suns in the sky, or volcanoes, or supernovae.  Maybe it’s time to use that.  Thinking about disaster at that scale plus the sub-theme of addiction naturally calls to mind Galactus from marvel comics.  Tryin’ not to bite too much…

A world exists in a cluster of seven stars, close enough to each other that they’re all visible in daylight of Merouffi VIII.  We’ll say this exists in the Josefina & Blasfemia universe, where the supernatural exists as a natural phenomenon, the spirit world a parallel dimension whose qualities are informed by different fundamental particles which respond to and reflect the collective imagination of thinking creatures.

The descendants of the colonists on this unfortunate world are plagued with time-space deformities and supernatural problems, which they have adapted to through descent into barbarism.  Many are mutants or hybridized with incarnate spirits, none pleasant.  The closest thing that the world has to scientists are the Priestesses of Taroth, who have developed a belief – now prophecy – that when all seven stars are visible on the same day, their world will end.  They know enough of astronomy to model this and know exactly when it’s going to happen – within sixty-six years.

The Villain:  King Sissif IV has a scheme to become the savior of his people by taming the stars.  This is against the will of Ta’roth, a god-like spirit who emerged from the collective struggles of Merouffian colonists, seen as the embodiment of the inexorable movement of the heavens.

Saving the world is good, right?  He has created a fascist system where the masses must work to construct ziggurats and machines, working unto death, or being used as ritual sacrifices (TWO OF WANDS / EXCHANGE).  If the ceremony works, whoever wears the king’s crown can control Taroth, and thereby the stars themselves.

Horror Element:  Sissif is right that the entity of Taroth can be controlled with a complex and massive enough ritual (SECRET CODE / PUZZLE) but he is wrong that the powers of the astral realm can control the movement of the stars in long space.  The suffering he’s causing is for nothing.

The priestesses of Taroth view people who want to save the world as slaves to their desires (ADDICTION) and use that rhetoric in their sermons.  The heroes are a mixed bag of doom-loving Taroth faithful, nihilists, and freedom fighters.  They’re fighting against saving the world – fighting to end the world – for their own personal reasons.  Good is bad and bad is good (JANUS).

In the spirit of undercutting the horror of it all, I might end it with the prophecy coming to pass, but the world isn’t fully destroyed – just its current configuration.  Maybe all the pure humans are killed by radiation but the hybrids and mutants, but life goes on in the world that remains (WASTELAND).
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  Didn’t have time to make the art for the basis of this one, or fuss over this at all.  Not intolerable for just a few revisions, but yes, terribly generic.  Also yes, I used Elric in the prompt.

 

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 6 – CREEPY KID
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  LONG LOST RELATIVE. SLEEP PARALYSIS, ACCIDENT
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THE DEVIL, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  THE FISH ARE JUMPIN’

Premise:  This premise is pretty much all descended from Turn of the Screw, right?  In that the kids were intermediaries for evil ghosts.  In others of this genre, the kid is the true creep.  What should I do? Hm…

Callie goes with her husband Hank to a family reunion, on a vacay where they have more time than plans, being spontaneous.  They meet some weird turbohillbillied cousins (LONG LOST RELATIVE) and he reminisces that he had spend a fun weekend at their cabin in the backwoods once, as a child.  They invite him to do it again and he accepts, dragging her with.

The Villain:  Environmental lead or something.  These people just ain’t right.  There’s a boating accident (ACCIDENT) and she wakes up in bed.  They tell her he had to be airlifted to the city hospital but they wouldn’t do the same for her, and they’ll let her go just as soon as she’s fit to drive.  They insist on keeping her in bed.  Water in the lungs y’know, caused some pneumonia, just a little longer.

Horror Element:  Is husband actually dead?  Supposedly the family don’t have phones and Callie’s and Hank’s were lost in the lake.  How did they get the airlift?  Shortwave radio out in the shed, but you ain’t fit to get to it, not now.  She wakes in the night with creepy kid sitting on her chest (SLEEP PARALYSIS).  He’s just trying to pump the water out of her lungs is all.

There’s a couple ways this would play out in a movie.  Yes, Hank dead, and edgiest option he was in soup they were feeding to her.  Or Hank not dead but in league with these devils, tormenting her for fun.  Hm… I like to subvert the expectation a wee bit.  Hank dead, kid saves Callie, helping her escape in an inner tube on a river.  The folks give pursuit (THE DEVIL) and get splattered or drowned in rapids.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  Didn’t have time to make the art for the basis of this one, or fuss over this at all.  Not intolerable for a single revision.  And yes, I used Fuseli in the prompt.

 

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 5 – BODY HORROR
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  HEAVEN / PARADISE, INFESTATION, IMPOSTER / IN DISGUISE
TAROT INFLUENCE:  KING OF CUPS, INVERTED

TITLE:  MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE

Premise:  One of those rapture predictions has people out on the hilltops waiting for a light to lift them out of earthly travail.  Maybe the hopped-up preacher (KING OF CUPS, INVERTED) who convinced the flock did have a line on some kind of cosmic truth, because a light doth come (HEAVEN/PARADISE).  But it doesn’t take anyone away.  They come back to town with a blissed-out expression and try to resume their lives where they’d left off.

The Villain:  Some kind of alien hive mind has designs on our tasty biome.  Monch monch.  It wouldn’t be much of a villain without personifying itself at some point, so I’d have it speak through its victims, show that it is intelligent.

Horror Element:  The hive mind has hijacked the faithful’s bodies (IMPOSTER) and is teasing their neurons and endocrine system into thinking everything is great – right up until the point where they move to the nearest crowd and erupt into a swarm of glowing moth-like alien organisms, which rush to infect as many people as possible (INFESTATION).  Their wings sound like an otherworldly chorus.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The tech feels close but still has some maddening irritations to it.  Didn’t have time to make the art for the basis of this one, and the free version was unable or unwilling to do a basic-ass revision I wanted on this.  I chucked some filters on it and am calling it a night.

 

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