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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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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SPOOKTOBER DAY 27 – APOCALYPSE / POST-APOC
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  RULES, BAD LUCK, TRYPOPHOBIA
TAROT INFLUENCE:  TEN OF PENTACLES, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  THE LIGHT

Premise:  Via my interest in paleo biz, I found out about another time of life-threatening global warming, the Eocene Thermal Maximum.  We’re going to hit that a lot more abruptly than the previous go, but if creatures the size of pigs survived that one, things won’t be as bad as I used to worry they would be.  Still, we’ll be living bitterly (BAD LUCK), for a very long, very ugly age.

Much of human knowledge was lost in the (APOCALYPSE/POST-APOC), but the most learned kept the scraps alive, slowly watered them, until they blossomed anew.  Several thousand years into the Desert Age, electricity is a thing again.  But humans are humans, so it’s hoarded by the descendants of warlords: the Blinsapory of Nuranoka, the Uraisi of Afoka, the Zuzigo of Yazo, the Rejeny of Yos Yazo, and the Gendaron of Anoka.  Trade and communication have become the new excitement. Everyone is marveling at the interesting weirdos from far away, their music and storytelling and style.

The Villain:  In the long dark summer of Supolar Anoka, a gendaro is consolidating power, connecting the grids of captured lands and attacking the electricity of the unbowed. His weapon is mobilization of the faithful, the cult of Undead Jesok.  Most of the converts are just trying to keep their heads low and ride this out; some see the ascendance of the cult as evidence of its power and are trying to feel the faith in their hearts.  Meanwhile, Gendaro Milar Milar dan Joceros is doing his best to stamp out the observance of Sandorona.  Idolaters get the iron maiden (TRYPOPHOBIA)!

Horror Element:  An alien world -future Antarctica- seasonal breadbasket (TEN OF PENTACLES) of the newly global economy.  Revolutionaries live by firelight and herd swine to war, while the bright cities ruthlessly expand their dogma (RULES).
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  Surprisingly good peccaries, if a lil mushy in anatomical particulars.  When you know the request for her was “dressed like a cross between a showy virgin mary candle, an aztec warrior, and a dune fremen” the outfit doesn’t look amazingly creative.  Nice to just get something that fits the ask with minimal effort tho.

 

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 28 – SCARY SYMBOL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  NEIGHBORS, SUPERSTITION, PINS & NEEDLES
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THE MOON, INVERTED

TITLE:  AND WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE THIS MEANS?

Premise:  A mature gay couple are hiking in the countryside, and seem pathologically incapable of fear – one more than the other.  Turns out it’s from hard-won practice.  One husband is prone to heart attacks and keeps it under control by maintaining control of his emotions, and the other just does his best to help by also controlling his own expressions of upset.  So when horror things begin to happen, they just brush it off – as best they can.

As they walk, they encounter increasingly scary tokens of violence.  At first it’s some moles and voles crucified on a fence.  Farmer superstition, doncha know?  Then it’s other animals twisted around thorns (PINS & NEEDLES) and vegetation.  Shrikes?  Can they take prey that large?  They keep making excuses like cultural anthropologists.  It’s all so many (SCARY SYMBOL)s, a kind of folk magic (SUPERSTITION), yes?

The locals (NEIGHBORS) are mum and shy away, like they fear the strangers will bring some kind of ruin into their homes, which makes theorizing about the grisliness hard to confirm.  At last they meet an undefinedly queer young person who sees a gay couple as their long lost people, and invites them into the cottage.  And then hesitates to let them leave…

The Villain:  Out with it, kiddo!  The reveal (MOON, INVERTED): the grisliness is not the work of local wizards, but of some unknowable presence in the wilds.  The foxshrike, which could be a cryptid or a person or a people, but are definitely dangerous, whichever it is.

Horror Element:  Who or what is the foxshrike?
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  I damn near went with the gemini one.  Openai was not much better.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 25 – CYBERPUNK
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  CLUB/GROUP, TERRORISM, MANNEQUINS
TAROT INFLUENCE:  TEN OF WANDS, INVERTED

TITLE:  MANNEQUINS, COME OUT AND PLAY

Premise:  During the events of Winner Take All, a gang (CLUB/GROUP) called the Mannequins (MANNEQUINS) fall victim to the maneuvers of the Dynex shot caller, getting rebuilt into cyborg prison labor.  It’s just one grimy horror scenario after another, until the gang is all more machine than human.

The Villain:  The Dynex shot caller is just a stooge.  The real villain is Dynex itself, under CEO Lathrop Machrie.  Under him, the corporations practices have grown massively more evil, because he is the flavor of sadist that isn’t satisfied until his victims are ripped to pieces as he watches.  Live feed gore is a better perk than any golden parachute.

Horror Element:  That’s obvious enough.  People watch their bodies destroyed, are dehumanized and enslaved.  Let’s say one of the victims is a l33t h4XX0r, who converts a gaoler AI to go rogue and help them out.  The crew get enough of a jailbreak to allow them to go on a suicide (TEN OF WANDS, INVERTED) mission (TERRORISM) – to get Machrie.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  I only needed photopea to enlarge text on this one, otherwise the raw AI was god enuf.  As usual I started in gemini then moved to openai, to lose the cartoony aspect of gem’s biz.  I wanna say tho, I was real impressed by how horrifyin’ the gory cyborg prisoners were in the background of this gem version.  I also note that openai was more shy about showing hands.  Weak sauce, pal.
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SPOOKTOBER DAY 26 – ALIEN / SPACE
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  SOUNDS & HEARING, SECRET PASSAGES, MOVING DAY
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THE HIGH PRIESTESS, INVERTED

TITLE:  THE TUBES

Premise:  Thinkin’ about aliens, was thinkin’ about how in Centennial Hills I wrote like three different characters wanting to fuck them, and about how if an alien was the only one of their kind on earth, in a less dire circumstance than my Dr. Snar, they might still end up coerced into the sex industry.  Thinkin’ about how that would be a great metaphor for how trans women so often end up on that path, to fund transition, or because other jobs won’t hire them, or just for survival.  But hey.  Let me steer clear of my perennial sad trans people shit on this one.  I already hit my quota.

A cool alien spaceship (ALIEN / SPACE) crash lands on Earth, so intact that it’s easily made operable again.  Where did the aliens on board go?  Must have ejected or evacuated.  A brave group of colonists is trained up and a few years later, sent to visit some exoplanets (MOVING DAY).  After they leave the safety of Earth, they begin to hear (SOUND & HEARING) noise in the walls.  Turns out the aliens were in stasis within the walls of the ship (SECRET PASSAGES), waiting for some chump organisms to feel safe before they come out to feed on them.

The Villain:  The leader of the colonists was a corporate bullshitter (HIGH PRIESTESS, INVERTED) who oversold the idea of herself as a cool hero, and so lets people down, lethally.

Horror Element:  There are no cool heroes available, just regular people who have to do their best.  No help, they must save themselves or just die grisly.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  It’s a lot easier with no people to contend with.  Funny but openai has this absurd kick of always making the ground shiny, like it’s wet or glassy.  It is a cheap artistic move to add interest, but it uses it as often as claude says a concept or phrase is “load-bearing.”

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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).
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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.

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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…
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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.

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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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SPOOKTOBER DAY 19 – VAMPIRES
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  STRAY ANIMAL, REGRET, RAIN & STORMS
TAROT INFLUENCE:  KNIGHT OF STAVES, INVERTED

TITLE:  SAD AND WET

Premise:  Rain & Storms got me thinkin’ about the Hyades which I first learned about via The King in Yellow, thx bobby c!  Haven’t explicitly done anything with lesbians this month so it’s time for this carmillionaire to get caught writin’ girly.  Let’s see…

The carmilla species of vampires (VAMPIRES) takes the form of cats or shadows, and needs to sleep in a coffin full of blood to stay healthy.  That insufficiently sauced sickliness makes it natural for them to use pity to inveigle themselves into the graces of young ladies, who be subsequently consumed.  This is all well-documented historical fact, I’ll have you know.

A young lady named Madison is trying to work her way up from the trailer park, in school to be a nurse.  Normally, she’d be too busy for hijinks to unfold in her life, but she had to reduce her course load and work hours to help care for a sickly mom.  Wondering how this will ever work out (KNIGHT OF STAVES, INVERTED), when on a wet night (RAIN & STORMS) a sickly cat (STRAY ANIMAL) scratches at the door, crying for help.  She lets it in.

The Villain:  The cat’s health improves and mom’s gets worse.  Further, sometimes when the cat is out of sight, a weirdly familiar-acting trashy girl named Miracall is hanging around the trailer park, making sweetie-eyes at Madison.  Of course, Miracall is the cat.

Horror Element:  Miracall was totally going to seduce and devour the young lady, as is her clan’s remit, but sickly mom was so much easier of a target.  Madison discovers mom losing her last drop to the cat and is filled with remorse (REGRET) for her previous mercy.  While trying to kill the cat, it transforms into Miracall and preys upon her mercy in a much different way.

This leads Maddie to the clan’s lair, and HORROR.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The ai got some surprisingly good story details in this pic by chance.  The nurse looks mad, like she’s cradling baby girl because of a sense of obligation, not unreserved kindness.  I didn’t even ask for that.  Further, I just asked for wine to be splashed around, to get past violence filters, and it gave her bloody knuckles – an injury you only get from punching!  In my story, nurse was trying to kill the vampire before the pity set in.  Wotta coinkydink.

I can see the flaws, but even so, I like this one a lot.  If I ever wrote or published this cheese, I’d wanna include some version of it in there.  Maybe not the cover, maybe an insert.  Fix the goofs, maybe repaint the whole thing, tweak the font only a little.  It’s almost like I’m into toxic yuri.  Nonsense!

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 20 – MEDICAL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  SURGERY, DARKNESS, THE UNKNOWN
TAROT INFLUENCE:  KING OF PENTACLES, INVERTED

TITLE:  SEE FOR ME

Premise:  …Then you gotta get sent to a slam, where they tell you you’ll never see daylight again.  You dig up a doctor, and you pay him 20 menthol kools to do a surgical shine job on your eyeballs…  Psych.  Man, that seemed so cool way back in tha double-M.  Anyway,

This is a sequel to Low Cost, which ended with the locusts of the apocalypse being release from a mine shaft that hit the abyss (THE UNKNOWN).  The quarried abyss-adjacent stone was used to build low income housing that mutated a bunch of poor people into sad bug creatures.  A kindly medical (MEDICAL) corporation has pledged to make them all able to lead normal lives, with various surgical experiments (SURGERY).

The Villain:  Sackleresque siblings.  Sis (KING OF PENTACLES, INVERTED) knows the abyss must be a source of great power, but it can’t be exploited if nobody who goes in is capable of coming back out.  Unmanned probes can’t pierce that dark (DARKNESS) with a hojillion lumens and the fanciest light receptors evar.  She has her mengelesque brother do experiments on the bug people not to heal them but to understand their abyss-spawn anatomies, that they may create superhuman scouts.

Horror Element:  Is it so much body horror for nothing?  What will the most fit specimen discover down there, if the experiments succeed?
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  This is kinda shit, but it’s cool that it looks pretty different from most of the others.  Gemini wasn’t much help, had to photopea the composition before bringing it to openai, but once I got there, one try was good enough.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 17 – LIMINAL
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  HITCHHIKER, TRUCKS & TRUCKERS, LOST & FORGOTTEN
TAROT INFLUENCE:  TEMPERANCE, INVERTED

TITLE:  THE RIVER LETHE

Premise:  A hitchhiker (HITCHHIKER) has nobody in his past that would notice he was gone or care what happened to him (LOST & FORGOTTEN).  He gets a ride from a young African truck driver (TRUCKS & TRUCKERS) to just, wherever.  They drive night and day through desolate places with automated services, scarcely a human in sight (LIMINAL).

The Villain:  Death itself, wrong prompt lol…  The African fella marched himself out of a war zone, terrible things behind him on that path.  As a refugee in America he learned the ropes, got a CDL, but never got to know anyone personally.  It’s like the family that died was still waiting for him to reach them, and he couldn’t disappoint by living life too vividly.  This isn’t abstract.  Death really is trying to pull him back in.  He was never meant to escape.

Horror Element:  The more they get to know each other the more remote the real world becomes.  By the time the hitchhiker and the trucker truly care about each other, they are seemingly lost to the world, in some unknowable void of concrete and brush and utter isolation.  Will the hitchhiker let himself go for a ride to somebody else’s afterlife?

They try to get drunk (TEMPERANCE, INVERTED) and drive off a cliff but idk something happens, the end.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  There was minimal hokeypokey here, didn’t need to photopea nothin’, which I appreciate.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 18 – BIG CITY
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  PAGEANT & PARADE, AFTER HOURS, MASKED
TAROT INFLUENCE:  ACE OF PENTACLES, UPRIGHT

TITLE:  ONE DIRECTION IN THE PURGE WINNER TAKES ALL

Premise:  Like the fantasy NYC of The Warriors, this big city (BIG CITY) is parceled up into protectorates by gangsters with themed costumes (PAGEANT & PARADE), all in an uneasy alliance under the Shot Caller.  Unfortunately apocalypses keep happening, such as the events of my previous spooktobers Laserboyz and Rose Gold.  But hey, this is the pax cyberpunkica, and nothing will ever upset these good times again.

Something upsetted these good times again.  The corporate overlords who rule the city by day are too greedy (ACE OF PENTACLES) to let it be run by anybody else by night (AFTER HOURS), and decide to take over the gangs – or if they can’t take them over, destroy them.

The Villain:  There are multiple villains. Not like their victims are exactly the good guys either.  Dynex – the corp that controls the police – is the first to move, planting their own (MASKED) stooge in one of the gangs, so he can work his way up to becoming the new shot caller.  The contingency plan is to get Shot Caller’s rolodex to locate all the gangsters and have them converted into labor cyborgs for the prison industrial complex.  Two other corporations get wind of that via espionage, and come up with knock-off plans.  Exodyne takes over a different gang, maneuvering their own wannabe ganglord, with the backup plan to assassinate all the gangsters with drones, and Dexyne puts up their own candidate, with the backup plan to convert all the gangsters into laboratory meat.

Horror Element:  Unless all the corporations lose so hard they can’t implement their backup plans, everybody loses.  But the gangs are just a bunch of creepy antisocial high school dropouts, the fuck can they do?  Their days are numbered.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  I had a vision for this and this ain’t even close, but if you wanna just keep truckin’ in life, sometimes you take what you can get.  At least I didn’t have to do any photopea.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 15 – TRAPPED
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  PULP / MEN’S LIT, BETRAYAL, FAST FOOD
TAROT INFLUENCE:  THREE OF SWORDS

TITLE:  MY GIRL WAS KIDNAPPED BY THE REDS

Premise:  The pulp/mens lit idea always makes me think of how obsessed anti-communists were with killing Castro, think of that book A Bullet for Fidel.  How do you work in fast food tho..?

Young soda jerk (FAST FOOD) in 1960s US Midwest dreams of anticommunist espionage (PULP / MEN’S LIT), while his day-to-day life falls apart.  His girlfriend leaves him (BETRAYAL) for cool beatniks (THREE OF SWORDS) and they become the villains in his spy story.

The Villain:  The soda jerk, of course.  He sees the leader of the beatniks as a right hand man to Castro himself, and stalks the cool cats and kittens to a riverboat casino, where he makes his move.

Horror Element:  First thing he does is kill the crew of the boat, causing it to go out of control.  Passengers have to choose between abandoning the boat, risking drowning, or dealing with The Killer.  The first to take their chances in a life vest meet grisly fates and the remaining people feel trapped (TRAPPED).  I think, Cape Fear vibes.
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  This went pretty well except that gemini was shit at understanding some basic instructions and I had to do some restructuring in photopea before I finished up in openai.

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SPOOKTOBER DAY 16 – MUTANTS
OPTIONAL CHALLENGES:  JEALOUSY, MIDAS TOUCH, EXES
TAROT INFLUENCE:  FOUR OF SWORDS, INVERTED

TITLE:  TOUCH MY HEART

Premise:  In this world every human is just bristling with intense energies that could lead to superpowers, like, idk, some kind of adaptation to high radiation or something.  Things that throw off the balance like catching a cold can, if rarely, lead to manifestations like spontaneous combustion or telekinetic destruction.  To keep that in check, the genetic variation of mutation is monitored and controlled.  The genome is 100% mapped and defined, almost all of the knock-on effects and multifactorial expression worked out, to where they can define and detect the most dangerous mutations, and eliminate them.

Some people don’t get their shots, you know?  We live in a society etc etc.  Some outsiders reach adulthood with mutant powers (MUTANTS), or develop them from retroviruses or other epigenetic causes. They have a secret criminal underworld with its own rules and social mores.  There are factions, but the prevalent attitude is to use those powers for personal advantage, and above all, to not get caught and gene-therapied.

The vast majority will know one to three “tricks” and never learn more, but there are martial arts -type senseis who can help mutants learn to use their powers in more different ways.  That power alone can bring them into conflict with each other, the most skilled mutants kinda like immortals in Highlander.  “Freeradical” is one of these, and has been doing random acts of terrorism against politicians and the wealthy for years – with dangerous touch attacks (MIDAS TOUCH).

On the other side, there are government agents called “supersoldiers” who are not mutants, but use tech to access their energy and do battle.  They either kill or gene therapy the mutants out of existence.

The Villain:  Freeradical’s showy power attracts enemies, who form a coalition to bring him down.  Some are envious of his power (JEALOUSY), others consider his public crimes a danger to the mutant underworld, and at least one is a disgruntled lover (EXES).  “Firecat” has decided not only that she hates that former bf, she hates everything that reminds her of him – including her own mutant powers.  She turns state’s evidence, voluntarily submitting to gene therapy, in hopes of helping the agents catch Freeradical and do the same to him.

Horror Element:  Losing identity, losing ability.  Maybe the supersoldiers could be scary guys.  Also, this is a world where a random person on the street might explode or shoot lightning bolts and die messy.  Horror is all about the telling of the story, right, but for me to say that about a superhero comic is like saying that about a hallmark movie.  Dubious.

Anyway, Freeradical feels like giving up, the whole world against him, but hearkens to the words of Albert Camus as he is about to be defeated, and his blaze of glory turns into victory (FOUR OF SWORDS, INVERTED).  Kill ’em all, boyee!
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This year I’m using AI tools from goog and openai plus photopea to make my covers.  The anatomical issues on the little dudes here were egregious lol.

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