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I don’t care for vampires. Strange, I know, considering so many people do and there have arguably been more adaptations of that myth than any other. However, they bore me. But this artwork, it was so damn good, I had to tackle it.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Bruce Conners

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3dyvwo

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

She had eyes Magda could look into forever. A new color. One Magda couldn’t place. Elusive, it shifted just as she was about to recognize it. Magda chased it, let her gaze relax because it was the only time she could capture it, though ethereal, otherworldly. Unnameable.

Lisbeth. Her name. Almost a whisper even when you shouted it. A faint touch of tongue to teeth, then lips, then teeth again. It ended like it began. And Magda never grew tired of saying it, shouting it, whispering it. Laughing it. As she did now while Lisbeth made a joyful face at her. One that didn’t change like her eyes.

Magda had changed. Would Lisbeth love her all the same? She hoped. She prayed. She asked.

“Do you love me?”

Lisbeth answered with the curve of her lips, the rise of her cheeks, the gleam in her eyes.

“I’m glad,” Magda said. “So glad.”

Magda went to hold Lisbeth, but her hands remained fused to her back, fingers tied in knots. She didn’t deserve to touch her, though she desperately wanted to. As much as Madga loved their home, it was no place for them any longer.

“Will you come with me?” Magda asked. “To the places we spoke of? Well, the places I spoke of. I know. I never shut up, do I? I can’t help it, you see. The walls here are so dark, even though the windows are so big and bright. Can’t you see?”

Magda went to the window that overlooked the cobbled yard now puddled from last night’s rain. She couldn’t help but imagine them beetles, those stones, creeping around in shallow water, bumping against each other, going nowhere. She rubbed the gooseflesh on her forearms.

“So cold,” Magda said. She put another blanket over Lisbeth who lay on the bed, watching her. “You don’t look it. I’d climb in there with you, but I fear I may bring a chill.”

Lisbeth smiled, her eyes batting long lashes makeup would never need touch.

Magda chose the bedside. Her hand rested close to Lisbeth, and she felt her warmth, walked her fingers closer, their tips prickling with heat. She stopped short, still afraid of how Lisbeth might react. To Magda’s surprise, Lisbeth grasped her two elongated fingers, and squeezed.

Magda’s heart fluttered, and for the first time, she felt her body produce heat, flooding her face, and bleeding from her heart. She thought she might die, though she knew that impossible.

From across the room, Lisbeth could have lied about her love, observing Magda in shadow. But here, in the window’s soft light dripping through cloudcover, presenting all her flaws evenly, flatly, plainly, Lisbeth could see her for who she was. What she was.

“Do you love me?” Magda asked again, cold cheeks returning where there should be a blush’s kindle. A conflagration, really. Magda had never been one to hide her emotions, and now was no different. She pulled her hand from Lisbeth’s and held it to her bosom. Two nails scratched her chest, longer than the others. They belonged to the two fingers Lisbeth had held.

Magda prayed for them to disappear, for Lisbeth to not have noticed, to not have been hurt. My God, had she hurt Lisbeth?

Magda hid her hands behind her back again, turning to Lisbeth and her pale hand, which was thankfully, blessedly unscathed.

“Thank God,” Magda breathed, but that breath became pain, and she grasped her throat, then punched her chest when that didn’t work. After a time, the thorns around her neck eased.

“I’m pathetic, aren’t I?” Magda said. “Assuming you’ll love me, go away with me, when you have all this.”

Rain patterned the window. An unsettling sound. How Magda imagined the legs of those cobble beetles stabbing the ground fiercely. She looked at the nails that had scratched her chest. Longer now, as were the others. She opened her other hand and found the same.

“Can you imagine ‘forever’?” Magda asked, fingers spreading across the blanket toward Lisbeth. “I’ve tried, but I cannot, even though it is possible. Now. I want to continue to try, though. Will you try with me?”

The question that had been tearing her up inside since she’d entered the room from the long night, leaving poor Lisbeth on her own. What a terrible person she was to do such a thing. But it had been for Lisbeth, going out, to provide for her with the only thing she had. Her womanhood. Something had changed those plans. With such selfishness. Did Magda now possess that selfishness?

Her arms held Lisbeth now, uncaring of her shame.

“Lisbeth?” Magda said. Her name didn’t feel right, Magda’s tongue was pricked twice. At the beginning, and at the end.

Magda lowered herself to Lisbeth, waiting for the girl to deny her love, her advances. But she didn’t. She just looked at her with those spectral eyes. “Forever.”

Magda’s selfishness sank into Lisbeth’s neck, so soft and sweet and succulent. That succulence was too much for Magda. It filled her mouth, her throat, spilling. Yet still she drank. Feeling more alive than she had when she was.

“Forever,” Magda said. She felt it, excited to open her eyes to see if Lisbeth felt it, too.

Lisbeth was a husk. Impossibly small. Slathered in red. Utterly still.

Magda vomited the blood out, over the wound, into Lisbeth’s mouth, desperately shoveling it back in. It wouldn’t go back in.

Magda picked her up. Held her as she had when Lisbeth was first born. Skin to skin. Magda tore her shirt down, hoping Lisbeth would find sustenance there. Find life there.

Lisbeth was weightless. Lifeless. Magda gently laid her back on the bed and tried to cover her and the blood with the blankets. She only made it worse and abandoned the futile effort, tripping back to where she had first spoken to Lisbeth from across the room, the mirror not cold because her back was colder.

Magda sobbed, tasting ‘forever.’

The horror continues. This one reminded me of the classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A film that is dear to my black heart. Despite the inspiration, I had a tough go at this one. But sometimes you need to dig deep to find the story.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Victor Hugo Harmatiuk

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/bKGQ6d

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

Marlow caught his breath on the petrified stump his Daddy used to kill chickens on, staring at a chicken he needed to kill.

The old fowl had to be the one. The last one. Sure of foot, the house had told him. Simple of mind. Sour of song.

“Marla.” Daddy’s voice said her name clearly, through six feet of soil. “With that brain and that limp, had to name her after you.” The last of the flock.

Marlow wrung his blood-stained hands. Some flaked off, not much, but what did he rolled between his fingers into an inch-long needle. He aimed it at Marla, who gobbled down a grub before squawking a success that made Marlow’s ears ring like they did when Daddy’d smart him with the flat of his hand.

Marlow looked at the flat of his hands, striped in what he had done, all of the ones he’d done in. But the wrong ones. Daddy had been simple of mind and sour of song, but not sure of foot. Marlow had been too anxious for him to fit the bill. Thought it might have been two birds with the one stone that was an axe. Oh, well.

He threw a stone that wasn’t an axe at Marla and she gracefully dodged it.

Sure of foot, it had told him. Had to be the one. For he had nothing left. But by God he couldn’t catch her.

Marlow punched the soil, rusty with old blood. He thought of that blood, feeding those grubs that old chicken fed on. Consuming its brothers, sisters, and children. A foul fowl. No wonder the house wanted her.

“Whatcha do, Low?”

Marlow winced at the sound, ear still ringing. It was Billy, lip puffed with chew, drooling and grinning at him with brown teeth. Just what he needed.

“Fixin’ to kill that chicken,” Marlow said.

“Old Marla?” Billy’s voice dropped a few octaves to match Daddy’s. “But she pretty. She Billy friend. One friend.” Bill held up two fingers.

“She is the one,” Marlow said. “The last one, and the one.”

“Billy no see.” He put both hands over his eyes.

Marlow looked at the boy. “Suppose it’s for the best. You go on now.”

Billy scratched his collar bone, then pointed at Low. “Billy still have more friend.”

Marlow’s bones ached as he stood. He thumped them hard to shut them up, then crouched low in the grass, stepping on the green patches to keep quiet. Marla was busy getting fatter, beak-deep in the ground, her plume of tail feathers so wide he just couldn’t miss.

A few feet away, Marlow went for it, diving with his arms out, because if one missed, he’d have one more, but swiped air twice instead, face planting just where Marla had been a moment ago, tasting more than mud.

Billy was there, laughing so hard he almost choked on his chew. “Low eat poop. Low eat poop.”

Marlow spit out undigested seed and wiped his mouth. He tried and tried again, the chicken always evading him. It had circled back, now standing on the stump as if to mock him.

“Marla think Low funny,” Billy said. “Billy, too.”

Marla’s wings flapping, beak squawking, even worse that before, was a barrage that Marlow couldn’t take. His hands wouldn’t stop it, so he tried to add his wailing on top, but all it did was make the bird squawk louder. Finally, he thrust his head into the mud, but down there all he heard was Daddy. “Named her after you.”

Consciousness fading, Marlow thought he’d won. Daddy was silent, Marla was silent, and most importantly, the house was silent. Then he felt a pounding on his back and saw daylight.

Billy’s head floated with the clouds. Then Marla flew with them. “Got her, Low.”

Marlow sat up, head spinning. He closed his eyes until the world settled, and sure enough, there was Billy, Marla held by her tail feathers, thrashing.

Marlow snatched the chicken from the boy before she started her sour song again, and he barreled to the stump, scooping up the axe that he’d sharpened to split stone, slammed her to that petrified wood and brought that blade down, losing a thumb knuckle like a potato peel, but barely noticing because of the voice inside him that soughed across the yard from the black windows, through the rotting teeth of porch rails, chilling his blood because blood is what it needed. A sacrifice is what it needed.

“You done it, Low,” Billy said. “But Billy helped.”

Rigid, ignoring the boy, Marlow stomped back to the house with headless Marla spilling a trail the entire way.

The house spoke to him most in the kitchen, where its exposed veins spread from around the window above the sink, pulsing in time with his own heartbeat.

Marlow waited for it to answer, waited for it to tell him he had appeased it and it would let him rest, let him die. But all he heard was the drip of Marla on the hardwood.

“She was the one, damn you,” Marlow hissed. But anger quickly devolved into grief, and Marlow pounded the hardwood as he had pounded the soil outside, the house repeating its demands in time, bringing him a pain that would have killed him if the house would let him die.

Sure of foot. Simple of mind. Sour of song.

Then a terrible, knife-sharp sound came from the window. Marlow crawled across the floor to the counter, where the knives were, where he would try to silence everything, anyway.

Through the smudged glass, Billy pranced in the yard, somersaulting, bounding over the old fence and scrambling up a tree with hands that had caught Marla. Singing something sour.

“Sure of foot,” Marlow said. “Sour of song.” He didn’t have to say the third.

Marlow regarded the infection that spread up the walls, through him.

“Billy,” Marlow shouted from the porch. “I got something else I need help with.”

Revisiting an artist who inspired a story way back in Episode 5. Similar in composition but different in scope. I hope this contributes nicely to your October reading.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Alexander Mandradjiev

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ELd3J4

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

I see her in the daylight. Only in the daylight. Muted and lifeless debris caught in invisible currents I cannot feel. Can she feel? As it stirs around her like particulate in a glass of water, shed from a lemon, perhaps. Her sourness is apparent in the way she looks at me. Does she look at me?

I look. What I see is this. A plain woman in a plain dress standing on a square of folded sheet not much wider than her shoulders, which sit narrowly on her frame despite the voluminous material resting there.

I see her when I rest. When my feet are tired from the walks from seat to window. Not far, but far enough for me. My bones are like splinters, the doctors say. That makes me think of the trees I love so much but have to admire from afar. Through the window that brings me this lovely apparition in the daylight. Only in the daylight.

I wonder why she visits me, but moreso why she doesn’t come in the night when all ghosts are rumored to haunt. I’ve tried to ask her, but she doesn’t respond. She is as rigid as those trees I miss. But the trees sway in the wind, their dead leaves piled outside the room where my bones don’t allow me to reach. Another comes through the open window. Eight hundred and one.

Foolish games like this occupy my time, which has slowed to the pace of a single grain of sand through an hourglass. The motes and down and outdoor intruders move faster. Around her. Not through her. Like the light. It paints her such a hue, both pretty and pale, showing me nothing of the dark wall that rises behind her. But it only ever reaches her hips, never rising above, no matter the position of the sun. I believe she has a power over it. I believe she has a power over me.

How I wish she would respond in some way. The simplest indication that she knew I was here, for her, for both of us, to hear her stories of pain and pleasure alike. I would worship her, if she wished. Perhaps I do worship her. I grow embarrassed when I think such thoughts, but such thoughts aren’t in my control, as she is not in my control.

How I wish I had control. Of her, of my splintered bones, so we may stand in the daylight together, both of us naked to the open sky, where I can see her face free of shadow so I may make her smile. I limp to the window to see the sky, but only make it halfway, each step the sound of matchsticks snapping. I wait there, until the pain subsides, my back to her, which makes me ache.

I tried to look under her dress once, to see what we all yearn for, what I haven’t had in some time. It was a mistake. The platform upon which she stands, a table perhaps, a workbench, or even a bed–I’m not sure of its origin–is too high for me. And I should have realized this. Stairs are painful enough. But, no, I had to inspect her with my desires. My sick desires.

God or gravity or some other force that wanted to see me fall made me fall. My hungry head upturned to see her secrets, vertigo took hold. I lay there for a day or two. Piss and shit myself for a day or two. With quite possibly the worst view of her you could imagine. The angle I lay in showed me nothing but her tailoring, which in this position wasn’t the flattering kind. No curled finger, no sculpted jaw, no lock of hair. I was cursed to look at the patterns of her funeral dress, and those patterns frightened me. Flowers twisting into bear traps, tipped with blood and bone. Vertical lines stretching into gallows fit with nooses the size of my neck. Gauze as thick as the cold fog that makes me hurt so much.

These thoughts have taken me back from the window, to my seat where I can admire her again in relative comfort. How I wish she would smile. How I wish her eyes would twinkle with recognition. How I wish I could climb up that accursed, absurd, pointless platform and face her. Hold her. Tell her I am the one she has come for, because I enjoy the daylight, too.

Then it hits me. The folded sheet. Has she ever stood there without it? That sheet has always been there, left behind by the previous owners for no known reason, though I hadn’t questioned it, so excited to procure a home in the countryside I had admired since a child. But when my bones fell to disease, it became my prison, one I could only admire through a window when my body allowed me the luxury.

I think on this matter for some time, study where the dust begins and ends beneath the sheet, mentally mark it’s exact placement, every fold, because it must be perfect, because she is perfect, because she deserves perfection.

When the sun goes to sleep, I go to work. I gather it up, carry it like a fragile relic to the spot near me, so she can be near me when the sun rises again.

I don’t sleep. I can’t sleep.

The sun finally wakes. It spills across the floor like fresh milk. I want to lap it up. Then it disappates, diffuses, as clouds cross the sky. I curse those clouds, and they flee. They fled to a wind. The shutters clatter against the window, the open window. Wind hurls her sheet out of the room, where the dead leaves gather. Where I cannot reach. Where no daylight reaches. Where daylight never reaches.

I stand. I fall. I break. My broken view is of the corner of a white sheet in shadow.

An artist I’ve admired for some time but never had the courage to tackle the work. The month of October inspired me to dive in, each week dedicated to the genre of horror.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Insist

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9mlmYq

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

Feng’s rice would become maggots if he looked away. Though he had never witnessed this, he knew it to be true. As true as the lies the smiling faces tacked to the walls told him. But they could not see the maggots, because they had no eyes. Only skin there, bare as unmarked gravestones. Feng’s dream for himself, buried deep in the earth, that unmagnificient plot crowned with ordinary slate.

The posters that trapped the smiling, eyeless people trapped him. Taunted him. No matter how many times he tore them down, tore them to shreds, they returned when he wasn’t looking, only the scars of the tears and folds there to remind him that anything had changed.

Nothing had changed. The broken children stirred. All three. Mei stabbing her doll, which had eyes, big and bright and staring as cotton entrails spilled. Feng could hear the saliva drip from Mei’s stretched lips of glee. Little Hu, twisted as a knot, tumbling like a stone in the cabinet just behind Feng, to drive him mad. But weren’t they all? Finally, Donghai, whose presence Feng detected beneath the table, ready to bite off toes, chew knees, or simply castrate with bare hands. Feng had seen it before, with one of the broken children he’d never named. Oh, to be nameless. To not exist. A dream Feng would have had if he dreamed. Oh, to dream.

These broken children were the least of his concern, though. Their knives and claws and teeth were occupied torturing other things at the moment, though his time was always near. When would it come?

What sat across from Feng frightened him the most. The simple dinner of rice and old meat he’d cooked the flavor from steamed and festered between him and the curious subject. The children had let it enter through the cracked window where mold liked to grow. He had been busy shooing them into shadows as they’d chanted: “Curse on you, cut you through. Belly to tongue, you are done. Bleed, bleed, bleed. Feed, feed, feed. Bleed, bleed, bleed. Feed, feed–”

He didn’t let them finish, imprisoning them in cabinets, in closets, under beds. He didn’t need them to finish. His mind finished their song for him. And when he had the courage to open his eyes, the figure was there, at the table, where a vase of plastic sunflowers sat. In a silk robe inlaid with gold, a cloth of the same design draped over its head. It sat silently, hands on its lap. Did it have hands?

Feed, feed, feed. The fed on his sanity. Here he sat, with this new creature, uneaten rice ready to turn into maggots to find him in his bed and bore through him while he slept. He’d wake to find himself full of holes. He’d discover the holes with his tongue first, probing them in his cheek, then he’d run his tongue to the roof of his mouth where some maggots were still feeding, and they’d fall into his throat to suffocate him while the ceiling appeared in fragments.

Feng tore his gaze from the rice that would become maggots. “You wonder why they’re smiling.” The robed figure did not respond. “They are smiling because they cannot see. You’d think that would make them sad, but no. They smile because they do not need to see, and they enjoy the fact that those of us with eyes assume they are anguished. Do you see?”

Feng lowered his head to see what lay beneath the cloth. Nothing but shadow.

Feng grit his teeth as the wet orgy of maggot rice commenced. His teeth were already worn smooth from so much grinding. They made the screech of porcelain on porcelain.

“Do you speak?” Feng asked. He wished it would speak. Scream, even. Anything to drown out the sound of the squirming larvae. Of the children’s song.

“These children, are they yours? Are you the demon that brought them here to hover over me with knives and teeth, but never cut, never bite? Tell them I’m ready. I am ready to be forgotten. I am ready to be buried. Faceless. Nameless.”

Feng looked to the bowl of rice he’d placed in front of the figure. It didn’t writhe. His didn’t either, he came to find when he checked.

“You play with me,” Feng said. “Don’t you? Bringing these horrible things who should kill me but never do. Sitting there quietly while I wither to nothing because I cannot leave this apartment and am forced to feed on whatever unfortunate thing chooses to scurry through my window. Whatever vermin the children leave in the fridge. Oh, yes. I know it’s them. I have seen the blood on the corners of my tucked bedsheets. I have seen the carefully hidden soiled paper.” Feng thrust his spoon at one of the eyeless portraits. “They see what I cannot, though they have no eyes. And they tell me things.”

The radio sputtered in a static voice, “Curse on you, cut you through. Belly to tongue, you–”

Feng backhanded the radio. It flew across the room, smashing into plastic shards. The batteries popped out, found the slope in the floor, and rolled and rolled and rolled. Bowling balls, then boulders, then a battering ram that hit the wall, shaking plaster dust from the ceiling. Then nothing at all, except the high-pitched smiles from the eyeless faces, telling him to look, look, look.

Feng looked. A pair of chopsticks stabbed the mound of rice in front of the robed figure. The eyes of the broken children rolled with a wet sound, and their lips sang with dry words.

“Curse on you, cut you through. Belly to tongue, you are done. Bleed, bleed, bleed. Feed, feed, feed.”

Feng thrust his spoon at the robed figure, to keep the curse it brought at arm’s length. His muscles soon quivered, burned like the hot light above the table, as the maggots writhed once more, just out of sight.

This story took me to the most unexpected places. Not a traditional narrative by any means. A conversation with my subconscious? You decide.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Artem Demura

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9mDWGq

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

Some stories don’t make much sense. Some stories don’t have beginnings, middles, or endings. Some stories aren’t even stories. Unable to be told, unable to be expressed with words, they pump their truths through the veins of the earth, to fill marshes, feed trees. Much like this stretch of land right here.

Well, one tree. The rest didn’t do so good, clearly. Drowned, I reckon with those dark truths that were too much for them. But that one tree–the one with two prominent boughs shading an otherwise ordinary house where a rundown white pickup might as well have dropped from the sky, because no one, no time, nowhere ever saw it drive up any road–was able to take those truths to grow into something frightening.

You might be thinking, That tree doesn’t look frightning at all. In fact, it looks like a nice place to sit and read a book.

You might be thinking that, but you’d be wrong. Take a closer look. Go on, I’ll wait.

See that there? That thing that looks like it might be a broken branch? Well, it’s not a broken branch. It’s an end. Not the end of this story, mind you. If you think it’s the end, then you weren’t listening to the most important part of what I said, about some stories just not making much sense. Not having a structure to please, to disappoint, to sadden, or anything else that might find its way into the primitive desires of our small minds.

Anyhow, about the end hanging from the tree. Whoever lives in that house thought it was an end. For him. For her. I’d tell you who it was if I knew. It has been an end for many. Such a simple device. A rope tied on itself to create a loop. A circle just big enough to slip over your head, just below your jawline, and step off high enough to make it quick. Easier that way. Less pain. Who likes pain? Do you? Didn’t think so.

You’d like to know what else there is to tell about that rope hanging from that tree, wouldn’t you? It’s not mine to tell, and if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you anyhow. I’m not a storyteller. This isn’t a story.

I bet you wonder what that person inside that old house is doing right now? I bet you have a guess or two. The chimney is a clue, smoke rising up out of it like signals are trying to be made. The light in that window. Is the person up early or up late? Dawn is coming, so it could be either one.

You want to know which one I think it is? Of course, you do. But I ain’t telling. I told you, I’m not a storyteller.

I see you leaning closer, trying to get a better look. Come to your own conclusions and make that story you so desperately seek, because we all seek stories. Wired for it, I suppose. Images, words, patterns. Tell me what story you see.

Want to keep it to yourself, eh? For yourself. I can understand that. You might be self-conscious that it’s not good enough, that this macabre display you see before you exudes so much more than what you can concoct in that head of yours. The key is not to think. Not to imagine. Let it be.

Of course, we can get closer. Nothing to fear. It’s just an old house and an old truck. Sure there’s a noose hanging from that tree, but what if it just looks like a noose from here, and up close you come to find it’s a rope that used to hold a swing. The wind just kicked it up all funny and, from this angle, right where we are, it looks like a noose.

I said there wasn’t a road, but there could be. You don’t look like you have the attire for wading through that marsh. That is, if it’s a marsh at all. Could be a big puddle, an inch deep from the rain you weren’t here to see.

All right, all right. We can take the dry way. Would you look at that? There is a road. Tire tracks, too. The truck must run after all. Strange, seeing things from a different vantage changes the truth. Or am I just pulling your chain? No, I wouldn’t do that.

Would you look at that, it is a noose, after all. Haunting. I guess that explains the visage of Death himself up there in the clouds, rising above that distant mountain. Maybe if you stand here, you’ll see better. Now a noose and Death and an old rundown house with an old rundown truck is a pretty bleak sight, isn’t it? How does it feel standing up close?

I could hang you from that tree. I could take you inside that house and torture you or serve you a fine meal by that warm fire. See what I did there?

I lied earlier. Sorry, but I did. All stories do make sense. It just depends on how you tell them. Where you’re standing. They don’t have beginnings, middles, and ends, though. I was truthful about that. They’re circular, looping back on themselves. The problem is we’re always trying to find those guideposts. Once you shed that concept completely, you see everything how it is.

Still confused? That’s okay. We can talk more inside where it’s warm. Something about the dawn never sat right with me, anyhow. And it’s coming fast. Or is it locked there on the horizon?

Might be a better view from up there on that noose, eh? Go on, I’ll let you stand on my shoulders. You trust me, right? I did lie once, sure, but I came clean. That has to be worth something.

Start over? I already told you there were no beginnings. Just turn around, look back the way you’ve come, and you’ll see.

Go on.

Another fun one that was daunting because I was worried about coming up with enough content based on an image with so little going on. Somehow, it all worked out.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Eren Arik

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KXYqo

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.

The Story

Rattle-click-clack-ting.

That wasn’t right, not right at all. So off key. Freylin almost laughed at his joke, but he would have been the only one to hear it, and he despised his laugh. A fluted inhale followed by what could only be described as a reverse burp. Utterly disgusting.

BOOM.

That wasn’t right, either. But it was a reminder that he wasn’t alone. The fleshy abominations that guarded this citadel had his scent–the essence of pine and lavender, if you were curious–and were BOOM-BOOM-BOOMing a tempo that was in direct opposition to the symphony he was composing. His lockpicks were the batons, they keyhole the orchestral pit.

If the BOOM-BOOM-BOOMing weren’t enough, the dreadful heat emanating from the brazier to his right was enough to drive him mad. It licked the stone wall like a dog who could never quench its thirst.

Freylin wiped his brow with the back of his glove for the twelfth time. He despised the fact that he knew the number, but he was an elf of numbers. That and locks, of course.

And music. Far more refined than the filth the prancing dolts in the forest played, for theirs did nothing but usher virginal swoons into glades to lose their innocence well before dawn.

Freylin’s music was about control. He was in command of this microcosm that had such a tight grip on this guardian slab. The bones of one of the great fathers who once stood tall for thousands of years, only to–

BOOM.

Gods, if those buffoons weren’t an annoyance. How could he perform under such circumstances? Closer, they were, and anyone would and should be frightened if they had naught by lock picks and their wits, like him. But not Freylin, oh no. He had plenty of time. Neither their jostling fat and muscle nor their slavering jaws struck fear into him. He’d been in far worse circumstances, faced worse odds, like the one time below Castle Harrow, far below, in the dankest of pits, where Freylin sipped breaths while golden-haired Mora kept watch, gods rest her beautiful soul, and the–

CRASH-BOOM.

Freylin lost his grip on his picks, almost lost himself to the memory, but the mouth of the lock, transfixed, allowed it to dangle from its lip.

“Mora,” Freylin said. The name was sweet. Bitter. Sweet.

The keyhole remained slack-jawed, and Freylin went back to work as the discordant counterpoint to his succulent interlude quaked down corridors to test the foundation of this ancient abode. To test his patience.

Rattle-ting-ting. Clatter-ting-tong.

“Dah-tee-dah, the Winter Maiden’s song,” Freylin sang. He hadn’t planned on lyrical accompinament, but when inspiration strikes, one cannot deny the muse.

He continued his delicate work, parting teeth and pillars and swirly-things, guiding barings and barrings and tiddly-darlings. Not their proper names, of course, but they were his names, his to raise, to mold, to release to find their true potential, which was to create a tone to make the dead weep. They are your children to name, and no other’s, was his mantra to his apprentices, when he was bored enough to take them on. If you use the names others have given, you will have no power, because there is power in a name.

“Elf!” came a bellowing at his back, stirring his cloak. Hotter than the brazier it was, a wind to smelt the most stubborn ore. But not Freylin, oh no. Steadfast he was, focused, yet able to perceive all around him. The picturesque moon, splashing silver onto gold. The sculpted halls, rising to where no light could reach, yet where sound could, producing such acoustics he had never experienced. The fetid flesh of the ones who pursued him, squeezing through the crumbling stone corridors BOOM-BOOM-BOOMing, and now talk-talk-talking.

Impressive, their pronunciation of his race, Freylin would give them that. A quiver of excitement tickled his back teeth and widened his eyes as tonal jewels spilled forth from the drooling keyhole.

THUNK.

From the corner of his eye, Freylin saw a crude axe embedded into the portal’s grained facade, then his own hair, caught silver by the moon coasting to the ground like dandelion seeds. And it was enough for him to lose focus, lose control, lose the power of the names he had given them, because he couldn’t let part of himself touch this disgusting place, tainting himself and his art as well as leaving behind ingredients for nefarious wizards to find.

Freylin collected every strand on the tip of a finger and frowned at it before stuffing it in his shirt pocket.

The keyhole stared blankly black, ordinary set in the hammered iron. Freylin stared back with that same blankness and blackness.

SWOOSH-TUNK.

TING.

Sung.

Sin.

An arrow, fletched with horror, with sin, but gilded with song. It could have been the locks of Mora there at the end of the shaft. The moon did nothing to dampen its golden luster, and the brazier’s fire only enhanced it.

Freylin went back to work as more arrows and axes missed their intended target as he swayed to the music he created, danced with Mora who existed only in his mind, captured by his symphony, as was he. That’s when you know it’s right. When it becomes part of you and you become part of it, one with everything and everyone until there is no singular, there is no plural, there is only an indescribable creation that has always been yet rarely experienced because once you experience it, you cannot experience it any longer since your senses are unable to be counted on a single hand, and music is all that is left, not even love, and you are helpless to its call, but eventually that music all comes crashing down to face a beautiful end of endless pieces because everything has an end, including the endless, but you step away at the last moment, providing release, closure, a final kiss if you will, and the sound your lips leave behind is a–

Click.