is a picture worth 1000 words

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.

The pain of last week’s story was worth it. With this one, I felt like things were falling into place.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Adam J. Middleton

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

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

The walls seemed to close in. David stretched his hands out to his sides to push the wheelchair down the hallway, himself in it. The handrims were cold, the footrest, too, but it was the only place he could put his feet.

Another push and his fingernails pulled free a strip of the dead wallpaper that lay brittle and torn, a mysterious force of nature keeping the rest affixed to the wood boards beneath. No plaster to hide critters, a family of spiders fled to the gaps between the boards.

David hugged his arms to his chest and tucked his hands into his armpits where no spider dared go. Jimmy had joked as much, David being the first to produce that sour musk Dad carried around with him everywhere.

When he felt safe, David brought his hands back out but didn’t sniff his fingers. He thought he might cry if he did, and not from the smell. He grinned, knowing Jimmy would have said the smell was the culprit, then gone on and called him Onion Boy or Pits of Eternal Funk, and not the music kind, he would have specified.

Still some ways to go until David hit the fork in the hallway, he braved his hands to the walls again, giving himself a good shove. The wheels locked to the grooves in the floor, he was on rails. He threw his arms up as the fine hair of his bangs lifted, imagining himself on a rollercoaster, the kind he and Jimmy used to ride at the fair. The Minecart Massacre it was called, and when the carnie asked why he should let a kid who couldn’t walk on a rollercoaster, Jimmy had simply replied: Who better to ride in a minecart than a kid used to wheels. The carnie had shown all his teeth at that, the ones he had left anyway, and gave them a two-fer for being so clever. Well, Jimmy that was. Always the clever one.

The chair wasn’t a minecart, and there was no massacre when David reached the fork. A calendar stripped of all months except the final one was pinned too high for him to tear off. He couldn’t look away from that fat-marker circle right around the 15. A Thursday. Jimmy loved Thursday because it was named after Thor, his favorite god. Mom would slap his hand when he’d say that. She was too afraid to do anything else. Dad would just shout blasphemer! in the best impression of Pastor Wheland until they all fell into laughter. Even Mom.

David hung a right, done with the date that would come to pass without Jimmy, so what it signified didn’t mean anything to him anymore.

David faced all of Heaven’s glory and brought his arms up to shield his face. The wheelchair caught where the doorframe met the wall. It took some time for his eyes to adjust to the window that should have been closed. Jimmy liked it dark and cool, and God knew the sun beat down something fierce out here most of the year. Today fell into that most of the year part.

Sweat sprung up all over David, sticking his shirt and pants to him in such a way that made his skin crawl. He’d pick a part off just to have it fall back in an even ickier way. It was as if he were the walls of this crumbling house and spiders were crawling out from between his ribs to torment him endlessly.

The bedroom walls were just as bad. Cracked, peeling, and everything in between. The only decoration was the crucifix Jimmy had decapitated to look more like Thor’s hammer. Too high to reach, Jimmy had said it was for his own good, because he was the only one strong enough to wield it. And what would Mom think if she knew her son had that kind of power?

“Blasphemer!” David shouted not to the makeshift Thor’s hammer but to the window, where Heaven wanted nothing more than to blind him, but he didn’t blink. No, he didn’t blink. He let the heat dry his tears. They didn’t even make it far enough to salt his cheeks.

David punched the mussed bed. Angry dust shot up in clouds that made him hack and spit. Wheeze after all that was done.

“Blasphemer!” David called to the window again, this time tears too plentiful to be dried. Or maybe it feared him, that pure light that had done nothing but bleach and rot this house for years. Nothing at all like what Mom said God and Heaven did. David didn’t believe in it anyway. He and Jimmy could have gone lizard hunting on the flats or played chicken with Monroe and his wheelbarrow. But no, Sundays were sacred. And what had they done other than make them wake up earlier and suffer through a storybook for grownups?

David raised his hand, which had become a fist, trained it at the window, and–

“Davey!”

His arm was held by a force stronger than any god, even Thor. Mom.

She had no words for him, just the look of a mother, which was better anyway. She gave his hand and arm back, and he turned away from the light. He didn’t flinch when she touched his arm.

She knelt beside him, and for a long time, he didn’t look, couldn’t, knew he had to muster up a tight-lipped grimace.

But Mom’s face broke down all his walls, and he was a child again, unable to fight her off. Unable to run away.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go get you cleaned up.”

David had heard those words so many times before, mostly when he and Jimmy had come home from a day of adventure. But he had never heard it in the singular. Never.

David stood up, took Mom’s hand, and let her guide him out of the room and down the hall to a kitchen with a warm washrag.

A journey to the surface of a planet where something is amiss. Writing this was a clunky but great experience. Like getting that last rep in you couldn’t last time. To extend the metaphor, I tore a lot of fibers on this one, and some still hurt.

Thanks for reading.

Artwork by Leif Heanzo

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0nJ9OK

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

A sky of smoke without fire. A sandstorm roiling. A streak of molten atmosphere. Hanging there. Burning there. A scar.

Karlson’s fingertips pound his visor with futile urgency. All he sees has seeped into his helmet, into his head, through his eyes, which burn like nothing he’s felt before. Maybe what he saw had been–

Sitting at the window, then standing when that became boring, Karlson’s toes flexed over the edge of the hemispheric view that might have been beautiful once. No reflection. No fingerprints. He might as well not have been there. He was the only one there. Had been since the sky had rolled in like sand suspended underwater, except there was no water. Anywhere on this moon.

Well, except–Karlson sipped from a thimble-sized container that recycled his sweat and piss. He popped some potassium and sodium for good measure, a little magnesium. It helped him sleep, staved off the hunger for which he had no device to recycle his shit. He’d heard about them.

An illusion. Maybe what he saw was a trick of whatever is in the sky, plus the blips of light from the incoming ship. That must be it. His left hand, the one that doesn’t try to rub his eyes has a gravity all its own, pulling his shoulder down, muscles straining just to keep his spine erect. Guilt is heavy as hell.

Something what’s-his-name-with-the-perpetual sneer had told Karlson, before he set off with that sneer to a new system. Karlson hoped someone had punched it off by now. Anyway, he didn’t have one of those devices. And he’d gotten a six pack for the first time in his life, the hairs on his belly falling into those symmetrical trenches to emphasize the sculpted-putty protrusions. There was no one here but him to admire them. Still no reflection on the glass, so not even him.

That arm, the heavy one–or is it his hand?–drops to his knee, and he lets it. It grew a mind of its own, and it decided it wanted to get the hell away from him but is limited to the fact that it is attached.

“It’s not my fault,” Karlson says.

His hand doesn’t answer, just works on a maneuver that feels like it might detach his shoulder from its socket.

The comm socket crackled. Karlson had smashed it a month ago when the last call he’d received had been the distress signal of a passing cruiser. A one-way communication when he was the one who needed help, him godammit!

He spit in its direction, a mist that forced him to take another drink from his piss thimble.

“Shut up,” he said to it.

It didn’t, and the crackle intensified, almost vocalizing its mutual disdain. Karlson tried to ignore it, folding his only pair of shirt and pants. He mostly walked around naked anymore. The crackle was incessant. He padded over to it.

“I said, shut up.”

The pattern hit him like the ship that had crashlanded him here, so hard he was sure to have a crater in his skull. He leaned closer to make sure, the circuit board throwing sparks at him.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” He slammed a palm to the machine, then punched the arming code into the dialpad. He grabbed his shirt and muffled the comm socket and jumped on his bunk, training his ear to the ceiling, waiting for the buzz of extension. Would it be able to handle the storm outside?

Tired of standing, Karlson sits among the wreckage, chunks of his own watchtower smoldering in front and behind him. It paints quite the picture. A lake which, when the breeze is just right, like now, produces waves of flame. Small ones, almost like paper boats burning. Those flames underlight the hull of the cruiser that hangs on life support, along with the storm that never got closer, taunting him from the distance. With what little energy the ship has left, it makes sure Karlson knows it was his fault.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Karlson took his palm to the side of his head, then shook his brain. That made no sense. Carvers didn’t come out this far, and why would they alert him of their existence?

The solar cannons clicked into place. Dust streamed from the ceiling tiles, landing in his eyes. Hand heels in his own sockets, he screamed, “Fuuuuuuuuck!”

The comm socket repeated the message. With his eyes closed, Karlson was sure of it now, their voices, twisted by mutilation were unmistakable.

“It,” Karlson said. “Fuck it.” His right hand busy trying to clear his eyes, he entered the code in with his other, those pads still retaining the grip coating of disuse.

The solar cannons fired, streaks frozen in time until they initiated a bolt of energy not unlike a fault line to split the sky. It was if that storm out there wasn’t a storm at all, but a shell incubating all of his failures, birthing them into one immense tangible force that was enough to take down a ship.

The storm shell divided, the target crashing through, to the ground. A clean nose, flawless hull, layers and shapes complex to a pointless degree, signifying the mark of the House Fleet.

He threw on his suit, still naked, climbed down to the surface to make sure it was real, because it couldn’t be real.

The ship’s final light flickers, then goes dark. The lake of fire ensures Karlson can still see the ship in the murk, since the sky appears to be darkening. Karl’s left hand, which posesses his trigger finger, lets him get to his feet. Maybe it decided there was no hope left, and they were in this together, despite its emergent consciousness, which grew to hate him. Most likely it feels his hatred, too.

Karlson turns his back on his failure and returns to his post where he can remove his helmet and rub the grit from his eyes.