Horror Challenge Responses

Remember that horror challenge, I issued? The one where you use tone to take something mundane and make it eerie or terrifying?

Well, I had a taker.

Here's a response to that challenge, by reader Alana:

The hairbrush's bristles seems a welcoming sea of tentacles, all touched with a globule that proclaims that it cannot possibly cause any harm. Yes, someone has decided to engineer a handle that keeps your hand away from actually being near these things, but, of course, that is merely for convenience, right? The tentacle cluster is so kind, cleaning up the dead cells and hairs of your head so that your unshorn places can be silky and smooth to the touch. It doesn't even consume those negligible parts of you like some living creature might, it merely collects that dead matter on the outside of the tentacle's body as a trophy of its hard work done. And it most definitely deserves that bushy gray trophy. Do not take that dead gunk away from them, it's rightfully theirs. You won't make them give it up by drowning them in the faucet, that will make them all the more determined to keep it. You'd have to attack and steal from each tentacle individually and we all know that you're too impatient for that--we know everything about what goes on in that head of yours.

Anyway, you'd do well to continue your daily hair routine where you move these splendid tentacles across your scalp and into your blind spot where you cannot see what they are doing. And if you hear a crunch of something, that is the brush doing its job. You'd like it if the brush continued to do its job, wouldn't you?

This was great. I got chills at the end, so nice blend of tone to scare, as well as subtle, horrifying details. A hairbrush as a monster. Great!

I wouldn't extend a challenge and not take part. So, here's my offering:

Look in this box.  Theobroma, the food of the gods. The chocolates gleam like polished wood, nestled in the tissue paper red as a beating heart. Care to taste one? Let me show you how.

First you caress the chocolate, admire its gleaming skin. Then, waft it beneath your nose. Smell its alluring aroma, calling for you to sample. How can you not, when such seduction whispers to you, melting in your sweating hands, baring its tender neck for your kiss? Then snap that neck: the best chocolate cracks like a bone. That’s how you recognize its quality.

Then, and only then, you can taste. Feel the warmth as the chocolate liquefies on your tongue, rich and thick, like milk, but deep and sweetly bitter, like blood. Inhale and exhale, tasting with nose, tongue, and body, searching for those secret notes, the plum and wine and leather, hidden in the darkness.

Do you know how those secret notes enter the lush, dark music of the chocolate? Do you know how the cacao tree, drinking water greedily, also takes with that water the flavors of the earth? The soil, the stems, the rotting fruit and putrefying leaves. Then what must happen to the birds and animals blessed, or cursed, enough to die above the cacao’s roots?

Imagine the blood, nourishing the hungry tree, as feasts of blood once satisfied the Aztec gods. Imagine the life, and the death, the fear and the desire, carried with heart’s blood to where a tree bearing the food of the gods gives it new life. Imagine a man, cruel and greedy, a man whose abuse and hunger grew along with his enemies until they struck him down, beneath this very tree. Imagine his hatred draining with his blood, his greed seeping deep into the ground.

If you pay attention, you can taste it, among the plum and wine. Amazing, isn’t it, to think of what part of chocolate survives the rot, and the purging flames of the oven, to hide behind sweetness. The many flavors, souls of the dead, with every delectable bite you take. Snap them in half, rip them apart with your sharp teeth, taste their heartbeats as they melt down your throat. 

The box is empty now, but you are still hungry for that flavor. See around you, the waters of life, selfishly hoarded in the pods that surround you on the street. Smell the life and desire pulsing red, driven by hearts as warm as yours used to be. Inhale, exhale. Taste fear and death as you drink. Be satisfied.

This is the take-off from the comment I made to my student that even a box of chocolates can become horrible. Next thing I knew, I was thinking about vampires. This is still in its roughest forms; I may build a whole story on this.

Feel free to send me your own writing or challenges! I'd love to see them.