100 Word Chiller: Fugue State

Courtesy of cdn.newsapi.com.au

The Fugue State has officially reached epidemic proportions. It began with traffic accidents in which drivers were so engrossed in phone activity that they forgot they were driving. 

Next children were injured and even abducted while their parents stared at screens nearby, oblivious. 

NHS figures show thousands have lost all connection with the world around them, unaware even of their bodily functions. Some have been found dehydrated, starving or filthy. Bizarrely they maintain communication through social media, but no longer operate in the real world.  

How are you reading this?

When did you last look around you?

100 word chiller: The Halloween Dare

The Halloween Dare held no fear for me as I don't believe in witches, zombies or ghosts. I sat with my back against a gravestone as midnight approached, secure in my unbelief.

I chuckled as no tombs cracked, no corpses rose. Nothing. I was alone with my thoughts.

But then they came...

'What are you trying to prove?'

'You keep failing.'

'You're mediocre.'

'Your dreams have come to nothing.'

'Everyone despises you.'

'You have failed those you love.'

'You are ruining your children's lives.'

They burned through me. I could not even cry out, so toxic was this unbelief.

School Run

She was there when I got back from the school run, sitting in my kitchen as if nothing had happened. Even through the shock, the disbelief, it was good to see her.

‘Em?’ I said.

‘Of course.’

‘But how did you get here, how..?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. I always come.’ She looked away as though my face worried her. ‘I need to ask you.  I don’t get it.  I mean, where is Ella?’

‘She’s – with your Mum.’

‘But why?’

‘Em,’ I said, gulping. ‘You died. We buried you.’  I blinked away tears, and her chair was empty. 

Swamped

Courtesy of www.tnktravel.com

The trip goes way beyond the promises of the Vietnam Tours brochure. Their speedboat roars along jungled mangrove swamps, and on to a raft with barely fenced-off edges, where a rod dangling fish corpses attracts ravenous crocodiles. They set sail, watching monsters leap, thrashing from the murky water.

She’s thrilled. She sees him chuckle at the health and safety abomination, and breathes; his mood, their earlier row, have passed.

The boatman smiles and turns to reach for more rotting flesh.

Hands slam into her back and shove. She tips in the humid air, drinks mud, feels writhing texture, tearing agony.

The Other Holidaymaker

Sorry for the interruption in weekly posts - holidays and family illness have intervened. Here is this week's chiller:

Who is the one who always walks beside me – along the holiday hedgerows and across the beach, leaving no footsteps? He flickers at the edge of vision and looks overjoyed, bounding among family and friends, at ease, like me in better times. He is there through the tasteless chill of ice cream; he savours the acid coffee that only burns my gut. Happiness comes easily to him; he throws it in my face, mocking my unshakable mood, my sharp longing. I see his quick look of disgust. I think he would destroy me if he could. I wish he would.

The Crossing Patrol

Courtesy of www.telegraph.com

I don’t like the phrase ‘Lollipop Man.’ I was in the military.

You see it all. Hyper-vigilant mummies, pampering. Cooing. They share their concerns with me: a homeless man or teenager, loitering. They clutch hands and huddle over pushchairs.

Then the dizzy ones. They natter in sing-song voices as if the world is jolly and safe, while their children run in the road.

Some mums don’t turn up at 3.30 – their kids like abandoned lambs. Misfits. Outcasts. The teachers usually take them in. But one day they won’t. I have picked one out. I watch and wait.

Gweilo

Courtesy of blogs.wsj.com

This chiller is inspired by my time as a gweilo (a foreigner, sometimes translated as foreign devil or ghost person) in Hong Kong.

The flat was cheap, since no Chinese person would go near an old mortuary. ‘Do come round!’ I teased my colleagues. The day I moved in, I went out in Wan Chai: Joe Bananas, then a club. I crashed out around two, hot but happy.

I woke up cold. The bed was marble-hard against my back and my sheet, for some reason, was over my face. I went to pull it off, but I couldn’t move.

And then the sheet was whipped away. Above me was a Chinese man in a surgical mask. In his hand was a cutting tool.

Mother of the Beast

Courtesy of Getty Images

Crowds shriek and howl at his prison van and at me – the Beast’s mother. How much did she know? the tabloids demand. Did she make allowances, turn a blind eye? Photos show him at five, cute and smiling. When did it begin? they ask. As if he emerged from me a writhing larva of what he would become, then burst from his maggot self transformed, hardened – a monster. As if I didn’t give birth so much as he shucked me off like an old skin and slithered away. But I remember, after the agony, his downy head, his tiny hands.

100 Word Chiller: He

We must all have played this playground game. We called it 'He' although when you tagged someone, they were 'It'. In the way of childhood games, the roles switch dramatically from one moment to the next: the predator becomes prey and an ordinary player is transformed into someone to run from in terror.

Courtesy of en.wikipedia.org

He

‘Tag!’ A finger jabbed my shoulder. ‘You’re It!’

The others shrieked and fled, then turned and ventured nearer to tease me.

‘You’re It, you’re It! You can’t catch me!’

I chased, lunged and grabbed at air, to hoots of laughter.

But Charlie Gee was fat and slow. I saw him stop, gasping.

‘I’m not playing.’ He leaned on his knees.

I pounced. ‘You’re It!’

‘I said I’m not playing!’

 ‘You’re It!’ we shouted.

Charlie stood up, staring, twitching. He bared his teeth; his hands curled. From fat fingers, raptor claws erupted. It leaped and swiped, roaring; tearing ribbons of flesh.

100 Word Chiller: Comeback

Courtesy of www.us-funerals.com

Lacey collapsed onto the sofa. They had tried to make the funeral a celebration of her brother’s life: his relentless wind-ups, his love of scary films. She had spoken about how he terrified her with endless tricks. Everyone had laughed through their tears. They tried not to think about the shock ending: his poor ruined face after the accident.

Was it terrible to feel relief, finding the house at peace?  No one jumping out at her, no fake spiders in her bed.

But then a dragging sound approached the door. There was silence, then scratching. A rattling breath. A moan.

100 word chiller: Blocked

Here's one to chill the writers among you:

Courtesy of www.femalefirst.co.uk

Dexter had given it all up to be a writer: the salary, the power, the perks and the pension. His head was clear of that corporate nonsense, his energy released from servitude. No more did he have to cram his creative output into fevered bursts at the crack of dawn or late into the night. He would write all day.

But nothing came. Instead of the wonderworld of a living imagination, where angels danced, sparks flew and treasures were crafted, he appeared to be working with a block of wood.

He had no talent. He had no job. Dexter panicked.

Thighs

Courtesy of abikiniaday.com

If your thighs meet, you’re too fat. I’ll just eat the apple at lunchtime and leave the cheese sandwich Mum packed, which is 261calories. I need a gap between my thighs, like the girls on my websites. They look amazing.

Mr Havers is on about our new textbook on the Third Reich. I keep imagining breakfasts. Bacon melting the butter in soft white bread. Typical fat greedy cow with thighs squishing together.

I turn the page. There’s a girl lying there with perfect separated thighs. Really, properly slim. Then it hits me. My girl’s a body, thrown on a pile.

100 Word Chillers: Monkey

I am starting a series of '100 word chillers' - stories that explore something frightening in only 100 words. There will be one a week. You have been warned!

How do you set up and tell a story with a satisfying conclusion in so few words? 

It has been a fascinating exercise. It makes you focus on how much each word matters. If it isn't essential, it's gone!

What chills us?

I've thought a lot about what I find chilling. It's certainly not just haunted houses. This first story, Monkey, harks right back to one of my oldest fears, and as I wrote the story, I found that it still frightens me now.

I also thought hard about what stories to include. The idea is to thrill and entertain. There is enough in this world that is distressing, and some things that chill us seem too close to the bone. I had to come at the fear factor from a different angle, raising some interesting questions.

Here's the first story. I would love to  read your own 100 word stories.

Courtesy of  blogs.ucl.ac.uk

Monkey

‘Hush, go to sleep, baby. Here’s cuddly monkey.’

When she went out, the room went dark and hard. Soon it was cold as death. And monkey was not cuddly like in the day. He squatted in the corner of the cot with his black lips grinning. I could see his teeth.

I cried.

Footsteps. The door clicked and a golden light came in. I smelled her milky warmth.

‘Shhh, baby, go to sleep’. The door closed.

Monkey chattered and shrieked. He ran up and down the cot, his claws scrabbling over my arms and face.

I screamed, but nobody came.

Where the story came from

When I was a baby, there was a cute little rabbit painted on the headboard of my cot. I was a child who hated to be left alone in the dark. In my memory, once night fell, the rabbit came to life. It grew great long scary legs and it walked all over me. Apparently, I screamed every night until I was taken out of that cot and put to sleep in a bed. Thinking about this while searching for 100 word chillers, I thought about a baby's vulnerability. It doesn't even have the physical control to avoid what frightens it, and it can't tell anyone what is wrong. All it can do is cry - and babies all cry, don't they?