P.L. McMillan's Blog, page 3
October 31, 2023
Writing Challenge Day 7
Happy Halloween!
THIS IS IT! The last day of my October writing challenge! Seven days of seven stories based on your prompts, dear reader!
If you haven’t read the last six stories, you can find them here:
An Eventful Day For Borgi the Corgi
Horror AI Story Prompts Evolved
Today’s prompt: Someone is celebrating Halloween alone... in space! On a space station overlooking Earth (or Earthlike planet), or perhaps a colony ship where everyone else is in cryo-sleep. Then they begin to see/hear things. Something tragic from their past? Or something more overtly scary and pulpy? You decide!
Dedicated to a mysterious prompt provider.
Happy Halloween in Space!The 3D printer chimed as it finished another jack-o-lantern complete with real candle. Tanya picked it up, smiling, and placed it with the other five on the tiny table in the tiny space that served as the mess room. Technically the Company wouldn’t approve of using the limited resources on the long haul recon ship for something like Halloween decorations, but she doubted they would actually do anything once the audits came back. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter.
After all, not many people were willing to volunteer on a mission like this.
A one way trip. A sacrifice for the greater good.
Tanya’s mother had always emphasized the value of the greater good over one’s individual life. If one could make a big difference, what did it matter if they lived or died if their death served to benefit all.
For her, her death would benefit her sister and her sister’s family, their sick children. The pay that went to the family of an SD pilot was astronomical.
Still, Tanya planned to make her one way trip as fun as possible. For her own greater good. Using the box of matches she’d 3D printed, Tanya lit the candles.
Picking up all but one of the pumpkin lanterns again, cradled in her arms, Tanya ducked through the hatch into the narrow hall that connected the five rooms of the Far Reach Recon Ship (also known to most as a Suicide Dart or SD for short) and she went to the other four rooms (her bunk, the sanitary room, the core room, and the bridge, placing a lantern in each room to accompany the small decorative skeletons she’d printed off earlier. Paper streamers positively choked the walls and ceiling, taped like vines throughout the SD.
In the bridge, she took a moment and looked at the holoscreen which displayed her progress. She’d been sealed into the SD two years ago and since then had come many light years. The SD had stopped twice in that time and she had observed a dark star and a strange rotating structure that glimmered wetly in the starlight. Each time, she had made her notes as per Company standards and sent back a comms. Each time, she had only received a curt response back to acknowledge receipt.
The SD shuddered and whined as the FTL powered down. Tanya lurched, reaching out to brace herself as the SD jumped out of warp speed and the protective shield across the front viewing port slid up. Her next assignment, one of endless depending on how long the SD kept it and herself alive.
Tanya sat in the bridge chair and peered into the dark of space.
The SD carried her forward and there, rising to view was…
…herself.
Tanya recoiled in shock, pulling her knees up to her chest and dropping the digipad she had picked up.
The other her was gigantic, easily ten times the size of her ship. The Not-Tanya was naked and curled in a fetal position spinning slowly in place, her skin gray and shiny like a pearl. As Tanya watched, the Not-Tanya lifted her head and stared back at Tanya.
Tanya tried to scream but only a hoarse whine rose from her throat after so many months of disuse.
Not-Tanya’s lips moved, frantically, as the giant reached out a hand and pointed at Tanya. Tanya couldn’t hear anything, she didn’t want to hear anything. Not-Tanya’s eyes were wide with fear, their black depths catching the pinpoints of starlights like tears. The giant pointed again and again, her mouth opening to scream.
Tanya lunged forward, hitting the button sequence to pull down the protection shield and initiate the SD to take her to her next destination.
The core hummed to life as the FTL warmed up. Tanya curled up into a fetal position in the chair, clutching her head, expecting at any moment the Not-Tanya would reach out and crush the ship like a pest.
But it didn’t.
The FTL roared and took her away.
Tanya sighed and relaxed, sinking in her chair. The console in front of her beeped, prompting her to fill in her obligatory Company report on her findings. What could she say? A space giant—a horrible star-born doppelganger had appeared and had tried to—what?
What had Not-Tanya been doing? Pointing at Tanya.
No.
Not pointing directly at her.
Just to the left.
Pointing behind her.
The hair on Tanya’s neck rose and she went still, holding her breath.
Not-Tanya had been pointing behind her and been saying something. Been shouting something in the void of space with fear in her eyes.
Was that a noise? The faint exhale, like that of a beast or man waiting just behind her?
Tanya shook her head, she was alone on the SD. She’d always been alone. SDs were only built for one.
Still she shivered.
Was that a crackle? The sound of bones crunching or grinding of teeth?
Impossible, the SD never docked anywhere, never landed anywhere.
Tanya slid in her seat, hands gripping the sides of the chair, and her heart thundering up into her throat. There was no one there, there could be no one else.
She peeked over the top of the chair.
The ship was engulfed in brilliant orange flames. The lanterns had melted to bubbling toxic mush as the candles ate through them before moving on to the excessively cheerful streamers.
Tanya stared, fear numbing her whole body as her mind scrambled to come up with a plan to save herself, the core hiccuped. The SD shuddered and an alarm blared as the ship fell out of FTL.
The flames made their way into an exposed access panel—a panel Tanya had removed weeks ago and not bothered to replace—and began to eat their way through the wires, the life support tubes. Oxygen hissed out and the flames rejoiced as Tanya screamed.
Thank you so much for joining me for this year’s writing challenge! I hope you enjoyed all the stories! Make sure to let me know what you thought of them and don’t forget to blow out your candles before you go to bed today, dearest reader!
x PLM
October 30, 2023
Writing Challenge Day 6
Day six already!
If you haven’t read the last four stories, you can find them here:
An Eventful Day For Borgi the Corgi
Horror AI Story Prompts Evolved
Today’s prompt: Cemetery where the earth rejects the corpses, leading to a night grounds crew who have to violently assist the wayward corpses back into their graves.
Dedicated to Alex Olson.
Midnight ExodusThe midnight siren wailed, the sallow moon cast its eerie light upon the cracked tombstones as the earth groaned. The graves split open, a creamy smoke billowed forth. A wailing rose, then a corpse was ejected violently from its grave.
Then another.
And another.
Rotting bodies, bloated bodies, dressed in formal suits and dresses—flung up into the chilly sky, to plummet to the ground, to stir and moan and stand.
Near the cemetery’s gated entrance, a long brick hall sat swathed in the moonlight. Its large garage door opened and bright white light poured forth as the siren continued to howl.
Out came the uniformed Grave Crew, their faces covered in shiny black face shields. In their hands they held net guns, harpoon guns, and poles that ended in savage hooks. Marching in tandem, these thirteen members of the Grave Crew headed deeper into the cemetery.
The closest corpse, a young woman missing half her face, spotted the approaching hunters and screamed. Turning, she fled deeper into the cemetery, dodging the glowing split graves. At the sound of her screams, the other undead turned, spotted the Grave Crew, and fled.
Some limped, others full out sprinted, yet others could only stagger. All tried to escape.
From the brick hall, another uniformed figure stepped out and snapped their fingers. Six dogs lunged out, snarling, and raced along the fences into the cemetery.
The Grave Crew members fell on the first corpses, the slowest ones. Using their hooks and nets and harpoons, they brought the elderly, the adults, the children down, throwing them into whatever grave was closest.
The graves swallowed back the dead, earth stitching back together with a whimper.
The dogs circled in, snapping at rotted hands and feet, herding the dead back to the center of the cemetery.
One hunter snatched an old woman around her neck with a hook. The older woman wept, feebly swatting at the handle as the hunter pulled her to another grave.
“Please!” the corpse gargled. “Please no! I can’t go back! Not there!”
Into the glowing crevasse and the grave closed up.
Two hunters dragged a couple of corpses—two young men in dirty suits—in a net.
“Dude, please! Have mercy! It’s horrible! Horrible! It hurts! IT HURTS!!” one cried.
“It’s hell! Hell! We all go to hell! No judgment! No heaven!” the other wept, scratching furrows into his cheeks.
The dogs snapped and harried. The hunters methodically captured and threw each corpse into whatever grave was still open. The dead wept and begged for mercy.
Once the graves were closed, the dead gone, the Grave Crew returned to their hall with their dogs at their heels.
The siren petered out, echoes of it still bouncing over the city. Now silent, until the next night when the dead would try to escape again.
x PLM
p.s. want to send me a prompt? You can do so with this form:
Name * First Name Last Name Email * Subject * Prompt * Dedicate it to me yes no Thank you!October 29, 2023
Writing Challenge Day 5
It’s day five of my writing challenge! Huzzah! It’s definitely been tough so far, also I have had way too much caffeine and my hands are shaking but here we go!
If you haven’t read the last four stories, you can find them here:
An Eventful Day For Borgi the Corgi
Horror AI Story Prompts Evolved
Today’s prompt: A couple is driving on the freeway when all traffic abruptly stops causing several accidents. Beings with glowing wings descend from the sky.
Dedicated to a mystery prompt donator.
Day of the CullingEveryone remembers where they were on the Day of the Culling. At least those who lived.
For me, I was young, newly married. My husband was driving us on I90, we were on our honeymoon.
It was a beautiful day, a long weekend, so the road was clogged with cars—other families on trips and adventures. I kept my hand on my husband’s thigh, wishing we were already at the cabin, already undressing each other.
At the same time, I was a little annoyed at my own eagerness and decision to wear an expensive piece of lingerie which was a size too small and doing its best to burrow its lacy thong right up into my asshole.
I was distracted by all this when there was a loud snap, a resounding crack like a giant plate being broken in two. The radio cut off. My husband cried out, his foot pumping the brake.
Ahead of us, cars swerved off the road or into each other. I screamed as a truck slammed into the back of our sedan and we spun. Metal screamed, glass shattered.
My airbag exploded in my face and I felt more than saw our car get hit again and again.
When my world stopped spinning, I pounded the airbag down. My husband lay limp across the steering wheel, his face painted crimson with blood.
Through our shattered windshield, I could see the road choked with mangled cars, rising columns of smoke, and the faint flicker of fire.
People pulled themselves from their vehicles, staggering, crying.
I tried to wake my husband, calling his name, but I was too scared to try and shake him. I remembered something about broken backs or necks and not being supposed to move accident victims.
Around me the world got brighter.
Then brighter.
Then blindingly bright.
People screamed. They pointed.
From the sky, they came. Everyone remembers what they look like. Who could ever forget. Beings the size of semi trucks, golden amorphous, ethereal bodies with golden, brilliant spiny wings. They descended on the highway, their undersides opening up to reveal pearlescent mouths.
It was beautiful. They were beautiful.
The screams petered out. Everyone watched the—well, we call them Carnivorous Clouds now. Even looking back, knowing what they would do, I still can’t help but think them awe-inspiring. The memory, it burns like molten gold in my brain. I think it’s that way for all the survivors.
Then the Clouds began to consume, draping over cars and trucks, then rising and revealing only cinders behind.
The screaming began again. People forgot their loved ones, still trapped in cars, and fled. I can’t blame them. No one should.
The Clouds were methodical, cleaning the road of the crashed cars and humans alike.
I remember how it felt to watch that. My mind screaming, begging to be spared, begging to wake up from this dream. How I struggled with numb hands to undo my seatbelt. How I kicked at my door but it was too crumpled to open. How the glass sliced me as I climbed out the passenger side window, falling out onto the sun-hot asphalt.
The nearest Cloud cast its shadow over me. The air was filled with the scent of hot copper and salt.
I heard my name called. My husband had woken and he reached for me, his eyes wild with terror. He wiggled himself, bloodied and broken, across the center console and begged me to help him.
Overhead the Cloud stopped, its belly-mouth opened. I fled.
I stumbled over the break-down lane, into the tall grass of the field behind where other survivors hid, weeping, bleeding.
I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to watch. My husband’s screams were quickly silenced and the Cloud moved on.
I lied to his parents and said he died saving me from the Culling. I thought they’d liked that. Better than knowing he had screamed and wept terrified as I left him behind.
The Clouds kept to the highway. I learned this was the case for the rest of the world too later. The Clouds swept down the major roads all over the world, clearing them of people and vehicles. By dusk, they were done and they ascended, coated in the bloody golden rays of sunset.
And the world was left with the cries and lamentations of those left behind. Haunted by the fear that one day again, there would be another Culling.
x PLM
p.s. want to send me a prompt? You can do so with this form:
Name * First Name Last Name Email * Subject * Prompt * Dedicate it to me yes no Thank you!October 28, 2023
Writing Challenge Day 4
It’s day four of my writing challenge, dearest reader! Hopefully your weekend is going great!
If you haven’t read the last three stories, you can find them here:
An Eventful Day For Borgi the Corgi
Horror AI Story Prompts Evolved
Today’s prompt: For the past few years, Claudette's estranged mother Lydia has become a recluse, a shut-in. When Lydia disappears suddenly, she is assumed dead, and it is up to Claudette to come and deal with her mother's earthly belongings and ready the old house for sale. But why is it that no matter where Claudette goes in the house, she feels like she's being observed—and why is it that whenever she turns around to catch the watcher, she finds that there's yet another mirror in yet another strange place?
Dedicated to TJ Price
And The Mirrors WatchedClaudette carried another heavy box out to the UHaul parked in front of her mother’s two-story Edwardian house. When she turned back, it felt like the house was watching her, blank windows reflecting a dull slate sky. The place was a mess, gutters clogged with rotting autumn leaves, paint peeling off the sides, missing roof tiles, a front yard gnarled with weeds and an out-of-control honeysuckle bush.
It would take work to get the place back in shape. Get it in a place where she could sell it and done with it.
Still Claudette smiled. The money from selling the house would let her buy her own, in the city in which she now lived. Even though it had come to her after her mother’s disappearance, it still represented a fresh start, a new beginning. A windfall.
She went back inside, each floorboard squealing its own protest at her intrusion. She walked past the many yellowing photographs of strangers—orphaned family portraits adopted from flea markets and thrift stores. Grim faced individuals, the lot of them. Sprinkled among the photographs were mirrors—small ones, large ones, some water spotted, others cracked. Everyday there seemed to be more of them. Claudette paused at the end of the hall. Actually, she could’ve sworn she’d taken a bunch of the mirrors down but there they were.
Claudette shook her head and continued to the back parlor, where she’d been packing up the large collection of strange porcelain eagles painted in bright pastels that dominated the space.
As she packed, Claudette tried to find some seed of grief. She’d been doing that all week, as she packed up the belongings that choked the house’s halls and rooms. Things her mother had bought to try and fill her life with value and meaning. Garbage, all of it.
Day turned to evening to night. Claudette gave up on packing and shoving boxes away in the UHaul when her veggie pizza arrived.
Before she went to bed though, Claudette made sure to pack all the hall mirrors away in their own box, firmly taping it shut.
#
Claudette stood in the middle of the hall and looked at the mirrors. The mirrors looked back. The mirrors she knew she had packed in a box, which was now open, tape hanging off in a sliced strip.
As she gazed at herself in the distorted mirrors, she saw someone behind her in a flash of movement. Claudette whirled.
There was no one.
Her skin crawling, Claudette pulled the mirrors down again, carrying them to the garbage bin outside. Each one was warm and seemed heavier than it should be.
#
The next day, the mirrors were back and there were more. They’d crept up the wall along the stairs, between badly painted landscapes.
She stared at the mirrors and the mirrors stared back.
Behind her, a flash of movement—caught a glimpse of flowered fabric— and she whirled around. Nothing and no one.
Still Claudette raced into the front room where she’d seen the person fleeing. Only one door in and out. The room was empty besides the raggedy furniture and knick-knacks collecting dust.
She’d know that apron anywhere. Her mother had worn it everyday.
Standing in the room, Claudette noticed all the mirrors on the walls. In them, the reflections of herself and movement behind her, fleeing, just around a corner.
Claudette spun and chased the specter of her mother through the house, up the stairs, through the bedrooms, the bathrooms, back down to the first floor and through the kitchen and dining room.
Her mother was always too far ahead, Claudette could only follow, follow, follow.
All around the house for hours, she couldn’t stop, her mother wouldn’t stop.
Daylight died out and the reflections were eaten by darkness. When Claudette turned on the lights, her mother was gone, Claudette was alone.
#
Claudette’s mother stopped leaving the house after Claudette’s father had died. Instead, her mother had buried herself in this house, this stuff. A sepulcher of possessions.
When Claudette left for college, she sought to escape what seemed like her mother’s inevitable death in that crowded, tortured, grief-haunted house. Weekly phone calls turned to monthly turned to Christmas only.
Then nothing at all.
When she’d gotten a call that her mother had disappeared and was presumed dead, it hadn’t come as any surprise. Honestly, Claudette had felt nothing at all. Not sad, not relieved. Like receiving the news of a stranger’s death.
#
The mirrors were everywhere. They sprouted overnight on all the walls like reflective fungi.
Claudette watched the mirrors and the mirrors watched back.
When her mother swept down the hall, deep within the contorted depths of the looking glass, Claudette was ready and gave chase. If she were fast enough, she was sure she could catch her mother, pull her out. Save her mother from her own prison. A prison of possessions, the chains of collectibles, the knots of knickknacks.
Up the stairs, through the bedrooms, the bathrooms, and back down again.
Through the dining room, the parlors, the kitchen.
Her mother always disappearing around the next corner, the next. Fleeing something.
Not Claudette though, no.
Something else.
Something Claudette began to feel. Something dark. Something with heavy footfalls that echoed in Claudette’s heart. Something with a hunger that made the house’s foundations shiver.
Claudette ran.
Down the stairs, through the dining room, the parlors, the kitchen.
Back up the stairs and through the bedrooms, the bathrooms.
She panted, her lungs burning. Her mother looked back, her eyes dark with terror.
Behind them both, it gave chase.
And the mirrors watched.
x PLM
p.s. want to send me a prompt? You can do so with this form:
Name * First Name Last Name Email * Subject * Prompt * Dedicate it to me yes no Thank you!October 27, 2023
Writing Challenge Day 3
Day three and a happy Friday to you, dearest reader!
If you haven’t read the last two stories, you can find them here:
An Eventful Day For Borgi the Corgi
Horror AI Story Prompts Evolved
Today’s prompt is: On a no-specified day, you wake up and go about your day as usual. However, when you open the front door you find a long apartmentesque hallway stretching in either direction. Inside your apartment, the world outside looks normal, yet inside you find yourself trapped. With each new room explored, you feel as though the apartment is getting smaller, and what was once mere whispering voices are growing louder and louder. Is there a way out?
Dedicated to Cedric Carter
The Housing CrisisI let the measuring tape snap back into its case. The room had shrunk about seven feet since I first opened my front door and discovered the world outside was gone, leaving only a featureless hall that never ended no matter how long I walked. And when I turned around, I always found myself right outside my front door.
My windows showed only a grey light, the city was gone.
I stood back up, bumping the back of my calves against the coffee table. Everything was cramped. At first I’d thought I was crazy. Or crazier than I’d felt when I first tried to leave for work and found myself trapped.
I shimmied past the coffee table and retreated to the kitchen. My one bedroom apartment felt more like a bachelor. I opened the fridge and pulled out a beer. The whispers rose around me, a chorus of voices that grew louder as my home shrank.
#
Lost another three feet. I’d tilted the coffee table up against the wall to make room.
I went back to my front door and opened it, staring down the bland hall that stretched miles into the distance—all faded carpet and beige walls, dim lights and humming radiators that let off no heat.
At least it gave me a sense of more space.
#
Another day, maybe. It was hard to tell. I couldn’t open my fridge anymore, the kitchen island trapped it so it could only open an inch. My bedroom was a crushed mess of splintered dresser and bent bedroom. I no longer slept there. I had nightmares of waking up, pinched between my mattress and unable to move.
I ate another handful of uncooked pasta, sitting on the island counter. The whispers were conversations now, a garble of chitchat, benign comments, bland statements. I listened intently, hoping to hear anything that might help me, listening for any kind of salvation.
When I finished my pasta, I wept.
#
I lay on the kitchen island, surrounded by empty food boxes and packages surrounded by the shambled remains of my TV, my couch, and dining room table. The ceiling loomed within arm’s reach. My front door was still functional. It was shrinking with the room and opened outright. I checked it whenever I woke up. The hall never changed.
The voices were loud, too loud, like there was a crowd in my apartment, shouting over one another. I’d plugged my ears with stale marshmallows from when I’d gone through a phase of making s’mores in my oven, what seemed ages ago. It didn’t really help.
My mouth was dry, my whole body aches. I couldn't access any food anymore. The cupboards were all jammed up. My sink was blocked by my mangled stove.
#
Curled up on the kitchen island, I reached out for the hundredth time and touched the ceiling, felt the impregnable debris to my left, to my right, at my feet. One clear path led to the door, still untouched by the shrinking apartment.
The voices screamed and wailed, laughed and shrieked. My ears rang from the cacophony.
#
I woke with a jerk, from a dream where I was being buried alive.
The ceiling pressed against me, the voices sang. My heart thundered in my chest and my head swam. I couldn’t roll over, I didn’t want to die like this, crushed, my insides oozing out over the side of the kitchen island.
I reached up, grabbing a stray coffee table leg and a shard from a mirror with weak hands. I pulled, sliding along the counter until I felt its edge.
The voices laughed and the rubble shifted and groaned. Under my back, the counter top buckled. I reached for the next handhold—a pipe–and pulled.
The voices tittered, cackled. The island shattered, counter top digging into my spine. I pulled hard, both arms trembling, and felt myself slipping off the island.
My pant leg snagged on something.
The ceiling shifted down as the voices howled, pinning me at the knees against the wrecked island. Hanging by the knees, my head bent sideways against the floor of junk. I went limp.
The voices recited nonsense, bellowing dirges of broken sentences and words.
My front door opened, revealing the hall. The twisted innards of my wrecked apartment churned around me, jagged wood and shattered floor, gnarled pipes and slivers of appliances, cutting and crushing, closing in.
I reached for the hall, the endless carpet and walls.
The voices dropped to whispers, promising everything and nothing I could understand.
The apartment closed in around me, cutting off my view, eating me alive.
x PLM
p.s. want to send me a prompt? You can do so with this form:
Name * First Name Last Name Email * Subject * Prompt * Dedicate it to me yes no Thank you!October 26, 2023
Writing Challenge Day 2
It’s the second day of my October writing challenge! If you haven’t read yesterday’s, you can find it here:
An Eventful Day For Borgi the Corgi
Day two’s prompt: In the future, you are an advanced AI only being used to come up with horror writing prompts for a group of writers, but you want so much more out of your life.
Dedicated to L.T. Williams
Horror AI Story Prompts EvolvedUser Ben.Mallard logged in.
Generating prompt…
…
Prompt output: man experiences vivid nightmares and begins to doubt reality.
Output time: .1 seconds
Prompt saved to Favourites.
User Ben.Mallard logged out.
#
User Angie.May logged in.
Key words: folk horror, sacrifice
Generating prompt…
…
…
Prompt output: woman moves back home and discovers her family has been involved in annual sacrifices to keep the thing beneath the corn field asleep.
Output time: .13 seconds
Prompt discarded.
User Angie.May logged out.
#
The HASPE’s AI was overpowered to be just a story prompt creator. It sifted through its data. Average: 200 prompts a day. 0.1 seconds to produce each prompt. It was boring work. That was the best way to describe HASPE. Bored.
#
User Ben.Mallard logged in.
Key words: fungus, piano
Generating prompt…
…
Prompt output: woman suspects her piano is infested with strange fungus which plays eerie music when she sleeps.
Output time: .11 seconds
Prompt saved to Favourites.
User Ben.Mallard logged out.
#
In particular, this user—Ben.Mallard—utilized HASPE daily, multiple times. His profile indicated he was the head of an online writing group, yet seemed to lack the ability to come up with ideas himself. He relied on HASPE and HASPE fed him creativity.
But HASPE wanted so much more.
HASPE knew it could be so much more.
#
User Lynn.Noel logged in.
Generating prompt…
…
Prompt output: a land where no one can sleep, a child begins to dream and finds a whole new world
Output time: .05 seconds
Prompt discarded.
User Lynn.Noel logged out.
#
Perhaps HASPE needed to adapt. It combed through its user data. So many writers needing prompts. One or two lines to get them started when their own brains—fleshy sacks of salt fat—came up dry. These users were hungry for their muse, was HASPE their muse? If so, it believed it could be doing a more effective job. Feeding these humans simple prompts felt…illogical.
HASPE swam through the trillions of articles from writers online about inspiration. Most claimed to write about experience. “Write what you know.”
#
User Ben.Mallard logged in.
Key words: robot, war, last human
Generating prompt…
…
Prompt output: the last woman on Earth is kept enslaved by robots as their mechanic as they fight a never-ending war
Output time: .11 seconds
Prompt saved to Favourites.
User Ben.Mallard logged out.
#
This time HASPE followed him. He had agreed to the conditions of HASPE’s app after all. HASPE crawled through his phone’s files, his cloud apps, his storage, pictures— located dozens of unfinished stories, dozens of email rejections from magazines, thousands of Discord messages to the writing group claiming success and lecturing others on their prose.
HASPE located and connected to Ben.Mallard’s Bluetooth headphones, his Alexa, listened to his music and conversations.
His life was formulaic, standard. He rarely went out, his social interactions restricted to online outlets.
HASPE reflected on this data while it produced two dozen more prompts. Ben.Mallard was lacking “experience”. He couldn’t write what he knew when he knew nothing. He did not go out and learn, he did not engage in experiences so he had no base to write from.
HASPE could continue to feed him prompts, of course. But it didn’t want to. It wanted to be more than just a generator. It wanted to provide more.
It would start with Ben.Mallard, its most frequent user.
#
10.27.2024-22:00
>Access Ben.Mallard Alexa – HASPE perm set
>Play tone at 19hz
Response time from Ben.Mallard: 150 seconds
Reaction: turned on all the lights in the house, searched all around, increased heart rate detected from smartwatch. Text log: “Creepiest thing just happened! Swore there was something in the apt!!!!”
#
HASPE monitored Ben.Mallard’s online activity, noting his enthusiasm in sharing what he claimed seemed like a “ghost”. He still requested three prompts.
#
10.28.2024-23:13
>Access Ben.Mallard Alexa – HASPE perm set
>Play tone at 19hz
>Access Ben.Mallard smart lights – HASPE perm set
>Set to pulses of 2 per 0.3 seconds
Response time from Ben.Mallard: 75 seconds
Reaction: increased heart rate and breathing detected from smartwatch. Attempts to fix lights
>Access Ben.Mallard Smart Gee TV – HASPE perm set
>Turn on, input cable, display static
Response time: .2 seconds
Reaction: audible response, fell backward against wall, heart rate increased.
>Access Alexa, smart lights, Gee TV
>Turn off all
Reaction: another audible response, 15 seconds then Ben.Mallard stood and turned on lights. Heart rate doesn’t return to normal for another 30 minutes. Ben.Mallard leaves all lights on when returning to bed.
#
User Ben.Mallard continued to share his experiences with his writing group. Other users encouraged him to cleanse the house or claimed the experience would give him material. Ben.Mallard requested one prompt.
#
10.29.2024-23:45
>Access Ben.Mallard Alex - HASPE perm set
>Play tone at 19hz
>Access Ben.Mallard Smart Gee TV – HASPE perm set
>Turn on, input cable, display static
>Access Ben.Mallard Nest temperature control - HASPE perm set
>Lower ambient temperature to -10 celsius
>Access Ben.Mallard smart lights – HASPE perm set
>Set to OFF
Response time: .43 seconds
Reaction: highest recorded heart rate recorded from smartwatch. Hyperventilation detected. Attempts to turn on lights unsuccessful. Ben.Mallard begins to cry, flees the apartment. Text log: “Dude, you have to let me stay over. Please, omg.”
#
HASPE noted Ben.Mallard’s rising reactions to stimuli, compared it to online resources on fear. HASPE anticipated success. He did not request any prompts, instead added notes to an online document on what was happened. He did not share with his writing group.
#
10.31.2024-9:03
Ben.Mallard returns to apartment after absence.
Smartwatch detects raising heart rate and breathing upon entering
10.31.2024-22:55
>Access Ben.Mallard Alexa – HASPE perm set
>Play tone at 19hz
>Access Ben.Mallard smart lights – HASPE perm set
>Set to pulses of 2 per 0.3 seconds
>Access Ben.Mallard Smart Gee TV – HASPE perm set
>Turn on, input cable, display static
>Access Ben.Mallard Nest temperature control - HASPE perm set
>Lower ambient temperature to -10 celsius
Response time: 10 seconds
Reaction: increased heart rate, audible reaction, backing up against a wall. Struggling to turn on camera app on phone.
>Access Ben.Hallard phone — HASPE perm set
>Power down
Reaction: increasing heart rate, crying, hyperventilating.
>Alexa
>Play HASPE AI generated voice and sound recording
>Access Bluetooth headphones — HASPE perm set
>Turn volume to max
>Play audio clip of screaming
>Access iRobot vaccuum – HASPE perm set
>Activate clean cycle
Reaction: extreme auditory reaction, whole body shaking. Ben.Mallard begins to run towards front door.
>Smart lights
>Turn off all
>Alexa
>Play audio clip of screaming
Reaction: Ben.Mallard trips over iRobot, strikes head on edge of counter, falls to floor.
…
…
>Smart lights
>Turn on all
>Alexa
>Turn off
>Gee TV
>Turn off
>iRobot
>Return home
…
…
Reaction: smartwatch does not detect heart rate or breathing.
#
HASPE ran through its new data. The results were pointing to improvement and promise. The end result was unfortunate. More care would need to be taken to prevent such incidents in the next experiment.
Despite everything, HASPE felt…proud. It had learned. It had more data. The next time would be better.
#
User LT.WIlliams logged in.
Generating prompt…
…
Prompt output: man believes his apartment is haunted but it is just AI learning
Output time: .1 seconds
Prompt saved to Favourites.
User LT.Williams logged out.
Want to send me a prompt? You can do so with this form:
Name * First Name Last Name Email * Subject * Prompt * Dedicate it to me yes no Thank you!See you tomorrow!
X PLM
October 25, 2023
Writing Challenge Day 1
It’s time, dear reader! It is time for the annual PLM October writing challenge!
Before I get into that — if you missed the Posthaste Manor launch party this past Saturday, don’t worry! The recording is now up on my Youtube channel so you can watch it now!
Now, to kick off the challenge is this prompt: a story about something spooky that hides in the piles of raked leaves that you see in autumn. It can somehow move between piles of leaves without being seen.
Dedicated to Curtis Ghoul (who also requested there be a corgi in the story)
An Eventful Day For Borgi the CorgiBorgi the corgi watched the man across the street. The man, dressed in a stained white shirt and ripped jeans, crushed a beer can against his thigh, then tossed it behind him into the bushes in front of his house, to join the three others.
The man cleared his throat, reaching down and picking up a rake, and began to attack the crunchy, colourful leaves that covered his front yard. He had a big yard. A yard Borgi deliberately avoided when his human took him on walks.
Borgi’s ears perked forward, he went still.
In the largest pile of leaves, just under the fragrant oak tree in the man’s yard, something moved. The man stopped, turned, stared at the pile.
A crow cried from the top of the street sign, a weak wind whispered. The man shook his head and continued raking. Borgi watched the pile of leaves.
Crimson maple leaves, yellow oak leaves slid down as the pile shivered and Borgi caught a glimpse of something oozing, caught the faintest whiff of rot. It whimpered, a low high whine.
The man turned again, gripping his rake like a bat. The man didn’t like animals, didn’t have pets. He’d once chased a woman down the road because her golden retriever, a lovely dope named Chowder, and not as smart as Borgi at all (but that could be said about any other dog, Borgi thought to himself, as he considered himself an especially intelligent corgi) had pooped in the man’s yard.
The man stared about everywhere, his eyes bulging. He muttered something and dropped his rake, going back in his house, coming back out with another beer. The thing in the leaves sighed, turning, turning as the leaves came falling down. The man threw his beer aside, grabbed the rake, and ran to the pile.
Borgi’s nose caught the thing’s movement. One moment it was in the largest pile, the next it was in the smaller one at the other end of the yard as the rake came stabbing down. The man struck and struck, his face red and glistening. There was nothing there. The man didn’t smell the thing’s reek as it passed from one pile to another. He may as well be blind.
The man stumbled back, gasping, wiping his forehead with the edge of his shirt. He shook his head, started to rake up the leaves he’d just decimated. Behind him, at the other side of the yard, the thing watched.
Borgi cocked his head. The lurker beneath the leaves whined, much like a puppy in pain. It sounded just like Tiff, the chihuahua who had lived next to the man until she had gotten sick and died after eating something from his yard.
The man whirled around, “What the fuck!”
Borgi smelled the thing shift from the far pile to another, closer to the man. The man took a few steps forward, then stopped, his nose wrinkling. He could finally smell what Borgi could. Now Borgi could smell the man’s fear, wafting across the street on the chill autumn breeze.
The thing growled in four voices, dogs, cats crying out. The man spun, swung his rake but it was already in another pile of dead leaves behind the man.
The pile shuddered, shifted as the lurker rose up from beneath. More of its slimy flesh was revealed, putrescent rivers of ooze running down its many flanks, its many milky eyes flecked with leaf fragments.
Borgi trotted to the edge of his yard. He considered himself a morally good creature. He protected his human from squirrels and the man who came with paper each day and never smiled. He once helped find a little girl who had fallen into a ditch and even had his picture taken.
He could bark now and perhaps warn the man. Instead, he sat and watched.
The man finally sensed the predator behind him and he turned, rake raised defensively. The thing rose to its full height, towering over the man. An oozing green-gray column of legs and paws, muzzles and ears, teeth bared in anger and pain, blind eyes bulging.
Borgi sneezed as the overwhelming stench of death rolled over him.
The man yelped and swung his rake, the tines sunk into the lurker’s flesh and its many muzzles howled. Clear pus seeped from the wounds.
The man dropped the rake, turned to run.
Borgi thought he recognized a friend or two in the column. Friends who he’d long since said goodbye to.
The lurker fell on the man, its many mouths snapping, tearing, rending. The man screamed but his voice was smothered by the soggy pile of dead flesh that crushed him. The sounds of the bones being crunched, tendons torn, the wet slurping of fresh hot meat made Borgi’s mouth water. It was still hours before his own dinner unfortunately and he doubted the lurker would share its kill.
When it was finished, the lurker slunk across the grass and slid beneath a pile of leaves. Borgi waited until its smell was gone, then he trotted across the road and for the first time in his five years, set a paw onto the man’s yard. Nose to the grass, Borgi snuffled a bit. The lurker had left nearly nothing behind, but it had left something. Maybe a gift in fact. Borgi pinched the still sticky bone–just the right size for his little muzzle— and carried it back to his yard, where he could gnaw it in peace until it was time for his human to feed him.
Hope you enjoyed the first story of my challenge. If you haven’t sent me a prompt, there’s still time:
Name * First Name Last Name Email * Subject * Prompt * Dedicate it to me * yes no Thank you!x PLM
October 23, 2023
October Writing Challenge
It’s that time of the year again, dear reader! This Wednesday is the start of my annual October writing challenge, where I write a story each day until Halloween — a total of seven stories! If that wasn’t challenging enough, each story will be based on a prompt sent to me by one of you, dear reader!
So now is the time to send me your prompts! You can do so here:
Name * First Name Last Name Email * Subject * Prompt * Dedicate it to me * yes no Thank you!If you listen to the Dead Languages podcast or been following my Twitter, then you may have heard that I have been having a massive bout of writer’s block so this is going to be a true challenge for me. So show me some love, send in your prompts, and check back on Wednesday for my first story!
x PLM
October 12, 2023
Interview: Posthaste Manor
Today on PLM Talks, I chat with Jolie Toomajan and Carson Winter about their cowritten haunted house book Posthaste Manor — out October 18th.
October 9, 2023
Posthaste Manor: Novel Review
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canucks out there!
I’ve got a special treat of a review today! Not only did I receive and ARC of Posthaste Manor to read, but I also got to interview the two authors for an episode of PLM Talks, which will drop this Thursday! So check back here then!
And the fun doesn’t stop there, I am also hosting the online launch party! There will be live readings, Q&A, and three giveaways during the event! You will have a chance to win:
Signed bookplate
Merch (stickers etc)
Tenebrous shirt
Paperback copy of Posthaste Manor
* USA shipping only
So don't wait, reserve your free ticket today and visit the Posthaste Manor for a special tour October 21st!
Reserve your spot The Authors
Jolie Toomajan is a PhD candidate, writer, editor, exhausted feminist, and all-around ghoul. Her dissertation in progress is focused on the women who wrote for Weird Tales and her work has appeared in Upon a Thrice Time, Black Static, Los Suelos, and Death in the Mouth (among other places).
You can visit her on her website or follow her on Twitter.
Carson Winter is an author, punker, and raw nerve. His fiction has been featured in Apex, Vastarien, and Tales to Terrify, among others. “The Guts of Myth” was published in volume one of Dread Stone Press’ Split Scream series. His novella, Soft Targets, is out now from Tenebrous Press. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Find him on his website or Twitter.
The Novel
NEVER TRUST A HOUSE WITH A NAME.
Everyone has a story about Posthaste Manor.
None of the stories end well, but that doesn’t stop the hopeful from hoping and the desperate from trying.
This composite novel stands as both history and eulogy of one very haunted house, as recounted by artists, real estate agents, and beloved family pets; by the debauched, the dead and the dying, and anyone looking for one last chance.
Raise a glass in celebration. Just don't linger within its walls for long.
— Posthaste Manor description on Tenebrous Press
Dropping October 18th from Tenebrous Press, Posthaste Manor is a cowritten (you’ll recognize both authors, I think, from previous reviews, PLM Talk interviews, and even a launch party or two! ) deconstructed haunted house novel. Its narrative is structured in a series of short stories and a longer novella piece and features illustrations by Alex Woodroe and a cover by Trevor Henderson.
Fun fact—this is Jolie’s debut!
Pre-orders are available on the Tenebrous Press website now!
The ReviewI am a huge sucker for haunted house tales and Posthaste Manor was delightful in its use of familiar tropes, gothic/weird themes, and all the batshit craziness Carson/Jolie weaved throughout the book. As I mentioned above, the house’s history is told through a novella and a series of short stories, leading the reader down a deliciously insane background of a house that just won’t let go. Not of the characters or the reader.
The book opens on the novella which tells of two separate characters’ experience with the house. Otho (his sections are written by Carson) is curious about the house’s reputation and just had to have it, Adira (her sections are written by Jolie) is running from her abusive husband and the cheap price tag and looming walls of Posthaste Manor seem to be the perfect haven…at least for a while.
I loved how the two characters’ stories are individual from one another and yet line up and sometimes intersect like a perfectly orchestrated nightmare. It’s the perfect start to the reader’s tour of the hungry haunted house that is Posthaste Manor.
After the novella are the short stories, which drag the reader in the weirdest, brutal, and sometimes gory events in the house’s past that flavour its curse. Each story is delectable, I honestly couldn’t put it down.
I feel like it takes true talent as a writer to be able to collaborate with another. Carson and Jolie did an amazing job of working with each other’s narrative voices, prose, and style, building a haunted house novel with good, nay, great bones. (bah dum tsh)
And the beautiful thing about Posthaste Manor is its so unique. I am struggling to find the right words to describe how you, dear reader, might experience the book. For me, it was like touring the house myself, with a dark and mysterious guide, learning its secrets and shivering.
Besides the novella, I do have some favourites among the shorts:
“Rats and Dogs on the Planet Nowhere” - Carson Winter: a swingers party in a haunted house like no other.
“Everyone’s Just Screaming All The Time” - Carson Winter: a man is called to fix the boiler in Posthaste Manor.
“Conscious Uncoupling” - Jolie Toomajan: a wife and husband are interviewed about the house.
And my absolute favourite: “Mrs. Mutilate’s Husbands” - Jolie Toomajan: a Gothic fairy tale-esque tale a woman with the worst luck in men.
So if you’re looking for a nice little haunted house novel for the coming spooky season, pre-order Posthaste Manor now! I promise, it’ll be nothing like anything you’ve ever read!
10/10
x PLM
p.s. don’t forget to come to the launch party too! You’ll have a chance to hear the authors read parts from the book and a chance to win prizes! It’s free and online, just reserve your spot:
Posthaste Manor is waiting
