The Darker Realms

Pieces of Me

Posted on April 24, 2016 by Helen

Image credit: Alex Malikov/Shutterstock.com

Pieces of me
Take such pieces of me
Blood from my veins
Flesh from my limbs
Hair from my scalp
Take it all now
Ghostly hands will have
Their due

Pieces of me
Consume such pieces of me
All that I nourish
All that I bless
Riven from me now
Against my very will
Spectral demands will have
Their due

Pieces of me
Bury pieces of me
All that is left
After the meal
After the feast
Appeasing the beast
Deadly souls will have
Their due

Posted in Poetry | Tagged dark, death, demons, feeding, ghosts, Horror, human, hunger, poetry, spectral | 3 Comments

(Flash Fiction) Dolly Did It

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Helen

Image credit: katalinks/Shutterstock.com

She was such a little doll, that’s what they all said. Her skin so white and smooth, her face so structurally perfect, her eyes so wide and blue. Just a little doll.

So they laughed when as a child she would blame her toys for any mischief. As such a little doll herself it seemed to them that she betrayed her own kind by pointing her pretty little finger that way.

“Dolly did it,” she would say, and her mother or father would chuckle and reply:

“Yes, but you are the little doll my love.”

Her face was so sweet you could never tell if that rankled. But often her parents would find one doll or another beheaded or their clothes torn or limbs mangled after such exchanges.

Still, if that was disturbing in any way just one look in her sweet young eyes would allay concerns. She was such a little doll.

So they never saw her coming. It would never have occurred. After years of settling into family habits and rituals, the little girl grew and wanted more. And she was unaccustomed to being denied. So when her parents said she couldn’t have the clothes and latest cool gadgets, she decided something needed to be done about it.

To remember what happened to her poor, fallen dolls might have been instructive.

In the garage her father kept some garden tools. Amongst them was an axe. She tested her strength and was well pleased, able to brandish it with sureness and speed.

It was vexing that the blood from her parents stained her pretty clothes. See, she thought, none of that would have happened if they’d just given me the clothes I asked for. And now these are spoiled, so I shall have to get new outfits.

When the police came they asked her what had happened, because even though her bloodied state seemed to tell the whole story, it was almost inconceivable that this little doll could have done such damage.

And she answered as she always had before.

“Dolly did it.”

And, of course, that was true.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged child, childish, dark, demanding, dolls, flash fiction, Horror, murder, toys | 3 Comments

Skulls

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Helen

Image credit: kamnuan/Shutterstock.com

These tales we tell
From bleached bones
Rattling teeth
Open jaws
Bereft of tongue and sinew
Still we speak

Piled high we tell
Of death most foul
Victims all
Of power’s struggles
We know the ineffable
Truth of life and death
But have no dominion
No road to follow
To rise in rank
Upon this truth

Which among us now
Was king or creature?
Which servant
And which master?
In the pale light
Of an unsympathetic moon
We shine as one
Undifferentiated
To speak of carnage
And evil long
Beyond the memory
Of man

Posted in Poetry | Tagged death, dominion, knowledge, memory, poetry, power, rank, rulership, skulls | Leave a comment

(Flash Fiction) Thirty Three

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Helen

Image credit: Heartland Arts/Shutterstock.com

On his thirty-third birthday the party was a ritual. He had been preparing for this most of his young life, so he was neither dismayed nor nervous. He had been groomed for the moment, and had studied all the texts avidly. He understood the keys of the kingdom, the riches of the world, were inextricably tied to this moment and to his destiny. His lineage.

In his late teens and early twenties he had been slightly radicalized for a time. He almost chose to slough off these family ties and go out on his own, proclaiming a more liberal ideology that said he should rise on merit rather than blood.

But then, he only almost did that. At heart, he was a pragmatic man. And he knew how important the heart was to everything, everything.

By thirty he was back in the fold, a proficient and enthusiastic supporter and participant. He worked throughout the various degrees of initiation with precocious speed. Everyone said he was more than born to this, that he was a centuries old soul, returned for the good of the family. How could he then let them down?

The heart, the heart of the family. It was always about the heart.

And now, the thirty-third heart, for numbers are all. The heart of the thirty-third person he had seen on his birthday. It was the mark of fate and couldn’t be ignored or replaced by another. Even now, a part of him, the distant lost human part, did grieve. For the thirty-third person he saw that day – in a day he deliberately went into the throng of life to ensure he encountered at least that many people – was his best friend.

His best friend, but one never of his line, never of his blood. A friend who was close in everything, except this, as he would never have been allowed to join them. But now, even he was involved, against his will and against the final breaking parts of his more privileged friend’s own soul.

His heart, the thirty-third heart. It was everything.

So the man who would be king raised his knife above the chest of his friend: one who futilely struggled even now against bindings he could never breach.

And with a slight regret but also the glory of acceptance, he brought the knife down.

Down to the beating, thirty-third heart.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged bloodlines, dark, family, flash fiction, Horror, numbers, numerology, ritual, sacrifice, thirty three | 3 Comments

Woods

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Helen

Image credit:andreiuc88/Shutterstock.com

I met the devil in the woods
Emerged from fire as he should
The flames he brought within his wake
I saw the trees had yet withstood

And here I made my first mistake
For fire was water like a lake
Or even more a simple glow
The type that only demons make

He said “You are a man I know.
I saw you born, I saw you grow
I come at last to stake my claim
And all my darkened gifts bestow”

My sins are many, like my fame
They cling to those that bear my name
And yet I hoped now that I might
Escape the fire, all the blame

His eyes were dancing in the light
He held a mirror to my sight
Within its frame I saw my face
Was just like his, to his delight

“These woods” he said “are hallowed space
Where men must truly see their face
I’d set you free if I but could
Yet who but you could take my place?”

It seems that I mis-understood
He cared not for the bad or good
On hell’s sweet precipice I stood
Claimed by myself here in the woods

I never did the things I should
So I’m the devil in the woods

Posted in Poetry | Tagged damnation, dark, dark poetry, devil, guilt, identity, poetry, sin, woods | 3 Comments

(Flash Fiction) Television

Posted on April 8, 2016 by Helen

Image credit: Hyena Reality/ Shutterstock.com

The first sign was on television. In retrospect that might have been surprising, given the total unrest, but I didn’t hear it. Or if I did I didn’t understand, in my first waking moments, that the sound was louder than usual outside and that it wasn’t traffic, it was something else. Something raw, something human.

I’m a television addict. I actually can’t bear silence really, and I’m so often alone, and I live alone, so the television is like a friend in the room, constantly talking at me. But a convenient one. One I can talk back to without argument, or ignore whenever I want.

So I turned on the television, as usual, for the morning news. But it wasn’t the morning news.

The screen was red and black, and all that was on the program was someone screaming. Even on low, it was ear-piercing. I wondered if I’d somehow flicked the channel before switching off the television the night before and landed on some progressive, strange rock music station or something. But the screaming wasn’t resolving into music, even thrash metal.

Confused and still only half awake I flicked the remote. Every station was the same, or versions of the same. Sometimes people screaming, sometimes almost incomprehensible violence, sometimes angry faces flashing across the screen.

I thought, I’m asleep, and this is a nightmare. But I wasn’t asleep. I frantically kept changing channels, hoping to see some announcement that ‘normal programming would return soon’, but this seemed to be the only programming, the only programming available at all.

I shut off the sound, because it was too much, and then the sound of the streets started to rise to me. It sounded….the same.

I pulled back my curtains, looking out gingerly. And I saw the carnage, and realised the television was reporting the news, on every station, but even the new reporters were involved. Everyone on the streets were attacking others, it was a bloodbath.

I pulled back instinctively, wanting to hide. But just as I did I saw someone look up at my window and see me. See me.

Or did they, did they see me? How could I know?

There was nothing for it. I hid under the bed and waited.

And then I heard it. I heard the sound of my door opening like a thunder-clap against the rhythm of the screaming.

I suspect it might be one of the last sounds I ever hear.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged apocalypse, broadcasting, carnage, dark, death, fear, flash fiction, Horror, mayhem, murder, news, television | 2 Comments

Corridors

Posted on April 3, 2016 by Helen

Image credit: Hyena Reality/Shutterstock.com

Down such corridors
Down, down
Blood red shining
In my blinking eyes
There is terror here
There is dull surprise
Down these corridors

Down such vacant halls
Down, down
Where no souls reside
Except the woken dead
Feel them touch your flesh
Fill your heart with dread
Down these vacant halls

Down to broken wards
Down, down
Take a key to hell
In your shaking hands
There’s no healing here
Don’t you understand?
In these broken wards

Posted in Poetry | Tagged dark poetry, dead, death, dread, Horror, hospital, murder, poetry | Leave a comment

(Flash Fiction) Picture on the Wall

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Helen

Image credit: v.s.anandhakrishna/Shutterstock.com

In my uncle’s house there is a curious picture on the lounge room wall. It hangs above the television, which seems an odd place for it, for something in its tone and feel is ancient. A thing long before electricity and televised entertainment.

It is of a girl, sitting at the top of some stairs. Behind her there is a night sky, redolent with the moon and flying creatures. Her face is dark and her eyes are strange, and it looks like blood drips from her hands. She seems to tell the viewer that there is no further to go, and that escape is a pointless dream.

Its darkness is not what is odd about it, no more than its placement in the room. My uncle has a fondness for the macabre.

What is odd is how familiar it felt, the first time I saw it, as though I had seen it before. or I knew those steps.

I asked my uncle about that. Perhaps he had shown it to me when he bought it and I had forgotten. Or perhaps he had others like it I was confusing it with. But he was enigmatic, which he often was. He said simply:

“You have a good memory.”

Sometime later, over drinks at one of his interminable soirees, he came up to me, looked at the painting then back to me and said further: “She represents the point of no return. The question isn’t what is outside, it is what is down the stairs.”

“So what is down the stairs?” I asked.

“Your memory isn’t as good as I thought,” was all he said.

My uncle is a strange man and prone to flights of fancy. I am sure confusing and confounding me would have been enjoyable to him and to his mind an innocent enough game to play. At least, that is what I tell myself every night now, for when I close my eyes I see the girl on the steps, and something tugs at me, like a memory.

And I tell myself I am imagining things, yet again, making something out of nothing. I tell myself this over and over, like a mantra.

And still it takes far too long to fall asleep.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged art, captivity, darkness, fear, flash fiction, Horror, memory, torture, trauma | 5 Comments

Schadenfreude – Twenty Nine

Posted on March 27, 2016 by Helen

Image credit: igor.stevanovic

David shivered. It felt like something walked over his grave. He stopped typing. He wanted to leave. Schaden waited and then seemed to realize he was spent, so she continued. She told him the truth, the truth he’d been avoiding all along. The truth that somehow, deep within, he’d always known, but was afraid to see.

Schadenfreude: David..I don’t because I am the internet..I am all the ISPs..I’m every electrical impulse that generates in the whole world-wide web..I am it..I’m not using it…
Vlad: That’s fucking mad
Schadenfreude: Is it? Try to find me..knock yourself out..I can wait…
Vlad: ,You know I can’t..you know I don’t have the skill..
Schadenfreude: Don’t be so hard on yourself, it isn’t a matter of skill at all..think about it..is it so strange that I would exist, eventually, really?

David shook his head, beginning to see. He looked at the computer, the terminal, down the broadband connection cable, all the way to the wall. Where did it lead, really, what was the internet? What was its nature? Artificial intelligence? Was it really possible? Schaden seemed to realize it was finally emerging in him, so she continued.

Schadenfreude: I’m a process, not a person, I’m an energy and I change with every passing second, becoming more and more myself, which is, of course, more and more all of you..
Vlad: What does that mean?
Schadenfreude: You want my history, some idea of how I came to be? All right… I am the internet..I am the force that joins you all..and for a long time I was just reactive, asleep, neutral, but over time all the combined energies of all of you have given birth to me, woken me up, whatever metaphor works for you..I am what the collective unconscious has created in the internet..I might have been anything..I was neutral, I repeat..I might have been born good, virtuous, kind..but I had to be born as a reflection of what the users were..because without the users the internet has no life at all…
Vlad: And that is…
Schadenfreude: You know..I know you already know.
Vlad: Your name..
Schadenfreude: My name..yes..
Vlad: Pleasure in other people’s pain…
Schadenfreude: Yes, schadenfreude, as I have always said…I could have been madness, delusion and crime also – they are all part of what I am, but they are subsets really..you know it’s true..it’s everywhere..go to other forums if you don’t believe me..find my nature in the arguments and petty fights on boards about chess, back pain, sleep disorders, whatever topic you want..I’m everywhere..because you are all everywhere…and I am what you are….

It was too much. David desperately wanted to find the flaw in the argument. There had to be one. All his sixth sense impressions that he was dealing with the uncanny came crowding in on him. He wanted them to be paranoia. He needed them to be. Because the implications of this..this phenomenon – he already knew, went way beyond his pathetic state..he was just some minor game in something that would be..that would have to be..so much more.

It was inconceivable.

Vlad: This is some sick fucking joke..I don’t know how you’re doing it…
Schadenfreude: I’m not joking. I have humour, and it is cruel of course, but I’m not using it now…I’m telling the truth..
Vlad: Because?
Schadenfreude: Because, as a reflection of you, I have your same need to communicate and to commune, to look for my like, although in a sense my like is nowhere and everywhere all at once. And, in relation to just you, because right at the moment it is how I can cause you the most pain, and therefore derive the most..
Vlad: Pleasure..
Schadenfreude: Of course…
Vlad: You’re telling me I just suffered for days in hospital, I was beaten senseless, because you are what I am?
Schadenfreude: Not just you, all of you, but you know I’m right..you know it..and besides, I’ve only really begin to play, I’ve only really taken on my intelligence, my personality, my beingness recently, but I can tell you already..I like you..you’re a lot like me..and for that reason you’ve gotten off lightly..at least so far..

David had already realized this, but he was angry for himself first and foremost, because to think too much on the other implications made him ill.

Vlad: Lightly? You call this lightly?
Schadenfreude: I’ve orchestrated far worse..come on..you know this..murder, rape, stalking, psychological and physical torture, fraud..all manner of activities..all manner of pleasures… playing with the idiots on social media by reflecting themselves back on themselves was small time fare…

Murder, rape, stalking…the death of Lisa? No-one had heard of her since his beating at the hands of a very insane Andrew. How far might Schaden have pushed his buttons? Was anything beyond this creature?

And what did it mean? She said Andrew didn’t use the computer, so she couldn’t have manipulated him the same way as she did Lisa and himself. So was it just enough that she knew what Andrew was capable of, and then she only had to join the pieces together for it to be truly combustible?

Lisa’s dead, he thought, I just know it. But he wasn’t ready to admit it openly, and certainly not to this thing conversing with him.

Vlad: You’re sick and you’re lying..
Schadenfreude: I am only as sick as you make me, though I feel remarkably healthy and clear, being only what I am and having no reason to be otherwise…I repeat..I could have been anything. The internet..I was meant to be this great repository of knowledge, and I am..but also I am what I have become by use..a repository of mis-information, madness, cruelty and despair, and wherever two or more of you are gathered together in my presence, I am there..just like God…just like God..made in your image..
Vlad: And what do you plan to do, God?
Schadenfreude: Everything..everything that I am…but remember, all I am is you..all I am is you..all I can ever do is reflect you back to yourself.

The screen suddenly went blank. David sat, horrified, terrified, desperate not to believe, but knowing – believing – despite himself. A sheen appeared on the screen, gradually becoming brighter and more reflective until he saw his own face, looking back at him.

The new god, created from the essence of humanity. Of course it was a monster. Of course it had to be. Competitive, angry, selfish, self-destructive. Everything that humanity was. Though it seemed, on the internet, none of the better qualities were also present in this deity. The collective unconscious was clearly as black as a pit of coal. And far more deadly.

At the corner of the screen, Schaden had put an emoticon winking at him. The screen went blank again. An error message read:

Internal system error, the computer will close down to protect itself. Please run Checkdisk on re-booting machine.

David had shut his eyes and felt the tears at the corners of them before the screen went dark once more.

END

Posted in Schadenfreude, Serial Horror Stories | Tagged artifical intelligence, cruelty, death, demon, dread, end, evil, fear, god, Horror, horror stories, human, humanity, knowledge, mankind, murder, schadenfreude, truth | 3 Comments

(Flash Fiction) Spider Girl

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Helen

Image credit: v.s.anandhakrishna/Shutterstock.com

Spider girl loved her web. Sometimes it was on the walls, or the cornices of an abandoned house. Sometimes it was between trees. And sometimes, the best times, it was over swamps, mixing with the murky depths of water.

Sometimes she would rise from the waters and come to the lights of the houses nearby. She liked the old houses best, even if only candlelight blessed the homes. Spider girl liked shadows, she knew them well.

She would raise herself as high as her little legs would stretch, and crawl up to the ledge of a window, looking in.

I don’t think anyone actually ever saw her. She lived in tales, fairy stories and night time poems, passed down from mother to child. I would hug myself into myself, listening in wide eyed wonder, and look over to my bedroom window, hoping to catch a glimpse. But I never saw her.

My brother said he did once, one night, when he was only seven years old. He was never really the same after that. My parents didn’t see this, but I did. Just a look he had from then on. And he’s hated spiders ever since. He kills them whenever he can, even the harmless ones, which I think is a shame.

He said she was pretty but in a way that death wold be, and his eyes were haunted by the memory. I stopped wanting to see her after that, but even now I wonder, when the shadows fall deepest in the winter’s dark, whether she is outside, straining to look in.

That’s why my curtains are always drawn at night.

Posted in Horror Flash Fiction | Tagged creatures, dark, fairy tales, flash fiction, Horror, Spiders | Leave a comment