Halloween – Page 2 – This Jolly Beggar

Discovery

Written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers
PHOTO PROMPT © J Hardy Carroll
Click on the frog and join in the fun!

Genre: horror; word count: 100

Discovery

“Did you bring the mirror?” Eli asked.

Lena rummaged through her backpack behind him. “Do we have to do this?”

Eli snorted impatiently at his best friend. “Don’t you want to know why kids from this school have gone missing? Mr. Drobkoni’s gotta be a vampire. I’ll stay here. You keep a lookout. Whistle when you see him coming.”

“Right-oh,” Lena said. “Here.”

Eli held the mirror so he could see over his shoulder.

Lena had already left.

She’s fast, he thought.

“What’s that?” asked Lena behind him.

He turned around quickly. “The dead travel fast,” he said, suddenly pale.

Seasonal Ghosts

Fallen leaves, sudden colors surround our steps
this season of the encroaching frost, where breath
shivers surfeit with ghosts, phantasms of shade and shape
lingering on the outskirts of our gaze, entrapped
to swirl in gossamer guise of follies unguessed
flesh and blood whose course ran verdure green
but now, as the dry veined leaves, pose beleaguered
papery skinned revenants awaiting All Hallows’ Eve
as if deserving no more than our own fading grins.

note: Charles Baudelaire’s famous poem “The Revenant” should haunt every evocation of revenants. Check out this translation of the poem at Sublime Terror.

Lisa hosts Dverse's "Poetics 427: Mussenden’s Temple"
Write a poem (in any form) using the word "folly."
Check out all the responses at Mr. Linky.

The Alchemist

I thought I’d write this quadrille (prompt word “magnet”) in anticipation of Halloween with its cornucopia of bat wings and eerie skeletal thrills. Quadrille Monday at dVerse limits each offering to 44 words, so be warned!

She walks in a drysalter’s den
wearing death, her subfusc,
scattering acedia’s magnetic coils,
like iron filings shot hard
against fate’s blind eyes,
their littoral currents crashing
against her noon day commerce
of herbs, bone dust, pharmacopeia,
against concinnity escaping
fruitless desire, skulking caitiff.

Read more quadrilles at Mr. Linky.

It Can’t Be Smoke: A Haunting

It can’t be smoke that drives you here like a leaf
Caught in a funeral pyre or a sinner fleeing in shame!
What fell blast of Hell’s eternal fire brings you, cruel shade
Upon my porch, and feeds the tendrils of your fiery flame?
Begone, you ghost of the foul-mouthed past that stalks
The children of men, to warn of never-ending death
And griefs that ne’er can mend! Begone upon your walks
Of doom and leave me to life’s revelry and vice
Until its trinkets be a dream and I a shadow like you.

DailyPostPrompt: Smoke

The Marsh Fiend

The four friends sat in the pale moonlight beside a flickering fire. The youngest of them was just short of thirty, the others led by four or five. They had long met in this clearing by the marshes, surrounded on all sides by woods. As the darkness grew heavier, their thoughts turned inward to the Marsh Fiend of Vetiver and Thyme. She travelled alone like a ghost far from home luring travelers to her side. And once they had seen her and gazed quietly at her while she smiled her forlorn smile.

Continue reading “The Marsh Fiend”