Category Archives: Flash

October 27, 2012

Coffin Hop 2012: Inside – Day 4

Inside – Day 4

They are larger now, no longer simply sliding through the minute fissures of my head. I feel a piercing pain with each stab of their clawed legs as they dig in and they drag themselves forward. I can barely inhale for the number of them clinging to the walls of my throat. Coughing blood and eight legged bodies, I feel them holding on with their barbed legs so as not to get ejected with each contraction of my body.

Swallow or vomit my only choices, I grab a bottle of water from my nightstand and begin to gulp the warm water. I can feel it sluicing over their swollen bodies like lesions grown from my esophagus, not just the intruders that they are. I vomit more, pulling one or two free to expel them onto the bed. The others grasp tighter, puncturing the delicate pink tissue of my already mutilated gullet. These seem different, more frantic as they dance about on the bed. Their color more flush, darker – their bodies harder in form. Clearly blind, they dart in sporadic circles, slowly growing more sluggish, more translucent, collapsing like the first one I saw.

It seems they die quickly, they don’t seem to survive long outside my body.

Things most would choose to look away from…

Come with me over the next week, as I spin my tale for Coffin Hop 2012. This will be a story told day by day – on the final day, encapsulated into one post.

In honor of the tour, I’ll be giving away a goodie per day to one random recipient who leaves a comment on each post. My prizes will come in the form of e-books, print copies, eZines, and an unending subscription to The Sirens Call eZine as well. (plus there may be a rubber duckie or two) All prizes will be randomly selected on November 1st, as per the Coffin Hop guidelines found here on my Coffin Hop 2012 page, along with a list of the other bloggers. Please don’t forget to visit the Coffin Hop Blog for news, updates, delirious ramblings, and magnificent posts from the other bloggers as well!

10 Comments | tags: Coffin Hop 2012, day 4, horror, Inside, muse, Nina D'Arcangela, pain, Them | posted in Coffin Hop 2012, darkness, Flash, Flash Fiction, Horror, muse, pain, Quirky, twisted

October 26, 2012

Coffin Hop 2012: Inside – Day 3

By Nina D'Arcangela

Inside – Day 3

Oh God, I think I threw one up during the night. It’s lying on my pillow, but it doesn’t look like I expected it would. It’s far too elongated, thin and withered as am I, almost a milky grey color. Covered in mucus, mine or its own, I cannot say.

It twitched! I know I saw it twitch, I didn’t imagine it. Frozen in fear, I stare wide eyed at the collapsed carcass of the thing on my pillow, hoping it was my imagination. It twitches again, not my imagination.

I leap up, tangled in my own covers, screaming wildly. It still lies there making a feeble attempt to move, I think it’s dying. I feel a sloshing in my head. I moved too fast, screamed too loud, they are scuttling insanely about inside my skull. I retch, and retch again. Vomiting up more, I realize that they are no longer only in my head but have found a way to travel into my throat! The thought makes me retch yet again. They are agitated by my convulsing; I can feel their vibrating urgency to quell their host. Oh God, please get them out of me!

The pounding in my head is beyond bearable, the heaving of my starved body uncontrollable; afraid to breathe yet terrified I won’t, panic begins to set in as my body spasms of its own volition.

Blackness.

Things others have not seen…

Come with me over the next week, as I spin my tale for Coffin Hop 2012. This will be a story told day by day – on the final day, encapsulated into one post.

17 Comments | tags: Coffin Hop 2012, day 3, flash fiction, horror, Inside, muse, Nina D'Arcangela, Them | posted in Coffin Hop 2012, darkness, Flash, Flash Fiction, Horror, muse, pain, Quirky, twisted

October 25, 2012

Coffin Hop 2012: Inside – Day 2

By Nina D'Arcangela

Inside – Day 2

I would have thought knowing they were inside me would be the worst part, but it’s not – the mind adapts to such things; it’s feeling their movements, their scurrying back and forth beneath my skin that is the most brutal part. I don’t know how they were able to gestate inside me; they seem maddened at not being able to get out. Their constant frenzy keeps me up at night – I’m getting no sleep; it keeps me sick throughout the day – nourishment something I’ve not known in weeks; a prisoner in my own home – I’m terrified to go into the light, I look the part of a monster – a filth ridden hag.

I wonder: will they roast in the sunlight if I let myself burn in its glorious blaze? The sun beating down upon me, turning my skin the blistering red of cracked paint on canvas. Perhaps I should wander to the basement and embrace the furnace with its searing hot metal, cooking myself like meat thrown upon a hot skillet. Or simply douse myself with open flame; does it matter at this point? Tempted to try such things, my mind wanders to the possibilities: what if they panic from the heat and start to run, cascading in a black surging mass from my ears and shrieking maw? Nowhere for me to go, no way to escape them – more still coming, an endless flow continuing their frantic evacuation. What if they are no longer only in me, but all over me? The thought alone drives me beyond the limits of this tenuous sanity I now grasp.

God, the cacophony of their humped bodies sliding between the soft tissue of my brain and the hardness of my skull is deafening. I must find a way to get them out! Nails gouging at myself once more, ripping chunks of skin from my own body, sending fresh streams of puss and blood running down my face, past my eyes – my mind shuts down and I feel no more.

This path one that will lead us to obscure things…

Come with me over the next week, as I spin my tale for Coffin Hop 2012. This will be a story told day by day – on the final day, encapsulated into one post.

12 Comments | tags: Coffin Hop 2012, Day 2, flash fiction, horror, Inside, muse, Nina D'Arcangela, pain | posted in Coffin Hop 2012, darkness, Flash, Flash Fiction, Horror, muse, pain, Quirky, twisted

October 24, 2012

Coffin Hop 2012: Inside – Day 1

By Nina D'Arcangela

Inside – Day 1

I can hear them scratching – almost ticking, always clicking, as they move around inside my head. It’s maddening. Their tiny little feet always touching, testing, feeling their way about. Each hair coated limb sliding between the soft tissue and bone – scuttling through the crevasse in between. Growing in and feeding off the fluid…

Sometimes, when I’m looking in the mirror, in the worst moments, the moments where I have to hold onto the basin to support myself and can barely catch a full breath, I swear I see a shadow scuttle behind my eye. The quick darting of a grotesque form moving swiftly past before I can fully focus on it. My own visage in the mirror is a horror in itself; long hair a greasy tangled mess, cheeks sunken and hollow, skin a sickly yellow hue from their rancid poison. Sinking to the floor, scratching at my face to be rid of them, I gouge my eye sockets with filthy, torn nails. Will they find their way through the opening if I offer one? Covered in blood oozing from the destroyed tissue around my eyes, forehead slashed bare, with flesh caked beneath my fingernails, I crawl on hands and knees to the bed, where I cower beneath the covers seeking refuge, hoping to hide. But there is no refuge, nowhere to hide, they are always there with me – inside me, there is no escape from what is inside…

A dark and angst filled road we have chosen…

Come with me over the next week, as I spin my tale for Coffin Hop 2012. This will be a story told day by day – on the final day, encapsulated into one post.

19 Comments | tags: Coffin Hop 2012, flash fiction, horror, Inside, Nina D'Arcangela, pain, twisted | posted in Coffin Hop 2012, darkness, Flash, Flash Fiction, Horror, muse, pain, Quirky, twisted

August 31, 2012

Echoing…

By Nina D'Arcangela

Dark halls echo the sounds of the past. I put my hands to my ears, but cannot block them from intruding.

Bloodied and covered in filth, I cower in the murky dankness of my corner. A ray of sunlight leaks in just within sight – yet so far down the hall. Do I dare crawl to it, or will they come for me again? Unsure and frightened for my own safety in this house of illusions, I shiver with indecision as the glow slowly fades away, the hours tick past.

The last vestiges of light receding, my hope of sanity dwindling, I begin to crawl toward the retreating beam of hope. Nearing the doorway, I pause to make sure all is safe; clear for my passage. One splayed hand laid upon the long wooden floor before me, my body follows, curling around the frame as I begin to emerge from the room. My other hand is near to landing upon the hallway floor when I see a figure move through the arc of light.

No! On hands and knees, I quickly scurry back into the corner, but not quickly enough. They know I tried to escape, they know I reached for the brightness; they know my intent was to abandon them.

Enraged by my daring, they begin to assault my every sense as the light is snuffed. It’s always worse at night. Half crazed I scream for leniency, none is granted.

As my eyes adjust to the deeper darkness, I see the black shadows moving about me. “Please,” I beg of them, “please don’t hurt me anymore.” But they only laugh. The nearest whispers a rotted warning in my already damaged ear, as the others close in upon me for yet another night of terror. Cold fingers grasping, my screams echoing…

****

A sneak peek at my comparative flash piece in our August issue of The Sirens Call eZine. 300 words of flash fiction inspired by an image.

14 Comments | tags: Abandoned, darkness, Echoing, Escape, No hope, The Sirens Call, Them | posted in darkness, Flash, Flash Fiction, Horror, The Sirens Call eZine

May 6, 2012

Trust

By Nina D'Arcangela

I crouch cowering in the shadows of the barn. I should not be here. I was asked to stay away, yet I could not.

The unnatural sound of bones snapping, sinew tearing, and skin stretching is a thing so foreign that it rends my soul to shreds as I witness it, yet for all the breath left in me, I can not turn away from this creature I see.

I should have respected his wishes and not intruded upon his privacy – one that he has guarded so warily till this day. Trust is what I offered blindly for so long; now I see that my trust was both justly placed and unspeakably abused.

The depth of sorrow that emanates from the eyes that I have so often peered into is more than I can bear. I know now why he asked to own this anguish in solitude; I know now why he felt a need to protect me from the torture of his full nature; I know now the extent to which he wished to guard me.

He suffers more pain, my heart weeps. I reach out to touch him, he begs me to stay away with his agonizing gaze – so longing, so loving… so final.

Struck by a rising terror I’ve not felt before, my mind screams that he is no longer mine but belongs solely to the night. If only I had not violated our trust, we would have been as one forever.

Fully morphed he stands before me, yet I still see only him. He turns one final time – his eyes saying all his misshapen mouth is no longer capable of speaking.

A blink; he is gone.

Rushing forward I see all that remains of him torn and twisted upon a nail while I listen to his baleful cry carried upon the night’s harsh wind.