Category Archives: muse

October 28, 2012

Coffin Hop: Inside – Day 5

Inside – Day 5

Scratching my ear, I feel something long and thin move away from my finger. Something covered in fine wisps of hair, something that slithers backward and draws into itself, much the way I have snatched my own hand away, clutching it with its blood covered finger to my chest.

Crawling again to the bathroom and scaling the sink, I open a drawer and reach for my scissors intending to cut away a chunk of hair to more easily see inside my ear. As I grab a handful of hair, I realize that the clump I’m clutching is slowly pulling away from my scalp with a sickening sucking noise. Tendrils of a thick sticky substance adhere to the skin for a brief moment before slopping to the side of my face. The exposed tissue is raw, puss covered and stinging – the small globules of fatty tissue clinging in place.

With a terrified grimace, I turn my head ever so slightly to allow the light to shine on my ear. There! Just like the shadow scuttling behind my eye, something quickly moves further into the darkened recesses of my ear canal. Barely able to stand on quivering legs, weak from hunger and brought to the brink of insanity by this infestation, I pull my long tweezers out of the drawer – the medical ones, and with a shaking and still bleeding hand, I begin to reach into my ear hoping to extract what is hiding there.

A sharp nip warns me to go no further; I drop the tweezers and my other hand slips off the slickened sink as I crash to the tile floor. The coolness of the stone a brief reprieve from the molten pain I feel in my head and throat.

But not us, we are the ones who see…

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!

12 Comments | tags: Coffin Hop 2012, Day 5, flash fiction, Inside, muse, Nina D'Arcangela, pain, Them | posted in Coffin Hop 2012, darkness, Flash, Flash Fiction, Horror, muse, pain, Quirky, twisted

October 27, 2012

Coffin Hop 2012: Inside – Day 4

By Nina D'Arcangela

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.

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

October 20, 2012

She Watches

By Nina D'Arcangela

My watcher gazes upon me, great despair and longing seeping through her gently fluttering lashes. She lives a life of torment, a life filled with a depth of pain and depravity that rivals my own. Closer she wishes to draw, trying – always trying, but the measure of her success is a cruel and harsh one that denies, not grants, the wants of those like us. Unable to do more, she watches.

She watches as I sink ever further into the squalor that is my self-imposed exile, my place of preciously preserved pains, the darkest recesses of my mind where even I cannot find respite from my own deranged ramblings. Gasping for a breath that will never come, hope a thing lost to a moment that can never be regained, I will forever dwell in this chasm of nowhere. Capable of infusing life into me once more, yet unable to wade such a distance, she must simply watch as I succumb.

She watches as I prance about in this tattered garb, seeming to most a thing so giddy; a toy bright and shiny – all the while, inside… nothing but a fool. She sees my cracks, my flaws, all that makes me unworthy. She is witness to the tarnish that dulls my plating, the rust that flakes my surface, the debris that hinders my step. She gropes at the pile of destroyed dreams, hoping in vain to free me; the more she digs, the deeper the rubble becomes. She must watch as I succumb to what others have done, and what has become of me.

She watches as I shatter into innumerable shards, only to suffer my tears as I collect each delicate fragment to me; insistent upon rebuilding my ruined castle once more. Tears of acid crawl down my cheeks, the madness that accompanies them the crumbling of the world – my world – should they ever truly be unleashed. A steady stream of tangible harm inflicted by so many, each droplet a testament to the life I bear. Her desperate plea for me to hush heard only as an echo in my ear. Her arm stretched towards me, wanting so much to offer reprieve, is hindered by obstacles both beloved and unfair. She must watch as I succumb to what others have undone within me.

She watches as I flay open my own flesh for allowing moments of weakness, glimpses of joy, lies of happiness that happen in an instant, gone all too quickly. Brief encounters, an hour, perhaps two. Touching, loving, seeing, hearing; feeling – breathing; for the first time in so long, breathing. A small step that leads to a brighter existence, a false step placed upon undulating ground. A promise of the sweetest forever, but no promise ever made, a faith always held – a mourning that shall never end, my forever, my reality. This she must watch as I succumb not to what others have undone, but what I have done to destroy me.

Would I give so much more for even a lie of something less, if that lie was not this? With all the wasted remains of me, I would… But my watcher stands as guard. She will not allow one to crumble, for the other would fall, no longer even the loathsome wreckage that now exists. Scalding tears pour in a cascade of deafening silence from her eyes. She must always watch me from behind a glass wall that cannot be allowed to shatter for all that would be lost.

A pile of forever swept to the side so that the tendrils of this now never break for what should have been.

Originally posted on Pen of the Damned on October 2, 2012 – shoot on over to PenoftheDamned.com to read more of my mad ramblings, the exquisitely pain filled and deliciously horrific works of my fellow Pen members!

5 Comments | tags: Lost, muse, Nina D'Arcangela, pain, Pen of the Damned, shattered, She Watches | posted in loss, muse, pain, Pen of the Damned

September 26, 2012

Stone Cold

By Nina D'Arcangela

Stone fucking cold – an awareness that emanates from within. I’ve always believed the most grievous pain would come from what is held inside, from emotional wounds that take more than what forever is offering to heal; but no, I was wrong – the worst pain of all is being empty – drained, becoming a vacuous core, a dull resonating hollow that allows for nothing, not even the sting of its own frigid harshness.

What then remains?

The echo – that part remains. The thunderous slamming of logical thought, things I know to be true and by virtue of their own truth, to be right – just no longer right here.

The shadow – of what was conscious feeling, a memory… The memory of warmth, reaching out to it, grasping it; confusion at being sliced to ribbons on its brittle fractured edge, its tensile strength less than that of my own – for once I make contact with it, it can be nothing more than what I am; cold, empty, invisible, alone – the reality of full awareness.

The roar – perhaps the worst part of all, but no – the echo is the worst of it. Self-recrimination screaming in my head that this is my mind, my sacred territory, my imminent domain to control – well, my folly so it would seem. Comical, though I have no laughter to spare it in this moment, the thought that my own strength of will, my conscious pattern of thought exerted under strict control for so long – what I consider to be my euphemistic beating heart – would never grow cold. The mocking echo is utterly relentless.

I am a creature of science, one who ascribes to chaos theory – in chaos there is random order to be found that given enough time becomes specified; thus specified random order within chaos. Some would argue the merit of this statement to be the antithesis of chaos itself, simply order if it is to be qualified as specific; and order is not chaos. But if chaos creates order, and order forms pattern, is it not then a foregone conclusion that the rigid stricture of order will in all occurrences destroy the fluidity of chaos thereby no longer allowing for the existence of the chaos that created the order that formed the pattern that left me stone fucking cold?

Well, that’s a tough one to answer. I’ll opt to believe in chaos, in the randomness of the order and the disorder that it also brings. I’ll choose to feel the nothing that gnaws a pit through my existence as there is something worth feeling the nothing for. What that something is – left undefined.

It’s something that was created by chaos, and is being consumed by the stricture of random structure. It is a string that unifies me with a plane that is a more desired reality, a place where warmth still exists… where an echo is to be feared no more than a comforting howl carried along with the breeze.

– oh, by the way, welcome to my happily never after.

23 Comments | tags: alone, cold, empty, invisible | posted in muse, pain, twisted

August 8, 2012

The Slip

By Nina D'Arcangela

The texture of the brass dials a thing so fetching, feel them spin, with a tick and a click, tightening ever so slightly as the prize is nearing.

Nimble fingers twist knobs , first left, then right, and back yet again. Feeling for the slightest shift, as slowly they spin.

A tick, a click, the slip. The first dial is set. How these tired tips work at gaining entry, their art lost to time, man’s arrogance a false sentry.

These fingers you see, they are for hire, they spin, they click only for the most discriminate buyer. What lies beyond the beauty of this contraption of brass, these fingers care not – their job only to spin, to click, to find the – slip.

Ah, the slipping of the final pin into place, pride to be had for a task well done. These fingers find no pride being named thief, only in the triumph of yet another breach.

Never touching the treasures concealed inside, the gift is in the spinning, the clicking and the glorious sound of the decisive slipping as the lock disengages, and the tomb readies to release.

The thrill done, the game complete, the mastery of infiltrating the impenetrable is what these tired digits did seek. Their desirous splendor being the one called to task, no other hand as capable on the brass.

These fingers, they are old, and worn with time, slowly they reach out and gentle the slide.

A slight pop, the pressure released, the door opens a mere chink, allowing for those who would have the briefest of peeks.

The thrill these old finger have felt now past, gone on this final releasing of brass. This buyer untrue with intentions corrupt, these fingers have felt for the final time the tick, the click, the magnificent slip!

*****

For those of you who don’t know, in each issue of The Sirens Call eZine, we do a Comparative Flash amongst ourselves with fairly strict guidelines. We choose an image, and each of us writes a flash piece of 300 words – no more, no less – that is inspired by the image itself. We don’t discus the topic each has chosen, nor do we reveal our pieces to each other until everyone participating has completed their flash. Here is the image, and my piece that ran in the June issue – Kalla and I went head to head on this one. I hope you enjoy it! I had a ton of fun writing it… and the picture, what is it exactly? You tell me ;}

8 Comments | tags: Betrayed, Brass, Cheated, Comparitive Flash, eZine, Fingers, flash, Flash Fic, SCP, Sirens Call Publications, The Sirens Call, The Slip, Thief | posted in Flash Fiction, muse, Quirky, Sirens Call Publications, The Sirens Call eZine

July 11, 2012

Fated

By Nina D'Arcangela

Bloodied by my own thoughts and that which rages within me, I suffocate in the nearness of my own mind as it ruthlessly brutalizes what some would consider a soul.

Living with such agony is now part of my nothingness; I cannot avoid the anguish that comes to me through doors that should be well sealed, shielded from such hated devastation. I beg this putrescence with which I exist for the briefest moment of solitude, longing to be unaware for an infinitesimal reprieve, yet it will never be granted.

I am fated to grasp that which I would avoid knowing. Trapped by what adores me with an innocence my very inhalation of breath betrays, longing all the while for an existence that remains lost to me. My mind is my confinement, escape a possibility that will shred all that I cherish.

All that I cherish… these words said with such conviction only prove me more the fool than I know myself to be. The jester’s role I choose willingly for the eternity that it shall be mine, as I would not wish its anguish nor bestow its grandeur upon another. What shines with blinding clarity from within gnaws its way toward the surface never to escape, ensuring my absolute isolation from the magnificence that would sing me to sleep and offer a world of brighter murkiness which dances just beyond my reach.

Torture, this is within my reach. It engulfs my entirety, dulling each glimpse of the gleam caught by another’s eye, muddying every surface that would shine as the me who might have been had I not been locked away in this dungeon of madness. The key to my lock? I see it. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever set my eye to. It is sentient – it knows of the sway it holds over me. Entranced, I watch it dangle and shimmy in a breeze born of the hollow cavern that was once a thing of childlike promise within me. Yet sway further away it does with each passing eon encapsulated within the fraction of a moment. One upon another these waves of time pound relentlessly against my consciousness. Each moment stretched into an infinity while watched from below.

Ahhh, from below – that is where it crouches, watching and waiting for a chance to slip my guard; a minuscule crevasse in the wall though which it can seep. This night I believe it has gained entry for the echo of silence is all too deafening to allow feigned ignorance the opportunity to shield the undeserving such as I. Quivering bravado the only weapon against this consuming hatred.

I hear the thunder begin to rumble, I feel it resonate through my damaged psyche, I sense what is coming. Alone I will face all there is to conquer, all there is to fear. Tonight, something of greater menace stalks through the shadows of this storm.