Category Archives: horror

Apparition 

In the dark of your room
Something cold from the tomb
Awakes you with feelings of dread
Seems to float and to hover
Then pulls on your cover
And sidles up next to your bed

Its image is fearsome
A face without eyes
An energy making you swoon
It radiates outward
Your hair it will rise
Like you feel when you rub on a balloon

Paralysis grips you
You cannot but shout
Your face feels as if it will smother
Someone turns on the light
And, there in the bright,
Stands (in costume)
Your wee little brother.

You missed Halloween, you dope.

Twenty… this dream of anxiousness.

I turn around to an unfamiliar sound.
My strange neighbor stands in my yard.
He has a hose, and sprays casually,
glancing furtively in my direction.
The water is warm.
He turns his back to me, then quickly comes around.
Spraying now a fan of fine white sand.
I run for a broom, a shovel, a hope.
i return to backyard dunes,
as over the fence he floats, gone.
I slide open my back door,
admitting encroaching sands,
and run through my house to the front room.
Someone has laid a dead rodent on the white pile carpet.
It smells as i pick it up, and leaves a stain.
A face appears behind my front curtains, then flees.
An image of a long dead niece.
From behind the sofa, a giggle.
I bolt through the front door.
The street is dunes of white.
There is a plant pot placed in my driveway.
A single stick, bereft of foliage, sprouts from it.
And, hanging from a branch, a furniture tag.
It bears the word ICARUS.

number 19- the King of pain

On a wooden bench in a long darkened hallway I sit, in contrived cold dimness.
Shivering in shorts,I look down, dribbling on the bright dog tag hanging from my neck. Number 49. To my right and left, sibling sufferers, all in mourning.
Mourning for lives given over to pain. We, each of us, counting, enumerating, cataloguing its forms, its art. Moaning it out in sad violins, tubas of torture, oboes of woe. We, each of us, think we must be King. Flaunting, pointing inwards, saying see me, do you see me? We nod to one another, in fatuous fondling sympathy, waiting. Waiting to see who will be chosen from amongst the courtiers, and exalted to the royal standing. All at once, there is a hush. The house lights dim to darkness compete. A shuffling and a clanking is heard. A silvering light admits from above, coating a figure grotesque. In a gait at once jerking and shambling, he picks his noisome way, sparing all a proud burning glance, freshets of blood his tears. In fractures compound his bones protrude, splinted over with leg hold traps. The flayed flesh of his back dangles in ribbons. He makes not a vocal sound, but works meaty jaws to spit smoky pools upon the floor. He stops. We stand. Those eyes of his tilt upwards in seeming worship. Upon his head, a crown of Mercury. We bow, prostrate.

Very bad things (graphic)

Someone came running.
Said come and see.
They smiled strangely
as we took a shortcut
through the hedges, to the roadway.
There, a black cat that was mostly flat.
Crushed and cooking in the concrete heat.
One eye staring up, askew.
The other, a popped grape.
Introduction to prurience.
Smile no more.

Someone caught a snake.
A long sinewy garter.
Put a big red firecracker down its throat.
Bang.
Then hung it from a thorny tree.
For all to see.
Attraction, and repulsion.

Playing house in a backyard tent
with someone they called “the dirty girl”.
Now, let’s play Doctor.  She said.
You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.
Naïve confusion and uncertainty.

Someone laying by a bush on Mount Royal.
We were up there with our bows and arrows.
This person was a strange colour,
and had a crusty red hole in the side of their head.
Momma, Momma, Momma!
We ran.  Changed forever.

We were stopped at a gas station,
when we heard the sirens, coming from our left.
The loudspeakers blaring CLEAR THE INTERSECTION.
Straight ahead of us, a car speeding towards the same point,
with thumping music.  Oblivious.
They hit hard, and spun.
Bloody faces punched through windshields.
Horror and helplessness.