From the Inkwell, From the Vein.....

Genre: Horror Subject: Delivery in 30 minutes or less This was the "heat group prompt" for team 5 in the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge 2011. I missed the official sign-up deadline by a matter of minutes, so that meant I was locked out from "officially" competing in this year's short story speed round. It's a 2-parter.... Round 1 gives contestants 8 days and 2,500 words to create a short story in their assigned genre centering on the assigned subject. Round 2 then takes the Round 1 winners and gives them just 24hrs to create a second story. There were 30 groups covering every genre twice and no two subjects were the same. As I couldn't officially participate, I've opted to attempt the challenge under the table, as it were. I picked group 5 because of my fondness for the number 5, and it wasn't until after I had selected my group that I read through the entire genre list and their paired subjects. My pairing wasn't the best, but it ...

What is more horrific....seeing that which terrifies you most, or imagining what terrifies you most though you cannot see it??? There are varying degrees of terror in any manner of horror flick...everything from the most gruesome, gory, flesh-destroying monster to the psychological torturer bent on crushing a person from the inside out. The success of the horror genre is its ability to terrify individuals to the point of panic. The best horror brings the strongest of us to tears. The fear is palpable, the sweat is real, the blood pressure spikes and plummets, you have to remind yourself to breathe. Your heart pounds as if you've just finished a marathon, gasping, you are left reeling, trying to pull yourself back into the reality of the non-horror world. If you're lucky, the return is uneventful, peaceful even, a wondrous reminder that your own life is not, in fact, a horror film. You go about your daily activities just as you did before watching/reading the latest in the...

Were you ever one of those kids, like me, who knew that as long as you kept your eyes open at night, the boogeyman wouldn't get you---- because the bad things only come out when the lights go off and you've shut your eyes. So, you lie in bed, heart pounding at every sound, your eyes wide and drying out, terrified that once you close them, the nasties in the night will have the chance to pounce. Or, worse, you're petrified of closing your eyes when you're washing your hair for fear of what might be standing in the shower with you once you open your eyes again. Of course, this might just be me and certain memories from childhood movies..... The other school of thought follows the philosophy that so long as you keep your eyes shut tight, nothing will ever get you. As long as you can't see the spookies, the spookies can't see you. This idea never worked for me, I'd seen too much to the contrary....weren't the unsuspecting snatched from their beds wh...