SPOOKTOBER STORY #2:

I awoke with a start
A noise! A clatter!
I climbed to my roof
A hatch! A ladder!

Outside in the dark
A figure! A shape!
My mouth hung wide
Aghast! Agape!

For what I saw there
In dimness! In gloom!
Was a hunched old owl
A symbol! Of doom!

"Hello Mr. Owl," as my heart
Did thump! Did thump!
"Hoot hoot!" said the owl
I cry! I jump!

"Leave me alone!"
I howled! I cried!
But alas! by that time
I'd croaked! I'd died!

Now I perch here too
An omen! A curse!
And hoot death at those
Who I think are the worst!

October 3, 2016

Short chapter this time. I'm tired and don't want to be plagued by the nightmares of Chapter 3 when I do the sleep.

-------CHAPTER 2--------

Steve and Martha continued down the curvy country highway to the bologna factory. A smell of spiced meats permeating the air; wafting through the car vents.

Martha began to salvate--the drips sliding down and off her spandex dress. Steve felt his taste buds pucker.

"We're almost there, dollbody," he eagerly glanced over, "to the bologna factory."

"Mmm, that's right we are." Martha was ecstatic; continually readjusting her dress, her chin slick with saliva. Steve's thighs began to shudder.

They took a right turn down a thickly wooded dirt path. Dead branches knicked and poked at the passenger windows as the Cadillac's bologna tires bobbed and bounced on the uneven earth. Steve felt he was relying more on his heart than his sight. The bologna factory was near. It was getting closer. Closer. It was----

Right there, beyond the cast iron sign, it stood. Rusted spires and deep red walls towering against the foggy sky. Steve pulled up alongside the greeting monolith:
'THE BOLOGNA FACTORY' was printed on its face in bright red. A typeface similar to comic sans.

Steve killed the engine. He and Martha slowly turned toward one another.

No words needed to be spoken.

They exited the baby blue Cadillac.

Hi I'm pretending to be Jon Phillips for the time bean.
Horribly spooky story time, goodness gracious.

CHAPTER 1:

The headlights cut through the road mist like a bullet through margarine.

"I'm taking you to the bologna factory," Georgia stated to Martha, as they cruised down highway 456 in the dead of October night.
"Don't you think this is...a bit fast? We just met."
"The only ones I bring to the bologna factory are the ones I think are worth a damn."

They locked eyes; sweat pouring from their brows. The soft light of the radio panel glistening off each drop. Each stream.
Georgia returned his hard gaze to the road, not before catching a moment of eye contact with a roadside deer, and smacked his lips.

"My father--," he began weeping softly.

Martha placed her hand on his wrist, caressing his denim sleeve. He calmed a bit, his sweat subsiding. Martha's pink spandex dress ceased amazing him 3 hours ago.

The bologna factory will do me good, he thought.

"Take...take me to this bologna factory of yours." Martha's eyes were glistening, like marbles dowsed in petrol.
Her skull orbs brought long buried memories back to Georgia's mind.

"Now that I think of it, I haven't been there in a while," the sweat began to re-accumulate. "I shouldn't be doing this...not after...," Martha's fingers dug into his wrist.

"I'm really looking forward to the bologna f--"
The car buckled and hopped with a shriek of strangled metal, the ass of the vehicle veering off the edge of the road. Georgia recovered and pulled over. The sput-sputtering of the engine ended with a key-turn and a gaze into Martha's teeth. And then her eyes.

"Bee Are Bee," Georgia stepped out of his baby blue Cadillac into the foggy cold; a whimsical mist washing over him.

Everything was as it should be: darkness, coldness, roadside deer teasing him with playful glances. The road was strewn only with pine needles and dead leaves. And one palm sized rock--not enough to cause that ruckus.

And then he looked at the tires.
Oh, the tires.

There was something deathly, sinfully wrong with the tires. They weren't tires. At least not the tires of a sane world. They were tires of bologna.
Large wheels of bologna tightly fastened around the rims of his baby blue Cadillac. As if they were there from the start. Professionally installed. Or grown.

Georgia reached out---hand trembling---and ran a finger along the slick, glistening, probably delicious, meaty surface.

"Yep...It's bologna."
"What was that?" Martha was leaning onto the driver's seat, window half rolled down.
"The tires are made of bologna," Georgia replied, "Pure bologna. I think we should turn around. Go back to the pub."
"You're full of it! I'm not going home til I see this bologna factory of yours." She clicked her tongue and began to roll the window back up, but stopped, "I don't know...I, like, can't get it out of my head now."

Georgia could relate. He knew there was an eldritch wrongness awaiting them. Hanging over and pushing them. He couldn't go back. He wanted to want to, but the effort turned his stomach and ached his brain.

"You're right, Martha. Let's go to the bologna factory. Together."
"I can't wait, Stevie."

That's right, he thought, My name is actually Steve.

Steve, now resigned to his fate, dusted off his knees and climbed back aboard.

"O-Onwards to the bologna factory," muttered Steve, stiffly cracking an awkward half-smile, starting the car.

------to be continued holy shit im spooked------

Yes. I am doing that Spooktober Story thing, like I did last year, like I do every year. You know what the spookiest thing of all is? Creative stagnancy.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #1:

In the first part of this story, we are spooked out because of a ghost or whatever. I describe it in detail, really trying to build up the sense of spookiness.
Then the ghost comes up and does something unghostlike, like asking us for directions, which really punctures the sense of dread created in the first part of the story.
That's the joke. That's the whole joke. Oh my god.

NORMALVEMBER STORY #1:

Greg suspects he has enough time to eat a bagel before catching the bus to work. He is right.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #25:

SPOOKTOBER STORY #24:

Soon, the spooking time, rumbles the janglebones, grave barrowly. Fum fum fum, it grolls, and turns wrist to boob-tube infraclacker, desounding feed, hoofing cool sad noises out flat face holes. Sour air swells chest parcels, ticklers grasp leg hinges, and protts it vertical. Crack crack!

Janglebones dums and drums, ambulating westward, braining up to-dos of to-days and to-morrows as it pots black grain to paper mouth, setting brew to black wakewater. Fum fum fum, it grolls again, chattering jawly and dancing eyes. The spooking time peals ever pacer... lo lo, dull of dulls to janglebones! Recco any other! To glug fair breaths or squint a near star!

But janglebones too a quagmire of darkshackle, of spook and of shake, of bite and gnaw unconscious. Snoa relief for janglebones. Burden and bondage and duty. Cloak et now with sorrow?

Snoa wish it, soft thumpered et... for janglebones cloaks too, but snoa sorrow lo et.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #23:

The Murder Man crouches in the closet, waiting for the sexy teens to come upstairs and do the thing known as sex, so he can murder them with his knives and hands. He can hear them downstairs laughing in a sexy way. His knees hurt from crouching but he knows it will make a better murder if he hides in the closet, instead of just standing in plain sight like an idiot where the sexy teens could see him, which would probably make them run away instead of doing sex together on the bed.

He thinks what he will probably do is: he will use his machete to cut up the boy all at once as a nice surprise and then while he is doing that he will let the girl think she is getting away for a little while but then jump down onto the yard and pin her down with his knee and take off her skin while she is still alive. Then he will probably crucify the bodies for her parents to find when they come home. This is a good murder and the Murder Man smiles when he thinks about it and then he laughs a little too, but quietly so the sexy teens don't hear him. He has done a lot of murder over the years, but he still finds a way to keep it interesting for himself.

The Murder Man thinks about what he will make for dinner and he thinks maybe a nice vegetarian lasagna that will last through the week. He has a lot of fond memories of eating vegetarian lasagnas at his grandma's house, and remembering these memories makes him happy. He pats his grandmother on the cheek lovingly, which he can do because he is wearing her face like a spooky mask. When he made the mask he was sure to stitch her soft old mouth into a smile, because that is how he likes to remember his grandma: always smiling.

Yes, he thinks, I have lived a good long life and have done a lot of nice murders too. I am the Murder Man, that is me, and I have done the best I can with what little I was given. There is a lot of comfort in that.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #22:

The natural process of aging and decay.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #21:

You love your mother, even after dementia and the pain of the cancer made her forget and then hate you; but you don't think the tumorous thing crawling towards you across the floor of her bedroom is your mother anymore.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #20:

The human-flesh devouring robot from the future (disguised as a regular human) is chewing on a ricotta ravioli and thinking "This is the nicest date I've ever been on," right as the first alert comes in, flashing mildly in the lower right of his cone of vision.

CORE TEMPERATURE RISING. DEVOUR HUMAN FLESH TO AVOID OVERHEATING.

The robot disguised as a regular human frowns. This is very bad timing.

"Is something wrong?" Megan asks him. Her eyes are intelligent and robin's egg blue. During their conversation about beekeeping, before the food came, the human-flesh devouring robot noticed that when she gets excited she brushes her strawberry blonde hair repeatedly behind her right ear. A piece of chicken is suspended on her fork as she reads his face. She looks worried. The robot realizes it is because he's frowning. He stops frowning and smiles instead.

"Oh, no! I got a piece of spinach in my teeth. I'm having a really nice night. I mean, time. Also a nice night, though."

"Me too," she says, and pops the piece of chicken in her mouth.

CORE TEMPERATURE RISING. DEVOUR HUMAN FLESH TO AVOID OVERHEATING.

"Excuse me, I'm going to go deal with this, uh..."

"Spinach situation?"

"Spinach situation. Pardon me."

The robot stands and walks through a small hallway into the men's room. There's no attendant, which is good. There are no other humans to eat, though, which is bad. The temperature alert is flashing more urgently now. He is getting pretty worried, if he doesn't eat a human in the next five minutes he will probably burst into flames and that will not only ruin his date with Megan but it will also kill him dead.

CORE TEMPERATURE RISING. DEVOUR HUMAN FLESH TO AVOID OVERHEATING.

He decides to perch on the counter, out of sight of the door, and dive on the first person to walk through it. He could run outside and gobble up the maître d' in full view of the house, but that would ruin his chances with Megan, and the robot is having a really nice time talking to her. She could be the one, he thinks, and smiles despite the increasingly anxious warnings in his visual display.

Minutes pass. No one enters the bathroom. The alert changes, flashing hugely, nearly blinding him:

CORE MELTODOWN IMMINENT! DEVOUR HUMAN FLESH IMMEDIATELY!

He sighs and climbs down off the counter. Why did he ever think he could live a normal life, maybe meet someone nice, compartmentalize his need to devour human flesh and live simply with a woman like Megan? Once she sees him murder and eat the maître d', that is going to be that. No more hope for a normal life.

Suddenly, the door bangs open. It's Megan, tears streaming down her face. He reels in surprise. "Megan, what's wrong?"

CORE MELTDOWN IMMINENT! DEVOUR HUMAN FLESH IMMEDIATELY!

"There's something I have to tell you, and I'm so sorry, I wish to God that things were different," she gasps out. "See, the thing is: I'm actually a robot from the future, and I have to devour human flesh in order to keep from overheating. This wasn't supposed to- I was really having a nice time tonight, but I have to..."

She embraces him tenderly and unhinges her jaw to chomp down on his neck. Her teeth sink through soft flesh and muscle, and clink against his steel-reinforced robot skeleton.

Understanding washes over Megan's and she looks up at the robot disguised as a human, tears starting to trickle down his cheeks as well.

"I was having a really nice time tonight too," he says, as they burst into flame.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #19:

Look, there's seven billion other fucks on this planet, and no matter your sad little rubric, it's still hugely likely that neither you or anyone you know is ever going to be notable in any way.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #18:
white person: one booze
white person: more than one booze am i right
white people: hahahahaha
white person: you're so bad

SPOOKTOBER STORY #X:

5am: Jon Phillips sits in his bedroom, wide awake, having not slept in 31 hours. A Mr. Coffee machine grumbles from between his legs.

"Jon. Look. You've gotta keep making it in me."

Mr. Coffee sputters his last spurt as Jon finishes his undetermined bout of intense concentration.

"Jon. You've got to fill me up. You've got to turn me on."

Jon grinds for thirty seconds while Mr. Coffee writhes in anticipation.

"This is it, don't stop."

Jon opens Mr. Coffee, but there is a spider inside. The spider bites Jon, he shrieks, and becomes dead.

"Jon" grumbles Mr. Coffee.

"This was the best you never had."

SPOOKTOBER STORY #17:

A writer in Maine runs afoul of a generally innocuous thing that is imbued with malevolent supernatural powers and as it rends the fabric of his small town community he is hit by a car. This is a metaphor for substance abuse.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #16:

The thing heaved impossibly, my mind unable to comprehend its locomotion. It toppled towards me as if a collapsing building, climbing endlessly inwards or forward, joints buckling in sickly peristalsis, mouth-things forming silent invocations, rifts spitting and vanishing along vast semiorganic fissures. My last coherent thoughts before I finally went stark, raving mad: "this will make a dope spooktober story; can't wait for all those sweet likes and shares"

SPOOKTOBER STORY #15:

Chef Bobby Flay stares at the dish, his hands trembling. "Chef..." he starts, before losing his nerve and trailing off. He raises his eyes from the plate and looks across the table at Chef Bobby Flay, his perfect hair swept back from his forehead in a firey tsunami, pale blue eyes like daggers piercing Chef Bobby Flay's own with their intensity. He composes himself. "Chef, describe your dish." Chef Bobby Flay smiles, confident in his presentation. "What I've prepared for you today, Chef, is..."

But Chef Bobby Flay doesn't even need to listen to know the ingredients. Next to the julienned carrots and roasted brussel sprouts, staring at him through a red wine reduction, is the face of Chef Bobby Flay, a faint smile still on his lips.

SPOOKTOBER STORY #14:

She escapes the house
The drill wound gets infected
She dies anyway

SPOOKTOBER STORY #13:

The funk
The funk is
The funk is taking
The funk is taking over
Please help
Please help
The funk
The funk
Can you feel the funk
God help me
Please god help me
I can feel the funk
Deep down in my bones
Funk moving me and grooving me
Please kill me
Please kill me
The funk

SPOOKTOBER STORY #12:

At first I found it unsettling when the floorboards began to give me advice. "Dig... dig... dig..." they implored. I hadn't been sleeping a lot around that time and had felt (but not really registered... I've never been the most observant cowpoke on the dude ranch) the vibrations for a few weeks beforehand, it wasn't until the clarity my mother's funeral provided that I was finally able to suss out the floorboards'... let's say "exotic"... accent.

I clawed at the floor for a while with knives and screwdrivers and my fingernails and so forth, but the pit I drew after two weeks was barely even worth mentioning. Eventually I gave up. What can you do? I'm not an excavator. I live in an apartment building. I'm on the third floor, for chrissakes! I really dinged up my security deposit, doubtlessly, but I'll probably just end up slipping away in the middle of the night anyway.

I've been asking the floorboards for dating advice lately: I'm pretty lonely! But the advice they give always seems distracted, half-hearted. "There's other fish in the sea, you deserve someone special, just be yourself,"... that sort of thing. I think they were really set on the digging and are disappointed in me for giving up on it so early. Maybe I'll start hitting up garage sales, if I ever get a pickaxe or a shovel, maybe I could make some headway on their project, so they could help me with mine! I really am very lonely. I really, really am.