Tag Archives: horror

We’ll Come Back To Wake You Up

graveyard

PHOTO PROMPT – © J Hardy Carroll

“Where are we, Sarah?” Five-year-old Emily sat in the grass with her best friend from kindergarten.

“The old graveyard,” said Sarah. “It’s where you find dead people.”

Emily’s mouth gaped. “You mean like my pet turtle that Mommy buried in the backyard?”

“I mean like Great-Grandma who was so old she didn’t know her own name anymore.”

“She’s under here?” Emily touched the flat stone.

“They’ve been dead lots longer,” said Sarah.

“Are we supposed to be here?” Emily looked to see if Mommy was watching.

“No, but it’s okay. We’ll sneak back tonight and wake one of them up.”

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Film Review of “Sketch” (2024)

sketch

Promotional poster for the film “Sketch” (2024)

My ten-year-old granddaughter and I just got back from watching the 2024 movie Sketch, which just had its general release to U.S. theaters yesterday.

Spoiler Alert! This is a brand new film, so if you don’t want to know more, stop here. Well, actually, you should know up front that the PG rating pushes right up against PG-13 for violence and horror. It is actually a children’s horror movie but without the blood, guts, and killing. However, it’s pretty intense.

The story surrounds a Dad Taylor Wyatt (Tony Hale) and his two kids Amber (Dianca Belle) and Jack (Kue Lawrence). The mother has died (no details) and the Dad’s response is to pretty much bypass the anguish and grief and try to push the family beyond it.

That doesn’t work out so well for Amber. She’s always liked to draw, but now, her creations take on a much darker tone including depicting a monster attack on a bullying schoolmate (Kalon Cox as Bowman Lynch). This comes to the attention of a school counselor who actually encourages Amber to draw her darker feelings rather than acting on them (such has having her monsters suck out Bowman’s eyeballs).

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The Patchwork Man

stuff

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

“What the hell is this?” Matthew’s new eyes flickered across the macabre collection of “get well” gifts by his hospital bed.

“I would think it’s obvious, Sir.”

He called her “Big Nurse” but the woman’s nametag said “Louise.”

“I’m back from the dead and my friends send me crap?” He tried to sit up in bed, but morphine-blunted pain restrained him.

“Sir, you have no friends,” said Louise bluntly. “You’ve outlived them all. These are from your doctor.”

“What’s his problem? I pay him well enough.”

“It’s just that he doesn’t like harvesting your clones merely to keep you alive.”

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And the Sea Shall Claim Her Dead

roger-bridge

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

“We came to take nuclear torpedoes from an old submarine, not hunt for ghosts.” Simon, in the pilot’s seat of the deep-sea submersible, sounded almost panicked rather than his usual assured self.

“I can’t help that,” yelled Cora at the hydrophones. The banging I hear from the inside of that sub is an SOS. Someone’s still alive in there.”

“That’s bloody impossible,” snarled Vic. He was working the manipulators trying to free the first torpedo. “We’re 10,000 feet deep and that sub sank 60 years ago.”

“Tell that to them,” Cora shrieked. Then the sea’s dead came for the pirates.

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Coming Soon in “Haunted Places”

haunted places

Promotional cover art for “Haunted Places” volume 2

My short story “Haunting Chloe” will be featured in the upcoming anthology “Haunted Places,” edited by Jamie Ferguson.

Jamie’s probably one of the best fiction publishers and editors I’ve worked with. She is very keen on details and proverbially holds my feet to the fire to make sure I turn in the best story possible. She also provides exceptionally helpful feedback on my writing including how (thankfully) it has improved over the past few years.

Here’s the promotional blurb:

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With Two Cats and a Flood

NC flood

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

“Our house, is a very, very, very fine house
With two cats and a flood…”

He stopped singing the old song and listened to the water coursing down the street.

“Sure, I’ve been stuck on the floor days, your food has run out, and no one can get here to help, but we have each other.”

Chloe and Spike had been sitting on the coffee table staring at him for hours. He’d fallen out of his wheelchair and his usual attendant couldn’t get to the house.

The cats looked hungry and as he said, the food had run out.

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2024: A Year in Review

2024

It’s close enough to the New Year for me to post my annual “year in review” comments. 2024 has been pretty good as far as he number of stories I’ve had published.

It started out with my short story “I Don’t Want To Be Human” appearing in the Cloaked Press anthology Spring Into SciFi 2024. This tale goes back to my roots in terms of sapient robots, AI, while flying in the face of the common trope that all humanoid robots want to be like people.

Next up, I’m particularly proud of the 16-part science fiction serial I wrote for Starry Eyed Press called Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure. It’s currently on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform, but Vella is going away (you still have time to read it). The folks at Starry Eyed say they’ll republish my work in book form, hopefully in the coming year. I’ll let you know.

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Book Review of Jim Butcher’s “Grave Peril” (2001)

grave peril

© James Pyles

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

I just finished reading Jim Butcher’s fantasy/horror novel Grave Peril, book number three in the Dresden Files series.

Harry Dresden is the only professional wizard listed in the Chicago phone book. He’s like a private detective, but the mysteries he’s called to solve always involve the supernatural and usually something very, very nasty.

While he’s on retainer with the Chicago P.D. “Special Crimes” unit, he often goes out on his own when something deadly threatens the community, or often himself and those he knows and loves.

“Grave Peril” started differently than the previous two books I’ve read. Harry was in the middle of confronting a hostile ghost with a very unlikely ally, Christian and Knight Michael Carpenter (the last name is especially cheesy given his faith).

Something has stirred up the spirit world and weakened the barrier between our reality and the Nevernever, the realm of ghosts, demons, fairies, and darkness. Ghosts are being brutally tormented by a mysterious “Nightmare,” something from Harry’s past. He and Michael confront the spirit of a maniacal nurse from Chicago’s 19th century in the maternity ward of Cook County General, and unless Harry and Michael can stop her, she will murder scores of newborn infants.

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Movie Review of “Lifeforce” (1985)

Mathilda May as “Space Girl” in “Lifeforce” (1985)

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

The 1985 movie Lifeforce was on my “to watch” list more out of curiosity than anything else. I knew it wouldn’t be a great movie, but I wasn’t prepared for how bad it was.

Whatever the producers spent their money on, it wasn’t special or visual effects. The spaceship “Churchill” was a 1980s NASA space shuttle with ridiculously long solar panels. That was made even more silly since the spacecraft was nuclear powered.

The crew is on a joint UK/USA mission to come into contact with Halley’s Comet which visits the inner solar system about once every seventy-five years.

There were tons of technical errors I won’t get into but in the first five minutes, I regretted spending three dollars and change to stream this turkey.

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