The Halloween Scary Stories 2003
by Marc D Smith and Ron Dutcher
  Article # 399 Article Type: Fiction

Looks like Hell to me
by Marc D Smith

Madame the palmist, the seer, the psychic
Translator of futures, of heartstrings, of Old Nick.
Would consult of her glass, O sphere ever darker
And write out my augury with a blue-diamond Parker.

On a slip of thin parchment, she'd scrawl out my life-link
A fortune (no cookie) in dark purple were-ink.
That shade, so malevolent, the parchment would shun it
A shard of blank paper for witness, no comment.

But that whisper of prescience so wickedly jotted
Treacled my ear and thus envenom'd besotted.
I grew to be watchful, worried and wary
A bottle for fire; for gas, a Canary.

Then drew to my bed, facing a future so vivid
All danger foretold, my mind oh, so gravid
With violent death at the very steps to my door
That starving I lay there, else risk personal gore.

In state did I lay with fear clutching my feet
Brazenly clawing its way upward to glut on the gleet
Oozing out of my pores with their pallid reduction
And crawled down my throat. Fear: here for its luncheon.

A final quick visit, to Her door did I stumble
Paused just a still moment and hearing her mumble:
Prey! O Prey! They are all so much meat.
I leave them a-quiver, they won't walk in the street!

They pay me in rubles and dollars and yen
Yet hide 'neath the covers and call themselves men.
The riches I pluck from their craven, cowardly fists
Shall release my true treasure: Satan, to our sweet tryst!

Pure evil she was; apocalypse beckoned
I gumshoed behind her in less than a second
And snatched quickly up that most virulent pen
And gouged out her eyes; never seeing again!
October 29 2003

Ron Dutcher

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary
Stationary and ink bottles piled upon my desk,
I slaved over late letters to Pentrace friends promised from before.
Longing for the comfort of bed, I sat there still, sweating from every pore.

Having reached the final salutation, stamps I reached from my upper drawer
my arm struck the desk and set rolling, rolling so slowly rolling from my
desk,
my Sheaffer fell to the floor
only this and nothing more.

Taken aback, I heard a splintering crack like the lightening from some
Plutonian shore.
I looked down and saw the accusing white eye, the shards of my Sheaffer from
before.
I beat my head against my desk, hurting, cursing, blurting, "You damn
fool", I swore
Only this and nothing more.

With my fingers pale and trembling
Slowly towards the Sheaffer bending
longing for a happy ending, perhaps this Sheaffer I can restore.
Quoth the Sheaffer.... Nevermore.

A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core.
The Sheaffer corpse is leaking, speaking yet leaking ink upon my chamber
floor.
When my wife sees that her words will fill me till I'm sore
only this and nothing more.

And the Sheaffer, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the ink stained tile of my chamber floor;
And his white eye has all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming.
And the lamplight o'er him streaming shows his ink upon the floor;
And my soul from out that stain that lies spreading on the floor
Shall be lifted---nevermore
October 28 2003

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