krayolakrowns

[krayolakrowns]

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 20, page 362.

"- a witch leapt out from behind them. It was Rita Skeeter. She was wearing acid-green robes today; the Quick-Quotes Quill in her hand blended perfectly against them. 'I wonder if you could give me a quick word? How do you felt facing that dragon? How you feel now, about the fairness of the scoring?'

'Yeah, you can have a word,' said Harry savagely. 'Goodbye.' And he set off back to the castle with Ron."

~Justice for book Harry, and all of the attitude they left out of the films 💔

[krayolakrowns]

Small Appreciations ⛰️🎙🎵🥃

On the floor of a diner sat a green velvet lined guitar case. We made eye contact when the waitress came to take my order, and the first thing I noticed was the indent of your hair. I pause to wonder what kind of hat you may have worn before coming here, yet I disguise my interest by gazing at the whiskey bottles and all their interesting shades of carmel. I catch myself wondering what kind of life you lead. What hobbies fill your time when someone isn't paying you to sing country love songs for townies? Do you find monotony in the charismatic cabins that pepper these hills? Does the pine and moss scent of the very air of this place offer you the same serenity it lends to me? Lost in the nirvana of my fantasies, the girl in the corner I didn't notice approaches you while you finish your final song. The bartender pays you, you kiss your girlfriend, and the mystery of your small appreciations follow you back out of this ligneous diner.

[krayolakrowns]

10 posts!

Hello, my new followers! I have zero social media practice, but I am here to learn, grow, and inspire my own writing and yours! I will try to keep writing more short stories. However, if you have any challenges or suggestions, I would love to receive your ideas!

[krayolakrowns]

Torture prompt!

Prompt #1021

"You won't kill me."

"No, but I can make you wish I would."

[krayolakrowns]

Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments (trans. Richard Howard) [ID in ALT]

[krayolakrowns]

— Emily Brontë, from "Wuthering Heights", originally published c. 1847.

[krayolakrowns]

watercoloured, blurring,

fading chasms of time

the feel of something softly surreal

but just as real as my flesh

I fall, bloomed to decay—

with some strange seducing scent

left on my skin

I wear this scent of you

as others wear

a jewel or a ring

I carry it here, on my throat,

my hands, my lips…

so strongly

I can taste you

and I tremble.

—The Hollow Quiet

[krayolakrowns]

[krayolakrowns]

Each type of death has a unique type of Reaper. The Reapers of Drowning collects the souls of the drowned. The Reapers of Old Age collects those that have come to their natural end. Write a story about a Reaper for an unusual death finally having a soul to collect.

[krayolakrowns]

You always got strange looks whenever you fed the neighborhood ravens. “I give them food, they give me company,” you’d say. One day, a raven excitedly comes up to you and whispers, “A neighbor plots against you, my lord.”

[krayolakrowns]

[krayolakrowns]

Prompt #1025

"You told me you loved me."

"Yes."

"While you thought I was dying in your arms."

"Yes."

"Well, I'm still alive. Care to repeat that?"

[krayolakrowns]

Jumpy

I swear the damn thing looked at me. " I stood at the hallway door stretching the spiral cord as deep into the kitchen as it would go. Whose idea was it to put the wall mounted phone in front of the window anyway?

"Oh stop, it did not." Hazel chided from the other end, her voice cracking in and out.

"How do you know it's not some weirdo waiting to kill me in my sleep?" I whispered frantically, causing violent goosebumps to pierce my arms and scalp.

The sound of her yawning an obvious dismissal of my concern, "Look, I'm sure you're just seeing things. It's only been a few days. I finished unpacking. Once you make the place feel more like home, you'll be less jumpy. I love you, now - good night." The line cut out.

With that, my loyal and ever doting best friend sentenced me to a night full of anxiety, alone. I grumbled, rushing over to slam the phone back on the receiver. Maybe she's right, I thought, peering out my kitchen window once more. Into the starless night, I studied the pale outline of the scarecrow in the smoky corn field.

"I must've imagin-" glowing red eyes lit the hollow face of the creature, boring into my very soul. I dropped out of sight, crawled out of the kitchen, through the foyer of the drafty farm house, and didn't stop until I was safely barricaded in my room upstairs.

I thought, maybe if I said it outloud, I'd convince myself to agree with Hazel. Call me a coward, but I'm not coming out til dawn. I've been out in the fields a handful of times now, and I can say with absolute certainty that there are no power sources out that direction. I had run through every possible explanation that could've debunked what I saw. What felt like decades later, long awaited daylight streamed in through the dusty curtains.

Shoving the solid oak dresser aside once more, I wrapped myself in a robe and crept hasily toward the kitchen window. There he was, the innocent, unassuming scarecrow that lives in my corn field. His back was to me, which only irked me more.

I didn't even have coffee before I had taken an ax to his wooden stake, dragging him by the ankles to the end of the driveway like a sacrifice for the garbage collector. Looking at his tottery form in the daylight made me feel all the more deranged. It's just straw stuffed into a t-shirt and a ratty pair of jeans. The last owner of this house gave him a red and black checkered flannel. He wore a thin mouth of twine and two simple, (non LED, trust me I checked) button eyes sewed to his burlap sack head.

Shaking my head, more at myself than anything I turned, going about my day as usual. Getting rid of that vile object filled me with a sense of peace, similar to when you kill a spider in your kitchen or spray a wasp nest from the garage. As a matter of fact, I was completely ready to gloat about my accomplishment when I picked up the phone and recognized Hazel's voice.

Oh, so impatiently, I waited as she went on telling me about her day and the old fling she ran into during her lunch hour. I used my new butcher knife I got as a house warming present to dice up the chicken before adding it to the hot pan on the stove.

"So, tell me, "she began, "did Manny come and bother you at all last night?"

'Manny', being the affectionate nickname she gave my straw watchman. The static coming through the line did nothing to inhibit her unyielding ability to mock me.

"I evicted him, cut him down this morning. I watched him get carted away in the dump truck. " I gloated on the phone.

"Good riddance if you ask me. That thing was so old that it was bringing down the property value." She joked over the increasing static.

"I bet he was here when the property was fir-" the click after the line disconnected interrupted my thought.

Alone with only the sound of the chicken sizzling away in the pan, I pinched the phone with messy fingers to return it to its receiver again. I dug tongs out of a cardboard box on the floor labeled 'utensils', using them to put the cooked chicken over my pasta.

The dining room was pitch back this late at night, and when I flicked on the light, I froze. My heart pounding in my ears, I quietly set the plate onto the table, picking up the shirt draped over my usual chair.

A red and black flannel.

No way, I thought. Absolutely no way this could be- bolting back to the kitchen, I threw my body weight against the sink. Tearing open the curtains with the ferocity of a mad woman, there he was. Red beaming eyes bore head-on at me, only this time, his mouth hung open in a horrifyingly silent scream.

I nearly yanked the whole phone off the wall, "911, what is your emergency?"

"This is going to sound crazy, but there is a scarecrow outside of my house-"

"Is there a reason you feel threatened by this scarecrow?" She asked, urging me to get on to the real emergency.

My eyes never left the creature, I stared at it as aggressively as it stared at me. My determination to be rid of it holding me in place, "I- I cut it down this morning. And now it's returned." I stammered, trying to make my story sound as disquieting as possible.

The 911 operator was as hesitant as Hazel to believe my tale. She took down my address before informing me there would be a squad car sent out first thing in the morning. I spent yet another night barricaded in my room, my dinner drying out on the dining table.

At dawn, I crept back downstairs, filling me with erie deja vu. Like last time, I had fled so quickly that I had left every light on. I glared out of the kitchen window from the doorway, unable to do anything but wait for the cops to arrive.

They only sent one cop. He lavked any shadow of my concern, which made me all the more worried. He and I ventured out into the dry field, the sun just cresting the roof of my hoary real estate. In the daylight, the demonic scarecrow looked innocuous, but he was missing his flannel.

As expected, the nearby county police department has dubbed my troubling call as a 'false alarm' and to put it frankly, I snapped. I had disappeared into my shed across the lawn, loading up the wheelbarrow as the cop drove back toward town. I emerged after he had long gone and made laps to the scarecrow, dropping firewood at the base of its new post. I poured damn near two whole gallons of gas on the pire before lighting a wad of newspaper. Sweat and tears marred my face and in frustration I hurled the flaming ball at the evil spirit. I watched triumphantly as it went up in smoke. Just standing there, while it burned. To ensure it didn't escape, but also to spray water on the dry grass around it. Once I was satisfied, I spent the day in bed, unable to shake my nerves.

The dread filling my core didn't relent after the flames had died and the sun had set, so I decided to skip dinner entirely. I looked out to see the remnants of that damned scarecrow, crumpled to smoldering fragments now. I assiduously hung a towel to block the window entirely and went back to bed.

I was just starting to drift to sleep when a thump sounded below my floor boards. Everything in my body screamed with warning, I grabbed the flashlight off my nightstand. Avoiding the creaky spots to the best of my ability, I shuffled over to the door. another thump, and with the door cracked, I could tell it came from the kitchen. Something walked across the groaning floor with enough weight to sound like a pirate ship.

At the top of the stairs I hit the bottom of the flashlight hard enough for the batteries to kick on. This was no scarecrow. A plethora of shadowy limbs, flailing at inhuman angles came barreling up those steps at lightning speed.

I had no time to scream.