The handpicked crowd of spectators rowdily make their way through the underground passages and into the House Of Horror Dungeon. They sit and eagerly await the arrival of the Devilishly wicked House Of Horror Madam. A loud crash and bang, she suddenly appears in a puff of smoke and slowly makes her way through the crowd, taking her seat on the throne of bones.
“Bring on the contenders!” she calls, her voice demanding and pleasing to the crowd.
Clicking and ticking, the steel doors of two cages rise and the two contenders step forth into the fighting ring.
On the right, new challengers, Morticia, ready to step up and fight for her right to live. On the left, Lady Lych of Alethdin, her beauty and wisdom pouring from her body, head held high and ready to take the lead.Both bow to the Madam and the crowd goes wild. Baying for blood each chant their favourite to win.
Two have arrived. Only one will leave with their life.
Who are you backing?
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Happy New Year By Morticia
Mattie held the match in her hand. No need to be in a hurry; she had plenty of time before midnight. One stroke, one flick of her wrist and her life would start over fresh as the new snow. And it must be at the very instant the old calendar died. She stood on the sidewalk checking the time on her phone every so often.
She thought about the people inside the dark house. Her mother and her mother’s lover of more than ten years had become too old to stay up much past ten o’clock. They would have put out the cat, locked the door and turned off the television long ago.
And that was exactly what Mattie wanted. She wanted the shock of reality to get them long before the flames ever did. Her mother and her scheming little brain! She and Darryl deserved each other. She would no doubt sit up in her bed, tap Darryl and tell him she smelled something burning.
He would sit up and sniff the air. “It’s just a fireplace somewhere in the neighborhood,” he would tell her. “Go back to sleep.” He would never believe that Mattie had left prison on her twenty-fifth birthday after ten years and come back to cook a great feast for the New Year.
She pushed the button and the screen lit up on her phone. Five minutes ‘til blast off. She smiled.
She wondered if her father had felt the blast when Darryl’s car bomb exploded. She remembered screaming as the explosion knocked her into the snow drift in the yard. She continued to scream as her father’s car roasted with him inside in the driveway in front of their house. Her mother had been seeing Darryl for a while and Mattie knew all about them. She knew that her dad would’ve taken everything from his wife, and Mattie hoped to see her mother begging in the streets. She had screamed this at her mother on her sixteenth birthday.
Darryl was a dangerous man; Mattie knew this because she had been on the sore side of his fist a couple of times, but Mattie’s mother, Florence, seemed to love that about him. When the police showed up and her mother pointed to her teenaged daughter telling them her well-rehearsed story of the imaginary father-daughter fights that had gone for a year, Mattie made the resolution that she would have her revenge for herself and for her father.
One more minute. The emptied gas cans were tucked neatly in her trunk as she took a step closer to the house. A single fire cracker popped down the street as she struck her match and flicked it. If any other fireworks went off, they were overpowered by the monumental explosion of the house where Darryl and her mother lay sleeping.
“Happy New Year!” She sang Auld Lang Syne as she got in her car and drove away watching the flames in her rear-view mirror.
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An Evening to Remember By Lady Lych of Alethdin
Women wearing sexy waitress costumes, carrying trays of shot glasses with coloured liquid in them, circulate through the crowd outside the town clock tower on New Year’s Eve. One of them stations herself near you. Men drift over, drawn by the woman’s figure.
“What’s this then?” One man asks.
“It’s a new drink.” The waitress replies. “Contains an aphrodisiac guaranteed to make this evening one you will never forget.”
Another man grins. “Sounds like my kind of drink. How much?”
“Free, until I run out.” she smiles back.
Amused, you watch the byplay as one after another downs the drink.
A shout rings out from the crowd “One minute left!”
Everyone cheers and begin to surge towards to the railings, in preparation for the fireworks. The bunny slips away with an empty tray and climbs into a black van with the rest of the waitresses.
“…Five…Four…Three…Two…One…Happy New Year!”
As the town clock tolls out the twelve strokes welcoming the New Year into being, the crowd cheers and strangers turn to hug each other. It's obvious to you who has had the new drink, they get more involved with their partners, the lust contagious.There’s a scream. You recognise the first man who took a drink from the waitress. He’s collapsed to the floor, his skin lime green. His trousers bulge and writhe, each movement drawing a shriek of pain. Fascinated, you watch as the cloth tears and a cyclopean head peeps out of the hole on a long neck, swinging and looking at each personaround it. With a hiss and a wriggle the creature pulls itself out of the material, blood flooding out of the wound left behind.
“It’s a trouser snake!” Someone shouts. A titter ripples amongst the crowd.
A circle widens around the dead man, everyone watching the creature which darts towards a woman wearing a short skirt. It moves too quickly for her to react, disappearing up her leg and under the skirt. She gasps, her face flushing and breathing quickening; she cries out in ecstasy, dropping bonelessly to the floor beside the man, hundreds of tiny cyclopean snakes pouring from her body. The front row of people try to move away, but there isn’t enough room. Each tiny snake selects a woman and slithers up her legs.
Sirens blare; police shout, but it’s too late. The crowd are a panicking mass that can’t get away: those who aren’t lying at feet in pools of blood, anyway. Each wriggler feeds on the blood, growing and seeking out more sustenance. The first snake reappears having stripped the flesh from the woman, huge and sluggish. Rearing its ugly head, the snake stares up at you balefully before exploding, goop splattering over your body. The fine mist accompanying the explosion is breathed in by every one around you.
The next morning, the waitress reappears. She looks up at your bronze prison. “England is finally ourssss, my sister. We shall free you soon… and the Medusai shall rule.”
Wow, I am so honored to find that both myself and House of Horror has been nominated in the P&E Polls 2010. House of Horror is nominated as Best Fiction Zine and is currently at number 8. If you want to push up that leaders board then you can vote for us HERE It wil only take around two minutes of your time but would be a huge achievement for us if we got to number 1.
