A note about tonight's story

After yesterday's post about Britain's most common phobias including Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, I couldn't resist dedicating a story to our custard pie-flinging slapstick friends.

Maybe after writing this short piece, I do understand how people can fear clowns. The idea of a smiling, loveable and innocent children's entertainer hiding a malevolent and murderous soul beneath the grease paint is a very disturbing concept.

I mean, just what do those clowns get up to once the show is over, the people have trodden away from the big top across a muddy field, and the campsite lies quiet? Perhaps there's still the smell of popcorn and candy floss on the air, a few lights twinkling in the performer's trailers, the stillness only broken by the sound of lunatic cackling from the clowns as they prepare their evening feast....

Tonight's short but certainly not sweet terror tale: Fears of a Clown

Fears of a Clown

The corporate world was no place for me. It broke me. Took my livelihood, my wife, and for a while, my sanity.

The circus took me in, offered me a new life, a new identity. A clown. Something I’d loved since childhood.

The other clowns aren’t as I imagined. Away from the big top, they change. They frighten me. After the show, strange voices, singing, demented laughter can be heard from their trailer deep into the night.

Last night, I peered in the window. They were cutting strips of flesh from a living child, putting them in hot dog buns.

On writing, my 100 word flash fiction stories and the great fears of the British public.

I hope somebody out there is enjoying my flash fiction horror stories, I'm certainly enjoying writing them. I am going to try, whenever reasonably possible, to write one every day. I'm doing this to help get me into good practise of writing every day, to hopefully encourage people to regularly view my blog, and also as an exercise to hone my skills.

You'd find, if you really wanted to count, that every one of my flash fiction terror tales is exactly 100 words long; not 99, not 101, precisely 100; a century. To write any kind of story whilst adhering to that rule is challenging, but to send a little frisson of fear through your reader's breast is very difficult indeed. Hopefully I've succeeded in doing that with my stories, or at least in provoking your interest.

Either way, feel free to leave comments. I've set this blog up so anyone can post on it, you don't need to log in with a username/password. Whether you want to lavish me with praise, or unleash a torrent of hellish abuse on me, I want to hear your thoughts!

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An interesting article in today's Independent about a survey conducted on the yougov website to discover the nation's greatest phobia. Fear of heights proved to be number one, which I found rather surprising. In fact, I feel rather cheated that the nation's greatest fear could be something so mundane. Heights? Come on, show some imagination!

A couple of more interesting phobias cropped up in the top 13 (see what they did there?) such as Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes), Hemophobia (fear of blood), but by far the most interesting for me was Coulrophobia, the fear of clowns. Clowns. They are quite macabre and scary beings in many ways, and yet can reduce people to fits of laughter. What does this say about what we find funny and what we find frightening? Is there a very fine line between the two? Is this why many people laugh at those 'home videos' of people falling over, or stand up comedians that single audience members out for abuse? Because they're actually afraid of it happening to them and relieved it's not?

Clowns. Interesting.

Tonight's twisted 100 word yarn provides dreams, solitude, awakening and intergalactic, interspecies love!

Suburban Baby Boom

When it came it wasn't like the movies. It took me in my sleep, a discreet home invasion of my unremarkable home in the suburbs.

I lay alone, dreaming; a recurring dream about arriving to work naked.

It seems so petty now. The nude human form, a mundane sack of meat.

When I awoke, the tentacle was snaking down my throat. Ice cold, serrated. Warm salty blood filled my mouth.

It took me back, showed me such sights. When it came time to change me, I welcomed it.

I will bear its young on Earth, and then others will come.

A dystopian terror tale for anyone dreading Monday morning: 'A Question of Confinement'

A Question of Confinement

The thought.

It just popped into my mind on my morning commute, crammed into the shuttle with all the other cattle.

‘Why do we tolerate this?’

The alarm above my seat sounded and two Company droids came from the cockpit, moving jerkily down the cabin to come and arrest me, take me back to HQ for disciplinary action.

The operation will be conducted without anaesthetic and will be painful. Machinery will sustain me while my organs are replaced with synthetics. Components will be placed in my skull, making me programmable; a droid never able to question the Company again.

Tonight's twisted tale filled with Glaswegian swagger. Enjoy, ya bass.....

Fuckin Lost Ya Cunt

Where the fuck are they cunts? Fuckin stag night in London n the cunts’ve fuckin left ays. Nae fuckin clue where ah um. Goat tae find thum or all never get back tae thi hotel.

Walk in this fuckin place, Victorian place, eh? Cunt comes up tae ays, says he kens am lost, kin set ays right.  Says come in the back room n all tell ye where yer pals are.

Aye, OK.

Walk in there n the cunt pulls a knife. Stabs ays in the throat. Ah hear them chantin, guttural words ah canne understand.

Then ah black oot.

Tonight's 100 word terror tale is here! Ever wondered what your own funeral will look like?

A Small Gathering

So this is my funeral; a dismal turnout after half a century of life. My mother weeps, the others stand stony faced. Impassive.

Is this my fate? An eternity spent haunting the living. Unseen and it would seem, unlamented.

There’s somebody yawning. Maybe I’ll pay him a little visit later, see what harm I can do him.

My grave looks so deep, dark. I can’t even see the bottom.  I can hear voices coming from it, beckoning. Demanding.  Shapes rise to the surface and pull me down.

Down, down, deep into the cold, dank earth.

Then I see Him.