#WEP October #Horrorfest - Life is a sunless garden. #IWSG October - let's talk about ghosts.

 Hello there!

I know I'm a week early for the IWSG, but what the heck. It fits in perfectly with the WEP special challenge, so I'm all over it.

October 2 question - Ghost stories fit right in during this month. What's your favorite classic ghostly tale? Tell us about it and why it sends chills up your spine.

My favorite ghostly tale is Dracula, the old classic vampire tale, often credited with so much vampire lore. But ghosts come in various forms. The ghost I'm writing about today is all too common, but has a lot in common with vampires.

There remains a fascination with paranormal romance. Here's the latest:

"63% of Amazon's top 100 best-selling books in 2024 are Romance titles, and 30% of those feature paranormal or fantasy elements."  

Alex Newton (K-lytics

So here I go...

It feels so good to be writing again. So if you missed my last post, you'll know I'm back after a long hiatus. I'm the epitome of the #IWSG. I feel like I've forgotten everything about publishing etc, but am glad that the writing is still there. And I'm starting back with #flashfiction, my favorite. If you missed it, WEP is back for an October special challenge for all those who've been missing the motivation to write out of your comfort zone. 

The idea for my WEP entry hit me when I recollected Oscar Wilde’s quote – “A life without love is like a sunless garden.” I thought about the possibilities, and this is what I came up with.

 

A Sunless Garden

 

A Sunless Garden

The city of New Orleans moved to its chaotic rhythm, indifferent to the hollow ache nestled inside Clara's chest. How many people were like her, going through the motions but not really living? You’d never know with all the color, noise and mayhem surrounding her. She was an empty shell, nothing left inside but cold and desolation.

Completely out of sync with her city.

She sat at her favorite café window, mesmerized by rain streaking down the glass. Every drop felt like a tear she couldn’t cry, every shadow on the pavement outside a whisper of something lost.

"More coffee?" The waiter, his smile mechanical, held up the steaming pot of darkness. Clara liked his offish manner. No chatting. Just isolation.

She nodded, not caring that she hated the bitter taste. The warmth it gave was all she craved, a small comfort in a world grown cold.

As she sipped her third brew for the day, a glint caught her eye—outside, across the street, a man stood under the awning of her favorite bookstore, Dead End Books. His eyes locked on her, not with the casual gaze of a passer-by, but with a dark, knowing intensity. Clara’s breath hitched. There was something wrong about him, something familiar, yet utterly alien.

She looked away quickly, her heart pounded, the air in the café suffocated her. Her breath was choking gasps. The last time she had felt that sensation was with Thomas, her late husband. The same heart-racing fear masquerading as love. What torture had he planned for her when he returned from work and decided he hated the meal she’d prepared? But Thomas had died three years ago, and the pitiful trickling of love that had once warmed her world had died with him.

She’d always been lonely. Thomas was her antidote to loneliness, her lifeboat, until she came to prefer loneliness to her life with him.

Guilt tore at her. Why did she do what he asked right to the end? How could she administer that lethal dose that took him from the world? When she refused, he cursed and ranted, spittle flying in her face. Then he said his final words – “I’ve never loved you. Truth is, I’ve hated you for a long time.”

He was taunting her. He always taunted her to get what he wanted. She shouldn’t have done it. But she gave him what he wanted as she always did.

As the needle pricked his arm, his eyes glinted, triumphant. To the last you obey me, they said.

Now, her life was a sunless garden—dead flowers choked by weeds, nothing but shadows.

She scanned the street, but the man had disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared. Yet unease gnawed at her. She left notes on the table, rushed from the café, her heels clicking on the wet sidewalk in a hurried, hollow rhythm.

As she rounded the corner, she felt it again—that eerie presence.

Not someone.

Something.

She spun around, but the street was empty. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. As drops of rain fell on her head, the world seemed to warp, grow darker, the sky a bruised gray that smothered the last vestige of light.

She sped down the bright, graffitied alley close to her apartment, but the walls were black towers, pressing against her. Every footstep echoed twice. Someone was walking behind her.

She stopped.

Turned around.

The man. At the far end of the alley. Shrouded in shadow. He stood, legs planted apart, arms raised in the air like a boxer ready to administer the first blow. His eyes glowed faintly through the shadow, the way Thomas’s had the night he died—distant, lost to the sickness that had taken him, yet triumphant when she carried out his bidding.

"Who are you?" Clara demanded, her voice trembling.

The man stepped forward, walking slowly in her direction, and with every step, the world dimmed. The lights flickered, street traffic silenced, even the rain stopped mid-air, frozen in time.

"You … know … who … I … am."

Her heart raced, the truth clawed at her mind. This wasn’t real. Couldn’t be.

"Thomas? But you’re dead.”

The figure smiled, but there was no joy in it.

"Not exactly."

His voice was Thomas’s, but colder, laced with something darker, more threatening.

"You let me go, Clara. You killed me. Now you have no one. Instead, you’re living in this sunless garden of grief, and you’ll never escape."

Clara took a step back, her pulse a wild drumbeat in her ears. "This can’t be. You’re not him."

The figure stopped before her, so close she could smell his stench. Tilting his head, he growled like an attack dog.

"No. I am what’s left. The emptiness. The darkness you invited in when you let love go."

“What we had wasn’t love. You hated me. You taunted me. You beat me.”

Her back hit the alley wall. She was trapped by shadows.

"What … what do you want?"

His eyes glowed brighter, the alley swallowed the last fragment of light. "I want what you took from me. What you buried with your cold heart."

“My heart was never cold. That was all you. Despite how you treated me, I loved you.”

His teeth grimaced, rotten and yellow. His face in hers, his spiney hands encircled her neck.

“But I never loved you, Clara. I pitied you. Your life has always been a sunless garden.”

He squeezed, harder, harder.

Her eyes bulged, opened long enough to see the triumph in his.

And then the world went black.

In the silence, broken only by the inhuman sounds emanating from her throat, she realized the truth. Love was not the sun. It was the garden. Without it, the shadows had come for her.

TAGLINE:

The scourge of Domestic Violence reaches beyond the grave.

 

WORDS: 1000

FCA 

Aren't you sickened by those horrific stories of domestic violence and despite the money thrown at the scourge by the government, the violence gets worse. And I don't believe in judging women for staying in a toxic marriage - not everyone has an 'out' and some are kept in this situation by crippling emotional needs.

I wanted to show how far reaching domestic violence is - it reaches beyond the grave.

Thanks for visiting and reading. It's good to be back to blogging!

The awesome co-hosts for the October 2 posting of the IWSG are Nancy Gideon, Jennifer Lane, Jacqui Murray, and Natalie Aguirre!

To read more Horrorfest stories, click on a name below