Spoopy Writing Challenge — Day 7

Well, well, well, if it isn’t All Hallow’s Eve Eve. You know what that means – it’s the final story of my October writing challenge. 

I thought I might share how my writing process has been for this challenge, in case you’re curious! How quickly I start writing really depends on my mood that day, which of course can be difficult if I’m tired or have had a bad day. It always starts with me reviewing the list of prompts I’ve made, thanks to your help. Sometimes one will stand out and an idea will come right away – like with yesterday’s. Others might be harder. This can be for various reasons. I might get a basic idea for a prompt but need to flesh it out – like with the story for day five. For that prompt, I had to puzzle out what “currency” could compel a ghost to haunt. 

In all these scenarios, I usually start writing before I have a fully formed story. I don’t know the length or details, there are some gaps I have to fill in as I go, and I improvise a lot. I don’t get much time to edit either, so sometimes the edges stay a little rough (forgive me, dear reader, for my editing sins!)

What are the benefits? Well, I get to offer you, my loveliest reader, seven spooky stories for spooky season! But it also offers me a chance to push boundaries, to push myself. The prompts can often get me to write something I would never have otherwise. The time constraints forces me to ignore my inner critic in order to write. 

And overall, it can boost my sense of accomplishment. I like knowing that you are here with me, reader, enjoying the stories I’m telling. So thank you. Thank you for reading them, thank you for commenting, or liking, or even just lurking and sending me good thoughts. I appreciate you. 

And while today is the last story, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a treat (or trick) for you tomorrow, so if you want to know what that little Halloween goodie is, you’ll have to come back and see!

If you haven’t, make sure to read the rest of my challenge stories and let me know what you think in the comments below. I’d love to know your thoughts! So, without further ado, today’s prompt comes from B.D. Brave:

I can’t stop eating decorative beads

And to close out my 2022 October writing challenge, for my seventh and final story, I bring you…

Look at the State of Me!

“When you feel that emptiness inside you,” Debra said with a smile at the webcam installed in front of her ring light. “You can fill it. Fill it with self assurance, self love, and selflessness.”

She paused half a second, smiling, smiling, smiling, then winked. 

“Of course, if you’re in dire need. You can fill it with cake! Thank you for joining me today for my newest episode of Devoutly Debra. Until next time, stay centered, stay present.”

She gave the cam a wave, then shut off the recording. Her smile disappeared with the little red circle. 

Next came an hour of editing, adding filters, adding soft lo-fi music, a title card, rendering, before loading it up to the platform and setting a scheduled release. All done in the quiet bedroom, the only sounds the muffled shrieking girl underneath the desk whose hands, feet, and mouth were duct-taped. 

Debra watched the loading bar process, process, complete. She closed the laptop and pushed away from the desk. Not her desk. The young girl’s. It was covered in gel pens, high school textbooks about pre-cal, chemistry, and Shakespeare, a couple unicorn plushies, and scattered make-up palettes. 

She stood, her hands shaking, turned and faced the small bed with the yellow duvet. On top of the cover was the small box that Debra had brought with her. 

“It’s not fair, you know,” she said and opened the box. 

Inside were beads. 

Debra sunk to the floor, tears prickling her eyes. “I helped so many people but no one helped me.”

She met the eyes of the young girl, who still lay beneath the desk. Her parents were away, Debra saw them leave. They hadn’t been very careful, leaving the garage door open, so Debra could watch them heave their suitcases into the trunk of their van. Watch them drive away as their single child waved goodbye.

“Alone in a crowd.” Debra picked up a wine bottle, unscrewed its cap, and gulped some. The next bit was always the worst. “Did your father tell you you cried too much?”

The young girl sobbed, her mascara running, tears streaking her duct tape gag. 

Debra dragged the box off the bed, into her lap, the wooden beads – each the size of a cherry - clacking against each other, a rainbow of pastel colours. 

“We’re all just sponges, absorbing the world around us,” Debra continued. “And the world is dirtied by our greed and lust and selfishness. Some of us absorb more than others. It’s not our fault.”

She dug a hand into the box, feeling the smooth wooden beads against her palm. 

“You’re too thin-skinned. That’s what they told me.” Debra set the box down, leaning forward, getting on her knees. “They didn’t know how right they were.” 

Debra sighed, feeling the girl’s eyes on her. Slowly, as though on a stage, performing for an audience, Debra pulled off her sweater, her undershirt, unhooked her bra. 

“I never felt good enough. I dropped out of college, thought I could make a name for myself as an influencer.” She ran her hands over her sides, her belly. “The world ignored me. I was a shadow. My parents kept asking when I’d get a real job, when I’d grow up.”

Debra crawled towards the young girl, who let out a muffled scream and tried to shimmy away from her. 

Debra sat back on her heels. “Am I the problem? Or was the world so uncaring that it made me this way?” She gestured at the quarter-sized holes that dotted her skin, like dalmatian spots, like the empty pods of a lotus root. “Just look at the state of me!”

The young girl shook her head, new tears pouring from her puffy eyes.

Debra pulled a box cutter from her jeans pocket, pushed its blade up. “They didn’t find me lacking, but they made me feel inferior, and that made me lacking. Can a person really say that they can define their own worth? Is our worth not weighed by the judgment of others? Was I not whole until their lack of interest, their bored eyes, their cruel comments made me small?”

The young woman heaved against her bonds, hitching with sobs, and fear sending her into convulsions. 

“They left me wanting and so I want. I must feed the void. I have to find my place in the world and weigh myself down with worth. You understand, right?” Debra said. “To feel seen. To feel worthy. I want to feel whole.”

Debra reached forward and pulled the young girl to her by the girl’s blonde hair. Pulling up the other’s shirt, Debra dug the box cutter blade in, sternum to pelvic bone, exposing the rib cage, the organs, the inner workings. Blood as deep as wine flowed forth. Debra reached back blindly, finding the box, pulling forth fistfuls of beads and stuffing them into the young girl’s abdominal cavity. 

The holes in Debra’s chest and belly gasped like suffocating fish mouths, desperate, desperate, desperate.

“Am I alive?” Debra asked the dying girl, whose blood soaked into the decorative beads and poured over the carpet. 

Debra caressed the young girl’s face, then reached into her gaping chest cavity, pulling out a fistful of blood soaked beads. “Am I enough?”

Like kernels of popcorn, Debra popped one bead in her mouth, swallowed, then another, and another. 

On her body, the beads reappeared, blocking the holes on her chest, on her sides, on her ribs, her belly. Finally quieting them. Their hunger silenced by the crimson, glistening beads. 

She couldn’t stop eating the decorative beads, moreso she wouldn’t stop eating them. They blocked the emptiness. They helped her feel whole. She ate until every void in her body was filled and the hungry feeling of unworthiness had quieted. 

Debra opened her eyes. She looked at the massacred girl in front of her. The girl’s worth was gone, consumed by Debra. 

Debra stood, packed away her beads and her laptop. She would have to find a new place to film. Eventually the beads would be gone and the holes would demand. She would need to find her next mark. She would need to find her worth again. 

But she wouldn’t cry. Debra stopped crying when she was a child. When her father had shouted at her for being weak, her mother had told her to grow a thick skin.

She didn’t cry in college when she’d caught her fiance cheating on her.

She hadn’t cried when her professors told her she wasn’t good enough.

She hadn’t cried at the hateful comments online when she started out her channel.

And she hadn’t cried when the holes began to appear.

Debra had just developed a need. 

A need to be seen, to find a way to fulfill her self, to find meaning. 

And she wouldn’t stop.

Debra knew she was worthy of continuation, no matter the cost. 

She deserved to be seen.

And that’s the final tale, my dear reader. But be sure to come back tomorrw. I have something special for you.

x PLM