Writing Challenge Day 1
It’s time, dear reader! It is time for the annual PLM October writing challenge!
Before I get into that — if you missed the Posthaste Manor launch party this past Saturday, don’t worry! The recording is now up on my Youtube channel so you can watch it now!
Now, to kick off the challenge is this prompt: a story about something spooky that hides in the piles of raked leaves that you see in autumn. It can somehow move between piles of leaves without being seen.
Dedicated to Curtis Ghoul (who also requested there be a corgi in the story)
An Eventful Day For Borgi the Corgi
Borgi the corgi watched the man across the street. The man, dressed in a stained white shirt and ripped jeans, crushed a beer can against his thigh, then tossed it behind him into the bushes in front of his house, to join the three others.
The man cleared his throat, reaching down and picking up a rake, and began to attack the crunchy, colourful leaves that covered his front yard. He had a big yard. A yard Borgi deliberately avoided when his human took him on walks.
Borgi’s ears perked forward, he went still.
In the largest pile of leaves, just under the fragrant oak tree in the man’s yard, something moved. The man stopped, turned, stared at the pile.
A crow cried from the top of the street sign, a weak wind whispered. The man shook his head and continued raking. Borgi watched the pile of leaves.
Crimson maple leaves, yellow oak leaves slid down as the pile shivered and Borgi caught a glimpse of something oozing, caught the faintest whiff of rot. It whimpered, a low high whine.
The man turned again, gripping his rake like a bat. The man didn’t like animals, didn’t have pets. He’d once chased a woman down the road because her golden retriever, a lovely dope named Chowder, and not as smart as Borgi at all (but that could be said about any other dog, Borgi thought to himself, as he considered himself an especially intelligent corgi) had pooped in the man’s yard.
The man stared about everywhere, his eyes bulging. He muttered something and dropped his rake, going back in his house, coming back out with another beer. The thing in the leaves sighed, turning, turning as the leaves came falling down. The man threw his beer aside, grabbed the rake, and ran to the pile.
Borgi’s nose caught the thing’s movement. One moment it was in the largest pile, the next it was in the smaller one at the other end of the yard as the rake came stabbing down. The man struck and struck, his face red and glistening. There was nothing there. The man didn’t smell the thing’s reek as it passed from one pile to another. He may as well be blind.
The man stumbled back, gasping, wiping his forehead with the edge of his shirt. He shook his head, started to rake up the leaves he’d just decimated. Behind him, at the other side of the yard, the thing watched.
Borgi cocked his head. The lurker beneath the leaves whined, much like a puppy in pain. It sounded just like Tiff, the chihuahua who had lived next to the man until she had gotten sick and died after eating something from his yard.
The man whirled around, “What the fuck!”
Borgi smelled the thing shift from the far pile to another, closer to the man. The man took a few steps forward, then stopped, his nose wrinkling. He could finally smell what Borgi could. Now Borgi could smell the man’s fear, wafting across the street on the chill autumn breeze.
The thing growled in four voices, dogs, cats crying out. The man spun, swung his rake but it was already in another pile of dead leaves behind the man.
The pile shuddered, shifted as the lurker rose up from beneath. More of its slimy flesh was revealed, putrescent rivers of ooze running down its many flanks, its many milky eyes flecked with leaf fragments.
Borgi trotted to the edge of his yard. He considered himself a morally good creature. He protected his human from squirrels and the man who came with paper each day and never smiled. He once helped find a little girl who had fallen into a ditch and even had his picture taken.
He could bark now and perhaps warn the man. Instead, he sat and watched.
The man finally sensed the predator behind him and he turned, rake raised defensively. The thing rose to its full height, towering over the man. An oozing green-gray column of legs and paws, muzzles and ears, teeth bared in anger and pain, blind eyes bulging.
Borgi sneezed as the overwhelming stench of death rolled over him.
The man yelped and swung his rake, the tines sunk into the lurker’s flesh and its many muzzles howled. Clear pus seeped from the wounds.
The man dropped the rake, turned to run.
Borgi thought he recognized a friend or two in the column. Friends who he’d long since said goodbye to.
The lurker fell on the man, its many mouths snapping, tearing, rending. The man screamed but his voice was smothered by the soggy pile of dead flesh that crushed him. The sounds of the bones being crunched, tendons torn, the wet slurping of fresh hot meat made Borgi’s mouth water. It was still hours before his own dinner unfortunately and he doubted the lurker would share its kill.
When it was finished, the lurker slunk across the grass and slid beneath a pile of leaves. Borgi waited until its smell was gone, then he trotted across the road and for the first time in his five years, set a paw onto the man’s yard. Nose to the grass, Borgi snuffled a bit. The lurker had left nearly nothing behind, but it had left something. Maybe a gift in fact. Borgi pinched the still sticky bone–just the right size for his little muzzle— and carried it back to his yard, where he could gnaw it in peace until it was time for his human to feed him.
Hope you enjoyed the first story of my challenge. If you haven’t sent me a prompt, there’s still time:
x PLM
