Flash fiction project: one dark story per day, all the way through October, each one based on one normal thing gone wrong. More of this year’s stories here. You can find last year’s stories here, or at Amazon as October Nights.
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Normal thing: Kitchens
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SPOTLESS
In the middle of the night I got up and looked into the kitchen, which gleamed at me. The rows of cabinets spoke of containment and order. I knew, because I had done the arranging and shelf-lining myself, that the shelves within them were as neat and tidy as their exteriors. The refrigerator gleamed, its aluminum surface standing stalwart. The range was as sober as a judge, its black flat-top induction surface showing only the markings of gold rings, to delineate its “burners.” Sinks, spotless. Hand towels, tri-folded. Coffee maker, prepared for the coming dawn. Floor, clean enough to eat off of. I walked forward into it, intending to take some neatly-packaged leftovers out of the fridge. Maybe this time, I thought. But of course the cool, dark kitchen twisted around me, and I was standing back at the kitchen door, facing the other direction. I could feel the kitchen’s horror behind me, its sense of violation. I looked, and saw a handprint evaporating from the edge of the marble island, and a drop of blood on the floor. I had made it that far, then.
In the daytime I serve the kitchen, and I belong there. At night, when I am at my hungriest, I am an invader; I am something other.
And someday all that lovely, spic-and-span order that I created earlier in the day will be unable to eject me, and I will consume it all.
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Dark, strange, twisted, and wonderful – #paranormal #horror and #mystery stories from Wonderland Press.