Have you found yourself stuck in the middle of a particularly bad writer's block? Need a dose of inspiration? Or are you simply looking for some creativity to kick-start your newest novel? Then look no further!
Paranormal Prompts aims to bring you...
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Hello all! Welcome to our newest prompt. This week, we're featuring a picture prompt. The picture is meant to inspire you when you write, which means that you can interpret it in any manner you see fit - be it literal or figurative - provided that there is a clear link between your entry and the prompt. For more guidelines, please refer to below.
PICTURE PROMPT:
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WINNERS:
Please note that winners are not listed in any specific order. To read the rest of the wonderful entries, check them out in the comments section below!
Moonlight pours over the Eastward Stone Motel in Kilburne, Montana. Behind the veil of a coral curtain, there sits a candle whose flame dances with offspringing shadows. Ellis Crawford is impatient, resting on the edge of his hotel bed. In the wavering light, he polishes hunting knives, sparks flying as he slides a skinner up and down the sharpening bar.
Back in LA, Ellis is known not by his face, but by his deeds. The Back Alley Slasher. Here in this rural town, however, he is known by his true name.
Ellis Crawford grew up here.
More importantly, he had his first kill here.
As candlelight flickers on the wall, echoes of bloodsplatter play his mind. Lilith Mirren was a spritely little thing, so much fight in her. Her brown hair, so soft between his fingers. Oh, how he left such a mess behind!
He cannot believe it's already been a decade since that spectacular night, and to celebrate, Ellis Crawford is going to find another. Just like her.
"Not tonight," someone whispers.
Ellis cranes his head toward the bathroom.
"Not tonight," it says again, and this time, Ellis stands, gripping the skinner inflexibly.
He should be alone.
Ellis wonders if the voice is a mere reverberation of neighboring lust in the next hotel room, but he knows it isn't.
It's in here with him.
How delightful, he thinks. Has his prey found him first?
Silently, he edges toward the bathroom, kicks the door open, and flicks the switch.
But there is nothing. Just an empty, retro bathroom with decor still trapped in the seventies. Ellis almost leaves, until he notices the fog on the mirror.
Strange...
He hasn't showered yet.
But not nearly as strange as the message waiting for him.
Ellis steps closer, noticing condensation dripping like blood from the curly tails of enigmatic words: "Wish you were here," it says, and Ellis stares at the heart, broken with streams like tears.
That's when he sees her. A reflection standing behind him with a knife in her hand.
It had been a year since I last moved. Hopefully, for the last time, I could no longer afford to pack again, and I had performed every cleansing ritual there is on myself just to make sure!
It had been five years since I moved out of my childhood home and I swore to never step foot in that hellhouse again.
There was a malevolent force seeping from its walls. At one point, it had affected every single one of my family, but it latched onto me the most while everyone else had the luxury of forgetting the horrors they'd experienced under its roof.
It enjoyed toying with my sanity and mine alone.
Everyone ignored me and called me an attention-seeker. No one would help. So the day I turned 18, I left. And the horrors followed me wherever I went. Until now.
At last, I've finally been rid of it. Never had I had such a long period of relative peace. Whichever ritual of whichever faith it was, IT WORKED!
But it was on the night of March 13, after a refreshing shower, that I saw the words written stroke by stroke on the fogged mirror.
It was a chilling night in the Blackbird family mansion. Windows cluttered open, doors slammed shut, wind made noises to freaked the family. But this night, only Leo Blackbird was left at home. With his mom and dad out for a night out, it left him in charge of running around the house to shut the windows and keep everything in order. His parents would indeed be angered if anything was out of place when they returned.
It had barely been a month since they moved to his childhood mansion and not that long since the tragic event had occurred. He shook the thought away and went back to his bedroom. He noticed that his dad had left him the newspaper and out of boredom he decided to read it. The headlines bolder in red, read "Murder of Marian Bloom yet to be cracked"
As he continued to read, guilt filled him. He thought of his friends back at Lakefield. He thought of all the fun times and the lame jokes that they shared. Then his thoughts drifted away to a darker though, the thought about the fear that his friends had felt in that dreaded day. The day they committed their worst sin. Murder.
Leo felt unshed tears burn in his eyes as he felt a vary of emotions. Guilt, Regret and Agony filled him. He felt cowardly that moment and decided to go rinse his tear stained face. He entered his bathroom to face a steamed mirror. What scared him was the writing on the mirror that said "Wish you were here"
The moment he read that, a hand appeared from the glass reaching out to him. The hand grabbed Leo's wrist in a vise like grip as it pulled him into the mirror. What Leo notices were the well manicured nails that was attached to the hand. The well manicured of Marian Bloom, the girl that he had murdered in Lakefield...
