Friday Freewriting – August 6, 2021 – Megan

• Character: Monk
• Object: Candy
• Genre/Tone: Horror

For this tone I tried to draw from the feeling I got from a couple of nightmares I had nearly 20 years ago. In the first one I knew I was dead, and I was in a strange lightless country, but I had the sense that life was just a millimeter away behind an invisible barrier, that I should be able to cross, if I could only find it again. I woke up before I did. The second, I was in a room, and the door wouldn’t open, and the light wouldn’t turn on. And I realized that I was never going to escape from that room. Some deep part of me was terrified, but the most dominant part just felt numb disappointment and acceptance.

I was aiming at keeping at least a grain of hope for Brother Gustav’s entrance into realms of light. So I don’t know if this could be considered true horror.

If you try this or any other of these prompts, please share it with us, if you’re comfortable!

Brother Gustav blinked. His cell was in twilight darkness. His mouth was dry and grainy, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. How long had he been unconscious with fever? A bell, a water jug, and a bowl of peppermints were on the table next to his bed. There was no water in the jug, and no one came at the ring of the bell, so he picked up a peppermint and began to suck on it, trying and failing to get rid of the dry cotton taste.

He stumbled out of bed, and his limbs felt hollow with weakness. Water was his first goal, then finding whoever was supposed to be caring for the sick, and then whatever food they would give him.

Dust covered every surface. No candles were lit, not even in the chapel. He stumbled into the cloister and looked out through an arch; he couldn’t see the sky, just inky blackness with that weird twilight sense that real light was just out of reach. And he still hadn’t seen another person. He wandered around to each room, and each cell, and found them locked; no one answered his knocks. Only his own door and the door into the chapel opened. He felt that he should be nervous, but like the light, it was just out of his reach.

He sank to the ground and didn’t know how long he sat. He must have fallen back asleep, because he suddenly realized that there was another habited figure sitting on the ground next to him. He started, the figure didn’t move. The figure wore a hood, and he couldn’t see the face.

“I’m afraid I don’t recognize you brother…” Gustav began.

“You’ve been preparing to meet me for your whole life.” Whispered the darkness in the hood.

He was irked that he wasn’t given a name, but let it pass. “Well, Brother Preparation, will you help a sick monk to some water? Or perhaps milk?”

“It will do you no good now.” And the figure pointed a bone white finger at his own hands, sitting in his lap – withered husks, dry and flaking skin hanging off the bone.

“Oh.” He realized the un-melted peppermint was stuck to his teeth. “Well, what do I do now, Brother?”

“You come with me. You’ve been preparing for this for your whole life.”

The peppermint clattering out through the void in his jawbone just as they crossed the threshold, as they walked into the chapel and down into the dusk of the crypt.