Steve's Daily Blah.

  As the darkness sank into her veins, Victoria felt the chill of its malevolence crawl through her, numbing her feelings but heightening senses. The moon, obscured by fleeting dark clouds, cast an eerie glow on the woodland. A sighing, cool wind whispered secrets through branches gnarled and broken, which loomed like silent sentinels in the moonlit night. An owl hunted in deadly silence while small mammals screeched in the terror of death. Victoria stumbled through the dense woods, the black shadows of the night chilling her to the bone. Her footsteps, sometimes quiet, sometimes loud as dried sticks cracked beneath her tread were the only other sounds to be heard. The ominous darkness played tricks on her mind, conjuring phantom whispers and elusive shadows that slithered through the undergrowth. A distant howl pierced the silence, and the wildlife seemed to sense the encroaching malevolence. Her heart raced, as if it were a paradiddle from some unseen drummer calling from the...

 The puce coloured curtains hung heavy, like a dusty shroud over the window. The air in the room was thick and stagnant. The scrofulous, smelly old man sat in a worn-out armchair, his gaze fixed on the puce walls that enshrouded him. He took a drag from his cigarette, the smoke swirling, dancing with the dust motes, in the dim light. His hands trembled as he reached for the glass on the table. The liquid inside matched the puce hue of the room. He swallowed it down, the bitter taste clinging to his tongue. The clock on the wall ticked on, a marching beat counting down the hours. Outside, the city moved with a muted pulse. Sodium streetlights flickered in the gathering dusk. Shadows danced on the pavement, casting long, puce, distorted shapes. The man's mind wandered through the alleyways of his memories, each one threadbare tapestry woven of that same sombre colour. A knock on the door interrupted the stillness of his dark thoughts. He rose slowly, the puce carpet muffling his shuf...

  In arid hush where whispers roam soft sand the desert's silence wears a shroud so thin its voice a ghostly echo bare and bland tongues of dust quiet conversation spin. In nature's script no tortured rhymes abide nor flowery verses grace this arid tone in stillness where splashed sun dark shadows hide a desert's voice scorched dry and quiet moan. Each grain a syllable that speaks of thirst a parched confession in those shifting dunes no need for flowers when hot wind's dispersed, shush language of great sand hums quiet tunes. So silence here a desert's whispered word in hushed tones dry arid tales are stirred. Links Much more of my stuff available at https://dailyprompt.page.link/X1qUyE2jz2gCFkzv5 Or see my book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tall-Tales-At-Bus-Stop-ebook/dp/B0B135RB4D/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3TGEU7HM5LEKT&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qR5g4YN8X07Isx3scRia7Ky1T06Wa16Wv8RPTZPVWmE.i4Nl12KZvWpS64bNLKk7PdE7r2WvoI8tsiTkFSJoMYQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=tall+tales+at+the...

 The room fell into an unrelenting darkness as the power died. One minute bright as day under the daylight bright LED’s and next - black. My hands groped under the sink for my flashlight, its meagre, almost flat battery beam barely making a difference. My phone buzzed with an insistent urgency: "EMERGENCY ALERT: Unidentified celestial event detected. Seek shelter immediately. Stay tuned for updates." ‘Celestial event,’ I thought, ‘what the fuck is a celestial event?’  The announcement, devoid of details, was a bit of a worry, as helpful as it was useless. Celestial event? Seek shelter? I was in my kitchen, was that shelter? Did I need an umbrella? Should I start digging a cellar? I mean, really? And then the last bit - Stay tuned? Tuned to what? My phone? I asked Alexa but, of course, no use. I went up the internet. What internet? Eventually I found a radio - and it had batteries! The reports crackling through the static like desperate pleas for help. Apparently power grids h...

The desert sun hung high, casting long shadows across the dusty town of Ten Drinks. Weathered wooden buildings lined Main Street, the only street. Paint peeled from the sign above the saloon under the relentless heat so that what had once said ‘Ten Drinks Saloon’ now said ‘Ten inks loon’. Dust devils danced on the edge of town at the end of Main Street, while tumble weed provided the main action, bowling through town on the hot Arizona wind. A solitary rider kicked up the dust as he rode into town, the creaking of his saddle the only sound, apart from the buzz of flies, in the silent town. The locals eyed him warily as he dismounted, the brim of his hat casting a dark shadow over his craggy, sunburnt face. The rider, known as Colt, sauntered into the saloon, his spurs jingling with each step as the spike wheels rolled across the board floor. The piano player halted his tune, and the patrons eyed Colt carefully. Ignoring everyone, he tipped his hat to the bartender, ordered a shot o...

Amelia paced nervously in her modest suburban backyard on the outskirts of St Albans. The neatly trimmed lawns, larch-lap fences and neatly trimmed hedges belied the turmoil within her as the full moon approached, triggering her inevitable transformation. As it did every month, a strange compulsion led her to a small, neglected park nestled within the housing estate. There, amongst the broken playground furniture, the rubbish and discarded nitrous oxide bulbs, she stood, waiting for the full moon to appear over the horizon. In the quiet stillness, a figure, apparently clad in a long robe of shimmering white samite, manifested before her. The figure was quite still, apart from the way it seemed to scintillate under the intermittent bulb flashes of the broken street lamp and its hollow, sunken eyes seemed to penetrate her very soul. The ghostly presence suddenly spoke, in low, deep tones. He spoke of an unexpected change to her existence, revealing that a new life was growing within her ...

In an alley's grimy silence where streetlamp shadows creep a chilling truth resounds through this city's nightly sleep. “Falling feels like flying," a whispered, creepy verse as footsteps echo softly I could think of something worse. Concrete giants stand their edges razor-sharp and at our city's surface on railing’s pointed barb. "Falling feels like flying,” a mad loon’s crazy tale told in smelly corners where body’s are for sale. Down those murky filth strewn lanes no churchbells ever toll so dance some whirling jig to daft stories freely told. "Falling feels like flying," a ghostly haunting spell, in our complex high-rise city to a madmen’s scary yell. Beneath the flickering streetlights in yellow sodium gloom a date and dance with unknown fools and off the roof we zoom. "Falling feels like flying," a sinister refrain, in this urban labyrinth no nonsense is constrained. So tread with caution where danger's whispers hiss in that midnight ...

  The lantern hit the ground with a soft thud, its paper surface crinkling. The wish, scrawled hastily in ink, demanded a reunion with a long-lost, bonkers mad sister named Lila. I scoffed, for me skepticism overrode sentiment. Family ties that snapped years ago, too fragile to endure. Why would I? Doubt lingered, but obligation somehow pressed. Bloody conscience - who needs one? Inquiries led to rumours of Lila's seclusion in the distant Whispering Woods. Good riddance, I thought, but, still, something tugged at my mind. I like to think I’ve a flinty heart, but sometimes . . . The journey was arduous, too hard for me on my own. A guide, a hooded figure, hesitated but accepted the thankless task. Grumpy sod. Lila's dwelling emerged amidst the shadows, a modest cottage, windows dimly lit. Actually, I think it would qualify as a hovel, and therefore, under the legal definition (See Malicious Damage Act 1861, Para. 12) could not safely be riotously demolished. A soft knock on ...

 I stood there where accusations were hurled at me like like daggers. I kept thinking to myself ‘I didn’t do this!’ ‘It wasn’t me!’ But they wouldn’t have it. On and on and on and on. In the end I just wanted to shut them up. Their eyes demanded repentance for sins I never committed. Forced into a show of remorse I definitely didn’t feel, I gave up. I mouthed the hollow words they expected. Well that was mistake. The room echoed with their disdain, their satisfaction in my submission was, to say the least, limited. Now I was a puppet on strings, dancing to the tune of their unfounded accusations. There were more accusations attached to the first - well, if you did that it was obviously you who did this . . . I was forced to cop for the lot. But I can tell you for nothing, each apology dripped with bitterness, a taste of resentment on my tongue. Oh, and were they happy with that. Not a bit of it. Self-righteousness doesn’t even go halfway there. The tossers. They were relishing my h...

 It was a cold, desolate, damp evening, the light fading through Rose Madder to Payne’s grey. The air was leaden with a dead silence, the depressing weight of which was broken only by the distant intermittent hum of some unknown petrol powered machinery, throbbing away to an ear-worm of its own. The occasional creak as the wind forced itself through the skeletal branches and occasional leaves of dark, wet spindly trees closer by. The place lay barren, in parts muddy and in others baked bare. Despondent. It was a space sparsely filled with rangy, spiked and impossibly thorny rose bushes. Once they had been a vivid sea of red, a thrumming reverberation of bees. But they had succumbed to a slow decay, their petals withered, stunted  and brown like the remnants of screwed up envelopes from the tax man. Each stem stood like a twisted corpse, bereft of the vitality that had once been a joy. The garden had been her refuge, a place where she had sought peace and pleasure from the hars...