horror

Hide and seek

~ krish kumar ~ Leave a comment

frank-mckenna-720248-unsplash

“No, no, no…” Kavita screamed as she opened her eyes and planted her legs on the floor with force. He feet were glad to touch the threadbare living room carpet. She could feel her fingernails digging into the varnish of the sofa. She looked at the balcony, not that she wanted to. Her neck just seemed to turn on its own. The balcony was empty. An angry orange sun was setting below the railing of the balcony. She forced herself to look away. To look at her son.

Her five-year-old son was staring at her with wide eyes. His lips were puckered up, his chin ready to quiver. He was leaning against the coffee table to support himself.

Kavita’s hand trembled as it rose towards him, “I am just afraid for him…” she told herself. She pulled Ravi into an embrace. “Did I scare you? I am sorry…” she whispered as she kissed his forehead, “Don’t be afraid.” She was not sure to whom she said that.

“The police inspector is at the door…” Ravi said in a small voice. Continue reading →

Advertisements

Mother ate herself…

~ Ell P ~ Leave a comment

Are you asking for Mother?

Well, you won’t find her here. You can search all you want.

Go look into her closet that smells of rotten berries and starch.

Raze her bed; raze it off the sickly sweet whiff that permeates off the sheet.

Take a peek inside the kitchen; you won’t witness her breaking that soft loaf of bread,

Her ample behind busying itself around the kitchen, fretting over the crumbs, a sweet song lilting of her luscious lips while her legs tiptoe in a light tread.

You won’t find her here, just like the cops didn’t.

What happened to Mother, you ask?

Oh that’s easy, she ate herself into a tizzy and then dissolved in a whirlpool of pity.

Do you think I am joking, about my own Mother?

Oh, you didn’t see what I saw?

And you didn’t do what Father did?

At first it was the song that would effortlessly lilt off her lips. It died, died in her tongue because she bit it enough to bleed and burn.

bite-bleeding-blood-cut-favim-com-1386954

Continue reading →

The scavenger

~ LitLatte ~ 1 Comment

kyle-johnston-430068-unsplash.jpg

‘It stinks…’ the voices whispered in Aryan’s ear.  ‘I can’t breathe’ a voice choked in his throat, Aryan bolted upright in his bed, trying hard to catch his own breath. It was way before sunrise, the sky outside his window was covered in a thick carpet of dark clouds and the carpet was leaking. It wasn’t a strong rain, the sky wasn’t weeping and shouting at the earth, the sky was murmuring obscenities and threats. And it had been going on all night long. And that meant the ground was overflowing with the rainwater and that meant the drainage was clogged. Continue reading →

Write Club Magazine – Edition 11

~ Ell P ~ 1 Comment

“The Chronicles of Jim and other stories” marks the eleventh edition of Write Club Bangalore Magazine. You can read it for free under Kindle Unlimited, if not, it is just INR 49.

It starts with a darkly disturbing series of diary entries, by a troubled young man in “The Chronicles of Jim, written by Ashwin Kumar.

Moves on to the riveting Mythological Fiction called “Monster” written by Write Club, Bangalore’s recent enviable talent, Yedu Bose.

The series of stories then takes a dramatic turn and entices us into Romance with Kartik Patiar’s, “The Hot Cup of Cappuccino”.

Of course, now that you have read mythology, psychological horror and romance, you wonder what else does this book have to offer. And we don’t disappoint you with Anjali Torgal‘s fantasy/sci-fi short, “The Tree Whisperer”.

Since, we can’t get enough of sci-fi, we have ensured you get enough of it. Read on to “The Sporulation of Sarpanch Sam”, by, undeniably, our favourite writer Pavan Kumar. If you can’t get enough of Pavan here, follow him on Instagram for his surreal poetry.

Now that we have set the atmosphere of strange, it is time to bring out the big horror guns, with Amel Rahman‘s “No Cats”.

You must be wondering about how twisted we are, with just one romance and everything else is horror and fantasy. No, we are not twisted, at least not much. We do love a good splattering of romance in our imaginary worlds. So, read on to get your mushy on, with Isha Shukla’s “The Stone Bench”.

What did I tell you about our obsession with a good sci-fi?

Ankit Jha, our resident writer, editor and compiler, delights us with this fantasy/sci-fi short called “Wrath of Gods”.

Next up is “The Diary of a Womb”, a socially conscious piece about the conversations of an unborn girl with her male twin, general fiction by Nidhi Srivastava.

Finally, to end this embroiling book is a story written by me, “Raja and Mia”, about a young tiger’s love for his keeper. Genre: Drama.

Read an excerpt here.

Continue reading →

A Mother’s Love

~ krish kumar ~ 1 Comment

ali-morshedlou-598386-unsplashNorman stood outside his mother’s room. He sighed and balanced the tray in his hand, he had made all her favorites, pancakes, sunny-side up eggs, and freshly squeezed orange juice. He knocked on the door.

“Come in” his mother’s hoarse voice shouted.

Norman entered the room and placed the tray on his mother’s bed, across her lap.

“About damn time. What is this breakfast or brunch?” Mother hissed at him, “ I thought you had forgotten about me.”

“Sorry mother, I had to go out to get the oranges, we ran out of them.”

“This is why I tried all my life to teach you discipline. God knows I tried. You used to be better when I could get out of bed and whoop your sorry ass.” Mother took a sip of the orange juice, “ and you still cannot choose ripe oranges. What am I going to do with you?”

Norman stared at his feet. He had to hold both his hands to keep them from shivering. His mouth was dry. He tried to lick his lips but there was no moisture in his mouth. Breakfast was the best time to tell mother. She would only grow grumpier through the day. And he had been wanting to say this for a while now.

“Mother…” he whispered. She did not hear him and continued eating the pancakes.

“Mother, I have decided to leave,” he said as if testing her hearing. Continue reading →

Little red ghagra choli

~ krish kumar ~ Leave a comment

abstract-art-artistic-414768Little Pinky jumped up in joy because it was Diwali. It meant she got to wear her brand new red ghagra choli. It also meant she got to visit her grandmother. Little Pinky got ready even before mommy told her to get up. When mommy came into her room, mommy was very happy to see her ready and helped her into her brand new glittery ghagra choli.

“Can I go meet grandma now?” Little Pinky jumped up and down with excitement.

Mommy’s face fell. She rubbed her eyes and sighed. She forced herself to smile and said, “Yes Pinky, you can go and visit grandma…”

“Yay!” Pinky ran around the house in joy.

Mommy gave her a large box of sweets, “give this to Grandma. Wish her a happy Diwali.”

Pinky nodded, “I have my own gift for Grandma too.” She ran into her room, pulled out her gift from her school bag and placed it inside the box of sweets.

Little Pinky noticed her mom sitting sadly on the sofa. Mommy liked grandma too, just like Pinky did. But grandma and mommy had been fighting recently. Pinky didn’t know why, when she asked mommy, mommy simply said it was because grandma wanted to give her cousin Pappu more chocolates than her. This had hurt Pinky, why would grandma give Pappu more chocolates? Pinky always thought grandma liked her more. But Pinky was sure when grandma saw her in her new red ghagra choli and ate her sweets she would love her again. And she would give her more chocolates than Pappu.

Pinky went to Mommy, “Don’t worry mommy. I will make sure grandma loves me more. I will take good care of grandma.” Continue reading →

Fury…

~ Ell P ~ Leave a comment

It is past midnight. You struggle between the need to watch another episode of Black mirror, or to sleep. You take a look at the time again, 12:30 am. You calculate that if you sleep just about this minute, you would get exactly five hours of rest before your alarm starts screaming to “it’s all about that bass” by Meghan Trainor. A heavy cloud of exhaustion lowers itself and settles on your shoulders. You feel burdened, not just by your increasingly heavy frame but also by your head that carries viscous notions. You sigh and promise yourself that tomorrow you would put Adi early to bed, so that you would have the time to watch at least two episodes of Black Mirror and yet get to sleep by midnight.

You shut your laptop screen and half walk, half tumble into Adi’s room. Partly out of habit and partly out of admiration. You remember how terrified you were of sleeping alone when you were six. In fact, you admit to yourself, but only to yourself, that even now every night you have to stop yourself from begging your six year old to sleep with you, in your room.

You switch on the night-light and watch your little son sleep, his steady breathing calming the storm inside you. You are going to switch off the light and walk back into your room, but you decide against it. You don’t want your child to burden the night terrors that you did, growing up. You are about to turn your back to Adi, when you hear a scratching noise. Your hands freeze, an inch away from the night-light. You stop breathing, your eyes are wide, bulging out of their sockets. Your feet are tethered to the ground like massive Oak trees. Your heart…Your heart beating like horse hooves in a stampede, is the only sound you can hear now. You try telling yourself that you imagined the scratching noise. Yet a sane part of you begs you to double check under Adi’s bed, inside his closet and under the study table. So then, you attempt moving your feet that are still rooted to the ground, after some amount of nudging; they move and as if on autopilot, walk you back into your room. You try to convince yourself that if you don’t acknowledge the fear the fear, doesn’t exist.

scared-child-with-mother-300x200

Continue reading →