Horror/Scary: February 14, 2024 Issue [#12405]
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 This week: The Window Into Fear
  Edited by: W.D.Wilcox Author IconMail Icon
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Table of Contents

1. About this Newsletter
2. A Word from our Sponsor
3. Letter from the Editor
4. Editor's Picks
5. A Word from Writing.Com
6. Ask & Answer
7. Removal instructions

About This Newsletter


Horror would not annoy a soldier any more than the sight of a hammer annoys a carpenter. It is sentimental to pretend that horror is not the tool of the soldier, just as the hammer is the tool of the carpenter. We live off death and the threat of death and we must take it calmly and use it well.... Eventually, I came to enjoy killing, as a pianist enjoys the Czerny which keeps his fingers limber for the Beethoven.
-Irwin Shaw

I’ll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment.
-Mark Lawrence

When I try to write love, it only turns into horror. Thinking about it with a clear head, feeling such deep emotions to some other person you don't even know is truly a terrifying thingI wonder if love isn't a manifestation of madness in some way.
-Gen Urobuchi



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Letter from the editor


Windows


         Looking into a window is not the same as looking through it. Windows are like doors opening into other worlds--worlds left better undisturbed. Even now, a fresh spring garden lies before me. I can see the sunlight falling upon the trees and sweet grass, smell the scent of mushrooms growing in the moist shadows, and hear the gentle gurgle of the stream and the hum-buzz of insects.
         A beautiful lady strolls through the garden, her steps taking her nowhere. She catches a glimpse of her reflection in the smudged and moss-stained window of the old shed. Between the time she sees her reflection and the time in which we now stand, I am with her.
         I come without invitation--my laughter breaking her silent mood--and make myself at home in her mind. To the people that live on the edge of light, facing the storm, I float through their eyes like a reptile’s smile, like tears that never dry, like an unwanted love with an absolute stranger.
         I am fear.
         Even as she continues to look about the garden, I am there with her.
         Slowly I fill her thoughts with the sensation of red, biting ants that burrow into her flesh, chewing their way deeper and deeper toward the essential fibers of her soul. She feels torn from herself strand by strand, her confidence slowly ripped to agony. She can not believe that she can endure such pain and remain conscious of it. Instead of dying, she is caught in an eternity of incineration as though she has been struck by a bolt of lightning that will never end. Her legs collapse, and she rolls upon the garden floor with no control over her pain, pressing her fingers through the grass and tearing at the dirt. The gnawing insects peel the skin from her bones, consume the chunks of loneliness, and reveal her true naked heart.
         Yet still, she endures.
         You could say it’s an incomprehensible fact for the moment, but the moment will change.
         She is in another place now. It has no features and no dimensions. It is simply gelid white, multiplied to infinity, faceless as snow, demeaning as ice. It crawls over her like an angry lover bitter with pain.
         I reveal her worst fear.
         She recalls her mother, who locked her in the attic so that she would be forced to watch her kill herself. It is her dirty little secret. It is what haunts the rooms of her mind. It defines her, makes her what she is, strangles her hope and steals her choice.
         She is completely mine to do with as I wish, but I am incapable of feeling compassion for her because I cannot feel sorry for myself. Without the driving force of self-pity, compassion is meaningless.
         She reflects.
         And I am there. The underlying current that flows beneath the incomparable beauty of the garden. That which is just as real but never let out until faintly glimpsed as a reflection in a window.





Editor's Picks

Picking The Blood Red Roses

 
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Vampire Valentines Open in new Window. (13+)
Contest entry. Dialog only. New idea for a Valentine's card.
#2243794 by D. Reed Whittaker Author IconMail Icon

 
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The Valentine's Day Arrangement Open in new Window. (18+)
A completely different kind of floral arrangement. [Bloody Quill entry for Wk. 1].
#1849201 by Merry_Mikey Author IconMail Icon

 Bloody Valentine Open in new Window. (18+)
A gruesome retelling of Snow White.
#1067629 by Ariella Author IconMail Icon

Save the Trees Open in new Window. (18+)
written for Midnight Buffet-my bloody valentine
#1212092 by ⭐Princette♥PengthuluWrites Author IconMail Icon

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This item number is not valid.
#1613512 by Not Available.

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The Key to Your Heart Open in new Window. (13+)
It's Valentine's Day, no better time to enter a haunted house.
#990233 by W.D.Wilcox Author IconMail Icon

 
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Word from Writing.Com

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Ask & Answer

DEAD LETTERS


Ẃeβ࿚ẂỉԎḈĥmas Author Icon
Bill, I got to tell you ... this story chilled me to the bones! Thanks for that. *Ha*

Also, thank you for highlighting my item, "My Blood Runs Cold" .

Fright on!
*Witch*


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