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Psh, that’s not scary. Let me tell you a real scary story. 

My aunt Tabby was driving through the Midwest alone. This was like twenty years ago. She was on some big trip to see America before she settled down or something. And she drove through this weird town. It looked like it had never left the 1900s. There are no cell towers, no chain restaurants, no Walmart. Women are walking around in skirts down under their knees. She was sure it was some religious cult town.

So just at the county line, Aunt Tabby spots an antique shop. And she always brakes for antiques. She goes inside, and she finds this red tea kettle. It’s in great shape, there’s no rust. It’s so shiny it looks brand new. So she gets it. 

That night she’s at a motel, and she can’t sleep. The people in the next room are just the worst. They’re screaming at each other, throwing things around. And they’ve got a baby that’s just wailing. Who could blame it? 

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Aunt Tabby didn’t want to get involved. So she decides instead she’ll just make a cup of tea with her new kettle on the hot plate. 

So she starts boiling water, and the couple next door just will not shut up. But when her water starts boiling, she hears someone scream. I mean, really scream. And then Aunt Tabby hears a new voice. It sounds like a teenage boy, yelling shut up over and over. Aunt Tabby was just starting to think she was going to have to call the motel manager when she hears two gunshots.

Tabby called the cops after that. She was watching out the window when they took the bodies out of the room. The cops took away a teenage boy wrapped up in a blanket. But she didn’t see anyone carry out a baby. 

The next morning Aunt Tabby was so tired that she got completely turned around and ended up driving through that weird old town again. Only this time, it looked completely different. It looked modern, just like any other small town. Like it had gone through a century in one night.

Aunt Tabby always says it was like time was trapped in that kettle, the time that should have passed for that town. And when she boiled water in it, she let the time out. Maybe some other people got caught up in all that time escaping. 

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Aunt Tabby makes tea in that kettle every day. She says it’s the only way to keep time moving at the right pace. And yeah, most of the family think she’s a little nuts, but we all believe her about that kettle. Because if she misses a day, well, time just seems to slow down.

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2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Jennifer Weigel

    August 21, 2022 at 4:11 am

    Been there… Hard Times, Indiana. It was still a depression era shantytown when we passed through. Not even quite sure where it is – we got off the highway one or two exits too soon and were driving a bunch of back roads before we found ourselves again so it may have been a legit time warp. 😉

  2. David Davis

    August 21, 2022 at 4:43 pm

    This one was very fun and I enjoyed the mysterious nature of that kettle.

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Original Creations

The Scent of Blood: Comic Book Art by Jennifer Weigel

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Somehow I came across an older Midnight Panther comic book, Feudal Fantasy #2 from the late 1990s to be precise, and I thought I’d reappropriate it into a new story as a collage. Anyway, this is what evolved. Honestly there wasn’t a lot of content to work with, but that isn’t surprising seeing as how that wasn’t really the point of the original… And sorry, I saved the erotic bits for another project, though even that was pretty tame in this one – just a bunch of boobies.

The Scent of Blood comic book art
The Scent of Blood comic book art

Images: Black and white line drawings of wide-eyed anime women and men in various states of undress, looking cute, being coyly pensive, and hack ‘n slashing.

Text reads: I like… men who are dying. We ought to just kill everyone involved. The scent of blood!! I never see his face, he always wears a mask. What a waste of time. I don’t like this. The horny bastard. What a pig!! -Slash- Sounds like it could be fun.

Ferryman comic book art

Images: More black and white line drawings of wide-eyed anime women and men kissing and hack ‘n slashing.

Text reads: Mercenaries of glorious Edo, if you can make the flowers that bloom along the rivers during spring drop their petals, then do so. I’m the Ferryman of the River Styx. Whssh.

OK, OK – here are some boobies since you stuck with this so long. And here’s a link to some more of my comic book collages, in case you are interested.

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Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.

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Original Creations

Bonus Black Friday story: Zombie Apocalypse by Jennifer Weigel

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Black Friday.

You can’t beat the deals.  So many of us.  Waiting.  Readying.  Checking the time.  Counting down the seconds.  You better believe I earned my place at the start of the line.  I’ve been camping out here since late Wednesday.  Yeah, yeah, the holiday was yesterday.  Whatever, I had my family’s full endorsement.

Because that new high-definition television beckons.  The best in zoning out technology.  All channel access.  Cutting edge entertainment.  Bleeding edge.  That blade is sharp, baby.  Like a razor.

But this kind of escapism is costly.  A reality check says it’s not in my family’s budget.  We don’t make that kind of money, and so here I am.  Among all the others vying for the same prize.

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Only one will get there first.  Only one available.  Must have TV.  Must have T.V.  Must.  Have.  T.  V.

An employee approaches the door.  Nobody noteworthy.  A soon-to-be-casualty.  No more.  No less.

We rise and lurch into place.  Ready…

On your mark.

Get set.

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Go!

Black Friday Dealz... Must Have TV... Zombie Apocalypse
Black Friday Dealz… Must Have TV… Zombie Apocalypse

Original images generated with Nightcafe AI art generator.

Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.
Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website. Or if you just want more zombies, might I recommend either Elvis or the Fashionistas?

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Original Series

Nightmarish Nature: Scads of Scat, Beyond Just Goose Poo

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This time on Nightmarish Nature, in honor of Thanksgiving, we’re exploring scads of scat! And not just because of the aftermath of all that eating we’re going to be doing, given that everything that goes in must come out eventually. But because turkeys are weird.

But, how weird?

Apparently, the shape and size of a turkey’s poop can tell you the sex and age of the bird. Male and female birds poop different shaped turds, and bigger ones with age. Your poop can’t do that, we’re pretty sure. And no, we don’t want to check, even if it does come in a whole host of rainbow colors with all the dyes in our food nowadays. Keep your weird quirks to yourself.

Poop Emoji

Fecal Fetishes

Vultures have very acidic scat that helps to keep their feet and food clean of bacteria from hopping in and around dead things. Somehow, this doesn’t seem like a step up to us, but I guess if you’re a carrion crawler you take what you can get. At least you’d know where it’s been I suppose, and that’s more than you can say for some of your long dead food sources…

Rabbits must process their food twice in order to break down the grassy matter they digest (like cows chewing cud). And so they eat their own partially digested matter, the cecotropes they produce after the first digestion. This isn’t true poop per se, that fecal matter comes after second digestion, but it does work its way through the same way.

And that brings us to koalas. They are one of only a few mammals that can eat eucalyptus leaves (and are closely related to wombats, one of the other two). Koala offspring eat their mother’s pap, which is a specialized form of poop that allows the baby to transition from nursing milk to eating solid leaves. It is green, smeary, mushy, and can get everywhere. Just like you’d expect.

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Corny Poop Emoji

We aren’t exempt.

For all that we have learned to be poop averse, a lot of animals eat others’ scat and glean a lot of nutritional value from their detritus. It’s not just your dog raiding the cat litter box and then licking you in the face. And we humans have even fought wars over rights to seabird guano, which was used as a form of fertilizer in the late 1800s.

Anyway, that’s the scoop on poop for now. Maybe we’ll revisit this load later on, seeing as how there’s still plenty of content here.

If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:

Vampires Among Us

Perilous Parenting

Freaky Fungus

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Worrisome Wasps

Cannibalism

Terrifying Tardigrades

Reindeer Give Pause

Komodo Dragons

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Zombie Snails

Horrifying Humans

Giants Among Spiders

Flesh in Flowers

Assassin Fashion

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Baby Bomb

Orca Antics

Creepy Spider Facts

Screwed Up Screwworms

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