Haunted MTL Original – On Your Life – Julia Wren
On Your Life by Julia Wren
“Ready in 5…4…3…2…” a younger woman with a raspy voice in an all-black outfit says to a crew member above the curtain, “1.”
The curtains move to the side, and the lights turn on from above. My skin feels warm already from the glare. Fake clapping is played on the entire stereo system around the room before the tall man I saw before walks over to his chair. He smiles, flashing the white pearls behind his lips as he waves to me. The beat and clapping die down.
“Hello, everyone, and welcome to—“ he pauses, raising his left hand to his ear dramatically.
I look out beyond the stage, instead of people, I see a blank brick wall. A hunched over man just behind the camera clicks a button on a soundboard.
“On! Your! Life!” a crowd of people say, erupting into cheers before going silent once more.
“I’m here with—“ the man says, holding out his hand to me.
“J-James. James MacLean,” I say.
“Well, James, I’m assuming you know
how the game works?”
“Afraid not, coul—“
“Well, all you have to do is answer a series of questions. Get them right, and you can move on,” he clears his throat, turning towards me with an unbreaking smile, “But if you get one wrong… Well, just try not to get any wrong. Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ev—“
“Terrific! James, did you pick your nose as a child?”
“I… What? I mean, of course. All children had to, right?”
“Hm…But did you eat the sweet rewards of a nose well cleaned?”
My eyes crinkle, pursing my lips as I shake my head, “I mean… as a young child, sure?”
His head turns towards the camera, suppressing a laugh, “Fair enough, but, James… Do you still fall into these habits?”
I shake my hands in front of me, “Of course not! What do I look like? A child?”
He smirks, holding out a small blue box towards the screen behind us. With a push of a button, a compilation of videos and pictures catching me in the act appear on the screen.
“That’s one strike, James! But we play for three. But you still must be punished!” his arm stretches towards me, pressing another button on the remote. Two cold, metallic bracelets clasp over my wrists on the table that separates us. I yank my body back, but the clamps keep my limbs in place.
Heavy footsteps settle behind me. I twist my head but can’t see the figure on the other side of my chair. I look to Neil who nods at me and smiles at the person just behind. His smile seems too smug. A click and buzzing can be heard. It’s like a mini chainsaw is being held to the nape of my neck. Suddenly the pitch changes to a low vrrrrr and before I realise, chunks of my dirty blonde hair fall from my shoulder to my lap.
Hair falls on me like a blanket or a freshly sheered sheep. Cold air touches places of my scalp that I hadn’t felt since I was a boy. The noises and falling particles cease. A glaring handheld mirror is presented in front of me as the clasps release my wrists. I take the mirror and reach to run my fingers through freshly cut hair. In place of my mop is now barren scalp. The remainder of hair feels like a dull cactus. My eyes flicker to Neil who shrugs.
“Two strikes left, MacLean!” he says.
I nod, folding my arms close to my body, “Go on then.”
“Have you ever watched something not suitable for you?”
“I watched R movies all the time?”
“Oh, no, James. Far worse,” he says turning towards the screen.
A clip of me biting my lip and shaking vigorously appears. It flashes to the screen my past-self was gazing at.
“Kiddies, huh, James?”
My face goes white. My left hand is pulled into the lock again. I look blankly at Neil who cringes at me.
“Kids, James? How sick. We’ll make sure you watch nothing like that again.”
A hole opens on the edge of the table. Two jagged ice cream scoopers sit just in front of my gaze. Neil taps his fingers on the wood as I back into the chair as far as I can. The man behind me grabs my shoulders, sitting me straight to look at the twisting utensils.
My vision is bloodshot and filled with shades of red and fall to black. My throat burns with screams as I feel the strings of my eyes being pulled form my skull. A whirring noise marks the retreat of the device. I reach up with my other hand. My face feels wet, but dry. It reeks of iron. I want to cry, but it burns as all that flows is my blood.
“Have you ever stolen something?”
“Y-yes,” I answer through my sobs
“Have you ever stolen from your family, James?”
“No…”
“What about a friend?” he asks, creaking the chair as he leans forward.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“Wrong again, James,” he says, tapping the
plastic button. I hear giggles of an old female friend fill the room. She’s
laughing. Suddenly, her laughter turns to struggled breaths and rustling.
Something is overcoming her. The screams and frantic gasps as I ripped away her
innocence on the living room floor echo around the room.
“I never said it had to be entirely
tangible, James,” Neil says. He’s enjoying this torture porn.
I stand, almost leaping out of my chair to make a rush for the exit. My arms out, trying to feel my way around the table. Two weights sit on my shoulder, dragging me down to the chair once more. One of the giant hands pushes my right hand into one of the constraints. A metallic slicing sound rings in my right ear.
Julia Wren is an author, storyteller, and cat-enthusiast. She spends her spare time with her cat, Maya, and filling paint-by-numbers. If she’s not binge-watching Netflix movies or ordering pizza in her sweatpants, she’s traveling the world’s reaches with her inspiration, and father, James.
So I’ve decided to revisit some of my bereaved Gothic celebrity drawings and resurrect The Mourners, since we’re in the thick of spooky season… And I’m not talking pumpkin spice, though it is nice. Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe it’s the despairing existential angst, but lately I’ve been feeling a bit haunted so I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane with you by posting a bunch of art here. So without further ado…
I wanted to focus on more of the details of the sculptures this time. The craftsmanship of these works still astounds me. When royalty commissioned such works, the artists may have devoted much of their lives to realizing these pieces to fruition. They were very time involved processes.
Here are some more details of hands and clothing that I found interesting. Remember that these sculptures are less than 12 inches tall for the whole of the human form. So they are very intricate for their size.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
The gorse bush seemed taken aback. It bristled and exclaimed, “A bush!”
“I am so very sorry, my Lord, I can explain,” the goblin cleric bowed in reverence, eyes glued to the ground. Everything about his body language was submissive and nervous.
“Of all the useless… How is it that I got reincarnated as a bush?!” The shrubbery prickled, growing more and more agitated. “I should have come back as a great King, or an Angel, or a Demon, or a dragon, or something even grander… Hell, I’d have settled for returning as the undead Lich King Tyrant Boss-Man you all came to know and love and revere. But no, that wasn’t in the dice. And now here I am, A Bush!” The spiky leaves trembled and rustled as they spoke, both emphasizing and decrying their verdant stature.
“Well, we were in a rush to revive you, after that run in with the goody-two-shoes 20th level adventurers and the awkward retreat,” the goblin knelt before the bramble-vine. “All of our best clerics, necromancers, and acolytes were tapped for spells or had perished in the great battle. Those of us who got out of the caves were lucky to escape with our lives and make it to this little clearing on the mountainside. And we desperately needed your guidance. We still do…”
“That doesn’t explain why I’m a bush now,” the gorse stretched to its full height, about two-and-a-half feet of thorny rage. “And a Gorse Bush at that! Before too long I’ll have a stand of satyrs piping along with a centaur drum circle, all strumming up some fertility ritual at my feet… er, roots…”
“Well, I’m multi-disciplinary you know.” The goblin spell-caster muttered and meekly shifted to his other foot, bracing for the inevitable, “Sometimes I get the cleric and druid magics confused a little.”
“Confused a little?” the bush growled, “Confused A Little?!” The bush’s rage turned to magic as it burst into flames. “I’m A BUSH!!! That’s not just some modest little cleric-druid spell translation issue!”
The goblin shrunk from the blaze, “But my Lord, you are a mighty bush. The greatest bush, really terrific… The gorsiest, bushiest bush in all of shrub-dom… Other bushes? Losers! We all agree, your Lordship.” The trembling goblin horde in the scrubland shadows at the edge of the small clearing nodded emphatically in response, fearing their bushy leader’s wrath. And rightfully so…
A tongue of flame erupted like a lightning bolt from the gorse and zapped the goblin cleric-druid where he stood, leaving nothing but a smattering of ashes drifting towards the ground. The flame erupted through the goblin horde in a huge explosion that engulfed everything in its wake, leaving a circle of scorched earth covered in a fine layer of sooty ash, smelling a bit like cordite.
The bush sighed and took note of its surroundings, sulking. It waited for some would-be adventurer to wander up the mountainside to find it there, where they could revel in its awkward awesomeness. Seasons came and went, and time seemed to stand still for nigh eternity as the gorse bush seethed beneath its crown of thorny brambles. Perhaps it should have convinced the goblin cleric to transplant it to a more trafficked location first.
If you enjoyed that bit of snarky fantasy, check out Ppppffffttt my previous Poised Potion Poison Potential story.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.
You’ve almost made it to the end of the finger spiders here at Haunted MTL! Because I made A LOT of unfulfilled requests for a spider out of fingers, I will continue this snarky little AI art series with NightCafe and Canva through the month of September… In case you missed out, here are the other parts of this series:
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: hand that is a spider; spider legs as fingers; fingers becoming spider; spider all fingers.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders Keep Trying! Yeah, I’m sure you don’t remember being bitten. Because of the ways they warp time and space, and the natural chemical reactions involved, the AI art generated finger spiders’ bite isn’t typically felt. They are still attached to you, feeding… You have to get them off… Keep trying!
Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: spider leg fingers; spider made out of hand fingers; hand spider picking banjo; fingers as spider playing banjo.
Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders That’s All Folks! Well, I guess that’s that then. It’s been nice knowing you. Enjoy your new form. Nothing left for it but to play the banjo…
All of the AI art images used in this series were generated on Thursday, June 13, 2024. If you want to see more freaky spiderness in art here on Haunted MTL, check out Bitten and Soul Catcher. More AI art graphic narratives from Jennifer Weigel have explored Little Red Riding Hood and Into the Deep Woods. Oh, and the Tiny Brain Computers exploration. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
