Challenge #02495-F305: Goofy Scary Skeletons
“Be careful of humans this time of cycle; because this is when they perform a ritual they call ‘Halloween.’ They place images of human skeletal structures, women with green skin, humans biting into other humans’ necks, and other frightening images.” – Anon Guest
Some Humans celebrate mortality. Others celebrate horror and the unknown. In both circumstances, part of the celebration involves dressing up and a certain volume of depictions of Human skeletons. The cultural significance of these have been through more than five hundred years and mashed through the sieve of misunderstanding by the fork of ignorance. It should be no small surprise that such are easily confused by outsiders.
The key difference is that those celebrating Dio de Los Muertes never go door to door demanding sweets and threatening pranks. Mix in overlapping calendars depending entirely on how out of sync a Human colony became over the intervening centuries, and you get passages of time marked as Human Deception Festival on the Galactic Calendar.
Some species just never got the hang of theatrical makeup, or facepaint. It’s not their fault that they’re easily confused by Humans overdoing that particular aspect of the celebrations. Most of them entirely miss the thing with the pumpkins or turnips because one creature’s specific holiday decoration is another’s casual decor. The net effect is further exacerbated by attempts to render the various holidays safe for Havenworlders.
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Challenge #02143-E314: 'Tis the Season — Steemit
The office of the Ambassador for 1986 had broken out in bats, gourds, candles, and fake cobwebs. The waiting lounge’s entertainment screen was apparently running through a playlist that had dredged through every non-offensive, ‘spooky’, or 'creepy’ 2-D non-interactive entertainment that Shayde had caught up with since her incredibly peculiar exile from Earth.
Her desk had a bowl of assorted sugar items on it, all individually wrapped in deference to Station anti-contamination laws. The bowl was a ludicrously fake plastic skull with googly eyes instead of sockets.
Rael took a deep breath. Centred himself. Filched a sugar object in the shape of a spider. “Shayde,” he said eventually… “What the actual flakk?”
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These are eight cells of a 64-cell page I made. All of those bitly links lead to one of the stories I have on Smashwords for free.
Those stories are:
I printed five pages, and trimmed them into four-cell strips along the rows, and now have them in a little nest in case of haloweenies who can’t have sugar.
And if they can’t read, either, we have balloons.
[Yes, we also have lollies. We are not barbarians]
Ok guys check this out!
This Halloween, while celebrating the rise of the dead and Samhain, the end of the harvest season, and a night of free candy and imaginative costumes, give someone a scary book to enjoy. It can be a relative, a friend, a special other, a classmate, fellow worker, bus driver, whoever!
Share the spine tingling sensation that Halloween brings through a good scary book and spread the creeping feeling of horror to the readers on this eventful night…they may find themselves afraid to be alone!
For more information about All Hallow’s Read, watch the masterful author Neil Gaiman briefly introduce the event, or go visit their website http://www.allhallowsread.com/ for more information. There are book recommendations for those who can’t decide which book to give away and fun extras including posters and other fun downloads!
Let’s make All Hallow’s Read a new tradition!
[Added linkage for your convenience]
Every October 4 [my birthday] I release a free short story onto the interwebs in honour of All Hallows’ Read. Obviously, I can’t ‘do’ horror. Not yet. This year, I’m settling for creepy.
Stay tuned, folks. Shameless shill will be proceeding once I get the firkin cover finalised.
(Source: fangirl-verified, via neil-gaiman)
If this gets 100,000 notes before Halloween,
Then I, as a cisgendered heterosexual male, will purchase and wear an over sexualized costume for females for Halloween. With pictures. Will send to Party City executives.
DO IT.
Take video
(Source: darecrow, via the-gay-is-over9000)
An announcement
Firstly, I would like to thank Neil Gaiman for the idea that wound its way into my head and did what ideas do best: mutate into near cthulu-esque proportions.
See, the kind and apparently flamingo-like Mr Gaiman came up with/publicised All Hallows Read, an event in which people who celebrate Halloween [and even those who choose not to] can give away a spooky book to friends, family or complete strangers.
So I wrote a completely new story. From go to whoa, it took me two weeks, including piddly editing details that are now my new definition of Purgatory [Sorry, Mum].
I did try to write spooky. Almost all atmosphere and the world-gone-wrong and big hairy things jumping on the hero(ine)… but it still wound up as comedy. Le sigh.
I’m giving it away for free anyway.
So watch my Smashwords page come October 4 [Though since I’m Australian, most of you will see it Oct 5…] as my special birthday present to everyone who cares to read my shit stuff is a free short story.
I would very much like it if the folks who took the time to read said free story paid some real money for my other works, but that’s just icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned.
What I really want for my birthday, is to be read.
Have fun.