The word escapes like a hiss through the eaves of the ceiling, though Lenore couldn’t say for sure whether that’s where the spirit is choosing to reside on this day. As the spirits have no physical form, she can never tell where she should look to talk to them, or how big they are, or where their eyes reside, but she’s learned over time, while living in this rickety old haunted house, that they don’t particularly want her to meet their eyes, anyway.
“Yes, I’m having a cookie,” she replies. Immediately, she finds herself swarmed by a cacophony of voices, each of them chanting:
“Cookie…cookie…cookie…cookie…cookie…”
A heavy sigh escapes her lungs as she takes her plate and moves to the chair where she left her newspaper. Living in a haunted house requires having roommates that won’t lift a finger to help beyond scaring away intruders and impeding her ability to have a pet. They like to believe that they can take part, which doesn’t really lend itself to being helpful. Case in point, the slow slide of her plate across the table and tipping towards the floor.
“Cookie?”
“Darling, you know you can’t eat,” she says softly, pulling her cookie away from the edge of the table and out of reach. “This is my cookie.”
An unholy screeching noise accompanies that declaration, and she feels the room itself rattle. One of her thankfully less expensive decorative plates rocks off the edge of a set of drawers nearby, and were it not for a quick grab, her coffee would have done the same.
Irritated, she strikes her heel against the floor and stands up with a snarl. “Now you listen here. We are not in the habit of being wasteful in this house. And you all know that if I gave you that cookie all it would do is draw mice.”
The rattling stops, and the screech turns into a pitiful whine.
“Am I wrong?”
Eventually, the room falls into silence again, and she nods as she settles into her chair. “That’s what I thought.”
Slowly she finishes the cookie piece by piece as she reads the paper, and once the plate is nothing but crumbs, she hears the voice return, hissing out a question.
“Good cookie?”
“Yes. It was a very good cookie.” A pleasant rumble fills the room, and she smiles. “If you had a corporeal body, darling, this would be much easier. I would give you all the cookies you want.”
Little does she know that a creative ghost might take this suggestion a little too far.
halloween: creepy voices (430 words)
The word escapes like a hiss through the eaves of the ceiling, though Lenore couldn’t say for sure whether that’s where the spirit is choosing to reside on this day. As the spirits have no physical form, she can never tell where she should look to talk to them, or how big they are, or where their eyes reside, but she’s learned over time, while living in this rickety old haunted house, that they don’t particularly want her to meet their eyes, anyway.
“Yes, I’m having a cookie,” she replies. Immediately, she finds herself swarmed by a cacophony of voices, each of them chanting:
“Cookie…cookie…cookie…cookie…cookie…”
A heavy sigh escapes her lungs as she takes her plate and moves to the chair where she left her newspaper. Living in a haunted house requires having roommates that won’t lift a finger to help beyond scaring away intruders and impeding her ability to have a pet. They like to believe that they can take part, which doesn’t really lend itself to being helpful. Case in point, the slow slide of her plate across the table and tipping towards the floor.
“Cookie?”
“Darling, you know you can’t eat,” she says softly, pulling her cookie away from the edge of the table and out of reach. “This is my cookie.”
An unholy screeching noise accompanies that declaration, and she feels the room itself rattle. One of her thankfully less expensive decorative plates rocks off the edge of a set of drawers nearby, and were it not for a quick grab, her coffee would have done the same.
Irritated, she strikes her heel against the floor and stands up with a snarl. “Now you listen here. We are not in the habit of being wasteful in this house. And you all know that if I gave you that cookie all it would do is draw mice.”
The rattling stops, and the screech turns into a pitiful whine.
“Am I wrong?”
Eventually, the room falls into silence again, and she nods as she settles into her chair. “That’s what I thought.”
Slowly she finishes the cookie piece by piece as she reads the paper, and once the plate is nothing but crumbs, she hears the voice return, hissing out a question.
“Good cookie?”
“Yes. It was a very good cookie.” A pleasant rumble fills the room, and she smiles. “If you had a corporeal body, darling, this would be much easier. I would give you all the cookies you want.”
Little does she know that a creative ghost might take this suggestion a little too far.