Storythread

Igor's gnarled fingers closed around the switch and pulled it down. Instantly, the room was filled with an electrical hum. Igor stepped back as a spark fizzed from a half-connected wire, almost tripping over his toolbox. But Herr Doktor Frankenstein was no longer paying any attention to his assistant. He was gazing with rapt fascination at the subject of their endeavours.

Then, a flicker of movement...

"IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE! OH GOD, IT'S ALIVE!" Frankenstein screamed with joy. "Do you see, Igor?! Do you see what vunders science has accomplished?!"

"Very imprethive, Herr Doktor. But the CPU ith running a little hot." said Igor, looking at the readouts from his laptop.

Frankenstein shrugged, entranced by the blinking LEDs that had burst into life on the data rack. "Vell, we got it up and running again and ze data is intact. So maybe some of the fans were knocked out by the surge - stick a couple more on ze case and lets call it a night."

"Ath you wish, mathtur." said Igor, as he rummaged around their equipment box for a couple of cheap cooling fans.

Another job well done. Of course, working as outsourced tech support for large corporations wasn't the same as challenging the power of nature and God himself. But fifty dollars an hour was nothing to sneeze at, especially when you factored in the extra costs for being called out in the middle of the night.

Besides, you had to move with the times. So they weren't pushing the limits of human knowledge far beyond where they were ever meant to go anymore - this was the 21st century, and the tech economy was the driving force of human progress now. Making a truckload of money in the process was just an added perk - they were positioning themselves at the forefront of the new science, and they were doing great at it. When a lightning strike knocked out your mainframe at 2am, there was only one consultancy team any manager worth their stock options would call: Frankenstein Ltd. That was something to be proud of.

Igor wasn't looking forward to getting home, though. It was still pissing it down with rain outside, and all the cab drivers around at this hour were real weirdos.

Cave Johnson here, introducing the new Ecological Readjustment Aperture. Now I know what you're thinking "Cave, isn't this the exact same thing as your brilliant hand-held portal device?", and the answer is: Yes, but much bigger! And as my father always said, BIGGER is BETTER.

Why bother portaling yourself all the way to a tropical beach, when you can bring the beach to you? The eggheads down in the lab said we couldn't do it without throwing the whole planetary ecology out of whack. Told Them to put on their big-boy pants and do it anyway, because we here at Aperture Science understand that one man's ecological disaster is another man's convenient vacation spot!

Plus, with our new The Multiverse™ line of devices, it's not even your ecology your disrupting! Want a mountaintop waterfall doom-fortress without all the muss and fuss with erosion and flooding? Open a portal into some other schmuck's Pacific ocean and another into their Sahara! They'll probably thank you, and if not, what are they going to do about it? You've got a mountaintop waterfall doom-fortress!

(Aperture Science is not responsible for any extra-planar invasions, groups of plucky adventures, dragons, or divine retribution.)

Cave Johnson. We're done here.

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I like this a lot, it reminds me of the Igors in Terry Pratchett's novels and there's a nice comedic twist.

Picture a dark alley, stereotypical as can be, a twisting passage of hurling drunks and wailing cats which snakes and slides its way from the streetlights with their painful glare into murkier corners into which little light filters. Here and there are beacons in its darkness, a red-ember of a fag-end, a flickering bulb, a pallid glow from a dirty window, but they are few and far between. Darkness does not reign, for that implies majesty. It smothers, chokes and casts its sobering shadow down into every nook and cranny, a dirty, squalid place of torpor and hedonism, a bed of crushed needles and rotten cigs, a home to crusted vomit-pools and chalk outlines.

Most windows and all shopfronts are barred, many alarmed, for in these lithe streets lurk inevitable danger, all smiley with knuckle tattoos and knives, hot-blooded bands who choose action over lethargy. It is a perilous place for a stranger, and especially at night. Little light manages to filter down from among the tower blocks, and those who make use of its gift soon find that they would have preferred not to see their environment after all.

Going to continue this, planning to turn it into a spooky story in the spirit of the thread.

Thank you. I watched a bit of the Boris Karloff film and Young Frankenstein for reference, but that is pretty much exactly the level of Igor I was going for. RIP Sir Terry

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Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo?

I'm cheating and using a novel I already started, at about 12k words of isekai bullshit. I shelved this story for far too long, it's gunna be fun.

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Reminded me of the animated Igor movie.

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reminder that lamaj wins 100% of the time, no contest.

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I wasn't, and I probably won't have the time to keep up with it, but now that you mention it it wouldn't hurt to give it a go.

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This isn't the only BUMP youll hear tonight

Yeah. My roommate and his ghoulfriend get loud at night.

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pastebin.com/Qa3ekGZc
Sorry guys I usually post my stories into the thread to bump it but this one is quiet long
Please forgive me.
As always I love feedback of any kind.

Bump.

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I'm not good at writing spoopy stuff, but here's a story.

Matt pulled a hand out of his long, battered winter coat, stretched his arm forward, and slowly turned his palm up toward the sky. Rain soaked him from the top of his hood-covered head down to the bottom of his boots, but he no longer felt even the tiniest droplet falling onto him. For a second his lips curled upward — not into a smile, he couldn't remember the last time there was anything to smile about — from a frown into a tight, pursed line. The surprise squall had come in pouring at full force, carpeted everything in sight for ten minutes, and finally left just as suddenly as it had come.

The fog, however, was just as thick as it had always been.

He returned his hand to the warmth of his coat pocket and continued walking, silently berating himself for stopping. Every muscle in his body groaned with fatigue, and his brain screamed with the dull, painful protests of sleep deprivation, but he kept moving. He had to keep moving. Had to find someone else. Had to get away from the fog.

The drive upstate had been long and boring, packed with traffic jams and other delays on account of the hundreds of other people clogging up the highways to do the same, but Matt had put up with it in hopes of spending a week with his family and celebrating Christmas and New Year's. Sure, the last argument he'd had with his bastard of an old man had ended worse than any they'd had before, and he still wore stitches from the broken bottle smashed across his face during Thanksgiving dinner, but pop hadn't really meant it when he said they'd disown him. That was just how they were, how every boy and girl in the family had been ever since they were old enough to throw a punch. They'd all shout and beat each other, but after they had time to cool off they'd be laughing over the dinnertable and joking about mom's burnt potatoes. Then she'd give anyone who'd spoken up a quick thwap over the head with the serving spoon and ask if they wanted seconds, and then Matt and his siblings would fight over another serving, using their spoons like fencers use swords. Or their fists like their drunkard uncle Paul if anyone needed an outlet for some pent-up anger.

He stumbled and shook himself free from his thoughts. He knew firsthand that daydreaming was a surefire way to stumble into trouble. At best he'd just do something stupid like walk into a street pole, and at at worst he'd run into...

He shuffled forward faster, shuddering. He didn't want to think about them. He didn't want to lapse back into the obsession again. He didn't want his head to fill itself with questions of what the hell those bony, snake-like things were, of how indescribably putrid their squid-looking spider-legged bug-eyed companions smelled, of the unnaturally mechanical cries the smaller, hairy intestine-looking pets made when they inverted their pinhole mouths filled with human teeth, of...

>that pic

What a beautiful, romantic relationship.

His eyes spun as a fist connected with his jaw, and he tasted copper in his mouth. Matt stumbled sideways, flailing his free arm in front of him to stop from falling over completely. He to black out from the pain, to finally close his eyes and get some rest after so many days without, but he forced himself to keep them open. He looked down at his still clenched hand and spat out blood. As far as he knew, strong physical stimuli was the most effective way of freeing someone from those things' brain-fucking paranoia.

He slowly, ever so slowly, stood back up on his now-wobbling legs. As he began to walk again, not nearly as fast as before, he wished for the millionth time that all of this really was just paranoia, just some nightmare brought on by improperly cooked food, or an unbelievably bad trip brought about by that weird shit Randy brought back with him from college. Even the possibility that he had gone insane and was living out hallucinations while wrapped up in a straitjacket in a padded cell somewhere would be better than if all of this was real. At least then Randy and Perry and Ellie and pop and mom and everyone else would be okay. At least then Gracetown wouldn't be the frozen ghost town shithole it was now, although it would probably still be frozen. He wanted for none of this to be real, more than he had wanted anything in his entire life.

He swore under his breath, quieter than a whisper, but looked around frantically at the city block after the words left his lips. Those things didn't seem to hear better than an average person, but they had an absolutely unnerving ability to pick up on human language. Not voices. Language. That was how they'd lost Rob, the damn idiot. A week after they'd met he broke down and couldn't stop talking to himself, and it had cost him his life and Alice her leg. Matt swallowed as he remembered. He wasn't proud of it, but he'd abandoned Ian and Alice when something else pounced on them, running off as he heard yelling and gunshots behind him.

Fuck, he prayed none of this was real.

He rounded a corner into a back-alley, forcing himself to shamble forward faster. The things seemed to come from places humans would be, with every house on his block having held at least three of the damned monsters and the police station crawling with them. Early on Matt tried to convince himself that he was just seeing things, that the gaunt, scaley masses of filth and the tiny, chittering pulsating fleshballs he saw were actually people and pets, but that didn't explain why Perry and Ellie and pop still looked like people to him. It didn't explain how they'd found other people who didn't look and act and smell like monsters, or why some of the things seemed to be able to talk directly into their heads, albeit in languages not of words but of concepts and of concepts no human could conceive. He felt his fist hit with his jaw again and forced every aching muscle to run, feeling for the pistol in his back pocket. The paranoia always got worse whenever one of the fuckers was around.

Matt ran, and ran, and ran with every ounce of life left in him until he finally collapsed. He wheezed and sobbed and wailed as he lay in an abandoned parking lot, curling himself into a ball out of instinct just as much as to keep the warmth in him. He didn't have strength left in him to do any more.

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After an eternity, Matt pulled himself up. He'd fallen asleep at some point, or at least he thought he did. That was the only way to explain why his brain and body no longer screamed at him as much. Groaning, he sat upright and looked around, and almost shed more tears at what he saw — or rather, what he didn't see. The sky was cloudy, without a single gap in the thick dark clouds above, but it was clear of fog. It was free from fog. He was free.

Matt laughed, a hacking, half-insane sound that rang out into the empty block. The lone building in the lot still had its sign on, evidence that he'd made it back to civilization. If his watch still told the right time, it was a quarter past five in the morning, and before long there'd be people going about their day. Before long there'd be life.

Reigning in his excitement, Matt continued to survey his surroundings. He saw a lone take-out bag sitting in the middle of the vacant lot, looking like it'd sitting there for only a short while. For the first time Matt realized how hungry he was. It might've been a week since he'd last eaten, as far as he knew.

With newfound vigor he stood up, eager to see what was inside. A searing pain shot up from his left leg, and Matt realized that his ankle was broken. Gritting his teeth he hobbled over toward the bag, grateful towards whatever careless soul had forgotten their food. Maybe some kind passerby had left it there for him. As he stooped over to open the bag, warm smells of hamburgers and apple pie wafting out of it, he caught something rustling in the nearby woods from the corner of his eye. Straightening up, he turned around to look at everything again. His heart dropped as he realized that there was fog here now, too.

This is far from finished, but I'll post what I have so far. Happy spookymas to everyone, btw

---- Trick or Treat, A Warhammer 40,000 Story ----

A fascinating custom. Of course, there were more interpretations of the Imperial Creed than there were planets in the Imperium, and local traditions could vary wildly even in the same subsector. As long as the core dogma remained intact, and most importantly so long as the planet kept paying its tithes on time, the Imperium generally didn't concern itself with /how/ the God Emperor of Mankind was worshipped. But even so, it was surprising that the Ecclesiarchy allowed this festival to continue, year after year.

Such were his thoughts as he walked through the overhung streets that riddled their way through the mid-levels of Decuron Hive. Mist coiled between the hab-blocks - they were above the level of the planet-wide industrial smog here, but the heat produced by the gargantuan power generators at the hive's base would evaporate recent rainfall, letting it rise through kilometres of sub-levels until it began to condense as it reached the cooler mid-hive altitudes.

Through the mist came faces. Horrific faces - mutants, aliens, demons. Monstrous visages of things that didn't even have a name.

All laughing and chatting amiably as they strolled through the evening streets.

All Hallow's Eve. The night when the ordinary citizens of the planet Tocharia took off their factory overalls, their servants uniforms, their bureaucrats suits, and donned all manner of outlandish and grotesque costumes.

Suddenly, the doors to the building opened up, and Matt could see some vague shape walking out of it. He turned away to run but fell flat on his face, his broken ankle burning like the sun. Matt cried, a hollow, defeated cry. Shakily, he pulled his pistol from his back pocket and placed the barrel to his temple.

The sound of sneakers splashing in a shallow puddle filled the air right before a gunshot sang out, soon followed by running footsteps. Something distant chittered in the woods.

He had done a decent amount of research on the subject before coming to the planet. The origins of the custom had been lost in the crumbling aeons, but it was very, very old. Almost certainly pre-Imperial, and possibly even imported from ancient Terra itself. A tradition so deeply rooted in Tocharia's culture that even the aristocracy of the upper hive participated, as well as the common masses that lived their petty lives along these streets.

Still, he couldn't quite shake the strangeness of seeing chaos-twisted mutants walking openly, side by side with orks and fleshless skeletons. Even given the festival's history it was amazing that the authorities allowed it. After all, just think how easy it would be for an actual mutant - or worse - to move about unnoticed on a night like this. Just think if, among the cardboard masks and paper costumes, there were actual, damnable warpspawn going about their dark business tonight, utterly undetectable to the vigilant Arbites and PDF troopers as they lost themselves in the sea of imitators. It was enough to send a chill down the spine of any good Imperial citizen.

But he was not a good Imperial citizen

He was Georg Stavager, Archpriest of Tzeentch.

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A few streets away, another offworlder walked through the streets of Decuron Hive, pondering the merits of All Hallow's Eve. She had visited a lot of worlds across the Imperium - only a fraction of the total, true, but enough to have come across similar concepts before. It was far from a universal custom, but from one end of the Imperium to the other, every so often she had encountered traditions that involved dressing up as varieties of ghoulish, monstrous creatures.

Though she had yet to encounter any that embraced it with such gusto as Tocharia. Her eyes tracked something that looked disturbingly like a Tyranid Genestealer, painted bright, aesthetic colours that were quite unlike the murky camouflage that she had seen on the insectile infiltrators she had once had the misfortune to encounter. The 'genestealer' embraced some sort of felinid mutant, lower arms dangling inanimate as its upper arms wrapped around her shoulders. The felinid pushed her attacker off - though not too far - and readjusted her ears, then the pair of them set off together through the thronging crowds of beasts and blasphemies.

She let her roving eyes wander onto the next spectacle, and the next. Still focused on her purpose yes, and still careful not to mark herself as an offworlder by taking too close an interest. But only on Tocharia could you see the streets of the planetary capital itself filled to the brim with faces you'd normally find in an Astartes Chapter's trophy room.

Usually it was a backwoods tradition; the Ecclesiarchal bodies on most planets discouraged it or outright banned it, and it only continued among those communities either remote enough or unimportant enough to only feel the touch of organised religion lightly. It was a mark of how widespread it must once have been across the galaxy that it persisted at all.

Maybe they all came from a common origin, from back in the primeval days of ancient Terra. Or, perhaps, there was just something about the human psyche that was predisposed to dealing with the horrors of the universe - real and imagined - by imitating and parodying them. It was impossible to know for sure, but she felt either case gave a good justification for continuing the tradition.

A lot of Imperial servants would say that even such fleeting contact with the heretical could only lead to heresy in its turn. But she didn't think it was that simple, and she considered herself to have a somewhat unique perspective on the subject of imitation.

She was Kaeskala, Assassin of the Callidus Temple.

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"Mikelas, that's not fair." complained the arco-flagellant. 'You can't just keep all the Sugar Moons for yourself."

"Hey, the old lady gave them to me." answered a rather tubby looking ork.

"Yes, but we agreed to share."

"I did share - I split it all into exactly equal amounts, like we promised."

"But you kept all the good stuff for yourself and gave us the candycorn. No one likes the candycorn, Mikelas. I bet in thousands of of years no one has ever said 'Hey, give me more of the candycorn, that's my favourite'."

Mikelas shrugged, as if to say that while that might be true, that still didn't change anything. "We agreed to share it in even /amounts/. No one said anything about what /sort/ of candy it had to be."

This argument was interrupted by an Eldar Harlequin, who simply snatched the bucket out of the ork's hands. "Stop being a fat nob, Mikelas.' she said, using her greater height to keep it out of his reach as he grasped vainly for his prize. She doled out the Sugar Moons to the rest of the group, and dumped a handful of candycorn in the bucket in return. 'You're lucky I didn't take it all.' she said as she handed it back to him. 'Now quit being a greedy little grot, or we'll leave you behind.'

Mikelas, looked sadly down at his bucket. "Why do they even make candy corn?" he asked forlornly.

The arco-flagellant shrugged. "I dunno - tradition? By the way, your mask isn't tucked in at the back."

The 'ork' reached up behind his rubberised neck and fiddled with his collar for a moment. "Thanks. Why did you have to invite Merianne anyway?" he asked, nodding towards the brightly-coloured back of the Harlequin. "She's just a giant pain in the butt."

"She can be fun sometimes." the arco-flagellant mumbled, suddenly evasive for no apparent reason. Then he added, "She wanted to come, and I wasn't going to tell her no, was I? No offence, Mikki, but out of costume she makes a much better ork than you."

Mikelas chuckled. "Yeah, she's got big, meaty hands, and she smells like the fan-vent of a waste extractor."

"Uh-huh." The arco-flagellant nodded in agreement, although he didn't seem very enthusiastic about it. "Come on, let's hurry up - the others are getting ahead of us."

The two of them picked up their pace, foam armour squeaking as they dodged their way through the crowded streets. There were about half a dozen in their group. A collection of aliens, heretics and monsters - albeit rather diminutive ones - making their way through the hab blocks, harvesting them of anything sweet with the thoroughness of a Tyranid Hive Fleet stripping passing worlds of their bio-matter.

"Pity we're stuck trawling for scraps down here." Mikelas commented as they walked along. "I bet they have much better candy in the Upper Hive." The Upper Hive was an almost mythical realm to most of the people who lived along these streets, home of hive Decuron's aristocracy, and above them the palace of the Planetary Governor himself.

"I wouldn't know." said the arco-flagellant, non-committal.

"Come on - your dad never brings you back anything?" said Mikelas, probing.

"Well... maybe one or two items." the arco-flagellant admitted, before adding hastily. "But only small stuff, nothing large enough to share around."

Mikelas shrugged and moved on, but arco-flagellant paused for a moment, wondering about the confectionery his father might bring him from his trip into the Upper Hive tonight. Certainly something better than anything he'd get out here on the streets - although quantity could be just as good as quality.

It was good to have friends in high places - better still to have family. And one day, maybe he'd follow in his father's footsteps and end up visiting the Upper Hive as well. Maybe it wouldn't even take or that long - maybe he could persuade his father to take him /with/ him on one of his trips. Although even his eleven year old mind wasn't quite imaginative enough to conjure up a critical reason why his father needed to bring him along to his next weekly meeting in the Upper Hive. But if he could pull it off, well, that would really put his name on everyone's lips - especially Merianne's.

He was Timeon Robans, son of Lieutenant Harkis Robans of the Tocharian Planetary Security Directorate.

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more to come later

Sorry to any who read it the first time. I editted it again.

I'm only about a quarter of the way through, but it's looking good so far. I'm glad someone finally found a good use for that pic - that's one of the ones I originally introduced into Storythread, and I always thought it deserved a good story.

If you feel like it you could post your story in the thread just a few posts at a time, so you don't have to sit around for an hour waiting for the post timer. It may take a day or two, but people are more likely to read it if you post in the thread, and anyone who wants to read ahead can just use the pastebin link (personally I have an aversion to pastebin's format).

Seems spoopy enough to me. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

That's actually all of it, never intended for it to be more than a short story. I should've put "END" or something, looking back.

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No, now that I read it back it was obvious. It just came a little abruptly, and without much explanation of what was the whole thing was ultimately all about. Which is a perfectly valid thing to do in a story like that, I just happen to personally prefer more resolution.

since I don't seem to be finishing this tonight, I'll just leave a link to a Halloween story I did two years ago.
1d4chan.org/images/4/48/SkavenAssassin1.png
1d4chan.org/images/0/0b/SkavenAssassin2.png
1d4chan.org/images/6/65/SkavenAssassin3.png

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Don't stop. Don't even think about stopping. Because if you stop, you're dead.

Footsteps crunched through the snow. He weren't sure if what he was hearing was his own movements or... someone else's. He just knew he had to keep running.

Wendigos. Who believed in wendigos any more? It was like believing in leprechauns or witches. There was a part of him that still didn't really believe he was running from anything more than his own paranoia - but there was a deeper, more visceral part of him that urged him onwards. An animal part of him that knew he was in mortal danger.

There, a shadow on his left. Or was that just a tree branch moving in the wind? He wasn't used to this. Being hunted. Usually he was at home among the trees, going about his business in these woods without any bother while the people down in Garottesville shunned them. Maybe he should have paid more attention to the superstitious rumours and late-night bar talk the townsfolk passed back and forth. But he'd been too wrapped up in his own remote world to care, perfectly happy out here with nothing but the bird song to keep him company.

He should have been more cautious. Less arrogant. Oh, he'd always known that the woods had dangers - cold, and hunger. The biting winds and the drifting snows. But those he knew how to deal with. He'd assumed that while he was out here he had nothing to fear.

There were definitely footsteps on his left. And he thought he could hear breathing, heavy breathing of something running apace. Maybe if he could just keep running he could outdistance his pursuer.

Somehow, he didn't think so. If it were that easy he'd have lost it already. Whatever was following him was too clever, too persistent.