Maybe I'm just getting old, but there aren't many Halloween activities I really enjoy anymore.
Bars? I don't go to 'em often, but I absolutely avoid them on Halloween. I just can't deal with sorority girls dressed up as Horny Little Devils and Horny Little Witches and Horny Little Catgirls getting sloppy-drunk with their belligerently weird fratboy-of-the-month.
I don't go to haunted attractions either, partly because they call them "haunted attractions" instead of "haunted houses," like a generic buzzword bleeding all the inspiration and soul and fun out of something you used to be able to put together in your backyard.
Trick-or-treating? No one goes trick-or-treating in 2010. Especially not kids, unless it's to families they know, or to the damn Harvest Festival at the local Baptist Damn Church.
I don't even do Halloween movie marathons anymore. The ones they have on TV are really just awful -- movies that the networks can pick up for cheap, with scares few and far between, and ten-minute-long commercial breaks every 15 minutes.
But you know what I still do every Halloween? I read. Modern splatterpunk. Nineteenth-century ghost stories. Gothic shockers from the 1890s. Vampire erotica from the 1970s. Zombie apocalypses, Lovecraftian nightmares, werewolf comedies. It's the only way left for me to get the thrills and chills and shocks and shivers I used to find so easily every October.
You like to read, right? Yes. You like to write, too? Yes.
Let's try to scare each other.
Shall we credit icicle here? Yes, let's. She got the ball rolling back on October 29, 2001 with I can make you howl. And vice versa. Let's get down to business. Two days later: 36 entries. One of E2's longest-running traditions was off to a flying start.
A decade later, and it's time to keep our grandest, bloodiest tradition going.
So let's do it again. Write an original scary story. Write a horror-themed poem. Node a story that is in the public domain. Write a factual writeup that is about horror or scary stuff. Write a biography of a writer or actor closely associated with the horror genre. Create a review of a horror film or story. It can be any length and any topic -- as long as it's scary.
What's the runtime for the Quest? The entire month of October, plus November 1, server time. Halloween is too awesome to limit to just one day a year.
If you need inspiration, or if you just want to see some more of the scary stories that Everythingians have produced, check out our previous horror quests: I can make you howl. And vice versa. Let's get down to business., Everything Quests: Scary Stories, The Blood is the Life: A Frightful Halloween Quest, They Hunger For Nodes: An e2 Halloween Scary Story Quest (sadly, the nodequest entry has been deleted), I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Text: The 2005 Halloween Horrorquest, It's the Season for Graves Cracking: The 2006 Quest for Fear (another deleted quest announcement, unfortunately), The Poet and the Worm, The Night's Plutonian Shore: The 2007 Halloween Horrorquest, Necronodecon: The 2008 Halloween Horrorquest, and Pickman's Nodegel: The 2009 Halloween Horrorquest.
When you write a story for the Quest, just /msg me with the node title, then softlink your writeup to this node. I'll include a list of all the Quest participants below.
So start thinking horror, my children. There are whispering voices in the attic, a squirming shape in the cellar, and mad laughter in the graveyard. Halloween is coming. Let's scare each other.
Fiction:
blood and the maiden by cassparadox
Furnace Room Lullaby by ChristineWinter
B-Double by Sc0ut
schism by Serjeant's Muse
Bizmillah! We'll have to let them go by C-Dawg
The Halloween Slumber Party by ALittleHawk
The Other by BookReader
Behind every great man is a shadow by Sc0ut
December 7 by YellowOstrich
but the worm ended up killing them too by YellowOstrich
Homecoming by borgo
The Shadowman: An R-rated Ghost? Story by RustyLark
devil's chair by Lucy-S
We don't make good wives by grundoon
Through the eyes of a stranger by Browncoat
Normand Brissette by Diabolic
Dead men can't die by NanceMuse
A vaguely scary story by artman2003
October 31, 2010 by Pandeism Fish
August 18, 2011 by Lord Brawl
tell me a story about really being undead by Diabolic
Don't tell mommy by tanktop
The zombie revolution will not be televised. But it will be tweeted. by artman2003
The Evergreen Motel by fairyplain
Flayed, decapitated by tentative
Poetry:
The Pot Goblin by Woodnot
golem daughter by cassparadox
calling at the window by cassparadox
Monsters by Zephronias
cactaur by raincomplex
Fact:
Heap by Timeshredder
At the Mountains of Madness by bluerabie
October 12, 2010 by lizardinlaw
Everyone has a 'true ghost story' story by RustyLark
10 perfectly good reasons not to exorcise by Glowing Fish
Slender Man by Jet-Poop
Cephalophore by Pandeism Fish
Samhuinn by gnarl
Reviews:
Halloween by Timeshredder
Amnesia: The Dark Descent by Jet-Poop
Let Me In by Timeshredder
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by Jet-Poop
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima by Jet-Poop
The Vampire Lovers by Timeshredder
The Satanic Rites of Dracula by Timeshredder
Pandaemonium by gnarl
Day of the Dead by Glowing Fish
The quest is over for another year! Thanks to everyone who participated! |