Wallpaper

She shifted the pack, fingertips ghosting over weapons silently scanning the area around the house from the porch. “Blue, Ghost go.” She whispered to the dogs as she eased open the door. The scrape and clatter of nails on the wood floor deafening in the stillness. The dog ran into the house, ears pricked nostrils flaring. The first room was covered in dust; walls decorated in red flocked wallpaper and gilt framed pictures.  The dogs snuffled hunting in the rooms but no warning bark or shuffle or groan from rotting corpses too stupid to know they were long dead.  

Bookgroup drabble prompts: wallpaper and ghost

hairspray

Down to a handful of bullets and four shotgun shells. Fantastic. Jackson grimaced and picked at the flocked wallpaper beside the boarded up window as Phoenix wandered in. ‘Find anything?’

‘Well...enough canned goods for a few days but no ammo. We have a can of extra firm hold hairspray, a lighter with a pin-up girl painted on it and a severe case of performance anxiety, a quarter bottle of peach schnapps, a pink aluminium baseball bat. Oh and a can of spam.’

‘So we get eaten by the obstinately deceased or bash our heads in with Barbie’s baseball bat.’ Excellent.

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Book Group drabble prompt. Slightly Walking Dead and Zombieland inspired, my muse is mostly dead and buried but I dragged this out of....well I have no idea but it's the first thing I have written in months so it's better than nothing I suppose. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Gunslinger

He sat down placing his hat on the table beside him and removed his six-shooter from its leather holster. A lamp burned warmly on the table of rough hewn pine, scarred and stained but still serving its purpose. Oil, rags and bullets sat on the table. He took the weapon apart piece by piece. His mind wandered over the past, the lives taken and saved with the same gun. He was no longer sporting tin. He left that life to rust in a grave beside a cabin and a skeletal tree. He lived a new life but some things remain.

book group prompt: Gunslinger.

Also a tiny bit of a Tin Man fanfic, Cain of course.

a journal entry

Journal entry September 27^th 2025,

The world ended, but not by us, first contact. Fucking aliens. They sent out ships and seeded the world with bio-mechanical creatures that ate our weapons and electricity. There is no power, no plastic, all the cities are gone and nothing left of society. Ding dong the internet is dead, big oil is gone, mobil phones, all the damn bankers, ninety percent of the population and every silicon chip. They came and ate the world and spit out a new one.

The God Technology is dead long live the Gods of Fire, Steam and Darkness.

Chimera writing prompts: a letter and post apocalypse

the red death ball

The girl stood with her velvet gloved fingers pressing against dark wood and black iron. The sound of music and laughter drifted from beneath the door. ‘Let me in.’ she called. The girl blinked back tears. The door was locked tight. She gripped the folds of her cream coloured gown and knelt on the icy stone steps. She peered through the keyhole as screams filled the air. The girl pulled back with a cry, horror shining in her eyes. Her paste diamond masque fell to the earth as red blood seeped beneath the locked doors, and screams echoed all around.

written while listening to Hanna Pestle's Red Death Ball which was inspired by Masque of the Red Death

the owl

The grey owl was hidden by a dusty layer of dirty snow as it perched huddled on a rusty car. The owl was betrayed by the slow blink of his green eyes. I gripped my basket tightly rummaging in the rusting hulks of dead cars. ‘Fly away.’ I thought furiously pulling at a tangle of copper wire, the cold metal burning through my frayed leather gloves. In the distance the blocky shapes of the city. A chain-link fence ran around the perimeter of the city to keep the infected inside. I shuddered and touched the rifle hanging on my shoulder.

quarantine prompt

Pink

Pink. Not the colour of flowers but of sunburnt blistered skin. The first colour they could remember for days of walking the grey smoke. Black road gave way to desert sand. A splash of dried black blood stained the sand beside the bloated corpse. The body twitched and gurgled. A shot rang out echoing along the valley. The head burst apart raining down chunks of diseased black and grey brain on the white sand. No words were spoken as the group circled round the headless remains. A few brave children threw stones at the headless corpse, silently mouthing ‘zombie’.