Checking the Gate: Horror/Thriller Flash Fiction about Film
Please know that I’m visualizing the MC as a Muppet
I don’t know how these entries work, because this is my first time participating in one of these. But I am procrastinating on something else I should be writing. So I scribbled out a thoroughly ridiculous and not-super-well-edited entry for Bradley Ramsey’s Halls of Pandamonium prompt for Day 15.
Here is the prompt: “Write a story or poem about a detective who is investigating a string of crimes related to an independent film. Your entry must begin with them watching the film themselves after acquiring a copy. Genre: Thriller. Word Count Limit: 3,000”
Did I technically met all requirements as stated? Unsure. But this is what we came up with.
This is obviously NOT my usual genre.
I also wrote most of it with a timer ticking and somewhere I had to be when it went off.
Please be kind.
Checking the Gate
by Rachael Raine Rivers
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Rumor has it that the gates of hell itself unlock each time this film plays all the way through. Something about subliminal messaging buried in the soundtrack. Or maybe images stitched into scene transitions, blinking by on the projector with such rapidity that no human eye can process the demonic exposure as it occurs. Only hold it. Only manifest it once the eye of the projector blinks off.
Inspector Tiddlywumpf doesn’t put much stock in urban legend. Or in hell. He puts rather more stock in the power of advertising to alert this mysterious serial killer as to when and where their calling card film is about to screen.
But he can’t deny that the murders following each public screening of The Burton Banshees (also, what a shitty title) have been gruesome. Heads crushed like watermelons and torsos ripped like wads of teeth-wetted cotton candy from the paper cone.
He can’t deny that the killer has not yet been caught.
So, for academic purposes, and to better insert himself in the mindset of the murderer, he has smuggled the film home from the police lab where he consults. He has rigged up a makeshift home theatre with a sheet and some clothes pins. Installed thermal imaging cameras near every entrance to his house, and a few indoors, as well. Opened his laptop to monitor the environment as well as take notes on whatever content in this movie could have inspired such sick bloodshed.
Tiddlywumpf examined the film itself first, of course. He’s not a fool. He did his due diligence to science by combing though each individual film stock winding the entire 16 mm reel. No hidden demonic imagery surfaced, of course. With even more care, he removed each screw in the casing, scanning for hidden cameras and GPS homing devices. Dissected the entire affair, and then reassembled it with care.
Tiddlywumpf is not a fool, and he trusts in the scientific process enough to accept its conclusion that the film reel is utterly ordinary. Safe enough to transport to his house. Where no one knows he has it. Where no one knows he intends to play it all the way through.
So this is how he finds himself cross-legged on his sunken couch in the semi-dark, orange and blue streaks of film light flashing rectangles in his living room windowpanes, beyond which the night has just begun to rain.
This is how he finds his eyelids sagging in boredom before the credits have begun to roll.
When he hears it.
A voice.
At first, the oddness doesn’t fully register. It is a voice from the film — a line repeated throughout like some kind of clever motif, which it decidedly is not: “the Burton Banshees are coming.”
It repeats again, this time interrupting the nasal-y singersongwriter track overlaying the credits: “The Burton Banshees are coming.”
Is it some kind of easter egg? Some bonus or epilogue scene about to interrupt the credits and cleverly subvert the whole movie?
God he hopes so. The plot was terrible.
But, as he lowers the volume, he hears the voice again. This time louder than before, and coming, not from the speaker, but from behind the strung-up sheet. From the darkness of the dining room beyond the archway: “The Burton Banshees are coming.”
Now he feels a chill.
Glancing down at his laptop, Tiddlywumpf quickly taps the settings for each security camera. Yes, they are all working just fine. No interference. They have recorded nothing. Nothing has entered or left his house throughout the entire duration of the film.
“The Burton Banshees are coming.”
Obviously, Inspector Tiddlywumpf left his gun holster within arm’s reach. His profession has by necessity shaped him into the sort of person who sleeps with a pistol under his pillow.
But, as he dislodges himself from beneath his laptop, keeling sideways off the bowed couch in slow motion, pleading with every tensed muscle in his body for silence as he stands, he reaches instead for the set of throwing knives hidden in his cargo pants. Something about the idea of a gun aiming into a dark room — a dark room containing the possibly supernatural echo of a film actor’s disembodied voice — sits wrong with him. If this danger bears any tangible form, he wants to force it out of the shadows.
He would also just hate to explode his great grandmother’s china hutch by accident.
So Tiddlywumpf edges along the wall, carefully lifting his boots over an old rag rug (also his great grandmother’s) that has tripped him more often than he cares to admit.
Clutching one knife in his furthest three fingers, he reaches carefully around the archway for the light switch. Half expecting some monster to rip out of the darkness and swallow his arm whole.
He switches on the light and peers anxiously into the haze. One table, four chairs, and a neat row of cabinets lining the wall over the countertops greet him. Everything untouched and as it should be.
But then the voice chirps up again: “The Burton Banshees are coming.”
Inspector Tiddlywumpf jumps fully into the room, both knives flashing, an involuntary little roar escaping from his throat as he prepares to confront hell itself and the serial killer hell has spat upon his doorstep. This has never been his favorite part of the job, but he has considerable training in martial arts, and he has brought many a violent man to his knees before he has brought them to the halls of justice.
And there, at the other end of the kitchen, sits a parakeet.
It’s his neighbor’s parakeet, actually. It has been here, cage propped on a little consul table, since the Saturday before last, when his neighbor left for a cruse to Alaska. Tiddlewumpf has been feeding the thing every morning, talking to it while he makes his coffee.
He didn’t know if could talk back.
But, as if to confirm, the bird bobbles along its stand and squawks, in a near-perfect imitation of the film actor’s voice, “The Burton Banshees are coming.” Same inflection. Note perfect. There is no doubt this is where the voice was coming from.
Tiddlywumpf sighs, resheaths his knives, and strides over to the cage. The parakeet’s food dish is empty. Maybe this was its way of asking for more.
Tiddlywumpf unlatches the little wire gate and reaches in to stroke the creature’s head.
The parakeet opens its beak with a follow-up round of “The Burton Banshees are coming.”
And then its beak continues to open.
And open.
And the ridges of its throat unfurl gigantically into a kind of spiraling slide, each groove lined with row upon row of razor sharp teeth smelling of rot.
And then hell swallows Inspector Tiddlywumpf whole before he can even think to reach for his knives.
In the other room, the projector sputters off.
If you like scary/spooky stories, you should also check out my (much better-written) cozy fantasy horror short story below:
This was great! Love the atmosphere and the shocking imagery, particularly near the end.
You did great work! An excellent response to the prompt. 👏🏻👏🏻
That is not what I was expecting to happen. I really liked this.