Happy Halloween, writers and readers! We made it to the spooky end of Inktober: Writer’s Edition, in which I wrote a 50-word story based on a set of prompts everyday this past month. You can read the beginning with prompts here, and my weekly compilations here, here, and here.

Without further ado, here is my final set of entries.

Day 24: dizzy

Jake’s kisses made Louis dizzy. Louis knew it was because Jake’s species was toxic to humans but damn if it didn’t feel good. They should stop before the toxins grew too strong for them but Louis had always been a sucker for forbidden love and Jake, well, Jake was hungry.

Day 25: tasty

Few things were as satisfying as the tasty crunch of broken glass when she chewed it between her stainless steel teeth. This glass must have been made from the sands of Mars, the unique bouquet of Martian radiation burning bubbles into the soft brass of her throat as she swallowed.

Day 26: dark

“I’m not mad, I tell you, I’m a visionary! If you can make power from solar energy, you should be able to make dark power, see? Sun to the black hole, one emits energy, the other absorbs it. All I need to do is harness the power of that absorption.”

Day 27: coat

This coat was my mother’s but my body has changed so much since the war. I hear it tear as I slide the coat over my shoulders, my carapace piercing through the fabric. The zipper will not close against my chitin breastplate no matter how I fumble with my pincers.

Day 28: ride

“Let’s ride.” Seven-year-old Famine climbed onto his muddy BMX. Pestilence placed her favourite doll into a pink basket which hung from her Schwinn. War rode a red Raleigh with training wheels and had spikes on his helmet while his little sister, Death, followed on her battered tricycle, handlebar streamers flapping.

Day 29: injured

The ship shuddered when he applied pressure the seam of rivets running up the leeward bulkhead, her whimper echoing through the docking bay. She’d been injured. He pulled out a map of her species’ skeleton, tracing the fracture lines with his fingers and calling for his team of medical engineers.

Day 30: catch

“Come in,” said the re-animation specialist. “Before you catch your death out here.”

She rolled her eyes, swooping her net back and forth through the darkness of the Nether Beyond. “That’s the point,” she muttered, too quiet for anyone to hear, gritting her teeth and leaning further into the void.

Day 31: ripe

After asteroids, moons became ripe. We traveled the galaxy, collecting them. The wild ones were sweeter somehow. We’d carry them in nets trailing behind the ship, brushing near stars to soften their tough outer skin and through wormholes to liquefy the core ‘til the moons would burst between our teeth.

And that’s a wrap! Now if you’ll excuse, I have to get ready for NaNoWriMo. Happy writing!