r/WritingPrompts • u/katpoker666 Moderator • Oct 05 '24
Off Topic [OT] Fun Trope Friday, Writing with Tropes: Scourge of God & Hitchcock!
Welcome to Fun Trope Friday, our feature that mashes up tropes and genres!
How’s it work? Glad you asked. :)
Every week we will have a new spotlight trope.
Each week, there will be a new genre assigned to write a story about the trope.
You can then either use or subvert the trope in a 750-word max (vs 600) story or poem (unless otherwise specified).
To qualify for ranking, you will need to provide ONE actionable feedback. More are welcome of course!
Three winners will be selected each week based on votes, so remember to read your fellow authors’ works and DM me your votes for the top three.
Next up…
Max Word Count: 750 words
It’s Spooktober on WP. This month we’re combining some classic horror & scary tropes with the evolution of the slasher genre, and throwing in some phobias for bonus spooktacularness!
Trope: Scourge of God – This trope isn’t 100% self explanatory. Related to the ‘Karmic Death’ trope where divine justice is meted out to the truly wicked or at least the biggest assholes among us, ‘Scourge of God’ is when the killer focuses on those who have committed fairly minor infractions. Teenagers are a popular victim here as the targeted vices tend to be things like youthful promiscuity, underage drinking, drug use, and the like.
Genre: Hitchcock – This month we’re following the cinematic arc of the horror genre for inspiration. Considered a master of suspense, Hitchcock is famed for creating true terror without showing gore and violence on-screen. The classic example of this is the movie Psycho. So for this week’s stories, let’s leverage the reader’s own imaginations to make something horrifying.
Skill / Constraint - optional: Include the Coulrophobia / Fear of Clowns – from Stephen King’s It to B-movies like Killer Klowns from Outer Space, clowns can be scary.
So, have at it. Lean into the trope heavily or spin it on its head. The choice is yours!
Have a great idea for a future topic to discuss or just want to give feedback? FTF is a fun feature, so it’s all about what you want—so please let me know! Please share in the comments or DM me on Discord or Reddit!
Last Week’s Winners
PLEASE remember to give feedback—this affects your ranking. PLEASE also remember to DM me your votes for the top three stories via Discord or Reddit—both katpoker666. If you have any questions, please DM me as well.
Some fabulous stories this week and great crit at campfire and on the post! Congrats to:
Want to read your words aloud? Join the upcoming FTF Campfire
The next FTF campfire will be Thursday, October 10th from 6-8pm EST. It will be in the Discord Main Voice Lounge. Click on the events tab and mark ‘Interested’ to be kept up to date. No signup or prep needed and don’t have to have written anything! So join in the fun—and shenanigans! 😊
Ground rules:
- Stories must incorporate both the trope and the genre
- Leave one story or poem between 100 and 600 words as a top-level comment unless otherwise specified. Use wordcounter.net to check your word count.
- Deadline: 11:59 PM EST next Thursday
- No stories that have been written for another prompt or feature here on WP—please note after consultation with some of our delightful writers, new serials are now welcomed here
- No previously written content
- Any stories not meeting these rules will be disqualified from rankings
- Does your story not fit the Fun Trope Friday rules? You can post your story as a [PI] with your work when the FTF post is 3 days old!
- Vote to help your favorites rise to the top of the ranks (DM me at katpoker666 on Discord or Reddit)!
Thanks for joining in the fun!
6
u/wileycourage Oct 10 '24
Mycology
Cyrus, a young botanist tended to the rows of plants in his experimental basement greenhouse. Orderly rows of raised platforms house varieties of flora fed by an intricate hydroponic system of the thin, bespectacled man’s design.
“Cy, dear!” A young woman’s voice, which Cyrus recognized as his wife’s called from above.
“Yes?” he responded in a grating tone far too soft for her to hear.
“Cy!”
“Yes, dearie,” he shouted cheerfully.
“Come and see me off!” He climbed the stairs to the first floor with some trepidation. “You know I’ll be gone the entire weekend, but you’ve been in that basement of yours all day again, haven’t you? My Cy, whatever am I going to do with you. You are lucky you married a patient woman!”
“I sure am,” the young man said with practiced warm smile that only his eyes betrayed. Darya was too busy to notice any such discrepancy. He did admire his beautiful wife, adored her in fact, except for her interference with his work and incessant desire to be social. She was pretty as a flower, and that’s what he thought he wanted. Perhaps she would die in a car accident, he hoped.
“Three years in and you still stare at me like you did when you first saw me,” the black-haired, maroon-dressed woman remarked.
“You’re easy to look at,” he responded with a wry grin.
“Now you stop that!” she giggled before stopping abruptly. “Stop,” she repeated sternly. “I must be going. And you should be looking for work instead of playing in your basement!”
“It is not playing. I am working, inventing. We’ve talked about this.”
“It was what you always say, and despite months, nothing.” She sighed and kissed her husband on the cheek. “Goodbye, Cyrus.”
“If you must go, please be well, my Darya. See you when you return.”
The botanist returned to his underground lair, but instead of toiling below the bright grow lights, he secreted away behind a hidden partition to sectioned off portion of the basement. When he saw the fruits of his labor he smiled.
Along the back wall of the space, a long rectangular planter held the substrate which he had inoculated with precious spores. The mycelium network had spread and Cyrus encouraged it to produce the mushrooms he now looked upon.
“Hello, my cash crop, I’ll be back soon to gather you up,” he whispered as he backed out of the fungus room.
“Hands up,” the gruff voice startled Cyrus who whipped around quickly to find himself staring across his plants at a policeman with his gun drawn.
“You can’t be in here!” Cyrus shouted.
“Oh, but I can. What’re you doing back there then?” he said motioning to the walled-off space. “Not growing something magical and illegal are we?”
“How . . . How could you possibly know?”
“We’ve been watching you for some time now Cyrus. We found out about your connections, your plans.”
The botanist shook his head in disbelief. “Where’s everyone else then?”
“What?”
“You’re supposed to tell me the house is surrounded and I have no hope of escape. Isn’t that right?”
“I’m the one in charge here!”
“It’s just you, but why? I don’t suppose you’ll tell me the truth, will you?” Cyrus smiled in his practiced way, slowly approaching the armed man, getting closer and closer.
The man cocked his revolver back, but by the time he pulled the trigger, Cyrus had lurched forward and jammed his finger against the hammer, painfully preventing the gun from firing. Cyrus disarmed the shocked man easily and beat him unconscious with the handle of the pistol.
Cyrus woke that Sunday, well rested and ready for the return of his pretty wife. She charged through the door somewhat violently and breathlessly.
“Hello, my dear Darya,” Cyrus commented coldly. “How was the trip?”
“You. You aren’t supposed to- Where is he?”
“Oh! You mean Jason. Well, we hit it off very quickly, just like you two did, isn’t that right?”
“What did you do!?” Darya backed up against the wall of the kitchen and towards the back door.
“Tsk. Tsk.” The botanist brandished the revolver and pointed it at Darya. “Don’t do anything so foolish. I’ll show you to Jason.”
He lead her down the basement stairs and to the partition, instructing her how to pull it aside.
“There will be a cord, turn on the light.”
“He’s not here. WHERE IS HE?”
“He’s there feeding our children, wife. Don’t you see?”
--
WC: 749. Feedback and crit welcome!
2
u/Tregonial Oct 11 '24
I see we both went for the om nom noms.
The opening paragraph feels like a small info dump that could have been interspersed with the conversation between him and Darya.
It feels a little off to read Darya was "too busy" to notice his fake warmth, but without indication of what was she doing prior.
The transition from beating the man and waking up on a Sunday seem rather abrupt for me. It also seems sudden that Cyrus would know the name Jason when the man never introduced himself properly.
Towards the 2nd half, there is more repetition of "Cyrus" compared to the 1st half which used "young man" or "botanist".
Otherwise, this is a good building of suspense, like I knew something was up with his botany obsession with his prized plant, and waiting just waiting for it to do something utterly evil.
8
u/wordsonthewind Oct 10 '24
Mike had been against the hell house from the very start. They were a pale imitation of the haunted houses and hayrides that the kids actually liked. But the church served three dying towns and they had to attract the youngsters somehow. Especially with the devil-season coming up.
He'd opened the church's storeroom in search of decoration supplies only to come face to face with the leering painted monstrosity. He didn't scream. Didn't slam the storeroom door shut on instinct. Such a display would have earned a beating from dear old Dad, if the old man had still been around.
Besides, he refused to give those youth group troublemakers the reaction they obviously craved.
Hands shaking, hardly daring to look directly at the damned thing, he took the display down and went to work on it. He only stopped once it didn't look like a clown anymore. It would have been overkill for a bird or a puppy, let alone a cardboard stand. But that clown had it coming. Clowns were evil.
Now he had to dispose of it.
He would have dearly loved to burn it, but he'd only set off the smoke alarm. Better to throw it in the dumpster behind the building.
Mrs Smith called out to him as he walked by, mangled cardboard mess in hand.
"Those kids messing about again?"
He nodded. The middle-aged woman seemed to feel some kind of solidarity with him, as a fellow youth ministry worker, but the difference was this: he was simply doing time, as the son of the late respected pastor. She was stuck teaching Sunday school for the rest of her life.
"Don't let the brats get you down," she said. "They know not what they do."
"That's why we're here, aren't we?" Mike said. "To teach them to do better."
And, bless her heart, she thought he was making a joke.
Mike had warned the youth group about the spiritual danger of Halloween last week. Today he would tell them about a related danger.
He knew all about what they did when they thought the adults weren't looking. As if the grown-ups hadn't used all the same tricks and frequented all the same haunts back in the day. Halloween only made it worse, though for the life of him he had no idea why. How could anyone want to do the deed while they were scared silly?
"It hurts your partner," he told them. "It hurts yourself. Most of all, it hurts God."
Their hearts were hardened. He saw it in their eyes. They stared listlessly, moping about their dead pets or mysteriously vanished secret lovers from the next town. That or they gossiped among themselves, inventing lurid stories about a serial killer in their peaceful town. No care at all for their relationship with their Creator.
It was all the sexy costumes causing the trouble, he decided.
"You kids like dares," he said. "Tell you what. Why not dress as your favorite Bible character this Halloween instead of sexy bunnies or sexy devils or-"
"Sexy clown," someone coughed. A burst of laughter near the back of the room. They'd seen him flinch.
He never imagined they'd go this far. He'd have to teach them a lesson. Not for the first time he wondered if he should have taken a leaf out of his old man's book.
"God isn't just in the light," he was fond of saying. "He's in the darkness too, in the secret things we hide in our hearts."
His father had walked in the darkness, learning the best selves of the addicts and vagrants he ministered to and sending them directly to heaven. Mike had done his best to apply those lessons. He knew the kids' likes, dislikes, and secret desires, thanks to Mrs Smith and her kindly ways. But he preferred a more indirect approach. Surely they would learn to lean on the Lord if he took everything else away.
But some people were born reprobates, he supposed.
He looked at the boy who'd joked about sexy clowns. A red dripping grin would suit him well, he thought.
3
u/AGuyLikeThat Oct 10 '24
Hiya Words!
I enjoyed this small portrait of a killer and how you gradually shade in the edges of his world to reveal his monstrous inner nature.
You do a good job here building the world around Mike and slowly presenting his inner justification for 'teaching' these kids.
Your writing is crisp and direct as always - I didn't notice any grammatical corrections or line edits. So, in terms of crit, I'll pick at some of the structure around the narrative.
it's a little unclear how his relationship with his father affects things - was he a mentor or tormentor? - how did he meet his end? And I wondered what Mike's role in the church was exactly?
Those are pretty minor questions that occurred to me after reading I don't think you need to really address them, but its something for you to reflect on. Overall I thought this was great and would have like it to be a little longer!
Good words!
7
u/AGuyLikeThat Oct 10 '24 edited Oct 11 '24
The Date
Screams and laughter rang out across the fairground. The smell of caramel corn and fairy floss drifted on the warm summer breeze as people milled about, browsing stalls and playing sideshow games while they waited for the grand opening of the Asylum Nightmare Manor.
Marie didn’t particularly like jump scares and gory displays - and honestly, the only reason she’d agreed to come with John was the idea of jumping into his muscular arms. The guy was a bit full of himself, but he was a cool drink of water to look at. Tall, dark curly hair, broad chest, and a voice like smoky velvet. And whatever that cologne was, it made her want to get closer.
Her eyes drifted down to his tight jeans as he turned away to look at his phone.
Mmhmm!
“Aw damn, it’s my client,” John flashed his megawatt smile. “I just gotta go somewhere quiet to take this - you understand, right? Back in five minutes, sweetheart.”
Marie frowned as he strode away.
The alley was quiet enough that she could hear John’s wife on the other end of the line.
“Mother says you’re cheating. Are you cheating on me, John?”
I knew it! Marie felt her gut flip as her worst suspicions were confirmed. I’m a fucking side piece!
“Nah, babe. I would never. You know I’m out here working the Graincorp Account. Ring Dave. He’ll tell you. Look, your mom is getting old and paranoid. I’ve tried my best to make her like me, but she’s always held some kind of grudge. I promise you, there’s nowhere I’d rather be right now than with you”
She bit her knuckle to hold back the wave of anger. It washed over her as she listened in, and a surge of bitter disappointment followed in its wake.
“Look, we’re at dinner and the clients are getting impatient. If I shmooze them properly I can catch an early flight and get back by Saturday.”
Blinded by tears, Marie's feet led her back to the haunted house, where John had told her to wait while he took that “important business call”.
Fucking liar! Damn it all, why do I always end up with these assholes? She thought about his insolent smile and those wrangler jeans. Guess I’m just a sucker for a pretty face.
She dried her tears and fixed her make-up. Maybe I should just enjoy the night, and then ghost him…
“Hey, sweetie.” John’s husky voice came from behind her, and despite it all, she felt a twinge of excitement.
She turned around and instead of John, a demonic face hovered an inch from her own. White greasepaint smeared over crimson skin. Needle teeth. Bloodshot, yellow-stained eyes, reflected her horrified gaze back at her.
A scream rose from her chest, but a sudden hand covered her mouth and a chemical-soaked rag stifled her cries.
Reflexively, she tried to breathe. The world melted into oblivion.
Marie woke into darkness with a shuddering gasp.
Her head was full of cobwebs and her eyes and nose were burning from whatever she had been knocked out with. She tried to touch her face, but her wrists were tied to a chair. Her ankles were bound to the legs.
“What is this?” Marie croaked into the gloom. “John?”
“John can’t come to the phone right now.” The mocking voice was behind her.
A match flared and candlelight cast her shadow across a stained brick wall. There was a black puddle on the concrete floor, with what looked like John’s phone lying in it.
“Please. I barely know the guy.” Marie begged. “Let me go?”
“Temptress!” Something slammed against her chair, and her captor stepped in front of her.
He was dressed as a clown, but beneath the make-up, his features were barely human. A bloody cleaver in one hand and the other behind his back - crimson stains on his checkered costume. “John’s mother-in-law contracted me to find out what he really gets up to on these trips.” He bared inhuman teeth at her. “Never cross a witch, m’girl.”
“No! I swear - this was our first date and I didn’t know! I heard him on the phone.” She was babbling now. “He lied to me... I just want a decent guy.” She didn’t care what happened to John. “I was gonna leave, I swear.”
The demonic clown lifted something from behind its back.
John’s severed head.
The dead eyes opened, and its bloody lips moved.
“Liar…”
WC-750
Notes:
The Fun Trope for this week is Scourge of God and the genre is Hitchcock. The optional constraint is 'Fear of Clowns'.
Poor Marie doesn't have much luck in the dating game. Her decision to try and make the best of a bad situation gets her into even more trouble as per the trope. Perhaps the demon-clown might have let her go otherwise?
The gore is mostly implied, but I couldn't shy away from showing a glimpse of Walt's severed head at the end there. And the demon of vengeance takes the form of a scary haunted house clown, satisfying the bonus constraint!
Thanks for reading, I really hope you enjoyed the story! All crit/feedback welcome!
4
u/wordsonthewind Oct 10 '24
Hi wizzy! This was a pretty good examination of the Scourge of God trope. Marie isn't doing a good thing by having an affair with a married man but she's not quite the deliberate homewrecker the clown makes her out to be either. These characters never have very good aim, really.
I really liked the descriptions of the demonic clown. The ending with the head was quite a chilling image too. It was just the right amount of gore to cap off this piece.
Other than that, I was kind of confused by the black puddle with Walt's phone in it. Not sure if it was blood that looked black in the light or if the demon clown doused the evidence in kerosene to burn later.
Good words!
7
u/deepstea Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 10 '24
Jeff hated few things more than taking his son to birthday parties, and nothing more than the ones at the “House of Fun.” The screeching kids, mixed smells of cake and vomit, kids’ tantrums, and the unnerving music made his skin crawl.
The worst of it was the clowns. They didn’t just entertain the kids—they dragged the parents into the “fun” too. Since childhood, Jeff detested them. He didn’t understand why anyone found them amusing. To him, they were dumb and disturbing.
But here he was, in front of the House of Fun, lighting a cigarette while his son Andy celebrated a friend’s seventh birthday. He couldn’t bear staying inside, even to scroll on his phone.
Andy had fallen and started crying, and all Jeff could do was yell at him for being a wimp. No blood, no real injury, just tears over frustration. It pissed Jeff off. He couldn’t stand his son in moments like that. Yelling at him and telling him to grow a thicker skin only reminded Jeff how much he hated sounding like his own father.
Jeff often thought maybe he shouldn’t have been a parent, but he couldn’t abandon Andy like his dad abandoned him. He’ll grow up soon, Jeff thought, and then we’ll bond as men.
He took a drag from his cigarette, then he heard some footsteps in the alley behind him. He turned around, only to see a rat darting between trash bins. Shaking his head, he turned back around and kept on smoking. A few seconds later, he heard a faint sound again, almost a whisper “Jeff. Come here, Jeff.”
He dropped his cigarette. “Dammit, these dumbass kids.” He glanced into the alley. “Andy, is that you? You and your friends are in big trouble if you’re messing around back there!” A faint chuckle echoed in response. “Alright, that’s it,” he muttered and stepped into the alley. But when he got closer, no kids were in sight. Across the street, the door to another building hung open.
“You kids better not be in there! You will be grounded for a month, you hear me?” Jeff yelled, but the hairs on his neck stood up. Don’t be an idiot, he told himself. You are too old to be scared of a door.
Shaking off the unease, he stepped inside the building. His phone’s flashlight revealed a dusty storage room, leading into an old department store. He walked further, reaching to aisles of clothing.
“Andy!” His voice echoed, with no response. He wandered between racks of women’s clothes, cursing under his breath. “I know you’re in here. Come out now, and I’ll go easy on you.”
Through the silence, he heard some footsteps to his left, which made him turn towards the sound. His heart almost stopped. He almost screamed when he saw the clown mask on the shelf in front of him. He had seen that mask on one of the clowns in the House of Fun. “You kids think this is funny?” He felt a strange unease in his guts.
His phone rang, cutting through the silence. It was Annie, the birthday boy’s mother.
“Hey, Annie,” Jeff said, trying to steady his voice.
“Hi, Jeff. Andy’s feeling a bit tired. Could you come get him?”
“He’s… there?”
“Yeah. Where else would he be?”
“So all the kids are there?”
“Are you okay, Jeff? I can drop him off—”
“No, no, I’m on my way.”
He started walking back, but the sound of metal scraping on the floor froze him. He spun around, and there stood a clown from the House of Fun, wearing the mask from the shelf. He was holding a baseball bat.
In a raspy voice, the clown said “Don’t be a wimp Jeff, and I’ll go easy on you.” Jeff bolted toward the exit, but the clown was fast. He was a few meters away from the door when a sharp pain shot through his leg, sending him sprawling to the floor. He let out a cry but kept crawling to the door. His fingers fumbled with the handle, but it wouldn’t open. Out of breath, he turned around. The clown stood above him, bat raised, his red grin stretching wide. “I suppose you are grounded now, Jeff”. From somewhere distant, the warped music of the House of Fun blared. His vision blurred as he heard his son’s voice, faint but clear: “Dad, are you there?” Then, just as the bat came down, everything went silent.
———
WC:748
Feedback is always welcome
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u/AGuyLikeThat Oct 11 '24
Hiya Deepstea,
Enjoyed the story - it's always nice to see a bully get what's coming, but I think Jeff missed any chance to learn a lesson here, hehe. A little brutal, perhaps - but perhaps Jeff's fear stemmed from a premontion. ;)
Your writing is clear and paints a good picture of what's going on for the most part, and I think your dialogue here was strong.
I particularly like how the clown parodies Jeff's own attitude before working him over.
Not too much to crit. Perhaps some of the blocking was a little unclear. I was surprised to hear from his wife and had to reread to see that she was probably still inside rather than at home. And the plot seemed a bit of an abrupt progression - the murderous clown kinda comes out of nowhere. It can be helpful foreshadow an event like this - say maybe having one of the clowns stare disapprovingly when Jeff is berating his son.
Good words!
→ More replies (3)
10
u/Tregonial Oct 10 '24
Emily stared at the dilapidated warehouse, crushing a flimsy piece of paper in hand. That fake ticket had lied about a night of excitement. More like night of eerie silence. Her mood dampened by the cold air, she checked the address to ensure this wasn’t a bad prank by her friend Sam.
This was the address.
Glancing around at the deserted streets, abandoned buildings and flickering lamplights, she called it quits. She was going home. No way Sam would lure her into entering this battered building for a cheap jumpscare. With a sigh, Emily walked away from the darkened alleys and towards the brighter avenue along the main road.
The sudden clang of a trashcan hitting the ground made her jump. Her blood ran cold when sinister laughter filled the air, followed the dark shadows emerging from behind a wall.
“Sam? This isn’t funny!” Emily shouted. “I’m headed home. I’m not staying here to be scared. Who cares if you’re calling me a coward! This isn’t fun!”
Panic surged through her when a figure in tattered, patchwork clothing leapt out from a corner and swiped at her. She hated clowns, especially ones that ambush people at night. Ones with grotesque colors painted upon their faces. Ones with malicious slasher grins that could make the Joker proud.
Emily turned and ran, her feet pounding the pavement as she made a mad dash to the main road. Her heart thumped in her chest. Her eyes still wide in shock. The clown’s laughter echoed behind her, relentless and mocking. Her panic heightened as the clown’s chortling came closer. And closer.
Too late she realized she made a wrong turn. She had no idea where she was going, only that she didn’t want to be caught by the clown. Spotting a narrow path leading up into the mountains, she scrambled up the path. Past the overgrown vines that snaked across the beaten pavement, beyond the blurred danger sign along the side. Even as her legs ached, she kept going deeper and deeper. Even as the strangely human faces on the fleshy cave walls, distorted from shrieking in fear, all twisted to unleash silent screams at her.
Until she hit a dead end. Ahead of her was a dark pool of water, its surface unnaturally still, its depths unfathomable. Emily paused, breathless and debating her options as the clown’s guffaws drew closer. It burst into the clearing behind her, its footsteps slowing as it approached with a sinister grin.
Emily backed up, her feet nearly touching the edge of the pool. The clown lunged at her, but at the last moment, she sidestepped, causing her pursuer to stumble forward into the pool. Only to be swallowed by the murky depths.
The water’s surface rippled and glowed. Long sinous tentacles burst forth, twisting and flexing before her. Stretching and grabbing at anything near its surface. Which thankfully did not include a retreating Emily. With a splash, a familiar face surfaced.
With the facepaint washed away, she recognized Sam.
"Emily!" he screamed, thrashing about as the tentacles coiled around him. "Help me!"
Too shocked to react, she numbly stood by the edge of the pool with her mouth open. Sam was such a moron sometimes. He knew she was terrified of clowns. He was aware of her phobias. Yet, he chose to throw this prank which encompassed most of her worst fears.
“Emily!” Sam cried, tears streaming down his face. “Save me!”
When she stretched out a hand to him, a blackened tendril batted her hand away. Any attempts to step into the water resulted in one of the pool’s appendages tugging her away from it. Like it wanted to keep her safe. To punish others like Sam for being bullies. Those creepy appendages strengthened their pull on him, one even curling into a fist to hammer him into the waters.
Sam gurgled and flailed, his fingers clawing fistful of soil and dirt before he was dragged into the depths. On a cave wall beside Emily, a new face broke the surface. It howled without sound, its agonized visage twisting and fighting to tear free. She tried to flee the scene, having come face-to-face with the final scream of Sam Parker.
**
Officer Jenkins had a ritual to prepare after consoling The Parkers. Their son, Sam Parker, was another statistic among unsolved cases. He couldn’t even promise to find him, even though he knew of the boy’s fate upon the Mountain of the Devourer. His god must eat.
Word Count: 750 words.