Victoria Ann Carr is the readers’ choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge.
The winning entry is rewarded with a special feature here today and a place in our collection of winners which will be published as an e-book at year end.
Without further ado, here’s the winning entry:
Ghosts of Northgate
by Victoria Ann Carr
Raymond C. Jett, convicted of multiple homicides, including his parents at the age of twelve, was aptly nicknamed, ‘Raging Rooster’. Prodigiously violent, spurring victims, shouting ‘cock-a doodle-doo’ at every scene, he was finally apprehended, and sent to Northgate Sanitarium for ‘soporific treatment’ in 1948. Some claim to still hear his resonant, malefic crow!
Suspicious of gossip, informed only with factual research, I planned on debunking this paranormal insanity—metaphysical mania cannot persist beyond death! As an investigative journalist, I believe nothing I hear, and only half of what I see; facts, logic, and tangible experience I trust. Aside from recording this for confirmation and warning—this night, I shall never wish to recollect again.
Never call the dead! — “Raymond C. Jett!”
Never ask for a sign!—“Where are you? Give me a sign!”
Never, ever, mock the dead!—“Cock-a-lee-doo-da-le-do!”
Crowing, taunting, laughing sardonically, the affliction was sudden! — paroxysm, foaming at the mouth, convulsions, excruciating pain at my temples—I was delirious, frantic, and terrified of soiling myself, ironically! Glacial tendrils from beyond, thrashed me, as I tried to defecate in the cell—his cell! As I hit the floor, definitively—I soiled myself! Scratching my face, pulling at my ears—my hair—cheekbone crushed into the ice, cold cement floor—this was corporeity, indeed! No!—I could not see anything, nor could I hear anything—more than my own scuffles—until reptant, on the floor, an obstreperous, complacent rooster’s crow—an imprecation—barely a whisper in my ear, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”
Oh nicely done. 🙂