Once upon a time there was a very dull family that lived in a very dull town, a town not even worth mentioning by name. This family was structured like most boring families with one irksome Mother, one pretentious Father, one idiotic Son, and one vain Daughter. They excelled at fulfilling their stereotypes on a daily basis. Mother had brilliant shining ideas pooling about in her brain, but refused to put her tongue to her teeth and speak them aloud. Father had the most skilled hands in the world with so much dexterity one metaphor could not properly encompass it, but he used them primarily for clacking computer buttons at snail speeds and clasping sweating beer cans. Son and Daughter both had keen eyes and ears and could see great distances and hear pins dropping, but would spend hour and hour pressed against the despicable television screen, not paying any attention to the liquefaction of their brains. And then one day an odd thing happened. Each unused body part grew fed up, sprouted spider limbs and scuttled away, leaving the dull people husks to sit in complacency for all of time.

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I started a collaboration called "spiderlimbs and eerie things" for anyone wanting to help make this story(or any other creepy story) into something exciting, join me?

At the St. Lucius Home for Lost Little Children

We meet the cast of our grim little tale;

In the candle light dances two different shadows,

That of Sister Ignatius and a boy, small and pale.

“Lies” hissed the Sister, “are the words of the Devil”

And someone has lied, some filthy young sinner”

So tell me now Timmy, spare yourself a whipping,

Who stole the bread that went with my dinner?”

Small Timmy said nothing, his large eyes unblinking,

His face gaunt and dirty, limbs frail and weak.

His silence enraged evil Sister Ignatius,

“Send in the others!” she announced with a shriek.

They shuffled in slowly, eyes downward, cheeks hollow,

just like our Timmy, each a lonely lost child.

She glowered and paced as they stood there before her

Then she turned to the wall and to herself smiled.

“Do you know what happens to children caught lying?”

The gloom made her eyes look like two pools of ink

“They’re sent down to hell where they’re tied to a stake

And their eyelids are ripped off so that they can’t blink”

“They’re left there to watch their own flesh rot away,

Then vultures and crows strip them down to the bones,”

She turned to the children, her voice now a whisper,

“Then their remains are ground down with stones.”

With this, little Annie started to whimper,

The smallest child of them all, she was filled dread,

Sister Ignatius sensed the weakness within her

“…and flour from their bones is what makes my bread.”

Sister stooped to the girl, put her mouth to her ear,

“Who stole it,” she breathed, making Annie feel colder

“Tell me now or I’ll have your heart for my breakfast”

Then Annie felt Timmy’s warm hand on her shoulder.

“It was me” said the boy, and as he stepped forward,

He withdrew the bread from his tattered old shirt.

“I did it alone” he gestured to the others,

“None of these children deserve to get hurt.”

Sister Ignatius snatched the bread back from Timmy,

Her shadow started growing, stretching right up the wall.

“I don’t know about that” she loomed over the young ones,

What is good for one, I think is good for all.”

She bit into the loaf and chewed it with relish,

In her triumph, she failed to notice the taste

Of hemlock, which Timmy had found in the forest

And with which her evening repast had been laced.

She fell to the floor, her shadow diminished,

Her sight became dim but her mind was still clear.

The children that she had once filled with terror,

Now crowded around her, no longer in fear.

“Do you know what happens”, said our hero Timmy

To adults who put kids through terror and pain?”

“Whatever it is” he bent down and whispered

“I hope it’s never-ending and drives you insane.”

“What will we do now?” he asked of the others.

Said Annie to Timmy, “I think that you’ve shown

“that we can survive if we stick together,

We may always be lost, but we won’t be alone.”