Should I finish this story?

Hi, Splattercore.I wrote a quick chapter, more like half a chapter, today and pulled it out of my head. No plot. No research. No working through characters first. I just wrote it because it was in my brain and held me captive for most of last night. I'd love to know what you guys think of it...

Foreword   

The darkness enveloped her entire being as she trembled through the cold and lonely cemetery, clutching her goose-bumped arms to her chest. The moon was full, but still didn’t provide enough light for her to see, and to make matters worse, her flashlight batteries had died several tombstones ago.

    The crisp fall leaves crunched under her sneakers as she walked through rows and rows of the dead who had met their fates mostly over a hundred years ago. Vaulhurtz Cemetery didn’t take new additions. It was over a century old and the newest grave there was over sixty years old. It had filled up rather quickly when it opened up to the elite and after The Great Depression, it was completely full.
    Most of the stones, she noticed, were upright and had gargoyles and other creepy monstrosities on top of them, as if a grim tombstone would make death a bit easier on the families or something to that nature. Nonetheless, she combed through every single one of them and would continue to do so until she found the right one.
    The stone she was looking for would have the name Margaret Anne Thatcher on it, and it would be one of the oldest ones in the place. The grave, of course, would be completely empty-or so Sarah hoped.
    The story that her grandmother had told her that night, right before she took her last breath, was a very disturbing, if not sweet one.
    Margaret was her grandmother’s grandmother. Right before the turn of the century, Margaret married a plantation owner in South Carolina to ensure that her family’s financial status stayed put. Unfortunately, poor Margaret got more than she bargained for. The plantation owner, William Thatcher was an old, crotchety, cranky, mean, cantankerous and abusive piss-pot of an old man. When slavery was abolished, he kept his plantation running by whatever means necessary, and he worked his new, young bride to the brink of near insanity.
    Finally, as the thoughts of the grizzly story her grandmother had just told her replayed in her head for the umpteenth time, Sarah found a stone marked “William Thatcher.” That meant that his wife’s stone would be close by.
    Feeling sick from thinking of the cruel punishment that Margaret had received all those many years ago, Sarah spat on William Thatcher’s grave, and as she passed, she found Margaret’s stone sticking out of the ground next to it, below a grand oak tree.
    Her stone read “Margaret Thatcher, wife and mother. RIP.” That was it. No dates. Nothing else at all.
    A chill swept over Sarah’s shoulders and she pulled her shovel from her side and began digging as quickly and efficiently as she could without getting caught. Then again, on a night like that with the darkness sweeping through the entire cemetery, no one was likely to be about.
    When she plunked the shovel into hard ground the first time, she barely made a dent in the earth.
    “Shit.” She cursed, resting her shovel against the tombstone for a minute to tie her long dark curls back in a quick ponytail. Then, as quickly as she could, she resumed, pushing the shovel into the ground a bit deeper.
    She didn’t have time to wait on a court order to have the grave exhume, and as long as that body had been dead, if it was even in there, she had no reason to exhume it anyhow. Not from a legal stand point, that is.
    Personally, she had a very big reason to dig her up. Her grave would contain her destiny, according to her grandmother.

What better way to spend the night of your beloved grandmother’s death and your own eighteenth birthday then to go grave robbing? Her thoughts roamed towards sarcasm, but she shrugged it off.

    Margaret, according to the stories, had left strict instructions after she faked her death with the help of a few friends, that only the ninth Thatcher woman born could open that grave. Only the ninth would know what to do with the contents, and only the ninth could make things right again. Then, after leaving her daughter with relatives in Virginia, well hidden from William Thatcher, Margaret had disappeared to England, never to be heard from again.
    Sarah Thatcher was the ninth born daughter after all those years. Most Thatchers were males, though they were all powerful enough in their own as warlocks. It was known that the witches held the most mystique. This, according to Margaret, was why it had to be a daughter, and not a son.
    She pushed the shovel back into the dirt again, after making just a small hole in the earth, and pulled up a gigantic chunk of earth this time. Proudly, she heaved the dirt over her shoulder and kept at it, wondering what on earth was in that grave that was so darned important.
    Whatever it was, she wanted it. It could be money. It could be deeds. It could be jewels that Margaret had stored away. And then again, it could be completely empty. Who really knew...
    Three hours later, she hit the top of a very old black onyx casket wrapped in heavy silver chains with a silver name plate on top that had Margaret’s name on it and a number nine. It took her all of twenty minutes to uncover the rest of it, retrieve the set of bolt cutters from her bag, and tear into the heavy silver chains. She hacked at them longer than she thought it would take to get decrepit metal to break, but once they fell to the sides of the casket and she unlatched it, she felt she was ready to proceed.
    With one heavy, deep breath, she pushed the top of the casket open, and to her shock and horror, there was a very fresh body inside. A male body, dressed in turn of the century garb and a gothic top hat. He didn’t look over a hundred years old at all.
    On the contrary, the corpse looked brand new and not a day over thirty, albeit he was a bit dusty.
    Sarah gasped and stood back, waiting for a stench to hit her, but it never did. Just mold and musk. Her heart jumped into her throat.
    Silver-blond locks of shoulder-length hair was draped over the dead guy’s shoulders. White lashes covered the closed eyelids of the corpse’s sleeping face. If it weren’t for the fact that the dead man wasn’t breathing, she would half expect him to jump up and start talking to her.
    Frustrated, Sarah turned around and peered up at the moon and the star-sprinkled night sky. Holding her hands up in the air, she muttered, “Some destiny this is!” Then, she tossed the shovel on the ground and turned around again to face the corpse.
    “Dude, I don’t know who you are or why the hell you’re in my great great great great, a million times great grandmother’s grave, but you are not what I expected, here!”
    She closed her eyes and stood on her knees at the side of the grave. There had to be something in there besides a dead guy!
    Bravely gathering her wits about her, she slid one hand into the side of the casket, past the corps’s chest and into the lining, checking to see if there was a letter or a document in there. Perhaps a key to some kind of other buried treasure with a map?
    She slid her hand down further, closer to the corps’s arm and closed her eyes as she felt around the rock-hard, chilling-cold body.
    Nothing...
    She moved her hand to the other side of the body and slid her fingers into the lining of the other side of the casket, right above his chest again, still keeping her eyelids tightly closed.
    Then, she felt cold fingers wrap tightly around her arm and heard a low growl from below her.
    Her knees wobbled around in the fresh dirt that she was sitting in, and snapped her eyelids open.
    With more force and strength than she’d ever felt in her entire life, the corpse animated and pulled her inside, right on top of him. His eyes were a fierce red, his face stone cold, chiseled, and angry.
    There were no words to describe the horror that she felt inching down her spine, nor the cold of death that the corpse spread over her skin when he touched her. Nothing could describe the pain that spread through her neck, either, when he bit into it with a force stronger than death itself. Warmth spread over her neck and into her chin and chest when the fresh blood from her new wound seeped all over her and down her shoulder.
    She couldn’t even scream. It came out of her throat in a gurgling, but no coherant words escaped.
    He held her as tightly as a lover, but gave her not pleasure, but pain and suffering instead. It lasted only a minute or so, but to Sarah, the splintering, dull bite felt as though it was an hour before he finally released her, pushed her off of him and out of the grave, violently, and let himself out to stand next to her.
    “You’re Margaret Thatcher’s granddaughter?” His voice was low and raspy, but he spoke with a brilliant English accent and wiped her blood from his lips with the sleeve of his earth-worn shirt.
    Her head was spinning and she felt weak, but managed to nod in his direction with utter hate in her eyes. “Yes,” She whispered towards him as she pushed herself up from the mound of fresh dirt that she’d shoveled earlier.
    “You’re a witch?” He asked her.
    “Apparently so. That’s what they tell me.” She sassed him, but knew that it was true. She was a witch, but not a very good one. She got her spells mixed up and always managed to ruin them in one way or another. Either that or they simply backfired on her.
    Wiping a bit of blood from her shoulder, she gathered her bag and her shovel. “Well, it’s been horrible meeting you, and I hope I never have the pleasure again! Had I expected a vampire to greet me, I would have left this grave alone.”
    “Ever met a vampire before?” He asked, straightening his clothes, staring at her.
    “No, but there’s always a first time for everything, and hopefully a last!” With that, she spat blood from her mouth and realized that her lip had somehow been busted when he’d thrown her from the casket. “I’m leaving now. Good luck with the whole bloodsucker thing.”
    A sly grin crossed his lips. “You’ll be seeing me again, Sarah Thatcher.”
    “In hell, maybe.” She mumbled, feeling beaten and misinformed as she walked back out of the cemetery, searching for the iron gates she’d climbed over to get in a few hours ago. 

Let me know what you think through comments here. If it sucks, please tell me so. You won't be doing me any favors by telling me that the beginning of this story is great when it's really not. Go ahead. Take your best shot. I'm a big girl. I can deal with some criticism. :)

Thanks! 

~Rhiannon Mills 

Aaaahhh! What the heck was that?

I don't know why I put this here. It has nothing to do with this post...but I just really like it and I'm allowed to do erratic things when I've just seen a ghost.

So, today, I have another real live ghost story for ya. 

I was minding my own damned business at my computer, working on some emails that need to be read and returned, and the dryer stopped in the laundry room. 

Sighs...

So, I get up out of my comfy chair and push it under my desk, hot foot it to the laundry room, open the dryer, grab an arm load of clean, dry, hot laundry and begin to carry it through the bedroom and into the kitchen so I can fold it on the kitchen table. 

Only, I never made it to the kitchen. Hell, I didn't even make it out of the bedroom. I got to the first step between the laundry room and master bedroom, seen the most horrible thing I've ever seen in my history of ghostie sightings, dropped the clean, dry, hot laundry on my bare feet, and lost my breath completely and stood frozen in that doorway for about five minutes.

So, what is it that I saw today, do you ask? 

Again, it was the most horrible thing I've ever seen and I've seen a lot of dead folks. Or, their spirits. However you wanna put it.

I saw the graying, nearly rotten, standing straight upward corpse (only she was completely animated) of a lady standing straight up next to my bed. She was covered in blood, though I'm not sure it was hers and its really hard to see details when you're looking at ghosts because their forms are sort of shadowy and graying. 

Yes, I know that was a run-on sentence. Sue me.

She looked to be a bit older than me, though not much. She had long-ish dark hair and wore a long dress with full-ish skirts. In  one of her hands she held out the severed head of another woman. Or it could have been a very long haired man. I don't know. I couldn't tell because it was so damned grizzly. 

And in my bedroom. In. My. BEDROOM!

It's one thing to see a perfectly harmless ghost, one that doesn't wish to hurt you. But, when you see one like this who is clutching someone's head by the roots of their hair, it's a different ballgame altogether. Wanna know how I know she didn't like me?

It could probably be because she was practically growling, though there was no sound. I could just see her doing it with her mouth and facial expressions. 

And this all happened after my husband left for work and the kids were outside playing with the neighbor's kids and I was in here all by myself. 

I had to share this with Splattercore because I'm still pretty damn shaken up by it. And in case you're wondering, I folded the laundry and put it away, rather than leaving it in my apparently haunted bedroom.

The...Fucking...END.

Real Ghost Stories

There is something about me that not many people know. The reason not many people know is that I'm always afraid they'll think I'm just plain bat-shit crazy. I'm not crazy, not really, but I do have a few senses that most people don't have. There are others like me and others similar, but I still feel weird about it. So, I'm going to share it with Splattercore. You might think I'm crazy, but most of you are probably as nuts as I am. 

Firstly, I see ghosts. Sometimes.


The first time I ever remember seeing a ghost was when I was only about three years old. My parents and I lived in a little house in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, and it was Easter morning. It was raining cats and dogs, and I desperately wanted to hunt eggs outside. My mom and dad told me no, and that no one was hunting eggs outside in the rain. I wasn't the only one inside. 

Boy, were they ever wrong. When I looked out their bedroom window, there was about twenty kids following behind one adult, in a perfect line, walking up to the top of the hill where the old textile mill was. In my mind, I just knew that they were hunting eggs without me!

The ruins of a late 1800's mill in Saxapahaw, picture taken present day :)

So, I pointed out the window, and made both of my parents come see all those kids out there, going up the hill to hunt eggs.


They didn't see a damn thing. 


"But, b-b-b-b-but they're right there!" I screamed at my parents for nearly ten minutes, pointing at all those kids. They were going to get my eggs, dammit! 

Again, my mom and dad gave me a weird look and assured me there were no kids out there. 

I saw other things, too, but I don't remember many of them until I was in high school. My mom had just moved into the house that her father's father built from the ground up. She was excited with the move and loved the idea of being close to my grandma (who lived just a hop, skip, and a jump away), and she loved that she found old newspaper clippings in the walls when we moved in. 

I loved the history of that house, too. My great-grandfather was a moonshiner. During prohibition, many men (and women sometimes) made homemade hooch in stills they kept hidden from the law. My grandpappy was one of those hooch runners. Southern Appalachia was full of them, but it was a good way to get your alcohol and a good way to make money during the Great Depression some years later, too. On the mountain that he lived on, he was the only living soul there that had a vehicle during the depression. Oh, and he had horses and livestock that he didn't have to slaughter to survive-although, I know they did slaughter their own meat. They just didn't have to.

Well, my grandfather made his living moonshining for quite some time, and he married my Cherokee grandma, Betty. Betty was quite a looker. Tall, long dark Cherokee hair that hung down to her hips (like my moms and mine), beautiful big brown eyes, and really nice arms. My mom takes after my grandma Betty. They look exactly alike! 


Betty and my grandfather raised a small family in their little house up in the mountains. They had a young daughter and my grandfather and my grandfather's brothers. Well, when my grandfather was little, he was put in charge of watching my auntie (who was his little sister) while his parents were working outside. My grandfather was very little himself. Maybe seven or so...


Anyhow, he grabbed a rifle from his daddy's dresser and accidentally shot his baby sister. The bullet went through her and into a dresser behind her, bursting much of the wood from the end of the dresser. My great grandfather kept that damn dresser and my grandpa had to look at it every day until he left for overseas during WW2. 


Years later, when I was just fifteen, I saw my great auntie. I was watching a movie in the living room, and turned off the tv and vcr, then settled down to sleep on the loveseat. Before I got to sleep, the tv turned back on, then the vcr started making a noise. I looked up, and just beyond the tv stand, in the bathroom doorway, was my little auntie-but, I didn't even know she existed until a few days later. She was pretty. She had her hair in pigtail braids, very long and dark Cherokee hair. She had freckles on her face like my mama, and she was holding a kitten. She didn't speak, didn't smile, just stared at me. Later, my grandmother told me about her, and it gave me chills and I remember crying for about an hour over her death. My grandfather struggled with that for his entire life.


A few weeks later, I was sleeping in my bedroom, but heard a noise and thought I'd heard my mama calling for me. I looked into the doorway and there was a woman that looked like my mom, but wasn't her. She had long hair, braided to one side, dark Cherokee eyes, and I thought I was going to shit myself. Luckily, I didn't. It was my great grandma, Betty. 


I see ghosts from time to time, at the oddest times. I've seen miners walking home from the mine, carrying their axes and mining lights across the train tracks below my house. I've seen young, old, and in between. I'm sort of used to it now, but every time I see one, my heart leaps into my butt and I get chills.


I googled Saxpahaw, North Carolina a few days ago, though, and found out that the kids I saw were probably the children of Mill workers from the early 1900's. They went to school in the town and also worked in the Mill some, too. They were probably on their way up to the Mill when I saw them. I even found a picture. 

They took all my damn Easter eggs!

My Very Own Zombie

A good friend of mine is creating a new zombie image every day for the entire month of May. A few days ago, he made one just for me-a Clarke Gable Zombie (cause I love Gone With the Wind).

I wanted to share this zombie with you guys because I've never had my own zombie before!

 

The artist, David Naughton-Shires, even put my name in the poster...How about that? 

Anyhow, it got me thinking about what a zombie outbreak would really be like and if I could really have my own zombie version of Clarke Gable. What would I do with him? 

Here's one good idea: I'd tie him up in a shed in my backyard and feed people to him that I don't particularly care for. I'd take pictures with him and have him properly trained to fetch the paper. Then, I'd write a book about how to train your zombie. 

And I guarantee that if I had my own zombie around here, I wouldn't have much of a problem with neighborhood dogs scaring the shit out of me and keeping me pretty much locked up in my own house. 

My Real Life Horror Story With A Panther

My mother grew up on a mountain (Barker's Ridge) in West Virginia, and we moved back up there when I was about 13. I moved first and lived with my Grandma and then a year later my mom followed and we moved into a house right below my Grandma's place. Mountain life was unlike anything I'd ever dreamed of before, and getting used to it was a big issue for me, but I took to it like a fish to water. Probably because mountain living is in my blood.

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone in West Virginia lives way back in the boogey woods. My dad's family lived on a hill-what others (not from WV) would call a mountain, but what mountaineers see as smaller than a real mountain. I live on that same hill now (in Itmann, right below one of my uncles and my paternal Grandmother), so life on a hill is even way different than life on a mountain.

Barker's Ridge has bears, deer, coyotes, and all kinds of other creepy critters, and that was a big adjustment too. I loved to walk from my Grandma's place (quite possibly the highest point inhabited on that mountain) to my great uncle's house below a bit, and then out the strip and back. That was a great work out! I hated, however, making the trek from my grandma's house to my great uncle's house in the dark at six in the morning to catch the school bus. Then, when I moved in with my mom, right below my grandma, it was basically the same walk, except that my mom lived in this little holler-closer to the woods and even more out of the way of modern society.

I got used to it and it got to the point that bats flying ahead sometimes and deer sometimes stirring in the woods didn't scare me. I could sometimes even hear the occasional bear moving around further into the woods. I learned to identify which sounds could be threatening and which ones weren't. Bobcats scared me the most, but I learned that if you stamped your foot at them - if you see one - they scurry back into the woods scared to death of you. Problem solved.

When I was in the 9th grade, though, something very different happened. Something I never expected, and no one even told me about until about two years ago-long after high school had ended.

I got up one morning at 4:30 as usual so that I could take a shower and blow dry my hair and get ready for school as usual, in time to be to the bus stop by 10 til 6 (so that gave me ten minutes to sneak and smoke in my uncle's driveway). At ten til, I walked out the door of my house and up the driveway, hem hawing around with my backpack and carefully avoiding mud puddles so that I didn't get my shoes dirty. I think I even stopped once or twice to adjust my shoes and shift my super heavy backpack around.

When I got to my uncle's house, he was waiting for me on his porch, shotgun in hand. Usually, he was asleep because he worked night shift in the coal mines. When I made it to his porch, he had already anticipated my arrival and had the sliding glass doors open, quickly ushered me inside, and then said, "There's a coyote in your driveway. Don't go out there this morning. There's a whole pack of 'em in the woods. Stay in here until the bus comes and I'll wait with you."

One coyote doesn't scare me nearly as much as a pack of them, so I listened. The idea of being ripped to shreds by a pack of wild dogs before school didn't appeal to me very much. When the bus came, I got on-with my uncle standing at the door with his gun at his side-and I went to school a little shaken by the news of the coyotes, but the next day I walked to the bus stop as usual and no coyote activity. That meant I could smoke outside in peace.

Years later, I learned the real story. Sure, I was there to experience this, but apparently there were things I didn't know.

Apparently, the real story went something like this...

I left my house, through the front door, as usual. I stopped in the driveway to adjust things, and stopped to do whatever it is teenage girls do. I hem hawed over puddles and through rocks in the road. Meanwhile, I was being stalked.

By a big freakin' cat.

I'm sure to him I'd be rather tasty...

I'd heard my mom and grandma talking about the panther sightings on the hill and I'd totally rolled my eyes at them. A panther? On the mountain? Nah...

I couldn't have been more wrong. My uncle watched it stalk me and he held his gun at the ready in case the damn thing tried to grab me. He didn't make a sound for fear of spooking the cat. If the cat were spooked, I would have been a goner for sure. Panthers are just gigantic kitty cats. They play with their food first. It would have grabbed me from behind, went for my neck, possibly snapped it, and then played with me while I tried to get away. It would have left a blood trail from the overgrown driveway into the woods, and my mom would have just thought somebody or a bear maybe had killed a deer there in the middle of the night. Until I didn't come home from school that night, she'd have no way of knowing what happened to me.

About two years ago, my uncles finally told me about the story. I thought they were kidding at first, but then my mom confirmed that it was true and that they didn't tell me cause they didn't want me to freak out and never go to school again. It makes me wonder if they kept an eye on me after that, though lol. I'm sure that they did. I think...

Taking A Blood Bathory

Artwork by my friend, Ian Misfit

We often think of gore and horror as only pertaining to books and movies, but sometimes we neglect some of the real life horror stories throughout history-the ones that modern books and movie scripts are usually derived and molded from, at least in part.

One of the goriest serial killers of all time has fueled vampire books and horror for centuries now. Many, many centuries actually. Some akin to the stories of Vlad the Impaler (my Dracula-yes, he's mine), the stories of Countess Elizabeth Bathory are some of the goriest, nastiest, bloodiest accounts of murder and blood-bathing (literally) ever. 

This woman was insane. Very, very insane.  She was only tried for the deaths of 80, though in reality, it's said that there were over six hundred! 


Some of the charges were as follows: 

• biting hands, faces, feet, genitalia, etc.
• sexual abuse
• freezing them to death
• performing surgeries on the victims-often fatal
• burning or mutilation of the victims hands, faces, and sometimes genitals
• starving victims to death

Bodies were often burned or buried in unmarked, shallow graves. Who really knows where she found all these women, but it's said that she had suppliers. I guess that adds human trafficking to her list of offenses, although in the sixteenth century I think that was actually allowed. Not sure. Either way, it's creepy. Can you imagine being bought only to be tortured, killed, and drained of your blood so that some bat-shit crazy Countess can bathe in it?


Oh yeah, Countess Bathory bathed in her victims' blood, according to legend, because she thought it was like stepping into a really twisted version of the Fountain of Youth. 


I know, however, that Bathory wasn't born to be a serial killer. She was born into society as a noble lady, part of society's nobility, I mean. Her family was of high society, as high as you could get in sixteenth century Transylvania. She was related to a Cardinal, a Prince, and a cousin who was the Prime Minister of Hungary. She married a Count, but he took her surname so that she could keep it (evidently her family was more popular than his). The Count was away at war through much of their marriage, and thus, a manservant in the Bathory household introduced Elizabeth to the occult. 

She bore several children after waiting ten years to start a family, and after 29 years of marriage, her husband-the Count-died in battle. This is when, according to my online sources, Elizabeth went bat shit crazy and began taking part in some pretty odd behavior. The first thing she did was send her mother-in-law away from the Castle. Not so bad, right? Well, then she began to take part in some freaky weird rituals involving animal sacrifices. She became so vain and obsessed with losing her beauty in that time. I read somewhere that she'd had a maid to comb her hair one day, but the maid accidentally pulled a strand. So, Bathory smacked the maid's hand so hard that it drew blood. A drop of the maid's blood hit Bathory's hand, and she swore that the blood maid her skin look younger. Elizabeth made her Major-domo and a servant strip the girl's clothing, cut her open, and drain the girl of all of her blood so that she could bathe in it. 

I really wish I were kidding.


After this, Elizabeth gained a few henchmen to carry out her dirty, bloody deeds for her. She found suppliers for her need for youth (she wanted young virgins, according to some legends), so she probably had a pretty steady stream of young women to kill. 


Once, a victim escaped her castle and told the authorities of the horrible atrocities that went on there. The castle was raided, and they found one dead girl, one half dead and full of holes, several in the dungeon that were pierced and full of holes, and 50 bodies were exhumed below the castle. 


A trial was held, and Bathory's two witches (yeah, this serial killer employed help from witches, too!) were executed. Bathory herself wasn't allowed to be executed because of her noble blood, so she was placed on strict house arrest.


The fact that her husband dying seemed to be what started this whole blood bath debacle made me wonder if the loss of love might have been part of the reason she went wacky (Get it? Wacky? *grins*). Or it could have been that after she watched her husband die and partially decompose she might have decided that she didn't want that to happen to her. Perhaps it was vanity that drove her mad. It was said that Elizabeth Bathory was one of the most beautiful women in her time. 

Think about it this way: back then, they didn't have embalming fluids-or at least they didn't use them if they did have them-and bodies would lay out for a day or two before being buried. Perhaps watching one who was close to her, that she may have even loved (arranged marriage, so it's hard to tell if she loved him or not) go through the changes of decomposition really, really fucked her up. Who really knows! 


All I have to say about her is this: I'd love....LOVE....to write a book about her. I may just do that one of these days.

Hounds of Hell!

The Demon Queen and the Demon Pup

My dog is in heat. She's a mutt, a good mix between a boxer and some kind of terrier. Not sure what kind. Her name is Heidi Mills Demon Pup (Just Heidi for short) and she's my constant companion. I don't know what I'd do without her.

Unfortunately, I live in a neighborhood where everyone just lets their dogs run all over the damn place and are completely uncaring for what the outcome is. Since Heidi's been in heat (and she's only one of 2 female dogs here and the other female is fixed already) I've woke up every morning with at least six male dogs on my porch waiting for her.

This terrifies me, and that's the reason I've chose to share this rant with splattercore--dogs are freakin bat-shit crazy scary, especially when there's a whole pack of them stalking my house. 

She's winking...and that's scary as hell.

Most of the dogs' owners around here come after their dogs once they realize that they're missing, but there's two dogs (same owner) who stay here all the time and never go home until I gather my wits about me and chase them off with rocks, sticks, boards with nails, or whatever I can find. This TERRIFIES ME because these are big dogs and I've seen them hurt other dogs, so they could easily hurt me, too. 

What's more--I have four kids who love to play outside. They can't do that when all those big scary dogs are out there, and even if the dogs take a break and go home, their, um, messes are still all over my yard. Believe me, I can't clean up after them fast enough. I woke up yesterday morning to find that sometime through the night, while Heidi and I were fast asleep, the pack of wild dogs tore up all my garbage, too. 

Cujo...*shivers*

Thanks, ass holes....

One of the two dogs that practically stays here kinda reminds me of Cujo. The fact that I wake up every single morning to a pack of crazy lust filled dogs in my yard has almost moved me to plot out a new horror short story about a woman protecting her home against the hounds of hell. I may just do it, and when I do, I'll write the dedication out to the owners of the two big scary ones, and then thank them for never keeping their dogs at home. 

Sniffs....

Little dogs are creepy, too.

I'm even having nightmares at night about all these dogs, and dreaming of the day when Heidi's appointment at the Vet's office comes up finally so I can have her fixed and not have to worry about crazy horny dogs in my yard tearing everything up and making it impossible for my four children to go outside and play (which keeps them out of MY hair while I'm trying to cook and do things around the house). 

So, my question (Finally, I know-I'm long winded) is this: Which scary dogs from movies do you think of when you encounter a scary dog? Some people are more afraid of small dogs than big ones (like my son, Tristan). Some are only afraid of fluffy ones. Some are scared of dobermans and rottweilers but not other types of dogs. I grew up with dobermans and rottweilers, so I'm not afraid of them at all.

Personally, I'm terrified of pit bulls, but only the ones that aren't cared for properly, and around here, there are a lot of those, too.

As much as I'm terrified of unkempt pit bulls, I do believe this q-tip doggie is the scariest one I've seen thus far. 

Share your favorite ones. Let's see if I can top them :)

That's my natural eye color...I just wear brown contacts.

For more of my rants, you can visit me all over the place. But, for starts, you can try my other blog, Rhiannon's Paranormally Romantic Bits & Pieces, where I discuss everything from adult toys, adult films, vampires, creepy things, creepy people, books, kids, scary stuff, and lots of other odds and ends. 

You can also find me on Facebook. Just look for Rhiannon Mills Demon Queen :) 

Vampire Monsters Vs. Vampire Lovers - Why not both?

For those of you who may not know this about me, I'm a Mom--first and foremost. But, I wear many, many hats.  I'm also a writer, author, columnist, and reviewer (books, adult films, adult toys, comics).  I have my fingers in a lot of cookie jars! 

That being said, one of my favorite things in the world is reviewing books that make me so scared of my shadow that I'm ready to piss myself. The side of me that is also an erotica lover somewhat mingles with my horror loving side a bit, and yes, I love erotic vampire books.


I recently got a new one from Good Vibrations (I'm an affiliate of this company and also write for the Good Vibrations Magazine) that was published by Cleis Books. It's an anthology of vampire erotica called The Sweetest Kiss, and it's absolutely superb. Four stars from the reviewer (me)--and I don't give my stars away lightly.

Ahem....where was I? Oh yeah, back to the vampire erotica.

My question, however, is this: How is it that some folks out there, possibly many of you, think that a vampire cannot be a romantic being when one of the very first ones--in fact--was Dracula? If you remember correctly, Prince Vlad himself was, very much, capable of feeling love for another person/being in the form of the very odd love and possible obsession he had for Mina Harker. 


Not only was Vlad capable of feelings such as love and lust, but so were some of the very first vampires ever mentioned in history. If you research a little bit, you'll find out quite quickly that some of the very first accounts of vampires were from before medieval times. Those vampires were said to sneak in through windows and under doors in the form of a vapor. Then they would materialize into a more human form, sleep with their victims, and drain them dry of their blood. They were incubus/succubus vamps. There's LUST, if I'm not mistaken. 

I'm a vampire...RAWR!

Vampires being depicted as monsters are alright by me, too. After all, I'm a horror fan. That being said, I'm not gonna knock the vamps who are a little more human and loveable (although, I dislike the sparkling variety but loved the books and the story line that went with them). The vampires in my books are quite personable, too, even though they're bloodthirsty killers primarily. I think it's quite possible for a vampire to go out and rip someone's throat out one minute, then come home to the man/woman he or she loves and have awesome sex. Or maybe just a cuddle on the couch accompanied with some light blood play. 


Don't knock something until you try it, right? 


Please, by all means, give me your insight on this. I'd love to know from both an author standpoint and a reviewer's standpoint. 


But be warned. If you think you know more about vampire history than me...you probably don't. And if you do, I want to be your new best friend lol ! 

Yours Eternal, 
Rhiannon Mills





To find out more about my crazy vampire romance fiction, you can visit me at http://www.rhiannonmills.blogspot.com  or you can just email me for info. 

Really, I'm all over the darn place. Just google my name and see what pops up! 

The Crow Remake? It cannot be!!!

Yeah...that's me.

Hey folks. Rhiannon here. Just thought I'd drop into Splattercore to bitch about the upcoming remake of one of my all-time favorite, sooooper duper favorite movies EVARRRRR, The Crow.

Yeah, remember? 1993? Brandon Lee lost his life making this awesome movie that, if I'm not mistaken, derived from an awesome comic book? And I just happen to love comics.

Anyhow, some lame brain in Hollywood (not to name any names right now because I'm too pissy to fool with googling) decided that he should remake The Crow. The reason he's doing this is completely unknown, but in my opinion, no reason is a good reason to remake a classic. It's just ridiculous to try. It's gonna flop! *crosses fingers behind back*

The Crow was a great film. We all know that. However, it will be nothing....NOTHING...without the awesome soundtrack, and the bands we have to choose from today will never hold a candle to the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Hole on the original soundtrack. NEVER!!!! What ruined, gang ridden, rat infested, dumpty dump city would be complete without Courtney Love bellowing idiotic lyrics out of her manhole while wearing a dishcloth and a silk ribbon tied around it as her ensemble? It's just unthinkable that some idiot thinks he can recreate this masterpiece! Who are they gonna put on the soundtrack? Justin Bieber? Aaah!

Not to mention that the set will be haunted. If I were an actor working on the remake, I'd be incredibly suspicious of all props on the set.

I'm not finished with this yet. I'll keep everyone posted on the status of this remake as often as possible because The Crow was a film that, in my youth, caused me to really, really, really think about life in general. It centered around a really sad story in which a good lookin' fella (Brandon Lee playing the role of "Eric") takes out revenge on the thugs that viciously raped, tortured, and murdered his lady love. To do this, Eric comes back from the dead. Seriously. Only, he wasn't like a zombie. No body parts rotting and falling off.

Sighs...

Just watch a video, okay.

Oh, and by the way, Brandon Bruce Lee is rolling in his grave right now... RIP, sweetheart.No one forgot you or your great work on the film :)