Spell… H-A-L-L-O-W-E-E-N 2026 – Day 14
Spell… H-A-L-L-O-W-E-E-N is back! Let’s enjoy another month of supernatural fun.
Not all birthdays are happy ones. This piece of microfiction proves it.
Bloody Birthday
The candles had been lit for an hour, defying all expectations. Deanna stood in the kitchen doorway with the cake held out in both hands, forty-one little flames bending in the draft from the vent. Her mother sat at the head of the table in the paper crown Deanna had bought her, hands folded, eyes on nothing. The wax ran down the frosting in thin pink rivers.
“Mom. You have to blow them out.”
Nothing. The same blank patience she’d worn since Tuesday, when the strange woman from the church had touched her shoulder after service and said, “You’ve been so tired, dear, so sick of your boring and tasteless life. Maybe it’s time you finally did something about it.” She remembered her warm palm. She remembered nodding. She did not remember anything after that except the hum, low and constant, like a refrigerator in a distant room, and under it the instructions, which arrived in her head fully formed, as if she’d always known them.
“Your daughter is such a bitch. She makes you sick to your stomach. Give yourself a present tonight. Make it a night she’ll never forget.”
Deanna fished for a smile, a sign that her mother was still in the room with her, and that the night could still be saved, but the woman said nothing, thinking only about how slitting someone’s throat would be as easy as cutting a slice of cake.
