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I have never written a horror spooky sexy ghost story, but I do need an avatar. I'll give it a shot. No flash rule please.
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Oct 12, 2018 23:50
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 11:54 |
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The Lady of Milwaukee - 1569 words Let’s rent a boat. Go out on Lake Michigan. Have our own little private booze cruise. Stargaze. Get drunk and howl at the full moon. Sure, she said, like an idiot. Let’s do it. It was always a little windy on the lake, always a little choppy driving out onto it. But tonight had been different. There was almost no wind, and there were barely any waves to speak of. However, a thick fog had rolled in from the north. Clouds shrouded the full moon. The temperature dropped. Then the boat died. Darlene was shivering in her sexy pirate outfit. The skirt was short, showing off her velvet thigh high boots, but she had decided not to wear stockings. Her billowy pirate shirt was made from the thinnest of materials. The cold seeped right through. The only thing on her that wasn’t cold was the top of her head, where her three-cornered hat was still jauntily cocked to one side. She looked at Kate jealously. Kate smiled back. She was dressed as a sexy Red Riding Hood. Thick white stockings adorned her long legs. Her skirt went to her knees. She had the red cape closed to keep out the cold. Joshua appeared from the cabin with two steaming glasses. Darlene could just make him out in the hazy glow of the Chicago skyline. He was dressed as a Spartan with a slight beer belly, with sandals, a little cloth around his waist, and a thick cloak. Darlene thought he was a sexy Spartan, at least to her. “Mulled wine, to keep you ladies warm,” he said. “Any idea what’s wrong with the engine?” Darlene asked. She took a glass and immediately took a sip. “No idea,” Joshua shrugged. “The cold crept in from the north, and as soon as it hit us the whole thing just shut off.” “What do we do now?” Kate asked. “I’ll keep trying to get it started,” Joshua answered. “We still have cell service out here, so I’ll give Ron a call if I can’t get her to work. He’ll come out on one of his pontoons and get us running again.” With that, he disappeared back into the bowels of the boat. Darlene was feeling warmer now with a hot alcoholic beverage in her. Kate whirled her cape behind her, exposing her lovely red bodice. Darlene suddenly had half a mind to crawl under that cape and start unlacing that bodice, exposing those perky pushed up breasts of Kate’s. Kate wasn’t paying one bit of mind however. She was staring out of the rear of the boat with a look of concern. “Are we in a barge lane?” she asked. Darlene’s eyebrows shot up into her three-cornered hat, and her head whipped around to the rear of the boat. “Oh poo poo,” Darlene said. There was something in the fog coming straight at them. It looked like an old steamship with waterwheels on its sides. That didn’t seem right, but sure enough, as it steamed closer, she saw smoke billowing into the foggy night, and those waterwheels were churning through the lake. “Joshua, we got trouble!” Kate yelled. A loud thump echoed throughout the boat followed by swearing. Joshua came up a moment later rubbing his head. His jaw dropped when he saw what was coming. The steamship couldn’t have been more than 75 meters away and closing. He jammed on the start button. He throttled up and down. He smashed the pilot console with his fists. Nothing seemed to work. “Paddle!” Joshua exclaimed. Kate and Darlene set down their wines and hurried to the starboard side. All three leaned over the starboard side and started to splash the water furiously. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere. “Darlene, reach into that side console and light a flare,” Joshua calmly commanded. She had no idea how he could be so calm in a time like this, but she did as she was told. She unlatched the top, grabbed a flare, unscrewed the striker, and hit the flare with the striker. The flare blossomed into a bright neon red fire. She then went to the rear of the boat and started to wave the lit flare. She stopped almost immediately, the flare frozen above her head as she stared in wonder. “Guys,” Darlene quietly said. Joshua and Kate stopped paddling and turned. The steamer was almost on top of them. However, no sound came from the approaching boat. It wasn’t churning up water. The boat was misty, almost as if the entire thing was made of the very fog it had appeared from. Lamps with eery blue flickering light shone the way forward for the vessel. Their boat had drifted to the port side of the steamship. It started to pass within a couple of yards at first, but as soon as the steamboat’s wider cross section passed them they were within inches of the ghostly hull. “The Lady of Milwaukee?” Kate said, pointing. Sure enough, that was the blurry name on the front the steamboat. Joshua went white as a ghost. He went back to the pilot’s console and turned the wheel. He jammed on every button futilely. “What’s the Lady of Milwaukee, Joshua?” Darlene asked. Joshua stopped his fiddling and turned to Darlene and Kate. “She went down in 1860,” Joshua started. “It was the worst maritime disaster on the Great Lakes. She was struck by another boat and broke up off the Chicago coast. 300 people drowned.” Darlene stuck her hand out tentatively. Her fingertips brushed the fog where the hull was passing them. It was as if her hand was getting burned with dry ice. She pulled her hand away quickly and shook it out. “Cold!” she yelled. She glanced back, and Kate and Joshua were staring up in horror. She looked where they were looking and gasped. On the deck of the steamboat were dancers. They were slowly twirling, stopping, reversing direction, then twirling again. It might have been pretty if the ghostly procession wasn’t so obviously dead. They had bloated stomachs under their fine clothing. The faces were locked with open jaws, blue mottled skin seemed to be melting off their faces, and all their eye sockets were white with fog. The undead dancers took no heed of their new audience and simply kept twirling this way and that. Darlene looked down and away from the ghosts, afraid she might vomit. Instead of a foggy hull in front of her, there was a gaping wound in the steamboat. A bloated steward stood before her at the edge of the hole, his face turned an angry red in the light of the flare. He looked like he was screaming, but no sound came from his mouth. Skin melted off his face in the harsh neon red light. He raised his right hand as if to reach out to Darlene. “Guh huh wah,” was the weird croaking sound Darlene made as she leapt back away from the steward. The next sound she heard was a splash, then gurgling as she went under water. She quickly resurfaced, choking and gasping as the cold water stung her in a thousand places. “Man overboard!” she heard Joshua yell. Darlene felt something solid hit her shoulder, and reaching out she realized it was a floating donut. She clung onto it for dear life. It pulled on her, and she could see now that Joshua and Kate were yanking her back towards the boat. She reached up towards the boat. Joshua and Kate both grabbed one arm each and pulled her up over the port side of the boat. Darlene collapsed in a squishy heap, her hat finally falling off, her formerly billowy costume clinging to her. Kate wrapped her up in her arms and her cape. Joshua came by a moment later with blankets and the wine they had been drinking. “Here, this will warm you up,” he said. She gulped down the lukewarm wine, and it did it’s job of giving her stomach the feeling of a little warmth inside. Joshua took the glass. Kate felt so good and warm next to her, but she couldn’t control her shivering. The image of the steamboat’s steward still was fresh in her mind. Darlene felt a light shining on her face. She looked up, and noticed it was the full moon. The fog and the ghostly steamboat had passed on in the night. “Where’d the Lady go?” she asked. “Disappeared south into the night, along with the fog,” Kate said next to her. “Holy poo poo, that was not real,” Darlene said. “That wasn’t real, we were drunk. We were drunk, right Kate? That wasn’t real at all.” “Darlene, shhh, we were drunk and you fell over, that’s all, don’t get hysterical my dear,” Kate said consolingly. She squeezed Darlene so tight. Darlene felt like crying, but the comforting embrace of Kate was calming her shot nerves. She could swear that Kate was shivering too. Joshua appeared from the cabin again. He crossed his fingers in the air, and then pressed the start button. The boat’s engine fired up with a gleeful roar. “Get us the hell back to shore, Joshua,” Kate said. “Aye aye,” Joshua called back. He throttled up the engine. The night was clear, the full moon shone brightly, and the boat cut a straight line on the flat water back to shore.
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Oct 26, 2018 23:21
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Thanks for holding the contest. Thanks for the not-thunderdome crits as well. It was a good exercise for me to write something outside of...what I am writing. Definitely not writing about space lesbians right now. Not me. No sex stuff.
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Nov 2, 2018 00:22
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