HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: ONE HUNDRED HOURS OF ROTTING SOLITUDE
Rosemary Thorne
It is thus, by the transformation of the body, that I have learned to become spirit. Zosimos
ONE
She woke up to light and felt part of the jungle, breathing through it.
An explosion of exotic colors. Mesmerizing leaves and petals with unusual shapes. Somewhere, water fell over stone. Birds sang in the most fabulous language. Unapologetic beauty.
She smiled to it.
The smile awakened the pain.
It did not come all at once. It grew slowly, like another being waking up inside her.
She tried to move but felt more connected to the soil than to her own body.
Thin beams of sunlight slipped through the lush vegetation. A yellow butterfly landed on a hot pink passionflower. Then, in its flirtatious flight, it landed on a hand.
A hand covered with mud.
Severed.
It wasn’t one of hers because hers were in front of her. Oddly placed in front of her, but hers. The two of them.
It forced her to think about the geography of her own body. She couldn’t feel it as a whole. A fractured rib, perhaps?
Whenever she tried to move, the pain expanded.
Colors faded into black.
TWO
She dreamed she was dancing. Bougainvillea cascading over the verandas. Yellow butterflies wandering lazily through the yard. A familiar tune almost remembered.
Something brushed against her cheek. Softly. She opened her eyes. It hadn’t been a kiss.
A metallic green beetle crawled across her face with complete confidence, its tiny legs crossing her skin as if she were another fallen tree in the jungle. It stopped for a moment on the bridge of her nose before disappearing into her hair.
The sun was setting.
The jungle had changed color. Gold had surrendered to amber, and the shadows had grown longer.
The severed hand looked paler now. Dark hair on the knuckles. A man’s hand.
She tried again to understand the arrangement of her body. A sharp pain in her neck stopped every attempt to move and look down at herself.
She felt discombobulated, like a broken doll after being hurled up through the air. She could still feel parts of herself, but an empty echo had swallowed others. It was as if the jungle had already begun to eat her, one piece at a time.
Another serious attempt to move. Nothing answered to her summon except the pain.
THREE
He walked towards her, offering his hand to dance a cumbia. His face was a blur, but the carved pumpkins lining the hacienda were clear. Beyond, the horizon consisted in the wild Colombian jungle’s gorgeous shadow.
It was Halloween. She reached for his hand, lost her balance, and rolled downhill, faster and faster, until she felt the ground on her cheeks. A deafening thumb in her ears.
The sharp pain opened her eyes.
Her mouth was dry. Her tongue felt too large. Sweat dripped onto her lips. It tasted salty.
The jungle was louder.
A column of ants marched across the ground. The thick bushes resounded with the rusty scream of cicadas. Tiny black flies hovered around her face, settling for a moment at the corners of her eyes. A mosquito landed on her cheek. It was no longer her cheek, as her cheek had landed on a stone in the fall, becoming it. Either bone or stone, she couldn’t brush the mosquitos away off it. Her arms were growing roots and purple flowers.
Or so they felt.
The skin of the severed hand had grown ashy. The fingers were unnaturally swollen. Something moved under the skin. Maggots. On one finger, something yellow. A petal, perhaps. Or a gold ring, wildly shining under the midday sun. Gold confetti, most likely. —The pumpkins were celebrating a party.
She wondered whose hand it was. It was curious how a hand, though severed, could still ask for love.
FOUR
She woke up to darkness.
Fragments of a vision persisted with her. The joyful rhythm of an accordion. The strong smell of a man’s sweat as they danced and stole hurried kisses. Promises filling the air, whispers. The metallic sound of a slamming car door silenced the music. A wheel spun in the air, like a trickster’s show, while a bus burst on fire. Landing on the ground like a spoilt puppet, knees bent backwards.
As a child’s sinister drawing on the jungle’s floor.
She tried to put the images in order, but they refused to be meaningful, to become someone’s memory of something. Wasn’t she supposed to be elsewhere? She felt that someone was waiting for her, and that they had just felt a dark premonition.
Even so, it was easier to chase those fragments than to think about where she was. Or about what was happening to her body.
It was better than feeling the rot eating her alive.
FIVE
It could have been dawn or dusk. She was no longer able to tell.
The shapes were melting into one another. Some of them had gathered around the imposing figure of an eagle, or something alike. It stood perfectly still, guarding.
Her face was terribly itchy, as if burning under amber. She wanted to scratch it, but her hands belonged to the earth now.
Or so they felt.
Reality was melting away, undecipherable.
The severed hand had become a purple caricature. Whenever she looked at it, she thought she could hear someone humming close to her ear.
The smells were stronger now. There was something putrid around, it was nauseating. Where were her legs to run away from it? After a sudden tremor, her mouth came to life, filled with a suppurating liquid that flooded down her chin.
Another smell reached her. Sweet. Intoxicating. Her swollen eyes finally found it among the menacing shadows: A pale lily in bloom.
For a moment she admired its impossible whiteness and perfume.
Then her eyes and awareness returned to the severed hand.
Detached from the pale wonderful glow, she slipped into the unknown musing in anguish whose hand it was.
Rosemary Thorne (she/her) is a bilingual Spanish Horror writer, researcher of the Occult, and translator living in Madrid, Spain. Born in 1968, she joined the HWA in 2019 and serves as HWA International Chapter Program Co-Manager of the HWA. Her debut novel, El Pacto de las 12 uvas,
(The twelve grapes covenant) was published in December 2021. She has also translated Edward Lee’s The Bighead into Spanish for Dimensiones Ocultas Press. Her most recent essays include Rosemary’s Baby: A Satanic Camelot, and Eggs, rings and whips, published in Spanish by Archivos Vola in 2024 & 2025 respectively.
Find out more about her at: https://linktr.ee/Rosemary_thorne and Instragram at https://www.instagram.com/rosemary__thorne/