Dies Irae

Stormy horror short story for a writing competition.

This horror story was written for the Halloween TiF Team Disruption (Writing Contest/Event) Inanimate Objects sponsored by Killer Shorts.

Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash, modified by Saint-Lazare.

Text all rights reserved © Saint-Lazare, 2025.

21 November 2025, 4PM – West Oxford.

“A real weather bomb is currently shaking Northern Ireland and Scotland, roads of which are currently blocked with fallen trees and various debris. Thousands of homes are still without power. The Met Office has issued severe warning for the North of England tomorrow, with Amber alert for wind down to London. Due to Storm Tobias, train and ferry services will not operate until the end of the weekend, and nearly a thousand flights have already been diverted or cancelled. Authorities have urged people to stay indoors amid red “danger to life” warnin…”

The reporter’s voice died away as she closed the garden door behind her. She unbuttoned the top of her wool cardigan, for the air was strangely damp. A breeze stirred the small fruit trees, and in a neighbouring backyard, glass lanterns attached to a wire tinkled merrily. She walked towards the river, her cup of coffee in hand, admiring the last effort of the rusty leaves to overcome the opaque sky. She passed the garden shed, with the canoe strapped to the roof, and a small pang in her heart reminded her that it was time to get rid of it. Of course, Mark had not wanted it back. That was just him, always leaving the most inconvenient for her to sort out. He only kept the fun, and she no longer fit into that category.

The grass was still spongy from the recent floods, and she controlled her steps, without taking her eyes off the constant stream, where ducks sometimes splashed. Apart from the constant drone of the motorway, the afternoon was notable for its silence, and she had finally relaxed her shoulders when a voice boomed beside her. The spring of her nerves made the hot drink overflow from its container, watering the tips of her boots.

On the other side of the fence stood a big, nearly bald guy in a sweater of questionable hygiene, perpetually giving birth to his beer belly. He squinted over his round glasses, and a fleeting smile made his cheekbones redden as her eyes fell on him. That damn George. She had not felt his presence, otherwise she would not have risked a foot outside, and she owed the fixity of his irises on her person to an instinct for immediate retreat. She addressed a grin that bordered on rudeness to him, but he never seemed to notice the disgust he inspired.

“Oi, love, have you heard about the weather tomorrow? That’s not going to be just a spot of bother innit?”

He kept nodding his head repeatedly, like a bird searching the ground for worms. She refused him an answer, but he never got discouraged.

“Quite. I know you’ve only recently moved to England, and there’s something you need to know... Well, I don’t want to patronize you, but...I assume your partner was the one preparing your home for this kind of inconvenience, and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you…”

She could not help but tighten her face. Of course, the old pervert had been on the lookout since their separation. Certainly not. “Thanks, but I don’t need anything,” she cut him off sharply, before quickly going back inside, and slamming the door behind her.

22 November 2025, 1 PM – Abingdon. First incident.

He looked up at the sky and saw nothing but a large, fading bruise, like the ones he regularly left on his wife’s body. The fault lay in the timbre of her voice, always on the verge of hysteria, like this morning, when he let Charlie, their dog, out. In the middle of a storm, what kind of monster are you? What the hell did those fucking journalists know about the weather, in their penthouses at the top of Kensington? But that fucking mutt had not shown his face all morning, and now he had to go and get it back.

What was that noise? He peered over the wooden fence, and saw the neighbor’s clothesline. A sweatshirt slapped like a volley of smacks in the humid air, and the taut wires vibrated in a frenetic, muffled solo. In the background, the roar of a crowd of banshees, punctuated by the crackling of dead branches in the trees, the hissing of tiles on the roofs, and the bass of shaken antennas. Just a little noise, and better than his missus’s whining.

Suddenly, a gust of wind almost made him stumble, and almost knocked him to the mat. There, we were not messing around anymore. “Charlie, you fucking bastard, if you don’t get your ass back here right now, you’re going to get a beating!” Grabbing a lawn chair as he passed, he threw it into the garden. A gust of air picked it up, and lifted it momentarily, before propelling it farther than he could have thrown it, as if the wind challenged him. “Charlie, for fucking Christ’s sake...” Had he heard a bark in the fury of the gales? He did not have the time to prick up his right ear, because another gust was already hitting his left one. He had to hold himself to the ground, his hand plunging into the soaked grass.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dark mass rise above the wooden fence. He tried to regain his balance, teetering on his feet, buffeted by the air. The enormous shadow swayed like a boxer on the lookout. Ominous. Blinded by bits of branch, he thought he glimpsed elytra of black lace. Suddenly, the thing took a run-up, and heaved its enormous bulk like a leaping insect, using metal legs to climb over the fence. He saw flashes of green, then a smooth belly, like that of a manta ray, floating for a moment above his garden.

Then came the uppercut to the throat, and the black stars dancing in front of his eyes. A shock made the ground vibrate, a brief landing, then the attacker took off again, following up with a blow to the temple, throwing him backward. In a fog of blood, he saw the mass forcefully drive him towards the back of his house, before swallowing him whole.

22 November 2025, 3 PM – Cumnor. Second incident.

In the rearview mirror, the red eye winked at him, while the warm smoke pleasantly enveloped his throat. With the hot joint between his fingers, he tapped rhythmically on the steering wheel. The red light was swaying wildly, despite the puffs of Mary-Jane. “Yeah, you need to calm down, dude,” he whispered to it. The car also swayed from side to side, like one of those trippy wave motion machines he dreamed of buying. But maybe that was just the strength of Lemmy’s bass, whose gooey throat pleaded Don’t you touch me baby ‘cause I’m shakin’ so much.

At the thought, he started laughing. The girl from last night did not want him to touch her either. After paying for the restaurant AND the bowling alley? No, seriously, not with those Barbara Bouchet-esque tits. But he was a chill guy, a pill in the single malt, and he had dropped her off at the bus stop in the morning. Green light, foot on the accelerator, full headlights revealing a deserted road, free afternoon; Mary was beginning to loosen all the knots in his body, just as she should. The windshield wipers partook in his relaxation, pushing back the disgusting drizzle, the bits of paper that, for one reason or another, kept sticking to the windshield. Left, right, left, right. Like the wave. Damn, he had to find a redhead, a real one, right down to the regrowth of Hollywood waxing.

The steering wheel snatched from his grip, and he nearly crashed into a bin that had been overturned on the pavement. The gusts of wind buffeted the car, and water snaked past his eyes on the windshield, as sticky as semen. He was forced to slow down because an invisible force suddenly pinned his vehicle in the middle of the road.

And then he saw it. A huge black disc, rolling along the sidewalk, heedless of obstacles. Skipping over parked cars as if for fun. It was heading towards him. “Damn, what the hell is this?” he slurred, tongue limp. As if it had heard him, the black disc froze. It… looked at him? Could something with no visible eyes stare with such intensity?

With a nimble roll, the thing got back on its metal feet, swinging heavily like a sumo wrestler. Then, sinisterly, it began to slide on the wet asphalt towards him. With a hesitant finger, he shut up Motörhead. The noise grew louder; the scraping of a blade on a bloody sacrificial stone, the hissing of a beast to paralyze its prey. Panic pierced through the sedative high, and he fumbled to remember how reverse worked, waving his gear stick like a useless dick. The neural connections were remade, and the thing stopped, as if to study him.

With a hiss of tires, the car backed up a few meters, away from the thing. But the latter moved forward again, without urgency, like a hockey sniper gliding toward an unprotected goal. He managed a U-turn and slammed on the accelerator. A gust of wind counterbalanced it, and the engine roared. In the rearview mirror, he saw that the thing had stopped again. Its black, transparent flanks seemed to inhale and exhale with satisfaction.

The car leaped forward, and the monstrous chase resumed. This time, the thing returned to its giant wheel form, and gained ground on his side. It managed to get past him, and in a volte-face of water and sparks, blocked his path. The howl of his nerves drowned out the snoring of the gusts. The thing taunted him, his wet fingers sliding over the stick and the steering wheel.

Run into it, he had to run into it and get over with it. But his opponent was faster. With a blast of air, the thing launched itself at his windshield, drilling a star-shaped hole in the glass, and he felt a metal member plunge deep into his throat.

22 November 2025, 5 PM – West Oxford. Third incident.

She had been on edge all day. The assault on her nerves had begun since the morning, with the pounding coming from George’s house. This lunatic had completely barricaded his French windows with planks, after having emptied his garden. If only he could clear out for good.

The sound of the wind had finally reached the entire space, as if it now resided in every wall, pressing its claws against the wallpaper, and nibbling at the ceilings. She had tried several times to occupy herself, putting on her headphones, but a draft seemed to constantly draw her back to her picture window. Each time, she noticed a change, as if she were in a life-size game of spot the differences.

First, it had been the trees, practically lying over the canal with its tortured water. Then the glass lanterns were lying horizontal. She stared at them until she was exhausted, expecting them to be torn from their attachments, amidst the debris of branches and plastic bags. Strangely, they held firm. The palisades, on the other hand, with more wind resistance, had fallen like a domino path. Some lay on the ground, but others, still attached by one end, twitched with spasms as if in a last gasp of life.

And then there were the flying objects, against a sky that resembled J. M. W. Turner’s dirty palette after painting Rain, Steam and Speed. Some dark silhouettes had been easily identifiable: pieces of cardboard, broken umbrellas, plastic flower pots. One of them, however, had kept her blood pressure on alert for a while, streaking across the sky in a perfectly straight line, like a drone searching for a target. Almost in front of her observatory, it had remained suspended in the air, as if mastering its own gravity. She had then recognized the silhouette of a waste bin. A fucking flying bin, held by competing air currents, which then sped off toward an unknown destination, out of her field of vision. Unbelievable. She tried to laugh it off, regretting not filming it. She did her best to keep the anxiety at bay.

And then the November night fell, with its oppressive drizzle. In the dark, everything became hellish. The sky tore apart, abusing its colossal cymbals, revealing the frenzy of the storm in surprise flashes of light. Despite the great cosmic din, the slightest noise came to haunt her. Like that dull, sickening sound that made her jump as she heated her tea. She turned on the porch light, and discovered Mark’s canoe, lying in the grass like a filthy giant slug. A surge of rage shot through her. She was going to have to deal with pushing it out of the way on her own, while the bastard was having fun somewhere, probably with a wilder version of her.

The canoe slid into the grass, and the fire in her veins died out, extinguished by the embrace of frost. It could not be the wind pushing the inert mass. It was as if something were pulling it toward the darkness of the garden. A scream got caught in her throat as she thought she saw a darker mass absorbing the kayak. Gluttonously. Then, stomping, getting closer. The voracious beast approached, soon into the light of the outside lamp. Her eyes bulging, she searched the night.

The thing hoisted itself onto the garden shed like a giant crab. Her brain had a split second to search for a reference; an abyssal version of a spider virus, or the dystopian form of Kang and Kodos? But before she could conjure an identifiable shape, the thing already transformed, flying off into the night like a Dungeons & Dragons Cloaker, and slamming against her kitchen window with a wet thud. Screaming, she had the reflex to turn off the light in the room and run for refuge upstairs.

Alas, the thing seemed to have heightened senses, and she heard it banging all along the façade, following her ascent. My God, the picture window, she thought, paralyzed at the top of the steps. An explosion of glass echoed her thought, and the wind drove its fist into the house, followed by the intrusion of the thing. It forced its way through, compressing its black transparent membranes, which struck the walls with a sound like a wet mop, piercing the partitions with metal darts, snapping its elastic core like a giant diaphragm in a demented incantation.

Stumbling up the stairs, she reached for her phone, her fingers no longer responding to her brain’s commands. They decided to call Mark, and the ringing echoed in the emptiness of the stairwell for too long, sardonically responding to each pounding of her heart against her spine. Upstairs, the thing struggled, trapped in the room, looking for a way out, or to reach her. The phone slipped from her hand, and she rolled with it into the front hall. A sucking noise shook the house, signaling the thing’s exit, followed by a crash right against the front door. Cornered. Retrieving the phone, she managed to dial the police. As soon as a human voice got out of it, the shrill scream that came from her mouth acted as a final shield against the thing trying to break down the door, just before the tendrils of her consciousness ruptured.

22 November 2025, 8 PM – West Oxford.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a white metal ceiling. Neutral voices around her, disquietingly too quiet. A man, bent, leaned towards her: “Are you all right, madam? We were going to take you to the hospital.”

She realized she was on a stretcher, and gathered her strength to get up. “Oh, easy,” said the paramedic. “The thing...” she stammered. “Where is the thing that attacked my house?” She felt his limp hand press on her shoulder, and he called someone outside. She managed to sit up straight enough to see her street, its damp blackness glinting in the light from inside the ambulance, revealing two police officers. One of them, a woman with a tight bun, approached with a sugary smile. Dripping with pity.

“Well then, madam, you should let yourself be taken to the hospital, you look pretty shaken up.”

“My house...”

“Yes, you’ve had some serious damage, you’ll have to call the insurance company. Don’t worry, no one can get in. It might rain a little during the night upstairs, but you need to think about pulling yourself together first.”

Their voices echoed loudly, oppressing her eardrums, and suddenly she realized how quiet the street was; the storm had passed. The looks she received were worth a thousand words. “You... you know what caused this?” she croaked anyway.

“There’s branch debris everywhere,” the male police officer replied. “One of your neighbour’s trees was blown up like kindling. Too old. Couldn’t stand against the wind. Your picture window must have been at the wrong angle. Tough luck.”

She fought back tears as the ambulance doors closed on her. My house? No, this was her and Mark’s house. The one where they had planned to face the hard tough luck together. And she had to face it alone.

23 November 2025, 10 AM – West Oxford.

Gloomily, she pushed the debris away with her broom. The night in the hospital had left a bitter taste in her mouth, a mixture of indignity and loneliness. The humid air, icy again, came in through the gaping hole. She had taken the photos for the insurer in a trance-like state, then set to work salvaging what could be salvaged. At least, in the room, because inside, for the moment, there was nothing left but rubble. The emptiness left by Mark had finally shown its true colours.

The sound of unnailed boards caught her attention, and she looked outside without any real curiosity. George was removing the protection from his windows, storing them in his garden shed. As he walked back to his porch, he looked up and saw her. He stopped dead in his tracks and sighed deeply, shaking his head. His voice echoed against their adjoining facades.

“I tried to warn you about those damn trampolines! During every storm, the wind makes them fly like Harpies, on the prowl like Erinyes!”

She stared at him in confusion. It seemed to her that he was speaking a foreign language, and his accent had faded. “Like what?”

He closed his eyes, and pursed his lips in a rueful smile. “Sorry, what happened to you has given me a lot of emotions, and I’m reacting as a Classics professor out of survival instinct. The Harpies and the Erinyes are mythological creatures, the former personifications of the winds, the latter deities of vengeance.”

Vengeance? Through the vanished window, she gazed at her neighbour with new eyes. His sagacious face, his carrying voice, his awkward manner; a working-class man who had risen through knowledge, an intellectual who did not care about his appearance.

“Anyway,” he continued. “I’m glad you only have property damage. Two people were killed yesterday by one of those damned garden toys. They even put up a danger sign in Binsey! But I’ll tell you what’s the real killer. The lack of communication and benevolence towards one’s fellow human beings. This world is crazy, and the only way out is by helping each other. I keep telling my students this. I have a big bin, I’ll put it by your front door for your debris.”

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Do you want to see creepy trampolines in British storms? Check this video, this one, this one, or this one. But of course, the following one is a cult one:

Thanks for reading, now you have been warned! If you enjoyed my dark fable, please consider liking, commenting, sharing, subscribing as well as tipping.