•Posted by4 months ago
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Arthur Machen
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r/WeirdLit
36.6k members
Weird Literature: For news, reviews, book discussion, and anything else pertaining to weird fiction. We cover everything from contemporary writers of the Weird, such as China Miéville, Kelly Link, M. John Harrison, K.J. Bishop, Eric Basso, and Jeff Vandermeer to foundational authors like H.P. Lovecraft, Alfred Kubin, Algernon Blackwood, Robert Chambers, and Jean Ray, to everyone in between.
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r/Lovecraft
226k members
Dedicated to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this is your stop for all of his outstanding works and weird fiction in general!
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r/horrorlit
360k members
This is a place to discuss horror literature. Any book is up for discussion as long as that discussion is respectful. It doesn't matter if you're into Stephen King, Octavia Butler, Jack Ketchum or Shirley Jackson, this is the place to share that love and discuss to your heart's content.
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•Posted by3 months ago
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•Posted by3 months ago
(I used the entire text of Arthur Machen’s 1895 novella “The White People” as the prompt, excluding the Prologue and Epilogue. The resulting story is very short, as it was designed to be read aloud in under 4 minutes at a local open mic event. Both the style and substance of this are surprisingly similar to the original story. It took many tries, and I did have to move some sentences around to make it flow better. But at the end of the day, all of the following text was made by NovelAI.)
I don't want to tell you all the secrets. Perhaps I should not even think of them. But I shall say just one thing more, and then I will go. When I was quite young, perhaps five years old, I remember the doctor coming in the night. He was a tall thin man with a long nose and whiskers, and he had a brown bag like a grocer's. He talked to nurse and to me, and we three sat together in the kitchen. They spoke to each other quite quietly, and there were no lights except the kitchen fire. I did not understand what they were talking about, but I heard the words "child," and "dead," and "buried." And I saw the brown bag. I asked them what was in the bag. They smiled, and they said it was a present for me. Then I said I wanted to see, and they opened it, and there was a tiny doll inside. It was such a very small thing, dressed in blue, with little golden buttons on its coat, and it was lying on a bed of cotton. The doctor picked it up and gave it to me. I took it and I said thank you and I told him that I would love it very much. Then the doctor put his finger over my mouth, and then he opened my mouth with his fingers and put the little doll inside. I didn't know why he did it, and I was very confused. The doll lay in the middle of my tongue, and all of a sudden I could feel it moving and wriggling around. I was trembling all over, and I couldn't speak, but I felt the doctor's hand on my shoulder, and he whispered to me that I mustn't be afraid. The doll started to crawl down my throat, and I thought I would choke and die, but the doctor held my mouth shut, and made me swallow it. When it was all swallowed, the doctor said, "You are a brave child, and you have done well.” Then he went away, and nurse said it was all over now, and she carried me up stairs, and tumbled me into bed, and she blew out the candle. I slept very badly that night, and I woke up several times in a dreadful sweat, and once I screamed, for I was sure the doll was still alive inside of me, and that I could hear its voice whispering something strange. The next morning I woke up, and everything was quite different. I felt quite well and strong and well-pleased, and I wondered why. And now I know why. That was the beginning of all the changes.
Afterwards, I learned what the doctor and nurse had said to one another. It was about me, and about the baby that I was going to have one day, and what was to happen to it when it was born. They said that "The Child" would be a very special child, and that it would bring about terrible things and awful changes in the world. They said that they had to do this, and that it would be better for me if I did not know all about it, for I would suffer more than any one else.
And I prayed and cried and begged God to please let me be strong enough to keep the secret, and not tell anybody, and I promised that I would not, and I kept my promise. But sometimes when I am alone, and the wind comes softly in the chimney, I can feel the little doll moving up my throat, and I can hear it whispering to itself, and I can hear the words it says: "I want to live!" And I wish it didn’t.
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•Posted by7 months ago
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•Posted by1 year ago
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