Today’s challenge is take your favorite horror movie and tell a story in the same universe. I chose the movie Hereditary. This movie left me scared shitless. I always wondered what happened after and this is my rendition in flash fiction format.
It’s been six years since they discovered the Graham family. I’ve only really known Peter Graham. If it wasn’t for his mother’s deadline for some type of art exhibition, they would’ve never been discovered. Turns out the discovery was more twisted than anyone could have thought. She turned their lives into a performative art piece. Officials discovered body parts and his sister Charlie’s head sitting on top of a wooden sculpture with a golden spiked crown. There were two other headless body kneeled down as if they were worshiping something, or someone….but Peter’s remains were never found. Rumors circulated that he did it. The moments leading up to the discoveries of his bodies didn’t help his case.
Me and Peter had been friends since grade school. The last moments I remember him alive were abrupt but still clear in my mind. I still think about the panic attack he was having when we were toking behind the bleachers. Crying in agony for us to “hold his hand” It still haunts me as if it were yesterday. Their family had been through a lot death so the grief was heavy. First his grandmother then his sister in which he seemed to blame himself. He never did talk about it but it showed. I remember hearing of him banging his head against the table. That incident shook the school to its core. I didn’t know what to make of it. That was the last time seeing him.
As much as I was cool with Peter, I couldn’t bring myself to ever go near his old residence after the deaths. Some say and swear they can hear chanting in the treehouse at night. If anyone ever wanted to put a fright in themselves, that would be a place to go. But I could never bring myself to do it, out of respect for his family out of respect for him. It just doesn’t seem right to be near the place. Murder-Suicides can taint any familiar space tremendously and I fear this moment is no exception.
Every now and I again I wake up in cold sweats hearing him cry for help. I just think his last moments alive forced a trauma in me like no other. I remember this today because I haven’t thought of him in years but I think I saw him but then again someone looked awfully like him only it wasn’t him.
Vice and how it gets that way 