Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, and I love making decorations for this time of year. Most of the time, I look at the materials I have around the house and think about what I can do with what I already have.
I dug up an old wreath that’s been sitting in my garage for more than ten years and has seen better days. It’s faded, and a lot of the foliage is dropping from it. I thought about throwing it out, but decided that it could make a fun Halloween project. For this project, I used:
• An old wreath
• Black spray paint
• Three strings of bat LED lights
• Two packages of sparkly bat clips
• Glue. This isn’t totally necessary – depending on the lights you use, you might not need it, or you could use zip ties or electrical tape to secure the light battery packs.
I had the wreath, the glue, and the spray paint, but found the LED lights and the bat clips at my local dollar store. So I’ve invested about five bucks in this project. I won’t too feel bad if it doesn’t turn out!
First thing I did was spray paint the wreath black. I started on the back side. When it dried, I turned it over and sprayed the front. As is the case with all spray paint projects, I did it outdoors and painted it from several angles to make sure I got everything.
Then I added the lights. I used three strands of purple bat lights. I wound them around the foliage and made sure the battery packs were in the back, where I glued the housing down to the sturdiest part of the wreath. If you’re using LED lights with button batteries, you probably wouldn’t need to do this step, since you could tuck a smaller battery pack in the foliage. Zip ties or electrical tape would also work to get those battery housings out of the way. I made sure to add my batteries first and didn’t add glue to spots that would interfere with the operation of the switch or changing out batteries.
I turned my wreath over and was pretty pleased with how it looked so far.
Next, I added my sparkly purple bats! The ones I got had alligator clips on the back, so I could perch them wherever I wanted. A couple were in precarious spots, so I added a bead of glue to make sure they stayed stuck.
And the wreath is finished! I’m pretty pleased with it…I can’t wait to hang it for Halloween!
Flesh
Laura Bickle
Genre: YA Horror/Paranormal/Fantasy
Book Description:
The dead are easy to talk to. Live people, not so much.
Charlie Sulliven thinks she knows all the secrets of the dead. Raised in a funeral home, she’s the reluctant “Ghoul Girl,” her reputation tied to a disastrous Halloween party. But navigating her life as a high school sophomore is an anxiety-inducing puzzle to her. She haunts the funeral home with her parents, emo older brother, Garth, their pistol-packing Gramma, and the glass-eyeball-devouring dachshund, Lothar.
Chewed human bodies are appearing in her parents’ morgue…and disappearing in the middle of the night. The bodies seem tied to a local legend, Catfish Bob, who has resurfaced in the muddy Milburn river near Charlie’s small town. When one of Charlie’s classmates, Amanda, awakens in the cooler as a flesh-eating ghoul, Charlie must protect her newfound friend and step up to unravel the mystery…and try to avoid becoming lunch meat for the dead.
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Laura Bickle has done a great job with Flesh! What a fun ride! It has all the gore and fear factor we want in a horror tale, but loaded with a ton of humor. The legend and the journey are well worth the read.
Charlie is a great character, full of all the things teenagers are, and so much more. I loved how the teenagers are teenagers. I think as we get older, we do forget some of what it is to be a teen, but Bickle has done a great job capturing the emotions and thoughts of a young person, like Charlie.
If you love horror, you will love this book. It's also a great way to cut your teeth if you're a young Adult and wanting to explore horror.
Excerpt:
“Amanda, I…Oh.”
I don’t know what else to say. My brain just shuts down.
She is wearing the sheet, wound around her like a toga. It
trails behind her bare feet, sort of like a painting about Greek goddesses I’ve
seen in art books. She’s leaning over another body stored in the cooler unit on
a cart. Her back is to me, and I can only see her pale skin and her
burgundy-black hair shuddering.
“Amanda.”
She turns at the sound of my voice, seeming only to hear me for
the first time. Her face is covered in dark blood. In her hand, she’s holding a
big chunk of purple flesh. Her eyes are half-closed. The autopsy incision on
the elderly body below her has been ripped open, and I’m pretty sure that what
she’s holding is a lung.
“So hungry…” she murmurs.
I retreat until my back presses against the cold door. A
whimper escapes my lips, and I drop the laundry basket with a sharp crack of plastic on the tile floor. This
has to be a dream. A screwed-up anxiety dream that I’ll wake up from any moment
now…
Amanda’s black eyes snap open. She stares at the chunk of
flesh in her hand. “I…Agh…What’s
going on?”
Lothar waddles over to her and begins to beg. Bile rises in
my throat. “That’s Mrs. Canner,” I manage to answer. “She’s seventy-two and
died of surgery complications for varicose veins. Deep vein thrombosis, I
think. I don’t remember.” I’m babbling, trying to keep the bile down.
Amanda drops the lung with a wet splat. Lothar scrambles to it and begins scarfing it down. Her hands
are trembling. She presses them to her temples. “I don’t understand. I don’t
understand.”
I nudge the laundry basket closer to her with my foot. “I
brought you some clothes. And, um. Food. You should get dressed.”
I think I should be afraid. I think I really ought to be.
But Amanda seems genuinely confused. She reaches for the clothes I’ve brought
her. To be polite, I know that I should really look away. But I can’t move. I
am not turning my back on her. My heart pounds, and I struggle to take deep, uneven
breaths.
Amanda unwinds the sheet and slips into my clothes. Though I
avert my eyes, I see that her shoulder and side are still torn open. But my
mother hasn’t begun the autopsy yet, so there is no Y-incision across her chest
and abdomen.
“Do you remember what happened to you?” I manage to ask. I
congratulate myself for having a rational thought. Woot.
Her voice is halting, and her brow wrinkles as she struggles
to button my jeans. “I remember…something was chasing me. Jesus, it hurt…” Her
hand comes up to her neck, and she seems to remember, fingering the edges of
the wound. “Am I in a hospital?” she asks again.
I suck in a breath. “No. You’re at my house.” It’s not a
lie. Not really.
She scans the room, as if registering the sight of the
cadavers. “You’re the girl whose parents run the funeral home. The Ghoul Girl.”
“It’s gonna be okay,” I tell her.
“Why am I here?” Her breath makes ghosts in the cold air.
“The Sheriff found you, alongside the road.” That’s true
also, even if not the whole truth. “I think we should get you upstairs, so you
can talk to my parents…”
She shakes her head, and her dark hair slaps across her
face. “No. I…Oh my god. I’m here because…somebody thought I was dead?”
I swallow hard. “Yeah.”
Her hands press to the wound on her side. “But I’m not
dead!”
“I…uh…I think we need to get you to the hospital.” I
tentatively reach toward her, to grasp her arm and guide her upstairs, toward
the light of the much more civilized parlor and rational discussion. This is so
far over my head, and I need my parents to handle it.
She shakes her head. “No. No. No.”
I hold her elbow gently, trying to keep her calm until I can
get her upstairs to my parents. Her skin radiates cold through the sweatshirt,
and I can see that the edges of her neck wound are dry, not seeping so much as
a hint of blood. “Come with me.” I open the door and gently lead her into the
lab, as if I’m herding a frightened cat. She gazes at the stainless-steel
equipment. “I was here. I remember being here.”
“Come upstairs,” I urge, struggling to keep my composure. I
use all the empathy that I’ve learned, dealing with grieving family members,
trying to understand the shock and lead her away from the Body Shop.
She squints up at the buzzing light. “You were here, weren’t
you? You and that woman. Looking at me.”
“My mother,” I say. I’m thinking crap crap crap. I’ve heard of cases of people whose vitals have
dropped far beyond detection, who have awoken in hospital morgues. This has
never happened to us. Not ever. Oh shit. The other body. Maybe it the same
thing…
“The woman with that knife…” Her fingers go to her sternum,
where my mother’s scalpel had rested. All of a sudden, Amanda becomes rooted in
place, as immovable as a mountain.
“No one’s going to hurt you,” I promise. “Let me make you
some coffee.”
She shakes her head, and I feel her trembling. Her eyes
slide to the back door.
She slips from my grip. Before I can stop her, she rushes to
the back door. She slams it open with a sound like a gunshot and plunges into
the darkness.
About the Author:
Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. After graduating with an MA in Sociology-Criminology from Ohio State University and an MLIS in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she patrolled the stacks at the public library and worked with data systems in criminal justice. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs. Her work has been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016.
More information about Laura’s work can be found at
