Writing Prompts for Horror Week

Gah! These stories are making my skin crawl. Keep 'em coming!

Cynthia wrote: "Gah! These stories are making my skin crawl. Keep 'em coming!"

Lol!! This comment made my day

Two-sentence horror:

You hear the creaks and groans as you turn the handle and know something inexpressibly horrible awaits. As the door swings open, you spot your father rolling off the top of your mother, just not quite quickly enough.

Haha! Traumatic seeing your parents at it.

E.R. wrote: "Haha! Traumatic seeing your parents at it."

Tell me about it! No ghost or ghoul comes close!

Two-Sentence Horror Story:

"Where Are You?"

I just got a text message. It's a photo of me looking at my phone reading it - but I'm home alone.

I came up with a bunch of two sentence horror stories after reading this prompt. Here's a few of them. There are more on my author page.

"I looked up from my book at the sound of soft crackling. On the couch, the shell of my wife’s old skin- a papery, translucent thing like a cicada shell- was slowly splitting up the back."


"I rowed the boat out onto the lake until I could see the roof of the sunken house dimly outlined against the tea-dark waters below. Leaning closer, I could just barely hear the soft piano music coming from inside it."

"I picked up the chunk of amber again, not sure if I’d seen right. And there it was entombed next to a pair of winged termites: a perfect replica- no longer than my thumbnail- of that strange man that had been standing on my back porch last night. "

"Mr. Alexander lay in his bed with eyes closed and arms resting peacefully at his sides. Cautiously, I pressed my ear to his chest and heard the faint buzzing of the insects that had completely hollowed out his body."

Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,
Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown.
Tapping at the window, crying at the lock,
Beware his sable eyes, lest you join his flock.

---
I've always found the nursery rhyme Wee Willie Winkie rather creepy. I think these four lines (3 original, 1 altered) make a pretty good two sentence horror story.

(Willy Winkie by William Miller was first published in 1841)

My breath hitched in my throat as I dashed inside the abandoned house. Slamming the door so hard that tiny splinters of wood broke off the edges, I leaned against it and tried to calm my frantic heartbeat.
What were those things? Where exactly am I now?
I had been running for far too long, caught up in the fear of being found. I tried to convince myself that this was a nightmare. I pictured myself waking up and laughing over such a silly dream. But my mind knew better. I couldn't lie to myself. Those things had been real. Those hideous monsters in the woods behind my house were not some figment of my imagination or trick of the dim light of dusk.
They were real. Their long ears and black skin. Their claw-like hands. Their huge blue eyes that searched for new prey. The clicking sounds that emitted from their puckered lips.
They were real, all right. And they were hungry.
What should I do? Where should I go?
How would I ever be able to get back to the safety, however false, of my own home when those things were still out there? Even as my mind reeled, my body was still in the here and now. And I realized that I wasn't alone in the old, dilapidated house. As my eyes focused in the dark around me, the last rays of light coming through a broken window nearby fading away, I saw something glimmer to my right.
It was almost like eye-shine, from a cat or dog. A soft clicking sound to my left had me whirling around to see what was there. More eyes near the window. As full dark fell over me, the eyes began to emit a soft blue glow. The same blue color as those freaky things outside.
And there were dozens of them, all low to the ground.
I hadn't escaped into the safety of a temporary hiding place. I had run right smack into the nesting ground of those monsters. These tiny, clicking terrors all turned their eyes on me, as if smelling my fear.
And they were hungry, too.

Like this. It hit me--only prompt was the Walking Dead coming on and I saw the two sentence story. https://www.goodreads.com/questions/1...

The girl attacked her father, tearing his throat out, and his life ended with the massive amounts of flowing blood and flesh she swallowed. Once done, she stood and the zombie child left what was left of her father scattered on the ground, at last able to get revenge for her life of being molested by him, only by being as much a monster undead as he had been alive.

David wrote: "You hear the creaks and groans as you turn the handle and know something inexpressibly horrible awaits. As the door swings open, you ..."

...besides the shock, there's the pain of losing one's innocence. You managed to fit a lot into two sentences. Thanks for posting your excellent story.

Goodreads asked me:
Can you tell us a two-sentence horror story?

I answered:
"Facebook notified me that a very old friend posted something on my wall.
It wasn't really his style, at least until he died."

Ahmad Eddeeb
Goodreads author
https://www.goodreads.com/questions/1...

Two sentence horror story:


The posters at the beginning of the trail head asking hikers to keep a lookout for the two missing women were disconcerting, and although she knew there was no guarantee of safety in the wilderness from things as easy as getting lost, to falling off of a cliff, to the rare event of being attacked by an animal, she was more experienced than most – having hiked all around the world by herself. It was the deer that spooked her - the deer that approached her from behind, all the while looking back at whatever frightened it more than she did – a deer that under ordinary circumstances should be more afraid of a human than any other creature common to the area, and with that horrible realization, she knew hers would be the next face to appear at the start of the trail head.

My six-word horror story.
Killed many. Never caught. Now dying.

Chapter Two: An Anthology]

My penultimate thought was how beautiful the lush green English countryside looked from up here, so verdant and alive. My last thought, as I plunged towards earth holding the tampered with ripcord in my hand, was that I was glad that devious bitch didn't know I'd changed my will, and she wouldn't get anythi - .....

Richard Elliot Barnes

Richard wrote: "

Chapter Two: An Anthology]

My penultimate thought was how beautiful the lush green English countryside looked from up here, so verd..."

Outstanding! That made my night

Thanks dude! Glad you liked it... :)

I'll have to wander on over to your page and check out The Darkness Returns..... :)

REFLECTIONS - A HORROR SHORT FOR HALLOWEEN

Kate Maley, a pretty young blonde, was very fond of looking at herself in the mirror. Every opportunity she got, she would sneak a glance at herself in her compact or on her phone to make sure she was looking her best. So, while it would have been traumatic for any person to set eyes on the mirror woman, it was especially distressing for Kate.

The woman first appeared to her late one night, as she readied herself for bed. One moment the only thing displayed in the mirror was her own reflection, then she bent low to spit out a mouthful of toothpaste foam and, when she straightened up, the woman was there, standing over her shoulder.

She was a horrible creature. Her entire body was blackened as if by burning; drooping skin hung from her bones like that of a corpse dredged from the darkest depths of the ocean. Her hair was sparse, thin and lank; on her chest hung the deflated remnants of a pair of breasts. The eyes were dead, hateful, filled with malice and animosity.

Kate screamed. She spun round but she found herself alone in the bathroom. When she returned her gaze to the mirror, the woman had returned. She stood stock still, unmoving, grotesque.

'Mum!' Kate bellowed. 'Mum!'

Her mother burst into the bathroom, startled from sleep by her daughters cries. 'Kate, baby, what is it?' she asked, panicked.

Kate pointed to the mirror. 'Can't you see it?'

Her mother turned to the mirror. She could see her daughter only, nothing out of the ordinary. 'The only thing I can see is my beautiful daughter.'

Kate stared at the horror behind her, shivering uncontrollably, mouth agape. It couldn't be real, could it? She scrunched her eyes tight shut, kept them closed for a very long time. When she opened them again, the apparition had gone. She sighed audibly, relief washed over her.

'Kate,' her mother asked, 'what's wrong?'

'Nothing, mum,' she replied. 'I thought I saw something but I must have imagined it.'

***

Two days passed and Kate's lingering memories of the incident had begun to fade. She had almost convinced herself the whole thing had been an hallucination when she caught another glimpse of the woman.

She had been shopping, was walking down the street with an armful of bags, when she glanced in the window of her favourite store. The bags slipped from her grasp to the pavement as her hands shot to her mouth to stifle a scream.

The woman was there again, reflected in the windowpane of the store, standing directly behind Kate. She stood bowlegged, her thin arms hanging listlessly by her sides, ending in arthritic claws with long, ragged nails.

Kate began to hyperventilate, her breathe coming in rapid, terrified gulps. She watched the colour literally drain from her reflected face. A hand fell on her shoulder and she turned quickly with a frightened gasp.

The face of a young man greeted her. 'Are you all right , love?' he asked. He bent down and picked up Kate's shopping, handed it to her. 'You look like you've seen a ghost.'

When Kate looked back at the window, the woman was gone. The man hadn't been perturbed, obviously hadn't seen the abomination she had but, regardless, Kate was now convinced the hideous crone was real and not a figment of her imagination.

***

Over the coming days, the woman appeared to Kate ever more frequently, reflected in shop windows, bathroom mirrors, on the windscreens of passing cars. Eventually she showed herself every time Kate was unfortunate enough to move her field of vision across a reflective surface.

Something dawned on Kate as she saw the woman more regularly, something which made her sick with terror. With each glimpse, the woman inched closer and closer to her.

The visions began to take their toll on her mental health. Kate regressed into herself. Once so outgoing, she became akin to a hermit, refusing to leave her room, much to the worry of her mother. She spent great swathes of her time huddled beneath her bed sheets, forming a cocoon of perceived safety where she saw naught but darkness.

As extra precautions, Kate covered all the mirrors in her house with sheets, threw away her compact, did everything she could to dull any surface sheen in her vicinity. Still, no matter how hard she tried, she glanced the haggard figure wherever she happened to look. She simply couldn't avoid seeing this repulsive thing; it was impossible. When she least expected it, there she was.

Every time Kate saw the woman she edged noticeably closer. What would happen when she was close enough to reach out and touch Kate? What would happen then?

***

In her room, Kate pulled off the sheet covering her mirror. The woman was now so close they were almost touching. If the thing had been capable of breathing, Kate was close enough to have felt it at her back; if the thing had had an odour, Kate would have registered its stench.

She stared at the creature behind her in abject horror. She could feel her sanity fraying. She couldn't deal with the persistent threat that followed her everywhere, couldn't bear to look at this horrific aberration a second longer.

Sobbing hysterically, Kate lashed out at her mirror, again and again, until it shattered. Bright fragments of glass fell at her feet.

She had briefly dispelled the gruesome creature but it wasn't enough, was it? She couldn't hide away from that terrible reflection forever, couldn't break every mirror she ever saw. It was impossible to avoid her own reflection for the rest of her life – she would lay her eyes upon it purely by accident a million times or more.

She lowered her head, grabbed viciously at her hair. Fat tears of despair rolled down her cheeks. What was she to do?

One of the shards at her feet drew her attention. An idea came to her, a way to ensure she would never see her own reflection or that of the woman ever again. She bent down and picked it up.

The shard of glass slid into her eyeballs with ease. The pain was intense, but her sense of relief, of escape, was even stronger.

The sun reflected brightly off the polished headstones and the unseasonable heat caused her dress to stick to the back of her knees on the mid October afternoon that Stacy buried her grandmother. The service lasted about fifteen minutes with only Stacy and a neighbor of Nana's standing graveside. Time, distance and death had withered her family away and Stacy was all that was left.

Two hours later and she found herself surrounded by the detritus that collects around 80 years of life. Stacy needed to clean out Nana's house and the job felt insurmountable. Not because of the workload, but because each knick-knack, picture or paper she found brought back memories, not all of them happy. But it was her responsibility, and besides, being with her grandmother's things this weekend was more of a goodbye than 15 minutes at grave site ever could be. She owed her that much.

The house was one of those tight, five room jobs built right after WWII. Her grandparents bought it in the late 60's and Stacy had visited often as a child, much less lately. It had somehow been a bigger place when Papa filled these rooms, but a massive heart attack almost 20 years ago robbed Stacy of him. He died on the factory floor 3 weeks before his retirement. Since then the small house seemed to get even smaller.

She had found a charity willing to take all the furniture and they were scheduled to pick up everything on Monday. She planned to sort through everything else this weekend. Going through the house was one thing, but the real work would be in the attic. Not least because she really didn't want to go up there. Especially not alone. Attics were possibly her least favorite location. Well, attics and graveyards, and since she already braved the latter she figured she might as well tackle the former. Knowing she'd dread the job until it was done she determined to start up there.

A small access door in the ceiling of the spare bedroom closet offered the only entrance, but there were no retractable stairs- just a trap door that hinged up. Dragging a step ladder from the kitchen behind her with one hand, flashlight in the other, Stacy went to the closet. Being a guest room, it was fairly empty. A few coats and old dresses that she could never remember her grandmother having worn hung lazily from the single bar.

Pushing the clothes aside she went to move the chair under the access door, but jumped back and let out a scream when she saw the dead mouse lying on the floor directly beneath the door.

"It’s just a mouse, get a hold of yourself," she spoke into the emptiness, waiting for her heart rate to slow back to normal.

The dead mouse could not have been there long as its little body was still plump, not the dried-out husk one would find if it had died last spring. Lying on its side, its one visible eye lay open, staring up at her. The skin around the eye had begun to recess leaving the impression that the eye itself was bulging out of the socket, almost as if it were pleading with her about something.

"I'll deal with you later," she said throwing an old floral dish towel over the corpse like cheap department store shroud.

After moving the chair in place she climbed up and took a deep breath. "Now or never." She pushed up, but the door didn't budge. The humid summers and freezing cold winters of western Massachusetts meant wood often became a living thing- growing and shrinking with the weather. Bending her legs, she got into position to push up hard and shoved at the door.

"Dammit!" The door moved, but she also scraped the side of her left palm on the edge of the roughed in door frame.

The side of her hand looked like road rash; the blood already weeping up to the surface through the abrasion. At least the seal on the door broke and it creaked up two to three inches. The old hinges really didn't want to move. Slowly, using her right, uninjured hand, she got the door fully open, turned on the flashlight and looked up.

Darkness. Almost complete darkness. "Maybe this isn't such a great idea," she thought to herself. But it was already four in the afternoon, if she didn't get some of this cleared out soon Friday would have been wasted. And the light was starting to fade. The thought of being there alone at night spurred her on.

Checking her flashlight for the second- or was it third- time she crawled through the small doorway and into the attic. She saw no windows, openings or even cracks letting in any light. The only illumination came from the trap door and the narrow beam of her $3.00 Walmart flashlight. Lifting herself up and fully in she saw that she could stand in the center under the roof's peak, but only because she was 5'3''. Anyone taller would be stooping.

There was no floor, just evenly spaced beams with dirty, pink insulation tucked between. Carefully standing on the joist beams she made her way down to the left. Her flashlight pierced the darkness, left, right, left searching the blackness for whatever she could see. And despite her initial nervousness she saw just what you'd expect in an old attic. Boxes. Lots of boxes. Some taped shut, other older ones with string crisscrossed around them. The thick layer of dust over everything belying the fact that these had not been touched for years. Probably just old Christmas decorations and the extra sets of dishes found in most people's attics. "Nothing to be afraid of," she told herself.

As the beam of her flashlight speared ahead, one item caught her eye as it was not quite as dust-covered as the rest. It reflected her light with a cloudy, milky beam of its own. Peering into the gloom she spied a large, framed photo. She could see three people through the dust on the glass, but it was a little hard to make out. Stacy took her sleeve and wiped down the image to get a clearer look- it was her grandparents when they were quite young. She'd recognize her Nana's lopsided grin anywhere. They couldn't be much more than 20 years old, and with them was a little girl, maybe three. They sat together on a bench in what appeared to be a park of some kind. She could see balloons in the background.

Her grandparents were laughing at something off to the right of the camera, but the little girl stared straight at Stacy, unsmiling, expressionless. He hands clasped tightly in her lap around a single flower that looked more strangled then held.

She wasn't sure who this was. Her own mother had been her grandparent's oldest child and this picture was clearly earlier. Nana had been 32 when mom was born. So, who was this little girl. Just as she was wondering this her cheap flashlight gave out, plunging the attic into semi-darkness. "Crap, crap, crap," she muttered while flipping the switch on and off in rapid succession. She couldn't see much of anything now, the only light as coming from the open trap door about 20 feet behind her.

Standing there in the near blackness, trying to keep her near panic under control, she gave up on the switch and frantically banged the flashlight against her leg hoping to get just a bit more juice from the batteries.

The she heard a thump. Not terribly loud, but terribly close.

That was enough for her anxiety to overflow and she screamed aloud, the sound dying in the close quarters. While standing there, frozen, her heart beating a drum solo in her ears, the flashlight suddenly came back to life. In its dull, yellowy light she saw the photo frame had fallen off the box upon which it had sat. The fall had kicked up enough dust that particles shimmering in the light's beam seemed to point to where the frame had fallen- face down between two floor joists, resting on the ancient insulation.

She reached down to lift the image back into place. " What the hell?" Was this even the same picture? Her grandparents were there, but they were alone. Maybe she got disoriented in the dark and was looking at a different picture?

Then a loud bang echoed behind her and she spun around, too startled to keep her balance on the thin beams upon which she stood. Trying to compensate for her quick turn she ended up rolling her ankle over the beam and heard more than felt the snap as she tumbled down, her head slamming into a joist beam.

For an eternity that lasted maybe ten seconds she lay there in the dark. The flashlight had scattered in the fall; its battery failing for good. Ankle throbbing and head pounding, her mind a temporary blank from the blow to her head.

Five, four, three, two, on-

"Where the hell had the little girl in the picture gone? What was that bang? I need to get the hell out of this attic," the thoughts shot through her renewed consciousness like staccato gunfire.

But her thoughts were the only things moving at this moment, because she could not move. Her brain yelled "GET OUT" but her body wouldn't respond. No, her body was frozen with a fear she hadn't felt in years.

That's when she heard it. A small child giggling, or singing. She couldn't really tell; it was the aural version of a memory right on the edge of one's mind. You know it, but can't quite put words to it yet. But it was there. Oh yes, it was there.

And that proved to be the cure for fear-induced paralysis. Gathering her arms under her torso she heaved herself up onto her hands into an awkward upward dog position to get her bearings, and instantly learned what the bang had been. The hinges must've given out on the trap door. The only light now coming up into the attic was the sliver surrounding the edges of the door itself. In other words, next to nothing. She may as well have been blind.

She started to pull herself along the floor beams, her bad foot dragging between, bumping along through the insulation below. Fear was temporarily numbing the pain. She had only one thought, "Get to the door, and leave this house NOW."

Slowly, inch by inch she pulled herself along the beams. The exertion shook lose a single drop of sweat from her brow and she suddenly realized how hot it was in the cramped attic. Her clothes were beginning to cling to her damp skin yet at the same time she found herself shivering. The tiny hairs on her arms felt like they were raising up in a miniature defensive posture.

She pulled on.

The sweat continued to run down her left cheek and she could hear the rhythmic dripping off her chin an onto the beam below with each hard pull she made. She stayed focused on the single line of light and made her way closer. It was about five feet in front of her when it went out.

Or something blocked it. Something right in front of her.

A young girl's voice. "Peek-a-boo. I see you!"