For this year’s Horror Story Event, we had people send in some stories early, and write them on the spot! Congratulations to our winners, Matt Owens and Katy Barnes!
DayDreams
by Matt Owens - 1st place winner
The mind is a funny thing. It can see, hear, think, or even do things that the average person couldn't make up if they tried. I used to have dreams. Terrible dreams. Not because I was being chased by monster or in my underwear in public. It was what I did in them that was terrible. At first, I would be hurting animals. I would jolt awake in a sweat afraid of myself and what I had done.
After a while, I began to dream of people instead. Some I knew, some I didn’t. Even awake, I could still see the images. Blood, unrecognizable pieces of meat, and pieces of skull, brain, and veins and tendons. I used to grow ill whenever I would think of it. Until I didn't. Yes, the mind is a funny thing. And so are dreams. Until they aren't dreams anymore.
Walk On a Dark Path
by Matt Owens - 1st place winner
So peaceful, are the trails
which so few travel
Yet so many noises wait to unravel
Twigs and branches and other things breaking
Wind and breath so unsteadily shaking
The breeze howls while others scream
But no more
Silence restored
So peaceful
untitled
by Katy Barnes - 2nd place winner
I want all the great things that life has to offer.
I want good grades and passion and cleanliness.
But my brain tells my limbs,
“Weigh her down”
And my arms Velcro to my sides,
And my legs fuse with the floor,
And my eyes dart around in their cage.
And by the time I’ve picked up my arms,
Freed my legs,
Dragged my body,
And set myself up,
The exhaustion of lifting the weight of the world
Forces me to collapse.
Reaffixes the limbs to the earth.
And I must start again.
The House
by Xavier Alston
That house, that haunting black mass on the edge of our small bright town. Every pore of the wood that held it together oozed horror and regret into our streets. It washed over everyone filling us to the core with dread and despair. That house had been home to the most gruesome crime to ever shake our, one stop light, hole in the wall. And of course, in the tradition of teenage stupidity fueled by the ever present feeling of invincibility my graduating class would be staying the night.
"This will be the grand event of the year. Well as long as you can manage to make it through the night." Billy Brennan emphasized his speech with the true moaning and groaning of an idiot boy pretending to be a ghost.
The class erupted into laughter, cheers, and claps as the rest of our football team followed Billy's lead down the hall. I didn't really have any friends. I was known as a loner and a freak in this box of a town. All because I was the only one clawing at the cardboard walls begging to get out. But even I knew that this was something the whole class needed to go to. In the spirit of camaraderie, peace, love and all that shit, I decided to go. I mean what could one night hurt, but I'd be late, fashionably so.
Then came the night, the whole week the class had been a buzz with excitement for what Friday night would bring. Every senior was locked in their room sound "asleep" when the time came. As soon as the bell tower at the center of town struck twelve, the streets filled with the quiet pitter of sneakers on asphalt. Only one was missing, me. I laid in bed awaiting my time. I'd be an hour late, not one second earlier and not one second later. When the time finally came, I jumped up and fled out my window. My high tops made a quiet pop on the ground. But as anyone whose ever snuck out before will tell you, that pop sounds as loud as a shotgun to your ears. So, you don’t stick around and wait for the ass beating, no you just run like there’s fire lapping at your heels. That's just what I did, I hauled ass all the way to the moss coated cobble stone path winding it's way to the front steps of the house.
Then I noticed it, the emptiness of the house. I don't mean physical emptiness, no you could see the bulky shadows of teenagers ready to party scattered about the many cobwebbed windows. The kind of emptiness I'm talking about is the quiet kind, the off putting burning sensation that seeps in the moment you realize something is just too quiet.
I felt that exact sensation as I inched my way to the door, prepared for it to be some sick prank they all decided to pull on the weird kid. What I got was much much worse.
Instead of a harmless prank, followed by loud laughter and knowing grins. I got blood. Lots and lots of blood. I never really thought about what 160 ounces of blood would look like when it's not crammed into the tight restraints of our veins. But looking at forty times that amount splashed on the walls, floors, windows, doors, and ceilings makes you think about it.
I turned to run, started to scream, but I was too late Billy had sensed my arrival as soon as I had entered.
"I thought you wouldn't show. I'm so very pleased that you did. It just wouldn't have been as grand without you. After all, stories only become legends if no one makes it through the night."
As I said, this house is home to the most gruesome crime to ever shock our one light hole in the wall. So, you all know what happened next.
The Goose
by Andie Lamberth
At night, we heard his quiet flapping
His webbed feet on pavement gently slapping
And his beak's tenacious tapping
Tapping at my restaurant door
At day, we heard his bell a-ringing
His blaring call that he was singing
And as I thought to begin my drinking,
Quoth the goose,
"Press Y to Honk."
The Dog Screamed
by Adella Herron
The parasites in dogs drive them mad. Hind claws are especially unkind to the belly fur as hounds try to burrow into their own gut and remove the foreign invaders. Whimpering, the hairless creature crawls along the slimy wood floor to my feet and howls for forgiveness. Ha! As it should! It called upon its own damnation, and I am idle with mirth. Even more glamourous a thought: I shall release it into the hell of night!
“No, no sleep.” I mumbled to myself, wading through mucus as green as bile but as thick as curdled milk. The stench that literally bubbled from the dark, unseen depths of the swamp surrounded me, comforting me when the warmth of daylight refused. I walked in the path of the pearly gibbous moon to my domain, a broken heart of standing wood that enclosed the memory of witch’s births and deaths.
The iron door sent splitting echoes across Ebenezer Swamp, alerting the demon that lived in the attic that I was home. Cloven hooves stamped with impatience then stopped. I imagined the black form of the enslaved fiend outlined by the window moonlight, frozen with contemplation, determining how it might do away with me when I least expect it. Futile thing! I merely laughed, the fierce laugh of a young pythoness. I left the clump of herbs and dead rodent bodies (gathered from my nightly scavenging) on the fireplace mantel. My eyes, taken from me, were stolen by the black shadows of taxidermy mounts flickering across empty bottles and wirework. I love shadows. These specifically as they had human shapes. Then, I was preparing the table of alchemist’s instruments when I noticed my window looked more like a picture frame: it had a round, plump face that was looking in at me. No second later, the face vanished, and the window was nothing more than ebony night. Enraged suddenly by the peeping intruder, I hurried to the door and swung it open to the witching hour.
“You spying saprophyte!” I screamed into the low orchestra of willows. I demanded the face to reveal itself, but of course the night admits nothing. All was quiet save for the vile orchestra of willows. Returning to the dimly lit sphere of solitude, I came to the dreadful realization that (besides the demon upstairs) I was not alone. Bent with suspicion, I closed off the loving night with the sealing of my door and returned to my work bench. Odors of dry rabbit feces and boiling blood filled the cabin. I began fancying that the face at the window was only a harmless psychological conjuring, magicless. Then the baby cried from beneath my work bench. That is, so the near wailing sounded like the hungry, incapable child I did not have. I looked under the table, angry at the possibility that another pythoness had decided to make a joke of me. Yet, the creature under the table was no pythoness. The hairless body of a pink, bloated rat tensed as the creature’s beady eyes seized me. Its head was narrow and dented with wrinkles. A wet nose wiggled, the nose of a human newborn. Its cheeks and forehead and face-shape were no different than a snotty brat’s.
Being the lover of the vile, even I was repulsed by the scene; and in my dumbfounded trance I was unprepared for its assault. The beast lunged for me with fingers that flicked up and down like spider legs. It would have had my throat had I not bashed it with my fists. Its fleshy body went stiff into the floor, but it was quick to recuperate. I had my hand on the mantel of the fireplace, fingers diving into my palm in a fist. The rat lunged, and I flung an open bag of mycota dust at it, the contents flying with a sizzle. The vomit-green dust, upon impact, soaked immediately into the fiend’s exposed skin, and the nameless monstrosity fell in a helpless heap on the floor. It quivered and quaked and rippled and puked. Its bones cracked, reshaped, and snapped, taking on a formidable, half-breed canine form. I looked on very much pleased with myself until its transformation was complete. What a lovely creature! I would have desired to have kept the canine rat as a pet, but the demon upstairs would throw quite a fit as he hates pets that he cannot eat.
That same night, I had grabbed the canine rat by the back of the neck and threw it out into the muck of Ebenezer Swamp. And, I went to bed to the lullaby of a dog’s scream, knowing that it was eternal.