Writing

Scary Stories


Time for a contest!

Get your horror stories ready.

I know it’s not Halloween, but I’m in the mood to read something spooky.

So here’s the contest.

Write a super-scary, short story (up to 500 words) and post it in the comments here.

***BUT here’s the twist***

These three words-Pony, Rainbow, Teddy Bear-must be somewhere in the story.

Post it directly in the comments here and the one that scares me the most WINS a gift card to Barnes and Noble.

Yep, I know, the judging is totally subjective, but it’s my blog, right? LOL. No, seriously, the one that scares me the most will win. If I can’t decide, maybe I’ll have two winners….you just never know. . .

You have until Wednesday March 17th to post your short story. I’ll announce the winner on Saturday March 20th.

So—WRITE ON!

~~~

I better share some little disclaimers: This contest is totally voluntary and totally just for fun. I am the sole judge. One entry per person. The $10 Barnes and Noble gift card prize was not provided to me by Barnes and Noble, nor do I endorse that bookstore over any other–I just happen to like it. I’m just doing this for the fun of it.

16 Comments

  • A. R. Braun

    Here’s my entry. Couldn’t resist this one.

    “The Trunk” by A. R. Braun

    Eddie hated Paul.

    “You know I consider you a friend, right?” his overweight, obnoxious co-worker said while stuffing a donut into his fat cheeks.

    Eddie shrugged. “I guess.”

    “Donuts, man?”

    “Ugh. Pastries–the worst thing you can eat.”

    Paul stuffed another into his mouth. “Mmm, good, man. You ought to try ’em.”

    Eddie sighed.

    Paul looked around as if to make sure no one else lurked in the break room. “Keep this hush, hush, man, ’cause I know where you live, but I kidnapped and raped a twelve year old girl last night.” He busted out laughing. “Just like Slayer.”

    “You _what?”_

    “Had to shut her up though, she kept screaming. She’s in the trunk of my truck.”

    “Y-Youre…joking, right?”

    “Nope.” Paul scowled. “Don’t tell anyone, man. I’ll bring a rifle and shoot the whole workplace up.” He shoved the box over. “Put some weight on, pipsqueak! I’ve got to go back to work.”

    Eddie sat nonplussed.

    #

    Eddie sometimes borrowed Paul’s truck to grab his co-workers lunch. _I have to look in that trunk to see if it’s true and, if so, I need to turn him in._

    At five till noon, Eddie showed up in the door of Paul’s office. “Want me to grab you some lunch?”

    Paul looked up from the computer at him. “Ooh, yeah, man, but don’t get that weak Subway shit. Get McDonald’s–Third pounder. Oh, I forgot– you don’t have a car.” He threw the keys at him and snickered, winking. “Try not to have too much fun fucking the girl’s corpse,” he almost whispered.

    “Be right back.” Eddie walked to the break room, clocked out and headed to the ugly, green mini-truck. With shaking hands, he pulled out, looking for a quiet place to check the trunk.

    He spotted a graveyard, and drove in deeply where no workers dug graves or mowed lawns. The sky was overcast and cloudy. The full moon–the angry eye of God–stood out in a cloudless space in the sky. God would piss down rain soon in protest of what Paul had done.

    _If he’s lying about her, I’ll feel silly._

    With trembling arms, he opened the trunk.

    A prepubescent girl lay there with bulging eyes. She wore a green teddy shirt and white shorts, which were stained dark red in the crotch. Bruises covered her skin. She’d never ride her pony again, never sleep with her teddy bear or cry out in excitement over a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow while sitting in the backseat of daddy’s car.

    Paul vomited on the ground.

    A corvette pulled up behind Eddie–the boss’ corvette.

    Paul stepped out. “Hey man, thought I might find you here.”

    The built boss with glasses sneered from behind the wheel. Paul got a spade out of the backseat.

    Eddie’s legs shook uncontrollably as Paul advanced on him. “No…I…won’t help you…bury her.”

    “A nark–I suspected as much.”

    Paul slammed the shovel into Eddie’s head, and everything faded to black.

  • Kat Heckenbach

    A horror contest–talk about dangling the carrot! Here’s my entry….

    The knife wavered in Clarice’s trembling hand. The scritch-scritch continued on the other side of the door. She pushed her back farther into the corner, a ragged teddy bear clutched under her arm.

    The bear was the only thing she had left from her childhood, other than memories of the pony her father had killed in front of her. Punishment for her forgetting to feed him. Once.

    “I told ya yer to be the one to feed ‘im. Ya don’t take care of ‘im, ‘e dies,” her father had said, and slit the pony’s neck with a knife almost exactly like the one she held now.

    A tear coursed down her cheek. They said he’d never find me. They said he was locked up for good…

    The scratching stopped, and Clarice held her breath.

    A thump, and then the doorknob jiggled.

    She raised the knife, struggling to swallow the fear that churned her stomach and sent bile to the back of her throat. If only she could scream for help. If only there were people who could hear her. But she’d chosen this house for its seclusion. She wanted to make sure he’d never track her down. Just in case…just in case….

    “I know yer in there!” a raspy voice bellowed through the door. A vice clamped down and ground into Clarice’s temples. She squeezed her eyes shut. Please, no, please, no.

    The door rattled as something hard slammed it from the other side. Clarice turned to the window. Three stories up; and a bed of huge, spiked cactus below. Everything she’d done to keep him out was now keeping her in.

    “Open the door, Clarice. It’s me. It’s papa…” His voice was an unearthly gurgle. “Le’ me in, doll. I haven’t been the one ta feed ya in a long time, ‘ave I? And ya know what that means….”

    A howling laugh erupted then, and Clarice cringed, a sob lodged in her chest, choking her.

    She began to inch toward the window. Something slammed the door again, and this time it splintered.

    The room spun as Clarice tugged the window, her breath ragged. “There’s no other choice,” she whispered as the window slid open.

    She set the knife down on the dresser, and then hugged the bear to her chest. She kissed it between its button eyes and set it on the dresser, behind the knife.

    The door flew open with a crash, and Clarice took one final look into his eyes. The hatred bubbled in his pupils like tar.

    “I’m sorry, papa,” she said. She knew the words made no more difference now than when she’d screamed them as a child, but she wanted to say them one last time.

    As he lunged into the room, Clarice scrambled onto the windowsill. She crouched and ducked her head through before spreading her arms and pushing off with her feet.

    The cactuses were in bloom, and Clarice smiled at the deadly rainbow speeding toward her.

  • Jill Weatherholt

    Hi Lynn,
    I have never tried to write anything scary either….since I’m a big chicken! 🙂 Below is my 439 word entry.
    Thanks for the challenge!

    Blood was everywhere. Moira’s tiny body was curled into a fetal position. A half grin was frozen on her face as if she was smiling at the monster that took her young life.
    The bedspread that kept the winter chill at bay, now looked as if she had spilled the red paint used daily to paint the scenes she observed from her window. Paintings of rainbows filled the walls. Rainbows had always been her favorite. Now the rainbows were splattered with blood.
    Willie, the stuffed pony that stayed on her bed since Moira’s grandfather had given it to her at the age of four, now six years later, looked as if someone had held it face down in a barrel of burgundy wine. His tail hacked off, isolated in the corner.
    The polka dot curtains covering the window were flapping similar to a flag on a beachfront home during a hurricane. The icy air pouring through the window turned the warm blood seeping from the gash on Moira’s throat into a chilled Bloody Mary.
    Downstairs, David heard his wife’s bloodcurdling scream. He raced up the stairs, taking three steps at a time, drawn to her screams like a magnet.
    He could never have prepared himself for what he saw once he entered his daughter’s bedroom. Clutching Moira’s tiny hand was his wife with streaks of blood running through her blond hair. Lifting her head she revealed the smears of blood on her cheeks. A circus clown is what crept into David’s mind for an instant.
    “Who did this to my baby?” She screamed. “My baby is dead!”
    David took diminutive steps toward the bed. With salty tears dripping onto his lips he bend over and kissed his baby girl on the cheek. He knelt on the floor and grabbed his wife as though was trying to protect her from the monster.
    As they sat on the floor embracing one another, trying to will their little girl back to life, they heard the creak of the top step. The step David had been meaning to repair the last two years.
    “Someone’s coming up the stairs. Get under the bed.” He said peeling himself out of her arms.
    As David scanned the room in search of something to use as a weapon against the intruder, he saw his son Tommy standing in the doorway.
    His Spider Man footy pajamas were covered in blood. His teddy bear was in one hand and a bloody knife in the other, the knife David uses to carve the Thanksgiving turkey.
    “Moira wouldn’t give me back my teddy.” Tommy said with the innocence of a four-year-old.

  • Christian Miles

    Hey Lynn! Here’s my entry, it’s exactly 500 words. LOL
    I haven’t really tried horror before (which may be a bit obvious. haha) but I had a lot of fun. Hopefully this spooks you a little. 🙂

    ————————–

    Andrea clutched the knife in her sweaty palm and crept down the hall. A low creaking sound preceded her footsteps, coming from the nursery of her three-room apartment. Its door lay open a few steps ahead and on her left. Light spilled out of the entrance, tainted baby blue by the curtains she’d so wishfully put up last spring.
    Panic trilled down Andrea’s spine. She lived alone, had since Bert’s death. The mumbling she’d just heard… the creaking… someone was in her house.
    Inches from the door, she could make out the cowboy themed wallpaper inside. Andrea gripped the knife tighter. Her breaths came out in shallow puffs and she realized the intruder must be able to hear her. She knew she had to act fast, or else lose the element of surprise. Most burglars could be scared away, right? Andrea cursed the fact that she’d disabled her phone service last month. Even the incessant calls from her former mother-in-law would be worth it just for the security.
    Well, too late.
    Andrea spun around the corner, blade flashing, and screamed like a lunatic. Her would-be battle cry faded away. No one was there. She glanced around the room and saw only the empty crib and a bag of unopened diapers. Piles of stuffed animals, teddy bears with cowboy hats and ponies, stared up at her with their wide, glassy eyes.
    Was she really alone? Had it been her imagination?
    Creeeeak.
    Andrea gasped and twirled, her hair gleaming in the moonlight.
    A clown with a rainbow painted face sat propped up in the old rocker behind the door. It cocked its head to the side and stared at her, a fake smile painted red across its lips.
    Horrified, Andrea backpedaled against the crib. “Get out of my house!”
    “I’m sorry to tell you this,” the clown measured its words slowly, “but the child you and your husband were trying to adopt before he… Look, it’s nobody’s fault, but the state has deemed that you’d be an unfit parent.”
    “Stop it!” Spittle flew from Andrea’s mouth. “Just stop it!”
    A real smile joined the clown’s fake one as it stood. “You have my condolences.”
    Andrea choked back a sob and pitched the knife at her demented intruder. She didn’t wait to see if it struck its target, but sprinted out of the room and back down the hall.
    Footsteps sounded behind her.
    Sobbing, Andrea threw herself inside the first room she could find—the bathroom—and slammed the door shut.
    Fingers clawed the doorhandle on the other side and tried to bend it out of her grip.
    She twisted the lock and backed away.
    Silence.
    A tickle crept down her cheek and something red dripped onto her shirt. Blood? She swiveled and gaped at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “No…”
    A rainbow colored face stared back at her, tears mixing with its fake red smile and dribbling down its chin.
    Her chin.
    Andrea screamed, blacked out, and woke with a start.

  • Jill Weatherholt

    Lynn,
    Updating your blog in the wee hours of the morning, a person is allowed a typo or two. 🙂
    Happy Saturday!
    Jill

  • Jill Weatherholt

    Liza, I’m struggling as well. My story started out scary, but now it’s turning into more of a mystery and not so scary. UGHHHH!!!
    Good luck!
    Jill

  • Liza Quisisem

    That’s it! Trying to finish this story is driving me nuts. I knew my revising was gonna kill me! Hope someone turns in an entry

  • Lynn Rush

    Jill. Nice that I have the date wrong, huh? LOL. WEDNESDAY the 17th is the due date, then that gives me time to read them and announce the winner the 20th.

    WRITE ON!!

    I’ll go fix the post with the right date. LOL thanks

  • Jill Weatherholt

    Hi Lynn,
    The 17th is Wednesday. Do you want the story posted by Friday the 19th?
    This is tough. I’ve never written anything scary. I am writing now but it’s more gruesome than scary. I’m a chicken when it comes to scary movies. 🙂
    Have a great day and pass it on!
    Jill

  • Lynn Rush

    HI, Liza. The word limit is 500 words, so you’d have to stop at 500. That’s the challenge — to hone things down. It’s really hard, I know from experience as well. 🙂

  • Liza Quisisem

    Lynn – I have a few questions about the story. If I go over 500 words, what would you consider acceptable:? 500 -600 or 700 – 800? The reason I ask because I know that I am notoriously verbose and constantly have to edit and re-edit my drafts. I really want to do a story for you contest and I already have a pretty good idea of what i am going to write. Thanks so much for your time!

    Liza

  • Liza Quisisem

    Wow! What a great contest. I’ve written a very few stories for contests, but that was:) a few years ago! I love it! A horror story just in time for St. Patrick’s Day! Maybe I will try my hand at it, time time permitting! 🙂