3 Short Horror Stories

PIECE BY PIECE

The old woman was sewing the doll’s stomach closed now… there were lots of them around the dusty place. Maybe a hundred. That one over there had a strand of hair inside her… that one there, the clipping of a nail…

Young Claire watched the old woman—the naked hag—nimbly tie and cut the last thread, closing the torn piece of lip inside the wool-stuffed toy. Claire was disappearing on the hag’s workshop table. Slowly and excruciatingly. It would be a long while before she was gone and closed away, piece by piece, in a hundred more button-eyed dolls.

OFF-SCRIPT

She presses dial on her computer, adjusts her headset. This number is on the no-call list, but when has that ever stopped them? When her screen says the call has been answered she doesn’t hesitate.

“Good morning! This is Sue with Dawson’s Home Improvement calling to let you know we’re giving away free estimates to homeowners in your area! Are there any repairs to your home you would like us to come look at?”

Quiet on the line. Several heartbeats and a few breathes pass before he asks, “Do you do windows?”

“Why, yes we do!” Sue squawks. “What seems to be the problem?”

Two lines down, a page and a half of script and some credit card info left to go. But the script is about to change.

“Third story window is good and busted,” he explains, “I pushed my wife out of it last night.”

Sue’s breath catches in her throat. Then he asks, “Can you clean the gore from my driveway as well?”

She quickly ends the call before his manic cackling can loosen her bladder.

WHITE HOT VOODOO LIGHTNING Pt 1

The thing that looked like walking ripples of lightning gained on him, and no matter how many bullets her fired or how many swings of the heavy blade, it just kept coming.

Relentless.

Lloyd Hickum finally screamed, pent up fright escaping like a shrill train whistle from his bearded throat and hot piss released into his Carhartts. Trembling now, he begged for his life.

The thing, a humanoid-shaped network of glowing, veiny terror, was upon him now…

~

Two nights earlier is when it happened.

“You don’t belong here, muchacho,” Lloyd grunted while he kicked the kid in the dark alley, kicked him until he puked, until he started wailing in what Lloyd assumed was Spanish. Beaner-barking, Lloyd called it. He thought that was a riot.

“Go back to your cartel country, you wet back rat!” he said when he was good and exhausted, adjusting his bright red cap. But the kid on the ground wasn’t moving…

Domingo Ruiz wasn’t moving.

“Shit,” Lloyd spat. He leaned down and tore the gold crucifix from Ruiz’s neck before running down the alley and away into the night.

~

Now this thing was stalking him through his house.

“Stop!” Lloyd screamed, but the thing did not stop. “Please!” Lloyd begged, but the thing did not listen.

He’d emptied his pistol and swung his axe and thrown his frames and plates and still the thing stepped closer, reaching its rippling-lightning arm, its rippling-lightning head tilting curiously. It looked like the human nervous system encased in glass at the Natural History Museum Lloyd had visited only once and only to protest their teaching of evolution and desecration of human bodies for display.

This thing, this silent monster, looked just like that. And it reached out now and touched him.

Lloyd’s nerves exploded with relentless agony. His body so overcome he could not even scream. Instead he lay there feeling—feeling his ribs break beneath his shirt, feeling his teeth shatter in his face, and then feeling a gun-blast to his chest and an axe to his shoulder.

Every swing of his leg in that dark alley, even his attempts on this thing, he felt. All at once. No gore, no mess, only pain.

All the pain.

And the monster of glowing, humanoid nerves twitched gleefully, not letting go until Lloyd went still and quiet. It would leave the gold crucifix there in his pocket. It had other things to do. Others to touch.

Onto the next…