fiction
Horror fiction that delivers on its promise to scare, startle, frighten and unsettle. These stories are fake, but the shivers down your spine won't be.
Dreams Are Not Enough
Except in dreams, you’re never really free. -Warren Zevon Three weeks ago, my job laid me off, with two weeks’ pay in advance, and an invitation for rehire after this whole pandemic blows over, which I guess was nice of them. When I first got the email, I kind of wished they had just let me go entirely, instead of hanging me over a cliff for however long this quarantine lasts. Two weeks’ pay will last me almost exactly that long, after rent and groceries. If they had fired me outright, I could have started looking for another job right away. Now I’m hamstrung by the email. I definitely sensed an implicit expectation that I’d come back. But I guess I should be thankful. So many folks are out of work and out of money now. So many are dying. I am young and I am healthy. I’m doing fine and I know it.
By John Merino4 years ago in Horror
Inside These Walls
Detective Emma Davis was assigned to investigate the death of an old woman. Detective Davis believes the old woman is missing due to the location of the abandoned building that took place in an abandoned building. She followed her intuition and concluded that she was dealing with something more than just an accidental case.
By Anthony Dezenzio4 years ago in Horror
Chocolate Coated Peanuts
Frankie started off in a happy home, cute family, happily married couple with 2 beautiful daughters. Well what appeared to be a happily married couple, the perfect household but something changed. Geoffrey the father decided to give up his addiction to chocolate coated peanuts, his obsession was apparent, they were always on his mind, the glossy finish on the chocolate domes, the hidden crunch of the peanut, it was all he wanted. First, it was on his mind, all the time, then began the cold sweats, hot flushes rushed through his body like a trophy housewife holding onto her youth going through menopause, his hands would shake. Full withdrawals kicked in and with that his mind, his emotion, his soul became withdrawn from reality. Distant, angry, brewing, day after day he thought of the chocolate coated goodness he once enjoyed, it was all on his mind. The rhetoric changed, voices became louder in his mind, “you’re wife Dolly did this “, “Dolly took the peanuts away from you”, “Dolly wants to see you in pain”, his memory clouded, this was his decision, earlier in the year Geoffrey completed a charity 24 hour fast to raise money for flood victims in the Sahara and recognised his addiction, identified it and wanted to change it. The voices became louder, shouting, screaming “DOLLY TOOK THE PEANUTS AWAY FROM YOU, DESTROY HER”! At first he ignored them, but he could not escape the voices, the peanuts, he began to see them everywhere. Geoffrey notice the peanuts in the ads on his favourite shows, random peanuts packets left in the dairy isle, laughing at him, taunting him. Until one day he came home, hands shaking, sweat groping to his back, his shirt pressed against him, it’s a cold winters eve to find Dolly with her daughters Josephine and Bindi eating chocolate peanuts, Frankie on his favourite chair watching the glamorous trio laughing while enjoying their fathers favourite snack. This was enough for Geoffrey to snap, he grabbed the kitchen knife and began slashing, left, right, left, right, Dolly’s face gushing, severed open by the gleaming silver blade now dripping in blood, Bindi screams, while Josephine finds herself shaking in a pool of her own piss, the chocolate peanuts once in her hand had fallen to the ground, now with a gloss finish from the young girls urine. Geoffrey turns and lunges forward, shoving the blade into his youngest daughter, ripping it out and slicing the neck of a girl who once filled his heart with love. Geoffrey stands there, blood dripping from his face, he had severed an artery when he took the life from Josephine's fear frozen body. Geoffrey grabs a single chocolate coated peanut, he places it in his mouth and chews slowly, savouring each moment but he feels nothing, the taste was not what it once was, with his family now dead the one thing that could bring him joy fills him with nothingness, empty, an abyss. He turns the blade to his wrist, cutting deeply vertically into his arm and watches as the blood drains from his body….
By Shaun Botica4 years ago in Horror
The Passenger
I gasped, waking up in a cold sweat. My eyes still closed, I could feel a gnawing in the of my stomach. No pillow, no fleece throw tucked under my toes, just my warm cheek plastered to cool pleather. I noticed a low rhythmic hum, a vibration. I could feel it in my hands and my face where they made contact with the seat I was sprawled out on.
By Kim Loostrom4 years ago in Horror
3:02 AM
The closing credits of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre unfurled on the den TV screen. Not that any of the girls paid them any mind. If Leatherface wasn’t capering about menacing unsuspecting visitors, who cared about some dumb list of names? Clara’s dog, Zander, rooted under the couch, desperately searching for dropped popcorn. While the girls watched the movie, he’d sat near the couch’s tattered arm, putting on his best I’m-starving-to-death-and-no-one-cares expression each time someone plunged her hand into the overfilled bowl. Zander lived for nights like this and when Clara’s friends piled into the house, he shook his body with such force, he nearly toppled over Clara’s grandma’s ashes that lived in the urn in the foyer.
By N.J. Gallegos 4 years ago in Horror
ANDIE
Wastelands of decimated populations fell before the smooth, silent propel of ANDIE. ANDIE had been gliding along the steel tracks of Europe since Outbreak IX had begun; fast and deliberate ANDIE’s crew had no intention of slowing down until a new green zone was formed. Until then ANDIE continued its new mission of transporting quarantined survivors, clearing them for safety and ensuring that a once overpopulated world could manifest some normality.
By Laura Millett4 years ago in Horror
Silence
Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. In space, its quite quiet. As our alien creatures search the galaxies for planets and beings to take over for countless millennia, our life forms travel from one sector of the galaxy to the next, on missions to take over the land and resources that those civilizations had, and also to eliminate the beings from the existence of the universe. Our creatures can't have any competition or other beings living amongst us or along with us. Its only us and only us. We are not like other beings in the universe. Many other beings look and act a certain way. Our creatures adapt. That's why we have been able to be hidden from the eyes of other beings in other universes. Our body structures changed through the course of history. There were moments in history where we were super short, and then shot up in height. Then there was a good time frame where we were super fast and super strong. But now we realized that all those qualities pale in comparison to the most important quality: silence. Because silence works wonders on the psyche of the enemy. It drives event the most sane, insane.
By Birithivy Yogaratnam4 years ago in Horror
The Last Ride
His head was killing him. In the darkest recess of his mind, that was the only clear thought that was getting across. The headache. What he had to assume was the worst headache in his life. It was clouding his mind with a searing pain that he couldn’t stop. Hungover? Fight? Robbery gone wrong? Something worse? He didn’t know, but he didn’t think he would ever know unless he could get the headache to just stop. Was he dying? No. He wouldn’t go that far. He was still breathing, and the throbbing pain assured him very much that he was alive. He just needed to focus. Focus on something. Focus on anything. That would bring him back to the reality that he desperately needed to be a part of. He would wake up, take some pain meds, and sleep off the rest of the day. If there was still day left after the meds took over.
By Scarlett O'Neil4 years ago in Horror
The Train To Forever
The pain was blinding. Or maybe I couldn't see because the night was just that dark. Either way, I could see nothing when I opened my eyes. There was only darkness, pain, moaning, crying and loud rumbling that surrounded me. The darkness and noise engulfed me and I closed my eyes again as the pain swept me back into the endless black abyss.
By Sherry Howry4 years ago in Horror
