A Short Horror Story I Wrote

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

I woke up at 3:30 this morning, and decided to write a story. I'm quite happy with the result.

Rain swirled and gushed down to the cold dead earth, blown into eddies by the wind. A wind that nipped and hindered. A wind that murmured and whispered. A wind that did not mean well. The earth, strangled by crumbling pavement and exhaust, refused to soak up the water, so it poured down the ill-kept street in winding rivers, blown in all directions by the malevolent wind. It soaked through boots and snuffed out flames and chilled the soul.

A fog hang in the air. A thick, swirling dreamlike fog. It carried with it unpleasant cold and erosion and decay. It was the kind of fog that claws and the heart and reduces life to its primal instincts.

“Damn!” I muttered as my gas lantern died.

Without its guiding light, I would have to slip and slide and stumble my way through the fog. I realised this meant I wouldn't be home for hours. I sighed with grief and kicked a nearby non-functioning lamp post. I hated the ungodly slum of a neighbourhood. Even the lamplighters didn't bother with it. At least knowing the layout of the area, I continued to make my way down the side-walk. Somewhere in the distance, a bar window was smashed and man cried out. It was probably his body which had smashed the window.

Enough moonlight got through the thrice-damned fog that I could see the next couple of steps in front of me. There was also enough light that I could make out the shapes of some nearby objects. A nearby thing, a thing I had thought formerly believed to be a lamp post, moved. My pace quickened. I tripped.

I fell at an odd angle, and it was my head that hit the ground first. I hit a clump of dirt and not pavement, but my whole upper body still throbbed with agony. I tried to regain my footing, but the world swam around me and was forced to lie down again.

I didn't know how long I lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness. I soon began to wonder if I was conscious at all, or in a comatose state, because I began to see black figures to large to be human shambling around in groups of two or three. They were hunched, almost like apes, and seemed to have no faces.

Soon their numbers lessened and eventually they they ceased to appear at all. I managed to get up and stumbled a few paces, but fell over again in shock when I saw a huge dark thing floating through the fog. It was roughly the shape of a jellyfish, a black glob with a disturbing tangle of writhing tendrils at the bottom. It drifted smoothly through the mist, and it was not until it had passed me that I saw hundreds of tiny white lights begin to glow across its body. Seconds later, it began to grow and become insubstantial until it was just another wisp of sinister fog.

A dull, grating giggle began to sound in my ears. As it increased in volume, it turned into a chuckle and then a laugh. It wasn't a sound in the air, but a presence in my throbbing head. As it continued and got ever louder, it began to bore its way into my soul. Soon I had dropped to my knees and was clutching my head - writhing and groaning – as the presence turned me into its puppet. I involuntarily stood up and lurched in the direction of a house, only to find that there was no house. Only a valley filled with bleached ruins and dead shrubs.

I didn't know what this other consciousness wanted with me, but I was sure it was unpleasant. I tried to force the hideous laughter out of my mind, and I felt it become slightly quieter for a second. Then it became louder that ever before and gained a greater presence in me, knowing I intended to banish it.

I collapsed on to my stomach, clawing the ground until my fingers bled and screaming with effort, struggling to maintain control over my body. I was fighting a doomed battle, losing ground, slipping into puppet-like obedience.

No.

I struggled to my feet and lurched over to a charred boulder. I slammed my head against it hard, sending a jolt of agony and then an unbearable throbbing flooding through my head and then my torso. As I had hoped, the pain and shock were enough to tear away the presence, just for a second. A second I used to regain control and brace myself. It returned, but this time I was strong enough to push it away.

My energy spent and my lifeblood flowing freely, I crumpled into a heap and let the darkness swallow me.

* * * * *

I was on my hands and knees, half-submerged in a thick, oily fluid. The pain in my head was gone, and I was surprised to see I could stand up and walk with minimal effort. I was soaked in black slime from head to toe. I supposed I was dead, and has been dragged to some godless afterlife.

I was naked, and oily black mud clung at my feet. Examination of my surrounding revealed I was in some kind of murk swamp littered with small islands, dead trees, and floating white bones.

A horrific clicking noise caused my to whip around. What I saw was a dripping black spider, the size of a horse, scuttling towards me through the dark fluid. I picked up a floating bone and whacked it, just before it pounced on me. Its shell crunched, and it sunk into the slime with a satisfying gurgle.

My senses, heightened by adrenaline, told me to turn around. What I saw was two more spiders, one of them crawling with tiny red spider-lings and covered in glowing fungus.

I hefted my bone club and killed the first as it approached my, but the life-infested spider was luckier. It tore open my shoulder with one of its flailing legs, and pushed my down into the slime. Little red spiders swarmed across me, biting and scuttling into uncomfortable places.

The spider lunged, and I attempted to block with my arm. I braced myself for its fangs, and then cried out when a blinding flash of light exploded before my eyes. Unharmed, I clambered to my feet and saw the monster sinking about a dozen paces away, its charred corpse filling the air with an unpleasant stench.

In response to a tingling pain, I looked down at my hand and saw it was crackling with blue lightning. I decided to try an experiment.

I stared at one of the hunched black trees, outstretched my arm, and concentrated on blasting it with a bolt of lightning. The static in my hand became stronger for a second, and then flickered out. I tried again to no effect. I picked a random direction and began to walk. I needed to find food and shelter. I needed a place to hide.

I soon came to a rather large island with a twisted tree in the middle. Below the tree were the bones of something not human, and hanging from it were more bones, stained rag dolls, sticks, pipes, blades, and black gas masks. I decided to investigate.

I slipped and fell. I wasn't just prone, I was sinking, sinking into the mud. I tried to get to my feet, but something was holding on to me. Dragging me under. I grabbed a branch sticking out of the slime and pulled myself up, only to scream in terror at the over-sized, gnarled black hand holding on to my leg. It pulled harder and the branch broke.

Nearby, a writhing horrific shape burst out of the muddy fluid. It was a squirming tube, like a giant worm, with a screaming mouth on the end. Out of the razor-filled maw extended another, on the end of a sticky white tongue.

I was waist deep now, and sinking fast. Without thinking, I stretched out my hand and then watched a giant blue hand of glowing lightning appear in front of the worm monster. I clasped my hand shut, and watched its counterpart close around the monster’s neck.

I squeezed, and the giant worm-thing thrashed around madly, regurgitating blood and white phlegm. I was lifted into the air, and saw the the hand was part of the worm, attached to the end on its tail. It wildly flung me out of its hand and against the tree, giving me nothing more that a bruise, but causing me to let go. The magical lightning hand disappeared.

The monster tried to slither away, but I wouldn't let it. How dare it try to kill me and then flee? I sent a charge of blue electricity surging through it body, stunning it. I then roasted it with a stream of white hellfire. Murky smoke filled the air.

I looked down at my hands and saw that they had become pale and spindly, with wickedly curved claws for nails. Excellent. Lightning crackling between my hands, I dropped to my knees and chuckled with delight.

[bluewind95]

That is an almost surreal story. Like some kind of dream. It's neat. It reads a little more like fantasy than horror (a horrific fantasy, but still!) to me.

There's a few typos here and there, though, that I think could use some attention.

"A fog hang in the air" : I think you might want to use the past tense there.

"It was the kind of fog that claws and the heart and reduces life to its primal instincts.": I think you meant "at the heart"?

"I looked down at my hands and saw that they had become pail and spindly,": I think you meant "pale" there.

I think it's a very nice story, especially considering the length. Perhaps showing the protagonist's becoming a monster might have been more effective if you'd shown more what he/she was like before the transformation? More of a horror factor there, since we would see just how far he/she fell. Not quite knowing the starting point kind of diminishes the impact of it. Unless maybe you didn't want to show how the protagonist goes from normal (?) to whatever he/she became in the end? Anyways, good work!

[Icewalker]

Fun, some quite scary things. You try to hit a few too many areas of scary rather than focusing on one thing and building it up fully. Each little piece you present is scary, but as a whole it doesn't have a lasting impact. If you've seen the new Doctor Who shows, a similar situation is visible as the different between 'Blink', which focuses entirely on one very simple idea, and the 'Flesh And Stone' two part episode which takes the same creatures and adds a bunch of new elements to them, to the point that they lose some of the original fear.

Your writing reminds me a lot of H.P. Lovecraft. The first half especially. Similar kind of feel to the scary elements, although he usually keeps things pretty focused. I'd read some of his work and think about it, a few short stories I particularly suggest are The Rats in The Walls and From Beyond.

The idea of losing one's humanity and becoming a terror yourself is always a fantastic theme (and actually another often used by Lovecraft). You have the right idea here, but the execution loses a little bit of strength because it starts changing from horror into action, almost. One of the important things about horror is that the victims don't have a way to fight back, it's that helplessness that makes it not just dangerous, but scary. It's best to try to keep that fear strong, even when you're doing something like making the protagonist into the horror themselves. Right now there is a space between scary things happening to the protagonist, and the protagonist becoming a scary thing, and that space itself doesn't really carry horror, because it's lost the fear of the protagonist, and doesn't make him scary until the very end. It's important to keep the fear strong throughout.

I like it though. You have some really good ideas and writing in here. Like I said, your writing reminds me a lot of H.P. Lovecraft, which I say as high praise. Makes me want to read more of your writing. (Cough cough, Tales From The Menagerie, cough cough) :smallwink:

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

I fixed some typos and made a couple of very minor changes in wording and stuff.


Fun, some quite scary things. You try to hit a few too many areas of scary rather than focusing on one thing and building it up fully. Each little piece you present is scary, but as a whole it doesn't have a lasting impact. If you've seen the new Doctor Who shows, a similar situation is visible as the different between 'Blink', which focuses entirely on one very simple idea, and the 'Flesh And Stone' two part episode which takes the same creatures and adds a bunch of new elements to them, to the point that they lose some of the original fear.

Your writing reminds me a lot of H.P. Lovecraft. The first half especially. Similar kind of feel to the scary elements, although he usually keeps things pretty focused. I'd read some of his work and think about it, a few short stories I particularly suggest are The Rats in The Walls and From Beyond.

The idea of losing one's humanity and becoming a terror yourself is always a fantastic theme (and actually another often used by Lovecraft). You have the right idea here, but the execution loses a little bit of strength because it starts changing from horror into action, almost. One of the important things about horror is that the victims don't have a way to fight back, it's that helplessness that makes it not just dangerous, but scary. It's best to try to keep that fear strong, even when you're doing something like making the protagonist into the horror themselves. Right now there is a space between scary things happening to the protagonist, and the protagonist becoming a scary thing, and that space itself doesn't really carry horror, because it's lost the fear of the protagonist, and doesn't make him scary until the very end. It's important to keep the fear strong throughout.

I like it though. You have some really good ideas and writing in here. Like I said, your writing reminds me a lot of H.P. Lovecraft, which I say as high praise. Makes me want to read more of your writing. (Cough cough, Tales From The Menagerie, cough cough) :smallwink:
Thank you very much. Now that I've read over it again, I recognize that I've tried to introduce too many scary ideas at once. Problem is, I don't want to take any of the out.

Also, I disagree with the thing about the protagonist being helpless. I had plenty of that in the first half, when he was turned into a lurching puppet and then forced to mutilate himself in order to escape. The second half isn't about him being helpless, but being corrupted by power. That, in its own way, is scary.

I am fan of H. P. Lovecraft, which is probably why my writing so resembles his. I am also a rabid Doctor Who devotee, and I agree about the Angles. None of the episodes with Matt Smith have been scary. Not even the one titled "Night Terrors".

[Icewalker]

I fixed some typos and made a couple of very minor changes in wording and stuff.


Thank you very much. Now that I've read over it again, I recognize that I've tried to introduce too many scary ideas at once. Problem is, I don't want to take any of the out.

Also, I disagree with the thing about the protagonist being helpless. I had plenty of that in the first half, when he was turned into a lurching puppet and then forced to mutilate himself in order to escape. The second half isn't about him being helpless, but being corrupted by power. That, in its own way, is scary.

I am fan of H. P. Lovecraft, which is probably why my writing so resembles his. I am also a rabid Doctor Who devotee, and I agree about the Angles. None of the episodes with Matt Smith have been scary. Not even the one titled "Night Terrors".

I know exactly what you mean about not wanting to take it out. I did the same thing with a dnd campaign of mine, which just kept adding more and more, and all of what I added was really cool and I didn't want to lose any of it, but it just became so much of a mess without real overarching themes I eventually gave up on it and split it into multiple new campaign ideas.

As to the helpless vs. corruption bit, I totally know what you mean, and I agree: the idea of shifting from helplessness to corruption from power is great, it's a really cool idea, and it can work fantastically. You get both sides of it in there, too. The issue I was addressing was that I think when you make the transition from helplessness to corruption from power, you lose the fear of the helplessness first, but you don't gain the fear of the corruption until a little ways further, which means there is a section of the story where there isn't anything scary, because the helplessness is gone, but the corruption hasn't formed yet.

And yep. Night Terrors was a bit of a let down. Great setup for a scary atmosphere, didn't really do anything with it. Too bad.

[Bearpunch]

I like it, certainly very H.P. but may I make one suggestion?

THe bit of dialogue isn't neccessary and breaks the immersion. I suggest something along the lines of:
"Damn, I thought as my lantern flickered and died."