Short Short Horror Anyone?

[Druidic]

Haunted

The screams and moans from the attic were alarming; the sounds from the cellar were even worse. He had to act. Now.
“I’m leaving. Good Riddance!” he cried, slamming the door of the motel room.


But it was night. And he had forgotten about the crocodile-infested moat.

[teguififthzeal]

We'll leave the light on for ya!

[bendk]

This is a fun thread. Thanks.

"The Bear" and "The Insects" are great.

And I love this line:

Quote Originally Posted by KrakenMundi

"It's the arsehole that provides a window to the soul. The eyes are merely ornaments."

[T.E. Grau]

You Are Here

They had stumbled through the darkness for days.
The things pursuing them were gaining.
Their sounds getting closer.

The front member of the group cried out,
his dying flashlight finding a snatch of text on the wall.
He rubbed off the filth, the soot, and exposed
a complete sentence, the first they had seen in so long.

YOU ARE HERE, it read. The top of an arrow pointed downward.
"It's a customer map," a woman whispered, scarcely believing it.
"We can find an exit."

Every set of hands went to work on the wall,
rubbing off more of the dirt, looking for the map.

One stopped suddenly and stood back. Then another. Then all of them.
A dim flashlight moved along the wall,
finding an additional word, and a line under the first,
written in something crude and dark brown.

IF YOU ARE HERE
YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD

[Druidic]

All right. T. E. Grau has given us a beautifully written and perfectly evil tale of horror that just screams beneath its oh so subtle unraveling.
And then there’s all this--
H-G has contributed several very nice pieces, including the wildly acclaimed “Insects” and, my favorite, the Triumvirate Tribute. Kraken has given us, by far, the most notable phrase yet (I see ben really likes this one!) to haunt the desolate wind-swept grounds of Druidic’s Traveling Halloween Circus.
Beetlebox has come through with several good works of abbreviated Horror, including “Good Morning”, my personal fave.
T. has even offered to leave the lights on at Motel 666…if it gets too darn scary.
And Druidic has sweated blood (would if any ran in his veins) and now feels like a Barker at some Dark Carnival “This way, this way…Amazing Wonders within…See the True Window of the Soul revealed…See the clever and cute homicidal bears frolic for the pleasure of the young ones…See the vultures perform amazing aerial feats…”
And I ask you: Can it get any better?
Only someone out there knows the answer for sure…

[Druidic]

My final bow--


The Gift


He thought of it often: the door, the one door in the house of his Grandfather he was never allowed to open. No one ever had, his Grandmother had once explained. Afterwards, neither she, nor anyone else, spoke of the matter. Ever.

The long years passed. His parents passed, all his relatives died, even the most distant ones, and he was alone, quite alone. The old house had gone to his father years ago and upon his father’s death, to him. He thought of the Door often.

He moved into the old house and spent countless nights sitting in one of the elegant and beautifully crafted chairs ‘borrowed’ from the great dining room table. He placed it before the locked portal. For hours, night after night, he would be lost in contemplation before this Mystery. He resisted always the temptation to open it. As a child, with the courage only children are capable of, he had dared to wonder what untold horrors—or undreamed of wonders—might wait behind that Door. He had known instinctively that beyond such a door no mere dusty and empty room waited with air hot and musty from being closed up for so long—so long--

Perhaps it was months or even years, but the day came when he could no longer resist the pull it had on him. One evening, yielding fully to its fascination, he walked with great deliberation to the kitchen and there, from an old drawer, drew forth a key buried deep in the back. He had always known this was the key, he had always felt it deep in his bones. Now he turned and moved toward the Door.

At the first turn of the old copper key, he heard the sounds. He stood motionless, transfixed by bewildering and conflicting emotions. Fear, horror and wonder, all tore at his breast. Not all of the sounds terrified him; the sound of distant breakers on unknown shores fascinated him and drew him almost precipitously into a trance of rapture and wonder. But other sounds were horrible beyond anything he had imagined. Perhaps he stood there for hours or merely minutes. In the end he simply locked the Door and returned to the chair that faced it and from where he he had kept his vigil for years. Eventually he moved up the polished wood steps to his bedroom. He felt triumphant, vindicated in some strange way he didn’t care to think on or even examine.

Years passed. He was old now and Death a close companion. He decided it was time and made his way to the kitchen for the last time.

He turned the key, the sounds began, but this time there was no drawing back. Slowly he opened the Door and saw—

A man, thin and pale, old and bent, sitting at a small wooden table. On the table was an ancient object he had no trouble recognizing. It was a phonograph and the sounds, the wonderful and terrible sounds, were coming from a recording.

“It was a charade,” he said slowly, not even regarding the man with any degree of attention. “It was never real.”

“Perhaps,” said the man and his voice was the voice of an old man. It was low and sad but not without a hint of reproof. “A charade? Perhaps. But it was better than nothing…surely? Can’t you feel that?”

Slowly, he left the room, locking the door behind him. He moved the chair back to the dining room table and mounted the stairs with all the pains of a body ravaged by age and disease, and he heard the man’s words again.

Better than Nothing. “Can’t you feel that?”

He moved to the bed and he thought of the sounds, sounds terrible, and sounds wonderful and how they had seemed so strangely familiar to him from the first night he had turned the key in the lock of the forbidden door.

Better than Nothing the man had said.

He drifted off into sleep. The sounds from behind the Door seemed to follow him.

Better than Nothing? Certainly, he thought. Of course it was....

And he smiled into the Darkness.

[Murony_Pyre]

Saṃsāra

Yama's cool fingers closed the young penitent's eyes.
No sooner had they closed—

He awakened.

[Druidic]

Trauma


A door opened where no door had ever existed before.
The boy’s jaw dropped. Desperately, he scrambled to retrieve it. It was too late; he was already going to pieces.

[Mr. D.]

Let me try an even shorter form.

The knife shone in moonlight
He stabbed his blind enemy
The blade pierced his own heart

or, this
It called out to him
It sounded closer today
Maybe tomorrow?

[ramonoski]

Edited due to reasons... might come back to this later.