Welcome to the second annual flash fiction battle in which four brilliant independent horror authors will battle it out to be crowned the King or Queen of Horror, (well, Horror October at least).
You have just two hours left to have your say and vote for your favourite frightening flash fiction story! Who is your King of Horror?
Voting closes at 7pm, London time.
Welcome to the second annual flash fiction battle in which four brilliant independent horror authors will battle it out to be crowned the King or Queen of Horror, (well, Horror October at least).
For the past few weeks, four horror writers have been creating an original short story based on the theme you chose.
The winning theme was ‘Master of Cemeteries’.
Once all four stories have been published, the vote will open for you to pick your favourite. I will crown the winner on Halloween!
Without further ado, here is Entry #3.
Please do let us know what you think in the comments below. Will this story get your vote?
by Stephen Kozeniewski
“You want to know the really perverse thing about The White City Devil?” Donnelly asked, the glee in his voice as he discussed his favorite serial killer almost palpable.
Vince shrugged as he shuffled to the other side of his kitchen to grab a mug for the loudmouthed undertaker’s coffee. Vince always kept some beans on hand for Donnelly’s occasional visits, but he never drank anything more powerful than tea himself. High-test upset his stomach, and he had enough trouble sleeping nights with the arthritis and everything else.
“The only thing that got him off was the sound of women screaming. That’s why he kept doing it. Imagine putting all that time and effort and money into making a jack shack for yourself because of a weird kink. Eh, but it was the 1800s, after all.”
Donnelly shrugged. Vince nodded and sat down across from his…well, he hesitated to use the word “friend,” even in his own mind, as he didn’t particularly care for the other man. “Acquaintance” seemed too remote, considering he knew more about Donnelly than almost any man alive. (Certainly, he spilled his guts to Vince often enough.) “Visitor,” perhaps was a fair splitting of the difference.
Donnelly continued describing the exploits of mass murderer H.H. Holmes for more than an hour before finally asking Vince a question about himself. In previous visits he had gone much, much longer.
“But, my God, Catapali, I have to say, I sort of get it. After all, the work I do, the work you do. Well, you’re so much closer to the metal, so to speak, than I am, digging all those damn graves. I can’t even get to sleep without a fifth of Amaretto in me. How do you sleep at night, anyway?”
Vince didn’t rush to answer. Usually if he waited long enough, Donnelly continued on with whatever he had been blathering about. This time, though, he was silent just long enough for it to seem rude if Vince didn’t respond.
“Noise machine.”
Vince pointed at the little box with the speaker in his bedroom. It was visible from where they were sitting. Donnelly nodded.
“Yeah, that makes sense. That’s a good…I’ll have to try that.”
It was almost dark before the chatterbox mortician finally left, but Vince didn’t really mind. He couldn’t do any more work before dark, anyway. Not his real work, anyway. He clambered into his pickup truck and was greeted with a thump from the pine crate in the bed.
“Easy now,” he said, putting his hand through the back window and stroking the crate, as though its inhabitant could feel his soothing touch.
The thumping didn’t stop as he drove out to the gravesite. With the pulley system he had rigged up for his truck it was no trouble at all to dump the pine crate into the open grave. Getting the expensive cherry coffin from Donnelly’s funeral home up into the bed was slightly trickier, but he had done it nightly for years now and was used to it.
When Vince had first started his job, he had done the grueling work of digging a three by eight foot hole six feet deep by hand. 144 cubic feet of soil. 1100 gallons. Every speck hauled out of the ground at the end of a spade. Hours of work. Now, with his backhoe, it took him forty-five minutes, tops. Ten to cover it back up.
It was only half an hour to the abandoned dump. Using the old car compactor, Vince squished what was left of the dearly departed Mr. Squillante into a fine red paste, strewn with splintered wood and bone. Vince had occasionally considered selling Donnelly’s expensive coffins, but he had no idea what the market was for those, and, really, he didn’t need the money. He led a simple life.
Afterward, he swung by all his usual haunts: the docks, a few crack dens, the bus station. It seemed like slim pickings tonight, but he finally tracked down a skinny runaway peeing in the bushes outside of the homeless tent city downtown in Memorial Park. He brought the boy back to his caretaker’s shack before nailing him into a fresh pine box for tomorrow. By three in the morning he had finished digging all the graves for tomorrow.
Vince trudged into his bedroom, feeling every second of his sixty-seven years on this Earth. It seemed like all he ever did anymore was work his fingers to the bone, and yet no matter how tired he was he could never sleep a wink at night without his noise machine. It wasn’t a store-bought device with a pre-recorded track, though, as he had let Donnelly assume. The transmission had to be live. Always live.
He flicked it on. Instantly, his bedroom was filled with the soothing sounds of nails scratching against wood, panicked low-oxygen screams, and profanity-laden threats. Good. The prostitute he’d buried in Squillante’s stead was just reaching that point of pitch-perfect desperation. Vince yawned and felt his eyes grow heavy. Better sleep while he could. Tomorrow he’d have to do it all over again.
(854 words)
Stephen Kozeniewski (pronounced “causin’ ooze key”) lives in Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the modern zombie. During his time as a Field Artillery officer, he served for three years in Oklahoma and one in Iraq, where due to what he assumes was a clerical error, he was awarded the Bronze Star.
He is also a classically trained linguist, which sounds much more impressive than saying his bachelor’s degree is in German.
He has written numerous horror novels including Braineater Jones, The Hematophages and Hunter of the Dead, and has been published in various anthologies.
Website // Amazon // Goodreads // Twitter
Check out the other entries:
Entry #1: Holding On by Sean Seebach
Entry #2: The Master of Cemeteries by Justin Bienvenue
The vote will open soon. Stay tuned for the final story!
At the beginning of the month, you voted in your masses for your favourite horror story prompt, and the winner was ‘3 AM. Full Dark. One Sound’.
Four wonderfully creepy stories were entered by the participating writers and over 1300 votes were cast for your favourite.
And, finally the results are in…
In 4th place: Wake Up Mommy by A. Giacomi (102 votes)
In 3rd place: The Quiet Life by Stephen Kozeniewski (170 votes)
In 2nd place: The Secret of the Basement by Lily Luchesi (347 votes)
Come in Here by Stevie Kopas (714 votes)
A huge thank you to all four writers, and congratulations to Stevie! Thanks also go to everyone who voted and to Cleo, Lynn and Drew for helping me to promote – 1300 votes is amazing!
Here is your winning story again…Happy Halloween!
By Stevie Kopas
“Sorry I’m late,” Jill whispered as she crept through the front door, locking it behind her.
It was just past Midnight and she hoped the baby was already sleeping and that her sister wasn’t angry with her for not arriving home on time, but Maddie was curled up on the couch with a book as usual and smiled when Jill entered the living room.
“How was work?” Maddie asked, marking her page with a bookmark and hopping to her feet, stretching.
“Awful,” Jill sighed. “If I could actually leave when I was scheduled for once I might come home with a better answer. How’s my little bear?”
“Oh he’s great, been sleeping like a baby.” Maddie made a face and laughed. “Well, I mean, he is a baby, but you get what I mean.”
Jill chuckled and walked her sister to the door, giving her a big hug before sending her on her way. She was halfway up the stairs to check on baby Louis when her phone blared from her purse in the living room.
“Shit,” she cursed under her breath, praying that the noise didn’t wake the baby.
She fished the iPhone from her bag and quickly silenced it, looking at the screen.
Unknown Caller.
She frowned, but answered anyway, curious as to who could be calling at this hour.
“Hello?”
She was greeted by loud static on the other end and repeated her greeting only to receive child-like laughter in response.
“Maddie? Is that you?” She asked, but the call immediately disconnected.
Shrugging, Jill put the phone on vibrate and slipped it into her pocket. She started back for the stairs when it began to buzz.
“Seriously?” She pulled it from her pocket and rolled her eyes when she saw that it was an unknown caller again. She swiped and answered, trekking up the stairs. “Maddie, this isn’t funny.” The same static greeted her followed by a child giggling; she rolled her eyes. “I hope your parents find out what you’re doing and ground you!”
She hung up and stuffed the phone into her pocket once more before heading for baby Louis’ room. Her little bundle of joy was snuggled up and sound asleep. She smiled and leaned into the crib, gently touching his tiny hand.
“Good night, my angel. Mommy loves you.” Jill whispered.
She checked that the baby monitor was on and working before heading for her bedroom.
She changed into some sweatpants and before she could even get her oversized t-shirt over her head, her iPhone buzzed in her jeans on the floor. She let out an exasperated sigh and answered without even looking at who was calling.
“Listen up, you little shit—“ Jill started.
“Come back in here and play with me.” The little girl on the other end said.
“What?” A slight chill ran down Jill’s spine.
The little girl giggled. “I want to play. Come back.”
She rolled her eyes and scolded herself for letting it freak her out. “Go to bed, brat. I’m done playing for the night.”
She hung up and shut the phone completely off, she’d have to set the alarm on the clock for once.
***
Jill rolled over and squinted at the clock: 2:57. She groaned and sat up, she could have sworn she shut the phone off before she went to bed. As her eyes adjusted, she could see the screen read Unknown Caller. Jill tried to decline the call but her screen wouldn’t swipe. She hit the power button on the side, but again, the phone wouldn’t respond. In a huff, she threw the covers off and went with her only option: answering it.
“What!” She yelled into the phone.
“Come in here,” the little girl whispered through heavy static. “Come in here and play with me.”
“For the last time… Go. To. Bed.”
Furious, Jill made sure the phone was off. She got up and put the iPhone in a pile of clothes in the closet just in case there was something wrong with it and the little brat kept prank calling her. Just as she was getting back into bed, Jill froze; there was static coming from the baby monitor.
She stared at it for a moment, straining her ears for more sound, but there was nothing. She thought about checking on Louis, but he wasn’t crying and she desperately needed the sleep. Settling back into bed, she had just closed her eyes when the static came through the monitor again, this time, child’s laughter followed. Her eyes shot open and her skin broke out in goose bumps. She glanced at the clock before jumping out of bed: 3:00.
With the baby monitor in hand, she crept toward her bedroom door and again she heard the laughter. There was no denying it this time, it was the same laugh she’d heard on the phone.
“Come in here and play with me,” the little girl said.
Jill panicked and the baby monitor fell from her hands, the static screeching from it, louder now. She sprinted from her bedroom and made a beeline for Louis’ door. She charged through and turned on the light, expecting to find someone trying to hurt her baby, but the room was empty, and Louis remained fast asleep in his crib. She checked on her son, making sure he was okay, her heartrate slowly returning to normal. She cursed herself for being so paranoid, she figured whoever had been calling her had somehow hacked into the baby monitor. She would go to the police tomorrow.
As Jill turned to leave the room, the door suddenly slammed shut and her hands flew up to her mouth. She stifled a scream as she read what was written in blood on the opposite wall just before the lights in the room went out:
I knew I could get you back in here.
Stevie can be found here: http://www.someonereadthis.com/ // @ApacoTaco
Welcome to to Horror October 2016’s main event: The Flash Fiction Battle
At the beginning of the month, you voted in your masses for your favourite horror story prompt, and the time has come for the participating horror writers (see above) to battle it out for the title of King or Queen of Horror (October)! The winning prompt was ‘3 AM. Full Dark. One Sound’, and the only rule was a 1000 word limit.
You will be able to vote for your favourite story, but not until all the entries have been published (by the end of this week).
Author: A. Giacomi
Word Count: 755
Blurb: A thump in the night…
The sensation strikes me at nearly the same time every night. Midnight, the witching hour, where pregnant women around the world rise to take a piss. Begrudgingly, I slowly glide out of bed and drag my sore feet into the bathroom. Sleep would become impossible once the baby arrived, but sleep was already escaping me in my eighth month of pregnancy, a taste of things to come I suppose.
Returning to bed, I close my eyes and try to summon any god that would hear my prayer for a restful, comfortable sleep for the remainder of the night, as I couldn’t remember what great sleep felt like.
A moment goes by, or at least it feels that way.
A tapping sound wakes me from my sleep. The sound is muffled, but difficult to ignore, it grows a little louder when I sit up in bed, but not nearly loud enough to wake my husband, who is blissfully sleeping beneath the bed sheets, unaffected and quite still.
Glancing towards the only light in the darkness, our alarm clock, I see that it reads 3 am, an ungodly hour that I hadn’t seen since my party years in my early twenties. The sound grows louder, a thumping, drumming sound that I can’t quite describe.
It wasn’t coming from the walls, but it was close…very close.
Still groggy, with eyes half open, I try to shake my husband awake so that he may investigate the sound further, but when I pull back the bed sheets I find his side empty but still warm.
Shouting out to him, I await his reply…
The house remains silent.
Beginning to panic I try to get out of bed, but a sharp pain in my back prevents me from moving any further. Stuck, I call out again, but there is still no answer. My mind races as the thumping sound returns, this time louder and in tempo with my rapid pulse.
As the thumping grows louder and louder still, my pain begins to accelerate with the sound. It was too soon to be in labour, but I was beginning to think the baby might have other plans for its arrival. Gritting my teeth and bracing for pain, I sit up and pull the bed sheets away to expose my belly.
To my horror, when I look down at the round mound attached to me, I find tiny fists are pounding against it from the inside. The thumping was coming from inside of me. This is why it had been muffled, this is why I couldn’t detect its source.
Who would imagine such a sound coming from within?
The pounding of tiny fists is drowned out by my screams, which now fill the house and possibly the neighbourhood.
With fear coursing through my veins, my heart nearly bursting, I forget about the pain in my spine and bolt out of bed and down the stairs in my nightgown. My plan was to seek help from the neighbours next door, they were my best bet until I could locate my missing husband.
Reaching the front door, nearly out of breath, I find a dark figure standing in the doorway. It takes a moment to realize who it is.
“Baby?” I say in a whisper.
As he turns around slowly, I see that it is my husband, but something in his eyes is off. He seemed hollow, like his mind held no memory of me. Waving my hands in front of him, he barely flinches, but when I try to move him out of the way and exit the house, he springs to life and holds me back.
“Stay here.” He says in an eerie whisper.
“I’m having the baby, I think, I have to go to the hospital.” I shout with all composure leaving my body.
He refuses to budge and let me pass.
I scream for help, but the thumping returns and pain surges through my entire body, silencing me. My legs get weak and I’m forced to lay on the cold ceramic floor of the hallway. It feels as though I’m about to tear in half. My husband stares down at me without expression as I writhe in pain.
Looking at my belly once more as my vision begins to blur, I see the tiny fists pounding with so much force that it didn’t seem human, there was something other living inside me, and it clearly didn’t need me anymore, it was about to make its exit.
Check out the other entries: The Secret of the Basement , Come in Here & The Quiet Life.
Welcome to to Horror October 2016’s main event: The Flash Fiction Battle
At the beginning of the month, you voted in your masses for your favourite horror story prompt, and the time has come for the participating horror writers (see above) to battle it out for the title of King or Queen of Horror (October)! The winning prompt was ‘3 AM. Full Dark. One Sound’, and the only rule was a 1000 word limit.
You will be able to vote for your favourite story, but not until all the entries have been published (by the end of this week).
Author: Lily Luchesi
Word Count: 999
Blurb: A deep-seated fear of the basement might not be simple childish mind games one stormy Chicago night…
When I was a kid, I hated my house’s basement. No matter how many times my father said I was being ridiculous, my mother said I was getting too old for such childishness, and my older brother called me an assortment of cruel names, I never ever went down there. I always said it would take a life or death situation to get me to go down there of my own accord.
Yes, it was a stupid thing for an adult with a high-class scholarship to one of the best schools in the US to think that the boogeyman was living in their basement, but there you have it. Some childhood fears stick with you forever.
I only returned to the house because my mother left it to me in her will, with very specific instructions that I had to stay there until it sold. With a few expletives in my mind, I did my very best to negotiate with her lawyer. I was pre-law, I knew the drill, and I knew there were always loopholes in every contract, even a will.
Not this time. If I didn’t do as she asked, it would go to the state. When I asked why the house wouldn’t go to my brother, the lawyer replied that he had refused it: he’d claimed a vow of poverty and couldn’t accept the house or the land. Sanctimonious bastard.
I sold it, losing out on a hundred grand. That’s how badly I didn’t want it. However, I still had to stay there and take care of everything inside. I figured I’d hold an estate sale and whatever didn’t sell, I’d toss.
Being back home brought back unpleasant memories of my workaholic dad, my alcoholic mom, and my abusive brother. I hated it.
It took me over a week to price everything–most of which was junk–and then I realized, I couldn’t give the city this house without seeing what was in the basement. What if there was something combustible down there? Or valuable?
My fear of the place was still there, buried deep down but there nonetheless. I felt like an imbecile. I went three times all day today, trying to open the doors and get it over with. Each time shaking limbs and a pained stomach stopped me.
I spent the rest of the day and evening berating myself as I watched the sky darken and the usual autumnal thunderstorm roll in, drinking what was left of my mom’s liquor cabinet. I passed out on the living room sofa, only to be woken by a loud crash of thunder. I flew off the couch, frightened, as the power flickered a few times and then went out just in time for me to see the clock read 3AM. I let my cell illuminate the room, not that it did a great job. Looking out the back doors, I saw that the lightning hit a tree in the neighbor’s yard that had fallen partly into my yard.
Sighing, I threw on my hoodie and went outside to be sure there was no damage to the house. Rounding the side, I was relieved when all I saw was a branch sticking into the doors to the basement. Shielding my eyes from the driving rain, I removed the branch, which came apart with a wet crack, taking with it the old, rusted padlock on the doors.
Despite the fear in my gut and the hangover pounding in my head, I figured the Hell with it and threw open the doors, smelling the wet, moldy stench all places like that have after being closed up for years. And there was something else, something cinnamony.
I began my descent, cell phone before me to cast some kind of light into the inky darkness that seemed to be seeping into my bones just like the cold rain was. The stench got worse, a thick wet smell that made me want to gag.
As I went further down, the doors slammed shut behind me and I jumped. Damn wind. Now it was not only pitch dark except for a foot of smartphone light, it was silent like the grave and I shivered.
Take a look around and get the Hell out, I thought as I finished my descent, breathing through my mouth. I fumbled my cell, trying to get the light to stay steady in my trembling hand. Shouldn’t I at least be able to hear the storm?
The silence and darkness combined was too much. I just wanted out. Finally I got my hand to steady and waved my phone from side to side to get a panorama. What I saw made me collapse on the steps behind me.
Corpses. At least a dozen. Men, women, and children, all in various stages of decay, many so old they were mummified, creating that cinnamon stench. Gaping, rotted mouths seemed to smile at me, and empty, rotted eye sockets stared at me, the intruder in the domain of the dead. Flesh was sloughing off the bones of the most recent ones, and I saw a family of maggots in one man’s eyehole.
I wondered how they all got here, many of them were so old they had to have died in the twenties at least. Fear holding me prisoner, I finally had the sense to turn around and scramble up the steps, only to slip on the rainwater.
I felt backwards and barely felt my leg break. Too much adrenaline in my veins. Grabbing my phone, I checked for a signal to dial 911. Nothing. The storm had hit the cell towers.
I tried calling 911 twenty minutes ago, and I’ve been writing this ever since in my Notes app. I’m never getting out of here, but maybe one day they’ll find my body with the others. Why do I say I’m never getting out? Because the heavy silence was broken by one thing just now: the subtle, papery sound of a body shifting.
You can find her at the following links:
http://amazon.com/author/lilyluchesi
http://lilyluchesibooks.wix.com/lilyluchesi
http://twitter.com/LilyLuchesi
http://facebook.com/LilyLuchesi
http://instagram.com/lilyluchesi
OK guys, all week you have been voting for your favourite horror prompt so that the above authors can battle it out for the best short horror story!
The votes are finally in! Thank you to everyone who voted and to Cleo, Lynn and Drew for also posting the poll and spreading the word.
With no further ado, here is your top three…
In 3rd place is Circus of Blood with 45 votes (sorry Drew)!
In 2nd place we have Bad night for a storm with 49 votes.
So there you have it blog friends. I can’t wait to see what the writers come up with. Watch this space for their entries, and you will then have the opportunity to vote for your favourite just in time for Halloween!
Full breakdown of votes below…
Prompt Votes per poll
| 3am. Full dark. One sound. | 47+6+7=60 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Bad night for a storm | 33+6+10=49 | ||
| Circus of Blood | 29+9+7=45 | ||
| Monsters aren’t born… | 25+5+4=34 | ||
| Guttural sounds of the 70s | 18+5+5=28 | ||
| The Body | 17+2+0=19 | ||
| Unspeakable crimes | 16+7+2=25 | ||
| Red Tape Road Trip | 9+2+0=11 |
Hi guys, you have just 11 hours left to vote.
When I crawl back to into my coffin after work the votes will be counted and we’ll have our horror prompt for these amazing participating authors.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, see my original post here, where you can place your vote.
The prompts are:
The rules are simple: There are no rules! Muwahaha ha ha…Apart from the stories being under 1000 words and based on the winning prompt. OK, so there are a few rules. We’re not animals.
What’s your favourite prompt and why? Let’s discuss! What would be your nightmare scary story…?
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