Microfiction: a very short horror collection
[Photo by Magne Roed on Unsplash]
During a recent writing retreat, where I stayed in the woods for the duration of a 48-hour, 250-word NYC Midnight contest, I wrote five possible submissions with the prompts I received.
After submitting one piece I have four more, and am sharing them here with you. Each first published on my Substack.
My assigned prompts, informing the direction of each piece, were:
GENRE: Horror
ACTION: Leaking
WORD: Uniform
Starship Moria
“They’re coming,” I said, inaccurately, into my recorder. My voice didn’t shake; the records would be clear. “They’re here.” More accurate.
I lifted my finger from the red button when the screams started, pulling my hands down my face as though it could wash the extraneous background noise from my mind too. The sounds came from the underlevel, the intruders’ feet heavy as they drummed below.
“Report.” The Captain’s command was terse. Her knuckles were white on her armrests, but her voice too was steady.
I sighed before depressing the button once more.
“Casualties will be significant. Likely total.” Drumming from below, screams cut off as soon as they started, then a clanging. “They’re in the pipe room.”
The next scream wasn’t a crewmate’s, but the gnawing tear of metal from metal.
“The systems are interconnected,” I said, ensuring the words were clear, for the Captain, for the record. “We’ll soon have the evidence of—”
Water leaked from the ceiling, the smallest deluge on the shoulder of my uniform distracting my dictation. I had to collect myself. It would ruin the record, if I stopped.
“Evidence of their interference in the water systems.”
It wasn’t water on my shoulder, though, I realized as ceiling tiles rained down. Above, Lane’s head drooped from the largest hole before her body pulled back and I was eye to eye with death.
“Bridge breached at 0800.”
Of Monsters
“Monsters aren’t real, dipshit.”
Those were stupid last words, dipshit. I want to be mad or annoyed or scared or feel anything, but all I can hear is his idiot final proclamation ringing in the now-still air. All he had to do was stay still and shut up, but why would he listen to a little girl just trying to keep him alive? I kick his limp boot, only lightly because I’m not a monster, before I leave his stupid body behind.
I have to hide.
Because monsters are real.
And they’re coming.
Well. They already came, they’ve already been here, they could be returning. They’re probably returning.
A twig snaps. They’re definitely returning.
I hide, the branch above me leaking old icicle down the back of my shirt collar. We should’ve been at recess, but no, here we are in the stupid woods fighting for our stupid lives. If I die young, I don’t want to be like dipshit over there dying in my stupid school uniform. I wish I were wearing clothes I’d picked out.
I mean, if I’m wishing, I wish I just was anywhere else, literally anywhere.
Another snap, from the other direction.
Awesome, they’re surrounding me. Couldn’t the monsters at least have been stupid, unorganized? Couldn’t they do anything that gave us a chance?
“Over there.” The words are quiet, guttural in their language, but we had to learn English in school so I understand; they’ve seen me. The monsters are coming for me now.
Not Even One
Come on, he’d urged, just have one.
I can’t just have one, I should have said, because it wouldn’t just be one. And I didn’t say that and it wasn’t just one, because it never is.
It was an hour ago or two or four that he finally won. One drink then another and another, then it was shots all around, his arm slung over my shoulder at the bar as he told the guy behind it to just keep them coming and that guy did. Now I can’t hold myself upright, I need this wall for that, and I don’t remember getting to this alley. Had it been last call already?
Gotta take a leak, he said, and he was leaning one hand against the same brick wall supporting my entire weight while, yep, he was leaking all over the cobblestones. He barely gave himself a shake before stuffing his pants again and zipping up with a groan. As far as sexy moves went, that wasn’t doing it for me.
When he turned to me, eyes lit up again with the night, I bent over and vomited. As far as sexy moves went, that didn’t deter him. I wish it had.
The uniform walked by then, shining this too-bright light at us, told him to get her home safe, buddy, like I was the messy one here.
I don’t need to get you home, he murmured, tilting my face up and settling me on my knees. Here’s fine.
An Unhinged Offer, Accepted
“Give my uterus to the hawks.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“So?”
The hawks circled as though awaiting my offering. Maybe they were.
I didn’t need the thing; an entire organ, useless, leaking blood, taking up space in my abdomen when it could provide a meal to nature. Bloody, fleshy, maybe palatable to scavenging beaks. Perhaps it was a flight of fancy, I conceded, watching one hawk break the circle and dive to the forest floor.
“It’s got a vole, or something, see? Doesn’t need your body.”
“Vole uterus or people uterus, which sounds better?”
The hawk with its prize swooped again out of sight. The others remained, a fat murmuration over the trees, some uniformity in their flight paths as they traced patterns across low-slung clouds.
Another broke loose, darting like a winged comet. It landed, talons cracking through bark, on a branch next to my head. It tilted its own head, eyeing me, weighing my offer of a meal.
“Luce… What the fuck?”
A second hawk took a branch behind me. Then a third, behind Nico. He turned to look at it, spinning when another one landed at our feet. He was all jerky fear, then, as the hunting birds surrounded us.
I laughed, too hard. My abdomen hurt and I felt a little clot squeeze out of me, leaking a slow bloody path down my leg.
A hawk screamed, or Nico did, or I did.
I didn’t give myself to the hawks, but they took what I had offered.
