Short stories: A scary collection
[Photo by Taylor Daugherty on Unsplash]
On the last day of its registration, mere hours before the prompts were sent out, I decided to participate in my first NYC Midnight writing contest. This one is their first scary short story contest—what fun!
They explain of it:
“The Scary Story Challenge is a creative writing competition open to writers worldwide. When the competition begins on October 31st, writers are placed in groups where they will be judged against other writers within their same group. Each group will receive three prompts: a scare, a character, and an action. The writers then have 48 hours to craft a scary story no longer than 400 words.”
After submitting one piece I have three more, and am sharing them here with you. Each first published on my Substack.
My group’s prompts were:
SCARE: A jungle
ACTION: Rinsing
CHARACTER: A nonconformist
A Love Song for Beth I
“Rinse the blood later.”
They were close.
“Follow the outsider now.”
So close, too close; their words skipped across the glass of the river’s surface, a guttural dialect of Spanish I’d never heard before but could understand better than I’d like to. Outsider, stranger, interloper—whatever the exact word translates to, it meant I didn’t belong here. I’d counted on the river to hide the noise of my movements but it all but stopped flowing.
Were there piranha in it? Crocodiles? Would either be worse company than this group trying to find me? Animals would be following instinct and I couldn’t blame them for that. But people hunting people? My goosebumps froze my sweat, turning the jungle wind into a curdling blast across my bare skin. If I shivered too hard, I’d give myself away.
“Here, here.”
I needed to move, but options were limited. The river ahead, the hunters on my right, fat vines and swollen vegetation everywhere else. My kayak was somewhere close but the mangroves were so thick, the roots where I’d moored it blended in with each other.
“It’s almost time. The sacrifice is at moon up.”
Was it getting dark already? Were these the last drips of sun I’d ever see?
They were getting closer. I could see their skin, shocks of white in this primeval place moving like they belonged here, however alien they looked compared to the townspeople who’d rented me the kayak. The next flash through the vines was pale too, but metallic. A machete. I should’ve brought mine, but I hadn’t really expected to leave the river. Nature called, though, and I’d gone to shore, my relief melting off as soon as I’d relieved myself when I realized I’d left my machete, my bag, my sat phone, in that too-hidden kayak—and when I’d realized I wasn’t alone.
They were at the river’s edge now. I watched through a hole in a knotted vine as they rinsed their blades in the brackish water, turning it copper with whatever the waters stole from the edges.
It was easy to pretend it wasn’t blood.
It was easier to pretend it wasn’t meant to be my blood next.
“Moon!”
“Moon!”
“Forget the outsider, go now!”
The outcry at the moonrise was more chilling than their quiet tracking had been. The little hunting party dispersed, no longer minding their own volume as they tramped a tiny stampede away.
The sacrifice is at moon up, they’d said.
But they weren’t looking for me anymore; wasn’t I meant to be their sacrifice?
They were gone.
I wasn’t alone, though, and my sigh of relief died in my throat as the jungle came for its due.
A Love Song for Beth III
“I call her Beth.” The cultist smiled, unflinching, as she ran her thumb down the machete’s blade, her blood trailing down her wrist until she licked it to stop the flow.
I shouldn’t be here. Panic would do nothing; I was here, and this was happening. However much I didn’t belong here, however much I should be groveling at my parents’ feet, promising to do better, to fit in like they wanted, however much I should be trying to make the life I had been born into work for me—however much I could and should be somewhere else, I was here. With her. With her machete.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” She tilted her head until her cheek rested on her shoulder, moving her eyes rather than turning the machete in her hands. “Say that she’s beautiful.” It came out in a hiss, the blooded edge cutting through the air to spray some of her life across my eyes as I looked. I couldn’t look away.
“She’s beautiful.” I said the words, but in my head I heard myself telling my mother instead that I would take that job, that I wouldn’t hitchhike ever again. I heard myself apologizing too, and I didn’t know if it was to myself for the lie, to my mother for not being who she wanted me to be, or to the machete.
“She cuts.” The cultist nodded, satisfied. She set her head upright again and lowered the blade into a cradle. “She cuts them”—her gaze darted to the trees around us—“she’ll cut you.”
“They don’t want her to cut them,” I said for the trees.
“Then she’ll cut you.”
She laid the blade across the fat grass, reverently, gently, as she knelt before the stream. Painfully slowly, she dipped one hand, then the next, into the flowing water, rinsing her own blood from her hands to make room for mine.
“Then I’ll give you to them.”
The trees rustled without a breeze to move them.
A Love Song for Beth IV
I’d always understood baptism by fire to be a euphemism. But now it was my turn for flame upon my forehead, to let it lick at me until I rinsed the ash of who I’d been in the font they’d acquired from the shuttered church.
“I can do hard things,” I said as Brother Nick lit the fresh torch.
“You can do hard things,” he agreed as he set the flame upon my brow.
I screamed, of course I screamed, however unholy it was; I would be purified, but I was still weak, human. I so clearly needed to be reforged.
“You can do good things.” I heard the words over myself and closed my throat. “Go forth, my child, for you are cleansed.”
It was everything to not run, but this was the moment that mattered, each stutter-step I took taking me farther into the jungle and farther from the filth I’d been born into. Like a phoenix I would rise from this.
The font was shallow; my hands punched the gold of it as I swept the water over myself, rinsing flame from my face, rinsing ash that had been my lashes.
“Open your eyes afresh now,” Brother Nick told me.
I did.
The water unglued my eyelids from where they’d wanted to fuse shut. They felt thick, my eyes felt heavy, but my vision was unhindered through the smoke of experience.
“I see.”
“What do you see, my child?”
“I see our world, ready to burn and start again.”
“What do you see, my child?”
“I see my place in this fresh world.”
“What do you see, my child?”
“I see my ascension over what was.”
“What do you do, my child?”
“I bid you farewell, Brother who was.”
My fingers were slow, having swept fire and water, but I managed to fashion the vine to fit Brother Nick’s neck. The noose was of the earth, still living, green and pliant as we all should be.
“The jungle giveth.”
“The jungle taketh, too.”
I watched him swing until his twitching stopped, and gave him to the jungle.
“I can do hard things.” The voice behind me beckoned me to the fresh torch. I walked to it, held it above the eternal flame.
“You can do hard things.” I lit the next supplicant’s forehead and smiled as her wailing began. “You can do good things,” I told her, watching the waiting jungle through her light.
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