Can you write the shortest and scariest ghost story ever? Ric Royer wants to know. Because if you can, you're going to win his new book - She saw Ghosts, He saw Bodies. Each limited edition book has a hand-drawn cover by Jackie Milad. That's scary awesome if you ask us. Narrow House will also throw in his other books/projects (There were One & It was Two, Time Machine, the weather not the weather, and more)
Deadline is April 23rd
Post your ghost / scary / terrifying short, short story in the comments section. Shortest and scariest wins. Judged by Ric Royer. No more than 3 entrees per person, please.
Purchase ($15 in the U.S.):
65 pages
Fiction
Ric Royer writes his fictions with the attention to language of a poet and the staging of scene of a playwright. The interplay between syllables and phrasings, between sleep and sex and death, and between he and she creates a new kind of fiction.
Michael Kimball
The wind, the staircase, her pale gaze, a curtain, that stick, fog and in the distance, the minister's horse.
ReplyDeleteI love your hair. I am dead.
ReplyDeleteShit. Another blackout drunk one night stand. A sallow, nebbish man rolls over. OMG IT'S STEVE BUSCEMI!
ReplyDeleteI love my grandfather, a lifetime after his death. Haunt me! Tell me all is well or even scare the soil out of me! That never happened. There are no ghosts.
ReplyDeleteI was half asleep in the clinic bed when I felt that confusing warm wet mound writhing at my ankles. I felt sure it was trying to somehow move upward. I could just barely hear its voice because it sounded just a little like paper being folded.
ReplyDelete"Mommy, why did you do this? it's so cold out here Mommy."
You've been dead a year now! If I slash this throat, as you plead, will you leave me alone? The knife feels cold. I feel cold all over. At last, you fade. Thank you.
ReplyDelete"I thought your funeral would be the end of your moralizing?"
ReplyDelete"You are my Matrix. You give me life."
The father saw the picture again, big tears in red. He tore off the corner with the crayon name and rolled it, snorted the blue crush until his dead son stopped drawing.
ReplyDeleteSomething was tickling. A ghost peeling back the sheets. Smothering me, coming inside me. Years passed. I may have given birth but who can say. A cold drainage in the night. Navel pulsing. A pile of bones so pale they disintegrate when spoken to.
ReplyDeletein 18th century Europe a stranger would often grab your wrist when asking a question or engaging in casual conversation. Why would such a touch cause horror and fear? what else have we lost?
ReplyDeleteI'm the last person on earth. I sit in my room. There's a knock on the door
ReplyDeleteOn its own, the cellar door creaks open and down the winding stairs, a sudden vertigo, a throbbing nausea. In the dark damp, whos sweet breath and whos sticky hands?
ReplyDeleteThe rugs would be moved, just an inch, or a book left here, now, there. I would wake in the mornings to breathing on my neck, scratches on my wrist. The shower would already be running, hot steaming water soaking my pillow. Water flung on my mirror. My doors still locked from the inside.
ReplyDeleteI’m only entering for fun – I know I’m not eligible.
ReplyDeleteShe’d been dead only minutes, maybe half an hour. Warmth escaped her cheeks like dinner on a plate. It was okay to take it, he thought – the soft still soft – she would never know. But she watched him. Hovering above. A smiling vesper.
Months later at the doctor, “I’m sorry, Henry… Hepatitis C”.
I was eating stale tortilla chips. They tingled on my tongue strangely. Only later would I realize the tiny black dots on these tortilla chips were moving, were ants. I guess they were biting my tongue.
ReplyDeleteTrue story.
As the record played its first revolution, a scratch punctured the song, which would have been fine for nostalgia, but I felt blood begin to trickle down my ankle. The second revolution sent a gash down my shin. The third revolution left my leg severed right below the hip, and I knew there was no way to reach the needle in time.
ReplyDeleteMom was cooking the dog and smiling and the horses were coming inside to rape me. I was smiling, too, to be as agreeable as I could seem.
ReplyDeleteShe said it was mine.
ReplyDeleteFor sale: baby shoes, slightly bloody.
ReplyDelete"Off"
ReplyDelete(to be repeated multiple times if necessary to achieve desired effect)
Tone
ReplyDeleteHe held the boy’s head. He sought for ridges, pulled the hair.
Ears still ringing, Daniel reached around the small of his back to stop the blood. His entire hand disappeared inside the wetness.
ReplyDelete(staff entry, for the fun)
ReplyDeleteAnd that's the thing... nothing happened.
Did you .. Amy?
ReplyDeleteWhy, no one's lived in that house for years. Dumbass.
ReplyDeleteThe knife and I engaged in a staring contest. Then I blinked and it was in his chest. Oops.
ReplyDeleteHe called himself the Eternal Shadow of Unending Suffering, but I called him Jerry. "Hi Jerry", I said, ignoring the screams.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason he knew his name. Walter. And it wasn't Walter's sudden and inexplicable presence that bothered him, but the memories, coming strong now, that Walter had always been there. Since childhood. Forever standing just out of sight, until now.
ReplyDelete"So what," Glenn said, struggling to get in one last crunch, the hard kind, no-cheating, when the other firemen told him it was sick to watch a porno when he knew all of the actors in it had died in a still unexplained fire, "what could possibly happen?"
ReplyDeleteThe man smashed the kaleidoscope and crammed the pieces into his mouth, chewed them slowly and methodically. He opened his mouth and a pale, shimmering projection of my dead grandfather emerged, floating silently just inches from my face, gesturing for me to take a kaleidoscope from his hand.
ReplyDelete(comment on the comments)
ReplyDeleteThese are great, guys!!
Super excited to see more.
It was the greatest, easiest, surest way ever to lose weight. It was magical.
ReplyDeleteEvery year after gorging on Thanksgiving food, she would sneak out the house, and head down the road to the local gas station. She would enter the bathroom, and lock the door. She would shift her skirt so it wouldn't get dirty, and lift the toilet cover.
And she would lick the rim, side to side, top to bottom, until it was clean.
Ten days, a couple stomach pumps, and a disease fought off later, she would emerge from ICU twenty pounds lighter.
Magical.
It wasn't what she expected.
ReplyDeleteCovered in the sheet and blanket, a crinkle above her head. She rolled over. And fell.
Angela is alone in the house, reading. A susurrus from the guest bedroom intrudes. She steps down the hall to look. The bed: made. The curtains: drawn. The closet door (always kept closed): wide open.
ReplyDelete