In 2024, I plan to publish a horror collection of very short flash fiction. 150 words or less, based on a one word prompt for each one. I’m not sure how many stories it’ll contain (possibly also some illustrations made by me!), but I love twisting my brain to wring as much spooky, threatening, visceral ickiness from that tiny wordcount as the English language allows.
I did a few back in September of 2023, so I’ll include all of those in this post, and you’ll be seeing more of them as the days go by. I’m thinking it’ll be my writing warmup exercise each day.
Enjoy!
~Miranda K. Darq
This group of horror prompts came from the X/Twitter account PG Patey.
List here!
1.)Drain
My new place was cheap. In this economy, you do what you’ve got to. The bathroom sink had chipped, peeling avocado green paint. A relic from the 70’s that the slumlord didn’t bother replacing.
When I first heard the knocking at night, I assumed it was just old metal pipes, marching along to their demise. Until something started speaking to me. Calling me by name. Its words were a sibilant hiss that I could barely understand, but the words tickled at the back of my brain.
Weeks passed and the disembodied voice had its claws in my heart. I was going insane. Unable to stand it, I ran into the bathroom and shouted into the drain: “What do you want from me?!” A sinister chuckle echoed upward, chilling my blood. “Got ya.”
2.)Devour
“Scrape, pull, gush, chew.” The garbled voice echoed in the darkness. My fingers trembled as I reached for the chain to turn on the light. I hesitated, inhaled deeply to steel myself, and tugged. The light clicked on, flooding the bare, damp room with fluorescent harshness that stung my eyes.
It was nothing compared to the man my vision focused on. Chained to the wall by his emaciated ankle, muttering to himself. “Scrape, pull, gush, chew.” He dug long fingernails into his flesh, not deep enough to hit an artery, but deep enough that blood poured over his hands as he dug a chunk of flesh loose from his own thigh and popped it into his mouth. Mind broken at having been abandoned by his captors, he’d instinctively started to devour his own body to stay alive.
What sort of life could he have, after this?
3.) Irascible
“Irascible?!” His deep voice boomed and trembled with rage like a midnight thunderstorm.
Quaking with fear of the inevitable, her words came out quiet and meek in an attempt to settle him down and avoid his ire. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I just like readin’ the dictionary, is all. It means ‘quick to anger’.”
He slammed his fist down on the counter, a sinister smile curving his dry lips as he watched his daughter flinch. His voice was calmer, but still with an edge that did little to soothe the girl. “All them books you keep stuffing your nose in are where the problem lies, child. It’s lettin’ the Devil into your soul. Makin’ you disobey your father, who you’re s’posed ta honor.”
She sobbed as he took off his belt, the slide of the leather against the coarse fabric a familiar warning she could no longer avoid.
4.) Cracked Elbows
“You need to leave.” Tara’s words came out in a choked hush.
“I don’t understand! Things were going so well. Why do you—”
A canine growl rolled from her lips, the sound something a human throat shouldn’t have been able to produce. She threw Kevin’s shirt at him and scooted back on the mattress, doubled over like she was trying to hold herself together.
Her pained whine was drowned out by a series of resounding snaps as her limbs began to lengthen and change shape. Fur burst through her pores as the change overtook her, a canine pair of amber eyes watching him with carnal hunger.
Kevin scrambled to escape, slipping and cracking his elbows on the unforgiving floor while the beast confidently advanced.