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Write a story in which someone is warned not to go into the woods or speak to strangers.

Posted in Dramatic on Dec 19, 2025

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✍️ 46 stories

The Kindred Wood

Submitted to Contest #334

In all of the mountains there was no fairer glade than where the elk-riders lived. Before the many dwellings were built, naught but eglantine and mountain-thistle bloomed in that knolly place. Little had changed since ages past, though black moss grew thicker, draping over roof-rims or cladding the keystones, and these mossed abodes were arrayed in those darkly garlands alike the ancient fanes of the lowland. This moss-bedecked place pleased the shaggy denizen elk, and the folk made these beasts their greatest stock and blazonry, while the s...

35 likes 15 comments 15
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The Lantern and the Lie

Submitted to Contest #334

"Don't speak to the Man in the Grey Cloak, for he weaves lies into ropes to bind you." That is what Mother said every time she locked the heavy oak door. But Mother also said she loved me, and I had bruises that proved that was a lie, too.The kitchen smelled of burnt milk. Luca sat at the pine table, spine rigid, watching the empty porcelain plate that gleamed white as bone in the lamplight. His stomach twisted on itself like rope. The plate wasn't empty because he'd eaten. It was empty because Father had decided he wouldn't."You spilled the...

26 likes 11 comments 11
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A Cheap Date...

Submitted to Contest #334

“All right, you two, off you go,” said Rob, captain of the small craft that had brought the middle-aged couple to the island. They stood hand-in-hand on a long wooden dock that stretched all the way to the white sands of a beautiful beach. “Have a fantastic weekend.” Rob held up a walkie-talkie from the deck and shook it back and forth. “Remember, this is your lifeline. You need anything, anything at all, you use it. Okay?” Carl, a moderately overweight accountant dressed in tan slacks and a red plaid button-down, held up his radio and smile...

18 likes 8 comments 8
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Wisp of the Woods

Submitted to Contest #334

Veric’s breath was hot on her ear, their hand shaking in Serril’s.“Don’t go in there,” Veric breathed, a plea. “It’s not safe. It’s—it’s dangerous, Serril, please.”Serril surveyed the tall pines, weighing the way they loomed above against Veric’s warning. Between the branches, lights bobbed. Small things, like the dancing flames of candles, casting a rose-orange glow over the needles and the soft dusting of snow. Eyeless, they regarded her from the treeline. Serril tried—uselessly—to discern the mood of the small balls of light.“It doesn’t s...

18 likes 7 comments 7
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A Relic for the Full Moon

Submitted to Contest #334

Rose Riding knew the cathedral was at the corner somewhere. The coroner had told her she couldn’t miss it. But the rain was coming heavy, and the soaked clay of the Garland Hamlet’s outer fields slogged heavy on her boots, hem, and cloak. When she lifted her feet, a thick ‘schhhlok, schhhlok’ followed, and it sank her mood, too. She didn’t want to be out here, on Christmas Eve, looking for the big old thing, but Granny had said this was the only way. Her mother’s picnic basket was chafing something awful, pinching the wet wool of her cloak a...

17 likes 7 comments 7
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Gullywomp

Submitted to Contest #334

It only comes out at night. Once the sun starts it sleepy turn aside, we all lock the door and keep the lights on. From evening until the morning shines. No one knows if it could actually come inside, but why risk it? So, we learn to sleep with brightness. They’ve tried to combat it with streetlights and spotlights but somehow it gets close enough to destroy them. The day comes and the artificial light is cracked. Sometimes there’s a body cracked as well. Sometimes there’s not much of a body left at all. We don’t know if there are others. No...

16 likes 7 comments 7
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Taken Away by the Fairies

Submitted to Contest #334

Blueberry season was good and over, and now it was cranberry season—a time of year marked by shortening days and cold. I was six years old, living with my grandmother in a very small town, in a house that backed onto a dense forest of fir and spruce. I secretly loved to go into the woods at this time of year. The sweet scent of conifers mixed with fallen autumn leaves on the forest floor was almost intoxicating to me.Nan had been trying to get a start on the dark fruit cakes for Christmas, and I was bored—and in her way. So, with admonitions...

16 likes 8 comments 8
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Christopher Nightshade

Submitted to Contest #334

The young boy was kicked out of the door and fell to his face on the soil. He let out a deep breath, then gathered himself to his feet. From within the wooden cabin, a bucket was thrown, nearly hitting the boy. A strained voice yelled, “Fetch more water, boy! And stop talking about those silly stories. They’re nothing but fairy tales”. Then, the door slammed shut.Christopher Nightshade walked toward the bucket and picked it up. He sighed as he touched its dent. Up until recently, he was living a simple, yet joyous life with loving parents. H...

14 likes 3 comments 3
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Fairy Tales for Today

Submitted to Contest #334

Full dark had fallen when the trekcar hummed onto the gravel pad outside the FairShare cabin, slotting in next to Peach’s trekcar. Rachel thought it was strange to see a car sitting there, just waiting, with nobody in it. Citycars just whisked off to pick up their next passenger, but of course it was dangerous to be stranded in the country without transportation, so trekcars were programmed to linger for the length of your trip. It was almost like owning her own car.Rachel carried her warm, sleeping daughter Rose into the cabin.Her sister Pe...

14 likes 5 comments 5
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Paper Chains

Shortlisted for Contest #334 ⭐️

Dangling limply across the makeshift walls of the office cubicles, a paper chain made from scrap paperwork was severed at the middle. Perhaps the gluestick that had been used to haphazardly string it together was dried up. Maybe someone tore it by accident. I’d probably never find out. There were plenty of things you’d never know in your life, be it minute, inconsequential happenings such as this one, or indelible unknowns, like if that person years ago truly did like you back. You still wonder, regardless, and perhaps to the same extent equ...

14 likes 9 comments 9
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In a Land Far, Far Away

Submitted to Contest #334

In a Land Far, Far Away... “Brr! It's so terribly cold. Snow is falling, and it's almost dark. But shops are open late here in Vail so we'll get checked in at the Lodge then hit some shops to find some skiing attire like I promised you, Meredith.”“So glad we met up again collecting our gear at the carousel, Whitney. I'm registered at the Lodge, also, so I can ride the same shuttle. Don't want to go shopping with you but am willing to meet you for hot chocolate at the Gorsuch Ski Cafe. I've heard its the best place for cocoa.”“You're correct...

13 likes 18 comments 18
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The Nibblekin

Submitted to Contest #334

Once upon a time, there was a monster known as the Nibblekin. The children said the Nibblekin’s horns rose thick and crooked from its skull, ridged like old bark. Beneath them sat two enormous, glass-bright eyes. It was tall enough to cast a shadow on the moon, they said, but had talons thin enough to pass through keyholes. Truth be told, nobody really knew what it looked like. But it was fun to hold gnarled, sun-bleached branches to one’s head and play pretend. For the parents, the monster was little more than a scare to keep the little one...

13 likes 5 comments 5
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Appetite

Submitted to Contest #334

He first noticed her on an afternoon that should not have stayed with him. He had finished work early and stopped at a café near the bus terminal, choosing a small metal table close to the curb. Buses hissed as they pulled in and out. Someone argued on the phone. A delivery truck blocked the intersection long enough for one horn to sound, then another. Nothing about the moment suggested consequence.She stood across the road, just beyond the pedestrian crossing.She did not look at him, yet her stillness set her apart from the surrounding move...

13 likes 7 comments 7
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The Acoustic Predator

Submitted to Contest #334

The first thing the woods took from Sylas Renn was his wedding ring. Not its physical form - the platinum band remained on his finger - but the sound of it. The faint, definitive click it made against his ceramic coffee mug each morning, a tiny percussion of habit and home. He’d been listening to the playback from his overnight microphones in Halvarth Wood when he heard it: that familiar click, perfectly rendered, nestled between the hoot of a tawny owl and the rustle of a fox. The owl and fox had been outside his tent. The mug and the ring ...

12 likes 5 comments 5
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The Malice Remedy

Submitted to Contest #334

The night descended with a sudden, predatory weight, the way it only does in the deep reaches of the mountains. Here, along the jagged spine of the range locals called the “Sleeping Dragons,” the darkness felt less like an absence of light and more like a physical presence—thick, ink-black, and suffocating. The ancient forest that began where the hiking trail ended wasn't just a collection of trees. It was a breathing, watchful entity. Every shadow seemed to stretch toward our campfire, and every snap of a twig in the distance felt like a fo...

12 likes 5 comments 5
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