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“Center your story around someone trying to resist their darker impulses. Whether they succeed or fail is up to you.”

Posted in Horror on Oct 9, 2026

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✍️ 50 stories

SWEET HEART

Winner of Weekly Contest #376 🏆

I wanted to tear his heart out. Watch the scarlet blood squirt from severed arteries and carve trails like rivers down my hand. Feel the thick muscle squirm, pump, thump—until it ceased to beat. I wanted to sink my teeth into the rubbery organ. Shred it. Chew it. Take my time. Let the iron coat my tongue. Feel the warmth slide down my throat. “So that’s me,” he said, snapping my attention back. He briefly touched the inside of my wrist, his touch as light as a butterfly’s wings, his head tilted. “What about you? What are you hoping to get ou...

76 likes 52 comments 52
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The Last Time

Weekly Contest #376

The man in the chair has stopped trying to scream. Daniel Marsh notes this with something close to gratitude. Screaming is loud and pointless, and the cellar has already taken enough of his patience tonight. Now there is only the ragged sound of the man breathing through his nose, the tick of the old furnace cooling, and the single bare bulb swaying on its cord, throwing light and shadow across the stranger's wide, wet eyes. Daniel sits on an overturned crate across from him, hands loosely clasped between his knees. A quiet man in a cardigan...

31 likes 24 comments 24
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STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

Weekly Contest #376

TW: Violence, murder Elliot Mercer was dead for eleven minutes. At 4:17 on a Tuesday afternoon in June, Elliot was struck by lightning while he was crossing a parking lot behind the building where he worked. At 4:23, paramedics found him without a pulse. At 4:28, after repeated attempts at resuscitation, the monitor still showed no organized cardiac activity. One additional attempt at cardioversion using full power was successful in restoring normal heart rhythm. At 4:29, Elliot opened his eyes. In Tampa Bay, drenching rain is not uncomm...

20 likes 6 comments 6
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The Confessions of Rumpelstiltskin

Weekly Contest #376

My name is Rumpelstiltskin. You've probably heard of me. Although I suspect what you've heard isn't particularly flattering. They say I'm a monster. A trickster. A thief of children. I've never stolen a child in my life. Every arrangement I've made has been perfectly legal. You don't believe me? Of course you don't. Humans never do. But you've been coming to this well every afternoon for three weeks, and you've hardly spoken a word. That makes you as good a listener as any. Sit down, old woman. I'll tell you my story. You don’t say much, do ...

18 likes 10 comments 10
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White and Black

Weekly Contest #376

The conference room was shaking with noise: laughs, cries and occasional wing flaps. The wood table was already in place, stretching endlessly left and right. Between the wall and the table stood a raised platform, almost hovering above the table. Behind it, the gold door was firmly shut, and John was expecting it to open any moment. He was standing at his spot and was surprised to see the empty seat on his right. “Paul, you’ve seen Mike?” he asked. A chubby man of about forty was sitting on his left. He shook his head. “He’s never late,” Jo...

14 likes 9 comments 9
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The Bloodridden

Weekly Contest #376

When he awoke, it was not to salvation, but to the stench of rot. Rain slicked the stones of the capital, washing the blood of the dead into the gutters. The moon hung pale above, a single white eye staring down without pity. He had prayed for God’s hand, for warmth, for mercy, but only numbness answered. It cradled him now, hollow and cold, as he wandered the streets of a city that had forgotten the living. The spires of the great cathedral jutted through the mist, their bells silent, their doors chained shut. Once, he had knelt beneath tho...

14 likes 4 comments 4
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Things I Did Not Break

Weekly Contest #376

The ledger is a school exercise book with a green cover, the kind that comes in packs of ten from the supermarket. Nell is on her fourteenth. She keeps it in the glovebox with the tuning hammer and the felt mutes. Before every job she reads the last page, the way other people check their teeth in the rear-view mirror. Tuesday. Mrs Okafor's Yamaha, top C. The cup in the café (the handle). The man on the bus with his hand on the rail. She can't remember when she started writing it down. She remembers when it started. She was seven. Her mother ...

14 likes 2 comments 2
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Fence Posts

Weekly Contest #376

Russ set the fencing hammer on the corner post and stood a minute, letting his shoulders get used to the bag. Staples and a spool of 12-gauge. Pliers with the handles worn to bare steel. The post was cedar, A.O. burned into the grain. Deer flies circled his hat. He started walking. The fence had two hundred twelve posts. Uncle Alton told him that once, the way other men tell you their batting average. Alton died in March. No wife, no kids. He left the house to Russ's brother Gary and the fifty-two acres of hay to Russ, and everybody said tha...

13 likes 16 comments 16
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A Doomed Cheesy Romance

Weekly Contest #376

Opening Long ago in an old Geronimo Stilton book, eight-year-old me read about the doomed opera of a mouse who was obsessed with cheese but couldn’t eat it on the account of being deathly allergic. Even back then, something about it struck as poetic to me, and although I cannot recall which book I read it from (I’ve read far too many) or even the title of the opera, I find myself compelled to expand the idea. A Doomed Cheesy Romance All her life, Isabella Região was praised as the most beloved mouse of all of Italy. Flourishing as a model...

13 likes 3 comments 3
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In a Glass, Darkly

Weekly Contest #376

*** Content Warnings: Contains themes of domestic violence, physical violence, gore, abuse, and sexual violence. *** Marco was finally asleep on the bed. Silvia eased out of bed and went into the bathroom. The bright light made her wince. Her reflection showed a woman cowed and bruised, unable to smile because of the damage to her face. Her eyes filled with tears, and she sat on the toilet seat, with her head in her hands. Every so often she tore off some toilet paper to wipe her eyes. Years of practice had taught her to cry silently. One ...

11 likes 6 comments 6
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Mirror, mirror

Weekly Contest #376

What is that strange whimpering noise? It echoes round inside my head like a rotting dream. Like a hound tied to a tree inside a storm of rain. Inside my head. Like a storm of echoes inside a rotting tree. I need to stop the thinking. It has eroded my senses ever since I took that helmet-on-helmet whack. Concussion protocol be damned. I managed to fake it and went back on. Took another whack. Maybe that’s where it started? I was blind. Couldn’t see a damn thing, though I heard the team doctor talking, asking me to follow his finger. I can’t ...

11 likes 2 comments 2
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The Ice Machine at the Starlite

Weekly Contest #376

Marnie Kowalczyk worked nights at the Starlite Motor Inn, off I-94, outside Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Eleven to seven. Thirty-one rooms. One ice machine. No pool, though the building smelled like it had one once and missed it. She liked nights. Nights didn’t ask much. A trucker wanted a receipt. A couple wanted towels and didn’t want eye contact. The coffee in the lobby pot turned to tar by two, and she drank it anyway, because it was hot and it was there, and those were her standards for most things. She kept a Post-it on the side of the mon...

11 likes 6 comments 6
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Yarn

Weekly Contest #376

WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP I’d just been messaging my buddy Tom, telling him how bored I was. It was my sixth night running at the 24-hour garage before a blessed three days off and everything had taken on that numbed stasis that I’d been trying to pop a hole in with cans of energy drink and bags of e numbers. So you can imagine what it did to my nerves hearing my car alarm going off. It’s a fucken’ ol’ rust bucket with more hours on the clock than Mr Sandman so why anyone would wanna steal it was beyond me. So I set about asking him. ...

11 likes 6 comments 6
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The Man in the Mirror

Weekly Contest #376

The Cracks Begin Daniel Mercer had spent forty-nine years convincing the world he was a good man, and nearly as long trying to convince himself. He stood at the back of Hollis Creek Baptist Church in the black suit Rebecca had pressed that morning and waited for the grief to arrive. It did not. What came instead was a loosening in his chest, like a belt let out one notch after a long meal. His father was in the box at the front of the room. His father could not lower his voice anymore. Thomas Mercer had never needed to raise it. He lowere...

10 likes 6 comments 6
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Life’s a Party

Weekly Contest #376

I’ve never been to a party. Like, ever. I guess some people are born to enjoy it and others aren’t. There are genes controlling your circadian rhythm and your flow of adrenaline or serotonin. For me, there was also the lack of opportunity to ever go to a club in the first place. Like, ever. And of course, there is your upbringing. What you enjoy, what you can’t stand. My parents taught me quite too well what to enjoy and what not to. It’s a fluid process, with every situation it changes how well you fit in or maybe not. And in that one, my ...

10 likes 9 comments 9
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