My more macabre nature took hold tonight and I found myself inspired by the two sentence horror format. I wonder if there’s a precedent for a writer who creates both romance and horror?
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I watched her slipping further away through the shimmering chill of the frigid water, her fingers still reaching for mine. A grim satisfaction filled my mind, until I remembered which of us was sinking.
I was relieved beyond comprehension when the pain stopped, my mind blissfully quiet for those precious seconds. Until the voices came back to haunt me and I had to start cutting her again.
My children watched silently, their eyes unblinking pits of onyx hellfire as they sorted through the fresh entrails they’d spilled from their mother’s corpse. I’ve never been so proud.
It was horrible to look at, dark and misshapen, hideous and appalling, reaching for me as I pressed my hand out to touch the thing.. to prove to myself that no such creature could exist. Hesitant fingers trembled toward it’s own deformed digits but, instead of withered skin, my fingertips met with a pane of freshly polished mirror.
I hid my loneliness in endless hours watching mindless comedies, my solitary laughter hiding my pain. Until a rough chuckle echoed back to me from down the hall.
Running my hand over the smooth leather binding of the book, my thumb followed its oiled cover and turned the volume to examine its spine with a coveting eye. It was a prize for my collection, bound in human skin and I was thrilled with my purchase, until I recognized my wife’s tattoo on the book’s spine.
They danced and circled around me, those spirits, taunting me with their cries of torment and agony. My cries rose with theirs, wishing that they would end my suffering and let me join them.
I didn’t know which upset me more. That his body was missing or that I couldn’t remember where I’d put him.
I laid in bed, listening to the scratching coming from the floorboards beneath me and wondering if I had the courage to look below and prove it was all in my head. As my fingers swept under the bed frame, there was a moment of shock and disbelief as the hand snaked my wrist and dragged me in, a hoarse whisper assuring me that the brave suffer the worst.
