Nothing quite like a good scare...

Question

So the other day little miss midnightpoet said that I was being challenged as the "King of the Morbid" or something like that.  I would like to set out this challenge thread to allow anyone who likes to write horror stories to do just that.  They do not have to contain specific words or be any specific length.  I would like to see how talented we are at writing horror.  This will be an ongoing thread so feel free to contribute whenever your black heart desires.  The "stories" do not have to follow any type of form either.  They could be poetry, stories, or just plain random thoughts.  Have fun!

Comments

Can we respond more than once?

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Put as many responses as you like.  This challenge doesn't end.  I haven't had a chance to read your story yet, but I'll get back to you soon.

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Don't you hate it when you get a really good idea, like an "oh oh oh I have to do this!" idea, and then look at the time and realize you don't have enough time before class to write it all out? It kills me xD

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My limitations are my sleep requirements.  I am a vampire by trade (work graveyard shift)  and I have to sleep sometime plus take care of day to day chores.

Answer 1

The Keeper

Captured by the full moon’s light the scattered fall leaves scuffled for a place to rest.  Finally, they settle in small mounds upon the partially frozen ground in front of the gravestones of the lost souls.  Never seen by humans in decades the Mt. View Cemetery takes care of its own.  Sure, the weeds and sucker trees are a bit overgrown, but those too are kept at bay by the true keeper of the crypts.  One soul…that will never rest has been the keeper and the guard of the cemetery.  He is the one soul tormented for centuries by a sordid past that ensures the peace and tranquility of the departed remains.  Those who dare trespass soon find out that they don’t belong…

John was never one to care what other people thought.  He was a free spirit unbound by rules and he ignored the natural order of things.  He led his life excessively smoking, drinking and always taking the chances that no one else would dare.  He was a thrill seeker and often a home wrecker as he had a voracious appetite for the fairer sex.  He lived to the ripe old age of 99 and on his last day he swore that he would never die.  It was the last thing he ever said.  His heart stopped cold in mid beat just as the last word of that sentence exited his mouth.  Having no family he was buried in a pauper’s field.  No one knew of the true treasures that John held until later.

John’s grave had a modest limestone slab for a headstone.  His first name and last initial were engraved backwards as his headstone was prepared by a student at the trade school on an “off” day.  The teacher gave his son a “C” for his effort and passed the marker off to the mortician who didn’t even check the pine box John was lying in let alone the marker.  Both the box and the headstone were transported in an old beat up “woody” that had one semi-flat tire from making the trip through the uncared for paupers field.  The thump, thump, thump sound of the tire as the car trundled along its way sent all the woodland creatures scurrying for cover.  Two men exited the car and hand dug a shallow grave and threw the box into the hold.  The slab was chunked at one end and the grave was covered in rocky dirt.

The pauper’s field was near the Mt. View Cemetery although it was hidden behind a large stand of elms that kept anyone going to the paupers’ field from seeing it.  It was better that way.  The adventurous were not welcome.

John being true to his word sort of didn’t “rest” too well.  He was furious that he was put in such a sad state.  Although his body was soon to be worm food his soul and the remnants of his stoic mind were intact and it was time to travel.  John pondered a while before deciding that he had spent enough time in that pine box amongst the commoners.  His soul rose through the earth only to find darkness.  There was no sound from anything, not a bird, cricket or the flutter of a bat…nothing.  He wandered around until he found the edge of a tall stand of elms.  A vibration began to spark an interest in his soul as he knew that others such as him were near and not the destitute from the paupers’ field.

Standing in front of a large mausoleum encased by ivy the keeper watched as John’s soul came into focus.  An intruder he thought and not the human kind either.  It had been a long time since the keeper had seen a wayward soul pass his way.  They weren’t welcome either.  Only his brethren in this graveyard were worthy of being here.

John drew nearer and started to make out the more glamorous headstones although they were much worn.  As he passed a few of the graves he heard whispers that sounded like warnings.  He ignored them.  He was not about to be sent back to the derelicts and drag queens inhabiting the paupers field.  This looked like a place he could ponder his next move.  His mind was already imaging paybacks for past transgressions against him such as the mortician who violated his body and stuffed it into a pine box after breaking both legs so he would fit.  John paused…looked around…feeling strange feelings that he had not felt before.  It was almost a fear or panic but in life he had never felt such things.  He was the master of his domain and people kowtowed to his wants and desires without question.  But he still couldn’t shake the feeling.

He found the source…It swooped in like a missile and landed square in front of him.  The keeper had arrived and the battle began…

Comments

I do love a good ghost story.

Answer 2

Broken (Collared and Leashed)

      Small hands rest on bare thighs, fingers trembling as they curl with inner pain. A young girl screams within her own body in grief. She sits back obediantly on her heels, the collar circling her neck a great weight to remind her of her servitude; that she no longer belonged to herself. She shifts her weight slightly, a jingle ringing through the room, the claw hook connecting her collar to it's leash swinging on the ring. The leash leads up to the wrist of her Master, his eyes looking down at her huddled form.

     The room she's in feels large, the air shifting as if drifting through a large space. The only light hangs above her and her Master, throwing a spotlight's circle on the floor around them. The rest of the room is thrown into darkness. Her eyes strain but fail to see past the small glowing circle surrounding her.

     Another spotlight switches on at the other side of the large room. Beneath it stands her friends, oblivious to her state so hidden away from them. She attempts to crawl to that other pool of light, but a sharp tug on her leash pulls her back. Glancing up at her Master she sees him looking down at her with disdain. The spotlight switches off and her friends disappear. She returns to her prior posture, her shoulders hunched in sorrow.

     A second spotlight pools the opposite side of the room, beneath it shown her passion, her release, her escape and her fun. Crawling for that lightened escape, she feels the jerk on her leash choking her and bringing tears to her eyes. Her friends appear in that pool of light, searching for her to enjoy it with them. Again she tries to crawl for that bright light, her hand reaching for it only to feel the harsh yank on her leash as she's torn away. She coughs and sputters, gasping for air that the pain had pulled from her lungs. Quickly and fearfully, she scurries on hands and knees into her obidient position, glancing again to her Master's face. It clearly shows his upset, anger, and hate. She cowers as she lowers her head, the spotlight dimming before going out on her friends' distressed faces.

     A third spotlight comes on, below it who she used to be. A great friend, compassion, spontinaity, happy, excited, hyper, loving, and kind of crazy. Her head doesn't even lift; instead she cowers. Her hands shake atop her thighs. the longer the spotlight shines, the more the girl despises it. Despising the fact that she wants so strongly to be that girl again, but having no hope to be so in her heart. Master smirks down at her, letting the leash slip from his hand. He no longer needed it.

 

The girl is broken.

Comments

heartbreaking and beautifully told.

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Thank you. The scariest part is that this is a (metaphorically) true story, and it happens almost every day.

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I agree with  midnight on this one.  I would like to add that I thought your descriptive narrative was beautifully executed.  It set a somber yet frantic pace if that makes any sense at all.  Good job!  I admire your talent.

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Thank you again :) I'm not used to getting feedback like this! Every time I read a comment I blush!

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Thrilling. I never knew if this was reality (as in a sex dungeon) or fantasy or horror in its purest form. This is nice. And I'm not a real horror fan. Well done.

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Made me think of a woman in an abusive relationship. Very well written and captivating while being sad.

Answer 3

SCARY

I've never been afraid of horror stories.  On the contrary, I usually laugh at them.  Horror movies are even funnier.  Vampires, werewolves and zombies are laughable.  But reality is very scary.  Racists, sexists and bigots abound.  They scare me with their huge followings.

I like "feel good" movies, but they are just as unreal as zombies.  It's life's reality that is frightening.  Fire bombing other cities or the Holocaust are scary because it's not a movie.  Many people really feel like destroying other cultures.  The devasting results are felt forever.  We do actually have something to fear.

Drive by shootings, rapes, gay bashing.  Those are the real fear-producing horrors and they really exist.  Why should I fear Dracula when the world is full of real idiots who could attack you at any time?

Some diatribe, huh?  Real life is the only horror story that scares me.  Being diagnosed with a terminal illness and watching your own skin rot is true fear.  Watching your country abandon education in favor of wars just freaky.  There are a lot of things to be afraid of out there.  Horror movies just make me laugh - and that's a good thing.

Comments

I agree. I love a good horror movie or novel, though they do scare me. I love them so much because they're a welcome, unreal sort of fear, that help me forget the truly scary stuff in the world we live in. Watching the news scares me more than any horror movie.

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There are "real" things in this world we couldn't even imagine happening every day.  Its the things we know are happening, but haven't seen that are the scariest from my perspective.  As far as the fantasy of "horror" imagined and transmitted through the screen, books or plain oral presentation of horror I am a big, big fan dating back to when I was a wee tot.  My mom is a huge fan too and we used to watch them together.

Answer 4

Cutting Weight

     She looks down at herself. Smacking her stomach she watches herself jiggle. Her lip curls back over her teeth in an evil looking snarl. Disgusting. She hates it. To her it's vile. A spreading tumor that needs to be removed. An idea blooms in her head, yes, it needs to be removed. Excised like the cancerous tumor that it is! The vile thing growing on her body. Excise it! Cut it out of your life and off your body now! Her mind screams at her.

     She glimpses her salvation on a table across from her. A shining blade bearing the words Stainless Steel down it's length. She holds her hand to the tang of the blade, and sweet satisfaction runs through her. The same size. The blade was the same size as her hand. Perfect for the job. She picks it up, staring at the reflection glinting in the blade's tempered steel. She growls at the reflection, looking away with revulsion. She places the blade on the protruding flesh of her gut, releshing in the goose bumps that raise along her flesh from the cold steel. She pushes down and pulls it across her body, systematically slicing her flesh and fat off her own body, butchering her own meat. She looks down at the blood spilling from her stomach, running into the waist band of her jeans. Her face stays a blank mask, showing no hint of pain. She moves to her hips, slicing methodically and with a measure of calculation.  Her flesh weeps blood both from the flesh she removes and what remains spared, allowed to remain clinging to her bones.

     She scowls at her weeping flesh. Weak. She picks up her curling iron, plugging it in and waiting for it to become hot. She smirks as she takes the iron to her weeping flesh, smelling the stench of it burning, putrid in the air. It eggs her on, bringing her to more, until the weeping of her flesh ceases, stemmed by the cauterizing. She blows on the hot iron, brushing the smoke away from the metal coated in blackened blood and cooked flesh.

     She walks upstairs, stepping onto the scale. 83 pounds. Perfect. A smile graces her features, content in it's display. She curls up on the bed buzzing with happiness that she was light once again.

Comments

Very serious subject, Dear.  My daughter was bulimic for a few years and our whole family went into therapy about it.  That was worth it.  I like your take on it a lot because you really expose the beast.

People write murder mysteries all the time and that doesn't mean they are promoting murder.

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Thank you, and I'm glad your daughter got help.

And you're right, they don't. I just know that some people are sensitive to information that is put out on the internet.

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TheRunawayHeart:  I think you've opened up a giant delicious can of worms and this is exactly what I was looking for in this thread.  Horror, a wide variety of types, and plenty of discussion to go along with it.  Thank You!

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Thank you so much for giving a thread that I can post lots of scary stuff! I may come with more soon, depending on how twisted my mind gets.

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You are very welcome and I just read your story again and it just makes me sick!  But not in a bad way.  It illicits a horrifying response which is exactly what a good horror tale does.

Answer 5

I'll never forget my days in the closet. That was how I spent most of my days.

The wooden chair grew to small for me as I grew bigger, but she never bought a new one. As long as I could still be properly restrained in it, a new chair would be a frivolous expense for an unwanted child. I suppose I fit into it well when I was two and the punishment began.

I guess it started innocently enough. She was a newly single mom. My dad left, he couldn't handle being a parent. Maybe he didn't love me enough. I know she didn't.

At first it was a time out in the wooden chair when I misbehaved. She quickly got fed up with the fact that I would repeatedly get out of the chair and resist being punished. That's when she started tying me to it. And when I would scream to get out, she started locking me in the closet until the screaming stopped.

As I got older, the punishments got worse, but it always ended with being tied to that wooden chair in the closet.

By the time I was five it was a belt to the bottom until I was bleeding, and then the agony of sitting in that hard wooden chair after.

The belt became a hot iron on whatever part of my body had been used in offending her somehow.

Eventually, it just became easier for her to keep me locked in the closet. Over time, I learned to stop crying for food, because I knew that would mean the curling iron to my lips until they blistered and it hurt to cry or talk.

She fed me once or twice a day, whenever it was convenient, whatever food was cheap and easy. I heard people come over occasionally, but she never let me out at those times. I wondered if anyone knew she had a daughter.

I was nine when it happened. She had people over again, and I stayed quiet an obedient in the closet despite the gnawing in my stomach, as though my belly button were trying to eat my spine. I heard most of the company leave, but one man stayed.

I heard those unmistakable sounds that always came when one man stayed the night.

I don't know how long it had been since she'd fed me, but I'd never gone without food for that long before. She'd forgotten about me.

Seconds dragged, became minutes, became hours. I don't know how long it took. I spent my last hours in varying states of awareness, there in that dark closet, in pain and bound. And then I was blissfully free and I didn't hurt anymore.

I watched, waiting for her to remember the daughter she'd forgotten in the closet. It took another whole day before she checked on me and discovered my corpse.

I don't think she felt any guilt. She showed absolutely no sign of remorse as she wrapped my body in a black Hefty trash bag and loaded it into the back of the car.

She drove for two hours and dumped my body in a deep, fast-moving river. I watched her drive away without looking back once. And suddenly I was consumed with a burning vengeful rage.

The rage carried me back into my already rotting body, wrapped in a trash bag, floating down the river. With ragged, dirty nails, I clawed my way out of the bag and fought my way to the muddy bank of the river.

I could feel myself in my body, but I wasn't breathing, my heart wasn't beating. I couldn't feel any of the pain that had been inflicted on me in life. I was walking around in a rotting corpse with a gnawing hunger in my dead gut, and I knew nothing would satisfy it but the flesh of the woman who had given birth to me.

With no blood flow to my brain, my body moved of its own accord, carried by the power of the anger burning in my unattached soul.

When I arrived on the doorstep of the house in which I'd spent nine years in agony and eventually died, my bare feet were muddy, leaves stuck the the drying grime. My clothes were torn and  ragged, I'd been wearing them for weeks before I died. My flesh was discolored from the decay.

My lifeless hand rang the bell. When she opened the door, I saw her face go from confusion to recognition to terror in the space of a breath, and I heard my ragged, breathless voice say “Hi, Mom.”

She denied my existence. Told me I couldn't be there as I walked forward, backing her into the house and closing the door behind us.

“Payback time, bitch.”

She tried begging. Pleading. Apologizing. It was too late. I had no sympathy for the woman who never had any for me.

And my hunger had to be satisfied.

She fell over as I continued walking towards her, and I leaned down and ran my fingers over her soft, plump body. She would make a fine meal. Revenge was a dish best served body temperature with a still beating heart.

I started with a finger. Bit it clean off and chewed on it; the bone crunched loudly, but not loudly enough to drown out her anguished screams of pain and terror as blood gushed from the place the digit used to be. Swallowing my first bite, I moved onto her middle finger.

Ten fingers and ten toes were a wonderful appetizer, and my hunger for more was consuming me. I wiped her blood from my chin and grinned as I listened to her scream apologies and curses and pleas and regrets.

The sound of her wailing was satisfying at first, but as I leaned down, deciding what my next course would be, the sound began to grate on me, and I needed to silence her.

I sank my teeth into the soft flesh of her throat and felt the rush of arterial blood enter my mouth. The screams turned to gurgles and then silenced entirely.

Not wanting my meal to grow cold, I quickly began to rip off piece after piece of her flesh, chewing and swallowing hastily, as my face and hands and clothes became saturated with the bitter, sticky essence of her ended life.

I saved the best for last. Once I'd satisfied my hunger for her flesh, I grabbed the first heavy object I could find, and used it to split her skull. A fresh wave of blood spilled out, oozing now instead of gushing and squirting. My dirty, rotting hands tore her cranium open and revealed the prize.

Her brain was the best meal I'd ever had, dead or alive.

Comments

Ron...why would I be mad at you? On the contrary, I was concerned you were mad at me. Ya know, for totally stealing your first-person zombie idea. My muse made me do it.

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Giraffe... We have some history. But history is, well, history.

But note this about me please. I don't care about points. I just don't.

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Ron. some of it was sarcasm and some was a pointer.  If you post your story as a 'response' to the initial challenge, it gets its own space and is noticeable.  If you post it as a 'comment' to somebody's story, it will just look like a ranting about their story.  Midnight pointed that out to me and I'm passing it on.

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It also gives people a place to comment on it. ;)

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Excellent retribution tale! Had me rivited, one of your best yet.

Answer 6

The cellar

Nothing could be quite so dark and dank than the cellar I found at 26 Elmhurst Ave.  Getting to the house was the easy part.  After Officer Perkins hit that panic button on his shirtsleeve the army of sirens and lights were on their way.  I arrived first and found Officer Perkins patrol car parked in front of a shack, well it probably used to be a modest two bedroom home, but now it had been pretty much reduced to rubble.  The front door was gaping open and I drew my Glock as I entered.  There wasn’t a sound except for a little shuffling it seemed.  Couldn’t quite figure out what that was so I proceeded.  A dim light either cast from the reflection of a window onto a wall or a small light bulb caught my attention on the other side of the room.  I made my way over.  Now I could hear a cacophony of noise as other police cars arrived.  I radioed out to them in a general broadcast to stand down and guard the perimeter.  Officer Perkins might have someone cornered and we wouldn’t want them to escape.  I never actually heard any voice transmissions from him, just the panic button alarm that every officer has attached to his radio strap.  One touch of that button and the cavalry is on its way.

I continued my slow easy movement to the source of the light.  A small doorway that led to a set of stairs was the path to the light.  I crept down the stairs constantly pointing my Glock at all points of interest as I made my way down the stairs.

Suddenly in the corner of the basement a flash of light as bright as a lightening bolt leapt from another open doorway.  I called out to Officer Perkins, but there was no answer.  I had to take a breath, okay, maybe two…

Sounds of muffled muttering came from inside the room.  Little blips of muted light sometimes in different colors cast shadows where shadows shouldn’t be.  

I took a deep breath and bolted for the opening where the brilliant light had come out.  Now there was nothing but darkness.  I could see nothing in front of my face.  I had taken one step too far I told myself.  With Glock in hand that made me a bit bolder than I should have been I shined my flashlight around.  In one corner of the room I instantly saw a sheer curtain and behind that curtain stood a man with an ax in his hands ready to strike.  I raised my gun and fired three shots until the ax wielder fell in a lump on the floor.

Other officers flooded in as they heard the gunfire.  They found me still holding a smoking gun and Officer Perkins dead…slumped on the hard concrete floor of the cellar.

Answer 7

Trapped in a cube…no larger than a thimble…imagine the horror of looking sideways at life through a shattered window making up the cube’s walls.  The framing of it being solid granite polished to a high sheen.  I may be small by your standards, but my mind is deep even behind this small space.  What little air I get only feeds the central part of my system…the brain...eyes…and heart.  The rest of me has atrophied to the point of putridness…sloshing along the slick glass floor which remains unbroken.  Sharp razor like shards of glass keep shedding from the walls of the cube ripping at my molten flesh.

My mind is decaying too.  Little flashes of brilliance followed by the shock of impending death.  I can get out, but you wouldn’t want me to.  I am already what comes in your dreams; when you wake up with a soaked bed sheet tears welling in the corner of your eyes.

I don’t mean to be hurtful.  What harm can a putrid runny mess of a creature living inside a small cube be?  There are more ways to skin a cat they say.

I prefer to act out in dreams.  You think it is your wild imagination, but I can tell you that it is very real.

Comments

Maybe the best idea in this thread. I'm not so certain about the execution (positive criticism) but a brillian idea. Bravo. This one deserved a little more time and little editing though. But I know exactly where these threads come from and how they can get mashed out onto the page.

But gems need to be mined, cut and polished. This is a gem. But...

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I'll take that as a semi-compliment Ron.  I think that the new ThinkWrite site is thriving and although it is in its infancy like babies it is growing at a rapid rate.   I find your reference to "positive criticism" quite interesting.  I, myself have tried to temper my harshness as sometime it did not translate onto the "page" quite as I had intended it to.  I still get my point accross without stabbing someone with a poisoned dart killing them and scaring them away from writing again.  We all are trying to grow with this new site.  I hope you will join us more often.

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I liked it from the start, but where you really won me over is saying "I can get out." Very well done. Yeah, sorry, I've got nothing bad to say. =P

Answer 8

Nothing is scarier than the real thing.  Giraffe has a good point.  It got me thinking…

When I was a small child, I can’t remember how old, but there were two things that I still remember as “scary” and they were real.  The first was my super sized imagination of the contents of one grave marker that my family and I used to drive by over and over again as it was dead center in the middle of wherever you needed to go. (We lived in a small town).  There was a dollhouse on top of a grave.  It had been there for a long, long time.  It would scare the crap out of me every time we drove by.  Eventually I faced my fears during my mom’s cemetery tour and we visited that grave.  I still can imagine that little girls face in the windows of that dollhouse, but at least I have seen how harmless it is up close and personal.  The second was when we lived outside the same small town in the “suburbs”.  It was probably the first development known to man in those parts where you had country paving streets and houses in a square formation with nothing but farms and corn fields for miles.  One night we were having a sleepover with a couple of our cousins.  We camped out in the living room on the floor.  I awoke in the middle of the night and thought I saw a figure in the large living room window.  It was more of a shadow of a figure.  I dismissed it and went back to sleep.  We found out in the morning that a neighbor had hung himself on the barbed wire fence not 50 yards from in front of our house.

When I was in college I was sitting in my dorm chair eating a bowl of cereal in front of the window.  It was an eight story building and I lived on the fourth floor.  As I sat chomping away I heard a bang…bang…bang and then screams.  I turned around and stood up just in time to see scaffolding flying past my window and watched one of the two men on the scaffolding get impaled on one of the broken pipe supports.  The other’s head exploded and I watched the blood pool grow bigger and bigger.

Now on to modern times and my current real world.  Most of you know that we have two boys with CF.  Alex spent his first 4months in the ICU and the doctors told us later that they didn’t think he was going to survive.  Even though CF is incurable and a terminal illness those 4 months were the scariest thing I ever faced in my life.  It altered me physically and mentally to this day and he is 3 years old and a ball of energy with a big smile!

Reality is the scariest thing we know.  I think our horror stories may just come from our own real horrors.

Answer 9

Your prize rests in your tightly clutched hand. Your one escape of this hell hole shit fest you call life, sitting there so breakable and precious in your palm. The bite of the tourniquet as it tightens on your arm warns of the upcoming pinch of the needle as it slips into your vein.

Colors start to whirl, a circus of lights sounds and feelings. Horses traipsing by with elephants riding atop, ballerina's with little cars inside them twirling around poles and through the air. Clowns danced atop their heads and lions and tigers danced in little tutu's before jumping at each other with snarling teeth and frightful claws. What kind of sick twisted circus was this? Where young girls squawked like birds and young men crawled on all fours like lost kittens? The colors assaulted your eyes and flew into your nose, choking and suffocating. The sounds wrap around your body pinning you to the spot. No matter how your arms strain you cannot break free. The ballerina's twirl on your head, the elephants crawl all over your body with the crazy clowns leaping out of their ears. Nothing would stop, you couldn't come down.

Outside, your body lay on the cold grimy ground of the alleyway you called home. Your heart doesn't beat, your chest doesn't move, and your body is soiled. You are trapped inside your mind, living the worst high you ever felt, forever.

Comments

I'm almost disappointed with this one, but the damn writers block hit me. I let the idea sit too long. :(

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I like this idea, and the imagery you used. I also like that you wrote it in second person, though that is a challenge, and can make it sound awkward at times. I can understand why you're disappointed. Not your best, but not bad. I like the last sentence, that really drives home the 'horror' of this story, though you could have gotten rid of one of the forevers.

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Thanks for the tips. :) At the end, I was debating whether to actually post it or not, but I fell in love with the idea the second I got it, but had to get to class. The idea sat too long and it rotted. :( Next time I'll have to write it on paper once I think of it! It was something little used to me, and I wanted to explore a bit. :) I like pushing out of my comfort zones.

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It does tend to look like you were trying to recreate an idea you had ruminating in your brain earlier.  I  think it might have been more powerful  if you had deleted the first two sentences and started with, "Your prize rests...".  You did tie it up nicely in the end and I think even there I would have gotten rid of the last "forever".  Editing, editing, editing a ThinkWrite tradition.  I'm a good one to talk.  A lot of times I just explode with an idea brewing and let it out.

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Not posting it would definitely be a mistake. Very well done. :)

Answer 10

The news came during practice.
"You're friends with Andrew?" I nod softly.
"Why, what's happened?" In my voice, you can hear the slight tremor of concern. No one says you know so and so like that without something bad to follow.
"He's been in an accident. His drivers side was smashed in, and he was flown to Mass General. Were you close?" Her voice was full of plastic concern.
"Yeah... Yeah we were."

He crashed. He hopped the curb and slammed into a tree. A few houses down from his own, and he crashed into a tree.

"What do you know?" My friend asks me. I tell her what I do.
"I know more, do you want to know?" I beg her for any information she can give me.
"He tore his aortic valve, and he's bleeding into his brain and spine. They've put him into a drug induced coma, so he doesn't feel it, but he's not stable enough for any of the surgeries he needs yet."
My heart pounds harder, and slower.
"Even if he does live, he'll most likely be paralyzed for life." I knew her information was reliable. She was close to him as well, and heard from his family.
We were family. All of us. We were all Players, our local acting troop. It was family enough for us. Now one of our brothers was lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life, and here we were powerless to help him. He was a great actor, one who taught me all I know, and now he may never set foot on stage again.
When graduation comes around, they will announce his name, and his hand may never shake that of the principals. It may be his parents accepting in his place.
So now he fights. Hovering between life and that long dark drop into death. And we are powerless to help.

That is true horror, and one that I now live. Every day.

Comments

Thank you. It is true, over the many many hours of rehearsal you do become a family.

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I guess I was being a bit harsh, but I did have trouble following the story.  Maybe because your true emotions were coming out on the page and there is nothing wrong with that.  I should never be the first to critique something written shotgun style from the mind.  Please keep us informed as to how your friend is doing and may you and your friends find comfort.

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No doug, please don't feel badly now that you know it's true. I appreciate the critiques for my writing. I put too many emotions into it. I believe it would probably work better as a short video. I'll work on a rewrite that will hopefully be better.
At this point he's still in critical condition and not stable enough for surgery, but we're all hoping and praying for the best. Thank you for your concern. I didn't mean to cause a sadness in this challenge. I'm sorry.

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You don't need a rewrite.  Move on to something else.  Another scary story would be great!

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How is your friend doing?