“No time,” Charlie gasps. “I’m sorry.” and then the clawed arms shatter the window and plunge through his abdomen. Gore spraying from his wounds, he squeals, “Run baby!” and throws me his keys.
___________________________________________
Trifextra this week chose a challenge posed by community member MOV from Word Cut. She asks us to: “Write a horror story in 33 words, without the words blood, scream, died, death, knife, gun, or kill. Good luck.”
|
Jessie Powell is the Jester Queen. She likes to tell you about her dog, her kids, her fiction, and her blog, but not necessarily in that order. |
Makes my heart race! You really killed this. Pun both intended and unintended.
Haha! I think that for me, as soon as the words were prohibited, I wanted to include them without saying them. I had this problem with the love story one, too, but had to shut down my ODD for that one. This one, the ODD response won.
Another winner?
🙂 Sweet of you to think so, anyhow 🙂
Sounds like it's part of something bigger. Yes?
The idiots went out looking for a Sasquatch. They found one alright, but they didn't know. Charlie went out back to get firewood for their nice little rustic cabin, and came pelting back in trying to say what went wrong and then ….
Excellent! I read the instructions first, and was doubly impressed by the way you smithed this.
Thanks, Andra. I didn't want any psychological horror. Stephen King argues there are three levels of horror. I've forgotten the other two. But the gross out, the most basic is his primary level, and that's where I was going for.
The panic pace is certainly included in this brief interlude with the outerlopers 😉
And 'brief' is definitely the case. Unless this narrator has the sense to jump out the window behind her and bolt for the truck, she's going to be as messy as her beau.
Awesome! Very well written, as always, Jessie! I was still trying to figure out what the "clawed arms" were from (zombies? lol) but then read through the comments. Whatever, heh… Charlie is a hero in my book! 😉
And actually, I decided it didn't really matter what they were from – that's just where the story was when I cut it down to the moment of action. The overall point is that Charlie is trying to warn this other unnamed character, but gets killed first. He's already got his keys out, because he only ran in to tell her to 'come on', so he's got that last arm jerk in him to throw the keys to her and hand her a chance. A single chance, and I have a feeling she's about to blow it.
I used to like camping…not so sure now 🙂
Heh. Never been a fan myself. I remember throwing out our tent after our daughter was born. My sorrowful husband said, "So you mean you never want to go camping with me again?" I said, "Not until she is big enough to swim herself. And this thing will dry rot before then."
what a way to go!
Glorg. Splat.
How do you do that?! I'm always waffling. 🙂
So, I fear, is our heroine above..
I'm most intrigued by the keys at the end. Don't look at the gore, and run for your life!
Exactly. Only I fear that our character will be unable to move, frozen by the impossible sight of the gore.
gripping and realistic.
you killed this
Yeah. Only Charlie wasn't too pleased with me.
Wow! Very scary! Well done!
Thanks! I'm hoping she'll live to lead people back to the cabin and get accused of the crime herself. Poor thing.
Thanks so much for linking up with Trifecta this week. Hope to see you back on Monday (10 am Eastern) for the new prompt and some exciting news about the changes Trifecta is making to spread the word about our writing community.
Hop over and visit trifecta’s recent post Trifextra: Week Ten
Can’t wait to see what’s coming next!! You are totally gluttons if you want to read MORE than 90 entries!
Nice – there aren’t a lot of straight-up gory horror in the entries this week. It was nice to read yours! I love the unresolved nature of it, and the phrasing works really well.
Hop over and visit Christine’s recent post Eyes
That was a really fun read Jester Q. My favorite part was the way she jumped up over the counter and took off so she wouldn’t miss he brother on the mound.
Nice work!
Hop over and visit k~’s recent post Bugging Bella
All that tension, that “I’m missing something” just boiled over!