Happy Halloween! Yes, it’s August 7, but we have to start now! Welcome to the Every Writer Halloween 50 Word Scary Story Contest. I know we just ended our other 50 Word Summer contest, but we have to get this one started now. It’s our big contest. It’s the big show. The contest to end all contest! You already know the ground rules. Our writers always seem to have fun doing these, and this is the one that started it all! We are looking for the scariest of the scary this time. We want your best possible stories please.
I know Halloween is a little ways away, but we have to have material to publish in our October 1st print issue of Every Writer. It’ll be our big Halloween issue. That’s why we are starting early. Here are our requirements:
Stories:
- Must be scary
- Must be 50 words or under
- Must be a complete story
- Have to be in before our deadline.
- Deadline is October 29, 2017
- Enter as many stories as you like!
- Post your story in the comments below.
What you win:
- Publication in our print magazine (will not be the Halloween issue, see below).
- 1st Place wins 1000$ in ads on our site
- 2nd Place wins $500 in ads
- 3rd Place wins $250 in ads
- Also, if we like your story we may pull it off our list, contact you, and publish it our Halloween issue.
I have to explain. We will not know the winners of this contest until October 29, and our Halloween issue will publish October 1, so the winners can’t be announced in that issue. They will be in our January issue, BUT if we see ANY stories on this contest thread that we like, we will simply ask you to publish them in our Oct issue, before the first. Those people may be winners, they may not be, but we are looking for 50 word scary stories to publish. In our last print issue we published 15 50 word stories. October promises to be a bigger issue, so we will need as many 50 word stories as we can get.
What I’m saying is, win or no, you have a chance of being published in our Halloween print issue, if you post a 50 word SCARY story below.
Last contest was awesome, and we have some of those stories already going into our print issue. Please creep us out. Scare us!
We will announce and post the winners on October 30th! We will do a movie and a chat, as always. We will watch something scary and fun and do all of that, which people really like, when they show up for it. Post your stories:
If you want to be in our latest contest, please visit: Our 2021 contest!
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The Next Bride
The scent of anticipation and cheap perfume fill the air as she throws her flowers. Women dive, grasping at petals. Press on nails and fake eyelashes litter the floor. A bridesmaid tears the heel off her shoe and stabs blindly. She picks up the bouquet from the bloody pile.
I looked at her; blood soaked. She was never a nice girl. That’s why I did it. Her best friend, Ray Stevens, was behind me; pointing a gun at my head. Then, it happened. All alone in the middle of the street, I lie.
The Witness
When my cat ran from me, I knew she had witnessed my death. I caught her and peered into her frightened, dilated eyes, into that other world. My final moments played like a movie. A bearded man. A knife. My bedroom. Blood. She hissed, ran away, and hid. He’s here.
Title: ECLIPSE SLIP
She sliced the still-beating man’s heart free. She’d saved them all. She held the heart aloft, waiting for the moon-darkened sun to return.
Time passed. No hint of sunlight ever-widening.
She shivered. “Why?” she whispered.
“Misinformed fool,” the dark whispered back. “A sacrifice keeps the light away. Forever.”
Title: ONCE UPON A TIME
“Remember what you said, once upon a time?” Son asked.
Mother waved her razor-sliced hand. “No.”
Son pressed the knife to her neck. “I’d kill you and Dad.”
Mother gazed at slashed-open-necked Father. “Five minutes ago.”
“Once upon a time can be five minutes ago,” Son said.
And slashed.
Title: ONE FINGER, TWO FINGER, THREE
Slice, crack, blood spurt, her little finger cut free.
“One finger,” he says.
“No, stop,” she pleads.
Then, “two finger.”
“Stop.”
“Three finger.”
She wails.
“Done,” he says when he reaches all eight digits.
“You forgot my thumbs,” she says.
She smiles.
I enjoy hearing the crunching of the leaves underfoot as I stroll down the sidewalk. The crunching soothes me while I work. The sun shining through the trees illuminates the secret path where leaves no longer make a sound but the littered bones crunch all the way to my doorstep.
Strangers
—
Knock Knock
It was a frightening noise when you are home alone; when your parents tell you never to open the door for a stranger.
Knock Knock
You look out the peephole in fear, but nothing is there.
Knock Knock
You try to escape, but it is too late.
title: Staged
The room was immaculate. Every pillow in place, a new lamp (the last one broke in a fight) and a recently vacuumed rug. The air smelled of tropical febreze, covering the scent of Clorox bleach. The only evidence left of the heinous misdeed was currently burning away in the fireplace.
Title: xSigned The Last Human from Earth
Beautiful were stars in the black dusted galaxy
Below and above the same
To left I saw my spaceship of every human framed
They couldn’t escape me
They didn’t want to believe
Until they gasped in space but realized they could not breathe
But I proved the earth was round
Title- Needles don’t negotiate- The Venom within
Fiercely, her fingers fumbled.
Her arm was an unfolded map.
Her veins, all back alleys.
Then it appeared.
Pulsating, a rare shade of lavender.
Unable to appreciate the little bit of life that still remained,
she negotiated, with the syringe in her hand,
“Just One last time.”
– And It was.
Title: All to myself.
Maggots furl in the corner of your mouth.
Today, marks the 7th day since you took your last breath.
I’m worried about the permeating stench of your flesh.
It’s a smell I could get used to.
Tomorrow marks the 8th day since I took your last breath from you.
I entered the hotel room to find
a pale woman.
Her smile took up half her face, giving her a rather constipated look.
I told her she must have been mistaken with the room, but she giggled ” darling if only I had listened 63 years ago on this very night.”
Title: Poster Child
She’s staring at me. I meet her frightened gaze, challenging her. Shaking herself from her stupor, she tapes something onto the wall and flees. Curious, I move closer to see it was a missing poster. Now I understood her horrified expression, because the picture of the missing person was me.
Title: Joker
“I see you”, her brother whispered in the dark.
He sat at his desk with only the lamp. The girl strolled to him with a smile and touched his shoulder. He turned around, the dark sockets where his eyes should be leering back.
“Kidding”, it touched her shoulder.
Title: The Grim Reaper’s Friend
the best of us sit at their desks and enter bits of data
The highest of us lie to the masses and hide
But I am mid ground.
I have accepted my place on this earth and answered my calling.
I dragged her body to the living room to admire.
Title: The Grim Reaper’s Friend
The best of us sit at our desks and enter bits of data.
The highest of us lie to the masses and hide.
But I am mid ground. I have accepted my place on this earth and answered my calling.
I dragged the corpse to the living room to admire.
Title: HOT BATH
“Turn up the water heater.”
“Costs too much.”
“Do it! I love hot baths.”
“And hate me.”
While she lay in her bath, he complied. He turned up the hot water. Way up. She screamed once.
When she came to him, boiled skin sloughing off, he asked, “Hot enough?”
Dishwasher
She heard knocking coming from the kitchen and went to investigate. The slow knock, knock, knock was coming from inside the dishwasher. Thinking it was a dish that needed to be shifted, she opened it. Once cracked, arms reached out and pulled her in quickly closing her inside forever.
Leaky Faucet, Middle of the Night
Imagine the quietest moment, three o’clock in flickering light surrounded by white porcelain set in 1899. Any word would echo coldly. There, a tiny pile of bright red finger nails on the sink. See her gauzy face behind you? Mascara running? Hear the blade bouncing off those little hex tiles?
Creeper
Jenny was ready to go relax and enjoy a good movie after a long day at work. When jenny finally came home, went straight to her room. When finally comfortable jenny got a message from someone named Kree per asking “can i watch too?”.
Oops.
In the dark someone whispers. “You know me more than I know myself.” Three people laugh. Silence. Then, “You saved me that day, yanked me off my bridge.” Non-verbals. A throat clear. And a small voice. “You would have been inconvenient, otherwise…” it trails, adding, “I didn’t mean it.”
OK, one more. (This is like eating popcorn.)
Ghost Town
Ghost towns remind me of Manson girls. Starting out so sure and earnest and then, in a blink, off into the shit. You shouldn’t think of these towns as summery, but cold and windy, neither winter nor spring. Doors flopping open and closed, knocking out, what-the-hell-what-the-hell in shipwreck Morse code.
Opioid Constipation
My stomach is distended, and I’m immobilized and
lying on the floor.
You only come in when it’s time to force feed me narcotics,
and chocolate cake.
My mouth is bruised,
from your fingers, squeezing my cheeks, and forcing the decadent dessert, down my throat.
My intestines burst.
THE TOOTH FAIRY
The straps were tight as her stomach. Bright lights blinded her, tools clinked, work began. One by one he hammered and yanked. No screaming today; she choked on her blood falling in and out of consciousness. “Tooth fairy, tooth fairy,” he hummed. Her eyes wide – silence.
How do you know who won?
Winners are here: https://www.everywritersresource.com/50-word-horror-contest-winners-from-2017/ Sorry, I should have linked sooner.
Thank You 🙂
Where were the winners announced?
YOUR SILENT FACE
Legs dangling, my arm drapes over your silence; the black water begins to flicker and glow. Finally, the florescent serpents of white light cloak my naked legs. They pull-I pull- I sink into the brine and hold your bloodless flesh tight against my chest. I am light.
uh oh
You had a great night sleep last night in your bed and then you woke walked around and realized you are in a different house.
Psychology
Remember all you know for a fact is that you are real but what about everything else you have no idea you could just be in a paded room and nobody knows were you are or even worse you could already be dead and life is just your brain clashing you life in front of your eyes
“Dinnertime!” I heard my mom call. I eagerly walked down the stairs. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I walked past my mom’s bedroom. Suddenly, I was pulled inside the room. I saw my mother’s terrified eyes. “Mom?”
“Don’t go out there, I heard it too.” She whispered.
https://www.everywritersresource.com/2021-50-word-horror-story-contest-only-for-the-glory/
Grandfather
Outside a fierce wind blows as the temperature plummets in the rickety house. Grandpa sits in his unsteady rocking chair as Claire lovingly wraps a blanket around his scrawny shoulders.
Sipping a cup of coffee, Claire turns to her grandfather and says, “tell me again Grandpa, how did you die?”
I like these. Do you want to post them in THIS years contest? https://www.everywritersresource.com/2021-50-word-horror-story-contest-only-for-the-glory/ Feel free.
It’s pouring rain, I’m sitting at home watching tv and eating M&Ms. My mom’s working late tonight. I have the house to myself. I hear a knock. I walk to the door. I notice that the rain stopped… it’s been transformed into an eerie fog. There’s no-one here… HEELP!!!
The Tall Man by Grady Allen
He was there. Standing in my doorway every night. Just watching me. I don’t know how he got there, or why he was there. But he was. I could hear his staggered breathing. He sounded of death, and smelled of rot. At morning he would disappear back to our basement.
They didn’t know. 11:00 pm, and dark. Far from light. They shouldn’t have been there, they should have known. Impossible to see but he didn’t need to, he knew they were there, and he didn’t like them. He decided. They didn’t know. Oh god they didn’t know. Gone.