Ten Extremely Short Stories

1. The Twisted Farmer

When I was younger my town became decently known for the legend of a serial killer who kidnapped children. I can now say that with extensive research, the following is true. It was said that he would take the children back to his shack-like farmhouse and turn the children into… scarecrows, which he would display all over his “property”. It was said that some hikers discovered his abode, immediately informing the town once they inspected and realized the scarecrows were constructed from the remains of human children. Exactly one hour later our local police stormed the man’s shack. Seeing someone with a knife, hiding inside, the police kicked in the door and shot on sight. They witnessed a body drop and when the cops came inside they found no one. Just a scarecrow that, strangely enough, matched the description of the kidnapper. The man himself was never captured, and some believe him to still be at large. I think they stopped him without even knowing it.

2. The Borne Mistake

My family is dead. Everyone, except for me and my twin brother. He resides in the attic, as he always has, since birth. Mother, father and sister would dare not look upon him, for brother, they said, was hideous. Up many flights of stairs there is a golden key, rusting, on a tray, on a table aside from the attic door. I haven’t climbed those stairs in years. I only saw the inside of the attic once. The room was all black, with covered windows and a symbol on the door. I don’t know what the symbol meant, but my father said it kept us safe. He says my brother is ugly, but my brother tells me otherwise. At night I used to sneak up and talk to my brother through the door. He told me he could hurt mother, father and sister’s minds, so they kept him locked away. I always listened to mother and father, from the second they brought my brother home from the hospital. But the other day I almost opened the attic. Mother and father were so angry, they hit me. It hurt bad, but brother said he could make them apologies. So, that very next night, I grabbed the key and let brother out. Now mother, father and sister are dead and brother is nowhere to be found. There’s a man knocking on the door, saying he’s from the police department. I hope he can help me find brother. I hope he believes me.

3. The Eldritch Cauldron

Deep within the belly of my aunt's New England estate, there lingered a cauldron, black as pitch; And it took up a corner at the far end of the cellar, looking ever so morbid in it's fine stillness. My aunt was old and I spent these past few years of my life aiding her. Since my own parents had passed a few years back, and all my siblings had cut ties with the family, over money-reasons, I felt I couldn't let my dear auntie wither away, alone and forgot. She was family, and deserved so much better than that. But that cauldron… Oh, how the sight of it twisted my guts and turned my stomach. Once every Friday I would have to venture down to the cellar to fetch that evening diner's wine. Once every Friday I retrieved that wine, but at the cost of a fright. Once every Friday I hear things come from within the cauldron. Voices and mumbles echoed from out of it, and as I put out the lantern on the wall, I raced up the stairs and slammed the basement door behind me; Once every Friday. I had kept forgetting that the cauldron held the souls of those who'd wronged my aunt; Believing her witchcraft to be a curse. It was that xenophobia which got my parent's killed, but not my aunt. She struck back at those hunters, imprisoning them in the cauldron. I always forget. Why do I always forget?

4. The Father Figure

My father’s footsteps ringing distant from the hall was my lullaby when I was younger. In the dead of night, when my back was turned to the door, I would hear the familiar padding of his white and gray socks colliding with the hardwood floor outside my bedroom. The door would open, and a thin cascade of golden light streaming from where he’d come would land across my bed. The sound of his steps would become softer now, muffled by the plush white carpeting settled along the ground. And upon my forehead, his hand would gently push my bangs away, and his cold lips would press tenderly to my skin. He had always had poor circulation, and in the hot summer evenings I spent holed up in my covers, it was rather nice to have his soft skin on mine, cold and forgiving. At times, I would turn my head to face him. My sleepy gaze would meet his, and in the darkness, his pearl teeth would shine in a warm smile. And I would smile in return. It was always a silent exchange when I awoke to one of his visits, usually ended by a wave of my hand and the fading of his loving grin. I couldn’t understand why, at fourteen years old, his nightly visits ceased. Upon asking my mother about this, she turned to me, gaze softened and lips parted just enough to emit tender words. “Well,” she stated softly, “As you get older… you see ghosts less and less.”

5. The Plummeting Hope

I am falling. I have been falling for… oh, I don’t even know how long anymore. A few million years? It doesn’t even matter. Time is meaningless in the infinity. There’s really not much of a story to tell here. I was just sitting at home, there was a pain in my chest, and suddenly I was falling. At first I just started screaming, and waited for my skull to shatter on the ground, followed by my back and the rest of me. But it didn’t happen. It was a few days later when I finally realized this might not be ending any time soon. I didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t do anything right. I didn’t do anything! And yet I am falling. I can see nothing but the empty blackness of whatever I am falling down to. I can hear nothing but the air whizzing past my ears as I plummet deeper. I suppose there must be air down here. Wherever “here” is. I can smell nothing except my decaying and withered body, rotting as time passes. I can feel my skin, fractured and broken, some parts of me worn away into nothingness by the fall. I’ve gotten used to the pain. It’s more interesting than the eternity of nothing I feel. Screaming? I gave that up after a century or two. No point. Not that there’s much else to do. Maybe I’ll die one day. Whatever awaits me has to be better than this. Really, the only thing that actually scares me at this point is that I’m already dead, and that this fall will never end.

6. The Dead Reborn

It started on a Friday night in October. The dead would climb out of their coffins and walk the cemetery. Once the dawn would come they would wander back to their crypts and holes in the ground, returning to rest. But every Friday since then, and without hesitation or notice from the town beyond the gates of this lot, the dead were given new life and returned when the day was upon them. They did little or nothing to me. For the dead were not vicious. I needed not take a revolver to their heads or a shovel to their throats, like those people do in the old stories. The dead had no quarrel with the living, and though they rejoiced with the gift to once again walk the earth, they would not leave the grounds of the cemetery. Why? It was almost like some force was keeping them here. Almost as though if they were to leave they would cease to be. Then I finally released something. A week prior to the dead’s weekly rising, a nobleman wearing a distinctly gothic red amulet on his necklace was buried here. I’ve taken the amulet from his corpse and hid it across town, just to see if the dead will rise again this Friday night. Then again, it was probably a bad idea to hid the mystical thing in town. Who knows how many bodies are buried back there, especially since the town was built over the lasts settlement’s graveyard.

7. The Vatican Archive

Speaking with Father Jon, one of the overseers of the Vatican Archive, he has entrusted with with information as to a most bizarre series of “facts” which have gone documented by the church. I breath not a word of these facts to anyone, for the mere fruition of this knowledge could throw our world into chaos. I speak only to the few who will take this knowledge and understand that things must be this way. Angels are not of this world. By this I do not mean they are from a realm of paradise, but rather another planet or dimension. They are humanoids with beautiful features, winged, though they are able to defy gravity. They have come to control us, for our benefit. their brother race, those which we know as demons, plan to kill and eat our inner energies. We are at the middle of a tug-a-war between supreme entities, with sciences eons more complex to our own. We are ants in the eyes of these beastly entities from those places in-between time. There is no god. Only a chain of ancient energies and monstrous giants haunt the never-ending stars. And even they fear that which surpasses them. The Vatican Archive holds these accounts. The aliens which visit us and those who work with them to mold the human race. The Vatican knows, the world government knowns and yet no one must ever know.

8. The Framed Horror (Original Concept By Theodore J. Romanowski)

He passed by a picture of the very hall that came before him and within the picture was a wooden chair. He walked down the hall and positioned himself to where he just barely saw into the upstairs bathroom. There sat a black cat with big red eyes. Their eyes connected for a moment before the cat payed him no mind and raced in-between his legs. By the time he turned around to see the cat it was gone. He blinked twice and there, again, appeared the cat, sitting beside a wooden chair that hadn’t been there before. As he walked back down the hall and over to the chair he noticed the painting from before. The chair had vanished, and in it’s place there stood a clown with a sledgehammer. Startled by the changed image, he walked over to the chair and sat down for a moment. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again everything was tinted acrylic. He got up from his seat and walked back down that same hall for the third time now. He looked at the painting and realized that it appeared more realistic. He blinked twice more and within the prelatic painting he saw the clown, again with the sledgehammer, the cat and a broken wooden chair by his side. He looked around to see the hall resembled the painting even more, finally realizing where he was. Now, if you go to the old house you may see him framed up on the wall. Trapped in that painting with the broken wooden chair and no way back.

9. The Unseen Trucker

They say that on this old road, there’s a driver that passes this speed limit sign every night, around six. He drives a big truck, and from what people say, he has a very white complexion. It’s said that if you flash your high beams as he passes you, well, let’s just say, thinks don’t work out for you or your brakes. Where the man’s truck appears and disappears is uncertain. Some have even described being on the road and having truck pass right through them, as if it’s an illusion. They say he a ghost. But, hey; smoke and mirrors, tampering with traveler’s cars when they stop into my station; How the hell else is a man supposed to keep an urban legend up and running? God knows, it’s the only thing driving people into this down. And man, could we use the money from those hikers we kidnap.

10. The Cannibal Cafe’ (Original Concept Paragraph For ‘The Manhattan Cannibal Case’ Short Story)

I have found the cafe’! Hidden away beneath these underground caverns within the sewers of Manhattan. Investigating this string of disappearances for three years now, I never believed I’d actually find the source. As well as I can figure it, the cooks and such kidnap people during the night, kill them and cook them up down here. One of the most startling things, I must say, is the revenue this place makes. So many people eating people! There are menus that display whole limbs, heads and torsos. This place must have about two-hundred customers on a constant basis. I never order anything. I just hang around behind the scenes and no one seems to notice. It’s a hive of cannibals that serves coffee and offers musical entertainment. Like a flesh-serving fast food joint that’s the size of a small parking lot. After tonight I’ll take the existence of this place to the local authorities and head a raid down here to put an end to this cannibal cafe’ once and for all. Though, something still shakes me. I’ve been noticing something strange. Before they eat, the customers pull the flesh around their mouth’s back, almost like a mask. And underneath it lies reptilian skin with a giant mouth of jagged sharp teeth. These patrons aren’t human!