Snippet: Youth-level Horror Story

Prompt: Write the first few paragraphs of a horror story for young adults.

Have you ever had that feeling like someone was walking behind you, watching you? Usually it’s when you’re alone in the dark in a hallway with lots of open, dark doors, or a street you don’t know when the power’s not quite right and the streetlights are flickering like they’re blinking back tears. You slow down and speed up and no matter what you do, you can hear their footsteps matching yours beat for beat, and every time you try to glance them when you pass a window or mirror, all you see is the wall behind you. You know there can’t be anyone there- it’s totally illogical and massively improbable, but you also know what you feel, and at that moment it seems like you’ve never been more aware of anything in your whole, entire life.

That’s kind of how it feels to be me, except not only in the dark and scary places. For me, it’s also in the hallway at school or the mall or the grocery store or the movies. No matter where I’m going, it always feels like I’m being followed by something I can’t see, that’s always gone whenever I turn around to look at it. For me, all those paranoid little feelings you get when you’re walking alone and you’re scared, the ones you don’t let yourself think about, the ones that seem silly when you’re back safe in bed or have the front door safely latched against your back - all of those feelings you say aren’t real? Well, maybe they aren’t for you.

Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones.

An Allegory for Falling Out of Love

One day we woke up, and there were no secrets anymore.

It wasn’t that they disappeared; the old secrets were still around, and, ghost-like, we could still hear them whispering behind our ears and see them flitting at the corners of our vision, but we found ourselves unable to create new ones. It was sudden and jarring, and it made both of us feel uneasy for the whole day. Maybe tomorrow will be different, we said. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have new secrets
again.

But then tomorrow became yesterday and the day before yesterday and last week and two months ago and longer and longer ago, and the secrets never came back. The old secrets, like lovers whose hearts were discarded before their bodies, still trailed their tendrils over our arms and rested their cheeks against our shoulder blades and begged us not to tire of them, but it was no use. Their breath was stale on our skin; their hands were ice against our cheeks; their kisses belonged to corpses. We hated them for staying, even though we knew there was nothing else to take their place.

And then one day, even the old secrets were gone. Now all we’re left with is the heartless stone-and-metal cell of truth, and we’ve finally realized that even if the secrets were old and boring and stale, they were our secrets. And now we realize that all we have is nothing, because what are we without our secrets?

Snippet: Cain and

Snippets are pieces of writing, some of which have corresponding stories behind them but most of which are one-shots of a few paragraphs or less, which popped into my head basically exactly as they are displayed here. They cover or fill basically every writable surface of my life - Moleskins, napkins, the backs of receipts - and some of them which I find long enough, formed enough, or just interesting enough will make it here.

Cain and

Abel's eyes were red and his hair smelled sour and his manner was vacant. Cain felt the rage swell in his chest as it so often did when he saw his brother, the eternal fuck-up but still somehow their parents' golden boy. He bit his tongue to dull the anger.

He'd been biting his tongue every day, some days once or twice but usually almost constantly, for longer than his memory served him. At night when he couldn't sleep, he'd run the scales of scabs around the inside of his mouth and wait for the outburst he couldn't bite away.

Sometimes you have to start anew.

"Cut off the dead leaves so new growth can flourish come springtime."

I was raised by gardeners; sayings like these are mantras that nestle deep into the subconscious realms of my memory, safe and familiar, always there when I need them. I know them well. There's nothing that bogs down a tree or a rosebush or a vegetable patch more than carrying dead weight, dragging themselves as if through sludge with a corpse still attached. It drains the new growth, having to support all that decomposing matter. It's still part of the plant, after all. It still diverts energies that should be nurtured elsewhere. There's nothing beautiful about dead weight.

There's been a lot of dead weight in my life lately. Many aspects of my life needs pruning, removing the old to make room for the new. I'm at a perfect stage in my life for it, too. Soon things will be changing, gloriously changing, and everything will be new and strange and different - but not yet, and I've never been good with suspense. Something's gotta give, something's gotta change, and something's gotta replace all the old, bedraggled nastiness I've been carrying around with me for so long. If those changes aren't going to be major, they need, need, need to be minor. They need to be something. Otherwise, I'm not sure how much longer I can wait.

So I suppose that's what this is: an attempt at pruning. A taking up of shears and a donning of gloves, in the hopes of removing all that anger, frustration, and sadness I've had weighing me down for so many years. Maybe this is what I need; or maybe this is where it'll stay. Maybe I'll give up. Maybe it won't work out - ah, but what if it does? A new life, a new release, a new me to present to the world - maybe that's all I needed all along.