The End of the 100-Word Horror Story Challenge
[Lil art I made]
Phew! So we've come to the end of the exercise I embarked on from the 1st to the 31st of October.
To mark Halloween I wrote a 100-word story every day for the whole month. It was really quite the exercise.
And I just realized that after completing my book in 2021 I hadn't written any fiction until I started this challenge. I've written a great lot of nonfiction, though.
This was challenging and fun, and I wondered a lot of times whether I would be able to complete it because writing is not something a writer is always in the mood to do.
But I guess the writing being in short form helped.
Coming up with different plots was the tough part, but the most enjoyable part too, as a writer.
To get to 31 days, though, some days had to not be as good as the others. Some days I finish thinking yo, this is not one of my best ones. But I had to still present it because this was just an informal challenge and the most important thing was that I went through the exercise.
The exercise of just sitting down for a moment and being spontaneous, in the true spirit of #freewriting.
Now that the exercise is over I've gone through all of them and picked out the best ones. 20 made the cut. You can see all of them below in no particular order.
You can see all 31 here if you want 🙂. It would be great if someone found one or more of the stories I weeded out as good as these ones 😃.
Thanks to all who supported this exercise. The engagement on Hive is much but I got some readers from outside Hive too. And most of my writings are not just for the moment but for future use too, and Hive is just a good reason to write, and a good place to store your write-ups.
Cheers 🥂
Time Travel
But as the apple lay there, some mentally challenged homeless men came for it, and as they made away with it, the flung knife sliced Jack's toddler's throat.
He went back in time again and didn't go for the picnic entirely. But roaming the house, his toddler got electrocuted.
Last pill.
He flew his family from Boston to California. But the plane was one of the 9/11 planes.
Day 28
Bomb
The world was destroyed.
Zuckerberg and his family were the only Billionaires lucky enough to make it into the bunker in time.
Close shave!
As they lazied about in the comfort of their bunker, they talked.
"Yes, the bunker doesn't only provide shelter but also protection against invaders. There are weapons and all overhead."
"Did it ever cross our minds that a nuclear missile could destroy all the overhead protection we have in place?"
Brooding silence. Then boom!
The mob had broken in.
Day 26
Priestess
"Damn", John replied.
They were all lying naked, tired from the orgy, which was still going on.
"It reminds me of a story about a priestess bloodline. Some occultic stuff. The females were meant for the spirits and any man who fucks them dies. They were called Netjers".
"Netjer?" Tina screamed." That's what my late grandma used to call me when I was 3"
Tina and the female participants had a hard time walking out of the hall the next morning, due to all the male corpses.
Day 25
Designer
Wrong.
Corpses are still buried with treasure. Designer clothes.
All you have to do is find that class of people anytime before, after, or during their burial just like Justin does.
"Time for the big prize", Justin said rubbing his hands as soon as he succeeded in opening the day's grave.
He looked in from the legs, torch in hand. $5000 shoes, $16000 suit. Then he got to the face. The decaying corpse was smiling.
"I'm not going to go naked, Justin", it said.
Day 23
The Sentencing
You're injured, but you keep it moving. Painfully.
Then a bridge collapses on you and gets up again. You can only crawl now.
Then a skyscraper falls on you, gets up, leaves you. You're alone, half-dead, can't move.
That is what ants go through as they go about their businesses around humans who unintentionally step on them.
So I sentence you to become an ant roaming the hallway till your death."
The witch-judge pounded the gavel.
Day 19
Anything Worth Doing...Well.
Fatigue, however, was real and not just an excuse, so she injected energy compounds while at her lab.
But she was even drowsier afterward.
"This compound's getting weak", she said, observing a second dose. Only to find she had, by error, injected herself with sedatives and injected the giant lab rat with the energy shots!
Just then, the rat broke out of its glass cage, she was too sedated to fight.
Day 18
Laugh
The rule is workers shouldn't clearly eavesdrop on customers' conversations, so Chris planned to catch the attendant laughing to himself while customers converse, so he could be accused of eavesdropping.
Chris got extra-strong laughing gas, he wasn't going to leave the laughter to chance.
As he passed by, he stealthily sprayed some the attendant's way, but the cylinder fell out his jacket sending gas everywhere!
Everyone inside the diner laughed uncontrollably for hours. Half didn't survive.
Day 17
The Last Wish
His first wish wished away his cancer, and the second wish gave him more billions than Forbes knew about.
As the other 4 drowned he pulled out his lamp. He wanted the best possible use of his last wish in the situation. One couldn't get immortality and "get me out of here" was too easy.
So he went:
"Give me the ability to breathe underwater"
It was fun swimming around exploring. Until he awoke the bees of the sea. The undiscovered salt-water piranhas.
Day 15
Perfume Spray
"Yes. It completely changes your smell, you become a whole different person to the nose."
Jake laughed, paid the seller and sprayed the perfume all over his body and his wife's.
" Wow, this perfume still smells strongly all these hours later", she said as they walked out of their car inside their gated duplex at the end of that day.
Just then their Pitbull pounced on her with a vengeance, tearing her into pieces.
Jake interfered and got the same treatment.
The perfume had really made them different to the nose.
Day 14
The Tooth Fairy
Bullying was just for fun until one day he found out the truth about the Tooth Fairy. And from then it was no longer fun, it was now business.
"Thud!" His punch landed on Alex's mouth. Alex screamed.
Timmy was aiming for Alex's lose tooth. One punch didn't suffice, so he landed more and more, until the tooth fell off. He took it, leaving Alex crying out blood.
That year he left the tooth fairy 21 teeth and made 105$.
Day 13
Doug and 3 friends were going to stay in the hurricane's path, live in a bunker, and steal the valuables left behind.
After 7 days their bunker was filled with stuff worth millions.
"The storm was going to be minimal in the evening the next day", Luther, the friend paging them weather forecasts to inform their movements said.
They were happy and went out. While out the storm hit harder than ever. Luther had lied for the loot they'd bunkered.
Day 12
Post Anonymously
He'll simply post anonymously.
He typed, but immediately it was published he realized he hadn't clicked on the "post anonymously" option. He deleted it immediately, it hadn't been up for 2 seconds.
A week later he took the bus to college. The bus took a route that didn't lead to his school.
"That was a nice post you made", one passenger said.
Then Ibrahim realized every passenger had a turban on.
Day 11
The Prey Talks
Her boat wrecked deep in the Amazon, she'd been trekking for days, and the first people she's finding are fighting?
Her signs/gesticulations worked, and the men tried their best to communicate with her too. After many trials, she understood that they wanted her to chose between the two of them.
She smiled, and chose the youngest looking one. The older got sad and left. The younger one smashed her head with a club and carried her body off to the cooking pot.
They had just been cannibals fighting over prey.
Day 10
Diddy Freed
Diddy's alternative account messaged him and provided a location.
When he got to the location there were 21 other upcoming male artists who had been recruited the same way.
They all got gagged, and tied in a bent-over position. Then a 16-inch-wielding gay gorilla on viagra was unleashed to do the deed on them.
The alternative account wasn't Diddy's, but a psychopath FBI agent in charge of monitoring Diddy's DMs.
Day 8
Sniper
The AI system that took over the job of snipers had a bug and there was a need for a human shooter to take down the leader of an Islamic terrorist sect.
Boom!
The head of the leader was blown into smithereens!
Boom! The head of a random person in the crowd. Then another, and another.
McBride's job was done with the first head but he wasn't going to stop. Tears of joy rolled down his cheeks as he kept shooting. He had missed this.
Day 6
The Invisibility Suit
"Yes!"
He'd stolen a lot of money using this invisibility suit but this excitement was different.
He followed a huge-titted woman into a chamber. Soon as she got in she closed the lid and it held him in place painfully because half of his hand was still outside.
Then he realized, this was the woman on the poster. She filled the chamber with water and sat to practice her breath-hold.
Greg couldn't hold his breath as long as the pro.
Day 5
HYUNDAI
Oscar, an American, worked at a junkyard but was just finding this out to his amusement.
Then the thought hit him, he ran to the pieces of Honda cars they had sent through the shredding machine last week. Luckily they hadn't been moved.
He stood there, petrified!
There were grinded pieces of human flesh and bones in it. The British drug dealers he had tried to smuggle through the Canadian border by telling them to hide in any of the Hyundai.
Day 3
A Night of Fun
He was panic-stricken!
What should he do? He couldn't call the police because he could go to jail due to all the drugs and the circumstances. He also could not tell anyone.
So he took her body to the woods nearby and dug an extra deep grave, because there were a lot of dogs in the area.
The next day, in the afternoon, Holly woke up from the drug-induced blackout. It was impossible to dig herself out.
Day 2
Hammer Curl
Yeah, I pinned an old friend to the wall and aimed a hammer meant to scare him, not to hit him, but to hit the wall by the right side of his head, so I can laugh and he'll join me realizing I was just kidding.
He shifted his head to the side of the wall I was aiming at.
Day 1
Trump
Now he's relaunching The Art of the Deal.
At the book signing a skinny sickly pale green-eyed 5 year old boy walked to his desk. Trump grinned.
"I've only come to give you this piece of paper, it's about the two failed attempts on your life", the boy said.
"It's only the greatest presidents they try to kill, they've tried to kill me twice, so what does that tell you, eh?"
The boy, still expressionless, walked away.
Trump looked at the paper, it read:
"Third time's a charm"
The End
Hi there, my novella Professor Otagburuagu just got published. It promises to be thoroughly entertaining and intellectually stimulating. Written by myself and illustrated by Scandinavian artist @katharsisdrill. You can get it from me for just 4 HBD.
You can also order the hard copy from anywhere in the world via this link:
https://katharsisdrill.art/the-katharsisdrill-shop/professor-otagburuagu/
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