Horror drabbles
Many of you may not know of drabbles. No, not those cute, furry little creatures from Star Trek—those are tribbles. A drabble is a form of fiction consisting of exactly 100 words. No, not 100 chapters nor paragraphs nor even lines. 100 words. Exactly. Needless to say, such stories are a very hard sell to publishers.
Even among authors, drabbles seem to be the “black sheep” of fiction as I’m aware of very few writers who, if I may be excused the pun, “dabble in drabbles.” And understandably so. It’s difficult. And yet, drabbles are where I feel most at home. Drabbles come far easier to me than allowing me the luxury of thousands of words to tell a story.And when it comes to fiction genres, horror is my other “home.” And so, collected here, you’ll find a good number of my 100-word “children of the night.” Along with three additional stories where I allowed myself to splurge and go wild with close to 200 and even 300 words!
Read a few drabbles
Axe to Grind
The little girl played with her dolls in the serenity of the
barn.
The girl was never quite happy with the appearance of her
dolls, believing that the face of one was better suited upon the body of
another. And so, she would lop off heads and place elsewhere accordingly. She
held up her latest acquisition.
“Lizzie!” came a shout from the house.
The hated stepmother. “Someday…” the girl began, but left
the thought unfinished, instead bringing the axe down upon the doll’s neck,
sending its head spiraling.
“Coming, Mrs. Borden,” the girl muttered icily as she left
the barn…
A Single Teardrop
So this is how it ends, he bitterly thought, peering out
from the penthouse balcony. One nation’s tactical error and a bomb drops,
followed by retaliation after retaliation after …. “You fucking assholes!” he
screamed into the still air.
He gripped tighter onto the balcony railing. He was
grateful, at least, for his wife spared this final moment—being fitfully
asleep, unaware of having been slipped a sleeping draught.
There it is, he cried! He could see the shock wave! Like a
hundred-foot-high shimmering and translucent tidal wave it barreled,
annihilating all in its path.
A single teardrop fell before…
Look Up
The Wicked Witch of the East looked upon the groveling
Munchkins with contempt. The Witch would be rid of them completely if she
didn’t need them for the one thing she herself could not produce.
“24 hours to fill this with gold coins,” she bellowed,
holding up an empty pot. “Or else!”
“24 hours?” stuttered a terrified Munchkin. “We can’t…”
“24 hours!”
To the Witch’s surprise, the Munchkins, instead of remaining
cowered, instead turned incredulous eyes to the sky above.
Despite being a cloudless day, the Witch found herself
suddenly cast in a large shadow. She, too, looked up.
“Crap.”