Two Sentence Horror Stories

A few days ago on a thread of The Writer's Group, a user named WhispersintheDark had posted a little writing game where it challenged anyone to write up a horror story by using only two sentences. I thought the challenge was interesting enough so I decided to throw my hat into the ring. Eventhough I have never attempted such a thing before, I thought it would be fun to try out. So below is what I created. I hope you the reader would enjoy.

Yes, officer, I did kill that man. But I don't recall who the guy in my basement is.

Do you like the stew? It's got some mom and dad in it.

Surviving the apocalypse where everyone dying isn't what scares me now. What does is that someone is knocking on my door.

My orchard grows strange fruit. They often smell and hang on ropes.

I've tuned in to a radio channel that plays some oldies. My friend turned to the same channel and told me it's just static.

My best friend had flown to Hawaii. The plane went down in the middle of the Pacific.

Last night the clock in my room was ticking loudly. Then I remembered I haven't put batteries in yet.

I used to pull pranks as a boy scout. One time I set a tent on fire with my whole troop in it.

I play an old violin in the symphony orchestra. Those human gut strings really make those high notes sing out.

I used to hear voices all the time. Those in the attic keep saying they want to go home.

We had a salesman at the door the other day. His name was Mr. Death.

I gave my husband a glass of wine... Now, which one was the poison?

As kids, dad punished us if we misbehaved. He has us buried alive in the backyard.

Comments

[Jlargent]

Let me see if I can come up with one:
I'm glad to donate blood every month. The hospital tells me that they've had a blood shortage lately.

[BurningSkies]

My neighbors have terrible taste in backyard aesthetics. They keep repainting their patio with this garish red paint that dries into a gross brownish crust.

My small business is doing great! Those absolute morons from the local crystal healing Facebook group seriously can't tell infant kneecaps from quartz somehow.

Inspired by an actual audio glitch I experienced during a lockdown online class:
Was online school good for my first grade daughter? The eldritch cacophony of her Google Meets classmates' voices doesn't think so.

[Trick Question]

To be a little blunt, I don't like most of these. The initial sentence in most of them makes the second one less surprising because it already sets up something disturbing (or in the case of "strange fruit", evokes the song immediately). You need to subvert reader expectations a little more than this if you want to cause fear.

I also think you need more of a narrative arc even if you're limited to two sentences, which is very difficult to do. You might want to check out nanofiction stories of various lengths online. Usually the story is limited to a certain number of words, as two sentences could go on for a very long time if you twist things—so you're also shortchanging yourself if you don't try for longer sentences here. But even with nanofics limited to the number of words you're using, it's still possible to improve a lot.

Sometimes you need a personal touch to feel true horror, and I think I can illustrate that for you. I'll address this tomorrow morning to provide an example of what I'm talking about, but at the moment I need to sleep because it's late and very dark right now in the crawlspace beneath your bed.

[ILikeFood]

I like these types of challenges too. If you have Reddit, there is a fairly active group dedicated to twosentencehorror. Certainly fun to read through.

[Herald of Opera]

5597119
Four months later...

EDIT: Also, the third one is a worse version of one of the genre's classics.

[CrackedInkWell]

5639715

The moral of this: when doing something for the fun of it - don't. Because in the end, you'll end up looking like an idiot.

[Trick Question]

5639715
Don't worry. I'm still there.

[Trick Question]

5639724
That is a bad moral. There's nothing wrong with imperfection! It's how we learn and there is no shame in trying. Giving up before you start because you worry about how you'll look is the only real failure.

I don't remember who, maybe C. S. Lewis, said: "When I became an adult I put aside childish things, such as the need to be seen as an adult."

[Herald of Opera]

5639762
Here's the full context:

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

– C.S. Lewis "On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952); in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1967)