100 Word Horrors: An Anthology of Horror Drabbles
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100 Word Horrors
Presented by
Kevin J. Kennedy
100 Word Horrors © 2018 Kevin J. Kennedy
Compiled by Kevin J. Kennedy
Edited by Brandy Yassa
Cover design by Michael Bray
Each story in this book has been published with the authors’ permission. They are all copyrighted by the author. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
First Printing, 2018
Acknowledgements
I would firstly like to thank Brandy Yassa. Brandy is the editor of everything published by KJK Publishing and without her I would probably still be spending most of my time sending stories into other peoples books, rather than putting them together. She does an amazing job and is a pleasure to work with. We have worked on four anthologies together and one novella, so far, and I can only hope that we will work on many more projects in the years to come.
I’d also like to thank every author that has worked with me so far. I’m very early in my career and it means a lot to me that authors trust me with their work. I only hope that I can continue to publish books that make the authors proud to be a part of what I’m doing.
Thanks to Michael Bray for an amazing cover and Ronald Malfi, for providing the cover blurb.
Thanks to my mother and father for everything.
Most importantly, thanks to everyone who has picked up a copy of the book. Without you, none of us would be doing this. Writing stories is a pointless endeavour if no one reads them. You give us the opportunity to try and be who we want to be, and for that I can’t thank you enough.
Kevin J. Kennedy
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Foreword
The Dead Thing
Lisa Morton
Hide and Seek
Matthew Brockmeyer
They Came for Me
Glenn Rolfe
Lunchtime
Andrew Lennon
Strength in the Blood
A.J. Brown
It is Just Local Gossip
Norbert Gora
Just A Game
Christopher Motz
Firing Squad
Mark Fleming
Alone
Brandy Yassa
Baby Steps
Michael A. Arnzen
A Song For Them
Mark Cassell
The Other Me
P.J. Blakey-Novis
Late Night Drive
John Dover
Hobby
Matt Hickman
Beauty Mask
Sara Tantlinger
Bessy
Mark Lumby
Heart Shaped Box
Pippa Bailey
Post Halloween
Veronica Smith
The Man in the Black Sweater
Richard Chizmar
Virtual Reality
David Owain Hughes
I Was Loved
P.J. Blakey-Novis
The End of the Pier
Amy Cross
The Dublin Pub
Veronica Smith
I Am The End
Michael Bray
Beasts from Below
Alex Laybourne
Coming Home
Suzanne Fox
Stone Dry
Sara Tantlinger
The Box
Valerie Lioudis
Best of Friends
Stefan Lear
It Came
Mark Lumby
Cold Toes
Georgia Lennon
Edmond
James Matthew Buyers
Knock Knock..
C.S Anderson
Delusional
Suzanne Fox
Disregarded Advice
Ike Hamill
Harsh Sentence
P. Mattern
No More
Mike Duke
What is Schizophrenia, Anyway?
Robert W. Easton
Shower Thoughts
Peter Oliver Wonder
A Caring Community?
Suzanne Fox
Lightbulb
Matthew Brockmeyer
A Demonic Pact
Billy San Juan
Till Death do us Part
Derek Shupert
Someone’s in my House
Gord Rollo
It
Billy Chizmar
Checkmate Roommate
Michael A. Arnzen
Silence
Pippa Bailey
Jolly Ol' Infiltrator
Weston Kincade
Shadows
Antonio Simon, Jr.
Winter’s Embrace
Duncan P. Bradshaw
Cut Down to Size
David Owain Hughes
Children of the Carnival
Kevin J. Kennedy
The Grave
Amy Cross
Will-o'-the-Wisp
Nicholas Diak
Stone
Becky Narron
Meal for One
Howard Carlyle
Don’t Look Back
James Matthew Buyers
Street-Hearts
Chris Kelso
Consumed by Desire
Adriaan Brae
Another Tonight?
William F. Nolan
Destiny’s Embrace
Michael Paul Gonzalez
Clean
Valerie Lioudis
Trees
Donelle Pardee Whiting
Dancing
David Owain Hughes
Running from Him
Michael A. Arnzen
Night Terrors
Lisa Vasquez
It’s Just a Dream, Right?
Ellen A. Easton
Over the Edge
Mark Cassell
The Beauty of the Sea
Kevin J. Kennedy
Breadth of Bone
Sara Tantlinger
Never Leave Me, Nor Forsake Me
Mike Duke
Escape
Megan Ince
Forever Men
Eric J. Guignard
The Artist
Howard Carlyle
Initiation
Mark Fleming
What's For Dinner?
Christopher Motz
Vermillion
Lisa Vasquez
Jack Frost
Christina Bergling
Coming Around
C.M. Saunders
Bad Cop, Bad Cop
James H Longmore
Experimental Animal 7
Lee McGeorge
Bummed Light
James Matthew Byers
Sugar & Spice
Chad Lutzke
Air
Dave McClusky
You Don’t See Me
Christina Bergling
The Dead Train
Craig Saunders
Delivery
Briana Robertson
The Guest
Dave McCluskey
Nights in Whitechapel
Theresa Jacobs.
; Betrayal
Lee Mountford
Beautiful Francesca
Ike Hamill
Priscilla’s Pugnacious Pampered Pups
Brandy Yassa
Mister Fancy Pants
Rhys Hughes
Greed Has No Heart
Mark Lumby
Beast in the Bedroom
Philippa Bailey
The Boy
Richard Chizmar and Billy Chizmar
Weeping Keys
Elizabeth Cash
Grand Slam
Christina Bergling
Shock Collar
Jeff Strand
The Festival of Gluttony
Mike Duke
Selfie
Rick Gualtieri
Jonathan
Amy Cross
A Flash Beginning
Jessica Gomez
Spellbound
John Dover
I Was a Teenage Eulogist
Jason M. Light
From the Mouths of Drunks and Babes
Alex Laybourne
Stage Fright
James McCulloch
Cupid and Death
Rhys Hughes
The Feast
Rebecca Brae
The Dolls
Mark Lukens
Afterword
Also available on Amazon from KJK Publishing
Foreword
When I started writing, I was always looking for anthologies that were taking really short stories, as I didn’t have a lot of faith in my writing. I was working on the basis that if the stories were short I could write more, heightening my chances of getting accepted. What I later realised was that it was much harder to tell a full story in a really short piece of flash fiction. I noticed that every story that I wrote was becoming longer and longer, as I had bigger stories to tell and more I wanted to say in them, but I had already developed a love for flash fiction and had read some really good stories along the way. I had also come across ‘drabbles.’ A drabble is a story of exactly one hundred words, not including the title. Drabbles can be a lot of fun to write, but can also have you pulling your hair out. Every time you add a line, you need to take another out. As you write it you always think of things to add, but each word is so precious that the drabbles go through more re-writes than most longer stories ever will.
I liked the idea of putting a book of drabbles together, but I knew I would need a lot of stories. I had no idea how many authors would be interested in writing a drabble, so I decided to ask them. The response was overwhelming and the drabbles started flooding in almost instantly.
Submissions to the book were almost entirely invite only and I opened it to a few small groups. I received hundreds of drabbles. The book you hold in your hands contains the best in my opinion and each drabble is a complete little contained story.
As always with my anthologies, you will find Bram Stoker award winners, Amazon top sellers, the best indie writers and a few newer writers, who just hit the nail on the head with their stories.
Some people will read the book cover to cover and others will use it as a table top book and read a drabble or two a day. Whatever you do, I encourage you to take a minute after you read each drabble, and have a think about it. There is a lot packed into each of these little one hundred word stories. I only hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.
Kevin J. Kennedy
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
― Mark Twain
The Dead Thing
By
Lisa Morton
I’m watching the dead thing in the corner when it moves.
It’s a big black mass, tall, like Mama, with the rough shape of a body, a head, and legs. I’ve been watching it since we came here, but this is the first time it’s moved.
Mama doesn’t see it. Or can’t. She just keeps sitting in the chair not far away, watching me instead of it.
“What are you looking at?”
It hovers away from the wall.
It floats toward Mama.
And then it goes into Mama.
“Come here, you stupid cat,” she says as she reaches for me.
Hide and Seek
By
Matthew Brockmeyer
There was nothing I loved more than playing hide and seek at the dump with my friends on warm summer evenings. And I was always the best at it. Searching out the most imaginative places to hide amongst the piles of trash and rows of wrecked cars, and remain so still and quiet. Like the time I squeezed into that dirty, old-fashioned refrigerator.
They’ll never find me here, I thought, pulling the door shut and hearing the lock click shut.
And they never did.
Never found me, no matter how hard I pounded against the door and screamed for help.
They Came for Me
By
Glenn Rolfe
The spiders crawled through the bedroom window. Ice spilled down my spine as I clenched the sheets over my nose, hiding, but unable to look away. They chose Billy first. An avalanche of arachnids the size of baseballs spilled through the broken screen and flowed to my older brother’s bed as if carried on the sea. Up they went, thousands of legs. They covered every inch of his exposed body, and then stopped. One climbed over the rest and disappeared into Billy’s mouth. All at once, his body jolted, and then lay still.
I screamed.
Then they came for me.
Lunchtime
By
Andrew Lennon
Alex mixed his minced meat into his mashed potato, the moistness of the gravy created a slurping sound as the fork pushed and pulled through the meal. Alex continued to stir, waiting for the meal to cool enough to be able to eat, the smell of pepper filling his nose.
Jonny entered the office. “Oh, that smells good, mate. What are you eating today?”
“Cottage pie,” Alex replied.
“Nice, not had that in ages.”
“Do you want some?” Alex asked.
Jonny took a bite and savoured the flavour. “Hey, where’s Anne?”
Alex smiled and raised the plate to offer more.
Strength in the Blood
By
A.J. Brown
I knelt in the kitchen, hands folded in prayer.
“You gave me strength.”
Eyes open, I stared. I cleaned up my wife’s blood there.
“You gave me strength,” I repeated in the den. I cleaned Paul’s blood from the carpet.
“You gave me strength.”
In the bathroom, I washed Kerri’s blood off the walls.
In the baby’s room, I closed my eyes against tears.
“Give me strength.”
Red stains soaked the crib where Charlotte once slept.
In the half bathroom I stared at my reflection. A shadow grinned back, it’s eyes red.
“I am strength,” it said. And it laughed.
It is Just Local Gossip
By
Norbert Gora
I came to this backwater where (or because) the inhabitants swore that there was a miracle at the local cemetery.
On a starry night, a dead man would appear at his tombstone.
What fool would believe it?
Camera clenched firmly in hand, I boldly crossed the graveyard boundary.
As expected, there was nothing to see, but emptiness.
Before a curse word could leave my lips, I felt an agonizing chill upon my neck.
“It’s just local gossip. Dead men don’t leave their coffins,” a cold voice suddenly whispered behind my back.
I didn’t have to turn around to know it was over.
Just A Game
By
Christopher Motz
Jack gave each of his four friends a small, clear capsule and took his place in the circle.
"How does this game work?" Jenna asked.
"You all wait and see who can last the longest," he replied.
"
But if we're all going to be trippin', who's going to be keeping time?" Mary asked.
"I will," Jack replied.
"This is stupid," Brian laughed. "Who ever heard of a game where the point is to stay high the longest?"
"Well that's the fun part," Jack smiled. "I didn't give you acid."
"Oh, it's Ecstasy," Jason shouted happily.
"Nope," Jack laughed, "it's cyanide."