Tragic endings, terrifying dystopias, gruesome deaths…
Let’s put YOUR grimdark prompt suggestions on the Wheel, spin it, then write some horrifying short stories together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we come up with some grimdark story ideas, put them on the wheel, then spin and write them.
Watch a short version of the stream here or scroll down for what we wrote.
For those who don’t know, “grimdark” is a genre that is similar to horror (violent disturbing, gross), but without a happy ending. Quite often in grimdark stories, the monster isn’t defeated, it wins.
Chat came up with some excellent grimdark ideas like:
- A doctor struggles against his autocanniblistic addiction.
- A magician has to sacrifice his assistants to keep his powers.
- Mom tries to pull a razor blade out of her son’s mouth on Halloween.
We put all the ideas on a wheel, spun it, and it landed on:
Three kids are home alone and playing with the stove. One kid gets locked in while it’s on.
Here’s what we wrote:
You see, doc, my fear of ovens goes way back. When me and Joe and Cole were just kids. You know the sh*t brothers do? Flicking snot rockets at each other, crying to Mom and Dad when Cole stole our Pokemon cards. He was the oldest, a whopping seven years old, when me and Joe were a mere five and six.
You know, we did the usual kid stuff. But I guess there was one thing we did that wasn’t too usual. It was a game we played. We called it Turkey.
Some kids I guess play doctor growing up, with their plastic doctor toys that their parents buy for them. But we didn’t have that. With Mom and Dad both working all the time, and having the apartment to ourselves, we had to make do with what we could find. Paper towel rolls from the trash turned into pirate swords, and crushed old Dr. Pip cans were gold doubloons. We even used the meat tenderizer and whisks in the kitchen drawer as tools, pretending we were builders like Dad, constructing our own playgrounds in our imaginations.
When Cole figured out how to use the oven though, our lives changed. Like cavemen discovering fire for the first time. We would toss our old crayons into Mom’s cupcake tray, load it in at 400 degrees, and watch them melt into colorful circles that we could scribble all over the backs of receipts.
We put so much random sh*t into that oven. Spoonfuls of peanut butter, bowls of milk, even just watching bread crumble to black dust inside was thrilling to our tiny brains. We started throwing in the pictures we drew too, seeing how long it took for them to burst into flames, then curl up and disappear into smoke.
Cole was the first one who threw something I actually cared about in there. I’d tattled on him to Mom the night before, when he’d taken my Optimus Prime, and then he decided to punish me by tossing it in the oven and cranking up the heat.
He laughed and laughed, standing in front of the oven so I couldn’t open it. Only once I started screaming did he step aside. I pulled open the oven and grabbed out my transformer, just as the edges were starting to blacken.
Cole didn’t care that I was crying. He seemed fixated on the open oven. He stuck his hand inside, slowly, then tapped a finger against the side, saying it wasn’t even that hot yet. Then he crouched down, and stuck his upper body into the whole thing, laughing. He said it was like a hot bath inside, and he could definitely last longer than stupid Optimus Prime inside it.
Little Joe and me begged Cole not to, but he did it anyway. He climbed into the damn oven, with plenty of space to spare, lying there and grinning at us. He stayed there for at least two or three minutes, sweat dripping down his head, until he slid out of there, his arms and face all red like he’d been sunburned.
He said it was awesome inside, and that Joe and I should try it, to see if we could stay in for longer than him. I didn’t want to, I wanted nothing to do with it, but little Joe wanted to impress our big brother. So we turned off the oven, waited for it to cool, then let Joe crawl in and cranked it up. The poor kid, he didn’t last thirty seconds before he jumped right out of there, laughing along with Cole.
Suddenly I was the weird one for not playing. I was used to Cole bullying me, but having little Joe poke fun at me too was something I couldn’t stand for. So I took my turn in the oven too. I don’t remember how long I lasted before the heat got to me, but it was enough to satisfy my brothers, and to give me this little burn scar, right here, on the back of my hand.
I wish I could tell you that was it, the end of our stupid oven games, but it was only the start. Cole called the game “Turkey,” like the game Chicken but with an oven, we’d see who could stay in the longest. Cole always won, and I didn’t really care, but Joe really seemed to want to win. It was the one thing he was better at than me, staying in the oven, and he probably thought he could even beat Cole too.
The two of them started really going head to head. Joe was the first to close the oven while he was inside, and from then on that was the standard. He even had them try different settings, to see if he could beat Cole at some of them. Broil, bake, convection.
I became the official scorekeeper, recording their times in one of Dad’s legal pads from work, organized by setting. We were like a team of gymnasts, keeping track of our best scores in all the different Olympic categories. I was just happy to do something that kept me as part of the group, but didn’t require going into the oven myself.
Then Joe pressed the “clean” button one day. It was the only setting we hadn’t tried yet, and he was determined to get a good time to beat Cole. We shut the door, pressed the button, and I kept my eye on the clock as a good scorekeeper would.
Joe lasted a long time. Three minutes sixteen seconds. I’ll never forget that number. That’s when he pressed his hands against the oven door, ready to come out, but it didn’t budge.
Cole ran up to pull the door open. It didn’t move. Cleaning mode had locked it shut. And it was just getting redder and hotter inside.
What I saw through that glass… to call it a nightmare would be a disservice. Joe pounding at the glass, his hands bubbling yellow, his screams muffled by the inches between us.
Cole frantically pressed all of the oven’s buttons. They did nothing. He dashed around the kitchen, yelling for the electric cord, where the hell was the electric cord to unplug the damn thing? But he couldn’t find it, and I was still transfixed by watching Joe. Not listening. There was nothing more to listen to.
Cole reached into a drawer and took out the metal meat tenderizer and whacked it hard against the oven, again and again and again. Cracks turned to holes spilling out heat like I’d never felt in my life, until one more smash broke open the whole damn thing.
My little brother slid out of the oven onto the kitchen floor, a crispy, blackened mass that half burst to ash on impact.
Seeing it was bad enough. But that smell. I’ll never forget that smell.
You know what though, doc? You’re the first person I’ve told this story to. Me and Cole, we kept what really happened a secret. We called Mom, told her Joe had been playing around in the oven, and we’d tried to save him. No one except us, and I guess you now too, knows about our Turkey game.
But here’s the thing. My fear of ovens, right? I know what you’re thinking. I can’t stand the sight of them, the idea of cooking something in one, whatever. That’s not it, doc.
You see, there’s another secret I’ve kept all these years. One I didn’t even tell Cole.
That smell. That goddamn smell. I loved it. Nothing has ever smelled as good ever since.
And I’m scared I’m going to finally cook it again.
Hooray!
We also did another spin and got this prompt:
Two Harajuku girls take a wrong turn late at night.
Here’s what we came up with:
Aiko and Harumi stumbled through the night streets of Harajuku. Colorful plastic accessories clacked from their bags with each step, and their rainbow-pattern clothes seemed to be flowing straight from their laughing faces. Their cartoonish wardrobes drowned out the drab rags of passing businesspeople and tourists.
After a long day of window shopping and nibbling on sweets together, they were finally headed home. Although the little bit of alcohol that some of the shopkeepers slipped to them under the table made the journey back to the train station more difficult than usual.
“That old man at the used clothes shop,” Aiko said, giggling. “He was such a perv. Totally giving us drinks just to try and sweet talk us.”
“I don’t care,” Harumi said, slapping her friend on the back, sending her bag covered in dangling beads jangling. “Free drinks are free drinks!”
Aiko smiled at her friend, then reached out with one of her sparkling fingernails, caressing her face.
“You are so cute,” she said softly. “ I’m so jealous….”
“Oh, stop it!” Harumi said, smacking her hand away playfully. “You’re cute too.”
The two of them laughed, and Harumi looked ahead, expecting to see Harajuku Station, lit up and ready for them.
But there was nothing ahead except the long, empty road, extending into the darkness of night. A few other people rushed past them, little more than blurs. Harumi wasn’t even sure if they were more than just fuzzy figments from her buzzed brain.
“I think we’re going the wrong way,” she said to Aiko. Her friend shook her head and grabbed onto her arm.
“Nah. You’re just drunk. We usually turn right up here. Follow me.”
Harumi let Aiko guide her ahead. This place didn’t feel like Harajuku at all. Even at night, most shops were still lit up, bright and colorful, but here was nothing but shadows. Blackened corpses of buildings, seemingly inhaling and exhaling cold, windy breaths.
When they turned the corner, Harumi gasped. The man from the used clothes shop stood there, smiling at them. Splotches of white fuzz stuck out from his greasy, bald head as he bared his jack-o-lantern grin.
Aiko let go of Harumi and thrust out a pointed fingernail at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Just doing what you asked,” he said with a hiss.
The two girls made a dash for it, but the man was faster. His long, lanky limbs sprung out, and he wrapped his hands around their mouths before either could scream. Harumi grabbed his wrist with her sharp nails, trying to pry him off her, but a sweet nail-polish-remover smell hit her hard, and everything went black.
When she woke up, it smelled of mildew and musty wood. She blinked, looking around, seeing that she and Aiko were chained to a metal pipe together, surrounded by racks upon racks of old, used clothing.
The shop owner knelt before them, still grinning, this time with a pair of sharp, tailor’s scissors in hand.
“I can see your seams,” he whispered to Harumi, leaning closer to her, snipping the scissors. His sour body odor clogged her mouth and nostrils. “Looks like you’ll come apart easily.”
Harumi screamed and looked to Aiko, but her friend could do nothing. She just sat there, eyes wide, waiting her turn.
Then the shopkeeper plunged the scissors into Harumi’s chin, all the way up her cheek.
***
It took longer than expected, but the final product was worth it. The shopkeeper admired his new Harumi pelt. He held up her face, complete with her flaccid neck and scalp that he’d sewn on top. With his excellent skills, he’d perfectly hidden the seams on the lovely new outfit.
Now it was time for the customer’s Fitting.
Aiko was still sitting on the floor, waiting patiently. The shopkeeper turned around his work for her to see, and she gasped.
“Kawaii!” she said with a happy sigh. “That’ll look so good on me. I’ve always been jealous of Harumi’s skin.”
Be sure to check out the video for some dramatic readings!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Images: Pixabay