Tragic endings, terrifying dystopias, gruesome deaths….
It’s HALLOWEEN so 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 for Halloween we write some grimdark stories.
Chat came up with a bunch of gut-wrenching topics, which we put on a wheel, spun, and then wrote whichever ones came up.
The first one we did was this: While babysitting your younger cousin on Halloween, you find hidden bruises and welts on his body and find out who gave those to him.
Here’s what we wrote:
Halloween was going to suck this year, what with my breakup with Brad and not looking forward to running into him at Molly’s party. So when I got the invitation from my aunt and uncle to babysit little Jay for Halloween, even take him out trick or treating for a bit, I jumped at the opportunity.
Honestly it was just what I needed. Dressing up as a dollar store witch, and holding Jay’s hand as we walked around the neighborhood with him dressed as Steve from Minecraft. I hadn’t done this since middle school, since apparently as soon as you enter high school, trick or treating becomes the most supreme uncool thing anyone can ever imagine. I don’t know though — even as a high school senior, I was pretty happy to get a few Snickers and Reese’s tossed my way through the night.
Spending the evening with a third grader whose face lit up every time a new piece of candy went into his pumpkin bag helped remind me of the simpler joys in life.
Back home, Jay and I sat on the living room floor and looked over his bounty together.
“You can have these,” Jay said, handing me a packet of Necco Wafers. “They taste like chalk.”
“Sure thing,” I said, snatching them from him. I ripped it open and dumped them into my mouth and crunched down like sweet sugary chalk. “I’ll dispose of these immediately. Here, let’s get that costume off you.”
I walked around to Jay, still distracted by organizing his spoils from the nighttime campaign. I grabbed onto the bulky, blocky shirt and wiggled it up over his head and off his body.
Then I saw the bruises covering Jay’s arms.
At first I thought it was paint or marker or something, all of the blues and purples and pus-colored yellows congealing together. But then I noticed the little hesitations in Jay’s movements as he moved around his candy. The little twitches that I’d thought were just him being a kid were actually little pools of pain.
“Jay,” I said softly, trying not to scare him or anything. “How did you get hurt on your arms there?”
Jay just shrugged and kept looking away from me. I needed to get to the bottom of this though. Neither Aunt Sallie nor Uncle Ron seemed like the type to do this, the angriest I’d ever seen them was when Uncle Ron yelled “Jesus’s left testicle!” when he burnt himself grilling that one time. But sometimes the worst abusers hide under veils of lily-white purity.
“Jay,” I tried one more time. “You can tell me what happened. It’s okay. You’re safe to tell me.”
“I fell down the stairs,” Jay said quickly, still not looking at me. “I was a bad kid.”
Holy crap. I couldn’t believe this. Poor Jay’s mind was filled with the excuses his parents had given him. I didn’t know what to do. Call 911, call my parents, go right to the hospital.
“She did it to me,” Jay said, his voice now shaking. “She did it to me on the stairs.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I didn’t want to push him right now in his vulnerable state. This was the second time he’d mentioned the stairs though, so maybe there was something there. Some evidence I could bring, or snap a photo of.
“You stay here, Jay,” I said, gently resting a reassuring hand on his little shoulder. “You’re safe here. I promise. I’ll be right back.”
There was only one set of stairs in the one-story house: the ones to the basement. I’d never gone down there, no real reason to go down into other people’s basements, but now I opened the door and stared down into the darkness that the staircase led into.
I whipped my phone out of my pocket and turned on the light, both hoping to find some blood on a bat or something to catch as evidence, and both hoping that I wouldn’t find anything at all.
But it was strange. Something must’ve been wrong with the light on my phone. Low battery or something. The light illuminated the walls a little bit, where a broom and mop were hanging, but the darkness below was still pitch black. Almost as if it were solid shadow.
I took one step down, and my foot pressed against the solid darkness like a bean bag chair.
You’ve been a bad kid, came a voice low and smooth, a crusty forgotten dream.
Before I could even gasp, I lost my balance. The solid darkness shifted to the side and I tripped over, banging my way down the hardwood steps. My head cracked against the sharp edge of one, and my legs smashed against the concrete wall, spinning my world around and around as a mist of blood gushed up my nose.
Suddenly it all stopped and all I could see was the light of the kitchen at the top of the staircase, now so painfully far away. I screamed for Jay, but it only came out as a hoarse whisper.
My arms seared like razors running through them as I pushed myself up and scrambled back up the staircase, breathing so hard that bubbles of saliva and blood popped from between my lips.
I made it to the top. I made it out. Scrambling through the kitchen and into the living room.
“She did it to me,” Jay said, crying, his bruised arms wrapped around his mother’s legs. “She did it to me on the stairs!”
Aunt Sallie and Uncle Ron glared at me, hatred burning in their eyes.
“It wasn’t me!” I cried, pointing behind me. “It was the… the thing! The monster! On the staircase!”
I just stood there, breathing hard, bleeding, not having a single sane excuse to say in my defense… except for one thing:
“I’ve been a bad kid.”
Next was this one: Two teens are backyard wrestling until a move goes horribly wrong.
Here’s what we wrote:
I’ve heard that some twins share a special bond. Some of them even come up with languages that only the two of them can speak. But not me and Liam. He was always Mom and Dad’s favorite, and he loved rubbing it in my face.
Mom and Dad always made it a point for me and Liam to come clean to them whenever we caught each other doing anything wrong. In their words, they would find out eventually, and they would make the punishment “thirteen times worse” when that happened.
“Thomas hurt me!” he cried, running into the house. It was Halloween, an hour or so before we were supposed to go trick or treating, and he was dressed as a doctor. I dashed behind him with my fake gashes on my forehead, playing his patient, ready to defend myself.
Mom and Dad were standing stiff as statues in the kitchen, waiting for me. When I arrived next to Liam, that’s when our inquisition began.
“Liam,” Mom said, “tell us what happened. And be honest, or else your punishment will be thirteen times worse.”
“Thomas and I were just fooling around in the backyard,” Liam said. “I pretended to take his temperature, like a real doctor, and then he punched me!”
“That’s not true at all!” I butted in. “You grabbed me by the throat and I just pushed you away.”
Dad sucked in air, and for a moment a smile flashed across his face, then his eyes narrowed at me.
“Now, Thomas,” he said. “You need to tell the truth. Lying is not permitted in this house.”
“I am telling the truth!” I said. “The whole reason Liam even brought me back there was because he wanted me to rub poison ivy all over my arms, because my patient makeup wasn’t ‘realistic’ enough for him.”
“He’s lying again, Mom!” Liam whined. “He always does this. I just… I just wanted to have a fun Halloween and… and he….”
Mom closed her eyes, then licked her teeth with her tongue.
“What have you done, Thomas?” she said softly. “You were supposed to make sure Liam had a perfect Halloween. You’re the older brother.”
“By three minutes,” I grumbled.
“Liam!” Dad roared. “That’s not how you take responsibility, young man. You are grounded from Halloween.”
My jaw dropped open as Mom and Dad swelled up.
“You can’t do that!” I cried. “That’s not fair.”
Mom bent down slightly, as if she were squeezing another kid out of her. Another one like Liam, not a disappointment like me.
“Don’t argue, Thomas,” she said, biting her lip. “And don’t be a tattle either. Or else your punishment will be thirteen times worse.”
I couldn’t stand being around them anymore. It was always like this. Liam could never do any wrong, I could never do anything right, and Mom and Dad seemed to like it that way. I just stomped out of the kitchen toward my bedroom.
“Can I go trick or treating by myself?” Liam asked as I left.
“Of course, Liam,” Dad said, his voice shaking slightly. He exhaled a deep breath, as if there were a wild beast trying to escape from inside him. “Head out whenever you want. Just don’t disturb me and your mother for the next hour or so, if you please.”
“Not that Liam would do such a thing,” Mom cooed. “When Thomas came out, and I saw him for the first time, I knew we could do better. And then I saw your face, Liam, and I knew that—”
Slam. I closed the door to my bedroom and collapsed on my bed, not wanting to hear another word out of any of them. But I knew this was just the beginning. The same thing happened every time I got in trouble and Liam got off scot-free.
I heard everything because my parents’ bedroom was right next door to my room.
I lay there, my face in my pillow, pretending I didn’t hear everything. The shaking. The shrieking. Both of them screaming out Liam’s name to each other.
And of course, the bangs right against the wall next to my bed. I counted them. I always do.
Exactly thirteen.
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!
Featured image: Pakutaso