Reddit Collection (Fresh-Short #10) by DeYtH Banger (books to get back into reading txt) 📖

first things you learn about writing. Write about what you know, what you're familiar with, pull from your life experiences. This ensures that your stories feel genuine. Readers can sniff out bullshit rather easily when a writer is out of their element.

But what does that mean for me, a writer of horror stories? I mean, I didn't always consider myself a genre writer. I sort of fell into it. I wanted to try my hand with a few short stories and I found it rather addicting. It didn't hurt that these first few stories I shared with the world seemed to draw a modest amount of positive feedback. And the readers, they wanted more. They pressured me for more dark tales.

So how do I continue to tap a creative well that isn't filled with personal experiences? After I've developed my few half baked scary movie ideas into 500 word sounds bites, what's next? I can't exactly become a serial killer, and study the way victims plead for their life. Way too risky, easy to get caught...

Perhaps I could watch others though. Do a little detective work, track down someone else who's doing the dirty stuff and simply observe. Intriguing, but I wouldn't know where to start to be honest.

But my basement. I could use my basement. The door is thick, nearly soundproof. It locks from the outside. Cameras have been installed for observation. A laundry chute that can double as a way to send food, and water.

There's a group of kids at the local theater every Friday night. I don't know if they ever actually see a film, but they can be lured around the back of the building easily enough with the promise of cheap drugs.

How long can someone deal with total isolation?
How long can they go without food?
What are people willing to do for their freedom?
Do people sleep when they fear for their life?
A lack of sun exposure, that has to lead to some interesting side effects right?

I'll write a few more stories I suppose. I think I have a knack for it.

 

 

 

 

Standing at the door.

 by bypurple

 

 

I stood there, face pressed close to the rough, splintered door in front of me, my breath breaking on the heavy wood and curling up around my face. I knew this was coming. For years, I knew that as the oldest son, it would be my duty. Father knew as well, and during the harvesting season, he would come home late, smelling something awful, and head upstairs without a word. Mother and my sisters were scared, though they tried to hide it by busying themselves at the fields.

 

In my small village, with its brown, squat buildings, we all worked the land, eyes cast downwards, shoulders and backs hunched. Rain was scarce, sunlight even scarcer, and we had little time for anything else.

We kept a stick of ironwood standing in the middle of the square, wrapped with boughs of juniper, dipped in honeyed wax. When the ironwood ignites, that’s when we know. It usually happens at the start of a growing season, or right before the freeze.

This time, it happened on my birthday, seven years since the last. My father came home that day, smelling even stronger than usual, and sat me down at our table. He handed to me an iron dagger, strung on a silver necklace. For luck, he said, as he wrapped it around my neck, his gnarled fingers working slowly. Grandfather wore it when he stood, and another boy was chosen. He told me then my duty, though I already knew.

 

A week from when the ironwood lights, stand at the door to the house after dusk. Face the door. Breathe slowly. Do not move. Do not make a sound.

 

But no matter what, do not look behind you, no matter how much you may want to.

And so now, here I stand, my face and fingers made numb by the ice-wind. Something is out there now, something that arrived when the last rays of the sun vanished behind the mountains. It’s threading its way through the mist that blankets the village. All the doors and windows must be shuttered now. I heard the crackling of the ironwood as it was taken, and I heard the soft padding of its feet on the ground. I had hoped it wouldn’t be me, but I think that some part of me had always known.

As the slow shuffling gets closer to me, I concentrate on the door before me, only trembling slightly. As the light from the burning ironwood, now just a few feet away, makes me cast a shadow, I stand still. I’m proud now, because I’m standing still and not making a sound, even as its claws start slicing into my belly and it begins to chew into the fat on my back. My blood begins to drip to the ground, bright red.

I’m the proudest because I don’t look behind me to see the beast. I know that if you did, afterwards, it eats your family as well.

THE TERRIBLE OLD MAN

 BY H.P. LOVECRAFT

 

It was the design of Angelo Ricci and Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva to call on the Terrible Old Man. This old man dwells all alone in a very ancient house on Water Street near the sea, and is reputed to be both exceedingly rich and exceedingly feeble; which forms a situation very attractive to men of the profession of Messrs. Ricci, Czanek, and Silva, for that profession was nothing less dignified than robbery.

The inhabitants of Kingsport say and think many things about the Terrible Old Man which generally keep him safe from the attention of gentlemen like Mr. Ricci and his colleagues, despite the almost certain fact that he hides a fortune of indefinite magnitude somewhere about his musty and venerable abode. He is, in truth, a very strange person, believed to have been a captain of East India clipper ships in his day; so old that no one can remember when he was young, and so taciturn that few know his real name. Among the gnarled trees in the front yard of his aged and neglected place he maintains a strange collection of large stones, oddly grouped and painted so that they resemble the idols in some obscure Eastern temple.

 

This collection frightens away most of the small boys who love to taunt the Terrible Old Man about his long white hair and beard, or to break the small-paned windows of his dwelling with wicked missiles; but there are other things which frighten the older and more curious folk who sometimes steal up to the house to peer in through the dusty panes. These folk say that on a table in a bare room on the ground floor are many peculiar bottles, in each a small piece of lead suspended pendulum-wise from a string. And they say that the Terrible Old Man talks to these bottles, addressing them by such names as Jack, Scar-Face, Long Tom, Spanish Joe, Peters, and Mate Ellis, and that whenever he speaks to a bottle, the little lead pendulum within makes certain definite vibrations as if in answer. Those who have watched the tall, lean, Terrible Old Man in these peculiar conversations, do not watch him again. But Angelo Ricci and Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva were not of Kingsport blood; they were of that new and heterogeneous alien stock which lies outside the charmed circle of New England life and traditions, and they saw in the Terrible Old Man merely a tottering, almost helpless greybeard, who could not walk without the aid of his knotted cane, and whose thin, weak hands shook pitifully.

 

 

They were really quite sorry in their way for the lonely, unpopular old fellow, whom everybody shunned, and at whom all the dogs barked singularly. But business is business, and to a robber whose soul is in his profession, there is a lure and a challenge about a very old and very feeble man who has no account at the bank, and who pays for his few necessities at the village store with Spanish gold and silver minted two centuries ago.

 

Messrs. Ricci, Czanek, and Silva selected the night of April 11th for their call. Mr. Ricci and Mr. Silva were to interview the poor old gentleman, whilst Mr. Czanek waited for them and their presumable metallic burden with a covered motor-car in Ship Street, by the gate in the tall rear wall of their host’s grounds. Desire to avoid needless explanations in case of unexpected police intrusions prompted these plans for a quiet and unostentatious departure.

As prearranged, the three adventurers started out separately in order to prevent any evil-minded suspicions afterward. Messrs. Ricci, and Silva met in Water Street by the old man’s front gate, and although they did not like the way the moon shone down upon the painted stones through the budding branches of the gnarled trees, they had more important things to think about than mere idle superstition. They feared it might be unpleasant work making the Terrible Old Man loquacious concerning his hoarded gold and silver, for aged sea-captains are notably stubborn and perverse. Still, he was very old and very feeble, and there were two visitors. Messrs. Ricci, and Silva were experienced in the art of making unwilling persons voluble, and the screams of a weak and exceptionally venerable man can be easily muffled. So they moved up to the one lighted window and heard the Terrible Old Man talking childishly to his bottles with pendulums. Then they donned masks and knocked politely at the weather-stained oaken door.

Waiting seemed very long to Mr. Czanek as he fidgeted restlessly in the covered motor-car by the Terrible Old Man’s back gate in Ship Street. He was more than ordinarily tender-hearted, and he did not like the hideous screams he had heard in the ancient house just after the hour appointed for the deed. Had he not told his colleagues to be as gentle as possible with the pathetic old sea-captain? Very nervously he watched that narrow oaken gate in the high and ivy-clad stone wall. Frequently he consulted his watch, and wondered at the delay. Had the old man died before revealing where his treasure was hidden, and had a thorough search become necessary? Mr. Czanek did not like to wait so long in the dark in such a place.

 

 

Then he sensed a soft tread or tapping on the walk inside the gate, heard a