Getting Ready For Spring Cleaning

horror

**Someone asked me to try and write a horror story. I have never been a huge fan of horror and never tried to write it but, well, here it is:

 

I only felt fear once in my life. My brother woke me from the other room. He was screaming. I got up and ran, I got there only a moment before my parents. He was crying, shaking.

“Someone was trying to strangle me!” he cried. My mother sat on the edge of his bed, held him. My father led me back to my room.

“It’s okay,” he told me, “it was just a bad dream.”

I tried to sleep, couldn’t. Thirty minutes might have passed, or maybe I slept. I was woken by my mother.

“Sweetie,” she shook me. I felt her there before she shook me, but kept my eyes closed. She shook harder. I opened my eyes.

“Were you in your brother’s room?” she asked. I frowned up at her. I looked around, my father was standing at the door.

“No,” I told her. “No, I was sleeping. Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, just had a bad dream. Go to sleep.” She kissed me on the head, just where my hair starts, as she always did. They left, talking low. I didn’t sleep well.

The next night it happened again, the screaming. My parents made it there first this time. They all turned when I walked in. They didn’t say anything. My father walked me back to my room, left me there without a word.

The next day, I saw my brother once, in the kitchen, his wouldn’t look at me or talk to me. As he walked away I saw bruises around his neck, he was crying.

My parents came to me in the afternoon, sat me down.

“You can’t go into your brother’s room at night,” they told me.

I looked from one to the other, confused. “I don’t,” I told them, honest.

“Okay, well your brother says it’s you.”

I frowned. “Me, what?”

My father spoke now, “he says you’ve been going into his room, and–well, attacking him.”

I laughed, mostly because my brother is a year older and twice my size. They didn’t laugh. I began to cry, uncontrollably. My mother came over and put her arms around me.

“I wouldn’t,” I tried to sob.

My mother kissed me, “of course not.”

That night it happened again. Then, again. After the fourth night my mother slept in bed with me. The next day her and my father told me I’d be sent to therapy. She slept in my bed every night for a week, I talked to the therapist twice that week. At the end of it, I was allowed to sleep alone. I woke up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe. I opened my eyes and my brother was there, sitting on the edge of my bed, his hands around my neck.

I looked into his eyes, there was something different, they looked cleaner. It was then that I felt the only real fear I’ve ever felt. I felt it just before everything went dark around the edges. It was only then that he let go. I coughed for a long time. He sat and watched. By the time I finished coughing I was already crying.

“I just wanted to see,” he told me, his eyes no longer clean.

He leaned in and kissed me where my hair met my forehead. He left.

I screamed.

My brother got there just after my parents. My mother sat on the edge of the bed and held me. My father stood by the door, at a nod from my mother he went and took my brother out.

“He tried to strangle me!” I cried into my mother’s shoulder. I said it over and over. She didn’t say anything. I pulled away, looked up at her and realized, she was crying too.

 

30 replies to “Getting Ready For Spring Cleaning”

  1. Great as usual. I love your little stories.
    As horror, I don’t know if this really qualifies? A little more suspense, more goosebumbish endings or something maybe? Interestingly, I believe I’ve read some dark stuff of yours that could actually be called horror. 😀

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    1. Thank you! I didn’t really know either. I think I was going for scary or something close. Unnerving? I know I’ve written things that were dark in the past but I’d never sat down specifically to write something dark or scary. My mother never let us watch scary movies growing up so I’ve turned into a bit of a puppy-ish adult when it comes to horror. If I managed to hit suspense I’ll consider it a success, and I’m glad you enjoyed it, that’s always my number 1 goal.

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  2. Nice piece! I was hooked the whole way through. Your use of short sentences is very good. Builds the tension nicely and keeps the story moving at a nice pace.

    I’ve recently had a stab at a horror story too. Similar length to yours. I went for the cultist angle

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    1. Nice, can you link it to me so I can read it?

      And yeah, that’s what I was telling my girlfriend (who was the one who asked) I was saying how, because I write flash fiction, I didn’t know if I’d have the time and space to build tension. I am glad it came out well. Thank you

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      1. Still editing it at the moment unfortunately. It’s for a ghost story night my writing group is doing for halloween.

        My pleasure. I enjoyed it. Any plans to do another?

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      2. We’ll see. Nikita and I have only 34 days left in our challenge right now. I have many stories in my head but I’d have to think for a bit about a horror one. This one came to me in the moment when my girlfriend asked about me trying horror. I’m nervous about this last month of stories because I want them to be perfect (of course thats impossible) but I’m not experimenting as much so that we can finish strong.

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  7. Very creepy. Not quite sure what the causal lines are in this one, but definitely worth finding out. This intimate detail, started with the mom and repeated throughout, is quite powerful:
    She kissed me on the head, just where my hair starts, as she always did.”

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    1. I’m glad you liked that. I think it is how my mother used to kiss my head as a kid so I just automatically wrote it into moments where it felt like that would have happened. I did try to be a bit different with this one. Can’t take my whole style out but I wanted–not sure. But I don’t think my usual more casual style sets a scary tone

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      2. uhhh this kind of kiss should be a kiss that gives you the feeling of trust and feeling of security if your mum used to kiss like this. So this is even more horror, if your brother did this after crimping.
        I´m still pondering, if this last scene is real or imagination….as a real situation it is very strange, …but o.k. your stories are strange anyway.
        But what if it is imagination/ a bad dream. This means, there is not trust left not even for the closest member of family? Or there is a feeling of guit, which overcomes him all the time.
        So it would be important to let him know, that the brother and all people who love him, will forgive him. This is the nature of love.

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  10. Definitely horror. A child claims to be choked by the brother at night. It is comforted by the mother and the brother is brought into his room. Then the other get choked, for the reason that he just wanted to see, how it feels like. no matter how it twist and twist, it’s horror! First possibility: child one is the devil, was never choked, but comforted and was still not in peace, so that it itself wanted to choke. Possibility 2: child one says the truth and child two also …. then the family has a gross horror choking problem. Possibility three: Possibility 1 and 2 transferred to lovers, who have fun to torment themselves … just as horror. Flash, horror you can definitely too! Congratulations!

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