Happy Halloween! Last year I posed a challenge to myself to write a one page horror story and post it. Well, that challenge sorta spiraled into Ten Pages of Horror—a collection of ten one page horror stories! I had such a blast working on it last year that I wanted to do it again, because it’s a really fun chance to play around with random ideas, study styles, and just get weird. So, here you go! I hope everyone enjoys it.
LAST YEAR’S EDITION - 2024
ten pages of horror - 2025
death won’t do us part
caw of the macaw
written in flesh
the being beneath
it collects you
a simple game of checkmate
the bad man
the trees talk
mr. orwell’s porcelain portraits
battle of the behemoths
death wont do us part
The auditorium walls shake like quivering flesh as the baroness bellows out a final note of despair. This opera, it’s a famous one, though I’m unsure of its name. All I know is this: it’s about a lover scorned, and her refusal to let go, and of course, what comes after.
When the baroness takes her final bow, the stage-lights dim, and just before the crowd applauds comes a single, isolated shriek from the seats below.
Soon, others join, forming something like an orchestra of terror. My love, June, clings to me, digging her painted nails into my skin. I’m forced to bury my face into her shoulder to hide my smile. So it’s true, I think. The rumors, they’re all true.
Shadow sweep past us, snatching up members of the audience and sucking the life out of them. June sobs that we must go, that it isn’t safe here. When she tries to run, I embrace her, wrapping my arms around her as those shadows close in on us.
The orchestra swells into a symphony of death. The percussive beats of bodies hitting the floor, the stringy sound of sinew being ripped away, the windy howl of agonized screams. June is sobbing. I wish I could tell her the truth—that they say death here, in this opera house, is merely a path to a new beginning. But she wouldn’t understand. She never understands. That’s why she was going to try to leave.
History will not remember that, though. All the arguments and bitter words, they’ll be lost to time. Here, within these walls, our love will live on forever. We will be immortalized as a symbol of hope: the two who, even as death came for them, sought only the comfort of each other.
That is why, when the shadows close in, claws glimmering under the stage-lights, I keep her close. I keep her close and simply say: “June, I’ll always love you.”
caw of the macaw
The man beat his sweaty fist at the front door as he screamed his throat raw. He was drunk, mama said. Drunk and foolish and that’s why he was going to die.
The walls shook with each tump-thump-tump. Plates and bowls clattered together in the cupboards. Mama paid it no mind. She slipped the shells she’d made this morning into the double-barrel. I put a record on, an old Bill Evans Trio record—we couldn’t let him in anyway, not with the door welded shut, so listening to him yell was pointless torture.
“Please,” the man begged, his words soaked in spit and whiskey. “They’re coming.”
They were, but there was nothing we could do to stop them.
A hundred tree branches snapped as they left their nests. I poured myself a glass of Jim Beam. Mama didn’t need one. Living fifty years in this damned town, you grew numb to tragedy. To dead friends and folk you’d never see again. You grew numb to it or you joined them, and we don’t show no love to folk like the drunken man. Fools, mama said. Fools who don’t learn.
The man’s words melted into incoherent sobs. He babbled like a baby. I just prayed it would rain before we emerged, and that the rain would wash away all the blood. We wouldn’t have to worry about the bodies—they didn’t leave a single morsel.
Outside, the wind turned to wing-flaps, which soon shrieked into caws. The man’s scream was ripped out of him, then all that was left was the gnash of beak into bone, the rip of sinew coming lose from the joints, the squishy sound of bursting organs and entrails. After their feast, they crowded the roof, so many of them that the lumber supports overhead splintered, and me and mama, we didn’t move. We held our arms still and our breath too.
Even after they left, it took a long time to start breathing again, because I knew they’d come back.
written in flesh
I washed my hands in the sink, then dipped them in a vat of alcohol. It burned, like little bugs biting my skin, but it was a small price to pay to keep him healthy. Him: the man strapped to the chair in the corner. He was coming to, swinging around into lucidity. Soon, he would be screaming. Him and all the other canvases, all they know how to do is scream.
“Fatty flesh doesn’t work so well,” I said, and it’s true. Too easy to slip into the creases or folds. “Toned muscles, temple-bodies, they’re easier to glide across.”
The man muttered a dreamy, indecipherable rabble, then started to squirm. Either the concrete slab was too cold, or he just realized where he was, some dingy basement he’d never seen before. There was no getting away, but I didn’t tell him. Better to let him exert energy. I slipped my clean hands into silicone gloves, then alcohol bathed them, too. Couldn’t be too safe. He needed to live at least a few days longer than the last few. Then, I took up the pen. It was glowing and golden. A gift from above.
“You’re wondering,” I said. “But it’s no use explaining—you’d never understand.”
I took a seat next to the man. He had tan skin, bronzed and built through long hours baking under the sun, chiseling the world, and flicked his olive eyes at me as I pressed the golden pen to it. In a way he and I weren’t so different. We were both craftsmen. But while he was building onto a world already filled in, I was trying to create something new.
“This pen was gifted to me by God,” I said. “With it, I can rewrite history. But there is a price.”
With that, the pen separated his flesh like a knife across butter, and finally the man screamed.
“You’re the same as the rest,” I said. “You just don’t understand.”
the being beath
The Being Beneath wears the hurtful whispers of the world above on its skin like blisters on burnt bread. Pustules swell up, engorged with rage born from human hate, and crumble into charcoal ash. And yet, the Being’s lips, swollen as water-logged driftwood, gnarl into a smile. Once, like all of them, it had been alive, and at that time it had been the only one alive. But soon they would all be dead and life would be right again.
Agony. That’s what the mortals had put it through. The mortals it, through accidental experimentation, had created. The mortals who had banished it to an eternity of suffering here, in the bowels of the Earth, melted to nothingness by the swirling magma, only to be reborn and die again. Yet, it had endured. Survived. Listened as those bugs above spread across the planet like a cancer, finding beauty in a world they had stolen.
But, in every human, a bit of the Being lurks. In some, it’s just a smidge—a mean sneer or a nasty thought kept to themselves. In others, it overflowed—drove them to steal, destroy, and kill. Every ounce of hate exerted by them only fueled its regrowth. A millennia ago, it had swam out of the molten maelstrom. Now it tears its teeth through searing silicate. Maybe, in another thousand years, it would claw its way onto the surface.
That day, damnation would begin. The Being Beneath would again become the Beast Above and nobody would be safe from Its wrath. It would bring ruin until there was nothing left, then create a hellish paradise meant for it.
Until then, it just absorbed the hate of the living—the curses, the insults, the fights, the murders—and snarled with glee as it flowed through its veins. How foolish they were, unaware that with every misused breath, they were damning future generations to agony.
The same agony it had endured.
it collects you
Ghosts of yesteryear sung to the pirates aboard the Scrummage, a ship adrift somewhere in the Pacific—ghosts of those abandoned by their peers, lost in the ocean, left to be swallowed by seafoam. Their voices swelled into one high-pitched shriek. The scream of some unfortunate soul tumbling overboard.
“Don’t move a damned muscle,” Captain Lorenz hissed. Just minutes ago they’d shambled into the bowels of the ship, hooting and hollering as they prepared for supper. Now, the rag-wearing ruffians sat still, frozen in the motion of eating, afraid to even breathe.
They’d been warned about this. Back at Port Trea, a man with skin like a leather book had told them of a monstrous sea-beast. It likes the sound of human rabble, he’d hissed through a haze of tobacco smoke. So if it hears you, it collects you, and once it’s got you, it keeps you.
Oh, how they’d laughed. They’d spat in his face and stole his booze and called him crazy. Today, when the sun was high, they’d hooted and hollered at it, mocking him. What a foolish old bastard! Now, something slithered around them. It wormed through the woodwork of the ship, hunting through the cabins, chasing whatever noise had peaked its curiosity.
The night grew long. Hours passed. Teardrops rolled down cheeks as men struggled to keep themselves still, and Lorenz wondered, would it ever leave? Were they cursed to choose between starving or being eternally bound to whatever this damned beast was?
Reflecting on those options, Lorenz made a choice: he wanted to go out with a smile. And so, he lifted his knife, his fork, and resumed eating.
“Eat, men,” he said. “You don’t want to be collected on an empty stomach.”
a simple game of checkmate
“Why are you doing this?” she pleaded through tears. “Please, don’t do this.”
The infernal machine sat across from her, an automaton forged to process only the necessary and discard the pointless, did not look up. “Your move,” it said plainly. Its voice carried not an ounce of care for the suffering she was enduring.
Ten minutes ago she was yanked into this room by machines just like this one, and when she’d tried to run, they’d fished hooks into the fatty flesh of her forearms and calves to ensure she didn’t move her limbs any further than what was required. Ten minutes ago it had been sterilized, white as marble, and now it was filthy with her blood—her bare feet smeared it all over the floor as she struggled to even think.
Bloodied drool seeped off her split lip and onto the black-and-white checkboard in front of her as she mumble out another incoherent sentence. She’d devoted her life to understanding this board better than her own body but now, with her pawns stained a deep maroon, and her queen crunched to dust in the frigid metal palm of the automaton, she looked at it the same way she had as a child: with complete and utter certainty that she was going to lose.
But back then, losing meant learning. You got knocked down, but you grew. Now, with the game rigged against her from the start, she was entirely outclassed and what would come after this? Only death.
She lifted her bishop, flicked her eyes all around the board, but there was no winning move, not even a drawing or stalling move. Time ticked down and when the buzzer sounded, the automaton did not even celebrate. He merely said: “Defective.”
And with that, the hooks began to pull, tearing at her flesh—and they never stopped.
the bad man
The boy doesn’t like waking up. In fact, when he sleeps, he wishes he could do so forever. Because when he wakes up, that’s when the Bad Man visits.
He isn’t really a man. He’s something like a monster. The boy’s mom and dad, they don’t believe him. They tell him that some kids have imaginary friends and he’s just created an imaginary enemy. His mom says it’s because he watches too many ‘cartoons.’ His dad thinks his older brother needs to stop telling him spooky stories. Neither actually listen to him.
And when he first wakes up, his body doesn’t either. The doctors call it ‘sleep paralysis’—that means his brain wakes up before his bones do, so he can’t wriggle his toes or tap his fingers or even turn his head. That’s when, maybe even why, the Bad Man appears.
He always starts lurking in the corner, towering frame mostly masked by the midnight shoal he keeps draped around himself. His teeth, sharp and overly long, piercing into his own gums, are what catch the boys attention first, glimmering in the moonlight. He stands there, watching and snickering, and only approaches when the sun starts to rise.
That’s when he inspects the boy. With his leathery fingers, he pokes at the fatty flesh of the boy’s arm and sneers if he finds even a single bruise or scratch. He warns to boy to stay inside, locked away, and keep himself unblemished and clean, else his parents will pay the price. Soon, this will all be over, he tells the boy, Soon it will be time.
But whenever the boy tries to ask time for what, the Bad Man disappears just as his lips begin to tremble, and when finally the boy is able to move again, he fears to—he wraps himself in his blankets, shielding himself from the world, and sobs.
the trees talk
The trees talk, but only to me—or maybe, I’m the only one that truly listens.
It started when I was little. Papa built a treehouse out back of our house, in the woods, and on long summer days I’d go out there with a pile of comic books and spend the afternoon chewing through them. There weren’t many kids in the neighborhood back then, so superheroes were my friends. That is, until the wind brought me the words of the trees.
Back then, they were soft as the leaves they shed. They told me their histories. The evergreens, the babies of the forest, were planted just shy of a hundred years ago, while the Great Oak had survived nearly four centuries.
As I grew older, their words became heavy as the bark shielding them. They spoke to me with wisdom, as if I had accrued enough years to be worthy of it. They told me how they had watched the world change. How they had endured meteors, and ice ages, and now humans. They even told me a secret—that, if I so desired, I could swear myself to the Earth and join them.
Now that I am ancient, their words are sharp as the bramble on the bushes between them. A new bunch of neighbors have moved in and they’re keen on chopping the whole forest down. Every morning, they trudge out there, dragging their axes through the mud, and hack at the trees, ignoring their screams. The Great Oak tells me it’s time to prove my allegiance. Do I side with the humans who brought me into this world or the forest that raised me to respect it?
When I take up my own axe, my mind is made. I walk out of my house and not into the woods, but instead my neighbor’s yard. I ignore their screams as I chop through the skull of the first one I see.
mr. orwell’s porcelain portraits
SIDE A: “Good morning, everyone. I am once again reporting live from the estate of Mr. Orwell Roberts, a famed artist I suspect you know all too well. Today he introduces us to his newest endeavor—the Porcelain Portraits. But do not let the name fool you! These are not drawn with the brush at all. Rather they are a series of handcrafted figurines lining his perfectly manicured garden. Grotesquely life-like recreations of all walks of mankind, the wind whispers out of them as you pass by, haunting of a life you could imagine true. From a dirt-ragged peasant to a petticoated noble, I believe this display is meant to symbolize a world Mr. Orwell hopes for—one without boundaries, where people enjoy all the pleasantries of life in unity.
SIDE B: Deep in the bowels of the Earth, beneath the rosebud roots, nobody could hear the clank of the machinery as it worked diligently to affix, solder, and sear the porcelain plates onto the man’s flesh. The first subject had thrashed—he’d kicked attendants and screamed till his throat bled. But they’d learned much since then. A simple cocktail of Devil’s Trumpet, an herb that plays with the mind and paralyzes the body, was enough to keep them trapped in their dreams until the operation was over.
That was why the man merely giggled as the coiling spiderweb of machinery worked on him, bolting a blushing doll’s cheek straight into his own, vitrifying skin to porcelain. By the time the herb were off, he would already be out there, among the others, left to rattle in his shell until, eventually, he starved. And then, what would he be?
Just another one of Mr. Orwell’s Porcelain Portraits. Nothing more.
battle of behemoths
The scaled behemoth sunk its serrated teeth into the furred flesh of the beast as it contorted its limber body, struggling to worm out of its grasp. The scaled one let go only when it wanted to, taking a fibrous chunk of flesh off the bone off its arm. The furred beast, which had the face of a common house-cat, shrieked and batted its paw wildly, crashing through a radio tower and sending debris flying as its blood rained onto the asphalt below.
On the 55th floor of the 2nd Street skyscraper, the office workers gathered by a window already shattered by the seismic collisions of the beasts. While normally you wouldn’t be able to hear a pen-drop over the stadium of busywork—shuffling paper, pouring coffee, phones ringing and people being put on hold—right now, everyone was silent, aware that their lives hung in the balance, unable to do a thing about it.
The ferocious beasts thought of nothing but the annihilation of each other. They crashed through buildings like children knocking over toy blocks and swung wildly at one another, swatting down helicopters like they were mosquitoes. The cat threw itself forward, slamming its shoulder into the belly of the reptile, causing it to belch nuclear fire which plumed into another skyscraper, turning girders to liquid and melted floors into one another.
No doubt inside of it were hundreds of people, no different than the office workers stuck on the 55th floor, forced to listen as screams and curses flowed from the stairways below, clotted with too many people fighting to flee. But for them, all the way at the top, what good would running do? It would take them hours just to make it to the 30th floor, let alone the bottom.
In the end, all they could do was wait and see.
Thank you all for reading—HAPPY HALLOWEEN!