Very Short Story

A Very Short Story is a form of micro fiction that was popularized on Twitter under the hashtag VSS. The goal is to tell a story within the character limit of a single Tweet. It’s quite interesting and a whole lot of fun to tell a story in only 280 characters. On this page you can find all of my Very Short Stories I wrote in the past.

Mother called out, telling me it was over. We were saved. Those things were gone and help had arrived.

I wanted to run. I wanted so dearly to believe her and throw myself into her arms. Yet, I fought the urge.

Because, you see, mother’s body was lying right next to me.

—

Scratching in the walls. Eyes watching me from behind mortar and brick. I hear the whispers.

I ignore them. I stay quiet. But soon, I am pacing the room, screaming at the walls.

Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I ram the needle into my vein once more.

Only silence now.

—

Its skin was plastic, its eyes were missing, its mouth a dark gaping maw.

For weeks it had been watching his window from the alley.

Today it was gone. At least he thought so.

When he turned from the window, he found it watching him from the other side of the room.

—

I love the thrill of the hunt.

A strange set of tracks leading me through the forest. They were almost leading on in a circle.

I realized my error only when the creature broke through the underbrush. It had been circling me all day. Today I wasn’t the hunter, I was prey.

—

A bottle of vodka and half a dozen pills. Should be one hell of a trip.

I’d barely sat down when it started. The walls broke apart and dozens of eyes focused on me. Tentacles slithered across the room.

When they held on to me I realized I hadn’t even taken the pills yet.

—

I love my wife’s body. The soft skin, the smell, everything. She’s incredible. It’s only been a week, but feels like an eternity.

I steal a kiss and our lips unite. I retract, but her lips, glued to mine, tear off.

I need to find a new wife. This one’s decaying too fast.

—

Each day I see him outside. Each day he’s watching me, staring at me from his window opposite the street.

I don’t know who he is or what he wants.

I started freaking out and began to watch him as well. There’s one weird thing I noticed. That guy looks exactly like me.

—

I love baths and to relax in hot steaming water.

Suddenly my foot touched something. Before I could react a hand closed around my ankle and yanked me underwater.

My screams were soon drowned out by the water.

With my consciousness fading, I was dragged down the drain.

—

Smoke engulfed the town once more. The fire must’ve started again.

I pressed my face against the window to watch, but the smoke was too sick. The only thing I saw were strange hulking shades.

When the smell of human flesh reached my nose, I knew this was no normal fire.

—

She suddenly stood in front of me. Beauty personified. Her hair was a dark black, her eyes a piercing blue.

Her smile was a promise, the kiss the fulfillment.

She was gone moments after, without a trace.

I was left alone and with a piece of my soul forever missing.

—

It was the epitomy of madness I thought as tears streamed down my cheeks.

It had been an insane idea. I only went along with it out of desperation. But Mikhail had succeeded where science had failed before.

Six month after the stillbirth our baby boy finally giggled.

—

“Daddy, come quick” his little girl cried out. It was as faint as a whisper. In a panic he jumped up and rushed down the hallway.

He ripped open the door and stumbled into her room. When the twisting horror inside jumped him, he remembered. His daughter wasn’t home.

—

He was woken by scratching, the sound of claws on wood.

His steps led him to the room the sounds originated from. Anxiously he peeked inside. It was nothing, but an empty room.

The sound was still there and now he realized that it originated from the ceiling above him.

—

Strange strands all over the forest. Lonely and white, dangling from twigs and branches.

There were more and more of them. They stuck to him, slowed him and entangled him.

When he saw the giant eight legged horror in the trees above, he finally knew what they were.

—

He looked deep into her eyes, wanting to know why she’d committed such atrocities.

He was prepared to find a past riddled in darkness, shapeless demons to hunt her every day.

Yet, what he found was much worse: Nothing but bleak, gaping emptiness.

—

What are ghosts?

Are they lost souls, wanting revenge on the living?

Are they shapeless apparitions that haunt us at night?

Are they remnants of past lives, lingering in our realm?

Or are they truly nothing but past regrets and our own inner demons?

—

Every night he hears the same sounds. Every night he sees the same dark figure standing outside in the snow.

Motionless it watches him through the huge glass window in his living room.

Tonight something is different, tonight there are no footprints in the snow.

—

Laughter reached his ears from his daughter’s playroom.

His wife, sitting in her chair, didn’t look up at the sound of play and toys.

When the pattering of little feet drew closer though, she started shivering and weeping.

For their daughter had died a year ago.

—

“What is true terror?” he asked his victim.

“Is it the fear you feel? Is it the chains that bind you? Is it the pain I make you suffer? The deterioration of your mind?”

“No,” he laughed and placed the key to the chains just out of his victims reach. “It’s hope.”

—

“Eat your fill,” the host said with the most charming of smiles as the meal was served.

The guests looked up, paralyzed by fear, at the cooked human remains in front of them.

“Eat,” he said once more, his face turning hard, “or tomorrow it’s one of you.”

—

Red is the most vivid of colors.

It is both fire and love, both passion and blood.

Today it is all four of those.

The passion I felt, the love that’s now long gone, the blood that remains to show the deed and the blazing fires to burn it all to the ground.

—

Darkness was lingering around him.

It was so sick he could almost feel it. But in the darkness he heard something nearby.

With shaking hands he took out his lighter. The moment he lit it, he saw the lurking terrors all around him.

Now they saw him too…

—

He looked up as the phone rang on the other side of the room. Who’d call him at this our of the night, he wondered. He picked it up, but there was only silence. He finally heard a voice.

“Why don’t you turn around?”

It wasn’t coming from the phone.

—

The boy cried as grandma’s coffin was carried to the graveyard. Suddenly the coffin began to shake and screaming erupted from inside. The boy looked up as his father ran forward.

“Quickly, the nails! This time we’ll make sure she doesn’t be coming back!”

—

“Mommy, I’m scared!” her son called out during the thunderstorm.

“Now, now, sweetie, aren’t you a bit too old to be scared?”

As a new bolt of lightning struck though, she saw them too. Hundreds of dark, faceless figures standing outside their house.

—

“What’s your name?” he asked as the veiled beauty. Quiet, with the sweetest of smiles she ushered him into the bedroom.

“Well, I’m Michael-”

“No,” she said grinning, “you’re just prey.”

With that she was upon him, sinking her fangs into his throat.

—

He hurried back to the cabin. It was supposed to rain tonight. An hour later he heard the patter of heavy rainfall on the roof.

Wanting to light the fireplace, he went outside to quickly grab a few logs from the storage.

Only now he realize it. It wasn’t raining.

—

His wife was out, the kids were at grandma’s so he decided to clean up the old attic. It was pure chaos up here. Dust and spiderwebs were everywhere.

“This is going to take a while,” he said with a sigh.

“No, it will be over quickly,” a deep voice sounded from behind.

—

“I don’t understand,” she said again and again as the ambulance drove her husband to the hospital.

The paramedic put a blanket around her shoulders. “It’s not your fault, miss. It’s clear that your husband-”

“No,” she murmured. “I made sure he wouldn’t. I made sure.”

—

“Hello,” she called out into the sky above the mountains.

Moments later the echo of her words resounded in the distance.

She called out again, but nothing happened.

Only after a minute did she hear her words again. This time however, they were whispered into her ear.

—

With tears in my eyes I’m staring at Susan’s picture again. We were supposed to get married in June.

A week ago we went into the mountains on a hiking trip. On the second day Susan fell off a cliff. She was dead instantly.

Even now, I don’t know why I pushed her.

—

“That’s the last one for today,” he told his son.

The boy’s eyes were wide with fascination as he brought down the knife again.

“Daddy!” he called out alarmed as their newest victim threw up another gush of blood.

“Don’t worry boy, he won’t die from just that.”

—

She woke up, startled by a noise.

“John? Wake up!” she called out shock the body next to her.

“Sorry babe, that was me. I didn’t want to wake you. Just had to take care of something downstairs,” her husbands voice sounded from the hallway.

—

Are you scared boy,” the fortune teller asked.

“N-no, I’m not!”

“Then why don’t you take a look at your future?” she said motioning for the crystal ball.

“I can’t see anything. All I can see is darkness.”

The fortune teller gave a sad nod, but didn’t say another word.

—

He sat down to meditate and to quiet all those thoughts and ideas that were on his mind.

Breathing slowly, he shut them off one by one.

Finally, he was in state of complete solitude. Suddenly a voice different form his own sounded in his head.

“Go back, it’s coming!”

—

He felt an itch on his leg.

Bug bites he thought when he saw a small bump covered in tiny holes. As he scratched puss and blood leaked from the holes, before a disgusting long worm slithered outside.

Before he could react, the parasite retreated back into his body.

—

“Why are we here,” he asked his wife.

She simply walked on, leading him through the graveyard.

After a while she stopped and pointed at a grave.

“Because you can’t come back anymore, Steven!”

Confused he looked at the grave. Then he saw his own name on the headstone.

—

The stench was terrible. The whole apartment was a rotten dump.

An old woman lay in bed covered by a dirty blanket.

“My legs, they tickle,” she giggled in a state of utter delusion.

The man didn’t return her smile. He’d seen the rats scatter from below the blanket.