A group of Raroa students recently entered into the NZ Intermediate School Short Story Competition. One of the sections asked for a horror story that was "Beyond Expectations" and less than 750 words - we thought you might 'enjoy' a read of few of them...
Foreign Bodies
By Scarlett Anderson
Foreign bodies are eating me, tearing down my life bit by bit. Debris from my now frail body evaporating into my system.
Life as I've always known it is boring. Sitting still, listening. It's BORING! Day in, day out, I sit here, nothing to do. That was until IT came along. Eating anything and everything in its path. Destroying me. Eating me alive, enveloping me like I’m nothing, like a child would a horde of chocolate. Without a thought, without a care. So now, now I’m fighting. Fighting like there’s no tomorrow - there might not be at this rate. Although it’s far more interesting than previous times, it’s not a nice way to spend your day.
But I’m just part of a bigger unit. We’re all made up of calcium, so we break and empty more easily. This disease is hollowing us all out like feijoas being eaten. Stuck in our own caves, this corruption is water eroding away at our sides and solid outer shells. Slowly dissolving us into swiss cheese. We’re all having to work harder now. I can hear the poisons fighting and battling, brawling and dueling against us. It’s an awful thing to hear - knowing you can't get over there and help take the poison down.
It feels like I’m dying; we’re all dying - slowly, very slowly. These foreign bodies are torturing me, inserting their tentacles of poison and twisting my insides into a evaporating mess of particles. It’s horrible. I’m trying; I’m fighting; I’m doing my best to stop them. But my best just isn't good enough. I feel this disease watching me, hunting me, haunting me - all of us.
I may not live much longer, who knows?
But I do know that for the rest of my painful life as a bone, I will battle this beast.
This beast known as cancer.
Run
By Evie Wright
Rolling over, hoping Mariane’s warmth will shatter the bitter cold chill rushing up my back. I reach out my hand like I always do, hoping for a sympathetic, tired squeeze.
But there is nothing. No motionless, warm body to comfort me. Panic. My eyes blink open like headlights on an antique car. Looking around, all I can see through squinting eyes is the window.
Open. The curtains are alive. Moonlight streams in, flooding the ruffled duvet strewn over the end of the bed. The Wellington Harbour outline is still and placid.
My hands feel something scrunchy beneath Mariane’s pillow. Alert, I sit up, swiping it onto the floor. A piece of paper, half scrunched up, blood stains splattered over the faint scrawled writing.
Mariane’s writing. And a blood-stained blade.
I grab the paper, leaving the weapon to sit, and bolt to the open window. Moonlight beams down onto the handwriting revealing the secret.
Run Simon! Run and don’t stop!
He is coming soon and I don’t want you to be next!
Then it says:
Mariane is dead. I am coming for you. Just turn around…
Fear
By Izzi Anderson
My breath rasps in my throat. My heart beats a wild tune of fear, the drumbeat of my legs and the melody of terror, so in sync they drown out all other noise. I don’t try to harness the adrenalin, instead I let it run loose, giving my body the power it needs to fly through the city; my legs pumping, panic forcing them to go even faster, because if I don’t, They’ll catch me.
But even with this amplification of my body, I’m not outrunning Them. They’re catching up, running effortlessly through obstacles, bending the laws of physics to Their will, and with that kind of power, nobody could escape. In the distance, the white domes of the labs shine in the sun. Their scaly coverings disguising the horrors inside. The horrors that I am running from.
I collapse, my legs giving out from beneath me, onto the hard earth of a graveyard. The mournful face of a stone angel looks over me, its concrete wings spread, but it gives me no protection.
Because They’re here now, with their metal skin, and their cold, steely, eyes, and their voices like new gravel, gritty and harsh.
I promised her, before they took her, that I would run. That I would try to escape.
I’ve let her down.
Since They came, our lives have changed. The frequent Takings have made us like rats, scurrying to and fro with our heads down, trying not to attract attention.
When she was Taken, the whole street mourned. She was unnaturally composed. ‘Que sera sera’ was always her motto. Whatever will be, will be.
The dry, sunbaked ground gives me up as they lift me into the Ship. It’s far enough away that I have time to appreciate the final moments of life as I know it. At this time of day, the streets around the graveyard are empty. I feel a small sadness that no-one will see me go. No-one will miss me. Que sera sera.
There is a sense of finality when the ship doors hiss shut, a foreboding implication of things to come.
I see in my mind the harsh white lights and the rows and rows of silver cages, all with someone or something inside them. I feel the fear emanating from everyone, crushing me with its strength. It’s a powerful thing, fear. It forces you to do things you never could have considered. The labs are like that.
And now I’m going back.
