Even More Short Scary Stories

Happy Halloween!

The Great Diablo

The escape had worked flawlessly a dozen times in rehearsals, but now the false door was stuck. Diablo, the Harry Houdini of his generation, shoved with his shoulder against the right panel of the specially designed coffin, but the door wasn’t budging. He called out several times, knowing their was a two-way mic hidden in the coffin’s lid for just such an emergency, but there was no response, no sounds of the backhoe bucket breaking up the heavy soil covering him. Sweating, panicked, Diablo put the entire weight of his body against the false door with no luck. His breathing was labored as the oxygen quickly dissipated. He screamed and beat frantically on the lid as reality set in.

“He should have been out by now,” whispered Alice.

Brad, Diablo’s technical engineer, pressed his hidden earpiece. “He’s not calling me. If he was in trouble he’d be calling me.”

“Something’s wrong, Brad. I can feel it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?

“Something is wrong, Alice. My wife having an affair with the Great Diablo, now that’s just wrong.”

Alice’s eyes widened with fear. “Oh god. God no….” She ran to the backhoe operator and demanded he raise the coffin immediately, and he complied.

No one would be able to prove it wasn’t a tragic accident, Brad assured himself, and he prepared for the crying and wailing of the crowd and his faithless wife. All was going as planned, he thought, until the lid was finally raised and the coffin was empty.

You can’t fire me

The obscenity-laced rant coming from Phil Green’s office had human gopher heads popping up over cube walls with “can you believe this?” expressions. Phil’s door finally blew open and a furious, crimson-faced Shelly Grebin marched swiftly out of the building. As if still feeling the heat from Shelly’s ire, neighbor Tom cautiously stuck his head into Phil’s office.

“She took that well,” he said.

A pale Phil got out of his chair and sat on the front of his desk. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human being that mad before. I had no choice.”

“I know. Firing her was the only option.”

“Well, it’s done. Can you find someone to clean out her cube, box any personal stuff and send her laptop to IT?”

“Sure. You should go get a drink.”

Two days later Alex from IT knocked on Phil’s door. He brought in a laptop and set it on the desk.

“What’s going on?” asked Phil. The somber Alex opened the computer. “I thought you should see this. It’s Shelly’s laptop.” They both huddled in front of the monitor. Alex hit a button and a slide show of photos of Phil started.

“What the hell?” he muttered.

“That’s weird, but this…this is sick. It’s a live feed of some woman being tortured.”

Though shadowy, Phil could make out a bruised, bloodied woman’s body on the floor, then his eyes grew wide. He grabbed his car keys from his desk and ran toward the door.

“What—“
“That’s my basement.”

Blackout

I won’t deny that I drink too much. I suffer from blackouts, like last night. I woke up this morning in my clothes, with dried blood on my shirt and pants. It’s not just a few drops like from a nosebleed, but large blotches, as if I’d held someone who was bleeding in my arms. But I don’t remember what happened.

I recall meeting some coworkers at a bar after work. I don’t do that often because I don’t like all the backbiting and negativity, but my manager was treating, so I was sort of obliged to go. I sat next to the office oddball, Lacy…pretty, but strange in a disquieting way.

My head is throbbing. God, I wish I could remember what I did last night. Was I in a car accident? I check myself and I don’t have any obvious wounds. Stumbling to the kitchen, my heart races when I see a trail of smeared blood leading to the basement door. I follow it to the stairs, and cautiously descend into the basement.

Candles are burning. My eyes quickly adjust and, in the flickering shadows, I see blood-covered bodies. They are four of my co-workers, their corpses propped up in lawn chairs around a blood-soaked mattress.

Did I do this? My god, could I have killed these people?

“You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

I twist around. Lacy stands at the edge of the jittery yellow candlelight, naked, smeared from head to toe in blood, smiling.

And then I remember.