Horror Stories of 1,000 Words or Less
For the month of June 2025, these are the stories that entertain us most.
* Letter from the Hill by Alan Keith Parker
* Prison of You by Hour Alkhayyal
* Hole in the Wall by Cameron Sauder
* Little Red Devil by Toro by Johnathan Alexander
Letter from the Hill by Alan Keith Parker
Listen to me, children, while you still have eyes.
My name is Theron, son of Marus, the boy the villagers remember as the lazy sheepherder, prankster, and liar, the one who cried wolf when there were no wolves, who laughed as the elders climbed the hill with knives and cudgels, only to turn away in disgust from my joke.
I thought they had no sense of humor. I was wrong.
They don’t go up the hill anymore. Not because of a wolf from that wet, blackened forest, but because of what happened to the sheep, my hound, the livestock, and the people.
It’s usually the dogs who sense things first. This time, it was the sheep. They froze in their grazing and turned in unison, like birds wheeling in the sky, then bowed their heads and began marching toward the tree line. Silent. Calm.
I rose slowly from my lounging spot beneath the Aleppo pine, cocked my head, chewed my lip in indecision. Then I followed.
That’s when I turned back and saw their eyes.
Gone. Not gouged, not torn. Just… taken. Empty sockets, smooth and red, yet still staring, as if the woods were looking through them. I turned and flinched. My hound had met the same fate.
Then the pain started low in the neck, erupted in my jaw, my skull. I bent over, moaning, hands on my knees, then vomiting hard into the soft grass. When the retching stopped, I collapsed.
When I woke up, the sheep and the dog were gone. In their place were slick, pulpy lumps of flesh and long, wet trails that dragged off into the tangled woods. There were no sounds. Not even crickets.
I rolled over, gathered what little strength I had, and screamed: “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!”
But no one came.
I half-crawled, half-stumbled over rocky soil, tearing my palms and kneecaps raw. I reached the edge of the village as dusk fell. The smoke of dinner fires curled in the air, but no one tended to the flames. Smoked fish lay uneaten. Grapes were scattered along a stone path. An axe was half-buried in a log.
“Wolf,” I croaked again.
They turned toward me, smiling faintly.
And I saw it.
They had gone the way of the sheep and the dog. Their eyes were gone but they were moving like they still saw me. Smirking. Nodding. Clutching knives made of bone. Marus and my mother were among them, expressionless with lidless, blank eyeholes.
Despite their blindness, the villagers moved fast, wrestled me down, and pressed bone knife blades into my eye sockets.
I screamed until I couldn’t.
I awoke to my father's voice beside the bed. His voice was soft, rehearsed.
“Your mother won’t say this. She gave up on you long ago,” he said. “But I will: You don’t have anyone but yourself to blame.”
I can no longer see what comes from those sickly black woods, but I feel it breathing on me. And soon, on you. May the gods forgive me, assuming they still exist.
Keith Parker has been publishing flash fiction since the 1990s. His latest pieces will appear the June 2025 issue of Flash Phantoms; and in Issue 28 of 10x10 Flash. His work also appeared in the March 2025 edition of Flash Phantoms. He was a featured writer on science fiction and fantasy for JustUsGeeks.com in the 2010s, and won the Freshly Pressed Award from WordPress.com in 2012. His short fiction has also appeared in the Stories: One anthology, Aim Magazine, The Fifth Di--, Zone 9 and on WLRH public radio. He’s married to his college sweetheart, who works in eyecare. The couple met at Birmingham-Southern College, a small liberal arts college, where they studied physics, history and beer. They have two kids in graduate school and one cantankerous cat. To pay the bills, he is employed as a modeling and simulation analyst at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Prison of You by Hour Alkhayyal
Something is wrong; you feel imprisoned. Your body feels heavy and stiff, like it no longer belongs to you. You try to move, to stretch your arms, but nothing happens. Panic starts to rise, your thoughts racing. Your body does not follow your commands to raise your arms, move your head, or part your lips. It feels as if you are imprisoned within your own body, a prisoner within your flesh.
Then, the voices start. “She’s finally awake,” one whispers, echoing inside your skull. “I wonder how long she’ll last,” another chuckles. A cold shiver runs through you. Your mouth doesn't move when you try to scream. Your body moves without your permission. Your legs swing over the bed, feet touching the floor. Your head tilts, and your lips curl into a slight smile. You feel it all, but none of it is yours. “I think a walk sounds good,” your voice says. Your feet begin to move towards the front door. You step outside, and the roads are empty. You try screaming again. But your body ignores you.
You see it — a cemetery. The gates are rusted and twisted, barely standing after years of neglect. Inside, gravestones stand in crooked rows, some cracked, others sunken into the ground. A thick fog lingers between them.
Your panic turns into terror. “No, no, I don’t want to go in.” But your body steps forward. You try to scream. A desperate cry for help. However, it stays in your throat. You try to push against the invisible force controlling you, willing your legs to turn around and run. And they laugh, “She still thinks she has a choice.” The laughter grows, echoing through your mind. Your legs move on their own, carrying you past crumbling headstones. The world gets quieter as you go deeper into the cemetery.
You stop. You already know what’s coming. Your hands hold the wooden handle of a shovel. You try to resist, but your fingers grip tighter. The first scoop of dirt is tossed aside. Then another. You fight, screaming inside your head. “Please stop.” But your hands do not hesitate. The hole deepens, and the dirt piles up beside you. Even though your arms hurt and sweat drips down your forehead, you continue. The voices hum in satisfaction, “Almost there.”
Now the hole is wide enough. Deep enough. So, your hands let go of the shovel, and your feet step inside. “No,” you beg. Your body lies down, back against the damp soil. And then, your hands move again. But this time, they are shoveling the dirt back in. You try to fight, but it’s useless. The weight of the earth presses against your legs. You are burying yourself alive. Dirt starts suffocating you. It reaches your chest and your neck. You want to kick, but you can’t move. The soil presses against your lips, seeping into your mouth and nose. The voices whisper one last time, “This is where you belong.”
Hole in the Wall by Cameron Sauder
Dennis couldn’t hold it any longer.
There were only a few finishing touches to put on his final essay, but his stomach churned with discomfort. He jumped out of his seat, apologizing to his study buddy Ellie, and rushed out of the group study space. The building had everything a student could hope for – a games room, designated study spaces, an outdoor barbecue – but the basement was a maze of dark, grey corridors, poorly designed and eerily isolated. It’s a good thing Dennis had been to the bathroom here before, or things might have gotten messy.
Dennis entered the small, dimly lit room, goosebumps rippling across his bare arms. How could it be so warm outside and so cold down here? He ran to the stall, locked the door behind him, unbuttoned his cargo shorts, and forewent his usual public bathroom cleaning routine. It was spotless in here; either the building kept it clean, or nobody ever visited.
It was a sweet relief when his bowels emptied. He looked around the stall, having left his phone at the table, but froze when he noticed the hole in the wall.
It was toonie-sized, situated at his eye level as if he were standing, and impossibly dark.
A shiver tore its way through Dennis’ body as he realized just how exposed he was, pants around his ankles, dick out. He instinctively closed his legs and made himself small, trying to rationalize this hole. In a women’s bathroom, he might expect someone standing behind that wall, maybe with a camera. He’d seen it in enough movies, and its position was too perfect to be anything else, but this was the men’s room. Who wanted to watch him take a shit?
Still, a new knot formed in his gut, one that couldn’t be relieved like the last. He leaned over and squinted at the hole, trying to look through it. Small filaments of drywall bordered the tiny chasm, which was too dark to see inside of but almost certainly didn’t house anything frightening, Dennis reasoned. This was the real world, not a horror movie; these things didn’t happen to real people.
He tore his eyes from the hole to clean himself. The faster he was out of here, the better, but the moment he looked down, he felt it.
Something watching him.
His eyes zipped back up to the hole, from within which a single, milk-white orb peered with a constricted speck of a pupil staring right at him.
Dennis gasped and closed his legs again, frozen in place, not believing his eyes. How was this happening to him? What sort of twisted fuck did something like this? He knew he should stand up and get out of here as quickly as possible, but he couldn’t feel his body, couldn’t move. Within the statue he’d become, his heart hitched and shuddered.
Ragged breathing came from the wall, and Dennis could have sworn the drywall pulsed around the hole. The eye looked up and down his bare legs, as though it was undressing him even further, peeling the skin from his bones and watching the muscles quiver. He imagined a gaunt face behind the drywall, a tongue waggling from an open, grinning mouth.
Dennis tried to speak, to tell the thing to stop, to go away. Tears rimmed the bottoms of his eyes. Saliva drained from his mouth, and he could not swallow.
The panting behind the wall turned to whooping, animalistic grunts as the eye stared without blinking past his clothes, past his flesh, past his soul. The eye rolled backwards, leaving only an obscenely white orb, and the voice started moaning. Rivulets of what looked like milk dribbled from the eye, sliding down the wall. More and more of it oozed from the hole, and Dennis knew this wasn’t a person tormenting him. It was a nightmare.
He snapped out of his stupor, standing and pulling his pants back up, nearly tripping over them as he did. He shoved the stall door open and sprinted for the exit, yanking the steel handle.
It didn’t budge.
A hand gripped his shoulder, wet and cold through his thin t-shirt, and pulled him around. Dennis couldn’t help but scream.
Dozens of doughy, inhuman figures filled the bathroom, smooth and naked. Their pale faces were the worst, with sunken eyes and gaping mouths lurking within the folds of their melted-wax flesh. They moaned with a lustful gluttony and groped him with soft, icy fingers.
“Get away from me!” Dennis cried, trying to swipe the hands away and open the door, both of which proved to be useless endeavours.
The beings pulled him backwards into their fleshy congregation, moaning and drooling as they tugged through his clothes at his skin. They converged on Dennis, undulating in a single form and pulling him inside themselves. He tried to scream, but their hands covered his mouth, fusing his lips together as his flesh melted into theirs.
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Everything was cold and wet, and their eyes, milky-white with constricted pupils, watched him all the while as he was unmade—digested into the throbbing, gluttonous whole.
Cameron Sauder is an avid lover of stories, writing, and all things fantastic. Born and raised in Barrie, Ontario, he's studied English and Creative Writing at Brock University since 2021, where he co-led the school's creative writing club and co-launched a small literary journal: Phylum Press. He's received an honourable mention in L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest, and his short story “Isolation” was published in Blood Moon Rising magazine in October 2024.
Little Red Devil by Toro by Johnathan Alexander
There is a little red devil that lives in a dark cave not far from my house. Once a week, precisely at 5 O’clock and when the sacrifice has been prepared, I must go out and meet with him. I hate him, but I sold my soul to him long ago, and now I am bound to him. When I open the old wooden door, the sun floods in, and I can see it fall upon his red skin. I carefully creep into his lair, being sure not to trip over the rocks, wooden debris, and even some of the remains of his last victims scattered about the dirt floor. Although this demon is blind, I feel as if he knows that I am here. A cold chill makes the hairs on my neck stand up to attention. Before I can escort him to devour his sacrifice, I must appease him with a liquid offering. The small can next to him is stained crimson like his flesh. It is as if this chalice were made just for him. He doesn’t say a word as I pour the pitch-black juice into his mouth. There is no doubt that this liquid is as black as his heart. I must then pull the string to signify that it is time. Three rings are the required amount. I pull, One, Fuck, Two, Shit I don’t want to do this, Three, He awakens. A god-awful roar bellows out from him, and it won't stop until he has had his meal. I escort him to his altar. He, on all fours, crawling like a sun-burnt child; he senses when we are close to his feeding ground. The sacrifice, seeming to know that their end is near, says nothing but calmly sways back and forth, offering their souls to whatever god they pray to. He begins to feed, and I follow as he eats. He takes handfuls into his maw, and some of that black liquid drips from his fangs. The viscera and bones of his victims are left in his wake, and they cover my shoes in an opaque film, and I begin to sweat. For an hour, he carries on like this, never stopping, never full. When the last one is devoured, he falls into his weekly slumber, and I return him to his lair once more. I close the door to his chambers, pleased that I won’t have to see him for another week. I spend the rest of the evening cleaning up the remains. I hate that little red devil and having to mow the lawn.
Johnathan P Alexander is a former active-duty US Marine with two combat deployments. He is currently pursuing an MFA at Hood College in Frederick, MD.