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Write a story about a misunderstood monster.

Posted in Short Story on Sep 5, 2025

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✍️ 93 stories

The Goblin Next Door

Submitted to Contest #319

The Unfortunate Incident of Mrs. Pickering’s Poodle Let’s get one thing straight: I don’t eat souls. Never have, never will. The whole idea is absurd, like accusing a vegan of secretly hoarding pork chops. Souls taste like burnt hair left in the sun: dry, bitter, with a lingering aftertaste of alpaca poop. And let’s not forget the texture. Imagine chewing on a wad of expired aspirin wrapped in mothballs. No thanks. I’ve got standards. This whole “soul-devouring monstrosity” narrative? Blame Brother Reginald of Bumfluff Abbey, circa 1347. A ...

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The Photo Without Context

Submitted to Contest #319

After two hours of lying on his back in bed, Dad began to fuse with his mattress. It was 117 degrees. He was drenched in sweat that had formed an outline of his body on his fitted sheet. I used a stick I retrieved from the backyard to poke his hairy belly that peaked from his shirt. Nothing happened. His eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. Just another fat guy lost to this heckish summer heat, I thought. He was never a likable man, but even I knew he shouldn’t have died so young. I kneeled on the side of his bed and say a prayer. Mors vi...

13 likes 8 comments 8
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Blood Moon

Submitted to Contest #319

Blood Moonby Andrew FruchtmanThe Moon was at perigee that evening, which is just a fancy way of saying it was at its closest point to Earth. It’s called a Super Moon and no, it’s not decked out in spandex with a stylized “M” emblazoned on it and it’s not sporting a fluttering cape (there’s no wind in the vacuum of space anyway, there, science lesson done). It appeared huge in the clear dark sky, a backlit hole in the night, lighting the passing clouds so that even at midnight they could be seen.So, on this beautiful evening, where the stars’...

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Under the Bed

Submitted to Contest #319

I’ve told this story so many times. I could recite it in my sleep. Sometimes I do. Reliving the moment I lost everything I held dear. The moment I lost more than I realized.The moment I met the monster.I’m sitting in the green room, waiting for my cue to take the stage. I’m alone, the makeup specialist and sound technician finished with me. I’ve studied the cue cards and rehearsed what I’m going to say. I grip my hands together to keep them from shaking, try to slow my breathing. It’s another talk show, another interview. My first in a whil...

11 likes 1 comment 1
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Death's Child

Submitted to Contest #319

The first child that Death came to claim was unlike any other. She was born in a time before children were taught to fear Death and she stared up at him when he came, silent and curious and watchful. She cooed at him as he reached out a long, thin-fingered hand to gently smooth unkempt chestnut hair out of her eyes, and he pulled his hand back. It was sad, to take a child this young.He learned a long time ago, though, that when the call came, he could not ignore it. There was a time, when Life and Death were still young in this world, when h...

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AIsha “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”

Submitted to Contest #319

In Queen Ann’s Grand Theater, the audience is buzzing in anticipation of today's sold-out event. News crews representing the major networks with cameras in hand line the front row seats. From stage left, a tall, thin redhead in a cobalt blue silk gown walks to center stage.“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Sheri’ Monet. I hold a doctorate from the French Science Academy in applied electrical mechanical engineering and have been a staff writer for Sci-Tech Today magazine for over a decade. I am honored to be your host for toda...

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NOT ANYMORE

Submitted to Contest #319

There are often clear signs that something is amiss in a small town. It can be in the way strangers stop and suddenly stare at you like you’re either a pariah or a meal. Or in the strain of an impossibly wide smile plastered on the face of a boutique owner. Or in dried spots of blood on a diner window. In Landover, it was the children’s things. The red ball in the park. A pastel friendship bracelet on a bench. The jump rope in the playground. Broken chalk on the sidewalk. But no children, not anywhere. I stopped in Landover on my way to G...

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Under the Bed

Submitted to Contest #319

Bella anchored the sheets over her chest with a white-knuckle grip. The walls, ceiling and floor, and all her junk she hadn’t bothered picking up, were black and shapeless as spilled ink in the darkness. All she could see was the bedsheets and her own limbs, and the tips of her toes poking out at the end of her bed, and the face that rested between her feet.Eyes flickered like candlelight in the dark. The creature watched Bella with feline fascination, as if there was nothing more important to observe than a girl quivering in her bed.It didn...

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The Garden of the Blessed Destoryer

Submitted to Contest #319

The temple bells had been quiet for three days when they finally rang for her.Ishaan felt the vibrations through the marble floor before he heard anything, a thrumming that seemed to resonate in his bones. The priests had warned him she was more weapon than woman, came wrapped in fire, but nobody had mentioned how the air would crack when she appeared, or how his chest would tighten like someone had reached inside and squeezed.She stood in the prayer circle like someone had poured molten gold into human shape. Ten blades hung from her belt a...

9 likes 3 comments 3
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The Awakening

Submitted to Contest #319

The darkness of my mind is consumed by the sunlight peeking through my bedroom window. My body screams in anguish as it awakens, wracked by the aftermath of another transformation. As my eyes adjust, I’m met with no surprise—my hands are once again stained with the blood of someone, or something, I can’t remember encountering. My clothes hang in tatters, the stench of death and decay clinging just beneath my skin. This isn’t how I envisioned spending my senior year. I slip out from under the sheets and make my way to the bathroom—thankful th...

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The Buzzerks

Submitted to Contest #319

The first time I felt alive was when my dad trained me to hunt Buzzerks. They were apparently a dangerous breed of monsters that only came out at night, so we hid out for days waiting to kill one. I wasn't exactly sure why my father was so obsessed with these things, but I finally got to spend time with him, so that kind of made up for it. "Henri, focus," he snapped as he lowered his rifle. "You need to be prepared. They could come out at any minute." My stomach growled. "Dad, I'm hungry. We've been out here for days," I complained. "There a...

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The Fixer

Submitted to Contest #319

The first thing they always noticed was the teeth.Row after row, jagged and uneven, crowded in his mouth like broken glass. Cameras loved that part - the way the light caught when he snarled, or when fear made him bare them in self-defense. Nobody ever showed the hands, though. His hands were delicate, careful things, shaped for work that demanded precision: soldering hair-thin wires, teasing circuits awake with a breath and a touch.He lived beneath the eastern viaduct in a room the city had forgotten: a shallow cave of concrete and rebar th...

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You Can Call Me Frank

Submitted to Contest #319

I am tired of being called his monster. I am literally exhausted. Seriously, when someone says “Frankenstein,” and then some arrogant little twerp adds, “I think you mean Frankenstein’s monster, the doctor was Frankenstein,” I believe we should all be able to cannibalize that person for parts. You should just call me Frank. It’s much easier, neater, we can all be on the same page of the same classic. And yeah, I know. I know. I am a monster. I scare people with my oddly colored skin and my mismatched limbs. But the thing is, aren’t we all ju...

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The Last Guardian

Submitted to Contest #319

They had always called him a monster. Long before humankind learned to scratch words into stone or whisper them into books, his wings darkened the skies above their villages. He was not born into hatred, yet hatred followed him like a shadow. Children grew up hearing stories of his fire scorching fields, of his claws tearing apart brave men who dared to stand against him. But none spoke of why he came—the real reason as to why he was there. None spoke of the truth. He was the last of his kind. The others lay scattered as bones beneath the mo...

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Yours Truly

Submitted to Contest #319

Yours Truly Good morning I don’t understand. Question? Am I the only one who sits down when it’s a party? I got invited to a get together. It wasn't my type of crowd. I came in,& smiled at every drunk face in the room. I got tapped on the shoulder for being attractive but they said some about me didn’t seem active. I came to this party thinking that my outside life will fit some type of match for my sake. Instead it showed I should’ve never came. I knew 3 people inside who looked at me like I was from the outside looking through their di...

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