Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Write a story about a monster trying to become more human. Or about a human trying to become more monstrous.

Posted in Thriller and Suspense on Sep 8, 2023

Submissions are closed

Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or use an email address:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 60 stories

What Kind of Mother

Winner of Contest #215 🏆

Trigger Warning: infant/child loss, drowning The day my daughter died, I became the villain of my own life story. When your child dies of cancer, there are fundraisers and flower delivery vans and friends taking shifts sitting up with you through the long black nights and washing your hair. When your child dies and it’s your fault, there are no homemade casseroles filling your freezer, no one to hold your hair back as acrid vomit wracks your body through the early morning hours, bilious and yellow from the lack of meal trains organized...

190 likes 93 comments 93
Read story

Monster with Two Faces

Shortlisted for Contest #215 ⭐️

 T/W: Mentions of childhood sexual abuse, disordered eating, and addiction. Please read at your own discretion.I am not a monster.She tries to persuade me every time I see her. The problem is, she doesn’t know me like I know me. She doesn’t know I have two faces. One, an angelic face acceptable to society. It’s the one I show her and everyone else. The other face, is an unsettling one, with the coolness of its dead grey eyes, and the chill of its lifeless skin. I keep it locked inside the most hidden parts of me. I can’t show it to the ...

46 likes 36 comments 36
Read story

Vanish

Submitted to Contest #215

I tried to be gentle. I tried to come to you slowly, revealing myself in fragments under the growing dimness of dusk. I stepped ever so carefully into the downward cast of the yellow streetlamp’s sepia light, sending forth first a finger, then, a tentative but eager-to-caress hand. I moved so gently, so slowly that I felt the cloak of darkness removed from my face inch by inch, nose first, before there was no more hiding. I did this for you, as not to startle you, didn’t you see?I even smiled, those sparks of kindness you all boast so easily...

40 likes 34 comments 34
Read story

Doctor D. and Mr. Hyde

Submitted to Contest #215

You stood me up. Or at least Freud would’ve said you stood me up. Me, a former client forking over a check in the high triple digits every week hoping that I’d hear a different existential interpretation than my own, expecting that somehow your take on things would open my eyes to something new, like some kind of salubrious psilocybin trip. I decided to terminate therapy because you disclosed something you perhaps shouldn’t have. “I took ayahuasca in the Peruvian jungle, four years ago,” you confessed. “When I was un...

35 likes 37 comments 37
Read story

Modern Day Monsters

Submitted to Contest #215

Modern Day Monsters How to build a modern day monster inspired by Mary Shelley: Believe misused power could destroy society. Believe in the Gods, here is a chain of them: Zeus: God of Sky, Weather and Fate. Call on him if questioning destiny. Aphrodite: Goddess of Love, Passion and Beauty. She will find love for the loveless. Poseidon: God of River, Seas and Earthquakes. Beware the Elements. Artemis: Goddess of Wild Animals, Disease and Children. Call on her for animal attacks, disease attacks and child attacks. Demeter: Goddess of Agricultu...

27 likes 38 comments 38
Read story

Ginger Monsters

Submitted to Contest #215

The sound of plates smashing, furniture being upturned, and guttural, echoing roars, finally subsided as an uneasy peace drifted through the Skarion household, replacing the previous turmoil. It was a case of the calm coming after the storm. Standing around the dishevelled dining table in the storm’s wake, was Roger Skarion, his wife Barbara, Roger’s mother, Emily, and a very uncomfortable-looking seven-feet tall male creature of seemingly unknown origin, covered from head to toe in shaggy, matted ginger fur. “That is enough!” Scolded the pe...

26 likes 23 comments 23
Read story

Elderakin

Submitted to Contest #215

Walking through the desolate landscape of Ruitina, Kurt Westin glanced over to his partner on this mission. His name was Alex, and he was a young cadet, freshly out of school. Kurt felt terrible for him for being sent on this mission, knowing that the kid did not know what was happening. The two arrived on this planet a few hours ago to investigate a report of strange sightings on and around Ruitina. Officially, this planet inhabited no form of life, but Kurt knew that was far from the truth. This planet used to be a lush paradise, fill...

22 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

The Grotesque

Submitted to Contest #215

My scaly flesh is hard as stone. A natural armor. I have always had a tough exterior. But I fear I have reached the point where I will petrify completely and be arrested in an eternal prison of stone if I do not cast off my armor before it is too late. I feel my soul, like a firefly trapped in a jar, buzzing about, and smashing against my concrete ribs—encased in a dark stone prison. I feel my essence suffocating and gasping as I become solid.Evil words echo from the flying buttresses and stained glass. The dust...

19 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

A Monster Of Apathy

Submitted to Contest #215

I am a monster of apathy. A creature of habit and a purveyor of fantasy. A born dreamer, I forged my own way of the maverick. Unconventional. Thinking outside of the box. Without siblings, without a father, and without proper guidance, I have waded through the shallow waters of life, creating my own path and re-writing life’s logic to fit my own. An outcast from the normal practices of family life, I have always struggled to understand what normal is. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t care about things. I do. I care about good suc...

19 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

Choose Life

Submitted to Contest #215

The sun abandons a city brim full of life. This overcrowded and noisy place buzzes with an electric vitality that heats the pavement beneath my feet and shines bright lights through my eyes and into my brain. There was a time when this cocoon of hyperactivity enlivened me. But tonight I am tired. Tired of this life. My bones ache and once again I am sinking below the surface of humanity, my breath caught inside my chest, making me feel sick to my stomach. I sink lower and lower until I am where I deserve to be. I find my level and the pres...

16 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

Befriending a Vampire over a Rare Steak

Submitted to Contest #215

"So, you say biting is out of the question?" The Count asked matter-of-factly as they walked on a crowded Manhattan sidewalk. "Absolutely," the Doctor answered. "What if no one was looking, and a lonely madame really wanted me too?" "No!" "How about a suicidal man who was about to jump?" "Still no!" "Really? That seems a bit wasteful. He would have died anyway. Why shouldn't I suck his blood?" "Not even if he begged you. You said you wanted to ditch the "monster" image. There are no exceptions." "Yeah. Alright. But this is go...

16 likes 10 comments 10
Read story

The Choice Death Made

Submitted to Contest #215

Trigger warning: mentions of suicide and infant death The world is quiet under night’s dark veil, but nothing could be more silent than my footsteps. It was a trick I’d developed quite expertly over many millennia of passing through whispers and shadows. Stars flickered solemnly above, as if even those distant shining gods knew I was working tonight. I hated the way they watched me, so full of disappointment and disgust. I’d ruined the prospect of a peaceful night already, and I hadn’t even begun. No houses had torches burning still. No ...

15 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

The Psycho's Revelation

Submitted to Contest #215

"Trender's Orphanage. If you aren't familiar with it, that's because it is basically wiped from the media. Hard as they could, though, those fools could not wipe away the blood...or tears." The six-foot-seven-inch lady looked down upon the white-haired boy, a metal staff as his only protection held in his lap. She conceded to his intrepidness, and so kept her custom goalie stick-styled blade down. She also appreciated him not staring at her scars around her mouth, usually covered with a surgeon's mask but for today; she wanted to be un...

14 likes 7 comments 7
Read story

Hematites

Submitted to Contest #215

Theodore blinked. "Up there?!" he craned his neck till it popped. "What are we, goats?! I'm not crawling there!" "You are," said Grigori, eyes on the steep slopes, clad in snow from the foot to the spear-like cusps, "have you dragged yourself here for nothing? Care to tell His Majesty you rode all the way to the Nebesk Pass to take a nice look at the scenery and bid it farewell?" "Care to tell His Majesty that believing in fairytales past the age of five is considered a sign of madness in most human societies". Grigori grabbed him by the fur...

14 likes 4 comments 4
Read story

To be human

Submitted to Contest #215

There was something so terribly, wonderfully different about them all, and he knew that he was not like them. He knew this in the same sort of way that one knew that the sun would rise the next day or that the worms would pick a skeleton clean, and so he did not question why it was that they were all so very different from him. The answer was perfectly simple after all, he was a monster and they were not. They were not born with the same sort of darkness to them that he was, the same desire to claw and tear and destroy until there was nothin...

13 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write a story about someone trying to resist their darker impulses. Whether they succeed or fail is up to you.

Dark – 100 stories

Set your story in a haunted house.

Horror – 68 stories

You confront the monster you’ve spent many long years hunting. Except they’re not exactly what you thought they’d be…

Adventure – 45 stories

Write a story about someone making a deal with the devil.

Dark – 111 stories

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

How to Write a Novel