Two Scary Short Stories

I wanted to share two short horror stories with you today.  One is mine and another is a contest winner's entry for a Fast and Frightening Fiction competition from Muse Magazine and I just had to share it.  More winners are here, along with this story and the author's name.  I especially loved this one, though (grammar and syntax errors fixed, because I couldn't help myself):

He could still remember how she looked when she fell.
He had her expression permanently ingrained into his mind as if it were chiseled there.  He could still see the fear in her eyes, still remember how her lips formed a found "o" of surprise, her hand grasping at nothing as she teetered on the edge of that rocky outcropping he had pushed her onto.  Worst of all, he could still hear her strangled cry as she finally disappeared from sight.
It had been ten years.
But it felt like ten minutes.
Thomas walked quickly past the place where it happened, trying to ignore the ringing of sirens in his ears, the beeping of the heart monitor flat lining, the brush of the shock blanket around his shoulders.  He closed his eyes and rushed past, determined to pass these woods without breaking into tears.  When he opened his eyes again, he was facing a teenage girl, with familiar features (if not a bit paler) and the same school uniform she had on the day she died.
He only had a moment to scream before he flung himself into the woods and started running to get away from her.  He could feel her presence following as he ran.  He let the branches rip at his skin and clothes and he closed his eyes and thrust his arms out before him to find his way.  He didn't see the edge before he was over it, he couldn't feel the rush of wind as he fell into the favine until he was nearly to the botoom, and he almost didn't have time to comprehend the soft words that floated on the brreze to him, those words spoken in the voice that had haunted his nightmares for years: her voice.




One of my grammar assignments this week was to write a paragraph using as many verbal phrases as possible.  I decided to write a horror paragraph.  Lovely, right?  Here it is (note that I would have written this differently if not for the assignment):

My feet landing heavily on the ground, I ran, glancing over my shoulder and spotting my pursuers. Already going flat-out, I couldn't run any faster, but they were gaining on me. To die at our hands is an honor, June, they thought at me, causing my feet to slow, my mind whirling. To die at our hands is an honor, they repeated, making me halt completely, hands resting on my knees, raking in huge amounts of air. Looking back again, I saw them ten feet away. One of them bounded ahead of the others and leaped on top of me. Everything went black, but before I lost consciousness, I heard it whisper in my ear, "To die at our hands is an honor, June."

Yeah, I know, mine's really short and it's not very good, but I just couldn't refrain from sharing what a classmate called 'epic' and 'enthralling.'  (Let me just say in my defense that this was a result of waiting until I had fifteen minutes to think of a paragraph and incorporate several verbal phrases.)