I woke up, gasping, but there was no air. The darkness was swallowing me up, and the weight—pinning me down. My lungs protested, desperate for oxygen. I tried to scream, but my mouth filled with whatever was choking me. Suffocating, panic surged through me. My life flashed in front of me.
Just when I thought it was the end, I turned my body sideways—and the cat fell off my face.
Outside my house, the winds were howling, and the bitter cold could even be felt inside my bungalow. Seeking refuge, I went to bed and wrapped myself in the bed’s covers.
The wrapping was good – perhaps too good. There was not even one iota of space for my chest to expand.
Slowly, I fell asleep; my brain shutting down from the lack of oxygen. This slumber would be very deep...
The precinct always feels different after dark, when the fluorescents buzz like dying insects and the empty registration forms gather dust in their wire baskets. That's when you can smell it best – the slow murder of democracy, perfumed with printer toner and bureaucratic sweat.
I've been working Voter Fraud for fifteen years, long enough to know when something's rotting from the inside out. Not the fraud they screech about on television – the real kind, the kind that leaves fingerprints on redistricting maps and DNA in voter purge lists. The kind that suffocates hope in broad daylight while everyone pretends not to notice the body.
My partner says I'm obsessed. Maybe I am. But when you've watched them strangle a neighborhood's voice with paperwork, seen them garrote entire communities with precise, surgical changes to polling hours, you start seeing the pattern. The killer's signature. They're getting bolder now, less concerned about leaving evidence. Why bother hiding when half the witnesses are cheering them on?
Tonight, staring at precinct maps that look like crime scene photos, I remember what my first supervisor told me: "The perfect murder is the one that looks like natural causes." They're making it look like democracy just stopped breathing on its own.
I can do it. I can hold it. This is the part of the story where the hero is saved. This sucks. Aaaand I still need to finish those dishes. hehe. I guess the dishes don't matter.
I've been here before, when I gave mom the desk and she kept it right there in the living room for decades.
I'll just rest in this cabinet for now. It's all perfect.
Ouch. It feels like that out of these the only survivable one is the coffin lmao. A gallon of tabasco is a LOT and snorting wasabi doesn’t seem like a safe way either.
I'd definitely go for the spiders in the coffin. I accidentally ate about a tablespoon of wasabi once, thinking it was guacamole. What can I say? I grew up in a tiny town and it was my first time at a Japanese restaurant, I had no idea what the stuff was - and my new in-laws were hosting the dinner party, so there was NO way I was going to spit the stuff out. And yeah, the fumes worked their way up into my nasal passages, too, so it was pure torture. Then again, having me sit there grimacing from the pain, with a waitress worriedly flitting around our table didn't make that great an impression, either. Oh well, they loved me anyway. So yeah, the wasabi snorting is out for me! 🤯
That's awesome! I believe that Microdosing is a great way to get back into writing fiction! Low pressure, you can try genres, themes whatever you want :) and who knows some of these may grow into bigger stories down the line :)
OK - so I plays by da rules, and da rules is da rules. so here is my 70mg exactamundo
His unrecognisably burnt body horrified me. I couldn’t let Dad endure years of endless suffering. I knew my Dad: “Just unplug me," that's what he’d say.
After a while, his twitching stopped and I lifted the pillow.
"Goodbye Dad. I'll always love you,"
"What do you mean, goodbye, Son?"
My father's lightly bandaged face poked round the door "Nurse said you were down here... and who's that poor bastard?"
i couldnt live with myself knowing I had flaunted the 70mg with a bloated 106 word version - and the idea was strong enough to stand the pruning. and I think the cripy fried f**ker was uncalled for. it was already dark enough. slapped wrists!
The precinct always feels different after dark, when the fluorescents buzz like dying insects and the empty registration forms gather dust in their wire baskets. That's when you can smell it best – the slow murder of democracy, perfumed with printer toner and bureaucratic sweat.
I've been working Voter Fraud for fifteen years, long enough to know when something's rotting from the inside out. Not the fraud they screech about on television – the real kind, the kind that leaves fingerprints on redistricting maps and DNA in voter purge lists. The kind that suffocates hope in broad daylight while everyone pretends not to notice the body.
My partner says I'm obsessed. Maybe I am. But when you've watched them strangle a neighborhood's voice with paperwork, seen them garrote entire communities with precise, surgical changes to polling hours, you start seeing the pattern. The killer's signature. They're getting bolder now, less concerned about leaving evidence. Why bother hiding when half the witnesses are cheering them on?
Tonight, staring at precinct maps that look like crime scene photos, I remember what my first supervisor told me: "The perfect murder is the one that looks like natural causes." They're making it look like democracy just stopped breathing on its own.
Thanks! so kind! keeping it terse, you have to make each word count, dont you, just leave in the strongest ones - its such a challenge - I'm obsessed! but october has been almost TOO MUCH horror, even for me! I've missed some out for sure.
T’is torture in a tourniquet, tightened with a rope around my wrists, tied behind my back. Terrorists toss me in a tunnel, blindfolded and gagged. I can’t move. I can breathe only through my nose. Alone, carried underground, but above crumbles of debris crash. Screams and silence. Desire dying to suffocation, but a voice is heard; a face appears. “Breathe slowly, calm down.” A cadaver dog finds me. I am alive.
(If unsupervised, after dark trick-or-treating had been as dangerous in the 80s as the government do-gooders of the 2000s imagine...)
All the candle lit jack-o’-lanterns and plastic flashlights were fading. I tried one last time to wheeze some air past the sticky gumball in my throat...
“OUTTA THE WAY, TWERPS!”
Someone thumped my back.
When I sat up, my weirdly tall neighbor Tobias, Dracula for the night, was waving my gumball wrapper at all us younger kids. “Stay away from the Combs Estate, dummies! Don’t eat candy called Dead Zone!”
His cold, sweaty hands tightened around her neck. She didn’t think it would happen now but the stench of crack was on his breath. All she felt was almost a release; nearly free. Just as the blackness started to form, he released. And his maniacal laughing. “It is just so easy and clean, no blood.” Shortly after he fell asleep, she was free. No longer would she feel suffocated by fear.
Murphy couldn’t breathe. Literally. He was hyperventilating. But from stress, not actual asphyxiation. He was suffering from what his shrink called content suffocation. His inner demons compelled him to watch every new show that dropped. To be up to speed for the water cooler, though there was no sign of The Culligan Man in his mother's basement. He barely survived cable’s drip feeding. He would not survive streaming’s bulk delivery.
PROMPT: SUFFOCATION
70 WORDS
Willow fell backwards, stumbling over one of the tombstones.
“Care to help me?”
“Quiet, I’m trying to focus.” He sighed, and started over, starting from the top of some random poem he had memorized at some point.
“Have I ever told you how much I respect your brother?” Abigail laughed, breathless. “Shame you had to go and get him killed.”
Dimitri stopped talking and the silence around them was suffocating.
I woke up, gasping, but there was no air. The darkness was swallowing me up, and the weight—pinning me down. My lungs protested, desperate for oxygen. I tried to scream, but my mouth filled with whatever was choking me. Suffocating, panic surged through me. My life flashed in front of me.
Just when I thought it was the end, I turned my body sideways—and the cat fell off my face.
love me some clean and crisp sci fi horror
I do Sci-Fi very rarely, but this one turned out fine I think haha
PROMPT: SUFFOCATION
THE PANIC
A sense of overwhelming panic was starting to envelop him.
He could feel his chest gradually tightening, until he was gasping for breath and on the verge of passing out.
Soon, his whole body was shaking with stress and anxiety, as the horrifying reality of what was happening began to sink in.
He’d left his phone at home, and was going to have to face a whole day without it… 😎
Outside my house, the winds were howling, and the bitter cold could even be felt inside my bungalow. Seeking refuge, I went to bed and wrapped myself in the bed’s covers.
The wrapping was good – perhaps too good. There was not even one iota of space for my chest to expand.
Slowly, I fell asleep; my brain shutting down from the lack of oxygen. This slumber would be very deep...
Microdosing – 70mg of a Suffocation
===
He’d waited for hours for his sentence.
The lord of the afterlife flipped the pages of his life-long crime records.
“I’ve an ultimate creative punishment for you.”
He smirked. No judgement was too harsh. He’d been in the infinite loop of self-destruction.
Reading his mind, the lord responded: “Your body will regenerate, in infinity. You’ll be alive forever, but not living.”
What..?
“Guards, drop him in the bottomless water pit.”
@Miguel S.’s prompt for today is: Suffocation
The precinct always feels different after dark, when the fluorescents buzz like dying insects and the empty registration forms gather dust in their wire baskets. That's when you can smell it best – the slow murder of democracy, perfumed with printer toner and bureaucratic sweat.
I've been working Voter Fraud for fifteen years, long enough to know when something's rotting from the inside out. Not the fraud they screech about on television – the real kind, the kind that leaves fingerprints on redistricting maps and DNA in voter purge lists. The kind that suffocates hope in broad daylight while everyone pretends not to notice the body.
My partner says I'm obsessed. Maybe I am. But when you've watched them strangle a neighborhood's voice with paperwork, seen them garrote entire communities with precise, surgical changes to polling hours, you start seeing the pattern. The killer's signature. They're getting bolder now, less concerned about leaving evidence. Why bother hiding when half the witnesses are cheering them on?
Tonight, staring at precinct maps that look like crime scene photos, I remember what my first supervisor told me: "The perfect murder is the one that looks like natural causes." They're making it look like democracy just stopped breathing on its own.
I can do it. I can hold it. This is the part of the story where the hero is saved. This sucks. Aaaand I still need to finish those dishes. hehe. I guess the dishes don't matter.
I've been here before, when I gave mom the desk and she kept it right there in the living room for decades.
I'll just rest in this cabinet for now. It's all perfect.
ALPHA SIGMA PHI - 70mg of Suffocation
"I hate these frat boys."
"Yeah well, you want in don’t you?"
"I guess. What did you get?"
"I gotta choose between chugging a gallon of tabasco, or snorting wasabi."
"Ouch. Pain in and pain out."
"Yeah, what about you?"
"Lie in a coffin full of spiders for 5 minutes…"
"Or?"
"Stray jacket in a sauna for 20 minutes."
"Damn…creepy crawlies or suffocation."
"I hate these Frat boys…"
Ouch. It feels like that out of these the only survivable one is the coffin lmao. A gallon of tabasco is a LOT and snorting wasabi doesn’t seem like a safe way either.
I don't know, I hate spiders...and I'm claustrophobic. I'd snorting for sure
I once ate like 20 wasabi coated peanuts at once on a dare and I thought I'm gonna pass out from the sheer power of the wasabi in my nose lol.
I'd definitely go for the spiders in the coffin. I accidentally ate about a tablespoon of wasabi once, thinking it was guacamole. What can I say? I grew up in a tiny town and it was my first time at a Japanese restaurant, I had no idea what the stuff was - and my new in-laws were hosting the dinner party, so there was NO way I was going to spit the stuff out. And yeah, the fumes worked their way up into my nasal passages, too, so it was pure torture. Then again, having me sit there grimacing from the pain, with a waitress worriedly flitting around our table didn't make that great an impression, either. Oh well, they loved me anyway. So yeah, the wasabi snorting is out for me! 🤯
Great story, btw. 😎
I lay on the hospital bed, in constant pain. I frantically pushed the PCA button, but the well was dry.
She appeared and I begged for help. She smiled, revealing teeth I'd broken during a drunken rage. I'd written her for amends, but she never responded.
She injected me with morphine. "70 mg. That's enough. You can make your amends now." No more pain, no more breathing, no more life.
Thank you for joining in Jeannine! Great story!
Thank you, it's the first fictional piece I've written in years! @Kathrine Elaine mentioned your SubStack in her most recent essay ( https://kathrineelaine.substack.com/p/a-losers-guide-to-conquer-substack?utm_medium=email&utm_content=post ) and I liked the idea of trying out writing prompts. Thank you for doing this!
That's awesome! I believe that Microdosing is a great way to get back into writing fiction! Low pressure, you can try genres, themes whatever you want :) and who knows some of these may grow into bigger stories down the line :)
OK - so I plays by da rules, and da rules is da rules. so here is my 70mg exactamundo
His unrecognisably burnt body horrified me. I couldn’t let Dad endure years of endless suffering. I knew my Dad: “Just unplug me," that's what he’d say.
After a while, his twitching stopped and I lifted the pillow.
"Goodbye Dad. I'll always love you,"
"What do you mean, goodbye, Son?"
My father's lightly bandaged face poked round the door "Nurse said you were down here... and who's that poor bastard?"
I really like this one Nick!
yes its nasty isnt it !
You play very well by da rules! 😎 You got a lot into just 70 words!
i couldnt live with myself knowing I had flaunted the 70mg with a bloated 106 word version - and the idea was strong enough to stand the pruning. and I think the cripy fried f**ker was uncalled for. it was already dark enough. slapped wrists!
The prompt for today is: Suffocation
The precinct always feels different after dark, when the fluorescents buzz like dying insects and the empty registration forms gather dust in their wire baskets. That's when you can smell it best – the slow murder of democracy, perfumed with printer toner and bureaucratic sweat.
I've been working Voter Fraud for fifteen years, long enough to know when something's rotting from the inside out. Not the fraud they screech about on television – the real kind, the kind that leaves fingerprints on redistricting maps and DNA in voter purge lists. The kind that suffocates hope in broad daylight while everyone pretends not to notice the body.
My partner says I'm obsessed. Maybe I am. But when you've watched them strangle a neighborhood's voice with paperwork, seen them garrote entire communities with precise, surgical changes to polling hours, you start seeing the pattern. The killer's signature. They're getting bolder now, less concerned about leaving evidence. Why bother hiding when half the witnesses are cheering them on?
Tonight, staring at precinct maps that look like crime scene photos, I remember what my first supervisor told me: "The perfect murder is the one that looks like natural causes." They're making it look like democracy just stopped breathing on its own.
I liked the longer version, too, but I think that the 70 word version is stronger.
Thanks! so kind! keeping it terse, you have to make each word count, dont you, just leave in the strongest ones - its such a challenge - I'm obsessed! but october has been almost TOO MUCH horror, even for me! I've missed some out for sure.
We'll slow down in November, don't worry.
Yeah it's a very fun exercise. Great take.
T’is torture in a tourniquet, tightened with a rope around my wrists, tied behind my back. Terrorists toss me in a tunnel, blindfolded and gagged. I can’t move. I can breathe only through my nose. Alone, carried underground, but above crumbles of debris crash. Screams and silence. Desire dying to suffocation, but a voice is heard; a face appears. “Breathe slowly, calm down.” A cadaver dog finds me. I am alive.
tense - a lot of story in so few words - liked it!
(If unsupervised, after dark trick-or-treating had been as dangerous in the 80s as the government do-gooders of the 2000s imagine...)
All the candle lit jack-o’-lanterns and plastic flashlights were fading. I tried one last time to wheeze some air past the sticky gumball in my throat...
“OUTTA THE WAY, TWERPS!”
Someone thumped my back.
When I sat up, my weirdly tall neighbor Tobias, Dracula for the night, was waving my gumball wrapper at all us younger kids. “Stay away from the Combs Estate, dummies! Don’t eat candy called Dead Zone!”
His cold, sweaty hands tightened around her neck. She didn’t think it would happen now but the stench of crack was on his breath. All she felt was almost a release; nearly free. Just as the blackness started to form, he released. And his maniacal laughing. “It is just so easy and clean, no blood.” Shortly after he fell asleep, she was free. No longer would she feel suffocated by fear.
oh bugger i got excited and forgot the word count.
Murphy couldn’t breathe. Literally. He was hyperventilating. But from stress, not actual asphyxiation. He was suffering from what his shrink called content suffocation. His inner demons compelled him to watch every new show that dropped. To be up to speed for the water cooler, though there was no sign of The Culligan Man in his mother's basement. He barely survived cable’s drip feeding. He would not survive streaming’s bulk delivery.