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15 first lines to a scary story

Which of these tickle your interest or tingle your spine?

  1. The bones proved brittle beneath her barred teeth.
  2. On an otherwise soundless night, a scream was carried delicately on the gusts of wind.
  3. The red door stood starkly in the hallway, having appeared in a silent yet all too sinister way.
  4. A baby cried and Elizabeth was halfway down the hall before her sleep-addled brain remembered there was no longer a baby.
  5. She tried to open her eyes against the darkness, but it swallowed her whole.
  6. She awoke to the sensation of burrowing deep in her ear.
  7. And just like that, her body wasn't her own.
  8. She could do nothing as she watched the lights one by one dim, flicker, and then go dark.
  9. Across the city, the women tried to scream but found that spiders crept out of their mouths instead.
  10. The lights in the sky moved and formed an erratic and constantly changing shape, but one thing was certain: they were getting closer.
  11. Reaching for his hand in the pitch darkness, she recoiled violently at the sensation of scales.
  12. The only building with light pouring out in tendrils into the inky pitch darkness was the only building she feared entering.
  13. He whistled "Waltzing Matilda" much to his comfort and her disquiet.
  14. "Ghosts aren't real," she told herself and she stared down at her own oozing corpse.
  15. She was finally alone, or, at least, she thought she was until the glowing red eyes began to blink open all around her.

(Prompt by Eleanor Pratt)

"red lines" by Janeen Hutchins. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).


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