Flash Fiction Horror: Terror on Hilltop Drive

by CJ Heck

Home alone, the sound of breaking glass wrenched Maggie from sleep. 

Waiting, listening, afraid to breathe, her heartbeats mingled with a wooden creak as someone climbed the stairs in the hallway.

Her door was open, she thought.  Oh my God!  The door was open!

Icy tendrils of fear prickled the nape of her neck, yanking the wisps of hair and standing them on end. 

Perspiration beaded her forehead and neck, the little runnels slipping down between her breasts, soaking the front of her nightgown. 

Suddenly a shot rang out in the darkness.  The bold flash was all at once blinding. Her ears were stunned to silence and a scream tore from her throat. 

She waited in the hushed gloom, her eyes again adjusting to the night. 

The smell of burnt gunpowder and blood filled the air and it was nauseating.

Afraid of the dark, but more afraid of turning on a light, she picked up the phone and dialed. 

“Nine-One-One. What is your emergency?”

“1010 Hilltop Drive. Help me!  I’ve just shot an intruder. Hurry!  Please hurry!”

Smoke clung to her like a shroud, its gray wisps still rising from the trembling .38 as Maggie crept through the doorway and into the hall to wait ...


[From the Book, "Bits and Pieces", by CJ Heck] 


“A writer soon learns that easy to read is hard to write.” ~CJ Heck

Flash Fiction Horror: "Half Past Five"

Peck's Corner

by CJ Heck

There’s a sewer drain in town on Peck's Corner.  At half past five every evening, the street lamp flickers on, near where gentlemen routinely take a leak after leaving the Raven's Wing Pub, after closing. 

It's been done for years.  No one even seems to notice, except for the smell of piss that assaults the nostrils when you step out onto the sidewalk. 

The smell immediately informs the brain, but only the vermin care -- and there were plenty of them out there, near the sewer drain in town on Peck's Corner.  I know.  I've been there.  That's where I saw the body.  

It was at half past five on Monday.  The chimes from the clock in the tower told me it was so, and when I called, that’s what I told the authorities. 

The body was posed, sitting.  The head was in his lap, resting between the legs which were all askew and bent at impossible angles.  

The arms hung down, elbows facing out. The hands were placed on top of the head, fingers entwined in the flaming red hair of the head -- the head that was in his lap. 

The body was sitting in a pool of its own blood, the mouth frozen in a scream that no one will ever hear.  But the eyes, the eyes ... I will never forget the eyes. The vermin had eaten both eyes. 

Will anyone ever know the horror they saw on Peck's Corner, just before half past five ...  


[From the Book, "Bits and Pieces", by CJ Heck]

“A writer soon learns that easy to read is hard to write.” ~CJ Heck