Cutting Corners
A short horror story about temptation.
The sky was orange.
Oppressive.
Lit up like the world was on fire.
Luis didn’t know that yet. He hadn’t noticed the sky or the fact the air tasted like TV static, and why would he? He was tending to blood dripping down his arm in wet lines from skin torn on metal. As he assessed how deep the cut was, and whether it would need stitches, he noticed there was glass. Shards of it caught in the red like diamonds, reflecting the world he’d just regained consciousness in.
He hissed. Forced himself from the pain to check the rest of his body, aware the adrenaline might be hiding a severed vein, a bone poking through flesh, or something more sinister. It was only then, as adrenaline slid into realization that he wasn’t going to die, that he absorbed it.
The orange sky.
The taste of static.
The fact that his car wasn’t the only one on its back.
Luis stared at the vehicle he had just been driving, wheel spinning, shattered windscreen wet with what looked like blood. Its shape was disfigured, heaped against a tree, but it wasn’t the shape that unsettled him. It was the wreckage around it.
Surfaces were infested with rust. Windows once home to glass were filled with weeds and saplings desperate to touch the sky. He stumbled toward the mess, trying to make sense of where one car started and another ended. Then Luis noted the models. Felt panic set his insides alight as he realized not just how many there were, but how much time must have passed since cars like that had been on the road.
He turned to the asphalt he had just been driving on. Shouted down its empty length. Span around and let out another strained “help” as anxious sweat broke out across his back.
He was still surrounded by trees. Still on a road leading out of a small town he couldn’t remember the name of, but the world had changed. Reality had shifted.
This was where he had been driving, but it also wasn’t.
“Can anyone hear me?”
All that answered was quiet. All that moved were trees on a warm, gentle wind.
Luis stumbled back to his vehicle, arm still bleeding. He wanted his phone. Had to hear someone’s voice.
He groaned as he crouched, stretching his good arm through the empty window, shattered glass glistening around its edges like teeth. He padded the car’s interior roof, low now to the ground. As he did, he tried to remember. Tried to swim through the panic to the moments before crashing.
He remembered blue skies.
Open road.
Trees on either side, towering up and out.
He remembered the bend.
How gentle the curve looked, reaching away from him.
Then he remembered the shortcut that opened up, through the forest. How inviting it looked. How satiated the ache in his soul would be — how alive he would feel — if he took it.
Just took it.
So that’s what he did.
Clutched the wheel. Eased it to the right. Angled the car toward the break in the trees until…
Luis shook the thought away, hand still padding the car’s roof, looking for a phone he knew would be crushed.
He slumped into a sitting position, which was when he heard it. Not just a noise. A scream. A clicking howl that sounded feral and hungry, cutting through the forest on air that had grown cold.
He froze.
Waited.
Listened.
Held his breath as a conversation from earlier rose in his consciousness and embedded itself in his mind. He tried to remain still as the memory collapsed into him, onto him, and the realization of it made him feel sick.
He remembered the woman at the bar, her ponytail grey and loose. The smell of old alcohol forced into floorboards by hundreds of worn boots.
“What’s this about anyway?” Luis had asked her, tracing the lines in the local paper like he was back in school.
She had looked up then. Lifted weary eyes to meet him.
“A curfew,” Luis read out loud. “Until the end of summer. To keep our residents and visitors safe in the event of extreme weather. They can’t be serious.”
“They’re serious,” the woman murmured.
“But the weather. It’s good.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
The bartender had warned her then. Told the woman to leave it. Leaned forward so she knew he was serious.
Luis remembered seeing it. The internal fight as the woman tried to hold back whatever it was she wanted to say. Tried until she lost, and pushed back the stool she was sitting on so hard the brittle wood yelled under it.
“Let her have them then,” she growled. “All of them. Maybe then they’ll listen. Maybe then they’ll stick to the road, and stop driving right into her damn mouth.”
This story was inspired by a prompt I saw a couple of weeks ago in the Macabre Monday newsletter:
Sunset Curfew: A little tourist destination starts enforcing a strict summer curfew at sundown. The reason isn’t the one printed in the local paper.
I read it and the story dropped, almost fully formed, in my mind, so a big shout out to them for getting the words going. On the topic of Macabre Monday, I was lucky enough to sit down and talk with the wonderful Shaina Read about my new novella, writing processes, and all sorts of other horror related stuff. You can watch it in full here.
Thanks for reading!
Before you go
My new novella, Jellyfish Bloom, is out now in paperback and Kindle (including Kindle Unlimited). You can grab a copy here.
For those unfamiliar, it’s an oceanic horror about a relationship unravelling. You can check out some reviews here.
Want to read some more free short stories before committing to Jellyfish Bloom?
Here are a few to get you started but you can check out all the fiction I’ve shared on Substack here.
Lightbulb 💡 - A short horror story about a haunted lamp.
A Gentle Rain 🌧️ – A short horror story about loss.
Checkmate ♟️ – A short horror story about long-distance chess.
I love hearing from readers. I keep an Instagram updated and post regularly to Notes. You can also find me on TikTok.
/ JJW