Short Horror Stories and Urban Legends

Lights Out

I’ve been laying down on this couch watching TV for what seems like hours. I can hear my dog barking downstairs. I glance up at the wall clock. It’s 9:00 already, and I still haven’t had dinner. My parents are out for the night, so I’m home alone with the maid. My stomach grumbles, and I decide that it’s time to have dinner. I turn off the TV, and as I slowly get up on my feet, all the lights go out.

I flick the light switch several times. Nothing. It must be a power surge. They’re pretty common in our area. I’ll have to go downstairs to the kitchen and turn the power back on from the power box.

In the darkness, I can’t find my slippers, so I just decide to do without them. Using the walls to guide me, I reach out my hand, searching for the banisters. As I make my way downstairs, I notice how quiet the house is. I don’t hear my maid’s radio or even my dog barking. Nothing. All I can hear is the sound of my feet against the stairs.

The house is absent of any light or sound. My house suddenly feels unfamiliar, and I feel lost. Unable to see or hear anything, my fingers tighten their grasp around the banister to prevent myself from feeling completely disoriented.

The silence is really beginning to get to me. “May! May!”, I call out to my maid, just wanting something to break the silence. No response.

The silence is unnerving, and the Creepypastas I’ve been reading have made me paranoid. My head darts from left to right searching for any signs of a monster or serial killer.

I use the wall to guide me and slowly make my way to the kitchen. My chest tightens as I begin to pick up on the smell of raw meat. The smell gets stronger with every step.

Fear swells in my chest with every breath that I take, and my heart begins to pound harder and harder.

‘It’s natural for a kitchen to smell like meat’, I try to reason out to myself, letting out a nervous chuckle.

I grope around until I find the smooth metal surface of the power box in the kitchen wall. I open the hatch and place my fingers on the master switch.

I hesitate.

I can feel my heart hammering in my chest. Do I really want to turn the lights back on? Horrific possibilities of what I could see race through my mind.

I take a deep breath and flick the switch.

The lights blaze on, and I’m blinded for half a second. My eyes quickly adjust to the brightness, and I stop in horror at the sight that beholds me. My heart feels like a leaden weight in my chest.

My dog’s corpse lay in a corner of the kitchen. His body is a mangled mess and looks as though it has been savaged by a pack of wolves. He lays in a pool of his own blood, eyes wide open and his mouth agape. His innards are emptied out into the puddle of blood, littered with his shiny black fur. The smell is sickening.

A set of bloody footprints, if you could even call them that, led straight from his body to the maid’s room.

The footprints were vaguely human but were large, far too large to belong to one. Their shapes were contorted, twisted almost beyond recognition.

The door to May’s room is closed. There’s a set of bloody claw marks on the door, perfectly complementing the footprints by her door. The scene is all too much, and the little food I had left in me quickly finds its way out of me. My vomit and the blood quickly pool together on the shiny white surface of the kitchen floor.

I run out of the kitchen, into the living room and up the stairs. The house is as quiet as when I came down, but I can hear the pounding of my heart to accompany the sound of my footsteps. Tears of fear swell in my eyes, clouding my vision.

I run into my room, close the door and dive under my blanket. My breathing is fast and heavy. Beads of sweat stream down my face. I stare at the door. My mind is so overcome with fear that all I can do is stay put and await my fate. I’m expecting the door to be brought down any moment.

Seconds pass. Nothing.

Minutes pass. Nothing.

After awhile, it begins to seem odd that nothing has happened, but I decide that it would be best to just stay put.

It’s not long before I start to feel sleepy. My eyelids start to droop. With every passing minute, I get sleepier and sleepier. I try to fight back, knowing that staying awake is a matter of life or death, but my efforts are in vain.

I doze off.

I am jerked awake by the sound of my parent’s car pulling into the garage. It’s still dark, so it must still be very early in the morning. My heart suddenly lightens and I leap out of my bed. It was all just a bad dream! I’d run downstairs, hug my parents and we could all have a good laugh at the ridiculously frightful nightmare I just had.

I flick on the lights and my heart freezes.

From the door, there’s a set of bloody footprints that circle my bed and disappear under it.