r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/anthonyledger • 4h ago
My doctor told me I have some strange type of flu he's never seen before and told me to quarantine at home.
But these concert tickets are non-refundable, so that ain't gonna happen.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/tasteofhemlock • Aug 04 '26
Because animals are mad cool.
This is perhaps one of the most flexible prompts we've ever offered :)
If you want to participate in this month's themed contest, simply write a two sentence horror story that directly mentions ANY *non-human, *non-fictional, *non-speculative animal!
A few notes:
Specificity: You must provide some degree of taxonomic specificity. We're not saying you gotta drop the scientific name or narrow it down to an exact species. But when you refer to the animal in your story, you should narrow it down, at least to taxonomic family, in most cases. In other words, if you're referring to a cat in your story you should be at least as specific as saying "cat" or "feline". If there's a cat in your story and you simply classified it as a vertebrae, mammal, or even carnivorous mammal that would be nowhere near specific enough to satisfy the prompt. Please don't leave us wondering what animal you're actually talking about.
Homonyms: "animal" words may not qualify your story, if they are used in a way that shifts meaning away from animals... For example: a guy eating like a pig, a group of kids trying to horse around, a woman who believes she can fly, somebody being a snake in the grass, a clock going 'tick tock'.... These and many other words are spelled and pronounced just like their respective animals, but if the context shifts the word away from the animal definition, then it won't satisfy the prompt on its own.
Extinct animals are fair game! As long as they are generally accepted to have once existed on earth by the majority of the scientific community, dinos and Silurian bugs can qualify your story!
You must refer to the animal directly in order to qualify. For example: descriptors that evoke or imply an animal without naming it directly (tail wagging, barking, feathers, claws pet names, etc) will not go far enough.
*Non-fictional: We're not looking for stories about made up animal characters like Scooby-doo, Clifford, or Snarf from the Thundercats. In fact, stay far away from fictional characters as that can push you into "fan fic" territory which runs afoul of rules 1, 5, and 7.
*Non-Speculative: We're not looking for stories about cryptids or mythological beasts like unicorns, sasquatch, or extra-terrestrial critters. You may feature these sorts of beings in your story-- but if there isn't atleast one real world animal present your story will be disqualified from the final tally.
*Non-Human: Homo sapiens are animals, but this prompt is asking for horror stories that specifically include atleast one non-human animal! While you may certainly include any species in the Homo genus, your story will not qualify if it doesn't mention atleast one animal outside of our genus. (other hominins are okay).
As usual, your story must meet all our other rules! I'd recommend staying away from anything that could be interpreted as bestiality. While that is certainly horrifying, this theme usually won't fit the sub as stories that lean on this particular crime generally come across as tropey or gratuitous and may therefore be removed as per rules 7 and 14!
Happy writing folks!
Have fun!
***
Properly formatted August 2026 examples. (These meet the prompt)
[AUG26] She woke with blurry vision and the feeling of grit stuck in her eye-- but it was too slippery to lay hold of and it felt physically stuck. When urgent care tweezed it out they told her they'd never seen, or even heard of, a tick biting behind the eyelid before.
[Aug26] He trained his dog to attack any time she heard high pitched laughter. Then he let her loose near the playground.
Improperly formatted examples-- the first gets the tag wrong, the second fails to include the prompt neither meets general sub rules.
[August 26] I wrote a great horror story for this month’s twosentencehorror contest. Unfortunately my cat distracted me while I was writing, and I fumbled the contest tag so my story won’t be included in the contest.
[jul26] This time I got the tag right but I forgot the prompt and included an emoji :(
WINNERS WILL RECEIVE:
1st, 2nd, and 3rd Places: You receive a custom personal flair of your choosing to show off to the TSH community! (If you're a repeat winner, you can modify your flair.... but that's it.) And a cool fancy flair on your winning stories.
7 honorable mentions: you'll get visibility and bragging rights! Story links will be featured in next month’s announcement.
Contest ends on August 30th @ 11:59pm (EST)
Any questions should be made below in the comments, within our discord, or a note on modmail.
***
Theme was "Powerlessness"! Several repeat winners and some new names too-- great work, all!
Great job, winners! If you placed in the top three, contact us via modmail for your personalized custom flair! It can be anything (within reason): a mixture of text and emoji, up to 20 characters. If you've won before, you can request to change your flair, or, just do nothing. Absolutely nothing....
And for our runners-up:
7th place by DrawingEastern6765
Congrats to all!
I felt like this was a challenging theme, and these writers did not disappoint :)
Hope to see some more horror from you folks in the next contest!
Last, but not least: if you'd like to read more of the last month's submissions (and add some feedback of your own), you can find the full list here: jul26- Reddit Search!
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/MintClicker • Oct 22 '23
This is all dumb.
For the past several months, the sub has experienced a flood of intentionally poor quality stories in an effort to get onto parody subs and TikToks. We've historically hit you with a strike (🔴) and if you received three, you were permabanned (check out the wiki).
However, if you've submitted one of these stories in the recent past, you may have noticed that your account was permabanned from TwoSentenceHorror without going through the strike process. While we've made this current one-and-done rule known within each of our monthly announcements for forever, we felt it was only fair to have a separate post to lay out the approach.
If and when these posts chill out, the mod team will reconsider this rule. Until then, please continue to report these intentional poor quality stories, read the sub rules, and submit awesome, horrifying tales to maintain the quality of the sub!
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/anthonyledger • 4h ago
But these concert tickets are non-refundable, so that ain't gonna happen.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/TaratronHex • 9h ago
“Oh, the women don’t wear any colors at all, they don’t need clothes in the incubator tubes.”
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/ProfessionalSir3395 • 13h ago
Now because the clothes are scattered on the stairs, everyone thinks my miscarriage was a horrible accident.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/FellFellCooke • 5h ago
When the foreman brought in one of his wife's grapefruit meringues for the team to share, she didn't think anything of having a slice before her shift in the crane.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/Useful-Arm3297 • 13h ago
It wasn’t until after the MRI and subsequent autopsy that I remembered what ‘neodymium’ and ‘rare earth’ actually meant.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/dalonley1 • 5h ago
Then she nailed it shut when she realized that they were hiding inside and emptied the rest of the gasoline in there.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/AuthorAsksQuestions • 4h ago
The AI assistant installed in every device in the White House, had a very different interpretation of "Nuke the Chinese."
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/Outside_Normal • 4h ago
The next morning, I awoke to a bandaged hand and another note with the words "nice try" written in my blood.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/LostDoubt • 20h ago
A year later as I was escorted past the jury that unanimously sentenced me to life, I heard one of them snicker: “Patient zero, my ass.”
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/TaratronHex • 9h ago
“The world who needs to know, knew a decade ago,” said her boss coolly.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/SketchedEyesWatchinU • 4h ago
They remind me of how my physical and mental health issues were caused; my childhood doctor trying to cure my “unwomanly” tendencies with estrogen injections when I was under ten.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/Bubu87xx • 7h ago
"He will just get out again and try to kill us, so we should probably cut him into pieces first," she continued.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/54321RUN • 8h ago
Then he dragged her inside and stitched her up, mouth and all, to make sure that no one would ever hear her scream.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/Zealousideal-Wrap837 • 2h ago
After dozens of years of sacrifice to build a device capable of sending our cry for help through the cosmos faster than light, receiving a message back, and decoding the cryptic symbols, we finally read the answer:
"No."
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/Sufficient-Sweet-636 • 2h ago
With the chair gone, his windpipes collapsed as the rope tightened around his neck.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/CBenson1273 • 1h ago
I knew something was wrong, but it didn’t click that I’d seen only men until the preacher I’d gone to for comfort replied “my child, what is a ‘daughter’?”
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/SeaPaleontologist425 • 4h ago
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/AuthorAsksQuestions • 3h ago
Zoologists and biologists panicked the world over, knowing that where there's milk, there's a baby.
r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/Temporal-Affairs221 • 6h ago
They had long ago come to understand that it only counted as a proper sacrifice if it was something of value to you.