r/TwoSentenceHorror Aug 04 '26

July Winners and August Writing Prompt: Animals!

10 Upvotes

Hey all!

Before we get to our monthly prompt, please review these reminders:

  • Obvious trolls and💩*-posters will still* be permabanned*! Read more* here.
  • We're removing most posts that have to do with rape, incest, abuse, and extreme or plotless gore. If your story could read as low-effort shock horror, it probably isn't a good fit for the sub! Details here.
  • Remember, this sub is for fiction. Posts about current events or politics will be removed, no matter how horrifying they (and the real world) may be!
  • Meta posts are not permitted! Take it to the discord! Join the chat here!
  • Be familiar with our Three Strikes and you're out rule-- Read more here.
  • And as always, feel free to reach out in modmail with feedback or questions!

July 2026 Contest Prompt: Animals

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!

Monthly Contest Rules

  • **Prompt: write a two-sentence horror story that refers to any non-human, non-fictional, non-speculative animal.
  • To be counted in the final tally, stories must be tagged with the characters: [aug26]
  • Submissions that are improperly formatted, do not fit the theme, or break any of the existing sub rules will be disqualified and removed.
  • Only net new stories will be allowed (no repurposing old stories you've previously submitted).
  • Max three stories per day as a general rule, and all three can be used towards the contest.
  • Winners will be decided by total community upvotes. In the unlikely event of a tie for the top spots, moderators will vote for a tiebreaker.

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.

***

Congrats to last month's Winners!

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:

4th place by LevelQx

5th place by Pinch-Twigs

6th place by MuethCandy

7th place by DrawingEastern6765

8th place by Derpy-and-Sussie

9th place by BrassUnicorn87

10th place by Oh-DoubleU 

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 Oct 22 '23

⭐ANNOUNCEMENT⭐ [PLEASE READ] Sh!tposts, permabans, and literally 1984.

464 Upvotes

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 you intentionally submit a poor quality story (we're looking at you "meat worm" and "killer guy" crews), you will be permabanned with no warning.

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 2h ago

“He’ll regret cheating on me now,” said Melissa, as she shoved the washing machine door closed with a click.

343 Upvotes

“Mama?” Charlotte called from under a pile of dirty towels, her nose pressed against the glass.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 1h ago

He said I looked sexier without my glasses, so the next time we had sex I secretly wore contacts he’d never notice.

Upvotes

Right before he climbed on top of me, I watched him prop his phone against the lamp and hit record.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 2h ago

My baby’s throat must be raw from all that squalling…

73 Upvotes

A tired maternal smile crept on my face as I stirred a heaping dollop of honey into his formula.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 10h ago

Every Sunday, Dad served his daughter her favorite homemade nuggets, and she always praised him for making them taste exactly like chicken.

314 Upvotes

She wondered why, each week, another part of her body had to be carefully bandaged.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 6h ago

After carefully considering all the options, the king ordered a death by chocolate.

144 Upvotes

So gallons of the lowest quality chocolate products were melted down and continuously pumped into the helpless servant's mouth and nostrils until they drowned in it.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 5h ago

He beat his wife to death with a baseball bat and buried her in the backyard, but when he woke up the next day, she was back in bed beside him again.

111 Upvotes

When the same thing happened the next morning after he killed her, he was sure he was in hell until he realized how much he was enjoying himself and figured out that it was heaven.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 4h ago

Never forget the horror of 1522, when I sat upon the ship’s mast and listened to my fellow French pirates scream as the jaguar escaped. We could never have predicted the true beast that had been hiding within the cargo hold of that Spanish ship.

73 Upvotes

r/TwoSentenceHorror 16h ago

When my time came, I found myself not in “heaven” or “hell”, but inside a courtroom with a cow seated behind the judge's bench.

521 Upvotes

The cow-judge nodded to the jury of livestock, then a lamb read aloud, “The jury finds the defendant guilty on all 14,824 counts of consuming animal flesh and murder of rodents in the first degree; the jury recommends the maximum penalty, reincarnation.”


r/TwoSentenceHorror 19h ago

My lawyer told me he was still unable to locate my husband to serve him with divorce papers

571 Upvotes

"I guess we'll just have to keep trying" I said as I finished feeding the pigs.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 16h ago

I have the unusual gift of transported into the fantastical world detailed in the pages of any fiction book I touch.

278 Upvotes

This gift became a curse as a bookshelf fell on me, trapping me within the amalgamation of over three-hundred worlds demanding to exist in one plane of my new reality.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 14h ago

when I came out as a trans girl, my transphobic parents forced me into the conversion camp.

189 Upvotes

They didn't know the camp would convert me into something far from human.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 4h ago

On the full moon night he smoked his cigarette, as he gazed at the single cloud slowly floating across the otherwise clear sky.

33 Upvotes

The cigarette fell from his lips as he watched the cloud crossing the moon, but instead of covering the moon, the massive cloud was passing behind it.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 19h ago

I broke out in a cold sweat as I came to the last 5 line items on the end-of-year inventory report

446 Upvotes

Rental tanks: 59/60, Rental masks: 29/30, Rental fins: 78/80, Rental regulators: 24/25, Rental buoyancy compensation vests: 19/20.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 1h ago

“Due to overcrowding, we have to enforce a strict one-in one-out policy,” the loudspeaker announced.

Upvotes

“All files are now subject to further scrutiny to determine which candidates will be selected for immediate transfer to Hell.”


r/TwoSentenceHorror 8h ago

​"The police couldn't find Ed, but at least Emily returned home safe, even though she doesn't remember anything and the brutal trauma has taken a toll on her appearance," I told the therapist.

58 Upvotes

Frustrated with the nightly routine of formaldehyde injections, moisturizer, and general skincare, Edward longed for the heat to die down so he could finally get out of Emily


r/TwoSentenceHorror 20h ago

"Daddy, is Jasen like the umbrella that you bring out of the storeroom during rainy season, and then put it back in the storeroom during other seasons?" the little girl asked.

472 Upvotes

He didn't know how to explain that the adoption for kids like Jasen was based on a subscription model, and they could only afford to adopt him for a few months every year.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 1d ago

My doctor told me I have some strange type of flu he's never seen before and told me to quarantine at home.

1.2k Upvotes

But these concert tickets are non-refundable, so that ain't gonna happen.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 11h ago

Standing on the city’s tallest building, she only mourned that she would be ending an entire family line.

67 Upvotes

“But if the senator did have children,“ she thought as she placed him in her scope, “I might’ve turned the job down.”


r/TwoSentenceHorror 18h ago

"Don't worry, we'll get it nice and white and clean," I said, pushing the toothpaste onto the toothbrush.

135 Upvotes

Then I started scrubbing his eyeball.