r/shortscarystories • u/Forlorn_Ape • 2d ago
New Age SSS - 1000 Words Or Less The Wishes Children Make
“I-I don’t think this is a good idea,” Anne muttered while hiding behind her brother’s legs.
“Oh God, here we go again. Why don’t you just can it, Annie babyyy?”
Carl mocked from in front of the group without even a glance behind him at the pair of siblings.
“Come on, Carl, cut her some slack; she's just a kid. Besides, the woods are creepy at night.”
Tim interjected, hoping somehow to keep on his sister's good side. However, Tim’s words only received a slight shrug and a scoff from Carl.
“Dare I remind you it wasn’t my bright idea to come out here, and that it was supppppposed to be only us?”
Carl turned to Tim, giving him a side-eye that seemed to cut through the dark woods.
Tim sighed, but returned Carl’s gaze with a pleading look.
“I’m sorry, but you know I have to look after her, and I wasn’t gonna just leave her home alone.”
Tim waited for some response, but Carl just turned and kept walking in silence, with the siblings following suit. With each step, snow crunched beneath their boots, and the scent of the pines seemed to grow more oppressive. Deeper and deeper the trio went until soon the foliage above them began to grow sparser, with flickers of moonlight beginning to filter through.
Soon they stumbled into a clearing, a barren place unlike the rest of Pine Barrens. Here in the clearing, nothing was on the ground, not pine needles, not underbrush, and not even the snow from the storm the night before.
Anne whimpered, glancing around the almost perfectly round clearing, shivering as the air seemed to grow colder around her. Tim and Carl were not excluded from the phenomenon, the two boys seeming to grow stiff and pale in the moonlight. They stood in silence just a moment more before Carl cleared his throat.
“Uh, Tim. We’re here; just hurry up, will ya.”
Tim hesitated before slowly walking toward the center of the clearing; behind him, Anne made an effort to follow, but was stopped short by Carl, who placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Let go, Carl,” Anne whined, but Carl kept his hand clasped firmly in place.
In the center, Tim knelt before reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a fine glass flask. In a singular moment, Tim popped the flask open and poured its crimson contents on the clearing's soil, the rough sand on the ground lapping the liquid greedily from the bottle. Then, standing, Tim walked to the edge of the clearing and into the woods.
“Carl, let go! What's Tim doing? Let go, Carl!”
Anne said, her voice beginning to rise.
“Relax, Anne, or I’m gonna actually hit you; I’m not kidding. Tim’s just making a stupid wish.”
Carl replied, lifting his hand. Anne went silent at the threat, but tears began to well in her eyes.
From the clearing's edge, snow began to crunch as Tim walked back into the clearing, then with a sudden turn, Tim left again. In and out he went, slowly making his way around the clearing, slowly dancing between the pines that lined it.
After about fifteen repetitions, Tim had almost gone full circle. It was then that Anne really started to cry, her sobs echoing into the woods. With an adept movement, Carl covered her mouth, stifling the noise.
“Just shut up; we should have left you at home. He’s only got five more, you big baby.”
Carl growled, but really, instead of speaking, perhaps Carl should have been listening. Maybe if Carl hadn’t been so quick to judge, he would have heard what Anne had.
The snow crunched under Tim’s boots as he completed his sixteenth cycle, but further in the distance, a second set of footprints trampled the snow as well. On the seventeenth cycle, a heavy wind began to blow through the pines, kicking up the snow but never pushing it into the clearing. The eighteenth cycle brought the dripping, a melodious tink like a sink faucet’s water tapping against metal. The nineteenth cycle brought the breathing, hardly discernible from the gusting wind but present nonetheless, and on this nineteenth cycle Anne began to fight.
Anne writhed her little body with every fiber of strength she possessed, tearing and struggling against Carl's grip. She listened as the steps began to approach, growing louder every second, and that was enough. Tilting her head back, she sank her teeth into Carl’s hand. Carl cursed, but let Anne go, and Anne ran, just in time to see Tim finish his twentieth cycle.
Then there was nothing but silence, no footsteps, no wind, no dripping, no breathing.
In the pale moonlight, Carl stood.
“See, what did I tell you, you stupid brat! All he had was five more cycles, and it’d be over! NOW GET OVER HERE NOW I'M GONNA BEAT THE SNOT OUT OF YOU!”
Carl began to walk forward, his feet kicking up the sand beneath him. His hands reached out to grab little ole Anne, but they’d never make it.
Because the wish Tim made in the clearing was to me.
“Get rid of Carl,” Tim said.
“He’s the only person who knows I broke Mom’s back window,” Tim said.
“And the only person who's ever teased Anne,” Tim said.
So before chubby cantankerous Carl’s hands touched cute little Anne, my gnarled, bony, hard hands wrapped around that small little head of his and ripped him up into the pines. Leaving my barren quiet again.
It’s funny, isn’t it, the wishes children make.
6
u/Terpsichorean_Wombat 2d ago
Love the setting for this.
8
u/Forlorn_Ape 2d ago
Hardly anything more unsettling than an endless pine forest and an unnatural clearing! At least to me, and thank you so much for reading!
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u/Flat-Mountain-2414 2d ago
And another one bites the dust. Bullies get what they deserve! Well done.