Workshops dissolve your voice. They sand it down. The essence of you, to make it "proper." Not only that; there doesn't seem to be much value in them. They dilute instead of integrate and upgrade.
What's your writing schedule? When you wake up? In the afternoon? Or do you let yourself indulge with being a creature of the night like myself?
Hey everyone! I'm u/JosephMichaelCaves, the founding moderator of r/writewithyourblood.
This is our new home for all horror writers to post their original short stories without any restrictions. We're excited to have you join us! If you're a horror reader, you can also join!
For Writers:
Post any word counts within a short story range (100-10,000 words) as the group builds (hopefully it does) depending on what the content is shown. There may be an NSFW tag for the subreddit. There will be rules, but they're the most obvious ones.
For Readers:
Comment with your feedback. If you don't want to leave feedback, that is fine! You can just enjoy the posts of short stories. If you'd like to comment that you like the story, go ahead. There will not be any tolerance for hate or negativity.
Community Vibe:
We're all about being friendly, constructive, and inclusive. Let's build a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing and connecting. Also, for writers to find their readership and readers finding new writers to find an interest in.
How to Get Started
Introduce yourself in the comments below.
Post something today! For writers: post a short story you'd like to share or start a discussion or simply just introduce yourself! For readers: you can start a discussion, comment, or introduce yourself!
If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.
Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.
Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/writewithyourblood amazing.
(This is the first short story I've written. I wanted to see feedback on how the story makes you feel. Do you like the development. Do you like the voices. How's the pacing.)
By: Joseph Michael Caves
The day is January 1st, 2025, and he is having a headache that will not subside. He has tried Ibuprofen. Still nothing.
He walks around his Colorado mountain shack. The snow is falling hard as usual in January, and Charles can't take his truck down to town to get him some different medicine.
He paces and paces for hours on end until he hears the first voice.
"Charles, why did you do this to me?" says the voice. It whistles inside his head like wind.
"What? Who's there?" Charles says with a frantic voice as he turns around in circles, making his head pound harder.
"Charles, you did this to me. Tell me, why did you do this to me?" The voice sounds clearer. It is the voice of a woman.
"I didn't do nothing to you!" He yells at the unknown voice.
"Yes, yes you did, Charles," she says with an almost gentle whisper, "you're a liar and a ——MURDERER——!"
Charles clasps his hands on his head. The veins of his temple are popping out, and he is gritting his teeth while he says,
"You focking bitch whoever ya are! I'll kill you! You hear me!"
"Oh, but Charles, you already killed me, oh yes you did, you Remember me, don't you?"
Charles goes through his pantry and grabs a fifth of gin and chugs it.
"You can try to wash me away like you did to my body after you slit my throat! I will never ever go away ——CHARLES!——"
Charles takes another big swig of the gin. The bottle is nearly empty. He sighs at the sight of the bottom of the small bottle.
"You will not get away with this ——CHARLES!——"
"Focking shut up! Focking shut up! Shut the fock up!" Charles bellows.
Not thinking of his actions, he swing’s the bottle upward toward his face and smacks it onto his eyebrow. The bottle didn’t break, but his eyebrow has a gash that is now leaking blood.
"Yes, yes! Hurt yourself some more, Charles, like you did me!”
The woman says in his head.
"Ya bitch! Get the fock out of my head!"
"No, no, Charles, I love this. I think I'm going to stay warm and cozy here and enjoy the show."
Charles, not caring about his eyebrow. He paces, grabbing his head again. The blood trickles down between his fingers, dropping on the floor in thick little droplets.
"What ya going to do now, Charles, huh?"
"I'm going to shut you up!"
"Oh, oh no, I'm so scared, Charles!" the woman says with sarcastic irony.
Charles goes into his room, a mess of clothes and beer cans sprawled out on the floor. He goes into his closet and finds a half-bottle of 1.75 liter of vodka, the cheap kind.
He downs the bottle, not caring about the mixture of alcohol or that he is mixing them with the ibuprofen.
"Charleees, I have a friend here waiting for you,"
"Ya fuckin' remember me? Hear my voice, you coward! You killed me and my sister! We are going to make you pay for what you have done to us and the others!" The man says in Charles's head with a raspy smoker's voice.
"GET OUT OF MY FOCKIN' HEAAAD!"
"NOOOOOOOO!" the voices say in a duet.
"I killed you. . .how is this happening? . .I fockin' killed you!"
"Yes, yes you did, a slow death for Patrice and Ramsey, right Charles? Just how you like it for all your victims, riiiiight?" The sister says.
"Now, we will make sure you have a slow death, a satisfying slow death." The brother says.
Charles continues drinking the vodka until the bottle is empty.
He is now drunk.
He goes to his kitchen and grabs a chef’s knife. He rips off his shirt and starts making subtle cuts on his chest.
One slash on his left pectoral, he switches the knife to his left hand and makes another slash on his right pectoral.
He rips off the skin where his nipples are, he rips both of them off without a thought of doing so.
Then, with slow efficiency, like a surgical procedure, like he’s done this before, he makes an X where his heart is.
The voices go silent, watching from his own eyes.
Charles doesn't scream. He is in pain, but he is sadistic about it——he enjoys it.
He causes another slash to where his ribs are with a diagonal cut.
All he does is wince at the pain, and that is it. Not a single grunt or vocal expression.
"Is this what you wanted, you focks!" he yells,
"No, I want somethin' differen' than what those two wanted."
A fresh voice emerges, a voice that sounds more haunting than the siblings, this voice Charles instantly remembers.
"I was never supposed to kill you! It was an accident!" Charles explains.
"Ha! You got jokes, yer' even lyin' to yer' self now, aint'cha?" the haunting man’s voice says.
"I swear I didn't mean-"
"Liar! Ya know it all started from me, ya bastud'!"
"It did, yeah, it did. . ."
Charles still has the chef’s knife in his hand. Blood is going all over the floor from the slashes. The blood from his eyebrow is drying, but slowly dripping down his face still.
"I was ya best frien' was I not?"
"Yes, you were. . . " A tear rolls down his cheek.
"Then tell me, why?"
"The thoughts, the impulses I had... I couldn't control myself any longer."
"Ahhhhh, see! There it is! So, ya admit you killed me on purpose?"
"Yeah. . .I did and I'll focking do it again!"
"Ha! I’m already dead living inside your head, yeh fuck!"
Charles stands up and drops the chef’s knife. He stumbles to his bedroom once more and opens a toolbox. he grabs a pair of pliers then heads into his bathroom.
"Do what yeh fuckin’ did to me! ——DO IT! ——" His best friend's voice says, repeatedly he says it like a broken record player.
Charles understands what his best friend's voice wants. He opens his mouth. He has the pliers in his right hand. He keeps his bloodied left hand on his mouth to keep it wide open.
He opens the pliers up and clasps them onto his front right tooth, then he pulls with excessive force. He grunts and wails as he does until the tooth comes out clean.
"Now another! Like you did my dead body!"
He does the same with his left front tooth. It’s yellow and decayed. It was easier for him on the first one. This tooth breaks on the force with which he tries to pull it out.
"You have to finish the job." His best friend's voice says.
Charles takes his pocketknife out from his jeans and opens it. He proceeds to take out the root of the rotting tooth. He makes a cut on the gum line. It opens enough for him to dig the pocketknife into the gums and pop out the root.
The decayed root falls into the bathroom sink along with a large quantity of dark maroon-colored blood. He gets dizzy, perhaps from blood loss or from the pain he has just endured.
"God, please make this stop."
"You should know, of all people, God does not love you."
Another voice says, it is the voice of his ex-wife. He knows this.
The familiar sound of her soft voice, it makes him irritable, not at her, but at himself.
"Oh, no... why. . .I'm so sorry, Juliana. . ."
"Charles, we were supposed to have kids together, weren't we?"
"Yes, love, we were. . ."
"Why did you kill me? The love of your life?"
“I don't know. . .something broke inside me that day."
"You stabbed me in my heart, you took away my love for you, Charles, you then——”
"I then fed your body to wild hogs. . ."
"Tell me, Charles, do you regret killing me?"
"You would have found out either way that I was a serial killer. . . I guess I was scared, so the answer to that question. . .I don't know. . .I'm so sorry, Juliana."
"Fuck your apologies! I want what is mine!"
"What is yours that you want from me?"
"Oh, Charles, sweet, ugly, sick Charles, I want you to end yourself not for me, but for the others, you have taken trophies from them. You never took one from me. Why is that?"
"I didn't want to be reminded of you."
"Ohhhhhh, then why kill me!"
"I didn't need you finding out!"
"So, instead you let me die with a knife in my heart, you twisted it, I felt my heart deflate, not just from your knife, but no longer was I in love for you, my love deflated while you twisted the knife staring into my eyes, yours were not of the man I once knew, they were dark and cold not green and polite. So, I will say it again: I want what is mine!"
Charles looks at the chef's knife once more. He knows what he must do. He wants all this suffering to end. His mouth is bleeding profusely. The scars he has left, the ripped skin from his nipples pouring out blood, his eyebrow fully dried of blood. He understands she desires his heart. The skin where his heart lies underneath, with the X spot already carved onto it.
"Ok my love, ok."
“I’m no longer your love! I’m your worst nightmare! Now do it!
I need my trophy!" she says with a snarl.
Charles seizes the chef's knife. He puts it to his heart where the X is marked on him. He looks up to his ceiling and closes his eyes.
Flashes of all his victims, one by one, all twenty of them, some men, some women, three children.
"I don't deserve to live."
He pulls back the knife he holds in both of his hands and then pulls it forward into the X spot on his chest where his heart lies beating.
The knife pierces his chest cavity, splits through the rib cage, and penetrates his heart with its final beat. The heart bleeds out, mirroring his ex-wife’s fate when he killed her. It inflates and then deflates slowly like a lung, attempting to push blood through, but failing.
Charles falls on his back, his legs folded under his body, he is trying to breathe but cannot, his lungs no longer hold air and his heart is no longer beating, he sees his victims staring down at him while he lies on his kitchen floor. They are all smiling at him. He can't talk. He does not think. He shuts his eyes. No longer will he be a serial killer.
The two main craft books that are essential for any fictional writer at any stage are:
On Writing A Memoir of the Craft By: Stephen King
Self-Editing For Fiction Writers By: Renni Browne & Dave King
Stephen King's book gave me my toolbox. It also inspires and motivates me. The lessons he teaches are not just metaphorical, but technical.
Self-editing is self-explanatory, though it is imperative for a writer to be able to edit their work. This book will give you examples and teach you through said examples and have checkpoint goals at the end of each chapter. Very comprehensive and very informative.
What do you ladies and gentlemen think matters more?
Personally, I love both.
Gratuitousness matters to me with reasoning, not just for shock value.
Visceralness matters to me because it makes the violence earned even if it doesn't have reason.
Example: The Girl Next Door By: Jack Ketchum.
I don't want to give any spoilers, but for those who read it, maybe you would understand this post more.
Gratuitous with reasoning can be an oxymoron, but it's a reframe of the word. It doesn't have to be purposeless. That's my opinion.
By: Joseph Michael Caves
12 A.M.
"I keep doing this. . .keep doing it, this shit is poison, I know it is, it's rat poison and I am the rat. . .fucking dog food. . .I am a sick dog. . ."
Jeremy Evans has the syringe prepared, the syringe that is filled with the poison he speaks of; this poison is for the sick dogs, the rats of human life. It is the existence of the.
----Never controlled substance----
It controls its host.
Some have lived to tell their story; most have perished their souls from their bodies chasing the high.
"I love you, I do, but I have to leave you after this one time. I have to get clean. . .I have to."
Earlier in the night, around eight o'clock, he told his parents and friends during the intervention that he would accept rehab treatment.
"Just this last time, I have to go tomorrow. . .I have to, my family. . .for my family and myself. . .I can't let my parents down I can't. . ."
He is sweating and shaking. He holds the syringe that is filled with the brown substance, which is the poison of heroin.
"Last ride, last high, it's gotta be."
He steadies himself, then sticks the syringe between his big toe and index toe. He rests on his back and he's floating. Floating above the trees of his apartment on his cemented balcony, His face is wearing a big smile.
He sees a flock of birds in the sky, the streetlights that are blurring, the noise of the wind, the whooshes like the ocean. Serenity.
That whooshing of the wind is now making him feel a sudden awareness. It tangles his stomach into knots, that familiar feeling of danger. Danger has become familiar to him for quite some years since doing the dope. That danger sensation that drives alertness into the brain seeps into its core. Its passenger does not know what is going to hit because of the unawareness of a drug-induced mental state.
----I love this feeling! I'm flying like Peter Pan!----
He sees the slow motion of gravity, that gravity within the whooshes of the wind, the not knowing for the inevitable.
----I don't need to live to live, I die to get high----
Though his brain is hinting at danger.
A person on heroin, of course, might love the sense of danger. Same as a daredevil or stuntman who breaks bones for a living. The difference is that they get paid to do so.
----I love you mom. I love you dad. . .I love myself----
He is riding his high from ten stories high. The memories inside his head, though, are indeed preparing him.
"I will get better. I will be better, I promise."
He said this to his friends and family several hours before escaping to his apartment.
----they can keep knocking all night, I'm high on my balcony flying!----
The broken tension from drug state to reality is closer than you and I may think.
He is looking up at his mother and father's face; he smiles at them with the euphoric high as the wind whooshes like waves hitting his eardrums.
----The summer of '08 was great. It was beautiful. . .Florida, oh man! First time I ever surfed, I was scared at first. In an instant I loved it----
He closes his eyes, then opens them; his parents are yelling for him.
----Mom! Dad! Look! Your son can fly!----
Danger embarks. He sees the horror on their faces, the bleak shrieks of panic in their voices that echo throughout his eardrums along with the whooshes of wind.
----I'm ok!----
He points a thumb up at them. That sinking feeling he feels in his stomach he has had before when he overdosed the first and second time.
"If I'm overdosing, I'll be ok, my parents will save me."
He sees their faces go farther and farther away from him as if he is sinking, slipping in and out of consciousness.
The light of his birthday candles hit his brain, the moments of his adolescence. The baby teeth he lost and the adult teeth that grew. The first girl he kissed, the same girl he had a crush on since kindergarten, but in high school; oh yes, high school, the start of his drug use after he broke his leg playing football in his junior year. The Percocet's, then OxyContin, then he got introduced to heroin. 18----24 now.
"Kristie Heemes, I love you!"
The realization hit.
----Drugs. . .I love you more----
He says under his breath amongst the whooshes of the wind.
Memories of his mother and father become flashes. His brain; a photographer, and every picture had a story he could tell. The frame of the pictures of his brain was in burn spots, the residue was there, the broken childhood memories; he was a great kid, was raised correctly; spoiled even.
"Mom. . .dad. . .I'm so sorry I have treated you like shit. . .I'm so sorry I treated myself like shit. . .dog shit. . ."
The memories fade along. Same for his thoughts about his parents and how they raised him.
----Danger----Danger----Danger----Danger----
----Whooshes----
"Ohhhhhhh fuuuuuuuuuck!"
Danger has broken the euphoria.
His parents are on the balcony.
"Oh my god! My baby!"
"Jeremy!"
"Mom. . .Dad. . .Help m----"
The End
I'm looking for people who write. To talk shop with. Yes, I mainly write horror, but I would love to branch off into different genres and combine them with horror. I'm currently self-coining realism horror (think of Jack Ketchum). It doesn't matter what you write. Would love to talk about writing and maybe give each other advice or feedback. Be constant or ideal readers. Writers should support.
Caves Makes You Fear
Authoring.
The experience of writing is an amazing one.
The creating your own world, your own characters, their development, the dialogue. I have learned I let the story brew in my head, then write. I let the story tell me what it wants to say, not me tell the story. I love it. It's crazy as well when you live inside your own world and live inside your characters' heads. The feeling is mesmerizing. It thrives inside your bones, heart, and soul.
I don't outline, never have, and more than likely never will. My debut novel's first draft manuscript is near complete, and I'm astonished. 3 months I've lived inside this fictional world and these fictional characters. Analyzing them like the narrator, but with care and not institutional.
Guess I just had to let this out.
If anybody sees this, and you write, let me know your experiences and how you plan things out. If you're a reader, comment about your favorite authors or characters or worlds! I hope to author books that you anticipate.
I will be posting free short stories. I care about them, but I feel some of them can be posted freely instead of published.
Caves Makes You Fear.