Trapped in Time
Reliving your worst day is true horror
What if you relived the worst day of your life over and over?
While the concept of a time loop is rooted within science fiction, it branches over into horror with ease. A character being forced to relive a traumatic event again and again qualifies as pure nightmare fuel.
That’s what makes Happy Death Day so compelling. Tree, the protagonist, is forced to relive her birthday where she gets murdered repeatedly. Only after fixing what’s gone wrong in her life and then finding her killer and preventing her own murder, is she able to live to see another day.
The crypt keepers at Macabre Monday love toying with time. Sure, if you mess with time, it messes back. But that’s all part of the scary fun, right?
That leads us to this week’s story challenge: Write a short story where your character is stuck reliving a traumatic event through mystical means. What happened to them? Why are they reliving the event? Is there any escape?
Tag the Macabre Monday hosts (Shaina Read, John Coon, Jon T) when you share the link to your completed tale. Feel free to post in Substack Notes, in the comments of this newsletter, or in our weekly chat thread.
The Weekly Digest
A selection of last week’s memorable Macabre Monday offerings:
Fire is not supposed to be shared on Hearth Week. Why? Leeron Heywood supplies the answer in their chilling new tale — A Fire Shared is a Fire Grown.
Enjoy dark and twisted two-sentence stories from Jason Duck in Tiny Little Horrors 10.
Check out Breech — the fifth chapter of Red Creek Boy, a serialized horror novel from Shaina Read, one of our resident crypt keepers.
Imperial politics and angry ghosts cross paths in Part 2 of Bill Hiatt’s latest serial, The Imperator’s Spy
Thanks for the mention!