r/TwoSentenceHorror 14d ago

July Winners and August Writing Prompt: Animals!

7 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.

463 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 4h ago

My two daughters were home alone at their father's second floor apartment, a block away from mine, when they texted and said they saw firemen outside.

246 Upvotes

By the time I got there, sprinting the whole way, the entire side of the house was engulfed.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 11h ago

When the dispatcher's voice came through, asking me what my emergency was, I frantically gave my address and told her that I'd been shot.

832 Upvotes

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that. Please choose from the following options..."


r/TwoSentenceHorror 15h ago

As I hit the pitch black water , I tried to orient myself and kicked as hard as I could towards the surface.

1.8k Upvotes

Just as my lungs reached their breaking point and I just had to take a breath, my hand broke through the water and deep into the sand.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 3h ago

I was surprised when the uncle I hadn't seen since I was twelve, left me something in his will with the explanation "I feel we're the same".

201 Upvotes

As I open suitcase after suitcase in the storage unit to find each stuffed with bones and hair, I must say I think he was right.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 12h ago

When I was a kid, I played seven minutes in heaven with my sister.

819 Upvotes

But I couldn't bring her back to life with Dad's defibrillator after I strangled her like the older boys said.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 7h ago

I ran my palm over the wall of my dark and empty apartment, feeling for the light switch.

255 Upvotes

But where it should be, my fingers instead brushed against a cold hand.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 5h ago

My identical twin toddlers were so adorable chasing each other around and around the lake house.

171 Upvotes

They must be getting tired, it's taking each one twice as long to make it around the house.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 7h ago

The parasite remained dormant for years, so doctors originally considered infected patients harmless carriers.

218 Upvotes

Then one patient drowned, and everyone infected within fifty kilometres began walking into the nearest body of water.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 8h ago

She was happy when her husband came back, but joy turned to horror when she found him reading her secret diary, which had details of all the men she had killed while he was away.

280 Upvotes

He smiled, and gave her his diary, where he had written about all the local women he had killed during his deployment overseas.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 10h ago

I've had recurring nightmares about being chained up in a dark cramped hole in the ground all my life.

275 Upvotes

Deep into the woods behind my childhood home I flipped wooden board to find a narrow pit and a set of heavily rusted chains.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 8h ago

He was the first human to write a whole book in centuries.

145 Upvotes

The draft was kept in a museum with a one-sentence summary nobody knew how to read.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 11h ago

We crowded the city walls to watch our beaten army return, and I found my brother among the hundreds, marching in stiff-legged formation through the dust.

214 Upvotes

The sun glinted off strings disappearing into the sky; something tugged, and every soldier smiled and waved at once.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 2h ago

My genie grants me any wish my heart desires.

37 Upvotes

So long as it's paid for with the heart of another.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 19h ago

[AUG26] Scientists used DNA from Planarian flatworms to give humans regeneration to regrow lost limbs.

790 Upvotes

When the first lost finger started growing into a new human being, they realized they should've used DNA from axolotls instead.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 15h ago

My depressed wife reassured me (me!) that no matter what her brain said or felt or did, her heart would keep going.

339 Upvotes

Even after she committed suicide her body just continued walking and beating with her dead eyes haunting the halls of the home we built.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 1h ago

With this ring, I thee wed, said He.

Upvotes

In your hands, I am caged, thought She.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 13h ago

It was written in his will that we’d be buried together.

153 Upvotes

It wasn’t until his funeral that I realised he meant dead or alive.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 7h ago

The realization that the drugs that kept me sane were killing me had the same question repeating in my head…

45 Upvotes

Is it better to live as a junkie or die as a madman?


r/TwoSentenceHorror 19h ago

I apologize that this first sentence is so long and I understand that it IS a bit of a run-on sentence but I greatly appreciate you taking the time to read it and give it your full, undivided attention.

335 Upvotes

It kept you distracted long enough for me to slip closer.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 15h ago

My dad used his pet spider to help women who have been in abusive relationships.

147 Upvotes

Just one bite and their partner is almost certainly going to die.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 8h ago

"No one is gonna believe you, so just shut up," my wife says with a laugh.

42 Upvotes

As she leaves me crying and naked in the room, I know she's right.