r/TwoSentenceHorror 28d ago

July Winners and August Writing Prompt: Animals!

9 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.

460 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 7h ago

“Did you know that the reason that newborns can’t move on their own is that we’re effectively all born premature, due to that being the only way for us to get out the absurdly narrow birth canal?” the doctor asked.

1.8k Upvotes

“While I’d have preferred a volunteer, with the hormone regimen I’ve developed and a Caesarian you’ll be the first human to carry a child to full term.” He continued as he checked my restraints.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 4h ago

I was horrified when I discovered that my boyfriend had sabotaged my birth control pills, though he thought it wasn’t a big deal.

334 Upvotes

As he fell to the floor holding his abdomen and writhing in pain, I explained that me carrying the baby wasn’t what I’d been trying to avoid. 


r/TwoSentenceHorror 11h ago

I grasp both sides of my head, trying to pop my aching neck.

657 Upvotes

After a loud crack, I'm limp on the floor begging for someone to help me, but only my beloved cats are near enough to hear.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 3h ago

My baby was born clutching a wedding ring engraved with my name.

161 Upvotes

I watched them bury that ring with my husband two years ago.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 12h ago

My bright happy smile slowly faded as my younger brother ran to the front of the bus saying "mom, I found this tooth in my pocket with a note that said... This was your brother's!".

293 Upvotes

I suddenly realized the crushing presence I hadn't quite registered and tried to very slowly turn my head, but felt a pressure as I realized a hand from the seat behind me was very carefully holding my head in place. 


r/TwoSentenceHorror 55m ago

My blind girlfriend told me "it's going to get worse" as she tenderly stroked the rashes on my arm.

Upvotes

When I asked her why she said that, she replied that she was only reading the braille on my skin.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 3h ago

When CPS came to our house, we thought it had to do with our neighbours misconstruing our daughter’s behaviour.

50 Upvotes

We found out later that the therapist we fired last week had made the call because we weren’t starving the autism out of her.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 11h ago

As she sipped what she knew would be the last Diet Coke that they would ever enjoy, she clutched the note firmly in her hand.

183 Upvotes

The note read "Now Donny and I will truly be together forever - Natalie"


r/TwoSentenceHorror 1h ago

I'm terrified of dying alone.

Upvotes

That's why I became an airline pilot.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 17h ago

One of the symptoms of Grandma's dementia is that she'll mutter randomly to herself, which can be a real problem.

506 Upvotes

With the kinds of spells she has in her head, there's no telling what she might summon without meaning to.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 1d ago

Every night, Mom rants about her doctor telling her that there's nothing wrong and to just lose weight

1.6k Upvotes

This morning, she didn't wake up. 


r/TwoSentenceHorror 8h ago

As her manager, I need to make sure that my child's acting career is mapped-out years in advance.

68 Upvotes

It's a balance between making as much as possible and having her O.D. at 17 be believable.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 23h ago

My husband proposed with a cheap silver band; as a disgraced physicist, he had little money, but promised me a much nicer ring one day.

1.0k Upvotes

As the remains of the moon begin to circle the earth, I can't help but wish he'd settled for one that would fit on my finger.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 12h ago

He broke into his neighbours house and killed their children while they were sleeping.

117 Upvotes

He said that it was revenge over CPS taking his kids because of them.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 5h ago

I cooked dinner for my wife tonight, but she didn't like it.

26 Upvotes

This was odd as i thought that she loved David.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 3h ago

As kids my cousin and I were called over by the neighbor to help call for his wife because she was inside and couldn’t hear him.

13 Upvotes

Over 20 years later that cousin doesn’t speak to me and I don’t remember anything past stepping into his RV.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 1d ago

"You said you wanted to be in a relationship with the hottest girl in the world," the frustrated djinn was bewildered.

1.3k Upvotes

"And I assure you that at 5,000° C you won't find a hotter girl than Princess Magmaria of the lava people."


r/TwoSentenceHorror 6h ago

When i was 12 my uncle told me these bells are attached to graves to help people buried alive, i didn't think one day i will be desperately ringing it.

27 Upvotes

It's been 3 months 19 days, 14 hours 17 minutes, Please someone please open it.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 1d ago

After nearly driving into a ravine on my way home from the bar, I was so shocked to see a winged figure in my headlights that all I could stammer was, “My guardian angel!”

1.8k Upvotes

“Your child’s,“ it replied, before pushing my car over the edge.


r/TwoSentenceHorror 6h ago

When the research doctor placed the bowl of multicolored thumb tacks on the table in front of me it took all my willpower to overcome the invasive thoughts telling me to push them all into my face.

23 Upvotes

Instead I ate them because "out of sight, out of mind."


r/TwoSentenceHorror 13h ago

When I was a kid, I used to think my dad was crazy because I could hear him talking to himself all night through my bedroom wall.

73 Upvotes

Then I found one of the women tied up and gagged in an old trunk in the back of his closet and realized what kind of crazy he really was.