Contest Awarded Short Story: The Invalid

Back in September I entered a short story I’d written in Ghost Story and Horror contest at www.indieitpress.com . And guess what?!?! It placed! 5th. I’m proud of it. Is it horror? It’s horrifying. LOL.

I’m dropping a link to it, in case you want to read it. It’s disturbing, so be forewarned that it might be triggering.

If you don’t want any spoilers…. better stop reading.

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Okay . . . a bit behind the scenes: I wrote a snippet of this story a long time ago. Which part? About a paragraph when the main character, Tom, collapses. I had an idea for the story, but hadn’t ever finished it, so when the contest rolled around, I wondered if I might use it to motivate me to finally write it.

“The Invalid” is a dive into the mind of a man who’s suffered a stroke and can’t communicate with his surviving children. The horrifying part of the story is that Tom wants to tell his children he’s sorry for all the horrific things he put them through as they grew up, but now he can’t. Their anger at him is palpable, and justifiably so. Of course, things aren’t exactly what they seem, leading the reader to a twist at the end.

I enjoyed pushing myself creatively to write outside my genre. While challenging, it pushed me to consider writing choices that I might not have otherwise when writing a romance, but also made me think about the same tools in a new way: tension, conflict, characterization. It was a fun way to expand my own craft.

I’d love to know what you thought about the story!