Category: 15. MisCellANeous

if knowledge creation (aka knowledge building) is about ideas improvement and being a deliberate act of creating something new, would entries to “What is the best horror story you can come up with in two sentences” on reddit count?

some samples:

1. I begin tucking him into bed and he tells me, “Daddy check for monsters under my bed.” I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, under the bed, staring back at me quivering and whispering, “Daddy there’s somebody on my bed.” by justAnotherMuffledVo
2. I woke up to hear knocking on glass. At first, I though it was the window until I heard it come from the mirror again. by therealhatman
3. They celebrated the first successful cryogenic freezing. He had no way of letting them know he was still conscious. by KnowsGooderThanYou
4. The last thing I saw was my alarm clock flashing 12:07 before she pushed her long rotting nails through my chest, her other hand muffling my screams. I sat bolt upright, relieved it was only a dream, but as I saw my alarm clock read 12:06, I heard my closet door creak open. by jmperson
5. The doctors told the amputee he might experience a phantom limb from time to time. Nobody prepared him for the moments though, when he felt cold fingers brush across his phantom hand. by Gagege

and an extended story built on Gagege‘s idea, by Nosfermarki:

It had been 6 months since the accident. I remember because Elizabeth was helping me sign my name in our daughter Jenny’s birthday card. Slowly she guided by hand, helping me create some legible signature rather than the scribbles of a child in kindergarten, the best that I was able to manage with such little practice. It seems that when one loses a limb, it’s quite likely to be the dominant one. For me it was the right.

I was concentrating on my writing, trying not to make her do too much of the work, when I felt it. I hadn’t noticed the phantom feeling of my elbow resting on the table beside me, by this point I had almost gotten used to it, although the pain would sometimes still wake me. It was brief, but enough to startle me and cause my hand, still holding the pen, to jump and effectively turn my name into scribbles despite my wife’s best efforts. It was gentle but cold. Too cold. Less like ice and more like the feeling of a deep cut, when the insides of a body part are suddenly exposed to the outside elements that they were never supposed to meet. When Elizabeth asked, I shrugged it off, telling her it was an unexpected pain in the hand that was convinced it was clenched, even though it didn’t exist. At the moment, I almost believed that that was what happening myself.

The next time it woke me…. (skipped)

For months it happened, with no warning or reason. The doctors said it was just the phantom limb, that it was to be expected. No one understood that something was wrong. Sometimes it would last days at a time, and those were the days when I would stay in bed, watching TV, trying not to focus on the hand around my wrist, trying not to think of the thing that was holding me. Sometimes it’s grip would loosen only to tighten again, as if the hand that didn’t exist was sore from holding my hand that didn’t exist for so long. The one day, it stopped. For a month or so, nothing happened at all. I had gone from living with an unknown entity at my side every day to finally being free. We lived it up during that time. We went everywhere, from the Grand Canyon to Disney World. It had been forever since we had the opportunity to spend time as a family again, and we enjoyed every moment we had, grateful to have suffered only a small loss to our family.

We had opened the cafe again, and my wife was doing what she loved. My daughter and I were at the cafe. It was closing time. She and I sat at a table outside while Elizabeth closed the register, chatting about the upcoming middle school dance. My wife joined us and locked the doors. “Wanna come with me?” she asked, patting the bag of money in her hand awaiting deposit at the bank across the street. Jenny jumped up, eager, no doubt, to get one of the suckers from the candy dish that the bank kept at it’s counter. “I’ll warm up the truck,” I said, fishing my keys from my pocket. My wife nodded in approval and walked me to the truck, kissing me on the cheek through the window after I entered, and again on glass after I rolled it up. They headed down the length of the truck and I turned to check the mirror when I saw it. A truck barreling down the road heading straight for my wife and daughter. I screamed her name and threw the door open when the hand that wasn’t there was suddenly jerked to the opposing side of the truck, holding me in place as I kicked and screamed. The kiss on the glass of the window was the last I ever got, and the hand never let go again.

and finally, trust someone among the community to be innovative (aka break the rules), marino1310‘s SIX words creation:

I just saw my reflection blink.

samples credit: various authors on reddit.com *THUMBS UP* to all the authors!