A few years ago, I came across a series of “two-sentence” horror stories like these ones on Bored Panda, and decided to write some of my own parent-themed “pocket” horror stories. As a severely sleep-deprived mom with nothing to do as I sat outside of my son’s bedroom, trying to Jedi mind trick him into going the fuck to sleep, my cup ranneth over with bizarre thoughts. Now that I have another child who won’t sleep, I’ve thought up a couple more. Because misery loves company, and if I can’t sleep, then why should you?
1. Laying her son down in bed, she noticed an eerie looking shadow in the corner. Leaving, she glanced back to adore her sleeping babe and noticed the shadow was no longer in the corner, but on top of her child.
2. Passing the nursery, he heard soft humming from behind the closed door. When he opened the door to look upon his loving wife and baby, the rocking chair stopped swaying abruptly and his newborn began to wriggle and cry atop the seat. Alone.
3. Squinting, I climbed the stairs in the dark, following my son’s screaming. He sat there at the top of the steps, facing the wall, completely still. “Oh, honey, what’s the matter?” I consoled and rubbed his naked, freezing legs, the reason he must have awoken. Opening his bedroom door, I began to lower him into his bed when something moved inside of the blankets.
“Mommy?” my son looked up at me from the bed, confused. Each hair on the back of my neck stood up as whatever I was holding curled my hair through its cold fingers.
4. When I heard the scratching on the baby monitor, I knew my daughter must be awake because she had a habit of scratching the crib rails. Upon entering her room, I was surprised to find her completely asleep. As I began to walk away from her crib, the floorboard creaked and she began to stir so I dropped to the floor where I found what had been making the scratching noises under her crib, smiling sinisterly and staring back at me.
5. It was the middle of a long night with my infant that I found myself feeding her in the dark living room. Moonlight filtered in weakly through the blinds, enough to illuminate the features of her small face that kept pulling away from my breast to look up and smile, not at me, but at the space behind and next to my head. My eyes crept up to something that moved in the black mirror that was our flat screen tv when it was turned off. Just behind me stood a white figure, reaching its arm out for my daughter.
6. I watched my baby on the baby monitor intently as he cried, and waited to see if he would calm down and fall back asleep. Just as I was about to get up to soothe him, my Grandma’s arm reached through a space between the crib rails and began to caress his face. The only thing is, my Grandma has been dead for 10 years.
