“A Year of Terror” – A Halloween-ish Horror Short Story Written by Stephen Kaplan

January 1^st

It started with a knock. It was four in the morning and there was a knock on the door. Ordinarily something like that wouldn’t have even made me stir, never mind actually wake me up. There was something odd about this knock, it was much louder than a normal knock. Even weirder is that it was just a single knock. No rapid tapping, no door bell, no “shave and a haircut” knock, just one single house-shakingly loud knock.

I immediately sat up, feeling hungover from the night of partying and debauchery, thinking that maybe it was one of my friends who just needed a place to crash. I got out of bed, wrapped a robe around myself and proceeded to the door. When I opened it, to my surprise there was no one there. I looked around but the street was dead. The whole neighbourhood was dead in the chilly winter night.

Did I imagine the knock? Was it part of the dream I was having? Did I take too long to answer the door and they left? I swear, it wasn’t more than a minute from hearing the knock to getting to the door. Oh well. I decided to go back to sleep.

January 2^nd

It’s Showtime!: A Video Game Review and a Short Story

I recently purchased a game on Steam called “Showtime!” It’s pretty fun. Basically you’re the head of a movie studio and you’re in charge of hiring script writers, actors, directors, etc. and making sure all the movies and sets and stuff are within your budget. You have to manage expenses and try to stay in the green. Some movies will do well, some movies won’t, but above all, try to at least make your money back.

“On Why I Killed Frank” An Original Poem by Stephen Kaplan

I was tending to the bar one winter’s night

Not much to see in the flickering light

The place was fairly dead at ten

Just a few ladies and some passed out men

I was standing there, cleaning a glass

After pouring a drink for a lovely lass

When who should come bursting through the door

But a boorish man standing six-foot-four

He declared he was Frank; he was loud and obnoxious

Just the sight of him made me nauseous

“The Five Stages” A Short Story by Stephen Kaplan

In my creative writing class that I’m taking we had an assignment where we had to write a 1200 word story. But there were a few rules we had to follow.

1) It had to be 1200 words (obviously, I just typed that)

2) It had to be written in 6 days at 200 words per day

3) Each day’s set of 200 words had to be a different scene (though it could involve the same characters if you want)

4) The first line of the first scene had to be “The phone rang at six with the news”

5) The last line of the last scene had to be “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Not now.”

Other than those rules, we were free to write anything we wanted. So here’s what I wrote. It’s called The Five Stages:

The Old Lady With No Sense of Humour

Back in 2012, working as a cashier in Wal-Mart, I had the most unpleasant little, old lady come to my register. I wrote a short story about it. Enjoy.

It was a bright and sunny day in the summer of 2012, but that didn’t mean that it was a good day for the old cranky hag who shall be referred to as Cranks for the remainder of this story. So this day was just like any other for Cranks regardless of the weather, lousy. She woke up at 6 o’clock in the morning, which was too early for her. But she couldn’t get back to sleep because of those “damn kids” with their “damn rock n’ roll” driving around her neighbourhood.