Fear Project: Week Zero

Insert shameless self-promotion: for the next thirteen weeks, David Wellington is graciously hosting the Fear Project (#FearProject2015), providing thirteen aspiring horror authors (yes, including myself) the opportunity to compete for a $1000 grand prize. Each week, a prompt will be provided to move, creep and inspire, and at the end of the week, an author will face the chopping block.

This week, the site comes preloaded with the flash fiction entries that earned each of us our space in the project - 250 word scenes of fear in many forms. Rest assured you can also track our pretty faces and winning personalities via Facebook, Twitter, and our personal blogs - there will be more than enough caffeine fueled anxiety to keep the creative wheels turning.

Comments on Week Zero's entries will just be general encouragement and ego-boosting, but bookmark the page - starting next week, immunity will be up for grabs for the author with the most comments on their story. (Comments can be positive or negative - remember, it is a horror competition, after all)

Stop by and let us give you the creeps.

Not into all that exhausting clicking? Need more motivation? Below is my entry, "Chew".

CHEW

When Harper showed me, I thought he was kidding. He didn’t say anything, just opened his mouth – I had to really lean in, my head cocked funny to one side. I still didn’t get it right away.

The pink of his gums was almost gone.

There were a full two rows of teeth in there, a dozen extra molars jostling for position. Sharks had less alarming mouths. Harper’s tongue jutted rudely over his bottom lip, left with nowhere else to retreat. When he grinned at me I saw there were even teeth snuggled under there. Like pearls. My stomach rolled.

“What do they feel like?” I said.

“They itch,” he said. He smiled.

I didn’t know what to say after that. I’d never seen anything so terrible as those teeth all piled together in one mouth. But you could tell Harper didn’t feel that way about them. Not for a second.
He talked about them with this kind of goofy love. He’d never been special before, never had anything to set him apart. Now, he found himself daydreaming. Harper dreamed about eating – he didn’t care about the taste, just the act of chewing, shredding meat into ribbons.

His secret shared, Harper went back to his house, and I sat on my porch until his mom’s station wagon made its slow, groaning way into their driveway.

It was my one shot. Right there. I could have told her everything.

I could have saved her life, if I hadn’t kept my promise.

Still have questions? Comments? Want to promote us or sponsor some awesome writing swag? You can e-mail David at fearproject@icloud.com.