A Beautiful Decay

Tall, Dark, and Dead

Before we kick off this collection of short stories I wanted to make a few things clear. 

These short stories will probably not be that scary, it's just something I'm doing for fun. So there will be lots of silly moments and bad jokes. That being said, there will be creepy sections so if you feel uncomfortable with blood, gore, demons, ghosts, etc. please read with caution. If anyone thinks there are trigger warnings in this, feel free to let me know in the comments and I can add it in, but this entire story will have violence, death, etc. so I will most likely not be putting warnings for that in every single chapter. 

I will be adding in chapters during the whole month of October! If you have requests feel free to ask in the comments! Without further ado...let's get spooky! 

Little light was left to light the winding West Virginia road, only a small sliver of gold dotting the trial in its own eerie dance, shifting and moving with the sun's departure. The teens paid no mind to the obvious dangers of speeding along in the beat-up gray van, laughing as the car shifted and groaned through the familiar twists of the country road. The car smelt of leftover pizza and cheap flowery perfume. It was Grayson's mother's car, although at this point it might as well have been his. His forgotten homework shoved deep behind the polyester seats and baseball gear shoved messily in the trunk. He took the car out nearly every weekend after practice, driving friends around or going to one of the two destinations somewhat close to the painfully small town. 

Grayson and his friends had just gotten back from one of the two spots, and old ice cream parlor that had seen more bad days than good. But Sarah always swore on her dog's grave it had the best ice cream in the state. Grayson personally thought it tasted like wet cardboard, but was willing to drive just about anywhere as long as it wasn't home. 

Grayson hit a turn a bit too quickly, slamming his breaks as he skidded into the opposite lane, causing the other passengers to swerve with him and bump against each other. 

"Jesus Christ Grayson! Are you trying to kill us?" Sarah barked from the passenger seat. "God! You made me hit my injured arm on the door. You're lucky we were wearing our seatbelts this time!" Her high-pitched voice rang out as she hit his arm.

Michal scoffed from the seat behind her, "We barely even swerved Sarah, stop overreacting. And we all know you didn't really hurt your arm, you just wanted to sit out at practice and know coach can't do shit about it." 

It was true, as soon as one student claimed to be injured, much to Sarah's joy, that student had to be exempted from practice.  

Sarah fiddled with the straps of the dollar store wrap tightly secured around her wrist. 

"So what if I did? At least I'm a better actress than your dumbass." Sarah teased, thinking back when Michal had tried to get out of baseball by saying he had a fever and shaking his whole body to show he had 'a case of the chills'. 

Grayson chuckled as he started the car again, driving, only slightly slower, back into the correct lane. Not that it mattered much, everyone knew these roads were practically desolate at night. Even the people who had lived in Troyhill their whole life was less than enthusiastic about navigating the windy roads with not so much as a streetlight to aid them. 

"You know you bring up that same argument every time, how about you get some new fucking material? I was a freshman, that was three fucking years ago." 

"How about you expand your vocabulary instead of cursing every other fucking sentence?"

"Guys! Can we please not? You two have this same argument every time we go out like an old married couple. Either makeout or makeup, but I can't listen to this anymore!" Stephanie whined from the other seat.