The Shortest Weird Tale Ever Written? And a Challenge!

Sunday, November 11, 2007

I was re-reading the Foreward to Thomas Ligotti's short story collection, Noctuary, when I came upon this odd bit:

For example, there is a well-known story that goes as follows: A man awakens in the darkness and reaches over for his eyeglasses on the nightstand. The eyeglasses are placed in his hand.
Despite being "well known," I haven't yet found the origins of this short story. Nevertheless, I'm impressed at getting a shiver or two out of a couple sentences. Whoever penned this--Ligotti or someone else--made a perfect example of the weird tale's essential need to rely on the imagination. Envisioning what lurks in the darkness and gives the man his glasses conjures up a great deal of bizarre imagery.

On that note, I challenge anyone to bring forward one to three sentences of equally strange quality to try to match or outdo this piece brought by Ligotti. Original design, discovery from another author, I don't really care. I would be glad to have this challenge won, since the world needs more creepy short-short pieces like this. Feel free to post entries in the comments to this thread, or e-mail me, and I'll post all entries after a time in a new blog post.

-Grim Blogger

  © Blogger template Writer's Blog by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP