Dkissinger23

This is the second short piece I've posted here. I think this one is pretty funny. Let me know what you think, please.

In movies every town has a haunted house. It’s big, and it’s dark, and it has broken shutters that clatter against the house on a cold windy night. The house is either abandoned or it has a solitary inhabitant whom no one has seen in years. All the kids in the town are afraid of the house, spouting tales of brave young kids that entered, and of course, never came back out.

The kids telling the stories were probably the “cool” kid, and to signify this, he would be wearing a backwards baseball cap, and be chewing on something. His story would involve probably a group of kids. Each one of the kids would have a trait that mimicked that of one of the kids in the audience. There’d be the fat kid, the nerdy kid, the funny kid, in all likelihood, the black kid, and of course the heroic leader (most likely, and entirely coincidentally wearing a backwards baseball cap).

They would all crowd up on either side of the gate leading to the walkway to the house. The walk would barely be visible due to the vast amounts of overgrown weeds, and it would be cracked beyond repair. The gate itself would be rusted and highly ornate, and obviously entwined with thick green and brown vines. All of the children would be huddled together, and they’d all be breathing heavily. The nerdy kid would stutter out some words of warning, and the funny kid would tell him to grow up. The fat kid would then counter with something along the lines of, “then let’s see you go in.” The funny kid would then say, “Nobody asked you (Insert slang term for fat person here).” At this point the kids might begin to fight each other and would be silenced and awed when the leader kid would shout, “I’ll do it. I’ll go in.” Then he would pick himself up and slowly creak open the gate.

He’d walk forward, slowly cautiously. The nerdy kid would be watching with his hands over his eyes, and the black kid would say something like, “There goes the bravest kid I know.” Every now and then the leader kid would turn back and look at his comrades, smiling outwardly.

He’d approach the door, and the nerdy kid would say, “Oh I can’t watch!” The leader kid would reach very very slowly toward the knob. So slowly that he’s almost not moving. Then, just as he touched the door, it would swing wide open. The leader kid would take one last look back at his brothers in arms, and as he turned back, he would disappear into darkness screaming.

All of the kids listening to the story would be screaming too. And the “cool” kid would smile and say slowly, “And they never saw him again.” One of the other kids would say something like, “Ah yeah, that’s all a bunch of hooey.” Or some other rarely used term from the 30’s. Slightly phased the “cool” kid would issue a challenge of bravery to the smart ass.

It would probably be to spend the night in the old (insert Victorian era last name) house. The kid, our new hero, would manage to stay alive though the night despite seeing some creepy things. He might discover a treasure and keep his parents from getting a divorce or he might make an unlikely friend that needs his help to lift a curse before day break. Either way, everyone’s happy, and the holocaust never happened. THE END

HippoHead

I lawl'd.

damn
right

!

it was hard to read coz of no paragraphs, though!

Holden Blake

It was pretty funny but you really need to work on your formatting, particularly paragraphing. Although you play on cliched storylines and stereotypes in order to evoke humour the action is quite flat..it doesn't go beyond the cliched storyline and therefore it ends up becomming a cliche in itself. All you end up with is a piece that says 'This is cliche..lets laugh.' Although that sort of strightforward commentary is funny enough you should try doing more with it by adding in a unique storyline of your own to coincide with all the cliched scenarios and make them look even more ridiculous.

You can really make a story come to life using cliche by having an actual action narrative other than simply observing that 'this is what would happen in a cliched horror film.' Why not allow an objective character, say the narrator, to have their own physical input into the story? Tobias Wolf does this wonderfully in a short story called Bullet in the Brain which tells the story of a book critic (in your case it could be a movie critic) named Anders who ends up getting himself shot in the head because he can stop laughing at a bank robbers cliched antics. If you could get your hands on a copy I'd really recommend you read it- apart from being a hilarious read it may also give you some ideas on how to use cliche and humor in a way that really moves the story along.

Dkissinger23

Thanks guys! I edited it to have paragraphs by the way. Lo siento.

needmoneyforcollege

nice story