Is there any emotion sexier than fear? Doesn’t it feel just great to be afraid of stuff?
Consider these concepts: A wizard. A motorcycle. A book that is too small to be read with the naked eye. A headless person. The ghost of a car. A mummy. A motorcycle. A demonic swan. A mirror.
Yes. You are terrified. Your heart is flapping around in your chest like a ragged flag in the October wind. Fear is engulfing you in its liquid atmosphere, and you are loving every second of it, because fear is awesome. Fear is the best. And now you are wishing that you could feel terrified of everything, all the time, forever.
I can make that happen. My name is Ryan Veeder, and “MOTORCYCLUS” and Other Extremely Scary Stories is my collection of extremely scary stories that I wrote. Its initial print run was funded on Kickstarter and you can buy a PDF and EPUB together for $5.
If you read this book, you can never un-read it. If you lend this book to someone else, you and you alone are responsible for the consequences. If you are at a Halloween party and you choose to read a story from this book out loud to your friends, it will definitely, absolutely be the scariest thing that happens to them all night.
For now, though, here’s the first story from the book:
Coming Out Ahead
Dean was hanging out in a café with his friends Laura and Pete. Pete was telling Dean that he was wearing his necktie wrong.
“It’s got to be straight. And you need to button that top button, or you’ll look like a hobo,” Pete explained.
Dean tried to look down at his chest and fix everything to Pete’s specifications. It took a while.
“Okay, okay, okay. Is this better, you guys?” Dean looked up. Pete didn’t say anything. His head fell off of his neck.
Dean screamed. He looked at Laura, but her head had fallen off too.
“Help! Somebody!” Dean yelled.
He got up and looked around the café. Everybody’s heads were falling off, or else had fallen off already. Heads were rolling around on the floor and clanking together. Some of them rocked softly back and forth with their noses in the air, like helpless turtles.
With fingers shaking, Dean got out his cell phone and dialed 911. He babbled into the receiver about all the heads falling off before realizing that nobody had answered him. He stopped to listen for a moment: He didn’t hear ringing, or a dial tone, or anyone talking. Just dead air.
Tripping over slumped bodies and loose heads, Dean ran out of the café. On the other side of the road was a restaurant with plate glass windows in front. He could see dozens of people inside, talking and eating: Their heads were still attached to their bodies.
Dean dashed across the street and pounded on the window. “Help! Somebody help me!” he screamed.
As if on cue, everybody on the other side of the glass shuddered, then slouched in their chairs as their heads fell off. A room full of normal people suddenly looked like a toy box full of broken dolls. Dean fell to his knees.
He remained in this state for a while, until he noticed the approaching click-click of high heels. He tried to keep his face hidden as he checked it for tears.
The woman had slowed down and stopped several yards away. “Are you all right, sir?” she asked.
Dean looked up at her. She seemed scared. She probably thought he was dangerous.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said.
The woman’s expression did not change. Her head slid down from her shoulders, rolling across the sidewalk and over the curb, coming to rest near a storm drain. Her body teetered a bit before falling forward.
Dean howled in frustration. He pulled himself up to look at the window of the restaurant. He saw his own reflection in the glass.
“I don’t know why,” he said to himself, but before he could say “people’s heads fall off as soon as I talk to them,” his head fell off.