Horror stories in two sentences

Reddit asked their users in the summer of 2013 what horror story they can come up with in two sentences. Two sentences are not much, but this selection of 20 stories are scary anyway. (The Reddit question and all the answers can be read here: Reddit.com)

1. I woke up to hear knocking on glass. At first, I thought it was the window until I heard it come from the mirror again.
Therealhatman

2. The last thing I saw was my alarm clock flashing 12:07 before she pushed her long rotting nails through my chest, her other hand muffling my screams. I sat bolt upright, relieved it was only a dream, but as I saw my alarm clock read 12:06, I heard my closet door creak open.
Jmperson

3. Growing up with cats and dogs, I got used to the sounds of scratching at my door while I slept. Now that I live alone, it is much more unsettling.
Miami_Metro

4. In all of the time that I’ve lived alone in this house, I swear to God I’ve closed more doors than I’ve opened.
EvilSteveDave

5. A girl heard her mom yell her name from downstairs, so she got up and started to head down. As she got to the stairs, her mom pulled her into her room and said “I heard that, too.
Drrd777

6. She asked why I was breathing so heavily. I wasn’t.
Calamitosity

7. My wife woke me up last night to tell me there was an intruder in our house. She was murdered by an intruder 2 years ago.
The_D_String

8. I awoke to the sound of the baby monitor crackling with a voice comforting my firstborn child. As I adjusted to a new position, my arm brushed against my wife, sleeping next to me.
Doctordevice

9. I always thought my cat had a staring problem – she always seemed fixated on my face. Until one day, when I realized that she was always looking just behind me.
Hangukbrian

10. There’s nothing like the laughter of a baby. Unless it’s 1 a.m. and you’re home alone.
Wartortlesthebestest

11. I was having a pleasant dream when what sounded like hammering woke me. After that, I could barely hear the muffled sound of dirt covering the coffin over my own screams.
Vigridarena

12. “I can’t sleep,” she whispered, crawling into bed with me. I woke up cold, clutching the dress she was buried in
Vaultkid321

13. I begin tucking him into bed and he tells me, “Daddy, check for monsters under my bed.” I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, under the bed, staring back at me quivering and whispering, “Daddy, there’s somebody on my bed.”
JustAnotherMuffledVo

14. You get home, tired after a long day’s work and ready for a relaxing night alone. You reach for the light switch, but another hand is already there.
madamimadamimadam

15. I can’t move, breathe, speak or hear and it’s so dark all the time. If I knew it would be this lonely, I would have been cremated instead.
Graboid27

16. She went upstairs to check on her sleeping toddler. The window was open and the bed was empty.
Aerron

17. I never go to sleep. But I keep waking up.
Genetically_witless

18. My daughter won’t stop crying and screaming in the middle of the night. I visit her grave and ask her to stop, but it doesn’t help.
Skuppy

19. After working a hard day, I came home to see my girlfriend cradling our child. I didn’t know which was more frightening, seeing my dead girlfriend and stillborn child, or knowing that someone broke into my apartment to place them there.
Cobaltcollapse

20. There was a picture in my phone of me sleeping. I live alone.
Guztaluz

Riots because of Nutalla discount in France

I first read about that in the Guardian article 'They are like animals': French shoppers brawl over cut-price Nutella. The supermarket chain Intermarché had given a 70 % discount on 950 g jars of the chocolate hazelnut spread of Nutella, which made it cost 1.41 Euros instead of 4.50 Euros. This had led to massive runs and riots. Nutalla was sold out fast in some places and they sold amounts in one day what would have been sold in three months normally. A German article of Der Westen reported in the video of no injuries. The Guardian article however does mention that a woman took a box and hair of another one pulled out for example. For a jar of Nutella? Seriously? According to the Der Westen article they are working on a discount maximum of 34 % for foodstuff now. I have doubts however that this will prevent riots like that however.

Corpse disposal

For our plastic and metal disposal (metal in the sense of tin cans) we've got yellow bags or bins, which are collected by the garbage collection every 14 days.

Weeks ago I walked our street before the garbage collection had come and found the following, which I photographed right away:

At long last... the pleasure of shopping online

Pre-text: There is a sort of eBay thing in Germany. It's not eBay, but a platform to post ads to offer or buy things. The site-owners don't get provision, unlike on eBay. And neither buyer or seller are protected, because the site-owner is only providing the space for the ads, nothing more. I've sold and bought stuff there since 2011, so really a couple of years now. But what happened the past couple of weeks is really new, even to me. Therefore I have decided to post the exchange of messages I had with one man. I wanted to get a DVD from him, which would have been way more expensive on eBay or amazon, because I wanted the R-rated version. His version was cheap and shipping, as it turned out, would be cheap, too. Only reason I stuck with him. SG is me, MB is the other guy. I did my best to match his German spelling mistakes.

SG 23.10.2017
Hello, would you also sent it and if yes, how much would shipping cost? Greetings

MB 24.10.2017
Yes

SG 24.10.2017
And what should shipping cost, please?

MB 24.10.2017
2 €

SG 24.10.2017
That's ok. I would very much like to take the DVD. Can pay with Paypal as a friend or pay online with bank transfer.

MB 24.10.2017
Bank transfer

SG24.10.2017
Ok, and what are is your account data? ;-)

MB 24.10.2017
Yes

SG 24.10.2017
What "yes"? I need your account data please, if I should transfer.

MB 24.10.2017
(His account data)

MB 24.10.2017
This is my account data

SG 24.10.2017
(screenshot of my payment)
Transferred the money just now. Please, shipping to:
(My address)
Thank you very much!

SG 03.11.2017
Hello, I'm still waiting for the DVD. Other articles, ordered later, arrived already. What it's up?

MB 03.11.2017
Can you call

SG 03.11.2017
Why. I paid for the DVD. Don't want to call. Have no number anyway.

MB 03.11.2017
(His mobile phone number)

SG 03.11.2017
Why should I call. DVD is on it's way, went to someone else, lost or what? I see no reason to call. I don't call strangers.

MB 03.11.2017
(Picture of envelope. "To:" is at the top left corner with my correct address. Bottom right corner has "From:" with his address)

MB 03.11.2017
Is that corect

MB 03.11.2017
Hello

SG 03.11.2017
Yes, I wrote that over a week ago. What is the envelope still with you and not out? Actually the sender is at the top and the recipient at the bottom.

MB 03.11.2017
But it camme bak

SG 03.11.2017
Probably because the post checks the bottom, which has your address.

SG 04.11.2017
What now? When can I expect the DVD? What would have happened, if I hadn't asked again?

Arrival of DVD with no further message November, 6th 2017

The genius of masks

Halloween. The time for costumes and disguises. One of the few days in the year where the are accepted and worn deliberately and openly also in public more then otherwise. Time for me to write a post on masks, a kind of disguise of the face.

I'm mostly unaware of Asian cultures and also movies. It's not a particular interest of mine to watch Asian movies or dealing with Asian cultures, at least not in detail. A friend of mine that I only know via E-Mail contact so far, wrote to me a while ago that the expressionless masks of the Japanese No Theatre are fascinating to him.

Two days ago I watched the two part movie “It” (from 1990). No wonder that people are afraid of clowns after such a movie. Clowns made up or with mask scare a lot of people. Personally I don't quite understand that. There are scary masks and especially clown masks. Add to that the aggressive behaviour of mask wearing people from last year, I can understand the fear of people like them, but not the general fear of clowns as such. I don't mean this as a criticism. I would very much like to understand what scares people so much about clowns. Maybe there are readers that are afraid of clowns and could explain it. Feel free to leave me a comment!

Masks of criminals are meant to conceal the true identity for them to be unknown and therefore free from punishment. Superheroes on the other hand use masks to hide their own identity for criminals that may otherwise hurt or even kill them more easily without their costume and corresponding weapons. But the lives of the people the superheroes love is also protected by the mask of the hero. Because it could be a leverage for the criminal to kidnap important people and threaten their life to force the superhero to do certain things, as can be seen for example in “The Dark Knight” after the Joker learns that Batman/Bruce Wayne cares a lot about Rachel Dawes and the Joker gives the order to kidnap her.

A mask of a particular kind is worn by the anti-hero Rorschach from “Watchmen” by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Over the course of the story Rorschach is caught and described by the psychiatrist who questions him as “fascinatingly ugly”. The name Rorschach originates from the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach who invented a test named “Rorschach test”, which are ink blots images that the person has to interpret and say what they see in them. The blots are a symmetrical and mostly black. There are also some with more colours. Rorschach from Watchmen worked with clothes as a young man and during that time he gets a special cloth that is white with black, moving and continuously changing blots. Originally he makes a dress from that for a customer, but she eventually disregards it as ugly. Later he uses that cloth to make himself a mask from it with symmetrical black blots that keep changing. Rorschach calls this mask his “face”. After he is ambushed and caught by the police, the mask gets ripped off and he screams, “No! My face! Give it back!” Regardless of Rorschach's personal attitude towards his mask, the description of “my face” for is (actual) mask seems fitting though. A face is usually moving and changes in relation to emotions. The psychiatrist notes however that Rorschach's face is expressionless and finds it difficult to tell what really goes on in him emotionally. Regardless of Rorschach's own attitude towards his (actual) mask, it therefore seems actually fitting when he calls it his "face". His (actual) mask is moving and his (actual) face is expressionless like other masks usually are. It's not necessarily noticed by the reader or viewer of the movie, but the blots on Rorschach's “face” are not only moving, but are in fact linked to his emotions and show identical blot patterns at different times when the same or similar emotions can be assumed!

I also want to mention the post “The Hidden Genius of RORSCHACH's Mask! (Watchmen)“ by Scott Niswander from NerdSync. Among other things he points out in his post that the moment and timing of unmasking is often a bit strange choice. Often the masked person is unconscious or at least bound or otherwise hindered to resist and their identity unknown. The unmasking therefore is a sort of humiliation, because the identity is then revealed at least for the person taking off the mask of the one wearing it. The interesting thing about this is that with this there is a possibility to completely eliminate the masked person, meaning to kill them. But the unmasking and with this revelation of the secret of who is behind the mask, seems a stronger urge for the person that is with the masked person at that moment. Scott Niswander mentions a scene from “Spider-Man 2” and “The Dark Knight” for this.

In regards to unmasking or taking off masks let's one more time refer to Watchmen. Rorschach's true identity (or in his case probably better: identity without “his face”) is revealed to the reader and other people in the story with the aforementioned arrest. He does have “his face” back on for the final fight though. Normally every masked person would resist even at the threat that his masked may be taken away. Understandably so, because the secret identity up until that moment is at risk and also the possible security of beloved persons, as mentioned above. Rorschach, too, resists and screams for his face during his arrest. At the end of Watchmen however he himself takes off his face, his mask and faces his final enemy this way.

In 2012 a series of books came out that showed individual Watchmen characters before the events of Watchmen. Accordingly the series is called “Before Watchmen”. Of course there is also a story about Rorschach by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo. Then and now the story itself doesn't seem to appeal to many people. Like with all stories, I think, this is a matter of personal taste and different people have different tastes. Regarding unmasking there is however one interesting moment in “Before Watchmen: Rorschach”, too. Over the course of the story he gets beat up by a group of bad people and several of the henchmen eventually keep him in check. One of the henchmen wants to take off Rorschach's mask, to see what the fearful Rorschach looks like without the mask. But his boss calls him back and is noticeably disappointed by the fairly short man (described in Watchmen with a height of 168 cm/5' 6 '') to have him caught and defenceless that easily, “Rorschach. Huh. For some reason, I thought... Dude, you don't measure up to your myth. I mean, what the hell? I cocked up this elaborate scheme just to take you down? What was I thinking? Big bad Rorschach. Well, bad anyway Frankly, I'm disappointed in myself. That I stooped to your level. No, no, lucky Pierre. You know what's under that mask? Nothing that matters. In this case, the mask makes the corpse.” After they beat him up some more and seemingly leave him there to die, he adds, “And the front page.“ In another moment of that story one of the bad guys gets his hands on Rorschach's mask and for a moment he can take on Rorschach's identity, because if nobody knows who is behind the mask, a lot of people could be underneath it. Hurm...

3 ingredients cookies

“Mm. Smells good. What's wrong? You only make those when you need to calm down.” Joan Watson in “Elementary” (Season 2, episode 16) when she enters the kitchen in the morning and Sherlock Holmes is just about to get the Yorkshire pudding out of the oven.

Sherlock Holmes is someone you wouldn't call normal. Naturally he's got some weird traits and characteristics. Cooking and baking is not my passion, although I can do some things that others actually like. So it's very strange for me that Sherlock Holmes in Elementary seemingly is baking to calm down and I now started to do the same, preferably using one recipe when I am frustrated, namely the following:

Ingredients:

1 cup Nutella (or other chocolate spread)

1 cup flour (or maybe a bit more)

1 egg

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 330 ° F (160 ° C)

Put all the ingredients in a bowl, mix with a spoon or hand-held mixer. (Those of you who use a spoon, you can easily make the recipe in the middle of the night without disturbing your room-mates or neighbours at all.) Take a small piece of the mass, make a ball out of that. Squish it flat and put it on a baking sheet with baking sheet. Repeat until dough is all used. Should make about 16 bits.

The cookies will rise a bit, so really keep it rather small and flat with a bit of distance between each.

Baking in the oven for about 5 to 10 minutes, until the cookies aren't that much wet and shiny anymore as they will be the first minutes. A bit shiny is absolutely fine.

Afterwards let them cool a bit. When they're right out of the oven the cookies are not only hot, but also fall apart fairly easily. Cooled down a bit they're harder.

The original recipe is with Nutella spread, which is available everywhere here in Germany. I have made the recipe already with white spread (which needs considerably more dough). My favourite cookies are with a caramel sea salt spread I was lucky to find at Edeka. I also used dark brownie spread and peanut butter as well (with and without peanut bits). For that one however I probably have used too much flour, because the cookies were rather dry for my taste. I personally don't like the Nutella-cookies as much as I do the Nusspli-cookies, a different kind of chocolate spread, which is available here.

Try it out. Let the spreads that are available in the shops in your area inspire you. You're welcome to write in the comments which spreads you tried and how you liked the cookies.

I am beautiful

It's been over a month since I watched “Suicide Squad”. Didn't watch it when it came out in the cinemas. For one thing because there was talk about much violence. On the other hand I have only limited interest in comic adaptations and movies where people are put together when they are normally not appearing together interest me even less. My Batman details knowledge is very limited. I have seen the animated series as a kid. I barely know more than the „classic“ bad guys everybody knows.

“Suicide Squad” is a story around a group of villains from the Batman/Gotham City universe. I didn't know most of them, but their individual stories are roughly outlined to introduce the individual characters. Then there's also a scene in an otherwise abandoned bar where the group is taking a short break and talking. Captain Boomerang says that another one from the group is amazing on the outside, but ugly inside. “We all are!”, agrees the almost constantly aggressive Harley Quinn. Except for him, she says and looks at the reptilian-like Killer Croc, he's ugly on the outside, too. He's calm when he takes the hoody off his head and tells her, “Not me, shorty. I am beautiful.”

Overall the movie is a matter of taste and there's no accounting for taste, as they say. I personally liked the bar scene best and I thought about it afterwards the most. Obviously at least two other people thought the same, because that scene is on YouTube in German, albeit in bad quality, under the title “Ich bin wunderschön | Suicide Squad | Beste Szenen“ here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7Vat6_r4AA

And also in English you can find it under the title “SuicideSquad(Killer Croc)-I'm beautiful_-*Best Scene*“ here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3qeWUas-IM

Very fast I saw a connection to that one scene in “Sherlock” where John Watson asks Sherlock Holmes in the context of “Who am I?”, if he is pretty (see Am I pretty?). But Killer Croc didn't just say “pretty”, he said “beautiful”.