The Horror

by Simon Stratton

He sits down at the campfire, and the babble of voices cease, as we feel united by the presence of a master storyteller. The bones of his face are thrown into sharp relief by the dancing light of the flames. A young couple hold hands in tense anticipation. I would not have brought my girlfriend to this event. There was this girl, right (no-one nods) and she went out one night and woke up the next day in a bath of ice, thinking, "why am I in a bath of ice," because she only went out to donate a kidney (he pauses and in the dark; someone whimpers) although, now I come to think of it, she went to a party, before donating a kidney, or maybe she was at THIS party, the night before she woke up in the bath, and they had kidneys in the buffet, which she missed because she was late, but they had ice for drinks, and she drank too much and woke up in the bath (he leans forward, with hollow eyes) but what I'm not telling you is that the buffet kidneys were actually human kidneys (he leans back) which, luckily, as it turned out, was ok because this girl was vegan and wouldn't've had any, but that's not the end of the story, because in actual fact, the kidneys they ate were hers all along. Everyone is speechless, and the young couple flee into the night, terrified.

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Simon Stratton, author of It Could Happen to You, lost his MA in Creative Writing in a curry fight.