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Face Off: A Short Story
A short story based on Ray Thornton's grisly encounter with flesh eating larvae.
11 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 29, 2013
About the author
Rusty Henrichsen
4 books23 followersRusty Henrichsen is an Eastern Washington-based thriller writer. You can follow him and read free short stories at:
rustyhenrichsen.com
rustyhenrichsen.com
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 5, 2014
Sickening short story
was totally engrossed in this short story. gruesomely awesome from beginning to end. would recommend to anyone who enjoys a horror story.
was totally engrossed in this short story. gruesomely awesome from beginning to end. would recommend to anyone who enjoys a horror story.
May 4, 2014
Holy cow....this story was CREEPY!!
And now.... I itch like crazy!!!
And now.... I itch like crazy!!!
June 10, 2015
Oh creepy...
December 4, 2017
Some horror stories go for the quick shock. Others try to make people squirm. Usually, it takes authors quite a while to create the right mood to really get readers uncomfortable, the type of discomfort that stays with them after the story is over. However, in his short story "Face Off," Rusty Henrichsen manages to accomplish that feat quite well in only about 10 pages.
As you might guess from the length of the story, the plot of "Face Off" is fairly simple, and the title and cover art provide a couple of excellent clues to its content. The main character, Ray Thornton, returns from a coffee break at work one day and discovers the body of his friend and co-worker in the bathroom. There's also a large knife in the bathroom, and large parts of Vince's face are no longer firmly attached. For the rest of the story (which admittedly isn't very long), Ray tries to figure out why Vince did this, and the answer has to do with a golf outting the two of them went on a couple of weeks earlier.
Although I won’t spoil the ending of “Face Off,” this previous paragraph pretty much describes all of the “action” that takes place in the story. The bulk of it is taken up by Ray’s thought processes as he tries to figure out what happened to Vince. And, let’s just say that what he pieces together winds up being very unpleasant. By the end of the story, readers will get a pretty good idea what would drive someone to try to saw off his face. Further, unlike some authors, Henrichsen doesn’t go for what could have been some easy cheap shock value by describing what Vince did in excessively gruesome detail. Instead, the story has to do with the why, rather than the what.
“Face Off” is effective at 10 pages; my only quibble with the author is that it easily could and probably should have been longer. Henrichsen is able to get inside the characters’ heads and show just how one thing led to another. A longer story could have reinforced what is slightly sketchy at this length. Still, Henrichsen has done something fairly remarkable in a story this short: to get inside readers’ heads with some imagery that stays around well after the story is over. “Face Off” describes something very unpleasant and does so in a way that makes it seem even more queasily unpleasant; that’s the mark of good horror writing.
As you might guess from the length of the story, the plot of "Face Off" is fairly simple, and the title and cover art provide a couple of excellent clues to its content. The main character, Ray Thornton, returns from a coffee break at work one day and discovers the body of his friend and co-worker in the bathroom. There's also a large knife in the bathroom, and large parts of Vince's face are no longer firmly attached. For the rest of the story (which admittedly isn't very long), Ray tries to figure out why Vince did this, and the answer has to do with a golf outting the two of them went on a couple of weeks earlier.
Although I won’t spoil the ending of “Face Off,” this previous paragraph pretty much describes all of the “action” that takes place in the story. The bulk of it is taken up by Ray’s thought processes as he tries to figure out what happened to Vince. And, let’s just say that what he pieces together winds up being very unpleasant. By the end of the story, readers will get a pretty good idea what would drive someone to try to saw off his face. Further, unlike some authors, Henrichsen doesn’t go for what could have been some easy cheap shock value by describing what Vince did in excessively gruesome detail. Instead, the story has to do with the why, rather than the what.
“Face Off” is effective at 10 pages; my only quibble with the author is that it easily could and probably should have been longer. Henrichsen is able to get inside the characters’ heads and show just how one thing led to another. A longer story could have reinforced what is slightly sketchy at this length. Still, Henrichsen has done something fairly remarkable in a story this short: to get inside readers’ heads with some imagery that stays around well after the story is over. “Face Off” describes something very unpleasant and does so in a way that makes it seem even more queasily unpleasant; that’s the mark of good horror writing.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews