Baby Teeth​

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​NYC Midnight Scary Story Challenge 2025

Round 1

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400 words​​

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Written in 48 hours

using assigned prompts

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Prompts:

Scare: an autopsy / Action: yearning / Character: a rock climber

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TW: GORE

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The witch always performed the autopsies for the village, but this time, she insisted her apprentice do it. The girl whimpered as she picked up the scissors.

 

The corpse was a teenage boy about her age. Burly from climbing rocks, with large callused hands that knew where to grip and where to stroke, he’d been a heartbreaker amongst the local girls. The apprentice herself had yearned for him for years. She yearned still, even as he oozed onto their kitchen table.

 

When he went missing, the villagers suspected the young rock climber had slipped from some unknown cliff. The witch soon found the body crumpled into the wishing well on Lovers’ Lane, the stench of bad magic upon it. Accidents happened often in this strange little village, but she knew at once this was different.

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Snivelling, the apprentice opened the boy up. Inside, he was a mess.

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A brown frog jumped out of the cavity. The bones were soft as cake. The lungs were black and clotted with milky grubs. A lemon instead of a heart. Stomach full of baby teeth.

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The apprentice removed the abused organs one by one, voice shaking as she described the damage. Most cruel of all, the appendix, now turned to a fortune cookie, cracked open to reveal a message: NO-ONE LOVES YOU.

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The witch wrote it all down in her ledger, her neat handwriting never betraying her fury.

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Finally, he was empty, the usable parts jarred and pickled, the rest jellying upon the floor. When pressed about her conclusions, the apprentice stood silent, dripping snot, so with a bitter sigh, the witch completed the entry herself:

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Cause of death: a clumsily brewed love potion, administered by a foolish girl.

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Slowly, the apprentice clambered onto the table and lay down inside the hollow boy, blubbering now, but knowing better than to flee her punishment. Taking up a needle, the witch began to sew up the body. It was a skintight fit, each stitch wrenched closed with violent strength. She would exhume her apprentice in a half-century or so. The girl should have learnt her lesson by then.

 

The last knot secured, the witch mopped the blood from the flagstones, ignoring the sound of muffled sobs.

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Written by Sophie Dutton Oct 2025

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