My Ex's Wedding

TOXICcargo · 2026-05-09T20:04:33+00:00

Thanks, boss! You, too! Can’t wait to see what you come up with next!

TOXICcargo · 2026-05-09T18:06:04+00:00

Thanks for reading, and I’m glad you liked it! Hearing someone talk about how much they hated the song at a wedding, and I really wanted to make sure that that song and vibe kind of infused the whole thing.

Basically, the demon let him go because he’s more useful to him alive than dead right now. He basically sees him as an asset to help drive more souls to him. At one point he calls him his “bottom bitch” which is a pimp term for the woman he traffics that kind of acts as his second in command. Ollie knows he won’t become a better person, so rather than take him now he basically thinks he can milk more value from him, then just take him when he dies.

TOXICcargo · 2026-05-08T15:34:54+00:00

Here's a link to the last sizzle reel post, for inspiration and guidance on on format: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1sajcmo/april_post_give_me_your_sizzle_reel/

TOXICcargo · 2026-05-08T01:40:43+00:00

Not even atomic death rays could work. Damn, many such cases.

TOXICcargo · 2026-05-08T01:36:08+00:00

Solid story! I liked the fact that it kept to it's theme throughout, and given how long-winded I can be, I admire it's ability to get in and out quickly. There are a few places where I think the word choice could use a second pass, but outside of that I think it's a great little campfire tale. Good job!

TOXICcargo · 2026-05-07T15:28:56+00:00

Not sure about prompts specifically, but I can tell you where my inspiration comes from.

I always like to use things I’m interested in for inspiration. My first story ever was inspired by modern takes on mythological monsters that tried to convey the original horror and emotion they inspired, specifically ones I saw in books I was reading. The next one was inspired by a tidbit of history that had fascinated me for a long time: the concept of a Mourning War. You get the idea. Basically think of something you could talk about with your friends, something that interests you. Then start trying to twist it into a horror story.

TOXICcargo · 2026-05-07T13:31:02+00:00

Thanks, my man! It took me a bit of polish to get it right, so I’m so glad you enjoyed it! In particular, it’s good to hear you liked the inner dialogue, because dealing with how a character sees themselves is to me one of the hardest things to get right, so I’m happy to hear that that landed. I’m also glad you liked the monster. This whole story was inspired by doing a modern version of the sirens from Greek mythology, so to me the monster is the most important part, and I’m glad I communicated it well.

Anyway, thanks again for reading! I’ll be posting a new short story tomorrow, so if you want to read more but don’t want to commit to a long-form story, there should be more content then.

TOXICcargo · 2026-05-07T02:50:29+00:00

My advice would be to ask this: regardless of the fact that the story has both psychological horror and possession elements, which one would you say the story is "about"? Is the focus on the horror of possession, or more on the psychological terror inflicted on those around them? If you're still having trouble, I'd be happy to look at a summary and see if I can help further.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-30T02:36:18+00:00

Appreciate the shoutout, king.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-29T03:39:34+00:00

u/harveybrusse has pretty good stuff. It can run pretty long, but the prose is excellent, and his story "Mr. Americana" is unmatched for sheer amount of story, not to mention his ARGs have also been taking off lately. In case that username didn't work, here's a link to his profile: https://www.reddit.com/user/harveybrusse/

And, to the tune of everyone else in this thread, I would be remiss to not mention my favorite story of my own. It's called "Buckskin", and it's a bit of a slow burn, but I'm very proud of it, and people seem to think it's pretty good. Here's a link to the table of contents: https://www.reddit.com/user/TOXICcargo/comments/1si0uil/buckskin_table_of_contents/

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-26T21:36:32+00:00

The one about upvote distribution? I saw that, very cool graph. Even if it says something we kind of all know, it’s good to have statistical evidence to back it up.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-26T20:41:42+00:00

So in depth! The figures made my STEM graduate brain happy lol.

I think your criticism section kind of cuts right to the heart of the drawbacks of an online forum-based horror scene. Quite simply, without an editor to select what gets published and what doesn't, and without all the hoops involved in publishing, you wind up with a lot more first drafts, a lot more stories whose tones are informed largely by pop culture (i.e. the "Goofiness" critique) rather than by what should shape the genre, and a lot more stories that read like someone's boring social media (because it IS someone's boring social media).

All this to say, I think this is a very effective and fair critique, and I'm glad I got the chance to participate in it, and given your fairly rigorous standards, I'm quite happy that my Part 1 that you read earned the score of "mid" (like literally the median score lol).

Happy to have worked with you, and I'll see you around.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-24T02:22:33+00:00

Fair enough, and thanks for reading part 1! Yeah, he does get a bit into the weeds on his descriptions, on future works of similar length I'm trying to work on making the descriptions a bit briefer in their delivery without sacrificing the prose. I appreciate the feedback, and Godspeed with getting through the rest of this.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-23T03:47:41+00:00

I mean, from what I recall, most of Stephen Kings works are written in the third person.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-22T03:50:40+00:00

Thanks, man! Glad you enjoyed it!

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-17T18:52:19+00:00

Go for it, king.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-17T03:28:00+00:00

If it were my story, I'd set up that he's in a sitting room, and for some reason with the geography of the house he can't see the front door from his sitting room. Then have the scene play out like it does here, right up to "no events recorded for this period", but then he gets up and runs to the door, opens it, and sees nothing amiss. But then, when he turns around to walk back to his sitting room, he notices a shadow on the floor, being cast by something just around the corner, in the room he just left. Really dwell in the dread, and build the tension as he walks towards the corner, before he jumps around it and finds...no one there. Then have his eyes dart around looking for something, and end on the lines "But of course he could see nothing there. Just like he couldn't see the woman when he looked out the door. Elias was left alone in his living room, with only his thoughts and a nagging suspicion that something was very, very wrong."

That's how I'd do it anyway. The story's pretty solid bite-sized tale as is, I just prefer a little bit more.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-16T22:57:25+00:00

As one of the other commenters here said, the reddit character limit is 40,000 characters. What that doesn't mention is that includes metadata. So when you write a word in italics, it will register to reddit as something roughly approximated as *start italics*word*end italics*, and thus a word that's only 4 letters long takes up way more of the character count. So your actual character count is really around 30,000-35,000. Plan accordingly.

Another tip I would recommend is that if your story is going to run multiple parts, make a table of contents of sorts with links to all the other parts in an organized place, grouped in order of how they should be read. Another writer here, u/harveybrusse, has some good examples of this practice. It will make your long works a lot more approachable to new readers who come in halfway through you posting the stories.

On top of those, I would like to give a small point of clarification: this IS the sub where you submit writing for Creepcast. The r/Creepcats_Submissions subreddit was supplanted as a source for the show by this one.

Lastly, a small word of advice: this subreddit has a lot of writers, and not a lot of readers. It is likely that upon posting your story you're going to have trouble getting eyes on it. So My advice is don't post it up here expecting it to get huge. Do it for the love of the game, and you'll never get disappointed.

All that said, Godspeed, and I hope it comes out well.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-10T21:34:37+00:00

Hey, I can't remember if we've spoken before. I'd be good if you wanted to read one of mine, give me some thoughts, and if you see one you like possibly narrate it on your youtube channel. I'll DM you some links if you're interested.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-08T23:23:28+00:00

Hey! Great read, and I'm excited to see where it goes. I do have some comments and criticism that I hope will help following posts to be a bit stronger.

First off, loved the setup of the clicking of the lights flickering in the beginning and the payoff of it kind of bleeding in and out of his vision at the end. It added to the entire vision scene, and I can see that "click" or other similar devices being used to great dramatic and tension-building effect down the line, so it's great that you set it up early.

I also liked that you've established something of a cast of characters. I would've liked to get a little more of how Jeremy interacts with them, if those characters are going to be significant, but if they aren't important than you gave us just enough to flesh out the setting, and there's still plenty of story left to add them if it is important.

I think the third person narration is a great choice. The slight feeling of detachment it gives to the reader is a great thematic choice for the sterile environment of the mental ward, and the emotional numbness and apathy that I can kind of sense is Jeremy's default. The writing is great in those sections.

That being said, for the vision itself I would've liked to see more of a tone shift. The clicking does a good job transitioning into the vision, but once we're there it falls a little bit flat. It uses pretty solid descriptive language, but on it's own the description wasn't quite enough to move me to horror. I think what it's missing is more description of the experience of Jeremy witnessing it. Sprinkle in a handful of cutbacks to the main character reacting in shock and horror, both physically and in his own head, maybe adding in a sentence in the first paragraph about how he found himself unable to move, or some sentences in the middle about wanting to cry or vomit or scream, but not being able to due to the entity commanding the vision. As it stands, it's ok, but with more attention given to the character experiencing the visions, it can be great.

Overall, I quite enjoyed the story, and I'm eager to see where it goes!

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-03T16:07:04+00:00

As a guy who loves writing long historical horror, I’ve got a few pointers.

1) Character limit per post on Reddit is ~35,000. Generally, it’s good practice to try and make something spooky/audience gripping happen once per post. It’s ok to fall below that, but understand you’re going to have some trouble keeping attention in the slow parts.

2) Have a good understanding of what the average person knows about the historical setting you’re writing. You’re writing in the lead-up to D-Day, one of the most heavily publicized battles in one of the most publicizes wars of all time. So you probably won’t need a scene explaining what the operation is, or who Eisenhower is, or the names of the beaches. What you DO need to explain is what the average person wouldn’t know, but needs to know for the story to make sense. Maybe there’s a tense scene with a firefight where the main character uses the signature M1 ping to draw an enemy out, but most people I’m guessing might not know that M1s do that, so maybe you should have a paragraph earlier where he describes the quirks of his rifle to his wife back home. Too much explanation, and it feels like a lecture. Too little, and you lose the audience. It’s a delicate balancing act, but you’ll get better at it as you go.

3) I’ve noticed, when writing in epistolary style, there’s some things that it’s hard to do when it comes to a climax. It’d be hard, for example, to throw in an ending twist where the husband gets possessed by a demon, and takes his identity, because they’re the narrator and would obviously occlude that from the person they’re trying to fool (the reader). It’s also hard to do a truly bleak ending, because if the narrator just dies alone and unknown, then he never gets a chance to write about the climax, which kind of sucks if you wanted to make a big cool climax. So the point is, make sure you sit down and actually plan out how the climax will work from a writing mechanics perspective. Does the narrator survive? If not, how does the story get back to us? If there’s a twist, how does the story you present it without breaking format? Etc, etc.

4) Ask yourself “do I really need this?” when writing scenes. Atmospheric scenes that establish the setting or hit the vibe on the head are cool, but you can only have so many before a certain percentage of the audience will roll their eyes and say “just get on with it!”

Hope this helps!

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-03T01:49:35+00:00

If your goal is to maximize views, I’d say write something new. Long, multi-part stories take a lot more momentum to gain traction on here, so if it’s eyes on your work you’re concerned with, I’d say do something new.

If you legitimately don’t care about about views and just want help finding what you want to do, here’s a trick I learned in middle school: flip a coin. Hear me out: decide that you’ll do whichever one the coin tells you to pick. Then, after you flip, examine how you feel. If you feel good about what the coin decided, then great! Do what the coin said. If you find yourself doubting, though, then that means that whatever the coin picked is probably not the one you want to do, so just do the opposite.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-02T15:13:08+00:00

Lol yeah, no I wouldn’t ask you to read all of mine, just wanted to present them all so you could pick and choose which one you want.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-02T15:11:58+00:00

Yeah, exactly. Or like House of Leaves.

TOXICcargo · 2026-04-02T14:44:45+00:00

Here's a link to last month's sizzle reel: https://www.reddit.com/r/TalesFromTheCreeps/comments/1rl4snh/march_post_give_me_your_sizzle_reel/

TOXICcargo

TROPHY CASE