Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

They found the village sewn shut.

Windows sealed with sinew. Doors stitched with wire and skin. The streets were eerily silent, and the wind carried the sound of thread scraping bone. Gideon Moth gripped his rusted shovel tightly as they passed the last untouched sign—burnt letters barely legible: "Thimble Hollow."

"What stitched all this?" muttered Nara Hexley, flicking a black flame from her fingers for light.

Talia Grimm clutched her sketchbook, trembling. On the page was a figure—long-limbed and crooked, with a needle for a hand and button eyes that wept red.

The Stitcher.

They found the first body in the chapel—hung like a puppet, eyelids sewn shut, lips puckered with thread. Words were scratched into the walls:

"I lied. I bled. I begged. I paid."

Solomon Wraith ran his fingers over the carvings, reading deeper meanings hidden in the phrasing. "It's a curse," he whispered. "A pact gone wrong. Someone tried to cheat the Stitcher."

Behind them, a low dragging sound echoed down the aisle.

They turned.

A small figure hobbled toward them.

Hobb & Stitch.

The two-headed mutant child had wandered off earlier, drawn by whispers only they could hear.

One head giggled. The other sobbed. "It likes the broken ones. It wants to make us whole," said Stitch.

Solomon grabbed them, pulling them away from the altar—just as black thread erupted from the pews, snaring the ground.

A figure unfolded from the shadows.

Tall, gaunt, stitched from many corpses, its needle-fingers clicked like locusts. The Stitcher's head tilted as if pondering the group's imperfections.

"Frayed souls... ripe for repair," it rasped.

Panic erupted. Gideon swung his shovel, slicing the thread binding Talia's feet. Nara summoned a swarm of shadow-bats that tore at the Stitcher's false skin. But it was fast—inhumanly so—leaping and slashing with precision, its threads reattaching to whatever it touched.

Talia drew furiously. The image of a broken marionette.

She tore the page and burned it with Nara's flame.

The Stitcher screeched, its threads unraveling as if mirrored in the art.

It lunged at her, needle aimed at her heart—

But Solomon stepped between them, reciting a counter-curse from the Eldritch Codex he'd half-memorized in a dream.

"By flesh betrayed, by thread unmade—return to seams undone."

The Stitcher spasmed, threads flailing violently. Its body contorted, twisting back into ragged cloth and bone-dust. In its place fell a single black spool, spinning slowly… whispering names in languages no one should know.

Later, the group burned Thimble Hollow.

No one deserved to be stitched again.

But Hobb & Stitch stayed quiet as they walked away. Stitch whispered, "It didn't die. It just moved."

And Hobb, eyes wide with knowing, added, "It's waiting for someone to ask for a second chance."

The spool still spun in Solomon's coat.

And some nights… it stitched his dreams shut.