NYC Midnight Scary Story Challenge 2025: "Snagging List"

You might remember that I got to the penultimate round of the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge last year, so I thought I'd give their scary competition a try, too.

And I didn't even get past the first round 😂

It works like this: you get assigned a scare, an action and a character, then you have a limited number of days to go away and write a 400-word short story featuring all of those elements. In the first round, which started in November 2025, there were 3,663 writers participating in 90 groups, with approximately 41 writers per group.

My assigned scare was "earthquake", the action was "blaming" and the character was "jack-of-all-trades".

I'm not entirely sure what went wrong for me in this competition, but I didn't even place. You get feedback from the judges, but the feedback didn't seem to indicate any fatal error. All I can think is that the story isn't very scary, it's more a kind of dark comedy. One of the judges thought it would be great if it was turned into a series of stories for a Middle Grade audience, which I found a bit boggling, but there we are.

I still think it's a fun little story, so here it is if you'd like to read.

---

Snagging List

by Josie Jaffrey

Harry and Edward Carter stood in the bedroom of the underwater AirBNB and looked up at the top lefthand corner of the window. Beyond the glass, shoals of dark fish swam through weed that had been trimmed to preserve the view.

‘It’s a drip,’ said Edward said to his brother.

‘It’s condensation,’ argued Harry.

‘No, it’s a drip. When I got you this contract, you said you could handle it, but you’re not an engineer or an architect, are you? You’re a builder, and not a very good one at that.’

‘I can be all three.’

‘You obviously can’t.’ Edward gestured at the drip that was now running down the inside of the window pane. ‘Case in point. Look. We’re selling this place as the ultimate holiday destination. It’s supposed to be: come and hear the eerie bells of the sunken village tolling through the midnight water. Not: come and drown in your sleep.’

‘It’s a drip, not a leak.’

‘A drip is a leak.’

Involved in their argument, neither of them noticed that – faintly – the bells of the submerged church had indeed begun to toll.

‘We’re fifty feet down,’ Edward said. ‘If this window fails, it’s instant death.’

‘The window won’t fail.’

‘The window is failing.’ Edward pointed to the dripping corner. ‘Right here. See?’

There was a faint rattling noise and the drip became a tiny high-pressure stream that hit Edward in the eye.

‘See?’ he spluttered, jumping clear of the spray. ‘Either you sort it out, or I’ll get sacked and you’ll get sued.’

There was another rattling noise, louder this time, accompanied by a distant rumbling. Under their feet, the floor shifted, just slightly.

‘What was that?’ Harry asked.

‘Earthquake,’ Edward replied, ashen-faced. He rushed to the lift, but when he pressed the call button, nothing happened, and the door to the stairs had jammed shut. ‘Harry!’ he raged as he tugged at the door.

‘What do you mean Harry?’ he mimicked. ‘How could I have predicted an earthquake?’

Edward turned to him in horror. ‘It was in the survey.’

‘You didn’t tell me that!’

‘Because you had the survey report!’

The next tremor was unmistakable. It was followed by a sickening crack.

Then another.

The cracks multiplied, crazy-paving across the window from the top lefthand corner.

The brothers looked at each other, hoping they’d already had the last tremor.

Then the bells tolled again.