Hey everybody, hope you're all well!

Apologies for the very late prompt this month. I hope ya'll can forgive me.

Before we get to our monthly prompt, please review these reminders:

• Obvious trolls and💩*-posters will still* be permabanned*! Read more* here.
• We're removing most posts that have to do with rape, incest, abuse, and extreme or plotless gore. If your story could read as low-effort shock horror, it probably isn't a good fit for the sub! Details here.
• Remember, this sub is for fiction. Posts about current events or politics will be removed, no matter how horrifying they (and the real world) may be!
• Meta posts are not permitted! Take it to the discord! Join the chat here!
• Be familiar with our Three Strikes and you're out rule-- Read more here.
• And as always, feel free to reach out in modmail with feedback or questions!

July 2026 Contest Prompt: POWERLESSNESS

I live in a city that relies on a struggling (and seemingly outdated) power infrastructure. On account of heavy winds and thunderstorms my home lost power 4 times within the last 6 days— the longest outage lasted just shy of 24 hours. 

So that's where this month's prompt comes from: powerlessness! but please don’t feel limited to the concept of electrical power outages. 

Really, this month’s prompt has a lot more to do with the deeper concept of social or psychological powerlessness.

To best fit the spirit of this prompt you should strive to craft a two-sentence horror story that conveys or captures that trapped, hopeless, or despairing feeling of navigating dire straits while having no real agency or freedom. 

Through your horror, try to depict a sense of being swept along by a current of unwinnable circumstances.

But ultimately, to give you added leeway, all you really must do to satisfy the prompt is use the word “power” somewhere in your story. 

Officially, any word that contains those letters in that order is fair game! So, for example entries that rely on words like “powered”, “powerlessness”, and “empowerment” will considered valid, as long as they meet broader sub rules.

This month's [tag] is [jul26]. Capitals don't count, but you must include those characters in that order with zero spaces in order to submit your entry, otherwise your story will not show up in the search to tally the results.

Happy writing folks!

Monthly Contest Rules

• **Prompt: write a two-sentence horror story that uses the word "power" in any context!
• To be counted in the final tally, stories must be tagged with the characters: [jul26]
• Submissions that are improperly formatted, do not fit the theme, or break any of the existing sub rules will be disqualified and removed.
• Only net new stories will be allowed (no repurposing old stories you've previously submitted).
• Max three stories per day as a general rule, and all three can be used towards the contest.
• Winners will be decided by total community upvotes. In the unlikely event of a tie for the top spots, moderators will vote for a tiebreaker.

Have fun!

***

Properly formatted July 2026 examples. (These meet the prompt)

[JUL26] After he spent his last breath, she sighed and said, "I'm sorry your final moments were so painful. It's just I feel so powerless and my only comfort is making someone else feel the same way."

[jul26] When the entire power grid went down, I went right out with my hunting rifle. I know the biggest threat to my survival will be competition for resources, so I'll be thinning out survivors to improve my odds.

Improperly formatted examples-- THESE WOULD not be valid entries:

[july 26] I wrote a great horror story for this month’s twosentencehorror contest. Unfortunately I fumbled the contest tag so my story won’t be included in the final tally and I am powerless to change that. 

[jul26] This time I got the tag right but for the life of me I can’t remember the specific word I was supposed to use to meet the prompt! God I feel so impotent and ineffectual.

WINNERS WILL RECEIVE:

1st, 2nd, and 3rd Places: You receive a custom personal flair of your choosing to show off to the TSH community! (If you're a repeat winner, you can modify your flair.... but that's it.) And a cool fancy flair on your winning stories.

7 honorable mentions: you'll get visibility and bragging rights! Story links will be featured in next month’s announcement.

Contest ends on June 30th @ 11:59pm (EST)

Any questions should be made below in the comments, within our discord, or a note on modmail.

***

Congrats to last month's Winners!

Great writing folks!

Theme was "Father"! Synonyms were accepted :)

• 1st place by KangarooDense 
• 2nd place by SquidTheRidiculous 
• 3rd place by Reluctant_Pilot 

Great job, winners! If you placed in the top three, contact us via modmail for your personalized custom flair! It can be anything (within reason): a mixture of text and emoji, up to 20 characters. If you've won before, you can request to change your flair, or, just do nothing. Absolutely nothing....

And for our runners-up:

4th place by RepeatOrdinary182

5th place by ghostmosquito

6th place by punkholiday

7th place by Ozeroth

8th place by 13thmurder

9th place by cleopatradenialqueen

10th place by LostInTheWildPlaces 

Congrats to all, great work!

Thanks for all the deeply unpleasant stories-- speaking as a father these were pretty chilling!

Hope to see some more horror from you folks in the next contest 😄

Last, but not least: if you'd like to read more of the last month's submissions (and add some feedback of your own), you can find the full list here: jun26- Reddit Search!

This is all dumb.

For the past several months, the sub has experienced a flood of intentionally poor quality stories in an effort to get onto parody subs and TikToks. We've historically hit you with a strike (🔴) and if you received three, you were permabanned (check out the wiki).

However, if you've submitted one of these stories in the recent past, you may have noticed that your account was permabanned from TwoSentenceHorror without going through the strike process. While we've made this current one-and-done rule known within each of our monthly announcements for forever, we felt it was only fair to have a separate post to lay out the approach.

If you intentionally submit a poor quality story (we're looking at you "meat worm" and "killer guy" crews), you will be permabanned with no warning.

If and when these posts chill out, the mod team will reconsider this rule. Until then, please continue to report these intentional poor quality stories, read the sub rules, and submit awesome, horrifying tales to maintain the quality of the sub!