Awful Alphabet

by Evan Baughfman

“Daddy, they taught me my ABC’s!” my three-year-old, Lizzie, proudly declared. In her tiny hands, she held the spirit board I’d unearthed from behind the basement wall.

I snatched it away from her. “‘They’? ‘They’ who?”

I didn’t see the steak knife until she’d removed it from her pocket. Didn’t catch the crimson gleam in her eyes.

“D-I-E, Daddy!” she roared with voices not her own.

Growling, my little girl sprung on me with a bestial fury. The serrated blade slid between my ribs and twisted just beneath my heart.

“They” had come to teach me a lesson, as well.

Evan Baughfman

Evan Baughfman works in a very scary place: a middle school! He writes all genres, but horror is where he’s most comfortable. Much of his writing success has been as a playwright. He’s had many different plays produced across the globe. Heuer Publishing has published his Poe adaptation, “A Taste of Amontillado”.

Additionally, Evan has adapted a number of his short stories into screenplays, of which “The Emaciated Man” and “The Creaky Door” have won awards in various film festival competitions.

Evan’s “Ugly Sweater” was recently published in Grinning Skull Press’s 2018 Christmas horror anthology, O Unholy Night in Deathlehem.