Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The room was too quiet.

Harper stumbled backward, away from the vent, watching it tremble as something inside whispered her name. She scanned the lab—its walls sealed, doors chained shut, windows blocked with rusted metal. Only the flickering fluorescents above gave her any sense of reality.

And then she saw it. In the corner of the room sat a dollhouse.

Old, cracked, with peeling white paint and splashes of red that weren't part of the design. Something about it pulled her in. Unnatural. Compelling.

She crouched before it.

It was a replica—of the very school she was trapped in. Complete with tiny classrooms, desks, even little paper students painted with frightened expressions. One of them had a red streak across its face… just like hers.

Harper blinked.

The figure moved.

Not just that one—all of them.

The dollhouse vibrated faintly as if alive. Each miniature figure twitched, stuck in endless loops: a girl slamming a door, a boy hiding under a desk, a teacher pointing at the chalkboard—despite the blood on the walls.

Harper's breath caught.

One of the rooms was the science lab.

Inside, a figure had just fallen through the vent and stood near the whiteboard.

It was her.

She looked up—slowly.

And in the real world, the lights went out.

Darkness swallowed the lab, and for a few seconds, only the dull red glow of an emergency light bathed the dollhouse in blood-colored hue. Then a sound—a faint clicking—echoed around her.

She turned.

Figures now lined the edges of the room. Silent. Still. Faceless.

Plastic.

They were dolls.

Mannequin-like beings with stitched mouths and hollow eyes. One stepped forward, holding a key in its porcelain fingers.

Harper didn't move.

Another one placed a tiny desk beside her. It looked exactly like the ones in the dollhouse. They motioned for her to sit.

"No," she whispered, stepping back.

The walls pulsed.

The dollhouse glowed.

And then—she was falling.

Not in space—but in scale.

Shrinking.

The room stretched, the dolls grew tall around her, and the lab transformed into something crafted, clean, pristine… too perfect.

She stumbled into a chair that had once been hers—but now towered above her like furniture in a child's playset.

She was inside the dollhouse.

The science lab snapped shut like a toy compartment.

Through the miniature windows, she could see out into the other rooms. The dollhouse was full of the Vanished. All stuck in endless loops. Playing out their final moments again and again.

And she had joined them.

Outside the tiny windows, Harper saw movement.

A girl.

Real-size.

Peering into the dollhouse.

She looked just like Harper.

But she smiled.

And walked away.

The whispers returned—muffled now, as if under glass.

The Dollhouse had a new prisoner.