The Meuchlings

A Short Horror Story

Jul 15, 2026

This story was inspired by the photo prompt by Alicia sharing Aaron Martinez. It’s not my fault, this is just what came out. I’m sorry. It has a gruesome and horrific nature to the brutality within it so I warn the reader to continue at your own risk.

I did warn you.

They’d returned with spoils. As they always did.

When the Meuchlings arrived in the town square before the castle, they had the horrid countenance of an army of destitute souls.

Miguel heard them before he saw them, as he so often would. He rose from his chair and walked through the archway out onto the pulpit to gaze upon the returning hordes.

Within their mass he could see several large black shapes and he smiled to himself. He already knew what they were.

The Meuchlings army prided themselves on their brutality.

They ensured success by arriving as individuals, the most normal looking amongst them learning the habits of the people of a town or village over a week or two. They’d figure out the defensive weak spots and count the number of fighters.

If they thought there were too many, they would move on.

If they felt they could manage, the rest of the army was summoned.

They struck at night, always at night, when people were at their most vulnerable. The Meuchlings that had infiltrated would start murdering people while they slept, cutting down the numbers quietly until the rest of the army arrived to finish the job.

They would round up the defeated citizens of wherever they went, and they would line up the families opposite each other.

Their favorite thing to do at this point was to instruct the parents to murder their children.

Some did it willingly, hoping they themselves would be spared.

But if you knew anything about the Meuchlings, you knew they had a policy of sparing no one. Sadly, without survivors, there was no one to inform others of their policy.

The parents were given no weapons or tools. Some would use large rocks, but most were forced to end their progeny with their own hands, most commonly the fathers would do this with brute strength.

Oh how the Meuchlings delighted to find that a father had been killed in the battle, and the lone mother would have to take on the task of strangling her children.

Some parents would fight back or cry, collapse to their knees and refuse.

That never lasted long.

It was always preferable to murder your own children, rather than watch the Meuchlings do it themselves. Oh how they understood all of the worst ways to make a person feel pain.

They’d had plenty of practice after all.

Most of the time one child was all it took.

The quickest solution was to hyperextend their young knees. Reverse the bend on both of the legs of a small boy or girl and force them to try and walk a few steps. If the Meuchlings were in a good mood sometimes they would play music and make the injured child dance.

Well, the parents were almost begging you to let them do it themselves after that.

Unfortunately the Meuchlings made it clear that it was now too late. The initial refusal meant that the parents had given up that responsibility and wouldn’t get it back.

Screws were pretty effective to make this point.

So many screws can fit in a child before they bleed to death.

The slow and painful public torture of a young child was enough to ensure that the remaining parents understood which was the preferable choice.

Despite having to look your child in the eyes, the person you’d promised to love and protect, and kill them while they were confused and scared and begging for you to help them, nothing was worse than having the Meuchlings do it while you sat by and watched.

Nothing.

The thing the Meuchlings understood was that children hadn’t felt anything remotely close to this kind of pain before, which made their suffering all the more shocking when you drew it out.

Now that Miguel thought about it, neither had the parents.

Once a child was dead the body was added to the pile of those who had fallen in battle, and the parents were told to sit down and wait for everyone else to finish.

If an adult had no children, they’d be lined up opposite their elderly parents. Everyone has to come from somewhere.

In these cases occasionally the younger would try to overpower the older and survive. The invaders were more than happy to break few limbs in these situations to help the parents out. Respect your elders was another Meuchlings policy.

They loved when a family had more than one child, the more the merrier they always said. It was more difficult for those parents of course, but that’s what the Meuchlings were there for. They had plenty of time to wait. They didn’t come to just conquer.

They came to pillage and burn the very souls of a village.

Some of them smiled while they watched the proceedings, some of them stood stone faced and showed no emotion. Miguel was never sure which was worse.

When the children were gone, the women were next.

If you asked the women to murder the men, some might think of their children. There was a natural vengeance there, having something you brought into the world destroyed. Some of the men would even consider it understandable, and would go willingly, foolishly thinking their wives might be allowed to live.

Women, on the other hand, were smarter than that.

When the Meuchlings gave the men the instructions, the women understood that no one was getting out alive. Not a single soul.

The horrible expressions some of them wore when the order was given to the first man and they realized what was about to happen was all the more delectable for the Meuchlings.

And the men, well, some of them were still stupid enough to believe they had a chance.

Some of them maybe even enjoyed it a little.

Deep down, it was all the more painful for their wives when they saw that there was a sick acceptance to the procedure from the men they’d trusted and partnered with.

The fight had been lost. Men understood winning and losing. They knew that life was unfair and had to be fought over. There was a recognition of brutality that was in their nature.

They were the ones after all that were expected to fight and defend the village against warring tribes. To hunt animals, kill them, and learn to be ok with it. This was how the world worked for them. Men often believed that was the only form of strength, and they would sometimes take it on with a sense of duty.

Of course, once the women had been added to the pile, the Meuchlings turned on those who remained.

One by one the men were publicly castrated.

The Meuchlings enjoyed this immensely because a man’s pride and ego are often tied up in his genitalia. Once removed, especially against their will, the mind starts to go.

Then they were paired up by matching approximate age and physical profile and forced to fight to the death.

The Meuchlings would place wagers on them as a game and play music to add to the atmosphere.

If a man won his fight, he would be paired with another victor to await the next round, and the tournament continued.

Most of them gave in, but some refused to fight.

The Meuchlings enjoyed making examples of these men.

If a man made it clear he wasn’t going to fight, it would be too easy for the opponent.

The Meuchlings didn’t like things to be too easy.

Nobility always looks less appealing for each limb you slowly removed.

They once had a man so obstinate that he had both of his arms and legs cut off. They then sodomized him on a pole and stuck it in the ground so he hung, suspended seven feet in the air to watch the rest. Very noble.

Miguel remembered that they didn’t even put him out of his misery when they returned home.

They brought him, skewered, limbless and hopeless, and waved him like a flag upon their triumphant arrival.

Miguel had been impressed that the man was still alive at that point, after the several day march. He had the pole erected in the ground outside the castle where the man had slowly starved to death.

He glanced sideways at the skeleton, still stationed at its top, decomposed and picked clean by the birds until it was just a banner of bones.

When the Meuchlings finished with their sickening rituals, they returned to the pile, adding the bodies of the men, and set the whole thing alight. They danced and sang their songs as the corpses were burned.

The fire consumed everything but the bones.

The Meuchlings then dug a deep pit several minutes distance away from the town perimeter, and buried the remains within it, collecting the skulls beforehand which they stuffed into dark cloth sacks. The pit would be well concealed once filled in to prevent it being found.

That way whenever a village or town was discovered, it was simply empty.

The rain would wash the blood away soon enough. No obvious burial site close by. No evidence of the Meuchlings or their terrible ways. No need for anyone to raise the alarm or come looking for them.

As Miguel surveyed the familiar crowd before him, he knew that the several dark shapes among them were the sacks possessing the skulls, trophies of war, collected with pride and glee.

He grinned at the fetid crowd before him, jostling for position with their putrid flesh stinking to high heaven. Some of them had deteriorated so far they resembled skulls themselves, lipless, lidless horrors of the night.

They were all cursed, and rightly so.

Miguel stretched his arms out broadly with unabashed love and admiration for his immortal followers.

“Welcome home, my children,” he announced in his booming, arrogant voice, “Show me what you brought for Daddy this time!”

Hey there! Seb here! I just wanted to, well first to apologize. Sorry, this one was rather brutal. Then I wanted to thank you for choosing to spend your time reading my work. Sorry again! Feel free to leave a comment about any of your thoughts on this story. Your support means a lot and I am honored that you’re here.

Thank you.

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