Spectator competition winners: children’s stories get the horror treatment

In Competition No. 3268, you were invited to recast an extract from children’s literature in the horror genre.

In the forthcoming indie slasher film Winnie-the-Pooh: Bloody and Honey, the seed for this challenge, an unhinged Pooh and Piglet run amok in Hundred Acre Wood, indulging in some eye-gouging and decapitation before gorging themselves on honey. Shudder.

I was pleased to see the Cat in the Hat –who has always sent shivers down my spine – pop up several times in the entry. Seuss channellers Chris O’Carroll and Brian Murdoch were unlucky losers, pipped to the post by those below who snaffle £25 each.

‘Nay matey,’ said he; ‘not marooned, but marinaded in the blood of a warthog, and hung here in rusty chains for an eternity, and nothing to eat but jerky made from the yellow sea-snake, and sea-water slime to soothe my oozing tongues.’  Throughout this interview, his tentacles – for I can think of no other term for what masqueraded as his fingers – slithered over my jerkin, and rummaged in my pockets, for all the world like some warty footpad, intent on my money, and thereafter, my mortal soul.