The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Monsters of Men
by Melissa R. Mendelson

When my mother was at the end, she said strange things.  She talked of monsters walking through the woods.  She spoke of an ancient beast, something to never be summoned, but she summoned it.  And it marked her, and she bore a red scar that mirrored mine.  And in the end, she asked to be burned.  Burn everything, she said, or it would find her.  And it would find me.

After her funeral, I cleared out the house.  Most of the stuff was donated, but a lot was thrown out.  And in the attic, I found a small, broken chest.  Inside was a piece of paper.  It was a drawing of some kind of creature, and I shuddered.  And my scar hurt.  I never knew how I got that mark, and my mother never spoke about it.  She never spoke of my father either.

That night, it started to snow.  I used to love watching those flakes fall, but I was cold.  And I couldn’t get warm.  I called it a night and crawled into bed, but just as sleep was settling in, I heard crunching outside like deer stepping onto snow.  I moved out of the bed just as the window was fogging up like hot breath falling against the glass, and for a moment there, I saw piercing, blue eyes.

My mother’s stories were getting to me.  There were no monsters.  Still, my scar hurt.  I rubbed it as I crawled back into bed, and then I thought I heard the front door open.  But I knew that I locked it.

I was drifting off into sleep when hot breath fell across my face.  I opened my eyes and melted into the piercing blue.  My body softly shook like it was outside, under the snow.  White clouds of air slipped between us, and its lips etched close to mine.  Then, its body pressed against me, and I shuddered as its weight bore down into me.  And somewhere in the darkness, something in my belly stirred.

 Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Melissa R. Mendelson:

Please visit the following link for a Chapter 1 Transcript Reading of LIZARDIAN by MELISSA R MENDELSON. Performed by Amaka Umeh.