The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Witness
by Paula D. Ashe

She stands at the edge of a pit filled with useless grey bodies, their limbs stiffly twisted like discarded dolls. Soon they will be covered in soil and lye. Soon this place will disappear.

Her eyes are the color of gnarled nickels.

Later, machines split open the sky and ejaculate fire, broiling the color from upturned eyes. A naked girl screams while sheets of her skin melt from her bones like tallow.

The irony is not lost on the woman watching. Her skin has always been ash.

Blood cools in shapeless pools. The reasons are barked out over loudspeakers, echo through alleyways littered with the limbless dead. Inside the stone houses, the innocent hide and shake and pray.

She wears a wreath of fresh roses in her hair to subdue the stench of the dying.

Their screams however, she likes.

Fiction © Copyright Paula D. Ashe
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Paul D. Ashe:

Eulogies III

Nothing so commonplace as a werewolf or zombie lurks within these pages. No, on offer here is an altogether more complex assortment of evils and a sampling of humans who battle, retreat, suffer and are changed. ~Rob Dunbar from his Introduction

…between these covers is a breath of fresh air to those of us who have grown a bit weary of the usual zombies and beasties. ~Gary Braunbeck

Introduction by Robert Dunbarby
The Storm by David Morrell
Mr. Mumblety-Peg by Tim Curran
Terms And Conditions by Violet LeVoit
Hate Me Afire by Thomas Sullivan
The Mouth by Ray Garton
In Hell, An Eye by Gemma Files
Morgenstern’s Last Act by Bracken Macleod
One Last Drop Of Blood To Remember Me By by Matt Moore
Fly Away Home by Elizabeth Massie
The Hole To China by John Everson
She Sits And Smiles by Chet Williamson
Carry On, Carrion by Paula D. Ashe
One Possible Shape Of Things To Come by Brian Hodge

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Women in Horror Month 9

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