The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Dragons in the Sand
by Ashley Davis

The sunrise and sunset always look familiar, but the blue sky of day feels wrong. Am I from a place of perpetual long wavelengths? Am I accustomed to the edge? Night, dusk, and dawn—the only times that feel real. The shadow birds still come then, but they always keep their distance in a darker sky. My memories are filled with splinters from old beach-house porch steps, purple clouds over crashing waves, misty dunes, and a deep desire for something I cannot yet understand. I’ve been there a million times, but I don’t know when or who I was. Invisible feet climb a staircase to a destination just out of reach. What will I do when I reach the end of the concrete steps, where it drops into air? There are ticking clocks among the dunes, but what do they measure? Or maybe the clocks are really dragons, come to take back one of their own. I know they see me. I weave magic with words, see through multiple eyes, and always dance on my toes; am I a witch or a prophet? Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow. It’s what I know, and it comes from inside, but I don’t know how it got there. I used to know my braids and my house and the dark voice that shadowed me, and the beach never recedes. It’s always a darkening sky. The wind is always full of salt. The tide is always coming in. There are no seashells on this coastline. The perpetual tide brings something else. I know the darkness that calls me must live in the water, though its voice calls from the clouds. Bring me broken boards, broken shells, broken souls, and I will mend or destroy their essence.

Fiction © Copyright Ashley Davis
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

Poetry by Ashley Davis can be found featured in the fall 2017 issue of
The Horror Zine