The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
They Set Me Here
by Rie Sheridan Rose
They set me here, upon this bridge,
to hold it from invading hordes.
One of twelve spread o’er the ridge,
I tremble here, upon these boards.
I did not want to train to fight,
I never planned to hold a gun.
The soldiers came by dead of night—
I didn’t have a chance to run.
My weapons were of words, not war…
A poet, sage, a troubadour…
‘Twas thus my fancies turned afar—
the fate I saw worth dying o’er.
But now I stand with bayonet
Attached upon my rifle’s end.
I tremble, though I hold it set,
Foresworn to stand here and defend…
And now, the battle’s rage is spent
The bridge o’errun by foreign feet
And though my heart found courage lent,
Its blood lies dark on muddied sleet.
They set me here, upon this path,
which led to nowhere I had been,
To face the brute invaders’ wrath
as they swept on toward hearth and kin.
I lie beneath the trampled brush
lost to a bold invading gun.
My spirit feels a moment’s hush…
wondering what it is they won?
Fiction © Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from Author Rie Sheridan Rose:
Skellyman
“I have always preferred the supernatural in tales of horror, the knot between life and death. Rie Sheridan Rose’s Skellyman is cool and creepy. Her first horror novel is a chilling read.” — Charlee Jacob – Stoker winner, Best novel, “Dread in the Beast”
Brenda Barnett is trying to cope with raising her four-year-old daughter all alone after an accident tore her family in half. As she and Daisy go for a much-needed treat, the little girl spots a Skellyman on the corner.
This pivotal encounter leads to a wave of mounting terror as Brenda’s life begins to come undone around her. Who is the Skellyman? Why does he keep appearing? Can the sympathetic policeman Brenda turns to stop the madness before it is too late?
And why does Daisy insist that her dead brother is trying to tell them something important?
A wonderfully powerful poem.