The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Mirror, Mirror
by A.F. Stewart
Staring at the mirror I watch the trapped reflection looking out and I feel the blood pound in my head. I trace my fingers over the surface, caressing the manifestation caught between glass and reality. I imagine I hear the screams.
Can this be happening?
The thought flickers in my head. It doesn’t feel real. It seems like a broken hallucination, a shell of delusion, or symptom of a disease. Only the eyes seem genuine. Flickering in the light to illustrate the true demons of my soul. I tap the mirror with a sigh.
Perhaps the image is more real than the flesh, which had always been a construct of my illusion. I stare, allowing the inevitable, knowing this is who I am. It is time to remove the mask I wear and reveal the iniquity underneath.
I move my hand to her shoulder. She flinches and tries to scream through the gag, fighting against the rope binding her to the chair. Such a lovely couple we make, our reflections haunting the mirror. She with her fearful face, expression etched like petrified stone, and me with the knife clenched in eager fingers. Our frozen portrait in grey, soon to be painted in red.
I raise the blade to her throat. With a river of blood, I watch my dark self blossom in the mirror’s echo.
Fiction © Copyright A.F. Stewart
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from A.F. Stewart:
Abandoned: 13 Tales of Impulse, Betrayal, Surrender, & Withdrawal
To act with abandon, in any sense of the word, is human. Whether it’s the sudden, strong urge to do something, either good or bad, or the act of betraying someone you love, we make choices that forever change our lives. Do you give into something or someone completely, or withdraw wholly into yourself? These thirteen stories run the gamut of emotions and express horror as you’ve never imagined it.
The story of a woman alone at the end of the world and the small lifeline she hopes will prove humanity still exists challenges the search for anything left behind after the death of a child. What if you hid a secret you’d thought no one else knew? Would its revelation spark the monster hiding within? A downward spiral into madness juxtaposes the ultimate, but impossible, (re)birth. Would you choose the frigid winds of winter over the warmth and safety of your lover’s arms?
Abandon hope, all who enter here…
