The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

With Silent Words He Wrote for Her
by Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi

And he spoke to her, in unspoken language, hidden beneath phrasing and silence, but she could read his thoughts, feel his tension, hear his heart thumping across the miles, feel the blood in his veins pumping.

He’d read to her, in his own way, his life’s book, and opened her own also in layers that caused vulnerability to drip like honey from her fingers.

And he danced with her, in quiet moments of illusion, lush thoughts in dreams and screams inside gone unheard, wracking her until she wanted them to tremble out from her lips, but she was too scared to give them to the universe.

He peeled her, like petals off a rose, but she had dried from the world, her petals crumbling under his ghostly touch, and yet, at the same time she was re-born in a lust for living.

He wrote his story onto her story, etched with his mind onto hers, melding and meshing, and talking all at once of the same things, feeling the same reverberations, being nothing and whole all at the same time.

In hushed format, he tied her with string, roped her hands and her feet in loose but taut tie, and brushed her gently with letters of type, till he had bound her heart.

Fiction © Copyright Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi
Fiction Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi:

Breath. Breath. 

It’s the one-year anniversary of the publishing of my debut dark poetry and short story collection, Breathe. Breathe. Much of it tells my life’s pains and haunts and fears poured, sometimes savagely, onto the page. However, there is also legend, folklore, and fantasy as well. 

Breathe. Breathe. is a collection of dark poetry and short fiction exploring the surreal depths of humanity. It’s a representation of how life breaks us apart and words put us back together. Purged onto the pages, dark emotions flow, urging readers into murky seas and grim forests, to the fine line between breathing and death.In Act One, readers are presented with a serial killer in Victorian London, a lighthouse keeper with an eerie legacy, a murderous spouse that seems to have walked right out of a mystery novel, and a treacherous Japanese lady who wants to stay immortal. The heightened fears in the twilight of your minds will seep into the blackest of your nights, where you have to breathe in rhythm to stay alive.
In Act Two, the poetry turns more internal and pierces through the wall of denial and pain, bringing visceral emotions to the surface unleashing traumas such as domestic abuse, violence, and illness.
In the short stories, you’ll meet residents of Valhalla Lane whose lives are on a violent parallel track to collision, a man who is driven mad by the sound of a woodpecker, a teenage girl who wakes up on the beach and can’t find another soul in sight, a woman caught in a time shift pitting her against the Egyptian goddess Anuket, and a little girl whose whole world changes when her favorite dandelion yellow crayon is discontinued.
Amid these pages the haunting themes of oppression, isolation, revenge, and madness unfold through folklore, nightmares, and often times, raw, impulsive passion crafted to sear from the inside out.
With a touching foreword by the Bram Stoker nominated author Brian Kirk, Breathe. Breathe. will at times unsettle you, and at times embrace you. Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi, a veteran writer and editor of the written word, offers up a mixed set of pieces, identifying her as a strong, new voice in dark fiction that will tear the heart from your chest, all the while reminding you to breathe.

Available on Amazon!