The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Do-Over
by Mary Ann Peden-Coviello
They called me by many names. So many names for the Great Earth Mother. They worshipped me in all their languages and all their cultures. They lavished me with praise and devotion.
And they abused me and misused me. They destroyed and wreaked havoc in every place they set foot.
I grew weary of their depredations and shrugged them off. Shook the earth from beneath their feet. Washed them away like the plague they were. Their cries and screams, their moans and wails still echo in the labyrinths of my mind.
When I had rested long enough, I began again. My little butterflies are so beautiful. Graceful. Delicate. The highest form of life now. It seems a shame to go again down the road that led us here. The way of vertebrae and intellect and arrogance.
Perhaps someday . . . Perhaps I’ll try with a new species. Maybe I’ll try working with primates this time instead of felines. I enjoyed the apes in the last creation. Clever little fellows. I rather miss them.
Surely the descendants of wee apes wouldn’t be so wantonly destructive.
Fiction © Copyright Mary Ann Peden-Coviello
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from Mary Ann Peden-Coviello:
Fright Mare-Women Write Horror
Short Story: One Hour Before the Dark
Women write horror and have written it since before Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN. This anthology is to highlight the fact women write great horror and to kill the fallacy that they aren’t in some way up to standard. They are. Read here stories by Elizabeth Massie, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lucy Taylor, and a plethora of other great writers as they work on your nerves, get inside your head, and bang out some of the scariest tales written today. I’m proud to present these women for your consideration, as Rod Serling might say, as I ask you to step into FRIGHT MARE. Lock the door and windows, put on a light, and remember, it’s not real. It’s not real. Midnight awaits, monsters scheme to take you away, the strange and weird wait in the shadows, but it’s not real. Is it?
Edited by Billie Sue Mosiman, the author who brought you the SINISTER-TALES OF DREAD collections and her latest suspense novel, THE GREY MATTER.
Spreading the Writer's Word 
I like the story, but I’m confused. You start with: “They worshiped me in all their languages and all their cultures. They lavished me with praise and devotion.” Everything about the descriptions sounds homo sapiens. But then the ending sounds like Earth Mother had populated the earth with felines, and next will try the primates. The beginning descriptions do not sound feline at all, even if they’d had larger brains, etc. Felines worship themselves, and wouldn’t be wreaking havoc except with toilet paper rolls.(just kidding 😉 Anyway, that part could have had more feline than human stuff in it, IMO. So I didn’t see how that fit.
An intriguing story.