The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The buildings were on fire again. I could hear the glass that was left in windows shatter. The brick was already burnt, turning blacker, and debris fell like rain. The smoke claimed the sky, but the stars were already choked silent. And the moon was gone, leaving the bodies in the street in darkness, shadowed by flames.

My rags slipped quietly across my bare feet as I stepped over the sleeping dead. Those unlucky to dream hollow dreams moaned in protest, but their bodies were slender twigs. A bone snapped under one step, and I continued on, moving toward the massive brick hill lying in the distance. So many bodies lying in the street as if never remembering comfort, only a concrete bed, and an old man crouched by a burning barrel, shoveling garbage into his mouth. Did he not remember what good food tasted like, and he snarled at me like a wounded animal.

The flesh on my hands were torn away. I could see bone and vein, but still I climbed. I no longer felt pain. I no longer felt anything, but I did not want to sleep. I did not want to lie down on pavement, wishing to fade away, so I climbed. I reached the top, and I fell down to the other side, snapping one leg the wrong way. But I didn’t care. I had finally found him.

The building was gone, but one brick wall remained. That’s where he lived and watched. He waited for the lost souls to close their eyes one last time, draw in a shuddered breath, and then he would take them. He would lift them up into the air, carry them over the brick hill, and turn them into dust, and he would inhale that dust through his tentacles that hung down like a king’s beard. His purple eyes would shine bright, taking the lost souls not to heaven but to hell.

I gathered up what strength I had left, but I could only hurl one rock at his face. In doing so, I could hear the debris behind me move, and the shadows emerged, taking human form. But their faces were painted skeletal. Hoods covered their heads, and they swiftly moved toward me, lifting my broken frame upward in offering. And his purple eyes shined, and his long tentacles shot forward, penetrating my flesh and bone. I shuddered, slowly turning to dust, but as my body fell away, I held his stare. If only we had listened, but we never did.