The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Ivan and the Goddess
by Marge Simon
After dinner, Ivan is out for a smoke, as he’s wont to do if weather permits. The oaks are limed in shadows, the heavens ablaze with points of light. This night seems different, full of portent. He strikes a match to his pipe, wondering if he might discover some new constellation of his own invention. But the flame goes out as a woman materializes, the sexiest young woman he’s ever seen. She appears to float his way, holding an object lit with an otherworldly glow. Ivan stares with pipe unlit, wondering where she comes from, and why here, to his back yard.
“I come to share,” she says, revealing a golden hour glass, its top half almost empty. Trembling, Ivan touches it. “I know who you are, gorgeous. You’re an angel, come to tell me that my time here is at an end.” His eyes narrow, “Is this not so?”
“Wrong, Ivan! I’m no angel, I’m the Goddess of Time. As to why I’m here—oh!”
Ivan instantly snatches the glass out of her hand, turning it back over as he does. “Say no more, you beautiful broad. I get to live as long as I want, now. With another lifetime ahead, I can prepare myself to be president of our nation. I can have all the sexy women I wish, starting with you.”
The goddess begins laughing. “Do you actually believe I’d bring you my sacred Glass of Hours? I have a bet with the God of Fools that you’d do something like this. He thought you’d beg me for a kiss, maybe ask me to sleep with you. Hah!”
“I was just about to propose both of those things,” says Ivan. “But you are saying this is a fake?”
“It surely is, but you’re smarter than I’d thought, Ivan. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”
Ivan stares speechless as the lovely goddess unhinges her jaw. “It gets boring, being a Goddess. Sometimes I need a change of pace. I’m moonlighting as a vampire this evening, that’s what I wanted to share, little man.”
Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from Marge Simon:
The Demeter Diaries
by
‘The Demeter Diaries’ is a record of love and longing and the inevitable horror that arises between the minds of Mina Harker and Vlad Dracula as they court one another in waking dreams. The dialogue, written in both poetry and prose, imagines a psychic connection that develops between the two even before Dracula arrives in England. As Dracula makes his way from Transylvania to Whitby on the doomed ship Demeter, the two would-be lovers transmit their thoughts across the waves and lands that separate them, alternately wooing and terrifying one another with the idea of love eternal and all the dark delicacies necessary to ensure it. Front cover art by Wendy Saber Core, interior illustrations by Luke Spooner.
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superb rendition, as always! 👍💖
superb rendition, as always! 💖👍
A terrific story, full of dark fun.