The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Beneath
by Rie Sheridan Rose

She drifted in a sea of time. Up was a guess. Down a possibility. It didn’t really matter. There was no here, no now, no anything any more. Her blank eyes stared into the maelstrom of the sea, rising from a whirlpool below…she thought it was below, at least. What little she thought at all.

She felt broken, battered, boneless. But time surged around her with little gusts of movement, pushing her here, there, everywhere. And she was powerless to change that.

She had tried at first. Tried to sit up. To swim against the current of listless hours and clock-less faces…but now, she had given herself to the hours.

How had she come here? She remembered only blurred flashes—excited whispers with Colleen in last period about what they would wear to prom that weekend, and who would be their dates. Walking home past the abandoned house she’d passed a thousand times before…and would never pass again. The door creaking open—and her curiosity compelling her inside.

When had that been? Here in this endless sea, tainted with the bilious green of death and decay, there was no reasonable conception of time—it could have been yesterday, a week ago, a decade ago.

Here, there was only now…stretching to the horizon with the clock-faced fish. Maybe someday, she would become one of those funny creatures.

For now, she was simply beneath.

Fiction © Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Author Rie Sheridan Rose:

Skellyman

“I have always preferred the supernatural in tales of horror, the knot between life and death. Rie Sheridan Rose’s Skellyman is cool and creepy. Her first horror novel is a chilling read.” — Charlee Jacob – Stoker winner, Best novel, “Dread in the Beast”

Brenda Barnett is trying to cope with raising her four-year-old daughter all alone after an accident tore her family in half. As she and Daisy go for a much-needed treat, the little girl spots a Skellyman on the corner.

This pivotal encounter leads to a wave of mounting terror as Brenda’s life begins to come undone around her. Who is the Skellyman? Why does he keep appearing? Can the sympathetic policeman Brenda turns to stop the madness before it is too late?

And why does Daisy insist that her dead brother is trying to tell them something important?

Available on Amazon!

Please don’t forget to visit the other WiHM 11 projects taking place!