The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Odokuro
by Tawny Kipphorn

Far below the Earth’s viridescence, where the sun never shines, lies a place of perpetual darkness. Therein resides a being beyond human comprehension. A fragment of an alternate reality, a beast among men. An encounter with the Odokuro leaves you with an eternal sickness, and with each aching step becoming heavier. Days turn to night and weeks turn into years in the blink of an eye as you realize you have become one of them.

As the blood runs dry, veins once so vibrant and blue have now paled and withered away. The things you’ll see will leave you unable to determine what is real and what is not. The terrible truth sets in that a life shrouded in the darkness is all that awaits you, and the life you’ve known has become just a dream in a world where only nightmares exist.

Some seek the creature with the belief that it is a holy being that holds the secrets to humanity. I fear the only future the Odokuro holds for those people is death. Should you find yourself face to face with the thing that should not be, I can assure you that your agonizing death will be a sweet release from the cruel grasp of the demon so unlike anything you’ve ever imagined before.

The foul stench of sulfur burns your airways as you struggle to breathe. A deafening shriek ruptures your equilibrium and blood spills forth from your ears. You suffocate slowly as the thing draws closer to you. Just when you think you’ve reached the end, you see him there. A towering fiend, and the devil’s most favorite creation.

The melting away of our daily masks reveals what we truly are beneath. Bare bones… Ourselves… Odokuro.

Fiction © Copyright Tawny Kipphorn
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Author Tawny Kipphorn:

A Shadow of Autumn

Fall—a season as beautiful as it is foreboding. A Shadow of Autumn takes you back to childhood nostalgia while peeling away the mask to reveal things that haunt your worst nightmares. Within these pages, you’ll find the usual denizens of the holiday—demons, witches, ghosts, and bloodsuckers—along with strange and unknown creatures lurking everywhere from innocuous cornfields and pumpkin patches to basement hatches and high school dances. These fourteen tales of fall magic and Halloween horrors will keep you looking over your shoulder long after the last light of October has waned. Don’t say we didn’t warn you…

Available on Amazon!