The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Snow… White…. Forever…
by Rie Sheridan Rose

We were seven. Brothers in spirit if not by blood. And then, she came…and she was a breath of fresh air to our coal-stained souls. It wasn’t like it was in the books. She wasn’t our servant. She was more like a mother to us. We would all have laid down our lives for her…

Then the witch found her. I don’t know how it happened. We were careful. So very careful.

She was all alone when the witch poisoned her. When we returned home, she was cold on the floor. Nothing we could do would rouse her.

Though it was April, it started to snow. Gently, at first, and then a blizzard. It fell for a week, packing itself down, tighter and tighter. Until the cabin was completely buried.

The door opened out. The windows were shuttered. The chimney was full of snow. Our cheerful home was now a cold, empty prison.

The coffin was not glass—it was ice—and more a bier than a casket. We lay her upon it and sat beside it on drifts carved into couches.

One by one, my brothers perished, as the air grew thick and the cold increased. The food ran out…so the living dined on the dead.

I, alone, remain, and I feel the hand of Death upon my shoulder as I gaze my last on the empty bier. She tasted of pomegranates…

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!