The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Residue
by A.F. Stewart

In the twilight we hear them, the everlasting voices. The resonance breaks our harmony of being, disturbing small fragmented vestiges of what we were. We tried to ignore them at first, but their presence would pull at us.
We cannot remember why, though perhaps we should.
Sometimes, we can see them. Their silhouettes shift around the twisted spires, the relics of rusted metal we no longer understand. We instinctively know what they are: dead shadows caught between dimensions.
Possibly when the world shifted, they were left behind.
So we gather In the fading sunlight to listen to their forever screams. Some believe we knew their names once, but their identity has vanished with our irretrievable past. Were they part of that life before? We know some did not transition, some were a sacrifice to the machine. We do not remember why, or who, only that we live on. Not as we were, not with blood and bone, or memory long gone, but only thought.
Perhaps that is what they are. Our lost thoughts.
Yet we still watch them. Honour them, these shadows. Trapped in one moment we can no longer comprehend. They scream, but we do not know why. They cry, but we cannot fathom the tears. Once, we were like them. Once, I think, we may have loved them. Now we pity them.
These poor forgotten phantoms snared between our life and their death.

Fiction © Copyright A.F. Stewart
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from A.F. Stewart:

Visions and Nightmares

Tragedy spares no one… and takes no prisoners.
In the twilight shadows, secrets are revealed past the whispers of madness.

Wander into the realm of the old gods with Elenora, where humanity and marriage are a prison.
Step through a looking glass of dark horrors with an Alice you never knew.
Join with Zenna to seek the truth as her death by magic grows closer.
Journey with Olivia as she crosses paths with a monster of the forest and runs for her life.
Watch Isobel summon the faerie to solve her problem of an unwanted husband.
Shiver as Doctor Killbride experiments with corpses to create life from death.
All that and more await within the pages.

Ten stories. Ten women.
Who will survive? Who will fall? And who will succumb to their inner evil?
Find out in Visions and Nightmares.

Warning: This book contains disturbing scenes that may be upsetting to some readers.

Available on Amazon!