The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

View from the Pier
by Marge Simon

“A man lives so many different lengths of time.”

          -Steve Hall, The Raw Shark Texts

Before him is a lake that stretches for miles. The remains of an ancient pier stand as silent sentries, testimonials to the past. It’s an afternoon in early spring. The wind is from the east, a fresh and mildly fishy bouquet. He stares into the water dancing beyond the shore. Lives grow and exist out there in the shimmering water. Mesmerized, he can’t take his eyes off the horizon. Strange, but he feels the boards of the pier beneath his bare feet. Just then, he catches sight of a motor boat Streaking haphazardly toward him, out of control. It’s a familiar boat, with bright red and blue streaks from bow to stern. Now it’s close enough, he sees two people struggling over the throttle. On they come, rushing so fast the boat is lifted out of the water as it hits the platform.

She was so pretty, was Marianne, with chestnut curls hair and a dimple when she smiled. He’d adored her. But oh, what a temper! There was an argument – he doesn’t remember why, only that she’d grabbed the throttle away from him, had it in high –all of a sudden, and the pier was coming up too fast … then her head smacked the shield, all that blood …

A sad old man stands on the shore of a lake. Tears in his eyes, he gazes at the remains of a weathered pier. Testimonials to the past, they glow scarlet in the sunset.

Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Marge Simon:

The Demeter Diaries
by Marge Simon and‎ Bryan D. Dietrich

‘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.

Available on Amazon!