The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

I Believed Him
by Linda Lee Rice

He was handsome in an elegant old-fashioned way, genteel manners, and an old-world charm. I was swept off my feet with the after-sunset picnics. He plied me with a bouquet of beautiful flowers he said were called Oleander. The flowers were a lovely pink with a sweet delicate scent.

As we lay in the moonlight, he brushed a leaf from the flower across my lips saying he would love to spend eternity with me. As my heart started racing erratically, vomiting, I fell into a swoon, and soon darkness overtook me.

I woke up here in this cavern, naked, afraid, and alone. Behind me are skulls of his other lovers, the ones he had cast aside. I scream and scream but no one hears me but the grinning dead. A single torch blazes on the mossy wall, leaving shadows.

I claw my way around the walls of the cavern and through the layers of skulls. I find the latest victim; rigor mortis has long been there and gone. Rats have been nibbling here and there, enjoying their repast. Her neck had been bitten leaving puncture marks, her eyes wide open staring at nothing.

I smell the scent of Oleander, the faint sound of footsteps…he is coming.

Fiction © Copyright Linda Lee Rice.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More about Linda Lee Rice:

Linda Lee Rice aka Ruzicka has poetry published in Twilight Times, Dark Krypt, Fables, Descending Darkness, Writing Village, Spine, and Page, Muses Gallery, Bloodbond, Lycan Valley Press Publishers, Alban Lake, Highland Park Poetry, Rosette Maleficarum, The Siren’s Call, Edify Fiction and the June Cotner anthology, “House Blessings” and “Garden Blessings

She has short stories published in The Grit, and Reminisce, Haunted Encounters: Friends and Family, FrostFire Worlds. Plus, a personal essay at Mamalode. She also has various articles and blogs published online as a freelance writer.