The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Everything Just Falls Apart
by Kendra Hale
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, those who seek shall find. All the fairytales of her youth had filled her mind with silver linings and that gold awaited a kind and caring heart. The happiness and love that her soul must have been created for.
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
Real life crushed Serenity’s expectations, one by one. She watched as fate stacked a steep deck against her. Any relationship she had opened her world up for had always left her reeling in sorrow, one that etched deep and jagged raw wounds upon her heart.
Her parents had broken the unspoken vow of unconditional love, mayweather friends seemed drawn to her like flies, and lovers who she had selflessly given parts of her heart to had pumiced them to dust never to be fit back together.
Her daily life left her in the lonely, inky, blackness. But Serenity had the moon and stars to guide her. Her lighthouse of hope that one day things would be just like the fairy tales had promised. That the immense waves of pain would be calmed under the light of happiness.
Ashes, Ashes We All Fall Down
Serenity had married for safety, to a man whose heart seemed as big as her and little by little the love chased away the night. Her joy made her blind to the small cut that as time passed festered and grew into wider cuts like gaping maws.
The prospect of a child once deprived filled her days with the brightest and warmest of sunshine. The best times of planning and nesting. Preparing her whole heart as a gift to this wonder being bestowed. But fate has no kindness and little time for mercy and back into the darkness she fell…the years after filled with moments that clung to her ankles and wrists like heavy stones. Each poised with enough weight to take her further into the murky depths.
Rising From The Ashes
Serenity fought fate back with everything she had and she found herself reborn. Alone and the creator of her path, like magic she spread her essence at will and it became beacons of light. Twinkling, guiding novas that led the lost and broken to her.
Like the Pied Piper’s song, an unending sweet siren song brought their souls into her world. The creative’s would write of her in their tales and moniker her the “Sandman”. Artists rendered her likeness in wacky and whimsical ways. But she was not always a dream.
While her isle stayed brilliant and blissful for the children’s souls to be at peace in her safe haven, at night the moon took on a most sinister face of sheer malicious delight. Serenity’s pain and fury burned bright and those who had been the source of her pain and sorrow were mere glowsticks to be broken inside and shaken until they glowed like her novas.
Serenity had indeed turned her afterlife into a fairy tale. But here, she was the narrator, and her tales filled ears with endless screams.
Fiction © Copyright Kendra Hale
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from author Kendra Hale:
Just Emotions:
A Gothic Bite Magazine Anthology
A collection of poetry.
Cool story.
Thank you ❤️ 😊 💓 ☺️
Loved the structure and rhythm of this piece and how you invested me totally in Serenity’s fate. Melancholy and spine-tingling all at the same time – matches the prompt perfectly.
Thank you so much! I am so happy, literally, that you enjoyed my tale. This one is for someone very important to me and had to pass her scrutiny before submission.
Pingback: Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Kendra Hale @DevourAllWords @Darc_Nina #LoH #fiction – Bleeding Ink