The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Drawing Down the Moon 
by Marge Simon 

Armageddon came and went. They’d planned to tour Greece this summer, but now that’s out. They put the last of their pot in the Ford pickup, take Route 66 to where the mountains meet a brilliant Colorado sky. Below them, the canyon offers up a sweet warm wind that tousles their hair.

“Do you remember when we got this high?” Vera says.” Crazy times, the seventies,” her friend agrees. She wipes errant strands of hair from her eyes. At dusk, they walk along a forest path, stopping at an arch between the ruined and barren aspen. The moon looms huge above the eastern horizon. This is high country; the heavens are ablaze with light.

They light a joint, sitting on a wall of stones along the curve of the road. A distant river winds down the canyon floor, they’ve forgotten its name. There is a sudden rush of air and colors that are not colors but multiples of blue and silver. The wind is on their lips and the whole white night sings aloud.

Vera laughs, rises and steps off into the air. “We need no ship, we can fly there!” Holding hands, they reach to embrace the lunar glow.

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Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Rie Sheridan Rose 

More from Marge Simon:

Victims
by Marge Simon and‎ Mary Turzillo

The title of this collection sets you up for the surprise of lyrical stories of victimizations with unexpected endings for the villains. Be ready to have your heart opened and cheer for perceived victims, human (made and unmade) and other life forms, victorious in the hands of these two award-winning poets. —Linda D. Addison, award-winning author, HWA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and SFPA Grand Master.

Across histories and cultures and from Auschwitz to Babylon this book leaves you questioning who are the victims, and regardless of your conclusion you’re likely to get throat-punched. This is horror where everyone has a knife, and is ready to deliver this message: “Remember, you are always guilty. —Herb Kauderer, author of Fragments from the Book of the After-Dead.

Simon and Turzillo have only gone and startled me again. What a collection! Brutal. Beautiful. This quiver of poems strikes with the unflinching truth of persecution and oppression as seen through the lens of feminism. Prepare to come away bruised and yet strangely bolstered by Victims, a symphony of sadness orchestrated by two masters of dark poetry. —Lee Murray, Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award-winner.

This is one of the braver dark poetry collections I’ve seen in a while. Horror poets generally employ victims in their work, but the focus is generally on the Evil. Turning the camera the other way is unusual, unsettling, emotionally risky, and surprisingly effective. From their stark opening take on Pygmalion, to the ending poem about the wasted life of Stateira of Persia, this powerful collection teases apart an impressive number of the threads of victimhood. Some are the usual cases, but quite a few are surprises, or reversals, or cases with unexpected layers. There is nothing repetitive about this collection. —Timons Esaias, winner of the Asimov’s Readers’ Award and the Winter Anthology Contest

Available on Amazon!