The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Loco-Motive
by Amanda Worthington

I am forever in motion, it seems.

Only at rest in dreams and even then

I’m mostly shivering beneath the weight of the stillness

In my last life, I was a woman

A beautiful disaster with hair like the night

And crimson lips that whispered alluring atrocities

Until the utterances themselves were wind

And the stranger’s will became mine

Mind unwound like twine

What design there was rendered chaos

And my hips!

They were hips that promised not just to get you there

But to get you there faster

I was an alabaster goddess of men.

And now…now I am a train

Crude and dark and constant

And closer than I’ve ever been to the source of my power

Without any oppositional forces to resist me

I devour each new inch of track

And circle back and watch it disappear behind me again

And I find them where I always have

On the periphery of things and thinking they own the stars,

Have lent them the light that makes them shine so unflinchingly

I invite wretched men to enter me

Hiding my loco-motive behind an exterior that begs to be boarded

Tamed, commandeered, driven to some greater purpose

Because behind every great train is a mediocre man

Who thinks he’s a goddamn engineer.

And as my throttle does its hot work

And the steam pours from my stack

As I spread their ashes across this hellscape,

I smile at a passing tree

Needles frosted with snow.

I nod my acknowledgment.

Another bad bitch who knows how to survive.

Life always finds a way.