The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Laboring 
by Elaine Pascale 

The breath was louder than it should be.

She shouldn’t be able to feel it on the back of her neck.

Not this time; not again.

She had worked for them for years. “Labored” was a word that was too on the nose. Labored was also a way to describe her running down the dirt road. Her legs threatened to betray her, as if punishing her for “allowing” them to be chained to the table for so long.

The first time they had caught her, she had been running from the fire that had ignited from their weapons. The dry grass of the fields had succumbed to the flames without a fight. She had fought. She had not known what they intended. Her innocence scattered like ashes on the wind.

The second time they had caught her, she had been fully acquainted with their brand of torture. She had produced for them, had reproduced for them. Not willingly, never willingly.

The second time she had made it far enough to see the old gas station. She had been beaten badly everywhere except her pelvic area. They needed that. They valued that.

She laughed as she ran. She remembered growing up in this same farm country and being cautioned to keep her legs shut, to protect her womb. She hadn’t been warned about these monsters, and what they wanted to do to her womanhood. She hadn’t been warned that her own legs would try to trip her and send her back to the table in the barn.

They had taken over the area and massacred those without value. The gas station that had been famous for selling fireworks out of its back room had been abandoned for the same amount of months that she had been gestating for them.

She knew they were close behind her, but this time that was exactly what she wanted. Her adrenaline had placed them far enough away for her to kick through the delipidated door of the gas station with her traitorous legs. She had enough of a lead to grab a lighter and lighter fluid and sneak into the infamous back room.

When the breath was close enough again, she would meet their fiery weapons with her own. The fireworks would be a signal to the neglected area that her labor had ended.

.

Fiction © Copyright Elaine Pascale
Image courtesy of Pixaby.com

More from Elaine Pascale:

The Blood Lights

They victimize all…

Jezzie Mitchell is in anguish; with her brother’s murder still on her mind, she’s noticed strange behavior among the girls in the residential treatment center where she works. Is there a connection between the contagion on Cape Cod and the deadly Bahamas vacation that changed her life?

Jezzie reaches out to former lover Lou Collins, a scholar who has chased proof of the lights for decades. Will he be able to solve the mystery of the lights in time?

Intensely competitive, reporter Bridgette Collins knows the lights are a way to secure fame in her career. And while it’ll put the final nail into the coffin of her ex-husband’s career, she vows to know the secrets of the lights. Even if it means unleashing a world-wide epidemic…