The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Her Story 
by Marge Simon 

Shutting off the alarm, she dresses for work. The usual rush to the crowded Blue Line, where she settles for standing. She reads her phone en route, clutching the silver pole and turning her face away from the woman blowing her nose.

She never notices when her days become so many lies. Friends playing silly games, parties she doesn’t remember; the men who come and go, leaving damp sheets and ash, and only one that matters.

But he steals her heart, wrecks her car, her life. So much for being serious. She takes care of the situation with a finely honed steak knife, gets things back on keel.

Beyond her apartment, the thrum of wheels on rails, she finds their message comforting. So tonight, before the City can claim her for another day, she leaves for California. She takes a reminder for old time’s sake: A small vial of the bastard’s blood on a golden chain. He was certainly beyond needing it anymore.

Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

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!