The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Fibonacci Spiral into Madness
by Amanda Worthington

This place is being reclaimed

He knows he is nutrient rich

As the stone is not

Feels their tendrils reach to caress his bare feet

As he descends

.

They are hungry.

.

Each step induces a kind of madness

He sees and hears a million things

That cannot be said, but only felt

Heartbreak that no phoneme can clarify

Darkness no light can breach

Tones that cannot be sung

That manifest in his body as vibrations from some other realm

Unreachable by ordinary means.

.

He knows it is not the structure

But the creatures that overwhelm it

The things that have made

their home in its crevices

.

The woe of each stair

Is the sum of the two that have preceded it

And even in this low lighting

The greenery is devastating.

He is halfway down

And little more than charcoal smudges and smoke

The outline of a man

Nearly at the chasm of calamity

Ready to face down the worst in himself

So that he can bring the best back up to the surface

Where people are dying.

.

Of course, his people are already gone

Driven mad by the green things

Mowed down with bullets as they tore away

Just enough meat from the already-dead man

To keep the family fed

.

There are no guns here

Only time and desperation

And the barely contained hunger

Of the things that will devour him if he fails

To look upon their master

Or if his plea is not heard

Or if his plea is heard and refused.

.

So many ways to fall.

.

With a deep breath,

He takes the next step.

.

.

Fiction © Copyright Amanda Worthington.
Image courtesy of Pixabay