The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Not Like Them 
by Elaine Pascale 

She was not like them.

She was one of a kind, but not in a beneficial way.

Special interest groups were not banding together to advocate for her survival.

In fact, the opposite was true.

Her ability to succumb to disease was looked upon with disgust. Being the last person on Earth able to die naturally made her a monster.

The people living in the lights wanted no reminder of flimsy mortality; they wanted no reminder of the fragility that once was.

She had been driven into her cave. Pitchforks and torches were archaic; more sophisticated weapons were enlisted now.

Not sophisticated enough to detect that she was still alive, that they hadn’t managed to kill her via combustion.

The people living in the lights wanted no part of her. They sent drones, but the drones couldn’t reason like a human, and she was the last truly human specimen. She was the only one that could understand the fear, the anxiety, the loneliness, and the rage she felt. She was the only one that could anticipate the danger of failing to make sure she was dead.

The people in the lights could not die naturally; their deaths were state-of-the-art. She had no problem providing that.

The people in the lights had no idea what awaited them. They had no concept of the carnage they would face. They could not imagine what she had in store, for she was not like them.

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Fiction © Copyright Elaine Pascale
Image courtesy of Pixaby.com

More from Elaine Pascale:

The Kitchen Witches

The women of Cape Cod have a story that is dying to be told. If only they could live long enough to tell it.

When Fiona Walker is contracted to write about a party attended by her social circle, her friends begin dying. She captures the competition and misery of the women around her through three different stories.

In Wishes, Melanie Voss discovers a Time Between Time where nothing that happens counts. Initially, Time Between Time is a welcome escape from a life spent watching the clock while doing chores for her family. But something sinister is in the Time Between Time and it is headed straight for Melanie.

Death and Taxes tells the story of Nashville DeCota, the Cape Capo. Nash swears that she is not the Island Impaler, nor the Tooth Snatcher, but she has just as many skeletons in her closet. When her husband, Derrick, is kidnapped, she has to come clean about her crimes if she ever wants to see him again.

Fiona tells her own story in Hazing, where she finds that the real source of evil behind the deaths of her friends is worse than she could have ever imagined.

Available on Amazon!