The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Ghost Town
by Mary Ann Peden-Coviello 

The girl opened her eyes. She lay on the sidewalk, disoriented but unhurt, she thought. She checked. Yep, still wearing the same clothes as last night.

“Man, that was *some* party,” she said aloud. Her words echoed hollowly in the night air. She shivered. She sat up, trying to remember how she got here. Heck, trying to remember where “here” might even be. Unsteadily, she climbed to her feet, a bit wobbly on her stiletto heels.

She leaned against a house front while her head cleared. She didn’t think she’d done any drugs, only her usual cocktails, but she couldn’t be sure. She looked up and down the street. Nope, she’d never been here before.

Nice houses lined the street, well-kept. No lights on. Not even a front porch light or two to light the way for stragglers. On an impulse, she looked inside the big bay window of the brick two-story house she had been resting against.

Empty. Not a stick of furniture. Not a picture on the wall. Nothing.

She ran to the next house. Peeked in the nearest window. Another bare room. She darted from house to empty house, looking for someone. Anyone.

Completely alone. She hadn’t been on her own– without friends or at least other party-goers – for ages.

“Where is everyone? Who will I even talk to? What’ll I do?”

Alone. She felt the smile as it began to creep up from the corners of her mouth. This was a new experience. Fun, even.

She danced down the middle of the street, laughing and singing, not caring a whit that her singing was off-key and her laughter just a bit hysterical. She whirled and spun and kicked up her feet.

From an unseen observation post, the Demonic Supervisor for Section 9,410,208 subdivision Q284B watched the girl’s back as she cavorted down the deserted street. He did not turn to face his subordinate.

“I assume you recognize that this preposterous idea of yours to torment a gregarious damned soul with solitude has been less than successful.”

“Yes, sir.” The underling twisted in existential agony.  “If you’ll give me another chance, I’m certain I can tweak the environment to torture the subject more efficiently.”

Now the Demonic Supervisor did turn to glare at the sub-demon. “And when, I ask you, have second chances ever been handed out here?” His right hand lashed out, striking off the unfortunate underling’s head. Black blood fountained. Head, blood, and body sizzled away into ashes. “A waste of our Infernal Lord’s infinite time, that one. Now I’ll have to clean up this disaster before it comes to His attention. Can’t have all that,” he shuddered, “joy flapping around here like a flock of squawking canaries.”

And off he stalked to think of a proper torment for the party girl who’d died of a heart attack and ended up in a very odd sort of hell – for a while anyway.

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Fiction © Copyright Mary Ann Peden-Coviello
Image courtesy of Pexels.com 

More from Mary Ann Peden-Coviello:

Fright Mare-Women Write Horror
Short Story: One Hour Before the Dark

Women write horror and have written it since before Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN. This anthology is to highlight the fact women write great horror and to kill the fallacy that they aren’t in some way up to standard. They are. Read here stories by Elizabeth Massie, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Lucy Taylor, and a plethora of other great writers as they work on your nerves, get inside your head, and bang out some of the scariest tales written today. I’m proud to present these women for your consideration, as Rod Serling might say, as I ask you to step into FRIGHT MARE. Lock the door and windows, put on a light, and remember, it’s not real. It’s not real. Midnight awaits, monsters scheme to take you away, the strange and weird wait in the shadows, but it’s not real. Is it?

Edited by Billie Sue Mosiman, the author who brought you the SINISTER-TALES OF DREAD collections and her latest suspense novel, THE GREY MATTER.

Available on Amazon!