The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Surfing the Ocean that Time Forgot
by Amanda Worthington

The dream is always the same

I am in a motionless sea

sepia, serene

astride a surfboard

.

The shards of my grief shift within me

threatening to gut me where I sit hunched

over the polystyrene foam that is my salvation, my relief, my home

.

Eager to create movement,  I invoke the violence of a turbulent tide

because how can a thing be alive if there isn’t the threat of dying?

And I want to be alive. Surviving is all I know

but here there is nothing but a tableau I can’t hope to scry

.

What does any of it mean If I’m not fighting?

.

How deep do these waters run and what creatures lie feasting

where the gray half-light of my memory cannot reach?

.

There must be something beneath the nothing

.

I begin to think my incantation has not worked

when suddenly the jagged lightning unzippers the sky

It gives me a peek at what lies behind

but I am looking not up but down, down, down

into a confounding sea of spreading ink impenetrable as the grave

.

The water sloshes, strengthening, rising and falling

each trough and crest lengthening

until I have my wave

.

Its heart is dark like fury, but I feel what it contains

Fragments of the past once safely contained in the looking glass

The same brokenness that threatened to impale me

If I breathed in too deep

.

I understand now.

I am the wave

And it is me.

.

And my body knows what to do like I’ve been here before

.

I mount my board, brave the storm

and ride the Hell I endured to shore

carry myself to my fate

And when I surface, I am not the same

.

I feel myself falling awake

as the thing beneath begins to feed

as the pulse of the ocean slows its beat

.

The beast shows its hideous face

its teeth grind the pain into meat, and it swallows deep

And tranquility replaces the rain and the rage

And there is not an atom of my body that remains afraid

because I sense that this monster too is some part of me

.

We are a deranged ecosystem rebalancing

.

 I will bring more despair the next time I sleep

and I will wail and break

and feed the Bleak-Dweller

in exchange for my waking peace

.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

.

Until my transition is complete.

.

Fiction © Copyright Amanda Worthington.
Image courtesy of Pixabay

Wicked Deeds: Witches, Warlocks, Demons and Other Evil Doer’s

Sometimes wicked people do wicked things simply because they can… The twelve stories in Wicked Deeds tell tales of witches and warlocks with ill intent, devilish demons bent on destruction, and other doers of evil who make the world a terrifying place. What is a mother to do when her daughter is gifted but lives under the thumb of her fanatical preacher husband who will brook no talk of the supernatural? What of a demon so desperate to free himself of a trap that he will force another to repeat his atrocities and condemn a young boy to his demonic fate? Or maybe the story of a crotchety old witch with a score to settle against the town she lives in is more to your liking – what evil will the seemingly harmless town-crazy call upon when faced with an ultimatum? If you’re looking for wicked people with supernatural abilities doing wicked things, this is the collection for you!

Available on Amazon!