The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

You’ll Never Walk Alone 
by Donna J. W. Munro 

Cory stood in the bright square of light projected by her living room window admiring the sharp edges of her shadow against the snow-covered front lawn. The velvety black of her thin, short shape stretched across the lawn and out into the cracked asphalt street beyond.

All the other houses stood dark against the night and have been for weeks.

Only one in a million alive last time she could find an operating internet signal.

She’d never been one in a million before.

She moved away from the window, flicking off the switch so the house was bathed in the same darkness as the others on the street. No need to waste the energy.

Well, that’s what she told herself, anyway.

The truth was darkness felt better sometimes.

She walked into the kitchen to make something for dinner.

She had to eat. She’d gotten all the canned food of the neighborhood carted back everything she could find, even when she had to step over the rotting lumps that used to be her neighbors.

One in a million meant there were other people still alive. Right?

That’s what she repeated to herself as she warmed the Campbell’s Chicken Soup and forced it down, sipping water to try to settle it in to be digested.

Nothing tasted right, but she had to eat because someday she’d see another shadow spilling out of the moonlight, walking up the street to rescue her.

She was Rapunzel in the tower.

Aurora sleeping in her unnatural bed.

She was… scrawny. Wearing kids clothes now because fat didn’t stick to her anymore. Graying because the hair dye had run out. Eyes droopy and encircled with dark, sagging skin because when the pills at the CVS to help you sleep had run out, alcohol and… other recreational relaxers didn’t drive the images of Mary from next door drying out on her deck like jerky from her mind.

She shook her head and pulled on her coat. There weren’t many joys in being one in a million. Loneliness? Plenty. Anger? That too. She grabbed two pairs of socks and the skates she’d had since college. It was cold enough.

Walking down the snow dusted sidewalk, Cory watched her shadow spill long and then short as the pools of light grew bright under the streetlamps and faded in between. The pond was frozen and back when all the neighbors were still alive, it would be crowded with kids racing and teens playing hockey and people like her who knew how to spin and leap and dip on skates as smoothly as finch in flight. She’d been on America’s team back in the day. A competitive skater. It had always annoyed her when she had to share the ice with the whole damned town, but now that she had it all to herself…

Still, she had the skills and the moonlight and all that perfect ice. Sometimes, there’s a choreographed, scorable method of skating to do when people are watching. But since the world went to shit? She just skate until her legs quivered and the sweat soaks her hair through. When the ice was clear and her blades hiss across the skin of the pond and the air bit her lungs, it was a joy unlike anything else.

It was almost enough.

Especially when she spun and she looked down to see the four of her, Cory and her three shadows spinning under the bright, crossed spotlights of the park. Together, a dark flower glinting under the light of the moon. She was beautiful. Breathless. Full of strength.

In those perfect spins and jumps, the world felt like it might right itself.

And as long as she kept spinning with her shadows, she could keep believing that she wasn’t alone.

.

Fiction © Copyright Donna J. W. Munro
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from author Donna J. W. Munro:

Revelation: Poppet Cycle Book One

In a dark future, people with money live in doomed cities and use the recently deceased as
repurposed servants and workers called poppets. Ellie DesLoge is the teen heiress of the
company that makes and distributes poppets–your basic reprogrammed flesh robot complete
with training chips and kill switches. If Ellie does everything her Aunt Cordelia says, she’ll have a
life of wealth and power. If she chooses to be what is planned for her, life will be perfect.
Everything she ever dreamed. But something about her sweet poppet Thom goes against what
Aunt Cordelia and tradition have taught her. Will she choose to believe what everyone knows is
true or will she follow what her heart tells her about Thom? Her choice will change the world.

Available on Amazon!