The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Corridor of Unmaking   
by Kathleen McCluskey

The corridor yawned bright before me, endless, silent. The stone pillars rose like teeth, tall and pristine, chewing away at my shadow as I staggered forward. My wings are already gone. They had been ripped from my spine at the gates, leaving two raw pits that still oozed molten light. The smell was unbearable. Scorched feathers. Charred marrow. Burning skin.

Shapes flickered along the walls. Those who had fallen before me. Their bodies jittered in and out of existence. Faces tearing and reforming like torn film reels. One dragged itself on hands that had melted into the tiles. Another stumbled on horribly broken legs, bones folding like wet parchment, leaving only a husk crawling on its elbows. Their halos clattered behind them, fractured into shards that sizzled against the stone like hot metal quenched with water.

Then it began on me.

First, my hands unraveled, peeling back in long, wet ribbons, veins collapsing into ash. My arms thinned, bones showing through, then snapping into powder under the weight of the light.  I screamed but my voice dissolved before it reached my lips. My legs blurred, toes dripping away like wax from a burning candle. Each step left behind streaks of liquid light.

Still the corridor went on. No end, no mercy, only the slow surgical torture of being undone.

At last the light reached my face. I tried to hold my name on my tongue, to clutch at it, before it too melted away. My thoughts fractured, memories scattered like a moth to a flame. I tried to recall why I had been brought here. What sin could I have committed? Was I doubtful? Did I love too much? Not enough? What could have demanded such punishment?

I searched myself, clawing through memories like a drowning man at the surface. Had I disobeyed? Had I questioned too deeply? Doubted too openly? I remember lifting the prayers with trembling hands. Guiding mortals through their darkest hours. Shielding them with wings now torn from me. Was compassion my sin? Every moment of my life blurred together under the light. Every hymn sung, every vow kept. Yet none of it explained why I walked this corridor. The more I reached for answers, the more my memories crumbled and I feared I would never know.

That perhaps is the deepest cruelty: to be condemned without understanding why.

My halo, once a perfect ring of fire, now cracked apart above me. The shard spun like broken glass before sinking into my flesh, branding my head with wounds the light was eager to investigate.

The light pierced through my skull, not burning but erasing. Every line of touch, every line of memory, every trace of the one I had once been. My soul, once bright and vibrant, turned brittle and thin, until I felt it snapping apart like shattering glass. And when it was gone…I did not die, I did not move on.

I became something else. A shadow, a phantom. 

The pillars kept their rhythm, tall, white and endless. The corridor stretched on, not caring. I, what is left of me, flicker along the wall. A hollow silhouette phasing in and out of a jittery existence. A shadow among shadows. A stain of movement with no substance, condemned to walk forever between stone and shadow.

I no longer remember my name. I no longer remember why I had wings or what they had been for. I no longer seek salvation, I just seek an ending. All that remains, all that echoes are the endless shifting of shadow and the pull of the corridor that I keep moving.

Fiction © Copyright Kathleen McCluskey
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Kathleen McCluskey:

The Long Fall: Book 1: The Inception of Horror

Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.

Available on Amazon!