The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

What Did You Do?
by Melissa R. Mendelson

The blood would not come out from underneath his fingernails.  Little, red flakes decorated his pants.  Dirty, harsh nails scraped again, this time drawing his blood.

“Damn it,” he said as droplets splattered across the cement floor.  “I feel like I’m reliving Shakespeare.”  He stuck his finger into his mouth but then spat on the floor a moment later.

The candlelight nearby shined over his withered face, aged with time, loss, pain, and anger.  His eyes withdrew inside, keeping the shutters half open.  His lips were bitten and gnawed, and his hair, the one thing that he was once so proud of was nothing now but scarecrow straw sticking out of his head.

“Not my fault,” he muttered.  “I do as I am asked.  This way, I survive, even if they don’t.”

He still saw their shadows behind him, clinging to the walls with their chains hanging low.  He did not participate in their torture, in their indignity, but he heard their screams.  It once bothered him, but now, it fell on deaf ears.  And those women chained to the walls behind him would be the last to be brought here.  He was done, and they knew it.  He figured it would end with a bullet or knife to the throat.  Instead, they just locked him inside with their bodies.

“I did what you asked.  I needed to survive, so I broke myself into a million pieces.  All for you, but it wasn’t good enough.”

He wrapped his scarred, bruised arms around his chest.  Winter was coming, and it would get very cold in here.  There was no blanket to provide any kind of warmth.  There was just the candlelight, but he refused to look at the light.

“All they wanted was to speak their truth, but I am just one of many that devour the lies.”  He tried to lift himself up from the wooden chair, but his body creaked louder than the wood beneath him.  “I should have done different,” he said.  “I should have listened.”

He returned to picking at his nails, but their blood had not only succeeded in getting under his skin but mixed into his blood.  “It is what it is,” he said, knowing that she was waiting patiently for him to look at her, but she did not return his stare.

He noted her beauty, her shut eyes, and the smile on her lips.  He knew that if he had covered his wife in bronze that he would preserve her forever, and he was right.  But she had no time left for him or what he had done.  Still, she smiled.

“What did you do?”  He asked.  “Answer me.”

His wife opened her eyes and gazed at him.  Her smile was gone.  She leaned closer, her face inches from his.  Her mouth opened, and a soft wind touched his frail skin.  He waited for her to speak, a voice that he had not heard in almost forever. 

His wife blew the candle out.

 

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Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.

About Author Melissa R. Mendelson:

Melissa R. Mendelson is the author of the Sci-Fi Novella, Waken.  She also has a prose poetry collection called, This Will Remain With Us published by Wild Ink Publishing.  Her short story collections, Better Off Here and Name’s Keeper can be found on Amazon/Amazon Kindle.

If you’d like to learn more about Melissa, you can visit her accounts here: www.MelissaMendelson.com

Bluesky: @melissarmendelson.bsky.social