The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

False Flag
by Kai Wilson 

I feel this story should have a trigger warning for infant loss.  Please proceed with caution if that is upsetting for you.

The inner blast door loomed before me—a slab of cold iron scarred with dents. An acid taste coated the back of my throat, and I shot a baleful look at the basket.

This was all for my baby sister – guilt, anger and loss washed up, meeting the acid in my mouth. I’d given her my last real wool—guilt-tripped into it—only for it to end up here.

I rocked and began to hum quietly, and waited for the yellow light to turn green, thinking about colours. About our flags. T
I am red.  Not worth risks. Not worth resources beyond the meagre items for survival.  We were waste handlers, we did the dirty, dangerous jobs.
But…my green-flagged sister and her partner had created something with no flag at all. Something we weren’t to talk of. Just remove.
As if echoing my thoughts, the light shifted. It completely switched off, the hall black. Then it lit.
Green for go, get out.

I gripped the wheel, twisting until it squealed, pulling the door open a crack, and slipped inside, barely lifting the basket over the lip. The heavy metal groaned shut, sealing me in the transition zone. I raised a bare ghost of a smile.

The hall behind me smelled of sweat, fear, and too many bodies; this room smelled of ozone and silence.

“Airlock decontamination cycle, in to out, two minutes,” a pre-war recording chimed. Static followed, a different voice overlaid. “Out to in, twenty-two minutes.”

Those twenty-two minutes were worth it. Others might not think so, but I did. I got to breathe fresh air. Even if it tasted like pennies, even if I was blasted for 22 minutes with precious compressed air.
I made the best of it. I didn’t use guilt to get what I wanted.

I peered out the porthole. The mist curled around the pier like a thrown-off duvet, isolating the world beyond. It was crumbling into the water, but I could still make it most of the way out.
My glance moved to the Geiger counter on the wall. I was used to the slight tick. Everyone was, really. You could see people inside moving unconsciously to that rhythm. The tick and our heartbeats were the same now.

I wrapped myself tighter in my shawl, hearing the gentle ping of a thread letting go. Then another.

I sighed, glancing back at the basket. I’d had the chance to repair this shawl with that yarn, and I’d passed. For no reason other than this.
But the yarn…I looked down, and then pulled that meagre blanket off savagely, despair and anger mingling with that acid taste in my mouth, metallic copper beyond conscious thought, seeing red, BEING red.

My throat tightened as I cranked the handle. The door swung out, and the Geiger counter’s tick screamed up into a mechanical whirring scream. I stepped away from the door, down to the jetty where it was a matter of balance and a couple of steps to reach the furthest usable point, a flat portion much bigger than the basket. I was just about to place the basket at the end, when my breath caught.

A two-fingered hand had forced its way out of the bundle, waving dumbly, pushing the swaddling away. Wide, white eyes looked back from a doll’s perfect face whose colours were wrong. It was beautiful, aside from the lack of pigment. Its stare was…wrong. Its grey mouth rooted blindly for a mother almost gone too.

Not quite gone enough to take them out together, the bitterness rose like gorge.

“Sorry, little one,” I whispered. The tingling across my skin made me tense. It was probably imagined, but it was real enough to keep me RED. “This really is for the best…”

I rose and turned before I could falter. The walk back to the airlock felt more unsteady, and much longer than the walk out. It was punctuated by only one cry—a sob escaping my own throat, as harsh as vomit as I stepped off the jetty.
I didn’t look back until the door was sealed and the pressure began to rise, the uneven blast of air puffing and sucking my grief with it. Through the thick glass, I watched the mist swallow the end of the pier, the blanket of the outside stealing it all away.
Wiping away tears, my eyes fell to the bench. It was already unravelling.  What a waste.
I’d use the yarn to repair my shawl.
Maybe in a month or so.

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Fiction © Copyright D. Kai Wilson-Viola
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

About Author Kai Wilson:

D Kai Wilson-Viola, writing as Sabrann Curach, has three free stories currently available for download, ahead of her reissue books.

Her free books can be downloaded at https://SO.booksbykai.com/readermagnets, while Memento Mori returns soon.