The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Crash Test Dummies
by Amanda Worthington

You couldn’t stomach the things

They did to the women

Before they found what worked best

Was religion

.

The large hadron collider was only atoms and quarks

What they did was worse

It was science – of course

But you should have seen the bodies that didn’t make it

.

And now these crash test dummies

These overgrown stand-ins for flesh

This molded blue plastic

That’s all that’s left of the old world

Where men still aged and died and grasped at straws

Where the boys who were born survived

.

These constructions once heralded as the harbingers of progress

Are being reclaimed

By the wild grass and ivy and crawling things

And perhaps that is as it should be

.

Nature always wins.

.

Women always lose.

.

Even after they were found to be

More use alive than dead

.

This sordid hell wasn’t a life anyone would choose

Unless they thought God had willed it

And they were the chosen ones

And their submission would be rewarded

.

And now? Now?

Now the women must let the prophecy make them strong

Because they cannot afford

For the words to be wrong.

Fiction © Copyright Amanda Worthington.
Image courtesy of Pixabay