Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Melissa R. Mendelson @fallenhazel @Darc_Nina #LoH #fiction

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

To Be Obsolete
by Melissa R. Mendelson

The day is always perfect, the temperature just right. Still, I missed the sound of the birds, and a shadow flashed by. A familiar thud filled the air, but I shut my eyes. I’m still breathing, aren’t I?

What do you do with endless time? I could imagine going anywhere, doing anything, but these days, if they are days, I find myself here at the cliffs. Another flash, another thud. I just don’t want to do anything, no impulse, no inspiration, and even my mind is quiet, empty.

I know I am “outside,” but what is it really like outside? Has the world quieted down? Does the world even miss us, but I’m sure it doesn’t miss the spiraling. And some of us are still spiraling. Flash. Thud.

They touch the water, and they don’t come back. Why don’t they come back, and where do they go?

I can go anywhere, do anything, but I can’t connect. Whatever friendships you make here don’t last, and they’re either consumed with themselves. Or… Flash. Thud.

I can’t live like this anymore.

“I want to do something,” I screamed as loud as I could, and the wind didn’t even bother to carry my voice. They were censoring me, so I wouldn’t disturb the others. But they did nothing for those like me that were at the cliffs.

Where is here?

“I can’t live like this,” I whispered to myself. “Just to exist? But existence isn’t living.”

I stood up from the ground, and the dirt beneath my shoes almost felt real. I was “here,” but I wasn’t. And there was nothing left to do, nothing for me to become, and just nothing until the endless time meets the quiet days and cancels out what was once and will be no more.

To be obsolete is to be nothing at all.

Flash.

Thud.

About Author Melissa R. Mendelson:

Melissa R. Mendelson is a horror, science-fiction and dystopian author and poet. She has two publications with Wild Ink Publishing. One is a prose poetry collection, This Will Remain With Us, and the other is a short story collection, Stories Written On Covid Walls. She also self-published a sci-fi novella, Waken and a small short story collection, Name’s Keeper.

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