The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Spells and Sanctimony
by A.F. Stewart
Twisted vines snaked out of the blackened earth, erupting from the heart of Hell, while candles glowed with midnight’s fire. Nearby, harvest pumpkins rotted under fallen leaves, forsaken offerings to the forest.
As footsteps approached and the candlelight flickered, a wild wind rattled the tops of the bare trees; a heralding cacophony of anomalous noises reminiscent of the knocking of bones. She smiled at the greeting, kneeling down onto the dirt in front of her shrine. Shadows drifted, surrounding her like dark smoke, mingling around the vines.
She waved her hand above a candle’s flame, watching it flutter. She had pilfered it, and the others, from the church. A stolen prize from where her journey began. A symbol taken from the duplicitous church elders.
Be the good girl, they said.
That never stopped their lustful eyes.
Be the chaste girl.
Words never halted their groping hands. Only a sharpened knitting needle did that.
She prayed for them initially, but slowly her eyes opened. To the hypocrisy, the cruelty. Disgust crept into her bones and thoughts, yet she learned.
How to lie.
How to deceive.
And she learned other things too, from darker places, places that whispered to her in the night. Places that granted her power.
Tonight, she would use that power. Unleash what she learned.
The blood would flow on this sacred, hallowed eve…
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Fiction © Copyright A.F. Stewart
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from A.F. Stewart:
Visions and Nightmares
Tragedy spares no one… and takes no prisoners.
In the twilight shadows, secrets are revealed past the whispers of madness.
Wander into the realm of the old gods with Elenora, where humanity and marriage are a prison.
Step through a looking glass of dark horrors with an Alice you never knew.
Join with Zenna to seek the truth as her death by magic grows closer.
Journey with Olivia as she crosses paths with a monster of the forest and runs for her life.
Watch Isobel summon the faerie to solve her problem of an unwanted husband.
Shiver as Doctor Killbride experiments with corpses to create life from death.
All that and more await within the pages.
Ten stories. Ten women.
Who will survive? Who will fall? And who will succumb to their inner evil?
Find out in Visions and Nightmares.
Warning: This book contains disturbing scenes that may be upsetting to some readers.
