The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Love, Death and Gaming
by Alyson Faye

The Eternal Wars had laid the once powerful kingdom to waste – only the Archway of the Gods was left standing, along with its solo Guardian. Karia stood motionless, a ballet dancer of death, waiting to hear the sound of her master’s voice or feel the buzz in her central core, which presaged danger coming; a predator from the other side – or maybe a weary traveller wanting to recharge at one of the holy Archways. She never knew which it would be – a fight to the death or a friend to feast with. This was her life now – once she had been more than this, so much more, but she’d lost parts of her very being along the way. Vital parts, she could never retrieve.

She sensed her inner being fire up, cobalt blue sparks flying around her; she straightened, listening . . . waiting . . . preparing . . .

The Archways lit up with blazing red lights, dragons’ eyes, as she thought of them, fuelled by the pregnant moon hanging above her.

The dead earth shook, and the air began to ripple. Something or someone was coming through. She grasped the long sword in her hand.

“Mikey, do you wanna come off that goddam game of yours and come help me? Like now!”

The voice’s son hit ‘pause’ and whispered expletives of his own into his headset. Karia, who he loved beyond all reason, waited freeze-framed by the lower arches for his next instruction.

Wouldn’t it be great if all girls were like Karia, Blessed Daughter of the House of Orion.

“MIK-EY” His mother’s voice rose to an eldritch shriek.

Karia turned her head, for the first time without him manipulating the keys, and mouthed at Mikey. In his headphones he heard a silvery voice whispering, ‘Kill her, kill the bitch.’

Mikey, in shock, ripped off his headphones and stared at Karia’s blank, white-painted face with the familiar ice blue eyes. He saw a pearl of a tear trembling on her lower lid.

‘Kill her,’ the pink lips mouthed, and the screen rippled with her breath.

Mikey stroked the screen and his hand slid through the membrane, touching his love’s face. Her skin was soft, so gorgeously smooth. She took his hand and kissed it with those perfect pink lips. His whole being vibrated.

‘Kill her,’ his future consort whispered. ‘You are the Master. You are so strong. I believe in you.’

“Mikey, I’m cutting off the wi-fi in 10 – 9 – 8 -7 . . .”

Mikey, galvanised, grabbed Karia by the and and pulled her from the screen onto his lap, just before his mother got to ‘1’ and the array of computer consoles went dark. Karia sat cuddled up to him; she weighed hardly anything, so petite, her long dark hair flowing to the floor. She pressed the silver dagger she wore at her belt into Mikey’s sweaty hands.

‘We can be together . . .’

Mikey stood up and un-barricaded his bedroom door, stepping out onto the landing, piled high with his gear, to face his mother – his nemesis – red cheeked, puffing, frizzy hair awry, nothing like his beloved Karia.

“Mother, I have something to tell you,” he said, calm and sounding mature beyond his seventeen years. “You are not my family.”

The sliver dagger flashed once, Mikey thrust down deep into his mother’s chest. She crumpled, with a slight ‘ooff’ of escaping air and lay twitching at his feet.

“Victory is mine,” her only beloved son whispered as he turned back to his bedroom, anticipating the reunion with his beloved.

Karia was nowhere to be seen, the single bed and armchair were empty.

The window was wide open, a lock of dark hair lay on the sill. And a note.

‘Thank you for releasing me. I’ve been trapped for millennia . . . waiting, for someone like you, Mikey. Someone who loved me so much they’d kill to set me free. Goodbye.’

Fiction © Copyright Alyson Faye
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Alyson Faye:

The Lost Girl & Spindleshanks

The Lost Girl
A nailed-up door. An inheritance which comes with a ghost. A missing girl. A fifty-year-old mystery. Parapsychologist Berkley Osgood is hired to investigate. What he uncovers reveals secrets the living want to hide and the dead will never forgive.

Spindleshanks
Adam is having nightmares about a skeletal shadow figure, who he calls Spindleshanks. Soon his whole class are sharing the same nightmare. Adam’s dad, Rob, knows that Spindleshanks can’t be real. But is he? One terrible night Rob has to face his son’s nightmare creature and fight for his son’s life. What would you sacrifice to have your child back safe?

“A decent two-for-one. Alyson Faye brings the engaging and eerie in equal measure.” CC Adams – horror / dark fiction author

Available on Amazon!