The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Summer I Got Away 
by Christina Persaud 

“Come back home, okay?” 

I nodded, forgetting Dad couldn’t see me through the phone, and that it was an odd thing for him to say. 

But my bags were packed, and I had my ticket and passport. The next day, I boarded a plane for Spain. It was to be my summer abroad. The summer I got away. 

The flight was long, and my back was stiff by the time I landed in Madrid. I kept the address of the apartment I was to share with another student close. It was my first time being alone in a new country. Trying to ease my fear, I reminded myself that everything had been arranged.

“Hola, adonde?” 

Utilizing my three years of Spanish, I flinched hearing my heavy American accent. But the driver didn’t seem to mind and pushed the car through the bustling streets until they became a maze. Eventually, we stopped in front of an old complex. 

The driver peered through the windshield. “Aqui? Here?”

I showed him the paper, and he looked up at the building once more before halting the fare. 

Unlike the other neighborhoods we’d driven through, I could see no children playing or people meandering here. Perhaps it was because I was in a small alley and parents had warned their little ones it wasn’t safe. I hurried, thinking the same. 

I came to a heavy door that was propped open with an old brick on the floor. 

Great security, I thought, but left the brick in its spot, unsure of its purpose and not wanting to be locked in.

Dragging my suitcase up the old, rickety stairs wasn’t easy. Each step was worn, with crumbled edges that threatened to break. By the time I reached the third-floor landing, I was covered in sweat. Whenever I glanced over the railing, I could see the lobby I was just in. Dark. Except for the sliver of light. 

I found my apartment door and was prepared to knock so my roommate could let me in when it swung open with ease. 

This time, the access made me more than a little annoyed. Thoughts of calling my study abroad coordinator rushed to mind. But I was tired, and so I made my way inside. 

The apartment lay in an abandoned ruin. Cracked, yellowed walls were riddled with what appeared to be bullet holes. Plaster that had broken off had fallen in pieces and dust onto the tile floor. 

This has got to be some kind of mistake. 

I left my things in the dingy room to explore.

The kitchen was bare bones. The bathroom was worse. I couldn’t stay there, I knew. 

I wrung my hands. I was a foreign student in a place where I could not confidently speak the language, and I was unsure of my roommate’s or coordinator’s whereabouts. 

It’s okay. Everything’s gonna be okay.

Hoping that one of the neighbors would let me borrow their phone, I went back into the hall to knock on the nearest door. Surprisingly, it swung open, too. The warped knob didn’t line up with the latch. Inside, it was pitch black. The windows were boarded shut. 

I stumbled out, now fully suspecting I’d written down the wrong address. 

“Hey! You up there!” 

A voice! Thank God. 

“The bombs,” he said, with cautious hope, “They’ve stopped for now.” 

I stared at the translucent man in the lobby and felt the blood drain from my face. Around me, the building burst to life. Darkness lifted from its corners. A radio blared from the apartment I’d just been inside. Someone’s stove dispersed the sweet aroma of French toast. The sound of children’s laughter carried from the narrow street. 

I could feel people behind condemned and shuttered doors. 

The one designated as my own hung open. Wider than I’d left it.

I looked down at the man in the lobby. 

The man who had never left. 

“Wait!” I shouted.

Suddenly, I heard loud engines flying overhead, followed by the screams of tenants. 

I ran, tripping on the uneven staircase, and fell hard to my knees on the lobby floor. 

“Please—”

But the man acted as he had done so many times before. He kicked the old brick aside, stealing the small beam of light, and shut the heavy front door. 

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Fiction © Copyright Christina Persaud
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Woodsman Needs Skin
by Christina Persaud 

The year I turned thirteen, I made the error of accepting a dare. It was a silly, stupid thing to do, but I was young and had much to prove. So, when Susie McMullin challenged me in front of the class to enter the woods since I claimed that nothing could hurt or scare me, I took her on. Heart of steel, I told myself. Thick skinned and nothing to lose.

Ashyn Woods lay just beyond our little town. It rose beside a winding road with tall Evergreens that withstood each season without change. Always dark. Always foreboding. Always calling.

The kids who could make it that far to the edge of town gathered one Saturday afternoon. Susie was there, too. She had a gleam in her eye, while the other kids carried looks of worry and fear.

“You’ll never do it,” she sneered, “Just like you dad. You’re a loser and a quitter, too.”

I pretended I didn’t feel the sharp sting, but her insult burned me like a hot iron brandishing my skin. Everyone had heard about the recent fight up at the mill. My dad and the foreman, Mr. Da Costa had had a shouting match people claimed could be heard a mile away. Some of the things my dad said had bruised Mr. Da Costa’s ego and the man wasn’t about to let that go. Now, we faced money troubles and a tarnish to our good name.

“Shut up, Susie!”  I picked up a long stick on the ground and threatened her. “Don’t act like you could go in there. Everyone knows you’re full of shit. You just make people do the things you can’t.”

My words didn’t affect Susie in the way hers had injured me. She simply smiled and shrugged. “It’s just some dumb trees. Don’t be a baby.”

It was a shock to all of us to see the prettiest, most popular girl in school charge ahead and step beyond the tree line. I lingered a moment but began to follow, knowing that if I didn’t, I’d never be able to hold my head high again.

Susie moved ahead with surprising ease. She stepped over rocks, dodged jutting roots, and avoided low-hanging branches, all with the grace of a white-tailed deer.  When she turned around, she exclaimed, “You’re cheating. The dare is to go into the woods all by yourself.”

“Then let’s go our separate ways,” I said, this time being the one to put out a challenge. She glared at me.

“Good.”

I pretended to be brave as I pushed past her. “Great! I hope you get eaten by a bear.”

The bet was to walk for thirty minutes before turning back around to leave. I checked my watch. A mere three minutes had passed. Soon, I couldn’t hear Susie’s footsteps anymore. When I looked back, she was gone.

“Susie?” I called weakly.

She didn’t answer.

Thirty minutes is nothing. I can do it standing on my head.

But the lingering shadows played tricks on my eyes. Ten minutes, then twenty went by. I was doing it. I’d win the dare, and then I could shove it in Susie’s dumb, pretty face and prove that her words didn’t bother me.

Someone shouted in the distance. It stopped me in my tracks.

“Help!”

My heart clenched. Her scream was loud. It startled me.

“Susie?”

Her blood-curdling scream called again. “Oh, God! Help me!”

I started running.

Behind me, I heard her anguished wails. I heard something crashing in the woods. Branches tore and broke. Twigs snapped loudly, echoing in the dead silence of nature’s dark green cocoon.

“Where’s Susie?” A kid asked, seeing me tear through the opening back into the light of day.

“I dunno,” I wheezed, bending over my knees, gulping air.

But when we saw the woods tremble and felt the ground shake, tall trees parted way for a gargantuan creature whose skin was made of bark and whose eyes bore into our souls.

It did not intend to leave its forest as it never stepped onto the road.

I could no longer hear Susie’s scream, but I saw her. The ancient Woodsman of the forest had peeled off her face. No eyes could look upon us from the monster’s shoulder. Hers wasn’t the only one. Many others, turned leather over time, cloaked the Woodsman’s body in a patchwork of screams and skin.

Much thicker than mine.

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Fiction © Copyright Christina Persaud
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.