Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Ela Lourenco @ElaLourenco @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on February 24, 2020 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

02_IMG_FEB_Soul Summoner
by Ela Lourenco

They think they’ve won, those do-gooder white-robed Earth witches. Hah!
They think a mere little spell will stop me. It took the entire coven, all thirteen
golden hair all-shimmering pathetic little slips of girls… Well, they had better
pray to their Gods because I am not done. I will never be done. They think
banishing me to the realm of souls is punishment. This nexus, full of souls, all
mine for the reaping. Souls full of anger, hatred and torment, just what I need
to recharge my magic. Oh, perhaps the little dears thought I would not find a
way out? Well, all they have done is provide me with a veritable feast- infinite
dark spirits to consume as I regenerate into something, they cannot even
fathom. Already my dull hair has regained its raven gleam, my fingertips
pulsating with black-green electricity. I practically lick my lips as I aspire the
souls into me. Soon young ones, soon we will meet again, and I will give you
new dresses to wear, dresses in vibrant red. If I am feeling generous, I may
even wrap a few blackened souls around your pretty little necks as
ornaments…
Fiction © Copyright Ela Lourenco
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
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More from Ela Lourenco:

awakeningDragon Born: Book Three
Awakening

The Royal tournament, the Karnac, is fully underway. But there is deception and betrayal at every turn. Unseen dark forces are at play, both within the school grounds and out with. Even the Gods are unable to help when a new threat looms over them all.The very existence of Azmantium depends on Lara fully becoming the Child of Fire and casting aside the Shadows lurking in every corner of her beloved planet.Can she overcome the challenges that await? Will the Shadows cover the world in darkness? Only Lara and her friends can change the fate of Azmantium.

Available on Amazon!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Women in Horror Month, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Sheikha A. @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on February 24, 2020 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

01_IMG_FEBCollateral
by Sheikha A.

She makes them hoard
until their arms shrink
into their shoulders;
she says she walked
over cracked scry – time
does not exist for her –
the verses on holy pages
opened a door. She entered
a holograph leading to
her future, her body
wrapped in magnificence:
gold brighter than the sun,
pearls laced with blinding
iridescence of the moon -.
She entered their home
backward-feet as wind
of recession whipping
flat dunes of barren
deserts. They were rich
orphans given holes
of her clothing – transfer
and lock. She says
she walked into echoes
of starving bellies;
her nose curved as a hook
biting bait, words maternal
and eyes wild as razors.
They were fed to comply;
learning to be alone
yet watched – genes
tangled – she chained
them in love as stale
as sleep, as stark as fear,
as hollow sewers
as ravenous abyss.
On winter nights,
she collected remains;
shrunk their days
and shrunk the light.
They began to hide
what was left of them –
unprotected destiny –
locked blood
locked amulets
knotted threads
and embedded needles –
she shrunk land
and expanded water;
they collected grain
upon grain of sand
depleting; shrinking
under her weight –
heads sunk
into their necks,
bodies buried
under hoarding.
Fiction © Copyright Sheikha A.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More from author Sheikha A.:

Screen Shot 2019-12-17 at 10.57.17 AM.pngNyctophiliac Confessions:
Poems by Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee

“The night is cold enough to inspire poetry,” says Sheikha A. in her poem, “Reading My Bones.” This is the basis of Nyctophiliac Confessions – poems that are introspective and luminal, poems that require a certain amount of silence and space to be fully formed and appreciated. Reading these poems, I imagined that they were the kind of poems that assert themselves unbidden during a bout of insomnia. (A nyctophiliac being someone who loves the night or loves darkness).

Nyctophiliac Confessions is the 17th installment of Praxis’ chapbook series and contains twenty-six poems written by two poets, Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee, interspersed with abstract paintings by Robert Rhodes.

Available Here!

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Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Kathleen McCluskey @KathleenMcClus4 @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on February 23, 2020 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

04_IMG_FEBInferno
by Kathleen McCluskey

Manny kept thinking about how his lawyer was a moron. He couldn’t believe that he was convicted of murder. Arson, yeah he would go down for that but murder? He had no idea that the family was home. He could feel his pants begin to bulge as he remembered watching the flames engulf the building. His erection grew as the red and yellow flames in his memory licked out of the windows. He tried to think about something else but it was too late. He could feel the warmth of his manliness sticking to his underwear.
He sighed loudly and got into bed. As his head was about to hit the pillow he could swear he smelt the sweet odor that only burning embers provided. Lifting and tilting his head he looked around. Manny closed his eyes, he knew he could hear the crackle of flames and the scent that he adored was stronger. He opened his eyes and his six by ten jail cell was dark. He shook his head and placed it onto his pillow. He began to drift off to sleep.
Manny was sleeping on his back with a small smirk on his face, he was dreaming about the night that got him sent to death row. Jolting awake he could feel a cold hand pressing down on his forehead, he tried to scream but his voice had been taken. His eyes could not focus on anything, there was too much smoke. He could hear a child humming and looked towards the sound. Emerging out of the thick smoke was the little girl that perished with her family in the fire. She smiled at him, a toothless black grin. He could see the fire burning brightly within her, coming for him. Again he tried to scream but was denied.
The warden was dumbfounded the next day as he was summoned to the very cell that Manny had once resided. The entire lockup was nothing but ash. The cells that were on each side were left untouched by flame.  On the floor was Manny, his hand over his face. The look of terror engraved into the smoldering flesh. The coroner squatted down and touched him. He fell back onto his ass as Manny disintegrated in front of him, leaving only a pile of ash.
Fiction © Copyright Kathleen McCluskey
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
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More from Kathleen McCluskey:

The Long Fall: Book 1: The Inception of Horror

Lucifer always cunning and intelligent challenges father to a battle of wits. Being the angel of light he casts a judgemental eye upon mankind. He begins a war with his fellow archangels and God. Michael, along with his siblings defend their home and mankind from their deranged brother. Broad swords and hand to hand combat drench heaven in blood. The four apocalyptic steeds are released, each having their own destructive power. Betrayal and lust are at biblical levels. Understand the very creation of evil and the consequenses that transpire in the first of THE LONG FALL series.

Available on Amazon!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Women in Horror Month, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Michelle Joy Gallagher @Aphelia @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on February 23, 2020 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

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Sleeper
by Michelle Joy Gallagher

There are sleepers in the tall grass” she said quietly. “We must not wake them.
He said nothing. Never even looked up. He sat cross legged in front of the fire, carving a path in the dirt with a sharp rock.
Today had been good. She had been herself. Coherent. Almost cheerful. But there was something about nightfall that flipped a switch inside her. They’d worked all day gathering wood, tanning hides, checking traps, mending the holes in the fishing net, and she had kept up with him. Sure strides, steady hands, sharp sight. It reminded him of when they were just little and they’d set off together at sunrise and did not return til the sun had buried itself in the bosom of the hills to the west.
Of course, he’d heard about sleepers. She had too. From the old crone, before she traveled to the next plane. And from their mother’s mother, who would greet them with stern looks after they’d returned from a full day of adventures. A warning in a glance. Eyes that said “you are not being careful enough. You don’t know what waits.”
Sleepers, they’d said, walked between worlds, and would take shelter and rest in the tall grass when the moon was high, as to escape detection and exhaustion. Once recovered, they’d continue their journeys through this world to the next and the next.
“There are sleepers, brother. Please, keep still.”
The hand the guided the rock smoothly through the fine dirt paused momentarily. He kept his eyes down. Shook his head.
“Ain’t no such.”
She stood and crossed the distance between them lithely, as if she was still that little girl out exploring valley. Toe to heel, more grace than her thick frame should have allowed.
She had the full face of their mother; high cheekbones, wide jaw, round cheeks. Her eyes were dark and deliberate and deep. She knelt to face him. He glanced up for the first time in hours. When he did, for a moment he believed his mother was there before him, back from the dead, ready to love him back to reason, and his heart leapt against his chest.
She slowly took the stone from his hand, kissed him on the forehead, then stood and threw the stone as hard and as far as she could into the grass surrounding their encampment.
The stone made a dull thud as it sank through the dry grass and found purchase in the soft dirt.
Nothing, save for a cautious cricket momentarily pausing his chirping.
He glanced up and met her eyes with a sorrowful look, as if to say “See, your mind has rotted, but I give up.”
Every night like this, with the day before to torture him with a semblance of normalcy. He can’t remember when last he slept.
She gazed at the horizon momentarily, then started her graceful strides into the grass in the direction she threw the rock, arms out at her waist as if wading into water. He watched her go with a detached sort of pity and a small sliver of anger he knew would grow larger with each passing day. He already resented her, he was just too tired to show it.
He watched her as she went, the tall grass and the pitch black outside of the fire’s influence finally enveloping her.
Then came the scream.
He rolled his eyes when it began, wondering what new torture her madness had devised for him, who’s duty it was to see to her safety.
But it was a sustained scream, full of anguish and pain, and he struck out toward the sound of it. Finding his love for her finally at the bottom of his misery, sleeping soundly and suddenly awakened  by the threat of her harm.
His foot caught on some unseen disturbance in the grass, and he fell face first to the dirt, the smell of iron and ions from the recent storm intoxicating as he lay disoriented in the dark.
He felt blindly for purchase still reeling from the fall, and his fingers found something tacky and warm and out of place. He dragged himself up on his knees to find the moonlight glinting off of what appeared at first glance to be a skinned deer carcass discarded by some hapless hunter.
Then he saw the necklace their mother had worn as long as he could remember. The same one that was given to his sister when the cold had taken their mother last winter. She’d worn it ever since. It laid beside the carcass, discarded.
“No…”
Blood pooled around the carcass, a black, still lake that reflected his new understanding. Mocked it.
The skin had been neatly removed and was missing. Her organs bare and sickly glistening. He vomited down his front and tried to stand.
“NO!”
He was struck down before he could find his feet.
Laid out on his back he met the eyes of something almost formless, a void or a dark cloud in the shape of a man, that shifted and changed as it moved.
“Sleeper…” he whispered, and then met the dark beyond dark.
Fiction © Copyright Michelle Joy Gallagher
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More from author Michelle Joy Gallagher:
blkhwkBlackhawk: Volume 2

Welcome to Blackhawk, Colorado. Blackhawk has always been strange. Natural disasters. Disappearances. Murders. High strangeness is a part of daily life. We can’t hope to explain it, but we can chronicle its past. Learn from it. Fear it. Blackhawk is an experimental fiction series set in a shared universe, written by a variety of talented authors. It is the brainchild of David M Brown (Plague Doctor, Modern Animals) and Carl D Smith (Moleb the Giant, Darkness Out of Carthage). Each story will contribute to an organic, evolving mythology as diverse as the voices behind its tales. For fans of True Detective, Lost Highway, Twilight Zone, and The Terror. This is Volume Two of the series and contains five stories by five different authors, each in tune with the specific strangeness Blackhawk has to offer. NOTE: For fans of Lake Lord Publishing’s prior horror titles, be warned that Blackhawk will contain content that is perhaps more disturbing and mature.

Available on Amazon!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Women in Horror Month, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Rie Sheridan Rose @RieSheridanRose @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on February 22, 2020 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

02_IMG_FEB_
Beneath
by Rie Sheridan Rose

She drifted in a sea of time. Up was a guess. Down a possibility. It didn’t really matter. There was no here, no now, no anything any more. Her blank eyes stared into the maelstrom of the sea, rising from a whirlpool below…she thought it was below, at least. What little she thought at all.
She felt broken, battered, boneless. But time surged around her with little gusts of movement, pushing her here, there, everywhere. And she was powerless to change that.
She had tried at first. Tried to sit up. To swim against the current of listless hours and clock-less faces…but now, she had given herself to the hours.
How had she come here? She remembered only blurred flashes—excited whispers with Colleen in last period about what they would wear to prom that weekend, and who would be their dates. Walking home past the abandoned house she’d passed a thousand times before…and would never pass again. The door creaking open—and her curiosity compelling her inside.
When had that been? Here in this endless sea, tainted with the bilious green of death and decay, there was no reasonable conception of time—it could have been yesterday, a week ago, a decade ago.
Here, there was only now…stretching to the horizon with the clock-faced fish. Maybe someday, she would become one of those funny creatures.
For now, she was simply beneath.
Fiction © Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More from Author Rie Sheridan Rose:

Skellyman

“I have always preferred the supernatural in tales of horror, the knot between life and death. Rie Sheridan Rose’s Skellyman is cool and creepy. Her first horror novel is a chilling read.” — Charlee Jacob – Stoker winner, Best novel, “Dread in the Beast”

Brenda Barnett is trying to cope with raising her four-year-old daughter all alone after an accident tore her family in half. As she and Daisy go for a much-needed treat, the little girl spots a Skellyman on the corner.

This pivotal encounter leads to a wave of mounting terror as Brenda’s life begins to come undone around her. Who is the Skellyman? Why does he keep appearing? Can the sympathetic policeman Brenda turns to stop the madness before it is too late?

And why does Daisy insist that her dead brother is trying to tell them something important?

Available on Amazon!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Women in Horror Month, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Tiffany Michelle Brown @TiffeBrown @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on February 22, 2020 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

01_IMG_FEBThis Woman’s Work
by Tiffany Michelle Brown

It’s always uncomfortable, the change. She screams when her skin stretches, when her bones crack and lengthen and rejoin. There is no blood, but it’s excruciating just the same. The whole process takes an hour. An hour of endless pain, hollow cries, and a precarious dance with death. She’s never sure she’ll survive it, but she always does.

Outside, as she begins her journey, she turns her face up to the moon. She wonders, if she reached out to touch it, would it burn her fingertips with cold? Or perhaps it would turn out to be a fragile thing and would shatter into a million pieces with the slightest disturbance. Someday, she tells herself, she’ll find out. But tonight, she has work to do.

Despite her size, she’s quiet on her feet. The fairytales are wrong. When giants traipse across the earth, they don’t cause earthquakes. Rather, they inspire something much scarier. Shifts in energy, swirls of unknowing that are impossible to escape if you happen to fall into one. But she’s aware of her power and avoids people and only moves at night.

She carries an hourglass filled with snow-white sand. The item is light as a feather, but it won’t be for long. Soon, it will hold incredible weight, and it will be difficult for her to transport the hourglass back home. There will be sweat and scorched muscles and moments when she’ll want to give up. But she can’t. Without her work, the world will fall in on itself and grow sick and sordid and unbearable.

Across the river, she pauses by an old oak tree, knowing radiating through her. Yes, he’s close by. She can feel it like a leech on her fair skin, a distinct, dirty pull that makes her stomach flutter. He’s been hitting things again. Anything that gets in his way. People, animals, walls. They all succumb to his fists.

It’s time for him to succumb to something.

She flips the hourglass, and as the grains of sand fall into the glass, they are no longer white. They are the blackest black. They are infinite and heavy and evil. They fight to break the glass and escape.

She closes her eyes as the hourglass grows heavy in her hands. She takes all that she can as he sleeps, dreaming of future violence he will no longer be able to impart.

*
She’s weary when she returns home, but she tamps down her desire to collapse into bed and sleep. For one thing, she’d decimate her bedframe, large and powerful as she is. For another, her work isn’t quite done.

The change isn’t as bad when she’s returning. The shrinking is strange, unnerving, and slippery. Her bones go first, sliding out of place and withering back to human proportions. As her skin catches up, she’s like a balloon gradually releasing air. For a while, she’s simply an excess of stuff, shapeless and immobile. She closes her eyes, practices patience, and counts to a hundred, over and over again.

When the reversion is complete, she enrobes her body in luscious silk and brews a cup of tea. The hourglass responds to her touch and opens easily. She tips the contents into her cup. The black grains sizzle when they hit liquid. They will taste terrible, like him, like the brutality that used to fester inside his mind, his body, his soul. Now, she will consume him. She’ll down his horrible nature. Within her, it will do no harm. It will dissipate, no longer exist, be snuffed out by something greater than he ever was.

And the man will never swing a fist again. In the morning, his wife will find his skeleton between their cotton sheets. She’ll scream, partially out of shock, but mostly out of relief. Because the bones, bleached and useless, will be substantially less frightening than the monster he was life.

Fiction © Copyright Tiffany Michelle Brown
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Elaine Pascale @DocLaney @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on February 21, 2020 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

04_IMG_FEB280 Stones Pave the Way to Atlantis
by Elaine Pascale

“Alpha female, is there a problem?”
Una disentangled herself from the heap of bodies. The smell of the lab made her nauseous. Yet, for the past few months, the lab was all that she had known.
Every day, all day, their sexual activities were studied. They were paired, and sometimes grouped, randomly. The hope was for a reproductive miracle. 
They had selected the best specimens. Mars would support life just as earth had.
“Alpha female, is there a problem?” the intercom repeated. Una did not answer. There was no problem that their genetic tests would reveal. She and the other women had been selected for their fertility markers, intelligence, mental stability, and physical attractiveness. She and the other women had been selected while their family and friends and everyone they had loved had been left behind to burn on their dying planet. 
The placard above the door read: “280 Stones Pave the Way to Atlantis.” This was to remind them that the average pregnancy was 280 days in total. This was to distract them from the other activities in the lab.
“Alpha female, is there a problem?” 
“The old ways” of procreating were not working swiftly enough, so they resorted to “the old ways” of enhancing fertility.
Una knew she was not the one with a problem. Despite her recurring cycle, which heralded a lack of implantation, she was in no threat of becoming a “least liked.” 
The problem was she had seen the “least liked,” designated by a simulated social media vote, carried to the sacrificial bough. She had seen them hoisted by their ankles, throats slit, birthing so much blood that even the monstrous birds refused to fly over that part of the lab, and the monstrous birds loved human flesh.
So much blood, but some of the blood in the lab came from other practices.
“Alpha female, is there a problem?”
For Una, and the other women, guilt over the “least liked” was the main problem. The lab had resorted to “the old ways” of fertility rituals, but they had not considered that their specimens were enlisting “the old ways” of aborting them.

 

Fiction © Copyright Elaine Pascale
Image courtesy of  Pixabay.com

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More from Elaine Pascale:

The Blood Lights

They victimize all…

Jezzie Mitchell is in anguish; with her brother’s murder still on her mind, she’s noticed strange behavior among the girls in the residential treatment center where she works. Is there a connection between the contagion on Cape Cod and the deadly Bahamas vacation that changed her life?

Jezzie reaches out to former lover Lou Collins, a scholar who has chased proof of the lights for decades. Will he be able to solve the mystery of the lights in time?

Intensely competitive, reporter Bridgette Collins knows the lights are a way to secure fame in her career. And while it’ll put the final nail into the coffin of her ex-husband’s career, she vows to know the secrets of the lights. Even if it means unleashing a world-wide epidemic…

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Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Sonora Taylor @sonorawrites @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on February 21, 2020 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

03_IMG_FEB

Bramble
by Sonora Taylor

Mimi loved her hair. It grew past her shoulders into long and flowing locks. Those locks, however, loved to tangle; and Mimi’s mother hated having to brush them out.
“You have so many rat’s nests in here, I expect a rodent to come crawling out any minute,” her mother said as she brushed her hair in increased frustration. But Mimi ignored her mother’s anger, instead focusing on the bramble of her hair as it grew outwards and upwards, floating and spilling in all directions over her shoulders.
One morning, Mimi’s mother had had enough. She tugged the brush from another rat’s nest and threw it on the bathroom floor. The thwack against the tiles rang in Mimi’s ears as her mother opened up a drawer.
“Enough!” her mother said. She grabbed the tangles in Mimi’s hair and cut them.
Mimi screamed as she saw her hair fall to the floor, a clump that resembled a wounded animal. “No!” she yelled as her mother continued to cut. “I like my hair!”
Her mother ignored her and kept cutting. She pinned Mimi down with palms that dug into her shoulders with increasing pain. Mimi twisted and turned like her beloved curls, which floated to the floor like falling tears. “No, no, NO!”
Mimi jerked so had that the scissors slipped. The blade scratched a newly-shorn spot on her head, and Mimi felt a cool trickle of blood seep through the searing warmth of pain that emanated across her head.
“Serves you right,” her mother spat as she slammed the scissors down on the sink. “Crying over all that ugly hair.”
Mimi grabbed a tissue and held it to her head. She ran out of the bathroom, avoiding the mirror. She didn’t want to see what she’d become. She ran into the backyard and fell to her knees between a copse of trees whose dead branches littered the ground. She began to cry. Her blood and tears fell on the branches.
Mimi heard a stirring beneath her. She looked down and saw tender leaves sprouting from the dead branches. Roots sprang forth and curled themselves around her legs and waist. She was about to run, when she felt the wound on her head grow cool. She touched the wound and felt soft leaves. Branches and twigs grew as well, until Mimi felt her hand pushed away by the growing height and width of the bramble.
Mimi’s mother came outside, her eyes down as she smoked a cigarette. “Come inside,” she said as she looked up. She dropped her cigarette when she saw Mimi.
Mimi felt the power of the trees within her, and smiled as the branches around her lashed towards her mother. “Serves you right,” she said as they ensnared her mother’s ankles. “Cutting off all of my beautiful hair.”
Fiction © Copyright Sonora Taylor
Image courtesy of  Pixabay.com

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More from Sonora Taylor:

74533110_1104998099694619_4901851685367840768_nLittle Paranoias: Stories

Is it a knock on the door, or a gust of wind? A trick of the light, or someone who’ll see what you’ve done?

“Little Paranoias: Stories” features twenty tales of the little things that drive our deepest fears. It tells the stories of terror and sorrow, lust at the end of the world and death as an unwanted second chance. It dives into the darkest corners of the minds of men, women, and children. It wanders into the forest and touches every corner of the capital. Everyone has something to fear — but after all, it’s those little paranoias that drive our day-to-day.

Available on Amazon!

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Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Lydia Prime @LydiaPrime @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on February 20, 2020 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

02_IMG_FEB_

Annalina
by Lydia Prime

Time seems to go so much faster now; the world withers but I stay the same. If I focus on the end, maybe it won’t start again…
Shallow breaths leave tears streaming down my cheeks. I can’t help but wonder if it could have been different – would have been different – if only I’d just said no. My thoughts travel to places I’d rather not see; a memory breaks through and my pulse begins to slow.
The ground beneath my feet feels as if it’s falling away; I’m floating through a familiar void. I look above and see a faint glimmer of green, the higher my body goes, the brighter the light becomes. Strung up in the cosmos I watch the clocks roll back and forth while the skies change above me. Prickles on my fingers; my flesh gives way to bone. It doesn’t hurt anymore, just happens.
***
A long lonely path to the decaying castle, I looked up to the branches, small buds – the leaves were just starting to appear after such a vicious winter. It took just over an hour to walk from town to the abomination within the mountains.
Upon reaching the iron gate, I paused and took in my surroundings. It didn’t seem like any of the monstrosities were venturing about. No enormous winged beasts circling overhead, nor the six-legged mongrel. Those were the worst, with their ability to almost pass for a dog, had it not been for the extra limbs, and of course overwhelming maw filled to the brim with sharp black teeth. I breathed deeply and convinced myself that I was doing the right thing, no matter how hopeless I felt, and pushed the gateway open; the creaking of the rusted old metal hurt my ears. I shivered as goose bumps traveled the length of my arms and made my way to the wooden doors of the enormous structure.
Before I could knock, the door swung open. Through what little light there was, I could just barely make out the silhouette of someone standing back near the opposite wall. I cautiously stepped through the door way, my eyes locked on whomever was hiding in the shadows.
“Hello?” My voice shaky and questioning. No response followed and the figure remained still. “Are you, Annalina?” It took one step forward, I assumed that to be a yes. “Annalina, I’ve been sent by the people you and your beasts torment. I’ve watched as your nightmarish ghouls have plucked us off one by one. I stood helpless while my siblings drowned in a pool of their own blood. I –”
The figure let out a raucous laughter. She stepped closer to the light, closer to me. Now I could see all of her: pallid skin hung loosely from bone, fingernails curled in different directions, eyes of pure obsidian, stringy grey hair that came past her hips. “You’re either unbelievably brave or immeasurably stupid to dare coming here, to dare speaking to me like that.” Her voice rasped something awful, the hate in her tone was absolute.
“I prefer brave. I’m here to offer you a deal.” I blurted out; a bit quicker than I should have. My palms were sweating profusely and my knees were becoming jelly. I held her gaze and watched as a glint formed in those dark eyes.
“A deal, child? Are you sure you know what you’re getting into?” Annalina smirked, her yellow rotten teeth exposed.
Needing to resist the urge to run, I nodded. She moved closer, her odor wafting in my face. She stood no more than four feet away from me, “I will give you whatever you want, if you leave the town and its people be.” I dropped my head to my chest, her putrid scent causing nausea. “Anything at all, but the town must never be victim to your monsters or you ever again.”
“Anything? Anything at all?” She mused, “But how do you know if you have anything I’d want?”
My heart sank, I didn’t know. I had no plan beyond getting here, I didn’t think I’d even make it this far. Whatever it takes… “What do you want?” I asked. “The only way to know, is if you tell me.”
She scratched her scaly chin, turned away from me and began to pace as she thought. “You.” She uttered calmly, spinning to face me once again.
“M-m-me?” I stammered. “What could you want with me?”
“Doesn’t matter, does it? You said anything. I want you, all of you.”
“You’ll never bother the towns people again?”
“Never.” She held up her hand as if swearing on some invisible tome.
“So be it.” I replied accepting her request.
Annalina’s cackle echoed through the empty room and the ground began to crumble around us. She raised her grotesque hands to the heavens and chanted in a language I’d never heard. Green sparks flicked around us, her skin smoothing while mine shriveled. We floated above the clouds for what seemed like an eternity. When it was over, I collapsed and looked up at her. She’d gone from a disgusting old crone to an indescribably beautiful young woman.
“Your youth, your life, your soul. These will keep me satisfied for a time. As you heal, my youth and beauty will fade. Then, it will be time to feed off you some more. Your precious town will be safe as long as you live.”
Tears welled up and stung behind my eyes. My breaths shallow, my skin like paper.
Fiction © Copyright Lydia Prime
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More from author Lydia Prime:

UHBWUnder Her Black Wings:
2020 Women of Horror Anthology

– A glamorous actress whose very flesh is reanimated by a beloved Hollywood icon
– A Boy Scout Troup encounters a frightening mythological creature in an American forest
– A lonely woman finds a home among a group of lost-and-found souls, all cared for by a tentacled sea-creature called Mother
– A Faceless Woman attacks like a virus and takes on the identities of her victims
– A post-apocalyptic battle for survival rages between human and insect
– A Shadow Woman leads the spirits of the murdered to take revenge in the desert

These are just some of the stories nineteen women came up with when tasked with creating their own Women Monsters. Step inside and experience tales of bloodsucking entities in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Cuban river goddesses, an Aztec bruja, werewolves, mermaids, soul-stealers, obsessive lovers, furious spurned wives, bloody murder in Gothic manors and on Southern plantations… and so much more…

With Foreword by Brandon Scott (Author of Vodou and Sleight, Devil Dog Press)

 Available on Amazon!  

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Please don’t forget to visit the other WiHM 11 projects taking place!

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Women in Horror Month, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Marge Simon @Sotet_Angyal #LoH #fiction

Posted on February 20, 2020 by Nina D'Arcangela

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

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Ivan and the Goddess
by Marge Simon

After dinner, Ivan is out for a smoke, as he’s wont to do if weather permits. The oaks are limed in shadows, the heavens ablaze with points of light. This night seems different, full of portent.  He strikes a match to his pipe, wondering if he might discover some new constellation of his own invention.  But the flame goes out as a woman materializes, the sexiest young woman he’s ever seen.  She appears to float his way, holding an object lit with an otherworldly glow. Ivan stares with pipe unlit, wondering where she comes from, and why here, to his back yard.
“I come to share,” she says, revealing a golden hour glass, its top half almost empty.  Trembling, Ivan touches it. “I know who you are, gorgeous. You’re an angel, come to tell me that my time here is at an end.” His eyes narrow, “Is this not so?”
“Wrong, Ivan! I’m no angel, I’m the Goddess of Time. As to why I’m here—oh!”
Ivan instantly snatches the glass out of her hand, turning it back over as he does. “Say no more, you beautiful broad. I get to live as long as I want, now. With another lifetime ahead, I can prepare myself to be president of our nation. I can have all the sexy women I wish, starting with you.”
The goddess begins laughing. “Do you actually believe I’d bring you my sacred Glass of Hours? I have a bet with the God of Fools that you’d do something like this. He thought you’d beg me for a kiss, maybe ask me to sleep with you. Hah!”
“I was just about to propose both of those things,” says Ivan. “But you are saying this is a fake?”
“It surely is, but you’re smarter than I’d thought, Ivan. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”
Ivan stares speechless as the lovely goddess unhinges her jaw. “It gets boring, being a Goddess.  Sometimes I need a change of pace. I’m moonlighting as a vampire this evening, that’s what I wanted to share, little man.”
Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

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More from Marge Simon:

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The Demeter Diaries
by Marge Simon and‎ Bryan D. Dietrich

‘The Demeter Diaries’ is a record of love and longing and the inevitable horror that arises between the minds of Mina Harker and Vlad Dracula as they court one another in waking dreams. The dialogue, written in both poetry and prose, imagines a psychic connection that develops between the two even before Dracula arrives in England. As Dracula makes his way from Transylvania to Whitby on the doomed ship Demeter, the two would-be lovers transmit their thoughts across the waves and lands that separate them, alternately wooing and terrifying one another with the idea of love eternal and all the dark delicacies necessary to ensure it. Front cover art by Wendy Saber Core, interior illustrations by Luke Spooner.

Available on Amazon!

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Please don’t forget to visit the other WiHM 11 projects taking place!

WIHM2020logo_long

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Posted in Authors, Dark Fiction, flash fiction, FREE, Horror, Ladies of Horror, Women in Horror Month, Writing Project | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments