The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Maker’s Mountain
by Amanda Worthington

Lucerne watches as the girl is forced to her knees. She cannot see her face but imagines fear distorting the features. Something glimmers briefly, the reflective blade of a ceremonial knife, its edge impossibly sharp and almost as hungry for blood as the man who wields it.

There is power in potential.

It’s a weird thing being the mist, drifting, having volume, taking up space. It’s disconcerting to be the thing that obscures while being perfectly aware of itself. She would cry if she had ducts to form the tears, if she had a face to stain or a chest to spasm from the effort.

She feels them all around her. They reach, tentative, eager to touch.

The Fallen.

Some are newly-awakened and others have been in this state too long. They swirl and writhe and reconfigure themselves constantly in a vain effort to find some peace.

A spear of light bursts into being and they feel the force of it, the force of her. She will shine like a beacon through the night and then she will sleep as they all did. And when she awakens, she will know all the things she should not. And she will obscure the truth. And more girls will be chosen for the sacred task the Priest calls only The Integration.

Womankind has always been broken. Weak. Susceptible to the whispers. Not malleable. Not amenable to our purposes. We’ll make them all as they were intended to be. And their forebears? They’ll cloak this place until our work is complete.

The words drift back into her recollection and for a moment Lucerne thinks they belong to some other sacrifice.

In this state of eternal potential, everything sounds the same. Memory blends with the tones of the present and the echoes of a future only beginning to make itself known. They are echoes that dissolve, wither when a path is not selected, clarify only when steps are taken down a certain road.

Of course, mist can take no steps. Mist can only drift. Mist gathers and rides the currents and blocks the light and blankets everything in gray ambivalence.

She senses the truth even as the words themselves register: the Chosen were always women, would always be women until they were all gone.

***

Evelyn watches as the mist swirls at the base of the Maker’s Mountain. Its presence makes her uncomfortable; never abating or growing, just maintaining. She thinks it might be thickening, but the moment she raised the concern to the Father, he  told her that her eyes were new and could not yet be trusted.

She believed him. For a long time, she believed him. But then the mist began to speak.

We have bound our atoms to this place. This tomb is meant for the false prophet that his voice may never again be heard. Go. But return here when the work is done. This is the last we can say before the changing.

Evelyn begs the mist for something more, anything more, a whisper, a breath, a sigh. She reaches her hand forward and then yanks it back in pain. A fine shard of rock has embedded itself in her palm.

Pain has a way of solidifying things, making the illusory real, tethering us to a particular moment in space and time. So it is for Evelyn.

Her eyes scale the mountain and she wonders if once it was all mist, if it is a monument to success or failure and whose.

She gazes down at her wounded hand, digs the stone out, winces, watches curiously as the wound bleeds freely for a moment and then stops.

Evelyn begins down a certain road, heading always toward the faint light that colors the western skies.

***

No one knows for sure where the mountain came from or why the men that visit it vanish. No one knows why the women flock to it in summer and return with radiant smiles and golden skin. Some who live on the outskirts have claimed that it seems to be getting taller. A few of the more suspicious residents have even gone as far as to call it Babel. Various mining operations have suggested that it might contain precious minerals, although no one who’s been granted the rights to investigate ever seems to return.

Old Jacobsen never expects to see his crew again, but his daughter is with them and Rachel always has tales to tell. The girl never could keep her mouth shut.

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Fiction © Copyright Amanda Worthington.
Image courtesy of Pixabay

Wicked Deeds: Witches, Warlocks, Demons and Other Evil Doer’s

Sometimes wicked people do wicked things simply because they can… The twelve stories in Wicked Deeds tell tales of witches and warlocks with ill intent, devilish demons bent on destruction, and other doers of evil who make the world a terrifying place. What is a mother to do when her daughter is gifted but lives under the thumb of her fanatical preacher husband who will brook no talk of the supernatural? What of a demon so desperate to free himself of a trap that he will force another to repeat his atrocities and condemn a young boy to his demonic fate? Or maybe the story of a crotchety old witch with a score to settle against the town she lives in is more to your liking – what evil will the seemingly harmless town-crazy call upon when faced with an ultimatum? If you’re looking for wicked people with supernatural abilities doing wicked things, this is the collection for you!

Available on Amazon!