The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Death March
by Lydia Prime
August 2019 Ladies of Horror Picture Prompt Challenge: Death March @LydiaPrime
Reply
Category Archives: Lydia’s Writing
July 2019 Ladies of Horror Picture Prompt Challenge: Next Meal @LydiaPrime
The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Next Meal
by Lydia Prime
“Hello?” Whimpering from the darkness startled cautious visitors; their footsteps came to a standstill. “Is, is someone there?” The voice asked weakly.
Twenty feet from the opening, they huddled close together, not sure where the voice had come from. A summer breeze blew through the open room, wafting the scent of fear and sweat toward the damp chasm.
“I can hear you, please, help me,” the voice pleaded and the feet crept closer, certain a little girl was calling to them. Heel to toe, they made it to the edge and peered down, their flashlights just barely able to penetrate the darkness; perhaps a trick of the light, but one was certain something skittered across the ground from one corner to the other.
“Hurry, please!” She called out again; her voice was beginning to sound impatient and less distressed. The men looked at each other before deciding which one of them would go down there and save the girl. With a heavy sigh, the smaller of the two began his descent into the darkness.
CRACK. CRUNCH.
“Help me!” He shouted to his friend. The sound of flesh tearing from bone echoed through the cavernous pit; a scream from below drove right through the man trembling above. Hesitantly, he shined his light below and saw his friend scattered all over the floor and walls. His breath caught in his throat, Where was the … thing that did this!?
Rapid scraping against metal; it was coming. His mind blank, his body failing to remember how to move, to scream; helpless and frozen he stayed as a white creature exited the concrete opening. It had the horns of a stag and the face of a decomposing ram; its slender body turned, showing the butchery that covered its matted fur. Tears began to well in the man’s eyes as it showed off knifelike claws, tapping them together and watching as the crimson bits dribbled from each one.
“Delicious, but still…” came the warbled female voice, as its red eyes locked on its next meal.
Fiction © Copyright Lydia Prime
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
Voyeur
My mentor had done this procedure countless times but he was getting on in years, it was now my turn. As we entered the room, I turned to be sure he’d noticed. The subtle scent of overly ripe fruit in a room with no such dressings; the aroma of an expiration past due.
I walked over to the patient and examined her pale clammy skin. Her pulse weakened, her breath shallow. No wonder Death visited this room. I gulped and returned to my mentor’s side.
Our patient let out a faint whimper that neither of us could decipher. At the word of my aged tutor, I began administering treatment. An injection of morphine to calm her, ease her into bliss, followed by several well placed leeches to suck out the monster who held her soul captive.
***
“Quickly, quickly now!” His harsh whisper scratched through my ears.
“But… she just… and…” I managed to stammer.
“Yes, yes. A horrible tragedy all that, a grievous state.” His head hung low for the briefest of moments until his hands found their way back to tidying up. I couldn’t move, just watched while he placed the tools back into his bag. “Don’t just stand there boy!” His raspy voice coached me. I grabbed up the blood-soaked sheets and tossed them into my own bag…
“Get the leeches boy, the leeches!” His voice rang in my head. I turned, knocking my bag to the floor. The leeches had grown fat, too fat, as they continued their suckling while the patient withered. Plucking the engorged creatures off her tore sheets of wallpaper flesh from the desiccated carcass. I glanced at my guardian through terrified eyes; he himself shook at the horror before us. This wasn’t the way it was meant to be.
I ran to the wooden basin and flung them in, foolishly assuming I’d have time to dissect them later. Before I could blink, they swirled through the cracks, found each chink to slither through. No! No! No! With bare hands, I tried pulling them back but they were already gone.
Exhausted from the struggle, I turned from the useless pail only to find a figure standing behind my mentor. I tried to warn him but my voice escaped as quickly as the leeches had. I watched as it sliced through his torso, dropping meat haphazardly to the wooden floor. I wept as it devoured our patient one glutinous gulp at a time. I howled with fear as the figure turned its attentions toward me.
Perhaps Death wasn’t only a visitor but a voyeur…
∼ Lydia Prime
© Copyright Lydia Prime. All Rights Reserved.
June 2019 Ladies of Horror Picture Prompt Challenge: Decision @LydiaPrime
The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Decision
by Lydia Prime
He stands before us, judged not by a jury of his peers but that of the high counsel. We watch the screen replay the despicable act he’s accused of, some snicker while others shake their heads. I hear the ticking, the effervescent metronome of my mechanical mind; I know it’s almost time.
The man, now on his knees, tears and pleads for mercy. I’ve seen everything, past, present, and future – this wouldn’t be his last act. The counsel listens, watches the man cry and beg, though his sniveling face and empty notions of never doing it again fall on deaf ears.
We resign and leave him sitting in his home-made puddle of regret. I watch the others deliberate, unable to ignore the constant noise of the mechanism in my head. The tick-tock-ticking finally stops and I know what’s next. The others stand and I follow suit; upon entering the court room once more we see our accused no longer crying. Now, cross-armed and smirking, he’s let his true self appear.
“Mr. Habert,” the judge with a television head begins, “we have made our decision.” The man stands and walks toward the counsel, looking each of us over with hate and rage in his eyes.
“Mr. Habert, it is of our opinion that to simply punish you for this…” another judge, this one with a galaxy floating around him, trails off, disgusted for a moment, “would not be true justice.”
“You will be forgotten, your name stripped, and you sir,” I say, “you, yourself will be erased.”
I watch the man’s lips curl as he begins to laugh, he shouts obscenities and demands that we’ll regret this. Though, the final judge, a female made entirely of timber, reaches out to him. She slowly peels off layers of bark from her own limbs and lays them out carefully; each piece containing a story, a retelling of his life in print. Our guards hold him back as he tries to snatch them in a frenzied madness.
I twist some knobs through the clockwork on my head and watch as he painfully ages in front of us. The guards let him drop to the floor, weak and brittle. He peers up at the counsel, through sickly eyes, and cries out for mercy; this time his pleas are genuine.
“Any last words?” Asks a judge through ever changing faces on a fuzzy screen. The man shakes his head, all fight lost. The wooden judge locks the strips of his life into a furnace.
“So be it,” chimes the judge whose galaxy is now in over drive; every star and planet zipping around him as if it might explode. “Your atoms will be spread across the universe.” He smiles as the fear in the old man’s eyes grows.
We all watch as the now elderly convict slowly breaks away into a shimmering sort of dust, inch by agonizing inch. He screams, and we smile as the show has only just begun.
Fiction © Copyright Lydia Prime
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
Spiritual Malady
Desperate for the pinch that would bring her escape, she sought refuge in a dilapidated house slightly hidden by an overgrown yard. Squeezing through a paint-chipped opening, she entered a once loved home; now a desolate shell. She tiptoed through the crumbling building; fitting, however ironic it may have been, to have found a location almost as decayed as her. A few rodents scurried past and a disillusioned smirk crossed her chapped lips. A wave of cold sweat coated her from head to toe and the cramps in her muscles became too strong to ignore. Illness coursed through her brittle body; the remedy within her grasp.
Empty glassines scatter amongst the debris; almost instantly her vacant eyes glazed over. Collapsing into her surroundings, her back slid against exposed drywall. She stared through the broken window before her. The skewed view of an unkempt backyard swirled with gray matter. A memory washed through sullen eyes as salty tears trickled down battle-scarred cheeks. The enormous oak tree cast shade upon the little ones as they giggled in the grass; a time almost entirely forgotten. In that second she could feel the sun’s gentle warming on her skin. Pigtails and lemonade seemed so far away, droplets of melted mascara and misery spilled onto her tattered shirt faster than they could be caught. A swift jolt of pain deep beneath the flesh followed by a surge of pure bliss wrenched her into the present.
Despondent and motionless, she slumped over, barely propped up against the wall. Truths that could never have been told, let alone forgiven, silenced without warning. If she called out, would anyone even care? The gruesome truth beneath the surface of burned bridges and voluntary exile were all around her. The only company to be expected now were the rats to clean up her mess.
That haunting memory grew stronger; a skinned knee and the scent of antibiotic ointment permeated the air. Her pain was gone, then and now. Ghosts of her past pranced through her brain and banged against her skull. The sun beamed upon her face a final time as she welcomed its familiar burn. Her deep inhales grew shorter and more shallow until a stillness resonated through not just the decrepit shelter, but her ever wasting body. The withered land she’d hidden in would swallow her whole before she could be found. Iced coffee and nicotine lingered in her mouth — the last flavor of a life willingly let go. An accepting smile rested on the corpse who had no other home. Her once beautiful pale face now a brilliant blue.
Tranquility filled the darkness as hours passed, followed by weeks, until the months began to pile on. A skeleton picked clean by vermin, intertwined for eternity with an abandoned home. The idea of redemption dissolved; though her tomb was secret more would surely come. They’d follow in her footsteps and dwell on their misguided past; lives just as lonely and hearts concealed by frost.
∼ Lydia Prime
© Copyright Lydia Prime. All Rights Reserved.
Rising Moon
As it wears off, I’m worn down
walls are spinning all around,
my skin is crawling, or was that bone?
Belief is still that I’m far from home.
Chest compressions,
breath in sessions.
“What comes next?” I try to ask.
Voice so calm, “put on your mask.”
Bile; spewing out my soul.
Shallow breaths take their toll.
Crack here, crack there – something new,
skeletal fragments puncture through.
Bloody tears spill down my cheeks –
soak in sweat; my body wreaks.
My mirror’s near but I’m scared to look,
decaying since the last one I took.
Claws displayed, now covered in fur.
The moon is full; scented blood my lure.
Into the night I seek my prey,
I must feed before break of day.
Stalking, running,
thrashing, chomping.
Unsuspecting meat so tender –
hides from me, though I am clever.
I sneak up upon terrified face,
devour the heart, leave no trace.
Racing adrenaline;
was it me or was it them?
Hunger cured, I take my leave.
Moon’s glow fading – end of eve.
Before long the sun will rise,
my body twists back to size.
∼ Lydia Prime
© Copyright Lydia Prime. All Rights Reserved.
May 2019 Ladies of Horror Picture Prompt Challenge: Fill in for Fate @LydiaPrime
The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Fill in for Fate
by Lydia Prime
Fragile as rose petals, the tomes must be rewritten, rebound; the lifeblood of those who’ve gone before, wasted. Their scent causes my eyes to water, the text itself brings on a feeling of burning within my soul. Who began these works? I wonder while I glance at the shelves surrounding me. My tears stain the sheet as they drop from my face. Another page I must rewrite, Why does this ache so much?
As the night wears on and the candles fade, I do too; my chest heaves deeply. Who else would willingly take on such a task? My mind wanders to all those who’d ventured this chamber before. “Work quickly,” words slither through my ears as venom does my veins; the only advice received from the other.
I carefully ink the final page and feel my soul slowly fading from my body. I chose this, I know, but to parade as one of the fates seemed much more glamorous than how this wretched task feels.
Shallow breaths, my pulse in my ears; one word left, I don’t wish to do this. A language that has flown so freely through my mind to my hand, one I will never speak, yet I have written so clearly. Shedding tears for myself, I scribble the last of it, breathing has become a chore; the warmth grows deep from within.
Wailing, my fingers twitch and I can feel my body shutting down. My skin feels as through it’s slipping off my bones; my spirit ready to escape. As I lay down the scribe, through shimmering vision I see another tome claiming its form.
Fiction © Copyright Lydia Prime
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
Lapsed Reality 