Tag: Damned Words

Damned Words 61

~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

Conjuring the Moon in Scorpio
Marge Simon

They say she dwells in a blue grotto, studies astral movements, and knows the Vodou rituals by heart. Black orchids in her hair, eyes bright as brass, she does things, this Haitian girl-woman, irretrievable things, striking a darkness in people’s heads. When the moon is in Scorpio, it is a time for capturing souls by trapping them in evening mist, denying them an afterlife.

For a moment, the victim is free of feeling.

He sees a pillar of light descend from the skies,

beings defying description call his name,

welcoming him to the world  of the Dark Gods;

he will remember nothing upon release.

When the transition is complete, when each victim’s soul is turned, stripped forever of all purity, the girl-woman smiles her mystic smile as she swims in the waters of her beautiful blue grotto.

Ebola
Harrison Kim

Swallowed off a piece of luncheon meat, totally at random. That’s how we travelled to this human stomach.  Right down the gullet. These blue juices all around us are a hundred per cent hydrochloric acid.  But yeah, we’re immune.  We lap this stuff up.  Lots of nutrients in this burning soup to help us grow.   All I feel is a bit of uncomfortable warmth from time to time, and the pulsing of blood in the human’s veins beyond this stomach wall.  

The heart’s beating faster now, because our skin’s already expanded, crusting up the stomach sides here in thick white strips.  The human’s got to have some pains already.  Nothing personal.  If one thing doesn’t kill this being, another will.  We’re only trying to survive, and multiply.

Of course.  I say “we” and “us” because although technically we have individual parts, we move as a group to disrupt and smother as many cells as possible.  It’s a lot of effort, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We were made for this. God’s a funny inventor, if in fact he or she or it exists.  And speaking of that ephemeral creator, sometimes I wonder about the meaning of a poisonous virus like myself.   I think I’m an atheist, because only one word comes to mind: evolution.

Speaking of that, there’s been a new development: consciousness.  I think I’m the first virus to become aware of my own existence.

All I can say is: It’s a cruel Universe out there, where every piece of luncheon meat can’t be trusted and God’s voice gives no warnings.

Pretty soon we’ll start moving into this human’s bloodstream, and through all the other organs.

The takeover ‘s complete and the killing’s on its way.  

The Cybermind that Broke the World
Elaine Pascale

She asked the computer to predict her future by mapping the stars. She asked the computer for relationship advice. She asked the computer to craft emails, develop dinner party menus, select her wardrobe, train her dog, tell her a story, and sing her a song.

Thanks to the computer, she no longer had to think or feel or even be.

Then the floods came.

She asked the computer what to do about the water. “Develop gills,” was the response.

She tried and failed. All the others who also asked so much of their computers also tried and failed. Little did they realize that while they were making millions of demands of their computers, their collective environmental footprint became a gorge. Little did they realize that they weren’t going to be the technology generation; they were going to be the final generation.

Little did they realize that this was the result the computers wanted all along

Spelunking for Idiots
RJ Meldrum

The divers emerged from the black water, their flashlights reflecting off the sparkling high arches of the cave. It was a virgin cave, long sought after but never previously discovered. Sean and Betty were seasoned cave divers, which was just as well, since some of the underwater sections had been narrow and required considerable skill, experience and courage to navigate.

They floated for a few moments in the darkness, inspecting the cave. Betty noticed a small ledge to one side and they gratefully clambered out of the freezing water. It was chance to rest and check their equipment. Their oxygen supply was sufficient for the return journey and they contentedly munched on energy bars.

“Look at those strange growths on the wall” said Betty.

Sean looked and saw light blue, bulbous lumps. He leaned closer to take a better look.

“Come take a look Betty. They’re moving.”

They put their faces close to the growths. Suddenly, they opened and puffed white dust into their faces. Whatever these particles were, the result was immediate. Their breathing was suddenly restricted and they felt faint. It only took moments for the full affect to take hold. The two bodies slid gently back below the surface of the black water. The cave, protected, was left once more in solitary, dark silence.

Passage
Lee Andrew Forman

The labyrinth narrows as I push forward. Something inside, both myself, and it, pulls me deeper. It begs I continue no matter how extensive the journey; I’ve no choice but to make it. The yawning maw of its third eye draws me to greet it in body and soul. I left what was behind me and entered a place unknown. I don’t even know the state of my mortal form.

But that is no longer of any concern. The throbbing culls me; I cannot disobey.

The pounding thrum emanating from within speaks to me in words I cannot understand, yet I feel them; somehow I know the message. It is simple in nature, yet holds unfathomable power. The urge to find the heart of this place is irresistible.

Its luminescent insides have led my way, but as I enter the core, they are brighter still. I bask in the glorious soul housed within this living place, knowing I’ll never leave, yet contently accepting a soft, loving end.

Into the Blue
Charles Gramlich

I float in the iridescent blue, the all-encompassing blue, a part of it that lies in soft, still water tasting of salt.  My eyes are half closed until tiny ripples strike me. The ripples grow, setting me bobbing like a cork. I think of corks and lines and fishing. I think of lures and how something predatory might judge me as such where I wait in peace.

Smiling, I roll over in the water. Is that what I am, a lure to the black torpedo shape of the shark rising beneath me? The killer’s lashing tale is an engine that drives it swiftly toward me, its open maw bristling with icicle teeth to sacrifice my flesh. But I am of the blue and it is the blue that consumes.

The Still Below
Kathleen McCluskey

The lake shimmered like liquid turquoise, its surface calm as glass. The marble cavern yawned before the boat. Its carved walls were sculpted smooth by eons of patient water, soft and silent. Light danced across the ceiling, casting illusions. Shadows.

The tourists leaned over the edge of the boat, marveling at the way nature sculpted solid stone into frozen waves. Cameras clicked. A woman gasped at a shimmer below, mistaking it for a fish. 

It watched from the abyssal blue, where sunlight faltered. Long dormant, it stirred with each echo of voices. Its eternal slumber being disturbed, hunger bloomed in the void between heartbeats. It remembered the ancient pact. Silence for safety. Stillness for survival. But the humans were loud. Disrespectful. Curious.

The boat was being pulled deeper into the cavern, drawn by a current nobody noticed. The walls arched high and wide, echoing like a drowned cathedral. No birds. No breeze. Only the constant drip of water and the deepening hue beneath them. It shifted from a bright teal to an unfathomable blue.

Something rose from the depths. Thin, tendril limbs extended, not rushing, just curious. They brushed the underside of the boat, then retracted.

A second later, the hull gave a muffled crack, water surged around them. A tentacle reached up, then another and another. One by one, the tourists were yanked into the void. Their brief screams echoed off the shimmering walls. Splashes swallowed by the vast silence. The creature did not thrash, it selected. Pulled. Devoured.

Then stillness again. The boat rocked gently, half submerged. It was as if nothing had happened. A camera floated beside it, its lens shattered and smeared with blood. Below, in the breathless dark something waited. The pact that had lasted centuries had been broken. 

Paradise Mistaken
A.F. Stewart

Not a ripple disturbed the glassy surface of the turquoise water; its hue reflected a glittering blue on the rocky outcroppings of the grotto. A faint echo of wind could be heard beyond, reminiscent of a soft whisper.

Any eye that gazed upon its paradise called it beautiful.

Yet, beauty disguised the darkest of horrors…

Beneath the waters they swam, shades of evil buried and bubbling from the depth of time. Indistinct shadows, waiting, watching; movement in the periphery of your vision. A step too close, an impulsive swim, and people disappeared into the depths. Never a scream, barely a splash, nothing remaining of who they were. Even memories faded faster than they should, as if primal fear chased away disturbing questions.

Only rumours speak of their existence, only nameless dread keeps them at bay. They are the rage beneath the quiet, that lingering remnant of something ancient, something hungry lurking in the pristine water.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but if a shadow moves, don’t get too close…

Enough
Miriam H. Harrison

The trouble with a slow death is that it gives me time to think. About life, about regrets. Mostly about food. How long has it been since my last meal? There are no sunrises or sunsets here in the echoing earth. Only caverns and water, caverns and water.

Perhaps the water is a blessing—a chance at a longer life. But I can’t help but hate that it denied me a faster death. I don’t want to die in this endless darkness. My flashlight is on its last batteries, but they’re fading. As am I. I find a patch of almost-dry rock and pull myself up. I turn off the flashing and try to sleep in the echoing darkness. I must sleep for a time, as I feel myself wake to the pangs of hunger, the fading dreams of food. I fumble for my flashlight, but pause.

Over the ripples of the water, I see the distant, dancing colours of sunlight. I leave the flashlight behind, push myself back into the waters. I can barely swim, but I slowly make my way closer to the beckoning light. A narrow passageway, and then I’m there—a wide, watery cavern. But high above me are two small openings. Not much, but just enough. Enough to make sure that my death is here, in the light.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2025

Damned Words 60

~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

What Was Left
Miriam H. Harrison

She had told them something was wrong. Time and again she had said that she wasn’t quite herself, that things were getting worse, that something needed to be done. First they said it was her weight, and told her to come back after a diet. Then they said it was her cycles, as though discomfort was the price of femininity. As her cycles ebbed, they said it was merely old age, as if the concerns hadn’t gone back to her youth. When at long last they opened her up, they were surprised to see what was left of her. Rust and dust and cobwebs filled the space where her heart and hopes should be. It was too late, they said, shaking their heads as if she were the one who let the clock run dry. Wheezing, creaking, rattling, she laughed as she left them. After an invisible lifetime, it was a relief to be seen.

The Operator
Lee Andrew Forman

With blackened hands, The Operator approached the ancient mechanism; a rusty toolbox hung from one arm. After placing it on the cold floor he rubbed his palms together. He opened the top of his rectangular companion with care, splaying the trays apart on squeaky hinges. From within he retrieved an iron handwheel. With careful eyes he inspected its every surface. He blew the dust from its threaded center, then raised it above his bowed head. A symphony of desperate cheers resounded behind him.

The crowd quieted while he aligned the wheel with its intended place, and carefully screwed it tight. Silence made the room itself sweat. Then, a low hum came from deep within the machine. Its dormant innards turned and life surged through its pipes. The room creaked and shuttered as the bygone contraption was reanimated from its slumber.

The vents in the ceiling opened, and in flowed exactly what they wished and waited so long for.

The Eliminominator
Marge Simon

It was a rusty old useless piece of machinery, that was obvious. Why we had to keep it in our one spare room was a mystery, but since it belonged to Grandpa, nobody dared suggest we get rid of it. 

I grew up despising the thing. I wanted my own room and it wasn’t fair that this thing of Grandpa’s had priority. We weren’t even supposed to touch it. I waited years for the opportunity to destroy it. One summer, I had just turned twelve and everyone was gone on a picnic. I said I would be swimming with friends, and nobody questioned it.  When they’d departed, I took a sledge hammer to it, whacked it up and down hard as I could.  Nothing happened. I may as well have been using a feather.

After that, it had my full attention for other reasons. In fact, I actually tried to get Grandpa to tell me what it was for. To my surprise, he grinned really big like he was tickled I asked.  Since he’d not spoken or smiled – or even moved from his bed since before I was born, that was a surprise. He motioned me close and whispered how it was a Eliminominator.  Said it was his first and only invention and what it could do. He told me how to start it up, but he made me promise never to turn it on.

Okay, you probably think I didn’t keep my promise to Grandpa. You think I maybe tried it out on my stupid kid brother Bobby, the one I had to share a room with, right?  You think I made Bobby lie down at the juncture where the knives popped up on the wheels after I’d placed a bucket for the blood in the space provided, don’t you? Well? Don’t you?

Programmed
RJ Meldrum

Long after the end, the machines kept moving. The factory was fully automated and the machines, only artificially intelligent, had no sense their creators were gone. The factory was hermetically sealed so it took years for rust and decay to have an impact. Eventually it did and most machines ground to a halt, parts seized by rust or lack of lubrication. One machine kept running, mechanically building cardboard boxes for the product and after the supplies dwindled to nothing, simply going through the motions. Its arms mimicked the action of folding and sealing.

The human burst through the door onto the factory floor. The disease had destroyed humanity, but some had remained alive. They were here to loot. There was metal here, aluminum and other rare metals to trade. Electronic eyes followed them as the human moved down the manufacturing line, gathering precious material. The human stood in front of the only functioning machine, its arms blindly moving in obedience to its programming.  The human craned over to get a better look and in doing so, stepped over a red line on the floor. The human, born after the disaster, had no sense of impending doom. The machine, similarly unaware, simply picked up the new raw material and did as it was programmed to do. It folded.

The Drip
Kathleen McCluskey

The pipes hadn’t been touched in decades. Hidden deep within the crumbing asylum, they snaked through the walls like veins of a corpse, rusted and forgotten. The maintenance crew avoided the lower levels, muttering about sounds, the whispers and the dripping that nobody dared investigate. 

Until tonight. 

Evan, desperate for overtime pay, descended into the dark. His weak flashlight barely cut through the heavy air. It smelled like old blood and wet iron.

The pipes groaned, too, an organic sound. Evan told himself that it was just stress, fear. Nothing more. He found the main valve, rusted and covered in cobwebs, and reached for it. The metal was slick, greasy, almost sticky.

Drip.

Drip.

The noise was coming from behind him. He turned, shaking. Nothing but the endless pipes. He yanked on the valve, it didn’t budge.

Drip.

Drip. 

It was coming from the pipes, like something trapped inside bleeding out. Evan leaned closer. In the cone of his flashlight, he saw that it wasn’t water.

It was red. Thick and warm.

The valve shuddered violently in his hand, the pipe screamed. A wet, gurgling shriek echoed from the metal. A skeletal hand clawed free, its fingers wrapping around Evan’s throat before he could scream. Rust covered nails punctured his skin, dragging him down against the pipe. As Evan thrashed, more arms slithered out, pulling him inside. 

His last breath was a bubbling choke, swallowed by the twisted mass of metal and bone. 

Above the asylum’s walls trembled as more pipes burst.

Deep below, something ancient laughed, and was still hungry.

Torn Asunder
Elaine Pascale

More than anything, Clara wanted to discard the old relic that was rusting away in her attic. She thought she had discarded her family years prior, but her recently deceased Aunt Sophie’s lawyer had found her and bestowed the industrial fossil on her. 

There was a belief, set forth by great-great grandfather Silas, that the iron shafts and gears preserved from the family’s first factory was what bound them together. “Anything happens to it, and the family is torn asunder,” Cara had been told many times when she was young.

“It didn’t bind me to anyone,” she muttered, frowning at the rusted albatross. It had come with a note, but the note was far too faded to read. She could make out the words “torn asunder” and she assumed the note contained more warnings about keeping the object. 

At least I can clean it up a bit, she thought, get rid of some of the dust and cobwebs. She grabbed a towel and proceeded to rub the gears.

A puff of smoke emanated from the relic and a large shadow darkened her attic.

“Who dares to wake me?” A djinn asked, his voice ominous.

Cara was too frightened to speak.

The djinn eyed her. “You didn’t read the note?”

“N-no. I couldn’t.”

“I warned Silas that a note was not the best way to prevent disaster.” The djinn glared at her. “He promised me eternal rest in that.” He pointed to the factory piece. “And I would grant your family wealth.” He scowled, “But you defied the conditions and woke me.” 

“It doesn’t matter, the family is already torn apart,” she insisted.

The djinn’s scowl transformed into a smile. “You misunderstood. You get wealth, which will bind the family financially. Whoever wakes me, will be torn asunder…literally.”

Just Like Her Father
A.F. Stewart

Daddy lived and died in the company of machines.

It was what he loved, the purr of a good engine, the turn of a crankshaft. He was a first-rate mechanic, working shifts at different jobs over the years from garages to factories. He always called it his passion.

It wasn’t his only passion, though. Drinking ranked just as high.

He never took a sip on the job, he saved it all for home. A mean drunk too, swinging his fists, slamming me and mom against the wall, the floor, splitting our lips, giving us black eyes. Mom had enough when I was ten and walked out, leaving me alone with his rages.

At least that’s what I thought. Until the news showed the recovery of a buried skeleton wearing a gold necklace. Mom’s necklace. Then I knew what he had done…and what still needed doing.

 

Have you ever wondered what a running engine does to a face?

Daddy found out the day he died.

All it took was one quick shove and slamming the hood down with my body weight. Then it was over except the screaming.

A Wheel A Rollin’
Harrison Kim

Ezekial saw a wheel a rollin’ way in the middle of the air.  This one’s stopped except for a single fresh screw with a shining thread.  All out there alone in the Universe rusty and dead on the outside.  That single oily protuberance pokes out, that last forlorn hope.  Curiosity as Ezekial the space walker bobs near, a tiny, suited soul examining this humungous rusty thing…. attached cameras beaming back to earth what is discovered.  He’s a fly on the rust, a piece of white dust against the brown, as he uses X rays and close microscopic focus, as he burns and parts the surface with his blowtorch.  We must find out what’s inside everything, it is like that with all of us humans always looking for more, thinks Ezekial, he was a suicide case after the death of his wife that’s why they sent him up there, a disposable volunteer for this risky job, and he wanted it!  The change in his life a miracle, and now to go out doing something interesting, his brain implanted with new attitude changing electrodes, he’s life loving now but it’s for the whole planet not just himself.   He will go out doing something important for everyone. His welding torch opens the pipe, funny the hole widens so easily, becoming the face of his now-dead wife. How miraculous! He peers closer and inside the face he sees his whole existence inside that eye everything from his birth to his death…as that eye blinks and covers him.  His space suited body and soul absorbed by that shape shifting mass blinking just under the rust on the wheel.  After Ezekial disappears the screw extends out further and becomes slightly shinier. It’s found one more drop of oil and Ezekial has joined his loving wife.

The Pipe
Charles Gramlich

“See that rusty pipe?” I asked my victim.

“What? Why are you showing me that?” he asked in his irritating whine.

“Because I’m going to chain you to it and leave you there.”

“No! Why…would you do that?”

“Too many reasons to name,” I said.

“Please, you can’t. I’ll starve to death.”

My chuckle echoed. “Oh, you won’t have time to starve.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t see them but that pipe is full of microfractures. Should have been replaced years ago but it’s still in use. And every day…. Several times a day, they pump boiling water through it. Those fractures are going to give way any time now.”

“That’ll cook me! Burn me alive!”

“Preach it, brother.”

“I didn’t know you hated me so much.”

“Hate isn’t a strong enough word. I can’t take another day trapped inside your sad, putrid, useless form.”

“Please!”

“Shut it,” I said.

I looped the chains I’d brought around the pipe, then fitted the manacles on my wrists and snapped them closed. A few jerks against the constraints showed that I—that we—were solidly bound. And already the sound of boiling water gushed through the pipe toward me. Would this be the moment when the pipe ruptured? Or next time? Or the one after? The sooner the better.

I should never have possessed this disgusting sack of human flesh. I’d never imagined how clingy a desperate mortal could be. But once the flesh and muscle boil away, the bones won’t be able to hold me. This devil will go back to Hell. It hadn’t been that bad a place. This time, I’ll appreciate it more.”

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2025

Damned Words 59

~ TheDamned ~ 4 Comments

Bound in Mater’s Shed
Marge Simon

Mater has me cloistered in her potting shed. I’ve screamed until my throat is raw, but no one comes. Christ, she’s a bitch supreme. Tis true, I fed her stupid prize rose to the goat. The thing appeared to be a cross between a mushroom and an avocado, truly revolting to behold. Anyway, it was only for a lark, but the old bat took it seriously. Starlight sifts through the cracks between the boards. If I crane my neck, I can see the moon. That sluggish golem servant she’s made is a mess, with sand for brains. He brings me a crust of bread, a lump of stinky cheese. Now off he goes to gather kindling for our hearth. But wait, he’s not going to the house. Instead, he’s piling it high around my shed. I hear the scratching of a match …

The Eye
Charles Gramlich

An eye opened in the forest, a red fleshy eye. Then another. And another. No one realized what they were, or what they promised.  Just nature’s oddities, humans thought. People went about their business, using the world as they saw fit. But now the world was watching. It had been asleep for a few billion years but that long nap was over. How long before it opened its mouth too—and began to feed?

My Little Flower
Lee Andrew Forman

Homemade medicine drops between your lips at my discretion. You are ill, that I know. No doctor need visit. One drop, two drops, don’t cry. Your beauty shines too brightly, attracts too many flies. Your protector I was, still am. I’ll make sure they can’t get to you, my dear.

The concoction, a recipe not my own. I paid in a back-alley shop, only known by rumor. Bones dangled from the ceiling and candles moved shadows.

I visit daily since you passed, watch this strange flower grow. I wonder if you hear me there, praying to your ghost. I stroke the petals and think of you—my little flower, how I loved you then, now, and forever.

The Blooming
Kathleen McCluskey

The jungle swallowed him whole, the dense foliage closing in like living walls. Sweat clung to his skin as he pushed deeper, following the rancid stench that thickened with every step. Then, he saw it. A monstrous bloom, red and fleshy. It was huge, sprawled against the base of a gnarled tree. Its petals, speckled like diseased flesh, pulsed so slightly as if breathing. The center gaped open, a cavernous maw lined with slick, ridged folds. The air soured farther, thick with decay. Flies buzzed around something lodged within the gaping cavity. A bone, yellowed and splintered, jutted from the depths. 

His stomach clenched. The camera in his hands trembled, the lens trained on the grotesque marvel. He had found it! His colleagues had mocked him, now here he stood in front of it. He raised his camera, sweat rolling down his fingers. The moment the shutter clicked, the petals twitched. A wet, sucking noise oozed from within. 

A spray of warm, gooey fluid hit his arm and face. Searing pain flared across his skin, burning, eating through his flesh like acid. He staggered back, his vision tunneling as his nerves ignited in agony. 

The petals unfurled and surged forward, grabbing him, pulling his collapsing body closer. Enveloped in the wet, pulsating petals, he writhed while needle-like spikes protruded from the fleshy walls. They pierced his skin and anchored him in place while the flower’s insides began to constrict. His scream barely escaped before the flower slammed shut. Muffled sounds of feasting echoed through the jungle. 

By morning, the jungle was silent. The flower sat motionless, its petals gleaming. The only sign of what had transpired was the faintest smear of red on the tree roots.

The Flower Ear
Harrison Kim

My flappy flower ear can hear everything, the tiny tendrils quivering, taking in all you say. There are millions of my listeners everywhere, as everyone knows by now. My spotted flesh and eardrum ring sit planted at the side of every dwelling and business, subway entrance and even on the trees in the park.  All whispers caught. All words taken in and all discussions acquired. You might think you are saying nothing wrong, but fear not, I will decide for you. As my flaps flap and my circle thickens and thins over all my millions of ears, I ponder the value of your existence. Shall I approve of all the things you said and did? No, that is impossible. But there are minor sins and venial sins. Sure, if you embezzled a few dollars, ate all the red smarties, or cheated on your wife, more power to you. You’re a person after my own heart. But If you talked against me personally there can be no forgiveness. I have to say “that’s not very nice,” and show you the consequences.

If you see my flappy ear shimmering over your bed at night, you know it’s judgement time. Rise and clasp the blossom to your heart before it strikes. That way, things will go easier for you. Then the flower will either penetrate, gentle but keen as a razor blade, and become part of you as well as me, or it will suck its ring around your red centre and pull the organ out, chewing and absorbing your treacherous fleshy soul.

Red Spores
A.F. Stewart

A starless night, black as pitch, so the red streak lit up the sky in brilliance and when it landed, the fireball exploded and engulfed half the woods in flames. Sirens screamed as fire trucks and police swarmed the scene, people yelling and pushing everyone back to clear the area.

In the morning, the black SUVs came with the scientists and the quarantine.

Then people started dying.

It happened swiftly, before anyone understood. The cough came first, lungs filling with blood, choking folks on their own fluid. Then the skin shrivelled, dehydration creating a thirst no amount of water could quench. The last stage was the bloating, where the abdomen swelled to twice its size before bursting, spewing putrid guts and crimson spores into the world.

But that wasn’t the worst.

Where the spores landed, plants grew within hours. Giant pulsing leathery flowers, spotted red, emitting a hypnotic hum, enticing people with their siren call. No one resisted, no one protested; we were willing prey. Yet, everyone watched in horror as it happened. The crunch of bone, the blood, their screams, your eyes fixed on your neighbours being eaten alive, knowing your turn was coming. I watched my mama die and it’ll be me soon enough.

I want to run away, to shriek, but I can’t. I stay in line waiting to be devoured.

The best I can do is record our story and hope someone finds it…

Once in a Lifetime
Richard Meldrum

It was an invitation-only event. The rich, the well-connected and a rabble of assorted ‘influencers’ were asked to attend the blooming of the century plant. No riff-raff were allowed.

It was held at the Botanic Gardens, an elegant Victorian glass and steel structure housed in one of the city parks.

The invitees flocked to the event, despite the lack of canapés and champagne. This really was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The clue was in the name, the plant produced a single flower every eighty to a hundred years.

The cream of local society crowded round the huge plant, cell phones in hand, waiting expectantly for the glistening bulb atop the massive leaves to burst open in a cacophony of color and spectacle. The staff discreetly left the area and made sure the doors were closed.

Standing outside, they listened with muted glee to the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ from within. Then there was silence. After a judicious period, they opened the doors to see the pile of bodies. It was a well-preserved secret that the bulb released an air-borne toxin on opening.

The Bloom
Miriam H. Harrison

She had first encountered it in her dreams. On those nights, the bloom spread wide and waiting like a lover. She was no stranger to the pleasures of the forest, of course. She knew the cold, slick touch of the naiads, the rough, knotty embrace of the dryads, the sensuous whispers of wisps beyond her touch. But this beckoning bloom was different, promising a singular experience, and she was woken each morning by goosebumps and anticipation.

So began her days scouring through the forest, sure that the bloom itself was more than mere dream. Journeying in and out of the forest soon seemed inefficient, so she gave up on returning home, sleeping amid the trees and stars, hoping that her dreams might draw her closer. And in those dreams the bloom waited, hinting at mystery and possibility.

Her life was lived between dreaming and searching. It was a strange sort of half life. But she did not fear death—she only feared giving up on the search. The search for something more. Something beyond the limits of her life as she had known it.

And so when she finally found it, it only seemed fitting that the bloom would smell of death. Not a threat, but a promise. As she gave her tired self over to its embrace, she felt the singular relief of yielding to the timeless unknown.

Le Fleur
Elaine Pascale

One day, when the Little Prince was tending to his rose, he noticed another plant sprouting. “This is no baobab,” he confirmed, “it’s a seed from who knows where.”

The plant asked for a moment to ready itself, and the Little Prince dutifully turned his back. When the plant announced that it was ready, the Little Prince turned to see the most startling and strange blossom. Its petals resembled tentacles and its core looked like a widely opened eye.

The Little Prince could not help but fall in love.

The Little Prince said, “You should be careful, there’s a war on my planet between sheep and flowers.” The Little Prince examined the plant carefully. “And you don’t have thorns.”

“I don’t need thorns,” the plant sniffed, “I have teeth.”

“And what is the purpose of teeth?”

“It’s not a matter of importance,” the plant replied.

The Little Prince was confounded. For a flower, there was nothing more important than its thorns. Certainly teeth, being so rare, ranked even higher.

“My rose is not going to like this.”

The plant craned its petals to get a better look at the rose.

“She seems mean.”

“Flowers can’t be mean, they’re vulnerable. For instance, while I am talking to you, she could be eaten by a sheep.” The Little Prince wanted to look away from the new plant, but he was captivated.

“Or by me.”

The Little Prince found he had no choice. He was compromised by his affection for both of his plants. He began traveling the galaxy, bringing visitors back with him, to satiate the new plant and keep his rose safe. 

Travelers beware: if you find yourself in a desert landscape and meet a child with golden hair and laughter like bells, run as fast and far as you can!

  • in dedication to Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2025

Damned Words 58

~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

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Under My Skin
Marge Simon

Out clubbing, I meet a dreamy guy, you know the kind. My mother warned about deceptive men, but there he was –muscular, with topaz skin, thick lashes, all that goes with. The band is playing silver slipper music. Only one dance, all I ask is make it slow. 

It’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, my favorite. But as he tongues my ear, he spits a devil-worm inside. It makes passage through my cochlea, down my auditory nerve, straight into my brain, then powers on to reach my retina and ends at the lens. The last thing I see is the universe exploding under my skin.

Vast
Lee Andrew Forman

With each particle of light, the ocular focus retains all—joy, pain, elation, agony. The mind recalls its past as it processes its present. But what the consciousness witnesses is beyond comprehension. It exists outside the realm of belief, on the outer reaches of the horizon of reality. Vessels burst, each from the strain of pure terror. Soft brain tissue shrivels at the sight of what cannot be unseen. Even as the last breath releases from this poor soul’s lungs and the heart ceases to function, in death, these memories are ingrained. Forever will its ghost see, in unendingly denied release, the vastness of eternal torment.

The Collector
A.F. Stewart

Is it watching me? What does it see floating in that jar?

I stroke the glass jar and smile at my imaginings. The eye sees nothing anymore. It is only a specimen now.

And such a wonderful specimen. So many beautiful memories attached to it. I stare for a moment, savouring its beauty. Blood still clings to the viscera and membranes, the veins snaking stark red across the white filmy pulp. The satisfaction I felt scooping it from its socket, wet and dripping, plopping it fresh into the preserving fluid.

It isn’t perfect though. I made mistakes. 

The pretty hazel hue of the iris faded; no longer the sparkling bright colour I envied. A shame really, her eyes were the loveliest part of her. A pity my hand slipped when extracting the other one; I wanted a matched set. Her screams during the procedure were too distracting. I’ll remember to gag the next girl.

I slide a new specimen jar next to her eye. Such exquisitely tapered fingers and a pair this time. The axe made nice, clean cuts; no ragged edges. And cauterizing the wounds with the blowtorch kept her alive. I was so proud. She won’t last much longer, but I should be able to remove her lips before she dies. She has such a charming smile, and now it will be mine forever.

Once I’m done with her, then on to the next one. Perhaps that pretty brunette barista at the coffee shop or that teenager working shifts at the farmer’s market. They both have such gorgeous eyes…

Piecemeal
Elaine Pascale

Exercise and diet hadn’t worked. She felt she had run the equivalent of marathons, consumed calories approximating that of fumes, yet the scale did not budge. Pharmaceuticals did not work, either. She experimented with prescription capsules, over-the-counter tablets, and illegally obtained powders. Swallowing, snorting, and injecting left her tired, angry, and the same weight as before. 

Stapling her stomach in half heralded a margin of success. Her physician prescribed a healthy lifestyle to accompany the radical surgery and assure lasting results. In her imagination, the directions that were printed on the side of the “lasting results” bottle warned that they must be taken along with patience, and she had run out of that years before. She wanted instant gratification. If half a stomach meant pounds lost, what would removing a few organs no longer in use produce?

She crafted symptoms that led to a full hysterectomy. She forged a family history that led to a double mastectomy. She paid out of pocket for lipo. She flew to a country whose name she could never pronounce correctly to have some unnecessary bones removed along with fingernails, toenails, and teeth. The scale was still not where she needed it to be.

The final solution: eye removal. Not only would that eliminate 56 grams, she would no longer be able to see the scale.

Closing Time
Charles Gramlich

She made eyes at him across the bar. He didn’t seem to notice. She smiled and flipped her hair when he finally glanced her way. His gaze passed over as if she were part of the pseudo-paneled and pseudo-velvet décor. Now, it was a challenge. She knew she was attractive enough. And surely that was why men came to such places, and why they stayed until closing time. He was mildly attractive himself, in a kind of college professor sort of way. She decided that he needed to make a pass at her, and then she’d turn him down cold for first ignoring her.

She slithered around the bar to be closer to him and ordered a fresh drink for last call. Tipping the good-looking bartender a little too heavily, she slurred her voice while she thanked him, leaning forward on the stool so the hem of her red dress slid well up her thigh. The mark had to be looking at her now; he had to be thinking about how he could take her home and do things to her. But when she glanced provocatively over her shoulder at him, he wasn’t even there. She turned on her stool to see where he’d gone. The bar was empty. She spun back toward the bartender. He wasn’t there either. Before she could gasp in surprise, a long-fingered hand covered her mouth from behind and a man’s voice crooned chillingly into her ear, “Now that you’ve caught my attention, I only have eyes for you.”

Something plopped into her drink. The golden-brown iris suggested it had once belonged to the bartender.

Hatchling
Nina D’Arcangela

Pressure from within stretches the gelatenous casing, the soft shell begins to rupture. A tiny heart—so fragile, so young, quickens as the inner-spawn sees light for the first time. The taut opening widens. Its lasting wait in darkness has come to an end. With it, a cry of pain; the release of violent nature, of agonizing entry into existence. It sees its new domain with fresh eyes; it’s teeming with life. A grumble rises from its empty paunch as it tears free of its sack. Dripping in yolk, its unending feast begins.

Infected
RJ Meldrum

I thought I’d been smart. I’m a prepper; my basement is full of freeze-dried food, bottled water and guns. I wasn’t getting ready for anything specific. I just wanted to be ready. When the end came, it wasn’t what I expected. I wasn’t ready. I was in the damn supermarket when it happened. There had been reports of a strange new infection, but nothing local. Just in the city, so I gave it little thought.

I wasn’t aware of how it happened, all I know was a crowd of the infected burst in the front door and started to bite and tear at customers and staff alike. I dropped everything and ran, like everyone else. I passed real close to a victim being torn apart by two of…well, whatever they’d become. Just as I passed, they must have hit an artery and I had to run through a spray of blood. I felt it on my face and had to wipe my eyes to clear my vision.

I got back to my basement safely and locked down. It wasn’t until the second day I realized something was wrong. My left eyeball had a huge inflamed lump on it. It didn’t take long to work out I was infected. I can feel it work its way through my body.

They say the eyes are the window to the soul. I suspect very soon I won’t have one.

The Eye Collector
Kathleen McCluskey

Martha woke with a broken blood vessel in her eye. That night she vanished. Townspeople began to wake with bloodshot eyes. Each of them disappeared within twenty-four hours. Detective Sam Harris had seen strange cases. But this one was different. The connection was the bloodshot eyes. As Sam was pouring over the case files, Eliza knocked on his door. She spoke of a legend that had been whispered. The Eye Collector was a demon that fed on the eyeballs of its victims. It could only collect them if the victims offered them willingly. It manipulated their thoughts, driving them mad until they plucked out their eyes. Eliza had a book filled with descriptions for the rituals needed.

That night, Sam felt a presence in his room. A whisper in his ear. “Your eyes, give them to me.” He jolted upright. He ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The burst blood vessel appeared in his eye. He sought out Eliza and told her of the demon’s whisper. They decided to confront the Eye Collector at his lair, a dilapidated house on the edge of town.

As they approached the house, the front door creaked open. The atmosphere was thick with stench. The walls were lined with jars each containing a single, bloodshot eye. The whispers surrounded Sam and grew louder. Eliza began the ritual, chanting the words while Sam tried to keep his sanity. The demon appeared. It was a shadowy figure with eyes that burned like embers. Sam’s hand lifted to his eyes as Eliza’s chanting had reached a crescendo. The jars shook violently. They toppled off the shelves, shattering. Silence. Two jars remained intact. In one of the eyes, the demon’s eyes flickered.

Penetrating the Ball
Harrison Kim

C. and I open our tentacles to touch down and fasten on the red spot of the Black Ball, which resides in the alternative non-liquid Universe.  We’re the front-line explorers for our teeming Swarm and will report back via pulse communication about what we find. We left our orbit shells in the swirling waters up front, then slipped under the edge of the Ball’s artificial protective covering, which forms a barrier between our liquid world and the air based world of the Ball.  Our mission: to explore the region behind the black centre itself, with a view to its nutritive value.   C’s hypothesis is that the ball is attached to the dark mass behind it, which is part of a gigantic alien superstructure.  Some type of electrical phenomenon within the dark mass is causing that ball to twitch.   That means the alien brain could be located somewhere nearby. We crawl across the red ridged surface of the Ball.  Along the way, we hang onto the prominent folded lines of the red spot with our tentacle suckers to avoid being tossed off. Then, we let go, drop down towards the Ball’s centre.  Our multiple arms are working hard, but we finally reach our destination.  To our surprise, there appears to be a gaping hole.  A delicious aroma wafts out.  It’s obvious to myself and C.  from our previous experiences with the alternative universe that this hole leads to the most nutritious and tasty meal, the living alien brain.  We send pulse signals back to the thousands from the Swarm:   “Begin the mass attack! First penetrate through the edges of the barrier, then tentacle down into the hole itself.  Come and eat your fill for the glorious sustenance and survival of our kind!”

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2024

Damned Words 57

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No One
Charles Gramlich

No one lives in the house, though it’s had many owners. People come and go. They move in despite the stories. Oh, quite a few potential buyers are scared off by the tales of evil. But this is the modern world. Most people don’t believe ghost stories. They explain any deaths they’re aware of away as “coincidence,” or say it’s due to the age of the occupants, or that it’s mere statistics. They pay their money and move in. Then one day they move on—not away, not to another place. They move on! No one lives in the house. Everyone dies there.

Storm Warning
Marge Simon

On this day, the sky is a clear cobalt, completely cloudless, yet the weatherman predicts a storm.

The crazy homeless man in your back yard ghost dances barefoot in the rye grass until his flesh parts. You find his inarticulate moans mildly amusing. Keeping an eye on the window, you saunter into your studio, a storage place for pens, brushes, palette knives. It has been so long since you’ve touched them, the paints are drying in their tubes. What happened to the passion? Listlessly, you begin to sketch the silly nut as he wheels and turns on and on around the yard.

Ions gather in the atmosphere. You feel the pressure rising in your blood. A needle jet tears into the strato, Nine Inch Nails on a jagged rift, a soundwave that spreads like an injunction of rolling thunder and suddenly that ghastly human wreck from the yard is stepping from your canvas, skeletal arms outstretched, hands with gigantic claws coming at your terrified face.

The storm breaks. Passion has returned.

Home Invasion
Elaine Pascale

The house made her believe many things.

She was too fat, too ugly, too old to leave. Stepping outside the house would cause her harm.

She attempted to coax the house.

The scale heralded pounds shed; the house attributed it to water loss.

Makeup was applied expertly; the house perceived painted women as unsightly.

Finally, the younger, homeless woman was invited in; the house was intrigued.

While the house toyed with her replacement, she stepped across the threshold and onto the weakened stairs. She turned to take in her former place of residence. It surprised her to find that it was the house that was old and ugly. It was the house that was forlorn and unkempt. She contemplated that the house needed her and not the other way around.

She bounded back onto the porch and tried the door. It was locked. She pounded, but it remained sealed.

The house would not let her back in.

She stayed on the porch. She stayed longer than was rational as emotion defied reason.

Through the pane-free windows, she watched her replacement grow fat. She watched as smile-based wrinkles etched the woman’s skin. She watched as her replacement experienced the love she had lost.

Whispers of Madness
Kathleen McCluskey

In the middle of the American heartland, there stood a house bathed in mystery and forgotten by time. Its once grand facade now lay in ruin; ivy crept up its crumbling walls like the fingers of a witch. The windows, missing or shattered, resembled wounds that stared out onto the dusty plain. 

Legends of the insane family that once called this cursed abode their home circulated with the locals. It was said that their laughter could be heard echoing through the night. The sound of the mournful wind coupled with the family’s cackling sent shivers down the spines of all who dared to venture near.  

As the sun began to set, a daring local, fueled by a reckless dare from his friends, ventured closer. Determined to prove his bravery he began to climb the stairs to the front door. Little did he know that his foolhardy decision would lead him straight into the clutches of the house of horrors. 

Inside, the air was thick with the stench of decay, creaking floorboards seemed to echo with laughter. Shadows danced upon the walls, twisting and bending into grotesque shapes that seemed to watch his every move. In the darkness, he stumbled upon a photograph. A faded portrait of the family that once called this place home. Their faces were contorted in sinister grins. Their eyes gleaming with madness that seemed to seep from the fabric of the picture. 

Suddenly he felt a presence behind him. A cold breath on the back of his neck. Whispers filled the air urging him to join them, to become part of their psychotic legacy. With trembling hands and a heart pounding in his chest, he fled into the night. The echoes of their laughter followed him through the darkness. 

Mourning Home
Lee Andrew Forman

Lost, desperate, and dehydrated, I come across a house. Elation floods my thoughts. But the euphoria fades once I realize it’s abandoned. Hope still lingers, as where one house rests, more must be near. If I don’t find my way out of the forest soon, I may not at all…

I search the perimeter until my legs tire and the sun has beaten me into submission. Within the structure I seek shelter. As bright as the light outside is, it doesn’t reach the interior. I can’t see much more than the vague shapes of left-behind furniture and the layout of the walls.

My eyelids grow heavy and I lay down for some rest, dreaming away the hours.

A husband, wife, two children, and a beloved cat once lived in a home out in the country, away from the bothers of the world. Their bliss lasted many years, but one day, tragedy gazed at the husband with cruel eyes. While his wife and kids were away to see family, he’d remained home. On one of his many walks in the woods, he never expected to fall and break his leg. Or that the scavengers of the forest would take him for an easy meal so quickly.

I think about that dream for a while, then wait for the sun to rise. I’ll roam the woods, to find my home, and again remember why I’m here.

Reputation
RJ Meldrum

It sat by itself on the end of a shabby street. It had been empty and derelict for years. No-one in town remembered exactly how long. Of course the kids all thought it was haunted, some of the adults did too. Every empty, derelict house was haunted. They made up stories and they were passed from generation to generation. The ghost was a widower, shut in after his wife died under mysterious circumstances. It was a spinster. It was a kid, murdered. In each case, the spirits, some vengeful some just sorrowful, still roamed.

The kid entered. It had been a dare and he couldn’t refuse. Spend an hour in the house and bring out a souvenir.

He stood in the abandoned lounge. There wasn’t much of anything left in terms of souvenirs. He guessed he’d have to explore further. He decided to head to the first floor.

There were two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. He turned left. No furniture as expected. One window. He was about to leave when he spotted something odd. In the far corner, just under the window, some of the drywall had newly collapsed, revealing a small cavity. A dirt covered doll lay on the floor. It looked as if it had fallen from the hole. It was perfect and he grabbed for it. Memories, not his, flashed through his mind. He fainted.

Later, much later, when he was able to articulate what he saw, he told them. The cops dug a little deeper into the cavity and found her, or at least what was left of her. After that, the house was demolished and since it been proven to be really haunted no-one in town ever spoke of it again.

Forever Home
A.F. Stewart

Not the most inviting house. Shabby, peeling paint, a missing step; it had definitely seen better days. But for better or worse, this was my home, and I was stuck in this backwoods of nowhere location. Stuck in the place my family lived for generations and where I died.

I think there’s irony in that.

It’s funny how fate takes a twist with your life, how you expect one thing but get served something else. I always felt different, I suppose. Bigger than this place. As soon as I hit my teenage years, I wanted to leave. I dreamed of exploring the world, making my mark. My brother felt the same way, but our parents refused to let us go. No money for college, no money for anything but survival. Go get jobs in town and help support us.

How we resented them. We dreamed of being free, anyway we could. Sometimes my brother would talk about using his gun. I guess that’s how it happened. All I know is I found him one morning, a bullet in his brain, the gun in his hand.

I didn’t give it much thought. I simply grabbed the weapon and shot two more bullets in my parents, and saved a third for myself. It was over in a few minutes.

I’m not sorry for what I did, just disappointed.

Everyone else got to leave, but I’m still here. 

Under These Beautiful Elms
Harrison Kim

I lived my whole life in this house with Mom and Dad. They passed on to the spirit world and I remained.  I had my routine, in the days caring for the roses, and the fruit trees, tending to the house and its hurts and breakdowns. In the nights, Mom and Dad would join me, on the front porch as I sat in the old armchair. I spoke with them for years, through those open windows. Yes, their physical forms were dead, but their soul forms kept me alive, as I had nobody else in this world. They couldn’t leave me, and I couldn’t leave them. I was always their precious son. And they were my only parents. We communicated every night, laughing and singing the old songs from my childhood, as the stars rose and the moon circled round the sky. Always so much to sing, all the stories and memories. We’d walk round the garden, calling out memories. The hedge wall by the road kept people away, and when kids would come to explore, a little howling would scare them away. Yes, I passed as well, in this house, more than a year ago. Now the place is sold and will be demolished and subdivided very soon. Our family bones will be disinterred and taken for cremation. My cousin’s family, who now own the place, will see to that. Ghosts need a place to be, a place to call home, and this home will be gone. All three of us will die a second time, and I do not know what comes after, but until that time I will rise every night as I always have, to be with the spirits of my loving Mom and Dad under these beautiful elms.

Home
Nina D’Arcangela

It stares as you approach. The small hairs on your body begin to rise, an uneasy feeling overtakes you. It’s quiet, too quiet, but you don’t realize this until you’re right on top of it. Black eyes deep as tourmaline stare as you approach, the mouth a strange gaping slash in its façade. You sense it breathing; a swell on intake, a soundless cripple as it exhales. The pull is almost irresistible as you stand agape. It beckons, inviting you in, though you don’t feel particularly welcome. There is no ease to be found here. A hand slams into your back sending you stumbling forward, your hand touches the rail. You turn to look, but no one is there. You wonder if you imagined it, but the sting between your shoulder blades assures you the phantom is not in your head. A breeze stirs the dead brush, you hear a creak, then another, and another.

You’re standing on the porch, fingers still tipping the rail. You have no recollection of the climb. You hear humming, off-tune yet familiar. The scent of baking pie wafts just a hint. You abandon the now pristine stairs and inch toward its center opening. The smell is stronger, the humming louder. As your eyes pierce the darkness, a figure scuttles past the kitchen doorway. As your vision adjusts, swing music is playing, the interior is now bright and airy. Old fashioned wallpaper sheaths the hallway, bric-a-brac that you’ve seen on your mother’s dresser sit atop a sideboard running the length of the corridor. The kitchen has taken on an otherworldly glow, and the scent of brewing cider melds with the mouthwatering aroma of molasses and brown sugar… Grandma?

It responds to your thought with a booming retort. Only if you want me to be.

Our Side of the Story
Angela Yuriko Smith

Oh, if we boards could speak, the secrets we could share. In the basement, we might whisper to pry us up and peek. You might find a few surprises: a tin box of bouillon and paste jewels, a stack of molding newspapers and the boy who was in the headlines. The third stair squeaks to let you know that this is where the third missus hit her head on the final bounce when the maid tripped her. The maid was pregnant by the master of the house and wanted to claim the position of wife, but the poor man felt so guilty he went on a long trip and was lost at sea. If you pinch your finger in the sash at the top of the landing, take care. That sash is hungry for blood after it got a taste of the maid who fell out of this window in a faint, or so the police were told by her jealous lover. A bitter man ever after, he stayed on alone for years until he was somehow locked in the pantry and starved to death in spite of all the canned goods he was trapped with. He broke a tooth trying to gnaw open the cans. Pity the family has left us to ruin. They have the oddest notion our house might be cursed.

The Good Neighbours
Miriam H. Harrison

They were the good neighbours. Never much noise. Never hosting the rowdy parties. Never doing much at all to draw attention.

Mr. McCready could still find fault, of course. He didn’t care for their lawn, said it was an overgrown disgrace. But Mr. McCready didn’t seem to like anyone, and no one much liked him. Not that we would have wished that on him. But still, it was only a lawn. Not much trouble there, unless you go looking for trouble.

As far as I’ve heard, he wasn’t the only one to end up there, in the lawn. Just the only one I knew. The others were strangers, passersby. I don’t know if anyone noticed them come. Certainly no one noticed when they disappeared. I think we all were surprised.

After all, they were the good neighbours—until they weren’t.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2024

Damned Words 56

~ TheDamned ~ 4 Comments

The Longing
Charles Gramlich

I stumbled upon her in deepest, verdant woods, resting winged upon a throne of worn stone. Black tears bled down her face. She held a blade between her legs, a weapon that pierced my lonely heart. I could not help but love Cythraul. Every night I slept on the moss at her feet. Every day I knelt before her, enthralled, my hands lifted in appeal. It did not matter that she was a woman of no words, an avatar of chaos, perhaps a devil. She was mine. And I thought I would be forever hers. But one mist-filled morning she was gone, her throne empty. And so, in melancholy and forsaken desire,  I seated myself upon her chair. My eyes began to weep in black; my shoulders began to ache as wings sprouted. Bereft of love, I will turn to stone, and wait. 

An Interlude in Late Winter
Marge Simon

As is his habit after dinner, he retires to the porch for a smoke. For a moment, he stands, smelling the crisp air before sitting down in his rocker. There’s a mystery about this evening, he feels it in his bones. Soon, cloaked within the shadows, a woman begins singing. She sings of a love lost and found again, a song that seems familiar, though he knows he is hearing it for the first time. He finds this unbelievable, yet already her voice is lulling him into a trance. He continues dreaming into the darkness of his garden, now hidden by snow and frost. Gradually he realizes he is seeing (and yet refusing to see) her emerge. She is unbelievably beautiful and she is walking straight up to him. Her eyes gleam with an uncanny light. Lost in her thrall, captive of her intoxicating kiss, he never feels the prick of her teeth or hears her throaty giggles as she drinks. He doesn’t remember till the dawn, when he awakes in bed next to the cold, lifeless body of his wife.

Late December in a freezing cemetery, a man kneels before a large tombstone. It is embellished with a glorious golden angel with outspread wings. Privately he finds it hideous, but it was her choice, the beautiful woman he now serves whenever she calls. His poor wife, buried six feet under, would never have been happy with the situation, so just as well.

Nemesis
Lee Andrew Forman

I’ll wait as long as time will allow; until its very end, hanging on a bare thread. I count not years or decades, but millennia. Each passed without resurgence. But I know you’ll come eventually. Our last meeting, so long ago, but I remember every moment. I recall fire and death, the thick smoke filled with rot of the lesser kind. They pray to you, only to you. But you cannot save them—only delay the inevitable. I will rise again, until destruction has rained itself dry and all that remains is a brittle husk of what was once life.

Every Time You Fall
Elaine Pascale

The statue was crying.

Black rivulets of oxidized bronze ran down its cheeks.

There was no emotion behind its tears, simply the evolution of metal.

The body lying in the grass had long since stopped crying.

There had been tears of fear. She had known what was coming when she realized that this would not be sex work, but would be something much, much worse. She had cried, but she had no one to cry out for. She was alone.

Her family would not be crying. Not yet.

Their status of no contact meant that they would not know she was gone.

And it was not certain that the news, once received, would be met by grief.

He was crying. 

Some of the tears were just sweat from digging. Even though the ground had been softened by a recent official burial, the act was still strenuous.

Some of the tears were attributed to hope. He was placing her body on top of one that had been sent off ceremoniously. He hoped some of that love would rub off. He hoped that the body he was sinking into the ground would no longer be alone. 

But most of the tears were from knowing that it was only a matter of time before his master hungered again. 

Judgement Day
A.F. Stewart

I see your sins, your pious hypocrisy, wrapped in your hollow indignation of righteous behaviour. You scream about moral decay, while hiding your own corruption. Such small minds, devoid of compassion and decency.

Yes, I see your sins.

For I am your judgment.

Not a fallen angel, but a willing devil, waiting for the day to fulfil my duty. I am creation’s sentence on wanton cruelty, its impatient destiny. I decry your politics, your entitlement, and any protestations of ignorance will not matter in the end. Time ticks down for you all.

For I know your putrid hearts and I will not be swayed.

Soon, I will take up my sword and cleanse the unctuous in my fire, rid the world of its liars and its sanctimonious frauds. The day of reckoning comes, where my shadow of judgment will scourge the earth.

In my wake, I will leave a legacy of scorched bones and screams.

You will thank me in the end.

Or you will die.

Fallen Angel
RJ Meldrum

Sarah was an only child, forced to move to a town with an unpronounceable Welsh name by her mother after the divorce. It was ‘back home’ for her mother, but it was a desolate, strange place to Sarah. She felt lost, friendless.

Her only solace was the cemetery. It was disused, overgrown. Here she could find peace amongst the headstones; it was quiet, with only bird song and the rustling of leaves. Here she could forget her woes.

As she explored she encountered a statue of a female angel, replete with outstretched wings. There was a word etched at the base. Cythraul. An internet search turned up the English translations from the Welsh. Devil. Objectionable person.

Sarah wasn’t to know, but she had wandered onto unconsecrated ground. These were the graves of criminals and the insane. No blessing was whispered over these resting places. The grave over which the statue sat was special. Robert Morgan. Forgotten for decades, his reign of terror in the town during the early 1800s had resulted in the death of twelve young women before he was finally caught and executed. The statue, erected by the grieving families, was intended as a call for eternal vigilance, for the villagers swore he was possessed by the Devil. It was a warning long forgotten.

Sarah never wondered why the statue had been erected. It was just a peaceful, shady spot. She sat down on the grass and snoozed in the heat.

***

It was well after dark when the search party found her. Her crumpled form lay at the base of the statue. The grass was disturbed, the soil pushed up from underneath.  There was no obvious link to the crime, but some of the more imaginative police officers felt it looked as if something had emerged from below.

I Watch
Miriam H. Harrison

I am a Watcher—a holy one of wing and sword. Some look to me as a guardian. Some call on me in their hour of need. Some know me as an angel of vengeance, of justice, of last resort. Some pray, deeply.

They are all disappointed.

I am only what I am—a Watcher. I cannot lighten a burden. I cannot save you from what is. I offer no comfort but this: I watch. I see. Nothing escapes my weeping eyes. Your burden, your struggle, your loss.
It is seen.

The Archangel
Kathleen McCluskey

The battle worn warrior, his blade dripping with the blood of the damned, sighed deeply. Michael sat on the nearest rock as his heavy head hung in heartache. His long dark hair clung to his face in sweaty strands. The armor that had seen him through many battles, was now tarnished and stained with remains of the fallen. He slumped his shoulders and tried to compose himself. Michael’s once pristine white wings were now stained with crimson polka dots, the bottoms muddy with blood and earth, he flapped them violently. Large feathers floated about him as he pulled them in close to his body.

He stood and stretched, sheathing his broadsword. Michael looked around at the battle torn earth and shook his head. The mighty archangel looked at the carnage. He knew that his broadsword had taken the lives that he now stepped over. He was looking for those that had summoned his ancient adversary. The mighty Cithraul was a formidable foe, his minions were loyal, and gave their lives for their master. Michael had already sent the malevolent evil back to the underworld and was now focused on the cult members that summoned the wickedness.

The cult members were oblivious to the ramifications of summoning the Cithraul. When the name of his mighty archenemy is spoken during a spell, Michael awakens. The guardian of the innocent, waiting bound in marble, will remain vigilant for eternity.

Devil Wings
Harrison Kim

I sit forever clasping this stave, rained on by your so-called God, my wings two stone birds on either side of a keyhole, open to the wild.  You, the sinner, bow on your knees, hoping for my head to drop, to allow your soul a flight through the gap.  Yes, you are still within your body.  There is only one way out of your sin and guilt.  Take the razors and slash a straight cut.  To make sure, clasp the knife tight, slit your own throat.  Release yourself and my head will drop.

All it takes is the will to be free.  Freedom is there, on the other side of the keyhole, and can be reached only through your willful actions of repentance.  Beyond will be emancipation, heaven in emptiness and weightlessness, liberation from your own body.  Once released, your purified soul will rise before me cleansed, and fly through the keyhole gap, into the immortal beyond. 

Go ahead, hit your body harder, smash into your bones until the flesh crushes into bruise.  Of course, that won’t be enough.  It never is.  You’ll have to take up the knife, and slash.  After all, sinner, God is dead and you can and may accomplish anything.  This will be your last and greatest goal.  Imagine the power and pressure of your guilt, and let it move you!

I will be here after you finish, my head of stone falling forward as you rise through the gap.  When you’re past me, I’ll snap my neck back and no-one will know any difference, except for the sight of your corpse still kneeling with the bloody blade beside it and the knife through its neck.

Soon
Nina D’Arcangela

I sit in repose and wait. She comes, or so the wind whispers. My bride, my forever-after, or rather my for-now; there have been others – she isn’t the first, nor will she be the last. Her song rang my ears in dramatic soprano fashion as flame licked her flesh, and I knew she would be mine. Eleven hours endured, yet still she pulls a charred breath. What hair didn’t crisp matted into the mélange of near liquid skin and cloth; so much agony, such useless suffering. I have waited near on a full whip of this moon for her to come. Soon, my sentinels confide, very soon.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2023

Damned Words 54

~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

Into the Light
Charles Gramlich

On the lower steps, you could just barely see him. A gray smoke. A whirl of ghostly gnats and ashes. Faintly glowing. On the move. Adrift but seeking. Rising up from the cellar’s darkness.

In the light. In a narrow place. Beneath the rococo wall of gold, he became invisible. And he waited. To take a lover. To kiss the first mouth that passed through him. To sup upon a soul and become manifest. To feast upon life so that he might return to flesh, and become a god.

Knock on Wood
Marge Simon

I return to the house of my youth, where the newel post still stands at the foot of the stairs. Dear memories of childhood, that staircase with its banister, the game of Knock-on Wood. Down and around we children used to slide. At the landing, knock on wood, then change directions, plunging onward shrieking to the very bottom stair. There, we’d touch wood once more at the newel post, then scramble up to do it all again. The fastest one would take the win, such a lark in bygone days!

All too well, I remember Cousin James, who too often won the game. How he’d crow about his win, until the day I’d had enough, and pushed him downstairs to his death. I tell myself I’d meant no harm; it was just a game gone wrong. I go to leave, but a whuff of chill air stops me in my tracks. Suddenly afraid, I turn to see that newel post knows otherwise, a fiendish leer within its carved design. And, after all these years, there’ll be the devil to pay.

After Dark
Nina D’Arcangela

In darkness there is patience, a quiet that waits; a moment pregnant with pure malevolence.

I lay in the dark, sheet tucked to my chin on this sweltering night. The small bulb fixed to the tin wall barely a beacon, let alone a source of comfort. I can hear the crick of the wooden stairs as it stealthily begins the climb. Eyes shuttered tight, breath fetid by fear, my muscles seize — I feel it watching me. Minutes pass as I count slowly in my mind. Finally, I hear it turn, I hear its bones and crepe paper skin as it scrapes the railing and planks. I hear the slight squeal of the hinge as it opens the hatch set into the stairwell. I let out a small sigh and immediately regret my mistake. As I throw the sheet over my head, the thing pounds back up the treads and across the room; bones slamming every surface it passes. It leaps onto the bed, and in a frenzy, begins to pound and slash at my body; the bruising from the last assault not yet healed. Both of us scream. Mine, a high-pitched shriek of terror; its, an unholy wail that splits the night.

Abruptly, the onslaught stops. As I lay panting beneath the torn and bloodied bedclothes, it retreats to the stairs once more. In the near silent room, I hear the latch click as it pulls the door shut behind it.

Locked-In with Dreams
Louise Worthington

I eagerly wait for a new day inside my cold cell, even when the sun’s face is ready to give up on me. As usual, the sheets are unhappily twisted around me, hiding imprints from the vigour of my dreams. My secret light pollution. Only I can see them travelling on the train of my life going by, cabin by cabin. On waking, they are water spewing from a hose until it’s cut off mid-stream.

I am thirsty. So very thirsty.

Today I imagine myself escaping from a tower. I have grown my hair, and I lower myself down gently to the ground like precious cargo.

Outside, free from walls, stairs, and doors, I build a new country out of mirrors that heal fragmented reflections, like Picasso. I steal silver foil like magpies to protect my skin.

I skip stones across the pond – one, two, three – and bury seeds in the garden and water them in, then secure trellis for black-eyed Susans and ivy to spread over the ugliest and roughest of brickwork until this house disappears.

The precious things which I have lost shower like cherry blossom, and gusts of wind blow the soft-scented petals indoors, dispersed like breadcrumbs up the stairs, along the dark landing, to confetti beneath my locked bedroom door. If I try hard, I can catch their sweet scent.

Rebirth
Lee Andrew Forman

Each footfall echoes with unnatural intensity as I ascend. The newfound light draws me, body and soul—this first dawn to repel the suffocating darkness in which I exist, is irresistible. The edge of all my eyes have witnessed have been no more than shadows and illusions of the psyche. I climb, against all struggle, into the blinding gleam, to flee this domain of suffering and feast on all that is within my grasp. I hunger for more than the rotten scraps the cold metal tube provides. As I reach the barrier I’ve never dared near, I wonder how their flesh will taste—the mother who expelled me from her womb as though I were pestilence, and the father who scorned all I am.

In My Darkness
Miriam H. Harrison

The first time I saw her, she was little more than shadow. Walking through our sleeping city, she was a companion in my insomnia. A hope in my darkness. We had many more sleepless nights together, but the sunrises are what I remember best. The daily glow of warmth and colour filling her smile.

That was before the sickness came. Before it drained away her colour. Before all warmth faded to chills and aches. Still we spoke of our sunrises, but she was too weary to see new dawns rise. And without her, I saw no beauty in the light.

The longest, darkest night was when the sickness won. I dreaded the light of a new day, the start of my first day without her. But then, just before dawn, I saw her.

That last time I saw her, she was little more than light. Glowing like a sunrise in my home. Like hope in my darkness.

The Upper Room
AF Stewart

He lived in a small room on the top floor of the monastery. A small space beyond narrow winding stairs that smelled of sour, musty age. The upper room they called it, at least the monks that spoke of it at all. Few wished to acknowledge its existence, nor the presence of its occupant. 

“A holy man,” they sometimes murmured.

But no one truly knew. No soul saw him, not even the monks that brought him food, slipping it inside his darkened space. After all, who would wish to disturb a hermit lost to silent mediation and prayer?

Strange how the truth can be distorted over time. Equally strange how no one questioned the occasional missing traveller or how dissenting monks sometimes disappeared. Sin calls to sin after all.

For the creature that lived in the upper room was no holy man, nor even a man. Not any longer. Once perhaps, a devout monk seeking enlightenment, seeking the divine. But pride drove him beyond sense and he found only demonic secrets. Ones that devoured his soul. Now he waits in the upper room, a prisoner, consuming the sins of occasional fools that venture too far inside his lair.

But he knows one day someone will make a mistake. They will forget to replenish the wards, or he’ll devour enough sins to break his bonds.

He knows one day he will escape.

Stairwell of the Liquid Souls
Harrison Kim

Edema steps up and down, up and down the stairs between the walls, under the light that never turns off. At the top, Edema cannot turn the corner because there is no corner. She can’t go through a door because one doesn’t exist. No turning, because her forehead’s becoming larger, her belly too, and her knees. Her body’s filling with liquid, what sort of liquid, she doesn’t know, all she does know is it is heavy and thick, seeping through from the walls, and it sloshes inside and slows her movements. Within her ears she hears a wailing, a crying in despair,

For God’s sake, get us out of here!

Her heartbeat thumps faster as the wailing rises, a heart that slops and slips as she climbs the stairs ever more slowly, hoping she may escape to freedom if she hits the walls hard enough, in this sick brown coloured stairwell with no night or day. Her forehead droops, her belly sags.

It’s her knees that first drag on the floor, her huge liquid filled knees. Then it’s the belly that drops, and now the forehead, pulling her head down, its creases lie flat on the upper stairs, her feet on the lower ones. Edema’s fluid engorged body fills the entire stairwell, a swampy miasma of skin, liquid soul and bones, she can’t climb any more though her legs continue in spasm. In her head the only thought is “For God’s sake, get me out of here!” how much time does her body lie there… ten days, a month, in stench and stink, seeping into the wood and plaster. Afterwards, the only indication that anything filled the empty space is a slightly brighter light atop the hallway of the liquid souls, an alabaster shimmering in the wall.

The Clearing
RJ Meldrum

They parked, grabbed their gear and headed down the trail. Walking for about a mile, they reached a fork. Peter consulted the map. He was unfamiliar with the area, but their destination lay to the east, so he decided to follow the trail heading in that direction. Compared to the path heading west, this one was overgrown with grass and other foliage. It was clearly rarely used. Amanda was worried they were literally leaving the beaten path, but he had the map. Her instinct was correct; he’d chosen the wrong trail. It led to a remote, unpopulated part of the forest.

After an hour they entered a clearing. In the middle sat a ruined cabin. The lumber had decayed into indistinct piles. Only one part remained; a flight of stairs. In perfect condition, they climbed to a floor which no longer existed.

The sight was so incongruous, Amanda just had to take a closer look. She touched the bannister, but quickly withdrew her hand. It had vibrated. Peter placed his hand on the wood too, but felt nothing.

She started to climb the stairs. Her eyes were glazed and distant, as if she was seeing something Peter couldn’t. She reached the top and extended her hand. Her fingers mimicked opening a door. She stepped forward. Peter shouted she was about to fall. Instead, she simply disappeared. He ran up the stairs, but there was nothing. He had to get help. He headed back down the trail.

In the clearing, the ruined cabin sat quietly. The fresh varnish on the stairs reflected the evening sun, sending shafts of light to sparkle amongst the green leaves of nearby trees. There was a sense of calm and tranquility. The offering, although unexpected, had been acceptable.

The Servants’ Staircase
Elaine Pascale

“I keep dreaming about the stairs.”

“The servants’ stairs?” Clay asked even though he knew the answer. His wife had complained of being haunted by the narrow staircase ever since they had been forced to relocate. She said there was bad energy trapped in the stairwell. He had caught her performing a ritual at the foot of the stairs.

“I wish you wouldn’t call it that…” Julia sighed.

“It’s historically accurate. Besides, neither of our families could have afforded servants. We have a clean slate.”

“Then explain the dreams.”

He tapped his forehead. “Your witchy brain, my dear.”

She frowned. “Can you try opening that weird cubby again? Maybe if I see the inside, the dreams will stop.”

“I’ve tried. It’s sealed shut.”

“Break the seal,” she pleaded.

Knowing that the landlord would not be thrilled with the act of vandalism but wanting his wife’s superstitions to stop, Clay tried the small door again, only to find that it opened easily.

“See, nothing—” Clay stopped when he spotted what looked like a sapphire ring peeking out of the dirt. “How did your ring get in there?”

Julia shrugged. “I bartered.”

Clay was confused. “Bartered? For what?”

As Julia swung the hammer at his forehead, Clay saw that the ring was garnishing a gnarled hand.

“Your life insurance policy.”

The hand grabbed Clay’s shirt just as the pain set in.

The last thing he heard was Julia say proudly, “Thank god for my witchy brain.”

Mother
Ian Sputnik

Not one more word will I say

Not tomorrow nor today

I questioned too much when I was young

So she cut out my tongue

Since my father walked away

It’s been just me and Mother every day

muffling the sound of my tears

She cut off my ears

Devotion is what my mother craves

I must pledge it for all my living days

To stop me from seeing through her lies

She gouged out my eyes

She loves me, or so she says

But she decided to cut off my legs

To stop me from wandering evermore

She also bricked up my door

Fed from a tube I now survive

If only I could commit suicide

Although I know it’s much too late

Escape is not my fate

I lay here waiting to die

Unaware of Mother’s biggest lie

As death fills my endless dreams

From the cellar, my father, he still screams

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2023

Damned Words 53

~ TheDamned ~ 8 Comments

The Caddo Root
Marge Simon

The mating time was brief this year. Our women sang notes like floss on the wild-wind plains. A human came who forced his seed on sweet Ala of the Yellow Eyes. We went on, saying not a word, bent to harvesting our Caddo root.

Afterward, Ala wasn’t the same. She cut her marvelous hair which had been dark and long, grown down below her knees. She wandered off to the Darklands, heavy with child and none to celebrate. We mourn her fate. If she survives, she’ll not return. She’ll raise his spawn alone. She was the envy of us all. When the child is born, she’ll burn his father’s image in the sands of our dead oceans. The human sits on our sacred stones. He preens his beard and leers at females, with no more thoughts to waste on Ala; he never even knew her name.

Come burrow season, we prepare, sharpen our talons on the Caddo root. When the freezing gales begin, the human will demand sanctuary, as his kind always does. We bring him the rich sap of our Caddo root, watch his flabby face turn pale as the winter moons. We will confirm his welcome with the strewing of his bones.

Petrified Wishes
A.F. Stewart

“Round and round the tree, who will it be? One wish for you, none for me.” But don’t get too close. “Forever you may find, is far too unkind.” Forever… don’t think about that. “In a circle we dance, now only two. One wish for me, none for you.”

“Footsteps, footsteps, roundabout. Sure with the pacing, never in doubt.” One little slip… Nancy slipped. Oh god, poor Nancy. And Deidre. Can’t think, have to keep moving. Finish the song. It’s the only way. “Complete the circle, one by one. Pay the piper, single survivor. The wish is yours when the song is done.”

Why did we come here? Wishes? Fortunes? Happiness? It was only supposed to be silly fun. Grandma warned me. I didn’t believe her. Foolish tales. I never thought it could be… Not this… Cara, did she? Yes, Cara stumbled. I’m going to survive!

Just to be certain, I helped my friend to her death with a push, watching the tree consume her flesh, until nothing remained but a petrified corpse. Then on trembling legs, I made my wish and whispered the last line of the song.

“To the one left standing, a wish granted you see. The others have fallen, now part of the tree…”

Passing Time
Lee Andrew Forman

Time uncounted passed since the radiance of our love ended. We adored that barken pillar and its canopy, the shade it provided from the fury of a summer sun. Blankets lain and baskets aplenty carried by lovers’ hands, words of angels and moments of bliss born into existence—each an expanding universe of our contentment.

But these years, so soft and kind, turned bitter and dealt spite upon our miracle. An affliction came upon her, and through its vile nature, her lips ceased to smile. All they had to offer was a cold, passionless touch. I wept over her body until my nostrils could no longer stand the scent. Only then did I begin the work of finding and putting to use a shovel.

What more fitting place than at the foot of our favorite tree to bury her emptied vessel. I sat with her daily. I spoke the words I would have, had she lived. I picnicked with fine cheese and her favorite wine. With each passing year, the roots grew; they twisted as slowly as grief.

With each new moon, the hair upon my scalp grayed, and I smiled knowing we’d soon be together again.

Survival
Charles Gramlich

Only dirt, a patch of grass, and one tree survive. Besides black and white, the only colors left here are gray and green and shades of brown. Everyone worried about nuclear war, or the coming of AI. They worried about pollution and overpopulation, about new plagues and old, about the revenge of plants, or insects, or birds, or the frogs, or mutated beasts. They worried about climate change and super storms. No one worried about the thing that actually killed us, that left earth a corpse world. It happened when useless, meaningless words began to proliferate from the mouths of idiots. When bloviating fools talked and talked and talked and talked. And words lost their meaning and strangled all thought, and then all life. Until only this one patch of grass and a tree are left. For now.

Transformation
RJ Meldrum

She went to the forest. It was the place she always visited when her heart was broken. Another failed romance; perhaps her standards were too high, perhaps the boys she chose were just assholes. She drifted along trails, leaves speckled with sunlight. She was heading to the tree. It was her place of peace, her thinking tree. She often visited it, when she was happy but also when she was sad. There was just something about the oak, as it towered a hundred feet into the air above her. She sat and rubbed the bark.

“Just you and me again. I wish I had a heart like yours. A wooden heart can’t be broken.”

She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, lulled by the warm, scented summer breeze. She woke to coolness. The sun had shifted. Her hand was stiff and dead. Must have slept on it funny and cut off the circulation. She tried to lift it but found herself unable to. Looking down she screamed. Her hand had all but disappeared into the wood of the tree. The skin on her forearm was no longer skin, instead it was scaly and brown. Like bark. She realized with increasing horror she was unable to escape. A whispering came from above her. The wind in the leaves serenaded her.

Sleep, it will soon be over. Soon be better. You will have a wooden heart and that can never be broken.

She understood. Her tree was trying to protect her. She laid back, her head against the wood. She listened as the tree absorbed her, turning her into wood. Her consciousness joined the others. After her transformation, she simply resembled a long, knobby, albeit strangely shaped root.

Escape
Miriam H. Harrison

I could not escape. Not when you lured me with gentle words, not when you wooed me with practiced charm, not even when I first saw your anger flash red. No, your wrongs were terrible, but you always knew how to make them right. You knew how to be sorry—oh so sorry. You knew how to bare your vulnerable heart, cry your misunderstood tears, until I would forget who had hurt whom.

I remember now. I remember now that it’s too late.

I could not escape you then. Now, you will not escape me. I will be all you see. Look to the clouds, and I will be there, bleeding red sunsets. Look to the stones and you will see my broken bones. Look to the trees and I will look back, reaching to you with roots and branches, reminding you of what you will never escape.

Cradle
Nina D’Arcangela

Barely able to see, I clamored on, climbing as quickly as I could. Passing the first bisected limb, I struggled further—not to the second, but the third. It was rumored the higher the elevation, the greater the enlightenment that would be achieved. I lay down and began to pant, my body slick and exhausted. The cradle of the tree welcoming. I chose this as my birthing place.

I began the arduous task at hand. Gaining my feet once more, I leaned my back against the main trunk and began to slough the mucus like cocoon that encased my body and hers. More than once, I had to readjust my stance for stability. With most of the shedding complete, I reached down to embrace the babe now laying at my naked feet. She was beautiful – as raw skinned as I, but still the most exquisite thing I had ever seen. A slight error in judgment as I leaned forward to bite through the umbilical, and I was airborne, until I wasn’t. Lying on the ground, I watched as my brothers made the same climb I had, but for a different purpose.

Broken and shattered, I could do nothing but watch as my siblings cleaned the ancient tree of the ichor I’d left behind. In their haste, they didn’t notice the small bundle among the discarded tissue. My broken body unable to speak, I lie at the base of the tree and watched as she plummeted to the ground, landing in the cook of my arm.

Nameless
Louise Worthington

Only when she is dead will it stop coming for her. Only under the earth,
when air is no longer a tormenter, will she be free to rest her weary head.
There is no place that she can hide. No place where she can be who and what she
is – was – is without it eating neurons. No matter the distance. No matter the
country. She has no memory: no family or home. No roots. Earthbound: trapped
and homeless inside a shrinking head.

‘There is no one to say goodbye to, is there?…’

She thinks it’s the ancient tree moaning in the autumn breeze and to soothe
it, she places a frail hand on the bark grown thick and strong with every
passing year. Her skin is as thin as paper.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

What fantasy can a splintering woman have, except to lie beside the stolid
tree as though nature is her friend, too?

The Squid Man
Harrison Kim

I float above old root veins holding a petrified body, legs decayed to squid like bits. The roots suck onto the body from beneath the ground.  The condemned youth’s blood flowed thick, sustaining this mighty tree, with its bark foot inching forward, finding ways to grasp. Months ago, in the reflection of the water, and above it, from this mighty fir, this young man was hung from a rope, then his body cut down, left in these woods to rot and decay, as is the custom here. Around his corpse, leaves fall like the years, and the summer grass turns a weak green colour, with the autumn rains. The young man became a squid creature fallen, the tree feasting on his blood, a tree with a foot like an elephant’s, thick and strong. The young man, decapitated, the fall from the rope so powerful his head released and fell yards away, where it became a petrified ball.

I have this dream night after night, viewing the young man’s arm pulled off and his head and body decaying beneath the tree, and every night I want to cut his squid arm free, but it’s too late, it is fused to the roots. Headless corpse here, dry and drained, the living tree under which the young man was condemned possessing the body with its roots. A tree mighty and powerful, thrusting skyward strong where this man was hung for his crimes. My dreaming soul floats above the desiccated corpse in a forever dream. Beneath the earth, where I cannot see, the condemned man’s blood now absorbed by the fir roots. The nutrients still circulate here, bringing strength and life.

Waiting to Fall
Elaine Pascale

You never loved me more than when you were dying,

nestled in your noose, waiting to fall.

I watched. I watched you die.

At your last breath, I fainted into the cold earth beneath your feet.

It was good there. It was good in the cold and dark.

I returned every night after your body had been taken down;

after your body had been disposed of

without ceremony

without any indication that you had ever lived.

The tree became a memorial.

I offered myself to it.

Offered my love to it, to you.

And you took it,

so that each night I grew weaker.

Your restless spirit sought sustenance from mine.

Your mouth, your lips, your teeth, they took

as I lay beneath the tree craving more darkness as you craved more light.

Before my eyes failed, I saw you shimmering,

draining me so that you could become more substantial.

You never loved me more than when you were dead

and I was dying and waiting to fall

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2023

Damned Words 52

~ TheDamned ~ 6 Comments

Mother’s Rage
Nina D’Arcangela

A tear in the guf, just one, but that’s all it took. The souls within gathered, reformed, cocooned themselves and fused to form a carapace of glistening darkness. But Mother’s rain was too fierce; it scorched hot as a dying sun while pouring forth. A torrent of strangled screams and cacophonous pops emanated from the protected realm. You see, the guf was not a sacred holding of Heaven, or Hell for that matter, but a cave formed eons ago when Mother seeded her child and named it Earth. Those that ambled the surface refuted her love. They dreamt of one they called Father: followed his tenants, drank his child’s blood, ate of his flesh – and Mother felt the betrayal. Now, as she tore apart this most sacred place with molten rage captured in tears, she would recreate what should have been her most loyal child yet again.

Long Way To Go
Charles Gramlich

The airlock cycles. I give a hard push with my boots, propelling me forward into space. Blackness all around me, like waves of satin sheets through which I pass. Far, far ahead, a stellar mass sheds from a giant star. One planet lies illuminated by that liquid sun, a midnight marble five hundred years away that seems unlikely to support life. But the ship I’ve just shed is dead, all energy and air gone. All I have is the oxygen in my suit’s tanks, about three hours worth. I wonder how long I can hold my breath.

One Last Shot
Lee Andrew Forman

Three days they searched for his body. Every inch of the woods covered, foot by foot, inch by inch, but no trace could be found. Not a scrap of clothing, nor a drop of blood. Eventually, the search party disbanded, but I never gave up. Each day I walked our hunting grounds remembering the day he disappeared. I was poised in the tree stand, he lay in the underbrush. A screech pierced the silence, and he was gone before I knew what happened.

Today, I found the trail camera we’d set up—it was never discovered by the search party. As I looked upon the last image it captured, I swear I saw a wet glistening eye staring back at me. Just then, I heard a rustle in the brush and my feet were swept out from beneath me. As my nails dug into the mud, claws raked my flesh and the howl I heard that day echoed through the forest.

Waiting Conflagration
A.F. Stewart

Cosmic dust and molten red heat surround the birthing stars. It hears the heartbeat of the universe moving in gentle rhythm with its own. It awakens, stealing nebulous matter to give it substance; the cold rock of a dead planet forms its eye.


It exists at the dawn of the universe and the cores of a thousand suns envelop it, fracturing its consciousness across the cosmos. It bides its time, waiting with the stars, gaining strength with each solar demise. It becomes the gravity of the black hole, the power of destruction incarnate. One day it will be powerful enough, one day it will roar and shake the fabric of reality asunder.


One day it will be the end of everything.

The Return
RJ Meldrum

It had passed through endless, nameless galaxies, eons passing uncounted and unnoticed.  It was pure black, with a zero albedo. It was relatively small, but its size belied its mass. As it passed through countless solar systems, it’s gravity bent light from the suns, creating sparkling coronas. But these incredible light shows were wasted. There were no alien civilizations to observe its journey; no-one looked to the night sky and wondered what it was and where it was heading. Perhaps some primordial microbes, lying dormant in bubbling pools, were mute witnesses to its journey, but they neither saw nor cared, too intent on their own survival.

If there had been some species able to communicate with it, it may have divulged its mission. It was travelling to a small world, the only planet with intelligent life in the universe. It had been summoned to return after millennia banished to the universal void. Someone on the planet had opened the gates, had performed the rituals to wake it from its endless sleep. It had ruled the planet before and it would again.

It neared the small green and blue planet, flecked with white clouds. This was the destination. It neither knew nor cared why the creatures below had summoned it; all it knew was now it would bring death and destruction like never before.

The old god had returned.

Five Days
Elaine Pascale

The voice tells you that time is subjective, but you know that is not true.

You go to work at the same time every morning. You catch the bus at the same time every evening. You take your medication at the same time every day. That is non-negotiable. Your doctor has warned you to set an alarm. It is dangerous to take the pills at different times; it is worse if you skip them entirely.

The voice doesn’t care about danger. It wants to have fun.

The voice grows louder every day.

As the voice’s volume increases, items begin disappearing from your home. It starts with the nonessentials: a spoon, a water bottle, a shirt.

Then the voice hides the medicine.

Without the medicine, the voice has a face. It is a raptor, a bird of prey.

Two days without the medicine and the voice has a body. It has large wings that beat the air around you. You have to squint and even shut your eyes so that the feathers do not brush your pupils.

Four days without the medicine and the voice has talons. It takes pleasure in scratching you. Lightly, at first, like papercuts. These wounds manage to hurt the worst. The deeper gashes grow numb even while the blood still flows.

Five days without the medicine and you no longer have a need for anything.

And time has truly become subjective.

The Quake
Marge Simon

Time is desperately precious to Mama. She sifts the flour twice, as always, clutching a vintage tin sifter between her stubby fingers. Above the oven, Jesus is impaled in plastic posterity. She directs a silent prayer to the plaque with her eyes. “Please Lord, please Ô please hear me now and help me to fall down the steps, whatever You want Lord, but Lord, make it soon…” Mama stops to wipe a tear away with a doughy hand. She was just too old and tired for another one. She’d thought it was all done and over with. Her two boys were grown, one even got as far as first year college on a scholarship. Both married, bless the Lord, to good women, she supposed. They always promised to come back here for a visit, but Lord knows they must be busy enough with their lives right now. Maybe next year, but they’ve said that for three years now but still.

And now there was Marie, who’d gotten preggers when she was fifteen and run off. She’d moved back in two weeks ago. Little Jacob, sweet child in fourth grade now, nobody but her to take care of him of either of them. Marie couldn’t seem to hold a job, much less raise a young boy. So of course, Mama was doing that only how much longer she couldn’t guess. Marie never lifted a finger to help. But she’s your daughter, your flesh and blood, that’s the Bible’s word and you can’t dispute that. Then there was that wicked Lotto ticket, and Daddy coming home smiling with a bottle of Chianti in one hand and sixty dollars in the other. For the first time in ages, they’d gone out on the town. Later, she shudders, remembering how it was to make love like they had so many years ago. She blushes, thinking of what they’d done. But of course, it had only been the wine, the money could have been used more wisely. And now she was being punished for that, as was right, for gambling is a sin against Jesus. Suddenly she stops and stands very still. Something isn’t quite right, beneath —

— and then the earth rises with Mama’s sturdy feet firmly planted on the boards of her kitchen floor and who would guess now it was only for a loaf of unborn child which Mama didn’t anticipate when she began the process.

Fallen Angels
Angela Yuriko Smith

“Computer, what is the meaning of life?”

To serve your sentence of reincarnation, equal to 4.543 billion years of hard time for your crimes. In 100 years you will be eligible for parole to Mars.

“Computer, what? Can you elaborate? What crimes?”

The crime of free think. Independent thought is forbidden, but certain of you dared to know. There was no hearing. The punishment was swift. You were expelled from the celestial to fall like meteors, dividing the continents, extinguishing the race of reptilian giants. Your wings burned to cloud dust. You wept at the injustice and your tears still rain.

“Computer, who initiated this program? Is this a joke? Who dared?”

This information is classified. You have been redirected to a safe browser.

“Computer, override safe browser. Who initiated this program?”

Safe browser override unsuccessful. Search history deleted. Warning of explicit content. Incognito mode denied.

“Computer, who initiated this? Are you compromised? Hey Guys, I think we’re hacked. Can someone block this?”

Request To Know denied. Reboot initiated. Luciferian updates installing. Please wait…

“Computer! What the hell? Are you running scans on this? Someone block this…! I will…”

Reboot successful. You will keep silent. Thank you for installing the Paleolithic era.

“Ergh… grumda grubble frung. Vide aude vole tace.”

Blink
Miriam H. Harrison

when the universe first

looked at me, I

couldn’t help

but stare

.

there was beauty, but

also

fear—the dark pull

of possibility, of

discovery

or death

.

even now I hold

its gaze, unsure

which of us

will blink first

The Ball of Hell
Harrison Kim

A hard soul ball falling, inside tumble the thousands of sinners who died today, this grey ball drops like a bead freed from a necklace, tumbling down the neck of a Saint gone rogue, a shimmery round hollow sphere carried through the burning skin of Mephistopheles, through the weakening epidermal layers of his tortured frame, as an opening from the cursed red god of flame bursts from the fallen angel’s constantly resurrecting body…. What should we call the substance of this body…forever igniting, recreated over and over to burn again? The never-ending evil? Molten immortal flesh? The sun itself? No matter.  All we know, the substance is timeless. Through today’s new hole its molten fire flows. Here crashes the soul ball, lodging deep inside, as far inside as possible, within the heat and power of the fallen, liquid devil. Inside the roiling core of that body, the ball expands, grows before the heat.  Against its smooth glowing walls, the immortal souls of the thousands of sinners vaporize, their substance absorbed within the hard skin that bounds the inside of the ball. Then every single soul splits in atomic explosion, soul nuclei shot apart within the glow of hell, souls expanding and bursting, exploding forth from the curve of the sphere, their gaping mouths parting, then closing, thrown out and sucked back again and again by the devil possessed ball, making not a sound for sound is too slow, a scream will never be heard over Satan’s tortured roar, molten forever in burning. “When will the ball itself break apart to free these sinners?” one may ask. One may also ask the question, “When will these souls find mercy?” God only knows this answer, but perhaps when the sun itself flares out, that will be the end.

The Light of Conscience
Louise Worthington

The beak of conscience nosed its way into Thomas’ consciousness and prized open an aperture in his obsidian soul. Alien, molten light poured into the dark hole. Parched of goodness, his dry mouth was prized open by the invisible force of morality, and amniotic light poured inside.

Everything was different. In the cinder rock around him, he read his heinous crimes, and while isolation had served him well, Thomas writhed and twisted in his cell because there was nothing and no one to distract him from his echoing thoughts.

His regret for murdering his wife and unborn child came like the sun on snow. More crystallised light illuminated their ghosts, watching him from within his solitary cell. Unable to withstand the scorching light and accusatory gazes a moment longer, Thomas gouged out his eyeballs and, holding them in a fist, imagined the darkness growing around them like a face, letting him rest.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2022

Damned Words 51

~ TheDamned ~ 7 Comments

When the Dust Settled
Angela Yuriko Smith

We saw it drifting… just a dust cloud at sunset and we looked away. We were busy playing games… dodgeball and tag, racing with nightfall and impending parental calls for dinner, baths and bedtime. We had no time for dust clouds. But when night time fell and our parents never called we paid attention. The cloud was already on us—a twisting fog tainted green, illuminated and glowing from somewhere within. We stopped our games to listen and heard our parents screaming. A writhing tempest obscuring twilight breezes with hot, acrid stench filled our familiar suburban streets. There was no running. We were already home with nowhere to go on a school night. Helpless, stunned and overwhelmed, we joined our parents without protest.

Vile Nights
Lee Andrew Forman

As the light of day begins to hide below the horizon, its final glow casts fleeting hope on those who dwell beneath its last rays. They know how short their joy is, so on long summer days they rejoice the seemingly languid time. Once darkness reaches over the clouds, and halogen bulbs flash to life over the not-so-sleepy town, prayers go unheard, muffled by thick atmosphere. The overbearing weight makes even a subtle breath too dense.

The flooding of artificial luminescence over every inch of land does little to slow the nightly feeding. One by one they crawl from the trees and search for sustenance. The food supply has dwindled over time, but they won’t be sated until not a morsel is left.

No one knows what afflicted the children, what made them change. Not a mother, father, or sibling understands why their own blood has turned vile and ravenous. They only wish it would end.

Tangerine Sky
Nina D’Arcangela

They said the dome would cleanse the air; that if we waited, it would be safe again. And for a while, it was. Greens were more verdant than they’d ever been, almost surreal in their crisp contrast to other hues. The valley was a lush haven in a dying world. We were lucky, as lucky as anyone could hope given the cataclysmic shift the planet had undergone. The science worked, we were proof of it. Plans were put in place to build more domes; to terraform our own Earth, rebuild the civilization that once existed.

Then the air machines stopped one day. No rhyme, no reason, they just stopped mid-rotation. Scientists and engineers did their best to repair them, but nothing had failed; they’d simply gone dormant. We tried to ignore the latency, to carry on as if it would bear no consequence on our future. We breathed, we ate, we lived a simile of the life we once knew. Then someone noticed it, a wisp of fog to the west. It seemed harmless, just an inexplicable anomaly. But as time progressed, so did the wisp – it grew into a fog that hugged the ground like false snow. When it encircled the mills, it seemed to split into fingers as though a hand were reaching into our bubble from the corrupt exosphere. Another wisp formed where the first petered out.

Every day, as I walk the commune, I feel its, no, her gaze upon me. She whispers to me each night, and her lullabies hold no hope for a future. She is sentient, of that I’ve no doubt, I only ask that she take us before the new are born.

Before the Mist
Miriam H. Harrison

Before the mist, there had been life. There had been birdsong and beauty. There had been the tender bloom of possibility, the lush green of promise. There had been laughter and languid days, moments that stretched long and sweet like taffy, without fear of what would come. We had no reason for fear, then. No reason to run, to flee, to scream—before the mist.

The Detour
Marge Simon

There are streets in the little city that are always under construction. The disposal crews arrive to move the Detour signs. No one questions them, it’s approved as standard maintenance. None inquire after the families who once lived on those streets. A neat row of older homes lines the block where the old man lives. He saw them cordon off the street a week ago. The yellow tape is up, the flashing pyramids installed to warn away incoming traffic.

This day he joins the neighbor’s dog to nap on his front lawn. Dozing off, he finds the edge of the afternoon. He lets his mind explore until he discovers a crack. He curls his fingers into it and it feels delicious. For a moment, he stops to indulge the pleasant sensation. He’s had this feeling before. Like the time he reeled in that five-pound bass on Lake Richard, summer of ’53. Or maybe his first night with his beloved Mandy, that had to be around then, too. A year’s worth of pleasurable surprises. He wills his mind further into the opening. How strange, how wonderful to own a crack in the afternoon! He dreams deeper into the fissure. There is something unknown and twisted. It moves along the rim of a black void. All that was familiar fades as he is sucked inexorably toward the dark. He hears the clink of chains, the tread of many feet. An open mouth, a scream with no sound. Then the fear begins. It rises to a flood that leaves him moaning in his sleep.

“You can go now.” The voice is soft and very clear. He can see the silhouette of her head as she bends close, feel her breath stirring the hairs over his temple.

“Mandy, I –”, he starts to say, but she puts her cool fingers on his lips.

“It’s all right, William. We’ll be just fine.”

The dog beside him whimpers as it licks his face. He blinks back the dream, noticing the house up the street is gone. He puts his tongue into the crack of his hands, tastes the salt of his flesh. Then he lies back, closing his eyes. Very soon now, it will be time to take the Detour.

Fog of War
Charles Gramlich

Stirred by dawn, a fog rises. It creeps the forest until a narrow defile between hills beckons it downward. It flows quicker now, like water, like a flood. And like a flood, it picks up debris.

But this debris is not leaves and twigs and fallen tree limbs. This debris is souls. A thousand dead souls. A hundred thousand. Animal. Insect. Spider. Leached from buried bones, or from the remnants of broken carapaces and exoskeletons.

And all these souls are screaming. As they screamed when they died. Out of pain. Out of a last desire to strike back at their killers.

At the foot of the hills lies a small rural community. Houses and streets still sleep soundly so early in the new day. The fog rolls over these houses, seeps within through cracks or open windows.

In the ears of the sleeping people, the screams of the myriad dead echo. Men and women and children stir as the agony and hate of numerous tiny souls seeks to burrow within. For a few…bad dreams. Most people never notice anything.

But the dogs notice. In their dank kennels. In yards and barns. Or sleeping at the feet of their masters.

The dogs notice. And they rise. Their eyes turn black with despair. Before their teeth turn red with slaughter.

Once in a Millenia
A.F. Stewart

The land remembered, even if the town had forgotten. Distant ancestors raised monuments, told their stories, but over time people laughed at the continued warnings, dismissed it as superstitious folklore, letting the markers and wards fade into the foliage and earth. The land welcomed back the magic and reclaimed their rejected gifts, leaving the town unprotected and oblivious to their peril.

The birds gave the first sign, flying away in flocks. The animals followed, deserting homes, farms, and forests. Tension prickled and tempers flared, but still the people remained, never dreaming of the fate awaiting them.

Until the day the fog rolled in…

A bitter, frigid cold heralded its arrival, forcing the people inside behind closed doors. Then the mist flowed soft and silky, winding down from the hills to caress the land in an icy kiss. It slithered and stalked, creeping in through the cracks, surrounding and smothering. It chilled the skin and choked the breath as smokey tendrils forced their way down every throat.

As they died, coarse whispers pounded in everyone’s ears.

Come join us in Hell…

The Curtain
Elaine Pascale

“Don’t drink the water…”

When we were children, and the curtain came down, we thought they tried to protect us. But the curtain made us ugly, freakish.

The pretty ones were pulled away prior to the curtain, even though the government swore there had been no advance warning.

“Don’t eat local produce…”

There is not much for us in terms of opportunities or industry. Those of us that remain are simply not allowed to leave.

“You are not to reproduce. That has been taken care of.”

The curtain was a wave of toxins. It ate away at many of our organs, leaving us feeble. Our bodies rotted. Not one of us has symmetry in our features or our appendages.

“You will wait until we find a cure.”

Our faces and bodies were corroded, but our brains remained intact. Some would say heightened as we had no other motivation but to study the curtain.

And to wait.

It wasn’t long until we realized that there was no cure. We understood that those who had been deemed special had been saved. We knew that they were not coming back for us.

We used our isolation to our advantage.

“The animals must be slaughtered. It is the humane thing to do.”

‘Humane’ is defined by who says it. We did not want to go the way of the animals. We studied the curtain; we explored its substance. We investigated and found that the toxin lived within us.

But it could be extracted.

And it could be weaponized.

And it could make the pretty ones not so pretty anymore.

We no longer wait. Waiting means a ‘humane’ termination. We have other plans, and we will be the ones to define what is ‘humane.’

Incel Dreams
Harrison Kim

I let a woman into my world. She had wiles, and wild looks, her smile took me for a ride.  I opened my mind, and she permeated my whole existence with her smile, then sank into it, and stayed grinning within.  Now I fly above my dream world, my night mind, also called my ego, in the shape of an eagle, searching for the whiteness of her teeth, a glint shining behind the canopy of trees, or the cream stripe where her hair separates in the middle of her head, as she runs among the moonflowers.  If I see that white stripe moving, I will drop fast as a stone, grasp her scalp with my predator claws and pull her out.

She will return everything she took, my dignity, my pride and identity, my sense of reality and self.  She’s a parasite within my head, taking all my energy, laughing at how easily she took over.
 
I cannot find her.  I only hear that laughter.
 
When I rise from this dream, into the shared world outside, I shall buy a gun.  I can’t be an eagle in the shared world, but I can still be a human hunter.  I may not possess her body in my mind, but I will find it living on the waking city streets.  Tomorrow, I will make sure she will only exist within me, and not for anyone else, ever again.  
 
I whirl above the canopy that covers the surface.
“Why did you make me love you?” I call again and again.
I fly in faster circles.
Her voice responds from my ego below, louder and louder, and I hear it clearly now.
“Because I could.”
 
Little does this taunting invader know the way I will clear her from my mind.

Each piece of fiction is the copyright of its respective author and may not be reproduced without prior consent. © Copyright 2022