Fulfilling the Horror theme...
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Curling her hands together, the woman sat on the railing and waited. Every day she waited, the unease was more and more visible. She would move, from place to place, pacing on the deck, from sun up to sun down. Her home was right by the Black Gate, the only way on or off by water canal from the front deck. The house itself was of old, splintery grey wood, and the woman seemed as splintered as the panels by the end of the week.
After twelve days of waiting, her sister had come sailing by in a small rowboat. The river was narrow enough for two or three boats to pass, but all the houses were clustered together like an army unit, shoulder to shoulder. Windows opened into other houses, with only an inch of room to spare. She had not seen her sister in some time, and the word of her remaining neighbors told her that she was want to wait on her deck, staring up at the sky and looking to the gate as if the gods would bring her back.
She stepped off of the boat, pushed open the door, which had once been painted blue, but salt water had faded it to the point of wood again. Inside, her sister sat alone at a table, the center covered in a tower of melted candles. A sword lay prostate in front of her, along with a knapsack.
“No.” Her sister said, shutting the door behind her. “You just can’t.”
The two siblings looked at one another, the younger with weary eyes that seemed to stare beyond the person in her house. Her knuckles dug into her knees as she sat, and a silence coated the room like heavy blanketing.
“I.. I have to. I have to.” Ayla said, taking the sword in her hand. It was a long, thin weapon, with simply a curved wrapped handle and a square forged at the end. It would suffice.
“If she isn’t back, then she isn’t back. I know you don’t like waiting, but either she comes home, or she doesn’t.” Her sister said, pressing her back to the door. The sun was setting over the city, and the beams of sun cut into the window like knives.
“I have to. I must. She would do the same for me.” She said, her voice airy and lost of connection. “I have to.”
Her sister chewed her lip, staring the woman down. Her own blood was unwell, lost in grief. They all were. Everyone in the city was dying to the horror, or leaving. Empty boats, some full of decaying shadows of what used to be men, floated with the waves, knocking into one another. The city sounded like a thousand wooden hands clapping slowly, filling the air like locusts. She could hear it then, chattering and clacking through the thin walls. Her heart was beating like a hollow drum as she watched her sister shake quietly.
“I have to. I have to.” Ayla said again, shaking her head and gripping the sword.
“No. You’re going to stay here. The outside world is far too dangerous now. In fact, we need to leave.” Her sister said. She had been dreading saying it for weeks, waiting on her paramour to return, but now was as good a time as any.
“No.” Her sister said, gravely. She looked to the door, grabbing the supply pack in one hand and the dark iron blade in the other. “No.” Alya repeated, and began to walk to the door.
The visitor took a step forward, but when they met, Ayla put her hand on her chest carefully, looking her in the eyes. It was then she truly saw her sister, her eyes sunken in and white strands of hair twirling from her temples, when they had been a solid black before. The underside of her eyelids were bloodshot into pure red, as if someone had punched her in both sockets. A swirl of uncomfortable choking caught in her throat as she took in the sight.
The visitor had only seen this for a few seconds before Ayla pushed her to the floor with a hard shove, and brought her boot down directly onto her chest, winding the woman and sending her into a fit of coughing that burned the lungs. She was still reeling and rolling on the ground as Ayla stepped out of the front door and into her sister’s boat, pushing off to the gate as twilight fell in the air, blue and cold.
Having to work her way through the sea of empty boats, cut from ties and loose, she broke free from the heavy stone walls. The clouded sky rumbled, and every half minute streaking with lightning that jolted from one spot to the next.
Outside of the city, dark trees hung over their banks, low and ancient, heavy with water and life. Their leaves rustled in the coming wind, and by the time the woman had made it halfway down the river, rain began to beat through them, plinking in the river and on her head. She pushed on, ever determined, feeling a stinging in the corner of her eyes.
Along the coastline, she found the boat that bore Sheylla’s marking. She breached onto shore, tossing the oars aside and stepping off the boat without even looking at her footing, head fixated on the swamp and river treeline that was not far from the shore. She made her way into the woods, gripping the poor sword in hand. Pausing to look around, she had stopped for a moment as a hand grabbed her by her right wrist, yanking her down with impossible force into the mud and brush. Her shoulder cracked and popped with it, the cartilage snapping free from the bone. The woman cried out and rolled on the ground, thrashing her legs in the mud.
Thrusting her hand to push herself up, she reached into wrist deep of a bramble patch, the sharp curved thorns passing by with scratches. When she pulled back, however, the blades of nature cut into her hand, peeling back skin and slicing deep within her hand. As she finally pulled free, her hand was stained black and red from the mud and the injury.
Her head spinning, she turned and walked out of the trees and into a clearing, mud pooling all along, no grassland to be found. She could taste bile in the back of her throat, cold and burning to the touch. The rain was pouring down into the dark sky, and Ayla was soaked to the bone, but her left hand still tightly clung to the sword, her right flayed and hanging loosely.
Though water ran in her eyes, stinging and making her squint, the woman could see something rising from the mud, as if the pool itself rose up with it. A twisted face pushed from the mud, a human skull, bone white and chipped in places, ran with mud down the curves and bends. Two more appeared along side it, and then four, and continued to multiply.
She was frozen in front of this horror, a swelling pile of mud and skulls, lurching forward to her.
“Ayla, what are you doing?!” A voice yelled, familiar and sweet in the dark of the rain. She looked over, as Sheylla stood on her left by the treeline, dressed in all her waiving blues and greens, as pristine as the day she pushed off. Ayla ran for her.
She threw her arms around the woman, both of them soaking wet and covered in mud. Ayla had never felt a touch so sweet in all her life.
“Where have you been?” Ayla said, pulling off and looking up at the skull that covered her lover’s face. The exhausted woman’s tears of blood washed away with the rain, pouring from her eyes as though they had been cut themselves. “I missed you so much.”
Behind her lover stood ten more of her, watching and lurching in the shadows.
“I missed you, we are here now. We are together again. That is all that matters. Let us go home.” The skull chattered to her, as it wrapped the mud and bone flurry around the woman and pulled her down into the ground. She opened her mouth to scream, but mud poured in like water breaching a sunken ship, filling her lungs and clogging her throat.
Discord
Light Style