Dive Deep into Creativity: Discover, Share, Inspire
So, I’mma post my first thing here. It’s kinda awkward, I don’t know why; I’m just weird like that. I’ve decided to go with a safe option, it’s been published before, technically. My url’s sorta a lie. I got shortlisted in this contest and got shoved in a book with the others who were shortlisted and the winners. But yes, the story - here:
The mutilated carcass that lay before here had belonged to a young man, a boy really, he could not have lived for more than fourteen years.
She sits down. The ground beneath her is hard and dusty, it’s fertile crust pounded away by fleeing families and the men who march after them. The grass that struggled to emerge grew scattered and brittle, stained brown by the harsh sun. She wonders who it came to this.
She has memories of frolicking in lush meadows. Back then, laughing smiles glinted in a golden sun. Her youth was a perfect, though humble, one. But she turned twelve and whole realms fought over bruised pride. Her own kingdom was wrecked into pieces that nobles still fight to command today.
The politics of it all does not concern her. No, she has been personally wronged by the bastards who stole a chunk of her heart. Wretched shrieks pierce the air. Skin blisters in the heat of burning homes. Blood runs cold at the dead toes curling in the fire. Lungs itch from the pyre’s ashes, from what is left of Mother and Father. Eyes are scorched dry by the searing need for vengeance.
The rumble of distant thunder drags her out of the past. Her hands are sticky form congealing blood. Her eyes are still dry. She feels hollow.
She huffs. Gnawing emptiness ruined her life. It chased from her from her only home with nothing but Rael and the essentials in hand. It would smother her lest she stopped running from it. For now, she has eluded desolation. She has never stilled long enough for it find her.
The crackle of lightning breaks her brooding. Her skin is drawn uncomfortably tight by the drying blood. In the distance, the dark overcast is lit up by flashes of light. She smiles bitterly at how that reminds her of Rael, her darling brother. Her shoulders sag as her guilt strikes her. She fed him lies and he ate them all up.
“I just can’t stand that village anymore Rael. I need a fresh start.”
“That’s a brilliant idea, Maeve. It’s just what we need.”
He did not know that she learned to track down army camps and kill with stealth. He did not have the slightest clue that she revels in the blood dripping along her forearms or how sated she felt from it. They lived happily like that for years.
It was perfect until she turned sloppy, until she was caught smirking amid dead brothers-in-arms. She failed to find that lone survivor and eventually retreated back to Rael. She did not catch so much as a glimpse of that soldier for weeks.
She realizes then that he must have sought to destroy her, for her last beloved lay gutted and wretched before he lunged at her.
She killed him easily, far too easily for a man clever enough to evade her. In her rage, she dissected him as he had her brother. She let his blood dry on her skin and watched the red film crack as she held yet another funeral.
Warm rain shocks her out of her memories. It washes away the dried blood and gore. She sees the thunderstorm approaching from afar, violent and unstoppable as she is.
She sees how ruthless she has become. Her restraint, her humanity is gutted, wretched, and burned away, its ashes blowing in the wind, as her family is. Now, she carves into bodies and shatters bones. There is too much pleasure and power to be taken from torture to settle for an easy kill. She conquers evil, those who wage war for dominance. She owns life and it brings her untold ecstasy. And she has no remorse for any of it.
But the boy before her now was so young.
The storm finally arrives, and it is wreaking havoc. The ground fails, to take in the downpour, and so water runs across the surface. The rain beats down the tufts of grass rather than helping it prosper.
She that that the ground’s fertile crust just might grow back in a few decades of peace.
The rain is too warm, the air is too think, and it feels too much like fresh blood now. It thrills her. She looks back at the boy she mauled. She cannot bring herself to flinch, and despite her qualms, euphoria takes her.