Bloody

Just for fun, and because I was able to get the rights from Mavguard Magazine to promote them a little more, I thought it'd be fun to show you a little snippet from my short story in their first edition! 

For obvious reasons, I can't post the whole thing for you to read and enjoy... But I can post part of it! 

~

Bloody Mary, by Rani Divine

She stands at the edge of her plot, her hair moving slightly in the breeze, the air of death filling her nostrils—she can’t escape it, no matter how hard she tries. She holds a dozen roses in her hands, their floral aura trying to cover the smell, but it does nothing. It’s been too long since they’ve seen water—they become drier and drier with every passing moment, and she knows they won’t last much longer. It’s been too long since anyone came to see her. The roses only add to the reek of death and dismay in this abysmal place.

In her mind she recalls what it was like to feel alive, to sense life all around her. Not like here. Here everything is surrounded by death. Grass and flowers are all around her, but none of it gives off an air of beauty. All is sad, and the despair seeps into her soul.

She wants to leave, but she knows that she cannot. There is no way out—not now. The gates are closed, the doorways barred. There is nowhere for her to go.

But she is not alone. Hundreds surround her, all of them waiting—just like her. Waiting for that unknown day, the day they will all be released from their prisons.

She turns to her right and sees the children playing in their corner. For now, they’re all too young to understand their imprisonment. Not like her. She’s been here since she was a child, yes, but she’s known for too long now that this place is a prison. She’s been waiting for the day she’ll be set free, but it’s been so long that now she wonders when that day will ever come. It’s been so long. Too long.

She wonders now if there really will be an end to this imprisonment. It’s like torture to her. Trapped here with this wretched stench and fear of the outside world. She’s heard of prisons that were ransacked, of bodies that were stolen before their time, taken away from their prison before it was time for them to be released. She doesn’t know what happens to them when they’re taken, but she knows it’s nothing good.

Never leave your prison before you are called.

It’s one of the only rules here. Never leave. Stay where you are told to stay.

She’s obeyed it for years: decades, even.

She doesn’t know how much longer she can take it. Being so alone, yet with so many others around her. What can she do here?

There is nothing to do but wait. And the wait is like torture.

~

Mary is her name, Mary Penn-Draggon. By now so much of her life has been spent in this place that she hardly recalls her life before. It is the smells that stay with her so vividly, that call her back to a prior place and time—a time she believes she hardly knew at all.

She cannot recall her true name, does not know of the life beyond this place. But the gates loom ever in front of her, only a few yards from her plot, and by now she knows how simple a feat it would be to cross them. None ever guard the gates, none would try to stop her. No one here even knows the name of their prison guard, or where the rules come from. They only know that there are rules, that they have all been placed beneath them without their given consent.

Never leave your prison.

She assumes this means there are others, that this place is not the only one of its kind. There must be others, after all. It cannot be that this is the only one, that unending nothingness is all that stands between them and eternity.

Never speak to visitors.

Plenty broke that rule, and she never witnessed any of them injured because of it. Even when the visitors came through the invisible gates, when the walls were breached by those who could not be touched, everyone here did as they liked.

Listen when spoken to.

Do as you are told.

Except no one ever speaks.

She wonders where the rules came from, whether there is some great being that lives beyond the black gates, waiting for someone to break all three rules so they might be punished. She wonders what type of punishments might be given to those in this place, those who have already lost everything they’d ever known and loved in life.

Every day she opens her mouth to speak, and no words usher through. There is no breath in her lungs, nothing that might bring words to life within. In a place of death, no life is allowed to blossom. Were it ever found, it would be crushed and extinguished before it could make its meager attempt at life within the world of the dead.

Want to know how the story ends? Well you'll just have to find yourself a copy of the magazine. And you'd better hurry, because I hear there are only a few more copies left in stock at the 

RAD Store Online

[love]

{RD}