Keep Your Head #amwriting

207-07-july-30th-2017

© A Mixed Bag 2009

Thanks to Alistair, as always, for hosting Sunday Photo Fiction. If you’d like to join in, click here.

 

Keep Your Head

I grew up thinking monsters were inhuman. They were the bogeyman in the closet, Pennywise in the sewer, and the unknown grab-monster under the bed.

The true face of evil stands across from me, holding my father’s head by the hair in his skeletal fingers.

“Your father didn’t play the game,” he says, his voice reminiscent of Boris Karloff. His eyes hold cauldrons of ebony evil.

I glare at him, while his henchmen hold my struggling arms. I spit at him. It hits his face.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says and nods to his henchmen.

I grew up under my father’s teachings: never do harm unless harm is done to you.

My body grows cold, ice forms on my skin, the men holding my arms cry out, their hands ice-burned. I whir.

There is a fine line between defense and revenge. As I kill, no thoughts linger in my mind, until I am stumbling along a darkened corridor lined with mirrors and the face of evil thinks to escape, having tossed my father’s head aside as if it were trash.

He cowers, finding no exit.

And there’s a fine line between defense and revenge.

I’ve crossed.

end (198 words)

Sascha Darlington

7/31/2017

 

13 thoughts on “Keep Your Head #amwriting

  1. there’s a fine line between defense and revenge. And there’s a fine line between very good and excellent. You’ve breached that with this spooky tale. Well done, Sascha. I, especially like the neat structure in which the story flows.

  2. One of your best stories Sascha. I love it. The fact that you said “There is a fine line between defense and revenge” twice brings it more home and the anger that boiled over for him.

      1. Can’t say thank I liked the picture either. But like you I ran with it.

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