Your Last Words

(Challenge: Last Words.)

The words echo with a soft, gentle ring, almost as if said to awash the burnt weeping of a pulsing heart. Her caress is feather-like, yet fiery lasting strength lies hidden within. Her fingers are light and firm, unbelievably smooth against the wetness on his cheeks, leaving numerous trails of black sorrow clenching his heart. He tightens his already trembling fists by his sides, his eyes closed away from her kindness. It is too glaring for the tainted eyes he possesses. The eyelashes lying on his warm skin are sodden with the onslaught of undeniable tears welling up in his eyes. Her seeking fingers –so beautiful, so weak– carefully catch the hushed tears flowing down his cheeks, the long digits trying to soothe the thudding hurt inside. He is trying not to cry, not to be weaker than he has proved to be, but the slowness of her fingers calls forth the sea of despair from his eyes, the twin trails of wetness flowing at an unstoppable pace. His breath hitches from the strenuous effort of maintaining the silence, as if the blanket of quiet was all he had to keep his treacherous weakness from betraying him. He does not dare to open his eyes to look at her, but he wants to. He wants to inhale her sweet, comforting scent; wants to cup her face with his quivering hands; wants to hear her soft, croaky voice; to press his lips to her dry yet so beautiful ones, to feel her, to taste her, before she disappears, before she is forcefully snatched away from a being who was not meant to touch her– not yet.

He is kneeling on the floor before her, a mockery of the seeking of forgiveness he should possess. Though his eyes are closed, he feels her silently regarding him, fingers never leaving the tears on his cheeks. His breath hitches the second time. He loathes the eyelids of his that separate him from the breathtaking sight of her form, but it is this protection that allows him his calmer demeanor, this layer of self-comfort that when he opens his eyes she will still be there with him. His hands travel up to his face to clutch her hands fervently, as if the connecting touch would allow him to pretend for a while that she was his, that she was incapable of vanishing from his warmth. He is too gone to realize that he is trembling more than she is.

She allows the contact, hands never revolting away from his unforgivable weakness. He does not open his eyes, but he knows she is sitting in her wheelchair, legs uselessly swinging out from where she sits. He knows the lengthy chocolate hair that cascades down the slenderness of her small back, casting deep shadows yet carefree as one with the soft winds. He knows she is looking at him with her soft, liquid-warm gaze, eyes watering slightly with which was inevitable. He feels that heart-wrenching gaze cast upon him as he slowly cups her frail, thin hands to his heaving chest. He wants this moment to stretch across the dooming length of time, transcending all possible logic just so he can feel her against him. The slight drizzle of rain merges with his sorrow, just managing to cover the tears that she can no longer wipe away from his cheeks. The raindrops hit them, numerous but soft. Their darkness seep into him, unable to cleanse but only to expand the heaving hurt within, soaking his soul through with a dampness his eyes had already proved. He cannot hide anywhere away from the passing of reality, and the hatred-filled ticking of fate. Realization slams into him, digging invisible claws deep, ripping and tearing, not holding back.

He does not have much time to cherish her. He is granted too little to feel her, to think her, to love her. The sobs rise bitterly in his throat as he clenched her hands tightly against his chest and its fluttering heartbeat. Fate was a cruel beast lurking in the night, waiting to devour their last moments into blankness because he was nothing but a fool. He wants to kiss her, to protect her, to absorb her warmth, but he had not the strength to carry the both of them on his already weakening resolve. His heart is lodged in stone, and he knew it was too soon to lose her, too soon before he could even chase after her left-behind dust. In a blink of an eye, a second of out others’ mundane passing time, she would be nothing but another seared memory, another picture on the rooted gravestone.

And so with mustered courage he would embrace their time now, in this very passing, in this very moment, to fill the void that would cross the expanse of his life, devouring the unforgettable brightness of her soul. He would not weep now, not in front of her. He would stand, even trembling, to meet her strong, warm eyes with his own sorrowful ones and wrap his arms around her thin, weakening body as tightly as he would dare. He would smell her and remember the scent, he would grab her hands in his as the shine in her eyes slowly melt away into his feared nothingness, as her hands slowly lose their strength to hold on to him, as her body slackens in his death grip, as the hollow resounding of her heart starts to halt. He would cherish her in these moments, because he the last moments were the only moments he had left.

He opens his eyes. 

Between Perfect and Imperfect

(Sunday Scribblings Challenge: Between You And Me.)

Between you and me is an unfathomable distance. Our legs hit the ground; thumping on the rough surface, then rush forward against the wind. The growing muscles cringe with effort, pumping as breath surges outwards, escaping into the open sky. Our faces are undeniably coloured with perspiration that looks like a darkened liquid seeping into the fair, healthy skin. The wind pushes back our wild tendrils of hair, attempting to sweep the mess away instead of gently caressing the ugly locks. The run is arduous, and yet you breathe with a dimpled grin as you run, eyes sparkling with a curious wonderment. You, extend the majestic feathered wings to reach the clouds above, smiling with the vigor of youth pouring out from the very pores of your skin. You sprint with the rapid excited thudding of your beautiful heart, soaring further than I could ever hope to reach. Your lengthy arms swing in pace to the musical beat that will never enter my ears and your eyes twinkle with an everlasting hope I cannot comprehend. On the other hand I am breathlessly chasing a non-existent dream of fatigue, legs aching with a reminding agony that trails through the very tubes of my weary veins. My extended fingers want to reach the very tips of your casted shadow behind you, but your figure is so far away. The lights of my eyes are dimmed to flickers; barely even open to view the journey we agreed to embark together. I can feel the weakened thump of my rotting heart. I can feel the end of my journey. Yet you never stop to turn around to see, to realize I am too far back to move forward. Through my run all I can see is the unfathomable distance between you and me fading into another blurred forgotten memory as Perfect travels into dreamy depths that will be forever blind to Imperfect. 

Sorrow

(Challenge: Sorrow.)

Hollow, dark eyes peered out into the darkness. Adorned with curtains of midnight lashes, the swirling gaze remained out the window. Quivering hands touched the window with elegant fingertips, dragging the feather-like touch, afraid to shatter the fragmented pieces of night. Coal locks of raven cascaded down the slender, misty back, ungoverned and uncontrollable, touching the coolness of fabric and colliding with its dead strokes. The locks were paintbrushes painting the sides of his face with an ethereal light, caressing the light coated skin with its gentleness, wrapping in a shivering embrace. He raised a single hand in the hazy, alien glow, trapping his deniable sorrow within the palm. He slowly grabbed at the flowing air, clenching the hand into a tight fist. It shivered with a ferocity that grappled at his soul, swallowing his being into a veiled, moonless sea, sucking the very breath from his lungs. He let out shuddering gasps of air, fist trembling from exertion in which stiff-rock tendons refused movement, interconnected to the wispy whispers of the throbbing organ deep within his chest. The heart was an exhausted core, its engine rotting away in the slush murk of his darkness. His lungs were collapsing in a soaked puddle of weep, inhaling and exhaling but not purifying the swelling agony. The hurt penetrated, tendrils slithering into the blood hot organ, wrenching it into the open air from where it was connected to the fiery tubes of essence. He grabbed at his chest, shuddering sobs clenching, ripping at him, and triggering an avalanching barrel of flood from the gaping holes in his head. The leakage from his dark, sorrowful eyes trailed neat lines down his cheeks, colouring skin a darker shade of pain. The hand grabbing at his chest dug deeper at the strained fabric, fingers desperately grabbing at non-existent relief from the hurt, the tendrils swallowing his being into the shifting shadows.

He closed his eyes as the tears drowned him.

Bad Guy

(Original Challenge: I am the bad guy, and this is my story.)

The man’s bare hands held on to svelte, pale thighs in a clenching vice, pushing the slender quivering legs backwards to reveal the tight ring of muscle he wished to pound into. The man salivated, grubby fingers gripping the fine skin even tighter. He stood. With his head, he beckoned the rest of the awaiting men crowding near the doorway. The men entered hurriedly with increasing enthusiasm, their eyes trained solely on the alluring sight of the panting form on the bed. The first man was already unzipped, his throbbing desire a grotesque image. Without much patience, he slipped three fingers into the ring of muscle, rotating the digits and spreading as wide as he could. The figure writhed on the bed, agonized screams filling the air. The struggle was evident. The figure was thrashing, his rope-bound hands wriggling uselessly in the musty air. Tears flowed freely from clenched eyes. The gruff man ignored the actions. He merely slipped out the fingers and replaced them with his red-hot desire, desperately pounding into the figure. It was a swallowing, dark heat in which his heart throbbed in beat with and sparks of raw, carnal pleasure exploded in front of his eyes, threatening to ingest him whole. The figure now screeched, animal-like, as the ruby essence flowed mockingly from his tattered hole, down onto the floor. The figure was ripped inside out, then mauled open again, and again, and again. The cycle continued as dark ripples danced in front of him, wrapping around him and trying to consume his darkened soul into oblivion. Somewhere, a hand violently grabbed his jaw and forcefully opened his mouth. A pulsing organ was shoved into the opening, incurring his immediate gag reflex despite his near unconsciousness. He hacked and coughed as his vision swam piteously against the flooding tears, weakened hands hanging limply from where they were hung. Then, his ears briefly picked out a muffled thwacking sound. A slash of agony ripped through his open back, blossoming with a fiery fervor. The pain was wringed from him, and an animalistic scream sounded somewhere from the back of his throat. The flesh on his back was raw and wrenched open. He could almost fill his insides tasting the hacking, dirt air. Due to the fact that his mouth was preoccupied and gritting teeth could not serve as an almost non-existent distraction to the agony, his fingernails were instead buried deep within the flesh of his hands. The whip came down upon his back again, unrelenting. It was returned with a hoarse pathetic cry of whimper. Before the boy was drowned into blissful unconsciousness, his eyes shone with the stirrings of an unforgotten beginning, of a live he used to have.

Over months, those eyes changed, slowly and surely, breaking with every step along the way. The malice was seared into the fluttering gaze, coated with a shivering sheen of desperation. The slithering tendrils of evil latched onto his heart, threatening to consume, to conquer. The cries and unholy screams soon transformed into deranged chains of bubbly laughter and grins. The blackness shrouding his heart soon blackened it, deadening the tissues into mere oozing rotting matter. Acrid acid spewed out of it and polluted the tubes travelling through his body, colouring red blood into foul black. Years passed and the transformation was finally complete. A dark insatiable evilness arose from the shadows, glinting, devouring eyes roiling into its own head. Stained claws extended into the innocence of flesh, ripping and tearing deep.  

I am the bad guy, and this is my story.

Meal

(Challenge: Write a story about what you’d cook for an enemy.)

The meal would be pleasantly deceiving. It would, most likely, be a simple rounded bowl of noodles. The long strips of yellow will be soft, almost mushy. They will gather along the piping soup’s surface, as if ready to stretch out its measly length to wrap itself slowly and slithering around the diner’s ugly neck. They will be ordinary looking, curling in on itself as most noodles do, creating endless loops as trapped air bubbles try to escape to the fresh, crisp open surface. However, it will be too late. The noodles will block them with their physical forms, the entangling, soggy lines blocking the air bubbles from any light, depriving brethren from their estranged pocket of air. The noodles will draw the soup’s entirety with the clock as their witness, expanding and snickering with glee, cutting off the weak light and the cool air from reaching the bottomless depths of scalding darkness. The blindness of the sea of hotness will set fiery flames alight, shrouding the crystal clear of the soup. All that is left will be the shredded pieces of noodles laying on the surface, tattered and defeated by mere layers of choking, splattered oil. The soup will drown all in it, slaughtering and laughing with the bowl fully upright to its lovely shape.

And how will the diner die from the meal? The diner will die from the pinprick of poison planted delicately on the fork itself, of course. 

Mirror

(Challenge: The story starts when the protagonist breaks a mirror.)

The shivering clenched fist plunges into the mirror with a mighty blow. The cloud of smoke following it branches out its tendrils, leaving in a rush akin to haughty winds blowing amongst trees. The fist has pummeled into the frail, thin skin of glass, striking a torrent of ruby hot to drip onto the smooth marble ground. The ground’s chill is a mocking trail of laughter beneath the quivering legs, snaking its way up and into bones, tendons, -escaping blood. The hotness of life flows from the open wounds, coating-colouring plain glass shards, blossoming with fervor of thudding hearts. It travels, flows- in an ironically thin neat line onto the floor; the torrent a calm wave of essence dribbling out of him, draining the red, hot lava from his veins. His fist is littered beautifully with a myriad of glass shapes stuck out of misshapen folded skin, akin to an icy crystal mountain in mighty rein, with the blood forming a stark contrast to the perfect glittered crystals. His vision is awashed, saturated with blooming hues, addled with shadows and rising black figures in the background. It is teeming with grays and frightening darkness and unspoken shadows reaching out to him, swallowing and engulfing-