Safe Passage

By / July 14, 2020 / Fantasy, Flash Fiction, Magic, Surreal
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From the vantage point of a sheer rock cliff, Samantha stared into the void, the weight of an entire planet resting on her shoulders. She lifted her head, and in a deep baritone rumble, proclaimed, “I bear precious cargo and demand safe passage.”

The witch who hired her had warned her to be careful, that the world she carried would attract dangerous creatures who wished it harm, but there was no way Samantha could have prepared herself for this unique brand of terror.

The darkness in the void beheld her, standing with the world on her back, then surged, swelling like a dark rose in full bloom.

Samantha felt thick, creeping vines of despair shoot through her heart. All at once, the cargo she carried became too heavy, and she could feel it beginning to slip.

“Come,” said the darkness. “Drop your burden and follow me into the void.”

She could feel its corrupting influence surround her, a dark miasma that stoppered her nose and her mouth, making it difficult to breathe.

“I can’t,” she said, but she felt her feet sliding, her face falling. She could hear the inhabitants of the world she carried crying out. They, too, had sensed the darkness, and they were afraid.

She could no longer see the path that lay ahead. The impenetrable darkness wound around her like a snake and proceeded to crush her alive.

“Did you really think you could protect them from me? They are mine, as are you.”

The world on her shoulders sagged some more.

“I won’t deliver them to you,” Samantha said, but it was all she could do just to keep breathing. Like a noxious gas, the darkness seeped into her lungs, starving her of oxygen. She knew she couldn’t hold this position forever, but she also knew she couldn’t let the darkness win.

It was clear now: she had no choice but to use the magic the witch had given her.

Searching herself for the light within, she feigned weakness, and the darkness, eager for the prize she carried, rushed in. Samantha held her breath and readied herself for the outpouring of light that was sure to come…

Except it didn’t.

Samantha’s legs began to buckle.

What’s wrong? Why can’t I do this?

She felt the light inside of her, but it fled from her every time she reached for it.

I can’t keep this up much longer.

The little air that was left in her lungs was devoid of oxygen, and Samantha was beginning to feel lightheaded. Meanwhile, that awful darkness shook the cavernous walls, confident and victorious.

“You are mine,” it pronounced, and Samantha, to her mounting horror, believed it to be the truth.

Surrender, the witch had said. The light cannot be forced, only drawn. Let it take control of you, or you will surely die.

Starved of air, surrender was now her only option and, tumbling dangerously close to the death and darkness that awaited her, she opened herself to the light’s will at last.

Please, she thought. Help me.

And in the stillness of a guttering heart, she heard its reply.

Like lightning, it tore through her body. It drew an involuntary gasp, forcing the stale air from her lungs. It burst from her eyes, her ears, her mouth, piercing the darkness and making it shriek.

In the presence of that unwavering light, the darkness shriveled, drew into itself, and evaporated.

Then, just like that, the light was gone, fled once more into the deepest recesses of her heart, where it would wait in hiding until Samantha needed its help again. She fell to her hands, heaving, and the world she carried, safe at last, fell to the ground beside her.

Thank you.

She didn’t know if the light could hear her thoughts, if it was even conscious and could discern the meaning of her words, but she knew now that it was on her side, and she picked up her precious cargo once again, knowing this time that it would be safe for the remainder of her journey.

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©2020 Jeff Coleman. All rights reserved. For reproduction rights, please contact the author (who happens to be a kind and eminently reasonable man.) Unless otherwise stated, images are copyrighted by various artists and licensed by Shutterstock.

White Noise

By / July 7, 2020 / Evil, Flash Fiction, Horror, Surreal
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Joe Techapanupreeda/Shutterstock.com

This post was originally published through Patreon on March 6, 2019.

Daniel sat at an outdoor table, sipped a Starbucks cappuccino, and watched the world unfold like a silent film. Deep, resonant sound waves plowed through his ears like an ocean, and while the world was usually a loud and discordant place, as long as he had his white noise—as long as he could stick a pair of buds in his ears and drive the outside sounds away—everything would be all right, everything would be fine. The terrible memories that haunted his every waking hour would slumber for a little longer, and everything would be fine.

Only now and again, there was a hollow space in his mind that the static couldn’t fill, and when it finally bubbled to the surface, when his conscious mind reengaged with those dark horrors he always tried so hard to forget, he’d realize there was no running from the nightmare, that the nightmare would never end.

They killed her, he would think, and though his eyes would remain fixed on a neutral subject like a parked bicycle or a truck stopped at a red light, the eyes inside his head would stumble over unseen obstacles as he rushed headlong, back into the endless dark.

Like humans, they’d been…at least approximately, if one didn’t look too closely. And that had been Daniel’s mistake, hadn’t it? He’d looked too closely, and after returning home one night to find them standing in a circle outside his house—after following the contours of their too-long faces, angled down, to find his wife, Jennifer, splayed across the floor, her soft, unblemished body alabaster white, eyes wide, glazed, and unseeing—something inside him had broken.

In his mind’s eye, Daniel would, until the end of time, behold those grotesque and sharply-proportioned bodies. The white noise would never stop him from hearing his breath catch in his throat; would never stop him from staring again into those dull, onyx-black eyes; would never stop him from reliving the mad, soundless cry that had taken shape deep within his constricted chest, only to get stuck midway and never come out.

He would, as always, remember how one of those almost-human creatures had met his eyes, how it had opened its mouth, and how it had strained to speak. Only the profane secrets it uttered in the stillness of the night would remain a mystery, and that was not because of the white noise but because of Daniel’s steadfast unwillingness to remember. Some things were too dark, too unholy, to ever be allowed into the light of conscious thought.

But beneath the ocean of static, beneath even the subterranean layer of his subconscious, Daniel sensed its malevolent echo, a fetid residue that, like a grease stain, he would never be able to wash away. This abstract terror he knew intimately well, and white noise or no white noise, Daniel knew that sooner or later, it would catch up to him, that sooner or later, he would have no choice but to respond to its dark summons.

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©2020 Jeff Coleman. All rights reserved. For reproduction rights, please contact the author (who happens to be a kind and eminently reasonable man.) Unless otherwise stated, images are copyrighted by various artists and licensed by Shutterstock.