Holly Rae Garcia
Wyld FLASH February 12th 2021
Listen to the silence. Engorged on a future that will never be, it permeates the air around you as you kneel at her grave.
It speaks of moonlit walks along the canal, hands clasped tightly.
It speaks of a first kiss, stolen in the shade of the oak tree behind her mother’s house.
It screams of a dream’s abrupt death.
These moments whirl around you as you crouch in the eye of the silent storm and regret the actions that led you both there. Her, cold and rotting in a cheap wooden casket beneath the ground. You, alone.
She was too good for you, you know this. You’ve always known this. But somehow, through Cupid’s misplaced arrow, she loved you back. You tried to warn her, but she would laugh that beautiful laugh of hers. Her chestnut eyes would light up, and you would forget every reason you had to push her away. Of course she always thought you were joking, but you never joked about the darkness inside of you.
If she had only listened, she would still be alive. Gorgeous Victoria, with skin like fresh milk and hair black as a moonless night. She was beautiful even in death. The most beautiful woman you had ever known.
You managed to beat it for years, locking yourself in a steel cage on nights with a full moon under the guise of working late. But doubt had crept in, and you knew she wasn’t buying it anymore. She thought there was another woman, as if you could ever love someone the way you loved her. The truth was much worse than any sordid affair.
She followed you that fateful night, down into the dungeon. You were so obsessed with getting there in time, you didn’t hear her small footsteps behind you. Once inside the cage, you dropped the key in a box by the door that only a human hand could reach into, and sat down among the spider webs to await your fate. How were you to know she was watching from the shadows?
When she appeared you yelled at her to stay back, but she slipped her slender arm through the bars and into that box with the key. Ignoring your pleas, she pulled the key from its hiding place and into the lock hanging from the gate. There were eleven links in the chain and each one hammered a nail into your heart as they clattered to the ground.
You scrambled to put the chain back and to close the lock, but your inhuman hands had stopped obeying your human mind. Your fingers dropped the key as long claws protruded from your nails.
You’ll never forget the look on her face when you turned towards her with a snarl. Or the way her screams cut off when you ripped into the flesh at her soft throat and you knew you’d never love another.
The storm of loss rages there, at her grave. And you are silent.
Author bio: Holly Rae Garcia is a photographer and author on the Texas Coast. Her debut psychological thriller novel, Come Join the Murder, released March 2020. Her horror novella co-written with Ryan Prentice Garcia, The Easton Falls Massacre: Bigfoot’s Revenge, releases Oct. 30th, 2020. She is also the Editor-at-Large and Art Director for Versification, an online micro poetry magazine. Her other short fiction and poetry has been published online and in print. . More info can be found at http://www.HollyRaeGarcia.com
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