Tag Archives: post apocalyptic

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Dusk: #writephoto

photo from Sue Vincent

I dreamed this story Saturday night in response to Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompt. Something a little different.

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I can’t remember much bout that time, cept for the crazy animal fear. Like you weren’t in yer body but thrashing around outside yer skin, a thing gutted and clawing at some god to lift yer sorry ass outta there. Bombs pounded on our camp, and the screaming lay over the roar and rumble like I was trapped with a flock of gulls, and a pack of wolves were tearing at our throats, only it was worse than that.

And the reek of all them loose shits and us pissing in our pants, including mine. We were burrowed deep and bunched like rabbits, and it was blacker then death with yer eyes pinched shut. Already buried alive, I think. A funny thing how that situashun was better than being out there—tho I weren’t laughing. No, not at all.

Mason kep talking in that flat, butter voice of his thru the whole thing like he was telling lullaby stories come lights-out. I think Mason’s stories saved our asses on those days. Powerful stories bout life after the Reclamayshun, after the killing is worn out and we can go home.

Then my ears is ringing, and I’m breathing dust like I’m drowning. Some little kid’s keening so shrill it slices thru the exploshuns. And my heart is jumping on my ribs hard, and I know I jus gotta get out a there. It’s real bad, that feeling. My mind is so beat on like an old rug that it comes to me clean and clear—I got no choice in this life but where I’m gonna die. And I don’t wanna die jammed in a hole.

Then it all stop. All of it stop. The bombing and screaming and coffing up dirt. Mason makes us sit for seems a week until we gonna die from jus sitting still, already buried in our grave and starving to boot. When he say to give it a go, we dig out, and the world don’t look the same at all. It’s a hell place like the devil took a shovel and turned up the whole land for spring planting.

Mason stands atop the wreck and stares up at the dusk sky. There ain’t one single bomb raining thru the air. Little white puff clouds look fresh-washed and soft on that gold and blue, like a summer dress on a pretty girl. The world ain’t all broken up after all, and I think maybe Mason was right when he was telling us stories and promising hope.

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Violet Sky #writephoto

Sue Vincent #writephoto

Sue Vincent #writephoto

Violet Sky

We gathered at the border of the road, called out of our misery by one of the children. The dawn bled, a bruised and bloody wound. How fitting for the sixth extinction.

Yet, it was a dawning.

I had thought, long before the die-off, that we might poison the planet and arise one morning in disbelief that we couldn’t survive on an obliterated world. Or perhaps disease would usher mankind to the pyres, our super-viruses ravaging our weak and chemical-laden bodies. Of course, mutual annihilation was a possibility, the promise of our youth and sum of our talent and treasure dedicated to war. The end always made for entertaining speculation.

Who would have believed the culprit was time, all spiraling down with the slow ticking of the clock, the December of the human race.

I peered at the upturned faces of our isolated band as the heavens thrust spears of light through the clouds’ closing gash. My companions’ bodies appeared to glow in the rare sunlight, their radiant souls shining through, reclaiming lost beauty. In their smiles, I witnessed the dawning of hope and hadn’t the heart to tell them we were ghosts.

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Thanks to Sue Vincent of The Daily Echo for another enticing photo prompt. She tosses these out to us on Thursdays and reblogs our submissions. It’s great fun. Head over and give it a try!

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The Bone Wall

image from futuretimeline.net

image from futuretimeline.net

With a few books wading through the publisher’s queue, I’ve started my next fantasy novel, titled The Bone Wall.

What possessed me (literally) to pen this dark tale is a mystery to me. I’m a nice person. A mom, granny, volunteer, and past-mental health counselor who worked with grieving children. I baby my pets, cherish my hubby, and haven’t a violent bone in my body. I get teary at the occasional TV commercial and that’s pretty darn maudlin if you ask me.

Yet as an author of works of fantasy, I travel often down the road of “what if.” Sometimes that journey is light-hearted and happily-ending, and other times, when the news of the day makes me fear for our world, the path I wander is much darker. This is one of those grim trails.

The human journey through time is sunbathed and shadowed with remarkable advancements, some clouded with secret and not-so-secret costs. What if we continue to poison our land, water and air in the name of progress and profit? What if we continue to blast our way through conflicts on a global and personal scale? What if we abandon compassion, no longer our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers? What becomes of us when righteousness is blind?

This book is a work of fantasy in a world without vision or concern for consequence. A broken world.

The Bone Wall – Prolog

My sister stands by her window in the moonlight, the only light in the stone chamber. Carved of alabaster, she’s a statue whittled by a master’s artful hand, naked skin pale, shadowed, wraithlike in its translucence. Her hair gathers moonbeams, corn-silk draped over shoulder-bones, free of the blood staining her face and hands. Gray eyes honed with steel study a landscape of gnarled trees, skeletal limbs clawing with broken fingers from a dead land. All around her the world dies. She is blind to the fragile greenness of new leaves.

Her clothes lie in a heap on the floor, the reek of battle, sweat, and blood thick in the folds, threads of terror woven into the very fabric. She will dream in blood, wear those clothes without respite, glory in the gore of shredded flesh. My sister is demon-born, exquisite in her purity, and Death’s Devil has his grips on her.

I am her twin, one and the same, and this is her story.

My tale begins in Heaven…