As promised last week, here’s another spooky story in the lead up to Halloween. This one’s more bloody than spooky, and it’s more of a prose poem than a flash fiction story, but then who can tell the difference these days. When you write in a more lyrical style, boundaries are blurred easily.

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Mother Medea

In the bedroom, a putrefying. An odour of flesh dissolved. Perfume still lingers, the children quietly yammering in the corner. Voices roam from concrete wall to concrete wall, undecided.

A thick atmosphere carries the message. This isn’t over. Slanting shadows slice the street light coming in like a foreboding. I am ascending. I pass stairs, under peeling ceiling paint. I will do what comes naturally, what I was made to do. Cleave flesh, pierce heart. My creation.

A skull lies half-rid of finery. Gifts jellied into congealed blood. A father’s voice hushed by proxima. None of this matters to me. This is the past. Now only the future counts. I can feel the unfamiliar woman turned prophet after bed betrayal. Left abandoned and murderous by the tyrant of her body. Heard tongues wagging about her brewing with special knowledge. Now she is cornered like a rat. I will do her bidding. I will slash the flesh half hers, half his. Rid her of his only power left. Speak words that will fall like sods.

The force at the point punctures. I find a space between the ribs and sigh briefly, because I must leave and repeat. Fifteen centimetres. A deep bite through linen, through delicate flesh. Fresh blood wells up to join the pooled putrefaction. And I slip wet and sticky between her waistband as she carries me into the darkest night I have ever known.

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