spn_25 - This Familiar Parable III: Abject
Title: This Familiar Parable III: Abject
Word Count: 312
Prompts: #06 - First
Summary: The first disappearance. The beginning of the end.
A/N: Third installation of my spn_25 prompt table, and the first monster makes an appearance! Now for the real fun...
♠ First ♠ Previous ♠ Next ♠ Last ♠
"And though I only ever gave you love,
Like every child you've chosen to rebel.
Uprooted flow'rs and filled the holes with blood;
Ask not for whom they toll, the solemn bells."
--Thrice
“Shush,” she hears first. The broken glass is crackling under her palms and knees, and it’s so loud so loud but not as loud as the roar of panic in her ears.
Three more crickle-crack footsteps with the prickle of small cuts and little slivers worming into her skin. Pinprick smears of red are left in her wake.
“Shhh,” she hears second.
Two more and she peers around the corner. The bow her mother tied in her hair has come loose, dirty white edge trailing in the dirt and late afternoon sun.
A low piteous whimper, she hears third.
They stand in shafts of piercing sun, man and woman, something out of a romance, his hands on her hips and her bent back to receive some deep and passionate kiss. Nails painted cherry red dig into the smoothed-over wrinkles of a canvas jacket, and then the man gives her a violent shake, thumb digging into the hollow of her neck. She whips and jerks and stills, eyes meeting the stranger’s and going wide.
Slowly, his grip loosens, curling into her hair instead. The long fingers - piano fingers, Mam would say - sketch the air over her mother’s face. Her eyes are wide, but not afraid, and not happy, something else, something alien.
Fingertips trail across her mother’s brow, eyelashes, cheek, and in their wake… nothing.
A brief horrid hint of blood and bone, and nothing.
Mam sighs, and then her lips are gone.
She inhales, and her throat is gone.
The emptying fingers trail down her spine and in their wake, immaterial.
When there is space that once was Mam, the man still bent over what had been, right hand still curled delicately into the small of a non-existent back, smiles without his teeth and speaks in slow sibilance. “Abject.”
She whimpers, fingernails biting into the grain of the hardwood floor, and the man turns to her with empty white eyes. “Shush.”
--Concepts #06- First
Finis Part III
♠ First ♠ Previous ♠ Next ♠ Last ♠
Word Count: 312
Prompts: #06 - First
Summary: The first disappearance. The beginning of the end.
A/N: Third installation of my spn_25 prompt table, and the first monster makes an appearance! Now for the real fun...
♠ First ♠ Previous ♠ Next ♠ Last ♠
"And though I only ever gave you love,
Like every child you've chosen to rebel.
Uprooted flow'rs and filled the holes with blood;
Ask not for whom they toll, the solemn bells."
--Thrice
“Shush,” she hears first. The broken glass is crackling under her palms and knees, and it’s so loud so loud but not as loud as the roar of panic in her ears.
Three more crickle-crack footsteps with the prickle of small cuts and little slivers worming into her skin. Pinprick smears of red are left in her wake.
“Shhh,” she hears second.
Two more and she peers around the corner. The bow her mother tied in her hair has come loose, dirty white edge trailing in the dirt and late afternoon sun.
A low piteous whimper, she hears third.
They stand in shafts of piercing sun, man and woman, something out of a romance, his hands on her hips and her bent back to receive some deep and passionate kiss. Nails painted cherry red dig into the smoothed-over wrinkles of a canvas jacket, and then the man gives her a violent shake, thumb digging into the hollow of her neck. She whips and jerks and stills, eyes meeting the stranger’s and going wide.
Slowly, his grip loosens, curling into her hair instead. The long fingers - piano fingers, Mam would say - sketch the air over her mother’s face. Her eyes are wide, but not afraid, and not happy, something else, something alien.
Fingertips trail across her mother’s brow, eyelashes, cheek, and in their wake… nothing.
A brief horrid hint of blood and bone, and nothing.
Mam sighs, and then her lips are gone.
She inhales, and her throat is gone.
The emptying fingers trail down her spine and in their wake, immaterial.
When there is space that once was Mam, the man still bent over what had been, right hand still curled delicately into the small of a non-existent back, smiles without his teeth and speaks in slow sibilance. “Abject.”
She whimpers, fingernails biting into the grain of the hardwood floor, and the man turns to her with empty white eyes. “Shush.”
--Concepts #06- First
Finis Part III
♠ First ♠ Previous ♠ Next ♠ Last ♠