Memory Games
The interesting thing about running a challenge is the writing happens before the challenge. But the neat thing about scheduling the prompts in advance is that I write the prompts and I reflect on writing and by the time it’s actually time to begin, I’ve forgotten what I wrote.
Today’s Prompt: (re) Discovery
42flashchallenge 
Oddly enough as I moved to the next prompt, I was thinking about how I had no clue what was coming next. It’s deja vu all over again. (thank you, Yogi Berra)
I Forgot
I forgot. I forgot what I was going to do. I forgot why I was standing in the middle of the room, a pair of bloody sheers in my hand and you were nowhere in sight.
My heart skipped a beat, and then another. I wasn’t prone to blacking out, I don’t think I could have hurt someone – I just stood there.
“Hey, Keith, you comin’ back?” I heard you call from the kitchen.
I wandered back in and saw the chicken I’d been cutting into parts for frying. I smiled and relaxed.
“Who was on the phone?”
I blinked, trying to remember. There had been a familiar voice on the phone, and I could almost smell incense in the air as the voice spoke one word. “Now.”
I’m sorry.
That took a decidedly dark turn – And yet, the final outcome is entirely up to the reader– one of the things I love about flash-fiction – it involves the reader filling in the blanks.
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“Mr. Miller, I free from your burden…you choose compassion over conceit, and in so doing freed your soul from its burden.” Josh said as he touched the sword to the older man’s brands.
All of the people watched…and waited.
The emotions in the room were high. The twelve Defilers watched him in unconcealed hatred in their eyes. Rage fueling their desire for revenge…but they found themselves affixed to the floor. Restrained by a power greater than themselves.
The Lost Ones stood wide-eyed in wonder…watching at this glowing being who’d until recently been their friend, teammate, tutor, mentor or student…but now they were discovering something entirely different. They also look at their parents and, in one case their child, the realization that they had been willing to trade their lives, and their very souls for power and wealth.
Josh simply waited…there was nothing for him to discover…he knew what was going to happen from the moment he took the first brand…when the sword was scarred for the first time…it was only a matter of time now.
The sword he held, the sword that he’d carried for almost a millenia now, through battles with his father, and the demon his father had summoned. The sword that cut down enemy and infidel without prejudice, began to crumble.
Each Mark was another scar, and each scar had broken the sword further, until this moment when it collapsed to dust in his hands.
As it did, he felt the power rushing out of his body, the divine half that had sustained him all these centuries, spent to save the souls of the Lost Ones. His own life forfeit to protect them.
“Foolish child…what did you hope to accomplish?” a voice sneered in the back of the classroom.
Josh discovered as he’d accepted that his father would wait until he was weakest to strike.
“Hello, Father.” Josh answered. “I accomplished what I hoped… I spared 12 innocent souls from a fate worse than death, a fate I know far too intimately, Father.”
“So you gave up the one power that protected you…for what? Sheep, cattle…lives that will still be his…”
“Mortal lives perhaps…but not if you will have their immortal ones…and even so your patron will not be able to take those when he.” Josh said with a smile. “But he still will expect twelve souls to devour.”
“Of course, they will…they are still the sacrificial…” The older man sneered.
“Look again, Father…and you will discover that my sacrifice was not in vain…the power that protected me…now protects them…and like you…when Asterifur comes…the sellers of souls are ones whom he will settle accounts with…”
(Excerpt for The Scarred Sword – a tale that I am currently spinning)
@Whirlwindsof
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