These stories were
written with the photo and “defeat” as the prompts. "Defeated Draugr" received an
honourable mention at the 30 May Flash! Friday competition.
Defeated Draugr
We uncovered the grave
while digging foundations for a tower that would reach to the stars. Layers of
dirt weighed the barrow down and we dug greedily, talking of mounds of buried
treasure among the defeated dead.
Layer by layer we removed
time’s dirt until we found the sealed barrow entrance. A red light flickered
from behind the doorway. Drawn by the promise of gold – or money paid by
collectors – we broke away the rotting doorway of wood and stone.
Yellow light shone
from the tomb. Inside among golden treasure, on a stone pedestal, were two
figures; a man sitting with a shrouded woman in his arms. He was crying,
unaware of the corpse lights or his own death.
“She said she would
never leave me,” he moaned, rocking slowly. “She said she would wait for me.
And now she does not wake!”
Yellow light flickered
around the corporeal ghosts caught forever inside the tomb’s imprisoned time.
“She said she would
never leave me,” he cried in vain.
We left the gold,
jewels, and the dead lovers and built for them a new door. We were unable to
tell others what we’d witnessed. There was no language for such deep sorrow, no
hope for forgetting that voice defeated by time.
As If We Never Met
As the tower stretched
towards the moon, we started thinking ourselves gods that could shape earth to
our wishes. I, however, felt very small and mortal every day when you walked
past my front door. You were an angel in a world of wood, mud, and bricks. You
never saw me at the window, too scared to speak.
At night I stared at
the moon, wondering if you would live there with me in the perpetual silver
light. I’d work myself to the brink of death if it meant that I had something
to offer you. That we could be together.
The building grew
slowly and each day I stared at my angel passing. Until, one day, I waited
until you came and then went out the door. But I could only smile like a silly
teenager. No words would come to me.
The building crumbled
on the day we finished. I fell when I ran, cracking my head on fallen masonry.
I awoke in the
hospital; my voice not my own, speaking a strange language – a medical marvel
to be studied.
You saw me the day I
returned home. I introduced myself, but you did not understand me and kept
walking.
And I wished we’d
never met.
