#ThursThreads, week 340

Prompt: https://www.siobhanmuir.com/siobhans-blog/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-week-340

“You will come with me.” Death spoke in stentorian tones, standing stiff-shouldered and proud next to my bed.

I was the opposite of proud, lying in a pool of sweat, some spittle too watery to properly be considered vomit drying on the pillow next to my head. I’d been dying for a while, but I wasn’t ready for the end. And I was too weak to go with anyone, especially now. “Can’t. Can’t move.”

Disdain covered Death’s face. “You humans always think that it matters how ruined your body is. I am not here for that rotting sack of meat and bones. You will come with me, not your body.”

I turned my head to look more closely at the being that had come for me. There was no pity there, no excitement. It was just doing a job, after all, and I was the next item on It’s to-do list. I needed more than that, though, here at the end. “Could you ask me, instead of telling me?”

“Why does it matter? You are dead, and you will come with me.”

“I will. I know. But so much has been taken from me the last few months. My hope. My strength. I had no choice but whether to die quickly or linger. All of my life was about my death. I’d like to feel, here at the end, that I still matter. Somehow.”

Death paused. Considering. Then It nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Very well. Will you come with me?”

“Yes.”

#ThursThreads, week 339

Prompt: https://www.siobhanmuir.com/siobhans-blog/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-week-339

“You’re not even my type.”

“What? You’re dying! You need blood. Who cares if I’m not fuckable anymore?”

“You’re plenty fuckable, Mary, and you know it. Every man and woman here who you’d give the time of day to has gotten a tumble.”

“So what? The world’s ending, I might as well enjoy what I can.”

“I don’t care who you fuck. The days where we put any limits on each other are a long time in the past. But I can’t take your blood!”

“Why?”

“When you got pregnant with Melody, they typed you. You’re A-positive. I’m O-negative. I can only take blood from others with the same type. If I get the wrong blood it’ll kill me.”

“The world’s ending, you got shot, and you’re telling me that we have to hunt for a needle in a haystack to find someone to give you blood?”

“Pretty much. Except you don’t have to – this is my problem. I’ll find someone.”

“You? You can’t even walk.”

“I can yell. Kinda.”

“I’ll help you, you idiot. You’re the only one around here who can help me remember Melody. I can’t lose you too.”

“Thank you. Oh, and Mary?”

“Yes? What else?”

“When you get me better, if you want to throw me a pity fuck, just for old time’s sake, just let me know.”

“If I did, it wouldn’t be out of pity. Not anymore.”

Menage Monday, week 2×07

Prompt: http://www.caramichaels.com/defiantlyliterate/2018/11/12/menagemonday-challenge-week-2×07

It’s almost over. The sun hangs like an infected boil in the sky, swollen and red. It would go nova one of these years – maybe tomorrow, maybe a century from now.

Humanity had evacuated many millennia ago. We were the ones who stayed behind, the Keepers of Gaia, living our lives in protective suits and tending the rock garden that we made to honor the one who’d given us life. I was the only one left. If the sun outlived me, we’d have done the best we could, paying homage to a dead world.

I walked through the garden every day, lifting a rock here, shaping the dirt there, letting the Earth itself tell me what shapes to build. The planet spoke to me, as it did to all the Keepers. I heard its voice in my dreams, telling me of ages past, of dinosaurs and mountains, bacteria and hurricanes.

Lost in sleep, I was dreaming of oceans covering more of the Earth’s surface than I’d ever imagined when the call came.

*Wake up*

I rose instantly. That call was not to be denied.

*The sun is stirring. The end is near.*

“But…the end?” After all this time, after a lifetime of training, I was not prepared. “But you will die.”

*Then let me die. I have had my time. And I will not be alone, will I?*

By now I was in the rock garden, looking up at a dark sky that would soon boil away. “No, you won’t.”

An overlate bit for #ThursThreads

This is too late for ThursThreads, but I finally had an idea, and I needed to get it out. This isn’t good, but it’s words, and words are good.

They always travel in packs, do the bad thoughts, lying in wait behind the illusions of joy. They come one after another after another, not content to let you dwell on this failure or that, but expect you to delve into all of the ways you imagine you let yourself down, you let the world down. They travel in packs to give each other strength so that when you fight off one veil of darkness another is behind it waiting to bind you and keep you from escaping. Did you know that pain calls to pain, self-hatred to self-hatred? Those who live in the light, who see the world not for what it does to destroy but for what it is can escape the pain, but for those who know the truth of the blackness, are surrounded. When you find an island of safety, when you cry out for succor, you are shielded from hope. Pain calls to pain.

 

They always travel in packs, do the bad thoughts. That is why the fight only ends with death.

Menage Monday, week 2×06

Prompt: http://www.caramichaels.com/defiantlyliterate/2018/11/05/menagemonday-challenge-week-2×06/ 

“It’s an illusion.”

It took me a moment to reply. Her cheeks were flush with exertion and the chill in the air, and I wanted nothing more than to lay her down on the carpet of leaves and kiss her until we were too warm for our clothes. “What is?”

“Summer. Well, not an illusion, technically. More of a disguise. The leaves don’t want to be green. They want to be gold and red and orange, but the chlorophyll covers that up. It’s only now that they show us who they truly are.”

Before I could respond, we were both shoved aside by a whirling dervish of leaves and six year old Valkyrie, belting out a song she’d sung a thousand times and scaring away any wildlife within earshot. She spun and smiled at us and then dashed off into the leaves, singing the whole time.

I smiled back. “Stay where you can see us, honey!” She just laughed and ran along the edge of the path.

“You think Disney will ever have a metal princess?”

“We’d have to buy every toy they made.” I did kiss her then, a short but serious smack that I hoped portended of more when we got back hope and put our warrior queen to bed. “Maybe two – one for her and one for you.”

#ThursThreads, week 337

Prompt: https://www.siobhanmuir.com/siobhans-blog/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-week-337

There’s just one more thing I have to do, but I need help doing it. I have no voice anymore, and as far as anyone knows, I’m gone. I lay here in this hospice bed, living on nothing but inertia. The only noise I can make is a moan, though I hardly feel anything to moan about. My arms and legs move, but I no longer control them – involuntary spasms are all that’s left for me now. I still void my bladder and my bowels, though someone has to clean me up, and I’m not sure where it is coming from. Maybe I’m decaying and losing parts of me that I don’t need anymore. There’s just one more thing I have to do. Can they see it whey they look in my eyes? When they pull back my eyelids and see the pupils retract, can they see my final words writ in uncried tears? I love you, I ache to say. I want to cry it out loud to the heavens, the way I did in my every action for decades. I want to reach out and pull everyone close fiercely and gently, to let them know they still matter to me. But I cannot. I will waste away to nothing, my last words lost in a delirious babble late one night. I will die soon, though not soon enough, though too soon for forever. There’s just one more thing I have to do, but I will never do it.