Read Online Fiction: Fresh Reads Daily

Set some time after the third book…. wherever it fits into the story I guess.

Terrifying Times

–––Night; Lyric–––

I'm about to scream, but I can't. If I do, he'll see me and I don't want that. It's very dark, but I can still see clearly. All I really see is the blood that's welling up from the throne and that half distorted shadow person that I can see so well. That dark fist rises, slowly, then suddenly clenches.

I wake with my hands over my mouth, that's the second time tonight. I'm not going to sleep like this. I'm too frightened.

I slide out of my bed and grab my slippers, then I double check that they match my nightclothes and the dressing gown that I'm about sliding on. I ease out of my room and into the hallway and then to the next door over from mine.

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Edie was sitting in the classroom, checking her French homework for mistakes, for five minutes before anyone else even showed up. She hadn’t thought she was quite that early, but the clocks in the classrooms didn’t seem to be consistent with each other or with the ones elsewhere in the buildings. She suspected students of sabotage and teachers of counter-sabotage.

Zip plopped down in the seat next to Edie, breathing hard. Edie looked at her in surprise. “Were you running? You’re not late or anything.”

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* * *
Elete
* * *

The ocean nips my bare toes. I notice it simply because it's better than noticing anything else.

The water this time of year is that deep, electric cold that, when it contacts your skin, has its own peculiar burning heat. As I stand there, my feet sinking into the wet sand, I watch the bare skin on top of my feet first turn a shocking pink, then a grayish-purple.

I don't have to wonder how it would feel to sink into that frigid surf, feel the ice close over my head and steal the air from my lungs. My wife remembered it for me as she died, and my daughter -- I am grateful that my daughter was unable to do the same. I have only my own imagination to tell the fine details of her demise.

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The country looks the same; the same trees grow, the same birds sing. The villages are built Arkan-style, with sun-slits in the red-tiled roofs and a small All-Gods temple with a small sun-disc. We’d find them empty down to the house-mice, or else everyone hiding in the temple on their knees, weeping in terror.

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