Today on Drabble Wednesday, we whisper to the destroyer of souls…
The Soul Blade
The weight of blade felt like lead in her hand, not so much
the ivory hilt or its metal, as the consequence in wielding it. Killing a man,
she was used to that, but this dark magic…
She wondered how it felt, to be cut with the blade. To feel
your life sliced from your skin and drawn into the dagger’s black limbo. She
ran a finger along the metal.
How many poor souls are
imprisoned there, hundreds, thousands?
She looked at the man tied to the chair.
I suppose one more
won’t make a difference.
She swung the blade.
~*~
Ghost Ship
The tattered sails rippled in the wind, as if they sighed. A
year past, this ship—the Sapphire Belle—left port to race the wind and tame the
seas. Now it drifted, forever aimless with the tide, empty save for its ghostly
echoes on moonlit nights.
For upon the full moon, when translucent feathers of light
fell on deck, its crew of the dead stirred. Pulled from the hell where they
condemned themselves, the sailors moved as in life, steering their wayward ship
toward a home no longer attainable. On
these nights, the ship rejoined the world of the living.
~*~
The smoke and dust swirled, arising into barely corporeal
form. The dark, androgynous figure moved forward, its vaporous edges mere wisps
melding with air. It smelled of sulphur and wet earth, and a hint of apple. In
its wake it dragged the still silence of oblivion.
For a thousand years it slept in dormancy, nothing to
sustain its appetite, all souls of life drained and forgotten, every corpse
rotted into the soil.
Now it waited patiently, watching the crew embark from the
space ship. Soon it would dine on their essence, their souls. Soon their bones
would join the rest.
© A. F. Stewart 2015 All Rights Reserved
