Writer In Motion Forum

Note: Below is, as requested, the unedited first draft of my short. I can see where I want to make additions/edits in subsequent versions, metaphors and such, so I hope you like it. I haven't written anything coherent in so long it's been nice to just grind something out.

My Story, as yet untitled:


Sarah McIntyre closed her eyes and smelled the salty, crisp air. The smell of the sea, the high-pitched calls of the seagulls, had never failed to bring her to her favorite place, and they did again once more. She inhaled deeply, feeling the moisture in the air lightly brush her filth-covered cheeks. A hint of a smile crossed her dried, cracked lips.

Home, she thought. I want to be home.

Without opening her eyes, she held aloft the flair she?d snatched on her way up to the crumbling roof, and twisted the top. It whooshed to life as the flair ignited, and smoke billowed forth. The sea air whipped it around Sarah?s head of dark, tangled curls, and for a moment her lungs constricted against the acrid stench.

Sarah?

It came from below, where it had always been, she was convinced, and where it might some day return. She felt the voice in her head, her whole body shaking as she forced her head to keep from turning towards it.

Darling?

She damned the voice in her mind, damned it that it mimicked her husband?s voice and used his favorite nickname for her, damned it for claiming him first before the rest of their team. We never should have opened it, she thought.

But you did, the voice answered, and I wish to thank you?

She waved the flair back and forth, willing the smoke to rise to the heavens. She could hear the ocean waves crashing against rocks far below, foam and spray raining upon gray shoals smoothed over eons. At any moment, she would hear the beating of the helicopter blades, her savior swooping in to lift her from a living nightmare.

Thank you? whispered the voice, behind her ear, and in her mind. She had watched as the team pieced together stone remnants from the sea floor, hidden under multiple layers of silt in a grotto tucked away behind an ancient rock slide that had only last week revealed itself. There were no markings, none at all, on the stones her team excavated from the site. Once they were lain on the facility floor, however, her husband, Derrick, had known how to arrange them. His assistant, Sue, moved in tandem with him, their movements in perfect harmony.

In less than an hour, they had made a perfect circle from the stones. A shimmer had begun then, and rapidly filled the space. That was when she?d heard it, they had all heard it?

Thank you?

Sarah turned to the door to head to Derrick, but it locked in front of her. She had glanced down at the floor and seen an oily darkness rising from the shimmer, a tentacle caressing Derrick?s face while another did the same to Sue. Sarah stood mesmerized by the otherness of the darkness, the rich jet blackness of it, a living shadow, until two bright yellow orbs appeared in the middle of it. Irises the size of small cars appeared and the tentacles curled around Derrick and Sue like vices. Their bodies were swallowed whole by the blackness, and the amber eyes bore deep into Sarah?s baby blues. She tore her gaze from the nightmare, and slammed her hand down onto the emergency button in the control room. Five minutes later, a rescue helicopter would arrive. She just had to get to the roof.

Researchers scrambled for the exits, but several were struck down. A loud crack, reminding Sarah of a whip, popped through the air and stabbed two assistants in front of her. They tentacles punched through the bodies, then enveloped each in a veneer of shimmering ebony.

She ran. Through the doors, up the stairs, and to the roof. Along the way, she passed a few boxes of flares and snatched one while on the run. She hurried across the roof as the building shook. She guessed that whatever was down stairs wouldn?t stay there for long. Maybe it would be just long enough for the rescue copter to arrive, maybe not. Either way, she?d be ready with the fare in hand and get out of there.

Screams followed her to the rooftop and she turned back when she made it to the pole at the far end. Silence was her only companion. No one else stood next to her, not an assistant or associate, not any of the people she had worked next to for the past two years. Only the wind gusting through her hair made any noise. That and the sea below crashing on the smooth rocks.

She looked out across the ocean and could see the faint outline of a helicopter on the horizon. Soon it would be there, and she would be ready.

She opened her eyes and they began to water from the reddish smoke brushing her face. She waved the falre back and forth as the helicopter drew closer but only as it veered away did she realize her mistake. They had been told that there were two flares, red and green, in the boxes and she had greabbed the wrong one. The rapid whirring of the blades threw the smoke across the rooftop, wrapping her in her failure as it turned and headed back out.

The flare fell to the ground and rolled off the roof trailing the smoke down to the shoals. Cold began to fill the air around her, darkness at the corner of her eyes. She looked out at the sea, smelled the air, salty, welcoming, and made her choice.

She closed her eyes, and returned home.