Today I'm sharing a story I wrote in three days for a short story competition. Genres and prompts were assigned when the competition began, so no one could prepare anything ahead of time.
My challenge was to write a max. 2,000-word horror story incorporating a renovation and a researcher. Here's the result, warts n' all...hope you enjoy it...
Synopsis: Are we the masters of our fates, the captains of our souls? Before you decide what to believe, hear the story of Celestina.
I lie under the inky sky, unable to fall back asleep in the still, stale air. I pulled my cot out of my tent, but it’s no use. There’s never any breeze to catch. It’s too hot. Too quiet. I wish for other noises, the hustle and bustle of a living, breathing city.
I awoke in the midst of a nightmare. Lately it’s the same one, every night: a voice whose deep resonance pushes through the pores of my skin, invading muscle and sinew, chilling the marrow in my bones. I never remember the words. But each time I struggle to wake, as if I’ve been paralyzed by the monstrous weight of its sonancy.
I stare into nothingness until, by increments, I am able to see. As another cheerless dawn approaches, the darkness sinks, pooling around the remnants of an ancient civilization.
“Celest,” someone calls softly. It’s Manù. I can make out his long, lean frame, but not his face. Good. I’ll be more coherent.
I am already rising as I wish him a good morning. Time to get back to work.
When we reach the main square, the crew is already busy. A few say words of greeting as they pass. They call Manù “Father” and me “Prof.” My first day here, I protested that I was just a research assistant. “Call me Celest,” I said.
It was Manù who explained that I was making the men uncomfortable. “Actually it would be kinder to just…let them show their respect.” That was the day I noticed he had a slight accent, and a tendency to start sentences with “actually,” and light flecks in his dark eyes. And a million other wonderful things.
Anyway, now I try to let everyone be. To do whatever makes them comfortable.
Every day, under the dusky gray of overcast skies, we repair and rebuild, renovating this once-lost city to its former glory. The site makes us all jittery. Maybe it’s because of its history, all the bad things that happened here. I’m just thankful the job is almost done.
The temple at the northern end of the square is really coming along. Manù says we can finally start moving in the relics. We spend hours fussing with priceless candlesticks and statuettes, ash-filled urns, a timeworn mortar and pestle of bloodstone, and an ornate dagger.
It’s an uneventful day, until one of the crewmembers breaks a tile, uncovering a secret hiding place filled with scrolls. Manù is excited by one in particular, and he sits down right there on the floor to study it.
I sigh and sit next to him, start opening the other scrolls. Some are texts in a language I can’t read. Others are paintings. I can’t tear my eyes from one in particular. A depiction of the devil ravaging a young woman.
It reminds me of something unpleasant that happened when I was a young girl. A nightmare—one that I remember in excruciating detail—in which a heinous beast told me I was beautiful. Wanted. I shudder at the memory.
The foreman rings the bell. Dinner is ready at the canteen. As usual, Manù walks with me. I’m relieved to have a few hours now to relax and talk to him away from the crew.
We discuss the scrolls, Manù explaining that the one he was studying details an archaic ritual. He wants me to help him perform it, but he doesn’t explain why. Not properly.
We’re sitting at a long picnic-style table. Just us two, as no one ever joins us. I try to focus on what Manù’s saying—something about wine and other things we’ll need for the ritual—but it’s always difficult for me here. Firstly because the canteen is the place where I feel best. It’s well lit, with soft lanternlight throughout, and the smell of dinner is familiar, reassuring.
Secondly, because Manù sits beside me. We both like to face the cafeteria’s interior, rather than the dark windows. I can feel the warmth of his body, and there’s a sort of energy that courses through me, from my throat to my chest, from my chest to my stomach. Below my stomach. I fantasize about him. Imagine him putting his hand on my leg, sliding it in towards my thigh. My thoughts are not chaste. I am in love, and I am in lust.
Is it “wrong” to want him? Though I’m a scholar of religion, I’m not at all religious. Still, I feel a little guilty. I haven’t asked him—how could I?—but I imagine he has taken a vow of celibacy. I push away my wine.
He’s waiting for my answer. I don’t want to be part of any ritual, but I am too weak to say no. If I go with him to the temple now, we’ll be alone…truly alone. I feel a little thrill.
“Fine, let’s do it. Before I come to my senses.”
We get back to the temple and Manù doesn’t waste any time. He is already lighting candles, pouring wine into the bloodstone mortar. “Now we circle the altar,” he says, taking my hand.
As we walk, a chill runs up my spine, up my skull. Suddenly I feel suspicious of what Manù wouldn’t say when we were in the canteen.
Time seems to slow. Moving becomes wearisome, like wading through sludge. The wine sits thickly, like pig’s blood for black pudding, and the candles cast shadows that are overlong, making bony fingers on the floor, the walls.
We stop, and Manù turns to face me, and he is so beautiful, and it makes my heart hurt, and then I’m correcting myself because he isn’t beautiful, he’s resplendent. The flecks in his eyes are gold. His skin luminous. I think I’ve been drugged, but I know I haven’t. I hear a terrible wailing. I look around to find the source and I see a mist, floating like a spectre in the center of the hall, and I think it’s malice made material, and then I realize it’s me, I’m the one wailing.
I fall to my knees and then somehow I’m laying on my back. Manù leans over me, and I have to close my eyes for an instant. He is incandescent, frightening. He pulls me up, and I catch a glimpse of feathers and think that’s odd. He turns to look toward the altar and now I see that wings have torn through his shirt from the inside, like they fucking sprouted from his back, and they look sharp and dangerous, like etched metal.
What is he? An Angel? In every story I’ve read about angels, they bring peace. But I feel only terror.
He’s talking fast. “Cele, listen to me. I’ve been watching over you for a long time. You hear a voice in your dreams. He chose you. I’m certain of it. The scroll is incomplete, but I believe the rest of the incantation is in your head. I need you to say it.”
I can’t talk, fear has stopped the neurons in the vocal regions of my brain. He touches his forehead to mine. “It has to be you.” He whispers: “He doesn’t talk to me anymore.”
Who? What is he talking about? My dreams? “I don’t remember my dreams,” I say. My tongue feels thick in my mouth. “Ever.” Manù is depending on me? Stupid, stupid angel.
I’m useless.
“It’s not about remembering,” he says.
It doesn’t make any sense. I pull away and look back toward the mist, see it transform into a tornado of dark, oily smoke.
“Don’t look at it,” he says. “Just use your instincts. Say what comes to mind.” He grabs my chin, forces me to face him. “Cele, don’t look at it. I will kill it. That’s my job,” he says grimly. “I’m going to end it all.”
Kill what? What is that?
Manù whispers something, blows air into my face like he’s trying to cool it down. I feel suddenly awake, alert. Words that I don’t recognize pour out of me like vomit. Ugly, guttural sounds. Filth and slime. This is not one of the languages I’ve studied. But I can tell that Manù understands. His look of comprehension changes to worry. Despair.
He puts his hand over my mouth but my mouth has stopped moving, so he drops his hand and we stare at each other, then turn, as one, to watch the smoke resolve into a being. Horns protrude from its forehead. He has no clothing—it is a “he,” his genitals are grotesque. He leers at me, and I gag.
And it gets worse. Yes, worse, when he speaks. It is the voice of my dreams. But now I am awake and I know, deep in my soul, this demon wants me.
“Celestina,” he hisses.
I cover my ears though it doesn’t block out any sound and I can’t look away and I have this crazy thought that I should get the dagger and stab myself in each ear and each eyeball because I want to be deaf and blind. I want to unsee, unhear. Can someone turn back the clock, please, please if there’s a God turn back the clock.
He talks like I belong to him, and he walks toward me and Manù, but the fiend keeps his eyes on me and calls me his consort and this is the most disgusting thing of all.
I scream “What the FUCK!? Get away!” I stumble backward and Manù launches himself at the monster, and I feel the familiar paralysis of my dreams setting in. The demon laughs, and turns back into that oily smoke, and surrounds me. And I scream for Manù, scream so hard it’s tearing through my throat, and then everything goes black.
When I start to come to, I'm floating on hot air. Very hot. Burning! My eyes fly open. I expect to see flames and charred flesh. But there is no fire, and my skin is perfect. Yet I feel the burning, a pain so intense I know I should be unconscious still. It’s like a scorching wind, keeping me afloat and in agony, though somehow I am able to think, to reason. It occurs to me now that I am nude, and I wonder why.
What happened? Where am I?
Manù is suspended in the same blistering air. Around us is nothing but bare rock. In the distance I see caverns and jagged peaks. Dry and brown, not a speck of green. Tears stream down my face, and though I twist and turn, I can’t reach Manù or even the ground.
“Manù, what is this place?” I sob.
“This is the second circle.”
It’s not Manù who answers. It’s the voice of my dreams, disembodied, all around us. It talks for a long time, the hideous sound adding to my torture.
It tells a story, about an angel who plotted to kill a King. The angel found the lost city of Aita, and oversaw its restoration, and enacted a ritual to summon the King from his fiery realm. And somewhere along the line, somehow, this angel also fell in love. And he felt lust for the first time in his long existence.
“But the object of the angel’s love, the heroine of our story, was meant for another,” the voice says. “For long ago, when you were a girl of 10, the King chose you for himself.”
I weep and I weep. “You can’t do this, I don’t belong here!”
Raucous laughter. “No one wins the game of life, Cele,” he says, using Manù’s nickname for me, but stretching out the syllables contemptuously. “When you are ready to abandon your angel to endure this torture alone, you will rule beside me.”
“No.”
“You’ll be ready one day. All in good time.” There is no doubt in that voice. And I look at Manù and there is no doubt in his face, either.
Though this story did not go on to win, the judges took the time to send me their feedback (any budding writers out there, NYCMidnight competitions offer you the opportunity to interact with other writers via exclusive forums and feedback from judges who are experienced authors):
Praise for Celestina:
- This retelling of religious allegories...was rife with erotic and demonic imagery, deep sensuality, and the consequences of denial.
- The diabolical chemistry was potent. Also, I love the idea of there being TWO circles, one of a ritual sacrifice, and one of a willing one.
- The sentence fragments and parallelism are quite lyrical, as in the lovely sentence, "I am in love, and I am in lust."
- Specific details give the story a sense of verisimilitude. The items they move into the temple...the secret hiding place...the ominous nightmare...
(The above are excerpts with very minor edits for coherence)
My challenge was to write a max. 2,000-word horror story incorporating a renovation and a researcher. Here's the result, warts n' all...hope you enjoy it...
Celestina
Synopsis: Are we the masters of our fates, the captains of our souls? Before you decide what to believe, hear the story of Celestina.
Celestina
I lie under the inky sky, unable to fall back asleep in the still, stale air. I pulled my cot out of my tent, but it’s no use. There’s never any breeze to catch. It’s too hot. Too quiet. I wish for other noises, the hustle and bustle of a living, breathing city.
I awoke in the midst of a nightmare. Lately it’s the same one, every night: a voice whose deep resonance pushes through the pores of my skin, invading muscle and sinew, chilling the marrow in my bones. I never remember the words. But each time I struggle to wake, as if I’ve been paralyzed by the monstrous weight of its sonancy.
I stare into nothingness until, by increments, I am able to see. As another cheerless dawn approaches, the darkness sinks, pooling around the remnants of an ancient civilization.
“Celest,” someone calls softly. It’s Manù. I can make out his long, lean frame, but not his face. Good. I’ll be more coherent.
I am already rising as I wish him a good morning. Time to get back to work.
When we reach the main square, the crew is already busy. A few say words of greeting as they pass. They call Manù “Father” and me “Prof.” My first day here, I protested that I was just a research assistant. “Call me Celest,” I said.
It was Manù who explained that I was making the men uncomfortable. “Actually it would be kinder to just…let them show their respect.” That was the day I noticed he had a slight accent, and a tendency to start sentences with “actually,” and light flecks in his dark eyes. And a million other wonderful things.
Anyway, now I try to let everyone be. To do whatever makes them comfortable.
Every day, under the dusky gray of overcast skies, we repair and rebuild, renovating this once-lost city to its former glory. The site makes us all jittery. Maybe it’s because of its history, all the bad things that happened here. I’m just thankful the job is almost done.
The temple at the northern end of the square is really coming along. Manù says we can finally start moving in the relics. We spend hours fussing with priceless candlesticks and statuettes, ash-filled urns, a timeworn mortar and pestle of bloodstone, and an ornate dagger.
It’s an uneventful day, until one of the crewmembers breaks a tile, uncovering a secret hiding place filled with scrolls. Manù is excited by one in particular, and he sits down right there on the floor to study it.
I sigh and sit next to him, start opening the other scrolls. Some are texts in a language I can’t read. Others are paintings. I can’t tear my eyes from one in particular. A depiction of the devil ravaging a young woman.
It reminds me of something unpleasant that happened when I was a young girl. A nightmare—one that I remember in excruciating detail—in which a heinous beast told me I was beautiful. Wanted. I shudder at the memory.
The foreman rings the bell. Dinner is ready at the canteen. As usual, Manù walks with me. I’m relieved to have a few hours now to relax and talk to him away from the crew.
We discuss the scrolls, Manù explaining that the one he was studying details an archaic ritual. He wants me to help him perform it, but he doesn’t explain why. Not properly.
We’re sitting at a long picnic-style table. Just us two, as no one ever joins us. I try to focus on what Manù’s saying—something about wine and other things we’ll need for the ritual—but it’s always difficult for me here. Firstly because the canteen is the place where I feel best. It’s well lit, with soft lanternlight throughout, and the smell of dinner is familiar, reassuring.
Secondly, because Manù sits beside me. We both like to face the cafeteria’s interior, rather than the dark windows. I can feel the warmth of his body, and there’s a sort of energy that courses through me, from my throat to my chest, from my chest to my stomach. Below my stomach. I fantasize about him. Imagine him putting his hand on my leg, sliding it in towards my thigh. My thoughts are not chaste. I am in love, and I am in lust.
Is it “wrong” to want him? Though I’m a scholar of religion, I’m not at all religious. Still, I feel a little guilty. I haven’t asked him—how could I?—but I imagine he has taken a vow of celibacy. I push away my wine.
He’s waiting for my answer. I don’t want to be part of any ritual, but I am too weak to say no. If I go with him to the temple now, we’ll be alone…truly alone. I feel a little thrill.
“Fine, let’s do it. Before I come to my senses.”
We get back to the temple and Manù doesn’t waste any time. He is already lighting candles, pouring wine into the bloodstone mortar. “Now we circle the altar,” he says, taking my hand.
As we walk, a chill runs up my spine, up my skull. Suddenly I feel suspicious of what Manù wouldn’t say when we were in the canteen.
Time seems to slow. Moving becomes wearisome, like wading through sludge. The wine sits thickly, like pig’s blood for black pudding, and the candles cast shadows that are overlong, making bony fingers on the floor, the walls.
We stop, and Manù turns to face me, and he is so beautiful, and it makes my heart hurt, and then I’m correcting myself because he isn’t beautiful, he’s resplendent. The flecks in his eyes are gold. His skin luminous. I think I’ve been drugged, but I know I haven’t. I hear a terrible wailing. I look around to find the source and I see a mist, floating like a spectre in the center of the hall, and I think it’s malice made material, and then I realize it’s me, I’m the one wailing.
I fall to my knees and then somehow I’m laying on my back. Manù leans over me, and I have to close my eyes for an instant. He is incandescent, frightening. He pulls me up, and I catch a glimpse of feathers and think that’s odd. He turns to look toward the altar and now I see that wings have torn through his shirt from the inside, like they fucking sprouted from his back, and they look sharp and dangerous, like etched metal.
What is he? An Angel? In every story I’ve read about angels, they bring peace. But I feel only terror.
He’s talking fast. “Cele, listen to me. I’ve been watching over you for a long time. You hear a voice in your dreams. He chose you. I’m certain of it. The scroll is incomplete, but I believe the rest of the incantation is in your head. I need you to say it.”
I can’t talk, fear has stopped the neurons in the vocal regions of my brain. He touches his forehead to mine. “It has to be you.” He whispers: “He doesn’t talk to me anymore.”
Who? What is he talking about? My dreams? “I don’t remember my dreams,” I say. My tongue feels thick in my mouth. “Ever.” Manù is depending on me? Stupid, stupid angel.
I’m useless.
“It’s not about remembering,” he says.
It doesn’t make any sense. I pull away and look back toward the mist, see it transform into a tornado of dark, oily smoke.
“Don’t look at it,” he says. “Just use your instincts. Say what comes to mind.” He grabs my chin, forces me to face him. “Cele, don’t look at it. I will kill it. That’s my job,” he says grimly. “I’m going to end it all.”
Kill what? What is that?
Manù whispers something, blows air into my face like he’s trying to cool it down. I feel suddenly awake, alert. Words that I don’t recognize pour out of me like vomit. Ugly, guttural sounds. Filth and slime. This is not one of the languages I’ve studied. But I can tell that Manù understands. His look of comprehension changes to worry. Despair.
He puts his hand over my mouth but my mouth has stopped moving, so he drops his hand and we stare at each other, then turn, as one, to watch the smoke resolve into a being. Horns protrude from its forehead. He has no clothing—it is a “he,” his genitals are grotesque. He leers at me, and I gag.
And it gets worse. Yes, worse, when he speaks. It is the voice of my dreams. But now I am awake and I know, deep in my soul, this demon wants me.
“Celestina,” he hisses.
I cover my ears though it doesn’t block out any sound and I can’t look away and I have this crazy thought that I should get the dagger and stab myself in each ear and each eyeball because I want to be deaf and blind. I want to unsee, unhear. Can someone turn back the clock, please, please if there’s a God turn back the clock.
He talks like I belong to him, and he walks toward me and Manù, but the fiend keeps his eyes on me and calls me his consort and this is the most disgusting thing of all.
I scream “What the FUCK!? Get away!” I stumble backward and Manù launches himself at the monster, and I feel the familiar paralysis of my dreams setting in. The demon laughs, and turns back into that oily smoke, and surrounds me. And I scream for Manù, scream so hard it’s tearing through my throat, and then everything goes black.
Ω
When I start to come to, I'm floating on hot air. Very hot. Burning! My eyes fly open. I expect to see flames and charred flesh. But there is no fire, and my skin is perfect. Yet I feel the burning, a pain so intense I know I should be unconscious still. It’s like a scorching wind, keeping me afloat and in agony, though somehow I am able to think, to reason. It occurs to me now that I am nude, and I wonder why.
What happened? Where am I?
Manù is suspended in the same blistering air. Around us is nothing but bare rock. In the distance I see caverns and jagged peaks. Dry and brown, not a speck of green. Tears stream down my face, and though I twist and turn, I can’t reach Manù or even the ground.
“Manù, what is this place?” I sob.
“This is the second circle.”
It’s not Manù who answers. It’s the voice of my dreams, disembodied, all around us. It talks for a long time, the hideous sound adding to my torture.
It tells a story, about an angel who plotted to kill a King. The angel found the lost city of Aita, and oversaw its restoration, and enacted a ritual to summon the King from his fiery realm. And somewhere along the line, somehow, this angel also fell in love. And he felt lust for the first time in his long existence.
“But the object of the angel’s love, the heroine of our story, was meant for another,” the voice says. “For long ago, when you were a girl of 10, the King chose you for himself.”
I weep and I weep. “You can’t do this, I don’t belong here!”
Raucous laughter. “No one wins the game of life, Cele,” he says, using Manù’s nickname for me, but stretching out the syllables contemptuously. “When you are ready to abandon your angel to endure this torture alone, you will rule beside me.”
“No.”
“You’ll be ready one day. All in good time.” There is no doubt in that voice. And I look at Manù and there is no doubt in his face, either.
THE END
Though this story did not go on to win, the judges took the time to send me their feedback (any budding writers out there, NYCMidnight competitions offer you the opportunity to interact with other writers via exclusive forums and feedback from judges who are experienced authors):
Praise for Celestina:
- This retelling of religious allegories...was rife with erotic and demonic imagery, deep sensuality, and the consequences of denial.
- The diabolical chemistry was potent. Also, I love the idea of there being TWO circles, one of a ritual sacrifice, and one of a willing one.
- The sentence fragments and parallelism are quite lyrical, as in the lovely sentence, "I am in love, and I am in lust."
- Specific details give the story a sense of verisimilitude. The items they move into the temple...the secret hiding place...the ominous nightmare...
(The above are excerpts with very minor edits for coherence)
