Terror

Prompt: Nightmare

The terrorists were successful. They created an atmosphere of abject horror and fear which was exacerbated by the fact that no one knew their agenda. They made no political, social, or personal claims or aired any such grievances. They seemed to have one goal, which they accomplished efficiently. One of their kind had been pursued and killed but there were no clues, no leads, no trails to follow—just a tall, unkempt figure with half his head blown away.

The terrorists murdered one young blonde woman every night, and left her beheaded body on the lawn outside the homes of innocent people.

The bodies were collected and stored in a repository as identification procedures were set in motion and evidence was gathered. While the external investigation continued, the repository was fitted with audio and video monitoring. Why? It was believed no one, not even the staunchest or bravest, could stomach duty in a building that housed such a number of dead young women.

So when sounds began emanating from the repository one night, those tasked with monitoring the site were alarmed. What were these sounds? Muffled, but human. Were they calls for help? Cries of pain or despair? The live video was blurred and only fixed on the entryway, not inside where the dead lay in rows.

The first moving figure on the video monitor was a hazy figure that emerged from the locked room. An intruder? Impossible. The alternative was equally impossible.

So possibilities were set aside, with no reasonable impossibilities to take their place. Those tasked with monitoring stood and stared at the monitor, immobile, in a void empty of ideas or consequence.

Another unidentifiable figure appeared behind the first.

It was a tall man, unkempt, bloody, his pupils surrounded by whites, emitting primitive howls of rage directed explicitly at the camera lens as he approached it. Women, whole but blood-soaked, appeared like an army behind and around him.

An army of the dead, recruited by their murderers, and as full of rage.

Nightmare.

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Yes, that was a dream I had last night. I honestly have no stomach for gore in movies (or in the world) but somehow there was a dream logic that allowed horrifying images to direct whatever narrative there was in this story.

Lesser Moments

Prompt: Nightmare

Here’s my nightmare: Awakening to a world that is frozen in time, any time. There is no idea of progress or improvement, and instead a driving belief that we must preserve even the things that are flawed and damaging. There are blinkered fantasies about how life used to be, and an idea that the present is a lesser moment than the imagined past.

There is no empathy, just an attitude that suffering is normal and acceptable and inevitable in some way, for anyone but ourselves.

My nightmare.