300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #25 -- VICTORY TO THE JUDGE!

[TheDustyZebra]

Consanguinity


Blood.

Drip.

Blood on the water

Drip. Drip.

Spreading red and there’s no head and feeding dead and

drip.

Blood on the water and

I brought the blood like it said.

I was looking for Lady, she’s my dog, and I heard this noise, in the forest? And I followed the noise, it was … well it wasn’t Lady, it wasn’t anybody, but it wanted me to come, and when I found it, it was this puddle. I looked in the puddle and Lady was in there. I couldn’t see her head, but it was her.

She was right there, under the water, and I reached in to get her, but she was deeper, and I reached further, up to my elbow, and she was still deeper, and I was in all the way to my shoulder and it bit me.

Not Lady. She never bites. Something bit me. I jumped back, and my hand was bleeding, and it spread all over the puddle, red, and there was no Lady. Just red.

Blood on the water and the spirits

The noise said to bring it the blood.

So I went to find the blood, to get my Lady back.

A dog ran out of the bushes, and I almost took the dog, but it already had Lady and it wanted more than that.

A woman shouted at the dog, and she came through the bushes and I hit her with a big stick. I took her to the puddle and I threw her in. I sat and waited, and

drip. I still bled.

Drip drip. There’s no head.

Blood on the water

Spreading red.

Feed the dead.

Blood on the water and the spirits of the damned.

The noise says to come in and get Lady.

Here I go.

 

[Ursa major]

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Red Shift​

I’m an Angel of Death. (I’m no angel, just a non-corporeal entity.)

Some people must lose the lottery of life so that others can win it. The losers always outnumber the winners, who do all they can to keep the game going. I get paid to help them do this.

How can I put this delicately? Some people are special. There’s something about them that makes them popular. That thing is taste. Basically, they’re really yummy. (I wouldn’t know, being non-corporeal, but my employers assure me it’s true.)

The thing is, there’s a problem. And I don’t mean the cannibalism. Yumminess is a heritable trait: the same bloodlines are required to, well, serve themselves up again and again. This attracts attention. As farming the “livestock” is too risky – or, more likely, too expensive – hunting and gathering is favoured.

While no one ever suspects that people are killed because they’re delicious, this doesn’t stop the police from investigating suspicious deaths. (They’re nearly all suspicious: few accidents leave no body behind.)

What’s needed is a cause, one that can’t lead anywhere. That’s what I provide. I’m the literal personification of the family curse, the bad luck that follows certain bloodlines around.

We Angels of Death – yes, I’m not alone – each have our own bloodline to “take care” of. We all have our own ways of doing the job: like clowns’ faces, no two are alike. Mine involves appearing as a ghost: a corpse whose white dress has been drenched in blood. It’s very effective. There’s always one family member who’ll hide away… never to be seen again.

You may think me a monster, but I do have standards. No children for one. I have never frightened a child; I haunt the parents while their child is, well, despatched.​

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[Ursa major]

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