Hi all,
here’s another piece of writing prompt fiction for you. I’m going to start tagging the genre so the archives are easier to navigate.This one is “Horror”.
You know the rules by now: 20 minutes, no editing apart from changing typos and punctuation and deleting.
Enjoy!
Rain taps on the roof. The headlights pick out a hedge, the trunk of a tree. The light is too yellow, the contrast off.
The car is half on the road, the hedgerow impaled between the bonnet and the tree. The windshield wipers squeak across the glass. The car is warm inside but there’s a draft. From the driver’s side window, which is cracked, a triangle missing. The engine hisses and the bonnet pops as it cools.
There are three people in the car. The driver, the person beside the driver and the person in the back. They wear seat belts. One is breathing jaggedly, lungs avoiding broken ribs.
Look around, blink, look again and the scene comes into focus. It doesn’t make sense. The dark, the yellow lights, the noise of rain, the weird angle of the car. Then: the pub; the drinks; the offer to drive the two girls home.
The sudden movement as the car crested the small hill.
The weightlessness as the car aimed itself at the ditch beside the road.
His neck was sore.
Please, God, not broken.
The girls. Maura beside him, Siobhán in the back. He called, his voice drowsy with shock. He couldn’t see her, couldn’t turn his head, couldn’t get the seat belt off.
“Hey!”
Did she move?
“Hey!” Movement behind him. “Siobhán?”
He could hear breathing. Thank God, they had their seat belts on. And it was only a little bump. Just ran off the road trying to avoid a… what was it?
A flash of white before the car had lifted off the road. Singing. Keening.
Maybe they’d hit… whatever. Or a fox in heat.
Behind him. Keening.
In the mirror. The banshee on Siobhán’s lap. She rocked and wept as she sang.
Life, coming out of Siobhán’s mouth. The old woman sucked it in.
And Siobhán started to sing.
And Maura started to sing.
And the old woman, dressed in white, her tangled hair muddy with blood crawled across the dead girl.
And he was singing, too.
